Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 30, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last day of April, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, and a Hump Day (“Aho ‘o e Hump” in Tongan). It’s also National Bubble Tea Day, a clever invention which I much like (I love chewing on the tapioca balls). It was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, but has now spread throughout the world.

Howief, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

It’s also Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, Mr. Potato Head Day (the first toy advertised on television), Bugs Bunny Day (he first appeared in a cartoon on this day in 1938), Denim Day (check the link), International Jazz Day, National Oatmeal Cookie Day, and National Raisin Day.

In honor of Jazz Day, here’s Bird and Diz in 1952, playing “Hot House”:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Although I was glad that Trump favors Israel and criticized universities for creating a climate of antisemitism, I never though hard about why on earth he was worried about it. After all, Trump isn’t really notable as a Friend of the Jews. Now, the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg is explicit in saying, “I can’t believe anyone thinks Trump actually cares about antisemitism.” And I should have realized what she did:

Trump’s treatment of L.G.B.T. people should have been a lesson to anyone tempted to take his campaign against antisemitism seriously, when it is screamingly obvious that it’s just a pretext to attack liberal institutions. Trump and his allies, after all, have mainstreamed antisemitism to an astonishing degree. Elon Musk, to whom Trump has outsourced the remaking of the federal government, is perhaps the world’s largest purveyor of antisemitic propaganda, thanks to his website X. (My “for you” feed recently served me a post of a winsome young woman speaking adoringly of “the H man,” or Hitler.) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, once said the unvaccinated had it worse than Anne Frank. Just last month Leo Terrell, the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force, shared a social media post by a prominent neo-Nazi gloating that Trump had the power to take away Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Jew card.” Trump himself, of course, dined with the Hitler-loving rapper Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

Yet I’ve been astonished to learn that some people believe that when the administration attacks academia for its purported antisemitism, it’s acting in good faith. Speaking on CNBC last week, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, cheered Trump’s attempt to exercise political control over Harvard, saying, “It is a good thing that President Trump is leaning in.” In a shocking interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who served as a special envoy to combat antisemitism under Joe Biden, praised Trump’s assaults on academia and its attempts to deport some pro-Palestinian activists. While in some cases she thinks the administration has gone overboard, she suggested that those who don’t give the president credit for standing up for Jews suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

But then she says this:

It seems to me that there’s another sort of derangement at play here, rooted in the way Israel’s defenders conflate all but the mildest criticism of Israel with antisemitism. There have certainly been incidents of crude anti-Jewish bigotry in the protests that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But too many backers of Israel can’t seem to imagine a reason besides antisemitic animus for impassioned opposition to Israel’s merciless war on Gaza. This leads them to vastly overstate the scale of antisemitism on the left and, in turn, to rationalize away Trump’s authoritarianism as he attempts to crush progressive redoubts.

“Merciless war on Gaza?”  When Gaza has been shooting rockets at Israel for years, and finally conducted a brutal attack.  And put the “merciless” part (if that’s the way you construe it) at the door of Hamas, who has forced Israelis to fight them when they’re embedded among civilians. If Ms. Goldberg thinks Israel should provide material support to the enemy (Hamas gets most of the food), then she should also give her solution to the conflict. Would she want Hamas to stay in power? If not, how should Israel destroy it?

I’m not rationalizing away Trump’s authoritarianism, which is absolutely evident, and I do agree with her that Trump isn’t going after, say, colleges because he loves Jews, though I think there is an antisemitism problem on some campuses. But I do disagree with her when she implicitly blames Israel for what has happened to Gaza. Plenty of mercy was given by the IDF, which has produced the lowest ratio of civilian casualities to combatants in any modern war.

*Many of my friends are saying that Senator Chuck Schumer should resign because he voted along with Republicans to prevent the government shutdown. Someone even told me yesterday that he reads his speeches, which means that he’s too old!  But I’m not convinced of that, and I think voting to keep the government running was the right thing for him to do. The thought of him being replaced by AOC, who desperately wants more power, also makes me queasy.  But the WaPo describes how much pushback he’s received from that vote.

In the weeks since Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer infuriated much of his party by voting with Republicans to prevent a government shutdown, the New York Democrat has worked hard to repair the damage.

He called his fellow Democratic senators one by one. He spoke with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who during the standoff pointedly declined to rule out challenging him in a primary. And he acknowledged that he needs a different strategy for the next funding fight.

But even at one of his most vulnerable moments in eight years leading Senate Democrats and more than four decades in Washington, Schumer, 74, remains convinced he was right.

In an interview in his office this month, Schumer defended his handling of the showdown with Republicans and imagined the flood of complaints he would be fielding if Democrats had forced a government shutdown.

“I would’ve said: ‘It’s a shutdown. You can’t do anything,’” Schumer said as the sun set behind him on the National Mall. “And then they would’ve said, ‘Why’d you let that happen?’ So I felt I did the right thing.”

Schumer was determined from the start to prevent a shutdown. He believed one could last nine months or longer, giving President Donald Trump and Elon Musk freer rein to slash the federal workforce. But Schumer, who prides himself on his ability to see around legislative corners, was surprised that House Republicans managed to pass a funding bill written without Democrats’ input despite the GOP’s perilously narrow majority. The House vote put Senate Democrats in a jam, giving them only days to decide whether to back a bill that included billions of dollars in cuts — or block it and risk triggering a government shutdown.

Schumer has argued for years that the party that instigates a shutdown gets blamed for it, and he has described his decision to support the bill as “no choice at all.” Still, the tense discussions among Democrats were uncomfortable for a conflict-averse senator who prizes consensus.

I think he’s right: the party held responsible for the shutdown creates bad “optics” for itself, which Democrats don’t need at a time when their optics are bad anyway.  I don’t want Schumer as President, but I see no issues with him staying on both in the Senate and as minority leader. Others will likely disagree.

*Trump has sort of reduced the tariffs on imported cars, but it’s too little and too late.

The Trump administration said it plans to announce measures as early as Tuesday to ease the effects of tariffs on imported cars and car parts to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States.

Tariffs of 25 percent on imported vehicles and on auto parts will remain in place. But the tariffs will be modified so that they are not “stacked” with other tariffs, for example on steel and aluminum, a White House spokesman said. Automakers will not have to pay tariffs on those metals, widely used in automobiles, on top of the tariffs on cars and parts.

In addition, automakers will be reimbursed for some of the cost of tariffs on imported components. The reimbursement will amount to up to 3.75 percent of the value of a new car in the first year, but will be phased out over two years, the spokesman confirmed.

A 25 percent tariff on imported cars took effect April 3. On Saturday, the tariffs are set to be extended to include imported parts.

“President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a statement. “This deal is a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically, while providing runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment to invest in America and expand their domestic manufacturing.”

So what we have is a reduction in “stacked” tariffs, and perhaps a 3.75% reduction of value of the car, but there’s still a 25% tariff on the car as a whole, and you can bet that most of that will go directly to ther buyer.  I’m just glad my 2000 Honda Civic is still running now, as the prices of both new and used cars, already very high, is going to go up thousands of dollars more.

*Amazon was originally going to display the cost of tariffs when a consumer checked out, which could be considered a political move but I think was a move to let customers know that the company wasn’t raising prices to bilk them. Now however, and for reasons that might be obvious, they’ve decided not to implement that decision:

Amazon was forced to play down a report that it was considering displaying the impact of tariffs during its online checkout process after President Trump called company founder Jeff Bezos and the White House said such a move would be “a hostile and political act.”

The e-commerce giant said Tuesday it had considered displaying how much import charges would increase prices on its ultracheap shopping website Haul, but said the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.”

Amazon also said it hadn’t considered the idea for the main Amazon site, and no changes had been implemented on any Amazon properties.

Yet the company’s response was too late to avoid White House involvement. Trump called Bezos to raise concerns after Punchbowl News reported that Amazon was planning to display the impact of tariffs during its online checkout process, according to people familiar with the matter.

Criticism from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sent company shares down in early morning trading.

“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” Leavitt told reporters. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years.”

Amazon declined to comment on the phone call between Trump and Bezos.

The company considered displaying import charges ahead of the Trump administration’s planned change starting May 2 to a popular tariff exemption, known as de minimis, for small shipments from China, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump can bully his way out of everything like this, and clearly Amazon is afraid of what Trump could do to them. Yet the effects of tariffs are going to linger for years, and, as you know, prices are sticky downward.

*From the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we learn about German finger wrestling. Have a look at the photos in the article!: Men dressed in lederhosen, seated on opposite sides of a table,  hold onto a circular leather loop, with just their middle finger and try to pull their opponents over the table:

Men in short leather pants and embroidered suspenders risked dislocated digits as they vied for the top prize at Germany’s championship in the sport of fingerhakeln or finger wrestling.

Around 180 competitors took part in Sunday’s 64th German championship in Pang, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Munich.

It’s thought that finger wrestling, popular in Germany’s Alpine region and neighboring Austria, originated as a way to settle disputes. The earliest depictions of the sport date to the 19th century. Participants wore the traditional Bavarian dress known as tracht.

Here’s how it looks:

What a world! What a world!

And this came up as the next video. I couldn’t resist. I missed 2 out of 25.  Take your chances and report below!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej makes a botanical pun, but the adjective and flower names are both derived from the Greek myth

Hili: Not many of these narcissuses in the garden.
Andrzej: They know that I don’t love narcissists.
In Polish:
Hili: Mało tych narcyzów w ogrodzie.
Ja; One wiedzą, że nie kocham pięknoduchów.

 

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

From I Love Cats:

From Richard:

From Things With Faces, an angry turkey:

Masih is back, highlighting the plight of an Iranian political prisoner (see here) about to be executed. His mother’s plea:

From Luana; This is why science journals should refrain from making political statements. Scientific American was a good case in point:

From Simon, another good New Yorker cover:

Barry Blitt’s cover for this week’s issue, “The First Hundred Days.” #NewYorkerCovers nyer.cm/ysrCZ47

— The New Yorker (@newyorker.com) 2025-04-28T16:20:30.068Z

From Malcolm: Uncle Lynx is here! Sound up; I hear some purring. .

From my feed. It’s well worth going through this thread:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

This did not, however, end the killings in the camps.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-30T10:06:28.219Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, because I was low, he sent me a leucistic male mallard to cheer me up:

Leucistic mallard #birds

— Laura Gordon (@laurabgordon.bsky.social) 2025-04-29T11:11:39.186Z

Another in the thread of store names that are puns:

An oldie but goodie.

— John Self (@john-self.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T11:06:16.838Z

42 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    I learn that ten percent of all the world’s species are parasitic insects. It is hard to believe. What if you were an inventor, and you made ten percent of your inventions in such a way that they could only work by harnessing, disfiguring, or totally destroying the other ninety percent? -Annie Dillard, author (b. 30 Apr 1945)

  2. As an update to the nyt piece and comments on this site a couple of days ago on the helicopter/passenger jet collision at Washington earlier this year, I recommend an 18-minute video which is excerpted from the weekly two hour show on aviation by “mover” and “Gonky”. They are both experienced military pilots- mover (c.w. Lemoine) was air force and Gonky was Navy and I think that Gonky still flies or at least recently flew an Airbus for the airlines. Just after the crash, they had a retired CW3 pilot from the same helicopter group on to talk about flight and training procedures. In any case, they critique the latest “news” as published in the nyt. These guys are more colloquial in their banter than is juan browne (blancolario) but I still consider them a trusted resource as aviation subject matter experts, url for this episode should be at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wid_Q9h139A

    1. While the full video is 18 minutes, the main nugget of information is in the first 7:30….if you are in a hurry.

        1. Thanks for the validation, Darryl. Glad it is useful. I am fullydependenton the life sciences expertise of people on this site and the virology expertise on TWiV for truth, so if I can be of any use in bringing in trusted expertise from my small area of knowledge, I am happy to do it.

      2. Thanks for posting this, Jim. Another example of crappy journalism in The NYT exposed.

  3. Trump’s treatment of L.G.B.T. people should have been a lesson to anyone tempted to take his campaign against antisemitism seriously, when it is screamingly obvious that it’s just a pretext to attack liberal institutions.

    First of all, it is indicative of a real problem in analysis to assume that Trump doesn’t have any positive opinions, qualities, or for that matter, policies. Second, I haven’t heard anything to indicate that Trump has a problem with LGB people, and with trans people only to the extent that a lot of other people do. Third, Trump’s son-in-law is Jewish, so maybe he does actually care about antisemitism, because it affects people he cares about. Finally. is he attacking liberal or illiberal institutions? If they were liberal, would antisemitism be an area in which they were open to attack?

    1. NYT reporter, the short version: I might nod to a scant few of Trump’s actions, but when I look the man in the eye, I am able to get a sense of his soul—moral impurity contaminates his every act. I can’t believe anyone thinks otherwise, but thinking is not what most people do.

      1. Continued: Therefore, since Trump is evil, his actions are evil, meaning the opposite of his actions are good, so therefore we must oppose any attempt by his administration to limit expressions and actions of Jew hatred on college campuses, doubly so since Israel is “merciless”. Thus it’s ok to paint swastikas, vandalize buildings, miss class, intimidate Jewish students, trap custodians in buildings, and express core nazi propaganda without consequences. She calls those people bigots; I call them racists.

        Her application of emotion manipulation in the piece is pretty transparent.
        “We all agree that Trump’s bad, amiright? And Israel is pretty mean in how they just bomb things, right? There are certainly a few bigots on campus, but the real problem is Trump. Leave those poor protesters be!”

        As far as Trump, he seems to have been consistently supportive of Israel and Jews. I can’t read minds, so I’ll take positive actions driven by negative thoughts over negative actions driven by best wishes. I’ll also accept a few flaws in actions vs. inaction in most cases. As Obama said, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

        1. “Trump’s treatment of L.G.B.T. people”

          Does Trump put the T with LGB or is that you?

          ”should have been a lesson to anyone tempted to take his campaign against antisemitism seriously, when it is screamingly obvious that it’s just a pretext to attack liberal institutions.”

          Although they usually don’t use it as an excuse to attack conservative institutions, there is a similar problem that many on the “left” have trouble supporting good causes just because Trump also supports them. Witness the framing of J. K. Rowling and others who take Jerry’s stance regarding men (who claim to be women) in women’s sports etc. as “right-wing”. (There are even claims that they are sponsored by U.S. evangelical Christians, as if one of the richest women in the world would lay low if she weren’t.)

          There is a guy on Twitter/X, a professor of philosophy at Yale, who, when asked how he forms an opinion on an issue, said he looks what evengelical Christians believe then takes the opposite stance. At first I was sure that it was a parody account.

    2. First of all, it is indicative of a real problem in analysis to assume that Trump doesn’t have any positive opinions, qualities, or for that matter, policies.

      If I understand you, you are criticizing people who suggest that Trump’s condemnation of antisemitism isn’t due to sincere moral convictions. I’m one of the people you criticize.

      That’s not to say that I believe that Trump himself is an antisemite (or a racist, either, for that matter). Rather, I believe that Trump is morally indifferent to antisemitism. If he believed that antisemitism is wrong, he wouldn’t dine with antisemites and say nice things about them afterwards:

      the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Anyway, we [Trump and his notoriously antisemitic guest, Nick Fuentes] got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’”

      It’s incredibly telling that instead of condemning Fuentes for his hateful, hateful antisemitism, Trump handwaves it away and instead focuses on the fact that Fuentes says “nice things” about Trump. This is just one of many examples where, for Trump, the standard for being a ‘good’ person isn’t whether or not you do evil things to other people, but whether or not you do or say things that are good for Trump.

      Another telling incident is the first thing that Trump said about QAnon. Ignoring all their insane and destabilizing lies about the government and their brazen slanders of his political enemies, he praised them because, in his own words, “they like me very much.”

      In sum, I see almost no evidence that Trump has any sincere moral convictions. Or, if he has anything akin to a moral compass, it is a compass that points to him and him alone.

      Yes, Trump is sometimes on the ‘right’ side of issues. For example, he’s pro-Israel. But if that position was based on moral convictions, he wouldn’t be on the side of Russia, too. More likely, he’s pro-Israel because the evangelicals who worship him are pro-Israel and he wants to keep feeding their worship.

      Likewise, he’s right to condemn Harvard for antisemitism. But for all the above reasons, I don’t believe for a second he’s motivated by a conviction that antisemitism is wrong. Rather, he condemns Harvard because Harvard is anti-Trump.

      1. I remember Trump’s first term and the way he joined Evangelical prayer circles. I didn’t think that maybe he’d found Jesus.

      2. Wikipedia lists these core traits of sociopathy:

        • Arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style: impression management or superficial charm, inflated and grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying/deceit, and manipulation for personal gain.

        • Deficient affective experience: lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect (coldness and unemotionality), callousness and lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for own actions.

        • Impulsive and irresponsible lifestyle: impulsivity, sensation-seeking and risk-taking, irresponsible and unreliable behavior, financially parasitic lifestyle, and a lack of realistic, long-term goals.

  4. I agree with Michelle Goldberg that President Trump is using antisemitism as a pretext to damage liberal institutions—particularly colleges and universities. This is why the administration’s letter to Harvard centered on ending antisemitism but then added many other demands that extended well beyond the core of antisemitism.

    Using antisemitism as a pretext for attacking liberal institutions more broadly has the potential to exacerbate antisemitism, as it will encourage Jew-haters to come out of the woodwork and blame all of the ills at colleges and universities on Jewish influence and governance. I don’t think that blaming “the Jews” is part of the plan, but it may be an outcome.

    1. For Trump’s royal coat-of-arms, I propose the motto “Sicut si mihi curae“.

  5. I wondered why you were quoting Michelle Goldberg at the NYT: she’s one of the most dim witted remedial head injury cases there! A regular numbskull.
    Friend of Palestine of course.

    D.A.
    NYC

  6. Karoline Leavitt last March—“Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.”

    Karoline Leavitt yesterday—Amazon showing customers how much of the price for an item was due to tariffs is a “hostile and political act by Amazon.”.

    The mental contortions the Trump crowd must engage in is mind-boggling.

  8. I have yet to see any signs of awareness on the part of the scientific community that by becoming political partisans they should expect to be treated like political partisans.

  9. I got 24. I was pleasantly surprised to be correct on my three educated guesses. The one I got wrong was because I was fixated on a B answer I expected and didn’t bother to read the D answer that was even better. I won’t spoil it.

  10. The budget bill was basically a continuation of what was already agreed to under the Biden administration. The CR passed in September in the Senate 78-18, showing bipartisan support. The only reason for Democrats to oppose the April vote was to signal that they oppose Trump. I respect Schumer for sticking to principles on this one.

  11. I love reading your blog, but I notice several spelling mistakes! No offense meant.
    Don’t you have someone proof reading before you post?
    If not, I would love to help you out.

  12. 22 out of 25 (don’t know the elements’ atomic numbers, which were 2 I missed). According to the site, 9 correct indicates a genius. If so, stupidity reigns.

    What is the situation with the ducks at Botany Pond?

  13. Trump has won awards from LGB organizations. He is opposed to males in female sports. So are 80% of the American people.

  14. Democrats are stupid. Had the Republicans shut down the government, the Democrats would be screaming in defiance and rightly so. But Senator Schumer is getting heat for doing the right thing…and his job…by voting to keep the government funded. This proves to me Democrats are more interested in power than governing. Sad, they used to be a great party.

  15. I’m glad i cancelled my subscription to the NY Times. I don’t need to read the anti-Israel lies and calumnies of Michelle Goldberg and her fellow useful idiots.

  16. Based on today’s comments, I think we can conclude:

    Combating antisemitism = owning the libs

    Q.E.D.

    Any questions?

    #sarcasm

    1. I knew that about the eyes! In fact, I thought it was pretty well known since there are a lot of stories about those creatures.

      I got two wrong. One concerned atomic number 7 and I forget the other.

  18. ” though I think there is an antisemitism problem on some campuses”

    I think you’re understating how bad things have gotten.

    Have you seen the final report of the Harvard Presidential Task Force on Combatting Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias? The situation there has been WAY worse than I ever imagined. SOMETHING has to done — and I doubt that Harvard will reform itself except under threat from the feds.

    https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2025/update-on-presidential-task-forces-3/

    https://www.harvard.edu/task-force-on-antisemitism/

    And note that the pride that Garber takes in the efforts that Harvard has made to combat antisemitism during the past 15 months rings vacantly hollow when you realize they did NOTHING until Claudine Gay was held up to ridicule and shamed when she testified before Congress. Just sayin’

  19. I would have guessed the duck was a mallard/domestic hybrid rather than leucistic.
    Love uncle lynx.
    3 wrong, but one misread and one lucky guess.

  21. The article by Michelle Goldberg was simply awful. My head felt like a ping pong ball trying to follow all her put downs. Complete crap. Nothing edifying about it. So, who are the “good guys” and the “bad guys” according to her? Must we continually place others in this or the other camp? Bottom line is she hates Trump and she is incapable of attributing a single positive action to him. She should have just written that, but instead she had to take down a couple others as proof of her superior intuiting of everyone else’s motives and or lack of sophistication in coming to the same conclusions she did. Maddening piece of slop. Quit fanning the flames!

  22. I’d like to add that Trump’s lack of principles, sincerity, etc have long ago been established, in my mind. He likes anyone who likes him and he will use any person or cause to accomplish his goals. And those goals may change at any time. I’m not fooled by him.

  23. To Hili:
    I guess one could prune one’s narcissus’ with a pair of narscissors. Please do not regard this advice as a mere non-secateur.

  24. It seems that in Polish, the name Narcissus and the condition narcissism are not etymologically related. Which kind of spoils the joke. It only makes sense after you translate it into English. What am I missing?

    1. The English word “narcissist” comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus.

      The scientific name of the plant (genus) is Narcissus–though Wikipedia tells me “there is no evidence for the flower being named after Narcissus.” Evidently they were called narcissi before the myth!

      Don’t know if this helps….

    2. In Polish there are two words for a person who is a narcissist: one is the same as the flower, just ‘narcyz’, and the other (used in the dialogue) ‘pięknoduch’. (Well, ‘pięknoduch’ has a bit broader meaning but equally pejorative and it surely encompasses being narcissistic.) So every Pole reading this dialogue would understand the connection. But by using the other word in the last line could be misunderstood that A. just dislikes these flowers.

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