Welcome to CaturSaturday, May 10, 2025, and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also National Lipid Day, so stock up on your fats, like this rib-eye cut of Angus beef. I’d sear this sucker for 1.5 minutes on each side in a cast iron pan (after a day of marinating in olive oil and garlicf) and then, if it’s a thick as it looks put it in a 350° oven for about five minutes. (This is what the French call saignant, or “bloody”, the best way to eat a steak.)
French steak ordering (note that there’s nothing between à point and “bien cuit” (well cooked), but if you order the latter, be prepared for them to refuse or toss you out of the restaurant. NEVER order a well done steak in Paris if you want them to regard you as something more than an ignorant tourist.
It’s also American Indian Day (shouldn’t that be Native American?), International Migratory Bird Day, National Liver and Onions Day (my dad loved the stuff but oy! did it stink up the house), World Belly Dance Day, and National Shrimp Day. Here are the belly dancing duochampions of the International Dance Organization, Sabina Gadzhibabaeva and Primak Liliya, from the Russian Federation
I am saving the few readers’ wildlife contributions I have to space them out, but PLEASE send in your good wildlife photos. “Wildlife” is construed broadly (landscapes and tourism can qualify), but please be sure your pictures are good ones, comparable to what I’ve posted before. Many thanks!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Obituaries first: Supreme Court Judge David Souter, who became more Leftish as he stayed on the court, died at 85.
David H. Souter, a New Hampshire Republican who was named to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush and who over 19 years on that bench became a mainstay of the court’s shrinking liberal wing, died on Thursday at his home in New Hampshire. He was 85.
His death was announced on Friday morning by the Supreme Court, which did not cite a cause, saying only that he had died “peacefully.”
A shy man who never married and who much preferred an evening alone with a good book to a night in the company of Washington insiders, Justice Souter retired at the unusually young age of 69 to return to his beloved home state. His retirement at the end of the court’s 2008-09 term gave President Barack Obama a Supreme Court vacancy in the opening months of his presidency. The president named Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the seat.
By the end of his second year on the Supreme Court, Justice Souter had acquired the label that would stick for the remainder of his tenure. He was the justice who surprised the president who appointed him; who left conservative Republicans bitterly disappointed; whose migration on the bench from right to left led to the cry of “no more Souters” when another president named Bush, George W., had Supreme Court vacancies to fill.
Those who expressed such surprise, who either implicitly or directly accused Justice Souter of having portrayed himself one way and of turning out to be something else entirely, either failed to pay attention to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing in September 1990, or chose not to believe what they heard.
Justice Souter portrayed himself as he was: a judge of basically conservative instincts who took as his role model Justice John Marshall Harlan II, a distinguished New York lawyer and an Eisenhower appointee who was often in dissent during the heyday of Supreme Court liberalism under Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Perhaps his most famous unexpected opinion:
Justice Souter’s first term on the court was a fairly quiet one. But the future of Roe v. Wade arrived at the court’s doorstep midway through the next term, sooner than many people had expected. By then, another abortion rights supporter, Justice Thurgood Marshall, had retired, and was replaced by Justice Clarence Thomas. The new case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was argued on April 22, 1992, and it was widely anticipated that Roe v. Wade would be formally or functionally overturned.
But the result was just the opposite. Justice Souter, joined by two other Republican-appointed justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, who had earlier both expressed strong doubts about Roe v. Wade, collaborated to produce a highly unusual joint opinion that reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion. With Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens joining the central parts of the opinion, the vote was 5 to 4.
Had Souter voted the other way, we wouldn’t have had a positive decision in Roe v. Wade.
*Pope Leo XIV started off his papacy by criticizing the spread of atheism. Oy!
Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Mass as pontiff in the Sistine Chapel on Friday, stressing the importance of missionary work in a world where many live “in a state of de facto atheism.”
Leo, wearing head-to-toe white and golden vestments, returned to the chapel a day after cardinals elected him as pope on the second day of a secretive conclave. Standing before Michelangelo’s altar wall frescoes, the first American pope briefly spoke in English—calling his election a blessing as well as a cross he will carry—before switching to Italian, the Vatican’s dominant language.
. . . . In his sermon, the pontiff spoke of the challenges the Catholic Church faces in the modern era. “There are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure,” he said in the sermon. “They are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed.”
He lamented that “there are many settings in which Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman.” The pope added, “this is the world that has been entrusted to us.”
. . . .the 69-year-old pontiff is seen as someone who can help heal the sharp division in the church between those who believe it should adapt to modernity and those who want it to preserve its traditional identity—a rift that deepened under Francis. He hasn’t taken a strong public position on some of the more divisive issues for the Catholic Church, such as same-sex blessings and the requirement of priestly celibacy.
Leo may be more accepting than his immediate predecessor of the rituals and trappings that come with the job. His choice of vestments on Thursday offered a clue: He appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica wearing a red-velvet cape and an ornate stole—traditional accouterments that Francis had chosen not to wear.
Let me at him! Look, Your Holiness (or whatever they call you), atheists are probably just as moral as Catholics, or even more so. For one things, we don’t have the power or the enforced chastity to sexually assault children. We don’t need your rituals and incense, and, by the way, when are women going to be allowed to be priests—or even Popes?
*Get a load of this: Trump is accepting as refugees a bunch of white South Africans—Afrikaners. No black South Africans allowed! Bolding is mine.
The arriving families, who are part of a group that President Donald Trump has said face racial discrimination, will then be resettled outside Virginia in at least seven states, according to those familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details of the preparations.
“The U.S. government is prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees, and [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] is coordinating services to ensure they receive the support they need from the very initial days of their arrival,” Miro Marinovich, who oversees the Refugee Program Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an email to other federal officials on Wednesday. “The first flight of Afrikaner refugees is set to arrive on Monday, May 12.”
. . . .Refugees are a distinct class of people who have been forced to flee their home country after they have been persecuted or fear persecution — usually death — due to their race, religion, nationality, politics or membership in a particular social group. Highly vetted, they are eligible for government services and a path to citizenship and must often wait up to several years to be screened and processed before coming to the United States.
Last year, no South Africans of any race, ethnicity or linguistic group were vetted by the United Nations as meeting its criteria to be resettled as refugees, according to the organization’s data.
State Department officials would not say why the 60 Afrikaners set to arrive Monday were granted refugee status.
The department’s statement said officials in general were “prioritizing consideration for U.S. refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Talk about bad “optics”! Afrikaners were, of course, the main force behind apartheid, and yes, some of them are persecuted now for being white landowners by the black government, and in the last 30 years 3,000 have been murdered. But jeez, if you’re looking to import those who are persecuted, how about the Uyghurs or Tibetans? Of course, they are not classified as “white.” No, not good optics at all.
*This is a surprise to me, but it’s in the right direction. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has implied to Iran that if they stop enriching uranium, the chances are higher that they can strike a deal with the U.S..
If the US gets Iran to voluntarily shift away from an enrichment program, that is the most permanent way to make sure that they never get a nuclear weapon, US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Breitbart News Network on Friday.
“If we get them to voluntarily shift away from an enrichment program where they can enrich to not have centrifuges, to not have material that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels 90 percent, if we can get them to voluntarily do that that is the most permanent way to make sure that they never get a weapon,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff said that he believes in US President Donald Trump‘s policy of attempting to settle the Iranian conflict through dialogue.
“That’s a more permanent solution to that crisis than any other alternative. That would physically change exactly how Iran was approaching a nuclear program.”
, , , , Iran has agreed to hold a fourth round of indirect nuclear talks with the US on Sunday in Oman, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday, adding that the negotiations were advancing.
Trump, who withdrew the US from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, has threatened to bomb Iran if no agreement is reached with his administration to resolve the long-standing dispute.
Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program is geared toward producing weapons, whereas Iran insists it is purely for civilian purposes.
. . . . The fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed, with mediator Oman citing “logistical reasons”.
Frankly, I’m surprised that Trump believes anything Iran says about its nukes, as I still think they are absolutely determined to get nuclear-tipped missiles, and with those they can obliterate Israel. Iran is lying when it says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, and unless there is ironclad and spontaneous inspection, I still think Israel with or without the U.S. should take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
*This is an AP “oddity,” but it’s also biology: a rare carnivorous snail has been filmed laying an egg from its neck:
The strange reproductive habits of a large, carnivorous New Zealand snail were once shrouded in mystery. Now footage of the snail laying an egg from its neck has been captured for the first time, the country’s conservation agency said Wednesday.
What looks like a tiny hen’s egg is seen emerging from an opening below the head of the Powelliphanta augusta snail, a threatened species endemic to New Zealand.
The video was taken at a facility on the South Island’s West Coast, where conservation rangers attempting to save the species from extinction have cared for a population of the snails in chilled containers for nearly two decades.
The conditions in the containers mimic the alpine weather in their only former habitat — a remote mountain they were named for, on the West Coast of the South Island, that has been engulfed by mining.
Lisa Flanagan from the Department of Conservation, who has worked with the creatures for 12 years, said the species still holds surprises.
“It’s remarkable that in all the time we’ve spent caring for the snails, this is the first time we’ve seen one lay an egg,” she said in a statement.
Like other snails, Powelliphanta augusta are hermaphrodites, which explains how the creatures can reproduce when encased in a hard shell. The invertebrate uses a genital pore on the right side of its body, just below the head, to simultaneously exchange sperm with another snail, which is stored until each creates an egg.
And of course you’ll want to see it! Here:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is weary with hunting and fain would lie down:
Hili: I went round everything, it’s time to rest.A: And where have you been?Hili: Here and there.
Hili: Obeszłam wszystko, pora odpocząć.Ja: A gdzie byłaś?Hili: Tu i tam.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From the Elder of Ziyon via Malgorzata:
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
Titania is tweeting again, and remember, it’s a spoof account:
Anti-gay hate crimes recorded by police in 2023:
Saudi Arabia: 0
Pakistan: 0
Yemen: 0
Brunei: 0
Somalia: 0
Afghanistan: 0
USA: 2402And you’re telling me it’s the Islamic states that are homophobic? 🤦🏽♀️
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 9, 2025
From JKR. I think she’s right, but do read the short linked article on “top surgery”:
“We will one day view “gender-affirming care” in minors with the same revulsion that we now view frontal lobotomies. Until then, many children will continue to suffer tragic—and irreversible—consequences.”https://t.co/qfWRZiqy7h
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 8, 2025
From Simon; Brent, a spoof character, expatiates on the new American-born pope:
American Pope🇺🇸
— Brent Terhune (@brentterhune.bsky.social) 2025-05-08T21:53:34.670Z
From Malcolm; never disturb a sleeping cat (see the story of Muhammad and Muezza):
This man saw a cat, stayed to play with it, & cat fell asleep. The man didn’t move for not disturbing the sleeping cat. There’s no small kindness, & the world goes round for the sake of many a kind man. pic.twitter.com/35NZomOpcy
— Hakan Kapucu (@1hakankapucu) May 2, 2025
From my feed: LOOK AT THIS D*G!
This is the Belgian Malinois, and it’s pretty easy to see why it’s the dog of choice for the IDF’s Oketz unit.
— Cheryl E 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🎗️ (@CherylWroteIt) May 9, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:
A three-year old Dutch Jewish boy was gassed upon Arrival at Auschwitz along with his mother and 7-year-old sister.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-10T09:58:05.450Z
Two posts from the ailing Dr. Cobb. First, British rude words (I may have posted this before.). Matthew says he’s never heard the third one, and neither have I.
Which swear words do Britons find the most offensive?C*nt: 82% say very or fairly offensiveMotherf*cker: 70%Fatherf*cker: 62%B*tch: 55%F*ck: 53%W*nker: 53%B*stard: 45%P*ssy: 44%Pr*ck: 42%Tw*t: 40%A*sehole: 39%D*ckhead: 39%Son of b*tch: 36%C*ck: 34%Full list in the chart 👇
A rare video of a Pallas’s cat:
It's #InternationalPallasCatDay! Finding wild Pallas's cat was one of the most amazing experiences of the last year. It was hunting voles on a Himalayan plain, wriggling its tail – the only part of its body that isn't camouflaged – presumably to distract the voles. #MammalWatching #WildIndia #Ladakh
— Jack Ashby (@jackdashby.bsky.social) 2025-04-23T18:18:15.508Z
The Trump administration is bracing to be annoyed with Pope Leo, as he has made various left-ward signals. According to BBC News:
“He has voiced concerns for the poor and immigrants, chosen a name that may reference more liberal church leadership, and he appears to have both supported the liberal-leaning Pope Francis and criticised the US president’s policies on social media.”
Maybe Trump will man up and remove the Vatican’s recognition as a country?
Maybe Vance will have to reconvert to whatever he was before.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape. -Bono, musician and social activist (b. 10 May 1960)
Unashamed eater (very rarely given my wife’s vegetarian status) of well-done steaks here. I like the taste of burned meat, which is presumably a hangover from my ancestors and the discovery of fire. Presumably barbecue lovers know what I mean.
That’s the only way I can even consider going near the stuff. Poo poo Paris.
No longer reading much news, I had missed the news on Justice Souter. Thanks for the update…he seemed to be a mensch.
Maybe I missed it, but how are Mordecai, Esther, and the fam? Are your efforts to protect them being successful?
Bat, there will be a full duck report later today. The short take: all is well for the moment!
Thanks. Look forward to report later.
It is such a shame that Pope Joan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan) would appear to be mythical, though why the middle ages found it necessary to invent a female pope escapes me.
I wrote a little something about the pope’s comments on atheism:
https://lyonsnyc.medium.com/pope-leo-xiv-said-a-curious-thing-502d027f32f7
Good piece Mr. Lyons – fellow NYC atheist. Your post is a good riposte to the “meaning” thing … and Jesus at a time when pageantry and Vatican show biz is aweing too many people.
With Carl Sagan you mention – it occurs to me now that in forming a “theory of mind” for THIS pope we can get a clearer picture given he is American. Who knows if the last guy knew about Sagan, or Francis Collins. So from an atheist’s “know our enemy” perspective an American pope is good.
kudos – I’ll read your Beatles post later today.
best,
D.A.
NYC
It looks like textbook institutional socialisation — whatever his initial preferences and motives (and the fact that he devoted himself to work for and among the poor speaks well of his), working one’s way up an organisation almost inevitably either bends those preference to be favourable to the existing institution or, failing that, causes one to quit or be sacked.
There’s really no need to ask if the Pope is (sufficiently institutionally) Catholic; that’s why it’s a joke.
Nice piece; thanks for the link.
I think you pretty much answered your own semi-rhetorical question of:
“What does he (the Pope) mean by “practical” atheism?”
I took this to mean that Pope Leo is saying that if Jesus is merely a secular spiritual dude or a superhero figure, then followers of that perspective are “for all practical purposes” atheistic. I agree that the use of the word “practical” here is unusual and unclear.
Maybe we should annex the Vatican after we take Greenland and Canada.
Current president already has a trading card of Himself as Pope, so in his mind, that’s probably the same thing. Or close enough.
Good point!
We are keeping a Boxer-Belgian Malinois for six months for a friend off on a European adventure. I’m grateful that the Malinois genes do not manifest themselves more than they do.
In his first address the pope vocalizes his dismay at the spread of atheism. Is he somehow less obligated to similarly hold forth on non-Catholic faithful (who no less claim to be the Way and the Truth? (Southern Baptists claim to be – or are descended from – the original New Testament church.) Does he wish to censor free inquiry? (Is the pilot light still lit in the Inquisitional fireplace?) As Hitch once asked to the effect, would he prefer a Wahhabi baby to an atheist one?
I’ve had some encounters with the Malinois breed, including a recent one where a security guard was using a Home Depot parking lot to condition the dog into calming the *** down when around random people. They seem to be dialed at 11.
Your friend will owe you big time. There’s a reason K9 cops and others refer to them as “Maligators.” 😅 (Signed, a Malinois/GSD owner…)
Let the Sth Africans in. They seem to be a uniquely embattled group. Eff “optics” – if we went with optics Palestinians are STILL, decades later and totally safe: “refugees.” When they most assuredly are not.
Further, by Sth Africa’s demographics many will be the “Rainbow Generation” born after 1990. And I don’t believe in intergenerational guilt/sin. It is a morally broken notion.
So let them in. Sth Africa is pretty much a failed state and the whites there are absolutely targets – specific targets – for the displaced rage caused by ANC’s immiseration and bankruptcy of the country. There’s a lot written and broadcast about this for those interested (though it isn’t a specific specialty of mine).
Superfool Lidiya Polgren (sp?), a horrible person at the NY Times wrote about Sth Africa lately: complained about the (nonsensical, incoherent) “intergenerational trauma” and … this blew me away….suggested Sth Africa become more like Zimbabwe. Amazing. She never disappoints.
D.A.
NYC
I looked at Polgreen’s NYT article from Feb 18, 2025, entitled “South Africa Is a Warning.” The string of letters Zimbabw appears twice in the article. She makes no suggestion in this article that South Africa should become like Zimbabwe (which really would be an insane idea).
The string of letters trauma does not appear at all in the article.
Maybe I was looking at the wrong article. But this article seems to be the only one she has written recently on South Africa:
https://www.nytimes.com/by/lydia-polgreen
She recently published an article entitled:
I don’t buy the causal hypothesis in the subtitle (the subtitle apears in the list of her recent articles).
She wrote:
Sweden may have a number of problems, but having having recently admitted too many immigrants really is one of them.
Of course, for people like Polgreen there cannot be too many immigrants (thinking like that is deemed borderline racist – she’s woke). In that she is like most politicians in Germany, where the mainstream parties (the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats) have been given one last chance (another 4 years until the next federal parliamentary election) to handle the immigration issue in a way that accords with the preferences of most Germans (as opposed to the preferences of the Greens, the upper-middle class and the really rich) – and if they fail or are simply unwilling to control immigration the extreme right-wing AfD party will become the strongest party in the country in 2029 (after having come in second in the February 2025 election, starting from zero about 15 years earlier).
I’m not a fan of Polgreen (her writing on the trans issue is unpersuasive, and does not satisfy conventional journalistic standards – like Masha Gessen, she’s writing as a queer activist or ally and with insufficient regard for the facts), but she does seem to know that Zimbabwe has not been a country to emulate for quite some time (at least 20 years I would say).
Re: Lydia Polgreen
Can’t find any hits on “intergenerational trauma”
I do agree however that it’s OK to let the white South Africans in.
I’m quite comfortable with the optics of the admittance to America of white South Africans as refugees to escape the risk of state-sanctioned murder for the crime of making land productive. We should do the same. It is good that a refugee policy should be seen as colour-blind, no? Not excluding anyone by the colour or his skin? (Vetting gets to the “content of character” part.) And it is also good optics that a state run by black people should be held up to view as just as capable of carrying out race-based persecution as one run by white people. After all, even those of us who wanted an end to apartheid back when we were young and idealistic knew deep down that it would come to this when the blacks took over. And now that black people are running the Utopia, surely there can be no persecuted black South Africans to claim refugee status.
As for Tibetans and Uyghurs, to be granted High Commission refugee status you have to be able to get out of the country in the first place (or be expelled) in order to make your case for vetting and resettlement to the UN High Commission. The Chinese finesse that restriction by keeping them penned up in country.
The vast majority of UH High Commission refugees (and other people displaced by persecution or various other state failures) are non-white, simply because it is the non-white-run countries that generate all the refugees among ethnic, tribal, and religious sects within their own national populations because they haven’t got around yet to guaranteeing human rights. There just aren’t very many opportunities for white people to be refugees, now that white communism and fascism have died out and Jews can take refuge in Israel. That leaves the broad-minded Afrikaaners who stuck it out with fair-mindedness, hope, and optimism for a rainbow South Africa, and whom the regime is now rewarding their liberal virtues by dispossessing and murdering them.
Welcome them.
Pope Lion the Whatever: Chicago and world relevant
The Augustinian Order, which the Lion ruled in Chicago and abroad, still hides its secrets about priestly abuse of children.
See Robert Herguth’s article in the Chicago ‘Sun-Times, May 8, 2025.
I don’t see why black South Africans would be given refugee status.
Washington Post : “… The arriving families, who are part of a group that President Donald Trump has said face racial discrimination …”
And another smashing blow of Hatecraft, which gives Communists the lead with 10 repressive tolerances, 5 Wretched of the Earths, and a good measure of White Fragilitys. Yes, I think the bourgeoise and especially its women are just not having any luck today with the punishing use of dialectic and identity on display here in the first period.
I’ve always disliked steak snobbery. There isn’t a “best” way to eat steak, it’s up to the individual. And a well done steak isn’t ruined. Eating food isn’t purely about taste, which itself is mightily subjective, but all manner of things such as texture, looks, evoked memories, smells.
I’ll eat pretty much any level of “doneness”, and I usually order medium rare (which is often how the chef suggests it’s to be eaten), but in my younger fussier days I erred more on the well done side. I’ll always remember a fat, pompous douchebag on the table next to me exclaiming loudly, clearly so that I could hear, that I’d ruined my steak because I’d ordered it well done. It wasn’t his only display of obnoxiousness that evening. Probably had some Parisian blood in him.
I’ve had great well done steaks and awful rare steaks and vice versa. I do think, as you go down the rareness scale, a degree of bravado and showing off comes in. Although I accept I’m not basing that on much, if any, evidence!
And a good plate can be ruined if the undercooked meat hasn’t been rested properly and you get blood pooling and seeping into everything. Unless your name is Jeffrey Dahmer.
Finally, one of the top US lawyers who has made his living in food health litigation will not eat undercooked meat (along with five other foods), including steak that isn’t at least medium well.
https://marlerclark.com/news_events/this-food-poisoning-expert-revealed-the-6-things-he-refuses-to-eat
Rant over.
I think I’ve sat near that fat pompous douchebag on more than one occasion. Opinions are like arseholes; everyone’s got one. You’re right; the correct way to cook a steak is the way you like it. The best wine to drink with it is the wine you like. And it’s best accompanied with the side dish(s) you like.
Bon appetit
Indeed, the religious—including the Pope—have no monopoly over morals. When forced to confront the horrible acts of immorality described in scripture, the standard response is to claim that those passages are mere allegory—they aren’t to be taken literally (at least not today). The fact that clergymen pick and choose which moral lessons to believe proves that the source of those morals lies elsewhere than scripture—for otherwise, how would they know which scriptural passage should be read allegorically and which should not? Apparently they don’t believe their own bullsh*t which, I suppose, is a virtue.
Only if it’s intentional. I’m sure many do believe their own nonsense (at least to some extent). Re virtues, is dishonesty necessarily better than delusion?