Welcome to CaturSaturday and the sabbath for Jewish cats: it’s May 24, 2025 and National Escargot Day. I don’t like ’em, but ducks do! In South Africa, they release Indian runner ducks in the vineyards to eat the snails that impede the growth of the grapevines. Look and this herd of “pencil ducks”:
It’s also National Cocktail Day, National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day (we used to call them “rabbit turds” when we’d eat them at the movies), and National Cheesesteak Day. Here’s the restaurant editor of Bon Appetit trying 19 cheesesteaks in Philadelphia (the home of this sandwich) in 24 hours, and sussing out the best one, which happens to be from Angelo’s Pizzeria.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 24 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Re Friday morning’s post about Harvard, things have moved swiftly. A federal judge in Boston blocked the administration from implementing its plan to prevent Harvard from accepting more foreign students as well as booting out the ones it already has. (Article archived here.)
Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Friday, less than 24 hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university and one of its most prestigious.
Later Friday morning, at the university’s request, a federal judge in Boston moved swiftly to block implementation of the federal government’s order.
The judge, Allison D. Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order against the federal edict, agreeing that Harvard had shown that its implementation would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to the university.
The administration action, and Harvard’s response, signified a dramatic escalation of the battle between the administration and Harvard. And the university’s forceful and almost immediate response served as evidence that stopping the flow of international students to Harvard, which draws some of the world’s top scholars, would destabilize Harvard’s very existence.
In a letter to the Harvard community delivered Friday morning, Dr. Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, wrote, “We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” adding that it “imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The lawsuit, which accused the Trump administration of a “campaign of retribution” against the university followed an announcement on Thursday that Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification had been revoked, halting the university’s ability to enroll international students.
The lawsuit was the second time in a matter of weeks the university had sued the federal government.
In the new lawsuit, the university accused the Trump administration of exerting “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
This was pretty much predictable given the rapid and immediate damage that implementation of the government’s order would cause, not to mention the chaos in the lives of foreign students. I am counting on the courts to rectify Trump’s obviously illegal moves, but the Supreme Court, as far as I know, has not definitely overturned any of them.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s snarky news summary at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Fit to serve.”
→ What’s the latest, Mr. President? And returning from a huge trip to the Middle East, President Trump, as far as regards Middle East policy goals on a 20-year time horizon and a reimagining of the JCPOA, had this to say on Truth Social:
→ We do not need an immigrant competition show: The Department of Homeland Security wants to develop a reality show titled The American, where immigrants compete through a variety of challenges “for the honor of fast-tracking their way to U.S. citizenship.” This is real. And the challenges will be incredible: finding the rotisserie chicken aisle at Costco; binge-watching Yellowstone without peeing the longest; seeing how fast you can get diabetes. DHS has been working with writer and producer Rob Worsoff (supervising producer of The Millionaire Matchmaker, co-exec producer of Duck Dynasty), who, in his 35-page show proposal, said that the show will aim to “celebrate what it means to be American and have a national conversation about what it means to be American, through the eyes of the people who want it most.” It’s a Hunger Games. It’s a Squid Game. But it’s real people, trying to escape gang wars and starvation. By singing a Luke Combs song in front of a studio audience and then doing an obstacle course after eating a Big Mac. I hate myself because I know I’ll watch this.
→ This is technically still illegal: Trump’s Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, alleging he hired city employees solely because of their race, after the mayor gave a speech saying he hires solely based on race. Here’s Mayor Johnson: “Detractors . . . will push back on me and say, ‘The only thing the mayor talks about is the hiring of black people.’ No, what I’m saying is, when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else. We are the most generous people on the planet. I don’t know too many cultures that have play cousins. That’s how generous we are.” He then lists all the city leaders who are black and all the reasons the black race is superior for these roles. Anyway, typical MAGA craziness going after a normal American mayor who is simply doing diversity.
*I can’t help but be amused at this because North Korea, though an odious regime and perhaps the world’s most oppressive country, is also hamhanded. So, in attempt to modernize its antiquated navy, Kim Jong-Un got a new warship built and launched. It sank.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s dream of modernizing his country’s outdated naval fleet suffered a major setback after a much-touted warship crashed into the water after a botched exit from the dock.
Kim, who witnessed the mishap unfold at a Wednesday launch event, lambasted officials for their “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism” in causing the “serious accident,” North Korea’s state media reported. The 41-year-old dictator equated the gaffe to a criminal act.
The unnamed 5,000-ton destroyer had been docked at a shipyard in Chongjin, a northeastern port city. As it was pushed sideways toward the water, the ship didn’t move in parallel. Its hull got crushed and its bow got stranded on the shipway, state media said.
Citing satellite imagery of the shipyard, South Korea’s military said the destroyer lay on its side in the water. North Korean state media didn’t publish images from the launch event or mention any injuries.
The warship represents one of Kim’s crown jewels in his push to upgrade North Korea’s naval fleet. Much of the country’s ships are from the Soviet era—and pale in comparison to the nuclear-powered submarines, warships and vessels possessed by the U.S. and South Korea.
Atop a country with serious food shortages, a down economy and widespread human-rights abuse, Kim has leaned heavily on military breakthroughs to boost morale and demonstrate the nation’s strength. Officials responsible for the warship blunder were censured for the fault. Kim vowed a turnaround by next month.
The accident, Kim was quoted as saying, “brought the dignity and self-respect of our state to a collapse.”
. . . . In recent months, Kim had showered extra attention on his country’s naval operations, visiting shipyards and touting breakthroughs. He oversaw a successful rollout in late April of another warship from the “Choe Hyon” class, named after a general who served under Kim’s grandfather and country founder Kim Il Sung.
Desiring for the North to become a maritime power, Kim Jong Un, in a lengthy speech, linked naval advances to his nation’s sovereignty, since the country has seas off its eastern and western coasts. A fleet of elite warships, he declared, guarantees peace and development.
Jong-Un’s words presage, to anyone who follows North Korea, that whoever designed that ship is destined for a quick end. . . or a lifetime stint in one of the country’s many horrible prison camps. Here’s a news clip about the accident:
*First Trump levies tariffs on many countries, and then Wal-Mart, reluctantly, raises some of its prices. That will hurt consumers, but it also angered Trump, who pressured the company to put back its prices. When is he going to learn the lesson that everyone knows; it you start a trade war by raising tariffs, consumer prices will rise? Nevertheless, Trump is threatening a steep increase in tariffs on, of all places, the EU. And Europe doesn’t even smuggle fentanyl into the U.S.!:
President Donald Trump on Friday threatened a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union, citing a lack of progress in current trade negotiations.
“Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable,” he wrote in a Truth Social post Friday morning.
“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump wrote.
“Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025.”
Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission, declined to comment immediately, saying he was waiting until after a call between Maroš Šefčovič, European Commissioner for Trade, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Gill did not specify when the call is taking place. Reuters reported it’s set to occur at 11 a.m. ET on Friday. A USTR spokesperson didn’t respond to a CNN request for comment.
Shortly after Trump’s Truth Social post on Friday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox News interview that the “EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners.”
“I’m not going to negotiate on TV, but I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU,” Bessent said, adding that the “EU has a collective action problem.”
The three major European stock market indexes fell sharply after Trump’s post: The benchmark STOXX 600 index was down 1.7%. Germany’s DAX fell 2.4% and France’s CAC index slid 2.2%. London’s FTSE index was 1% down. US stocks also slid, with the Dow opening lower by 480 points, or 1.15%. Stocks came off their lows after Bessent said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Friday that he expects US trade representatives to meet in person with Chinese officials again to continue trade negotiations following a temporary pause in higher tariff rates.
The stock falls are predictable, as are the price rises that will follow any increase. Are they going to raise the price of French, German, and Spanish wine, for crying out loud?
*Reader John sent a link about how a clever Cooper’s Hawk (Astur cooperii) figured out how to hunt using traffic lights.
The story starts with Vladimir Dinets, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the study’s author, and an intersection in West Orange, New Jersey, near his home. As a zoologist, he had long been interested in animals’ perspective on and understanding of urban environments—and in birds’ relationship with cars, in particular. Scientists have previously observed ravens patrol American highways waiting for roadkill and songbirds using cars to hide from predators.
Dinets was on the lookout for these interesting interactions when a young Cooper’s hawk migrated into his neighborhood and started doing something brilliant.
The intersection wasn’t particularly busy, even during rush hour, Dinets wrote in a guest editorial for Frontiers in Ethology. But sometimes, a pedestrian would cross the street, causing cars to pile up all the way to a small, bushy tree down the block. The pedestrian “walk” signal would also make a sound that indicated it was time to walk.
One morning, Dinets saw the hawk emerge from the tree, fly very low above the line of cars, cross the street between the cars, and then dive to get something near one of the houses.
Then the same thing happened again. And again.
It turns out that the family that lived in that house near the bushy tree liked to have dinner in their front yard. In response, birds—like sparrows and doves—would flock there to claim the leftover crumbs.
That made for easy pickings for the hawk, who would swoop down into the yard to catch said sparrows and doves. But, curiously, the hawk only did this when cars were lined up along the block all the way to the tree.
Dinets eventually figured out that the line of cars provided cover for the hawk, and that the hawk had learned to recognize the sound of the pedestrian “walk” signal. As soon as a pedestrian pressed the button, the hawk would fly from wherever it had been hanging out and into the small, bushy tree. It would then wait for cars to pile up before using the line of cars as cover to sneak up on its prey.
The hawk had, apparently, learned to use the pedestrian signal as a cue to start heading over to the house crowded with defenseless birds, according to Dinets.
“That meant that the hawk understood the connection between the sound and the eventual car queue length,” Dinets explained. The hawk also apparently had a good mental map of the neighborhood.
The family moved away and the light stopped working, so the story, for now, is over. This should have been documented and published in a bird journal, but I doubt that it is, and I can’t find any video.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is preening:
Hili: Do you see what I see?A: No, you see me and I see you.Hili: So what you are seeing is more beautiful.
Hili: Czy ty widzisz to, co ja widzę?Ja: Nie, ty widzisz mnie, a ja widzę ciebie.Hili: Czyli to, co ty widzisz jest piękniejsze.
*******************
From Things with Faces, a sad banana:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Annie:
Masih is quiet against, so let’s have JKR agreeing with a man who gives primacy to biology over imagination:
Everything he says 👇 https://t.co/TcE8H6ol9Y
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 22, 2025
From Luana, more of the kind of injustice that JKR, Luana, and I dislike:
Two males took home medals at a “women’s+” longsword competition in Oklahoma last week, seizing both first and third place.
Beatrice Lostracco and Fox Graves were just two of the men competing against women at the Spring Fechten tournament.https://t.co/JuV9Gn6bFw
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) May 21, 2025
From Barry. For some reason I find this hilarious:
From Bryan, some nice jazz:
Scatman Crothers was born on this day in 1910.
Scatman played drums with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, played Scat Cat in the Aristocats, he shined in The Shining, and voiced Hong Kong Phooey. This performance of All of Me with Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son is brilliant. pic.twitter.com/1lshT5GvGK— The Sting (@TheStingisBack) May 23, 2025
From Malcolm, a polite cat:
such a polite gentleman pic.twitter.com/O35pDxa2mM
— The Cats 𝕏 (@TheCatsX) May 9, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was but one year old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-24T09:44:59.061Z
Two posts from Matthew. He adds the comment “revolting indeed” to fake, AI-generation of Auschwitz victims. Why would anyone do this?
This is revolting.www.facebook.com/auschwitzmem…
— The Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunter.net) 2025-05-23T14:24:28.799Z
Wh. . . and someone had a good eye for pareidolia:
Maybe it's called a corpse flower because that's a dead ballerina stuffed in a bucket.
— Hillary Monahan (@hillarymonahan.bsky.social) 2025-05-23T05:24:55.462Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Life is like a library owned by an author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him. -Harry Emerson Fosdick, preacher and author (24 May 1878-1969)
“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” — John Lennon, quoting another source, I think.
There is an expanded discussion of how they launch ships in general and the North Korean mishap on Sal Mercogliano’s “What’s Going on with Shipping?” you tube channel. Sal is a merchant mariner and maritime college professor who I consider a reliable source for boat and ship incidents and mishaps…a sort of blancolario of ships if you will. This section is about 5-6 minutes long and includes a copy of dear leader’s statement on the event. It is his first item, just one minute into the episode which should be at
I’m familiar with that shipping youtube, Jim, it is very good. Part of the NK “navy first” (after nukes of course) push is to make more boats in part to steal more fish/squid out of Japanese waters – which they’ve been doing for over a decade. They sell seafood to the Chinese and it is a nice little earner for a country short of funds.
I’m an amateur Pyongyangologist of many decades – like with the Middle East – I’m fascinated by dictatorships and crazy countries. I even wrote a piece on the ethics of travelling to NK for Forbes once. TLDR – don’t go. https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/03/06/useful-idiots-tourism-in-north-korea/#49fda0527dcd
D.A.
NYC
That wasn’t long, David. It was interesting, by the way. Tourism and North Korea are not two things I’d ever thought of at the same time. Takes all kinds, I guess.
On the reality TV thing, DHS came out early this week and categorically denied there had any discussion of this.
The producer of that show, Rob Worsoff, disagrees with you.
Canadian says his TV pitch portrayed as Hunger Games for U.S. migrants was misrepresented
…
The Canadian-born freelance television producer said he brought his pitch to build a show around aspiring immigrants learning about the culture of their new country to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under both the Obama and Biden administrations. He even brought a version of it to the CBC.
Worsoff then put his idea forward to the new Trump administration — but this time the 49-year-old got caught up in a global media and political backlash.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/rob-worsoff-reality-immigration-show-1.7541809
“As drunk as an owl” has been identified first in The Gentleman’s Magazine in Britain in 1770. Now since ‘stewed’ also means drunk, it is likely it became conflated with boiled. ‘Tight’ also means drunk in English slang. Why owls? Probably the staring glassy eyes. The phrase ‘while tight as an owl’ was last used by P G Wodehouse in 1971’s Much Obliged, Jeeves, and ‘You’re as drunk as a hoot owl’ appears in George V. Higgins 1981 novel The Rat on Fire. To describe the term as “Victorian” as Jesus of the Day does, is blinkered and incorrect.
Here endeth your daily dose of nitpickery.
“Transformation is the red thread running through all the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations’ agenda for responding to global challenges facing humanity and the planet. Setting our world on a more sustainable course requires radical shifts in current development paradigms that are exacerbating inequalities and imperilling our common future. This transition is dependent on new knowledge, research and competences that only higher education institutions are in a position to provide, rooted in their historic role of service to society.”
“In 1964, inspiring the 1968-student revolt a couple of years later, Herbert Marcuse wrote a key text against “one dimensional man”, urging universities and campuses around the world to become places that resisted reductionism. ”
Parr, et. al.
“Knowledge-driven actions: transforming higher education for global sustainability”
2022
UNESCO
https://doi.org/10.54675/YBTV1653
Ah, Marcuse. I actually had to read 1-D Man for an undergrad class (philosophy, I guess). Not my cuppa tea. The only content I remember from that class was Herbie’s overuse of the word “erotic”, in various non-obvious contexts. Maybe a literal fetish of his? Maybe early-pomo word-salad? DK;DC.
Edit: He also had an annoying tendency to over-hyphenate various words, I guess to emphasise the etymo-logy of the com-ponent parts. Bah, humbug.
I thought it was hilarious that Kim Jong Un’s beautiful warship couldn’t even leave the dock successfully, but I pity the poor bast*rd who’s going to be blamed.
Norman, in Sal Mercogliano’s video (url above in comment #2), around six or seven minutes in, Sal shows a couple of the Leader’s new ships firing missiles, but never while underway. Sal suggests that these new ships lack engines! It is worth the watch.
Wouldn’t surprise me Jim. So much of what they show off in NK is fake, basically studio props. Except they really do have nukes, some iffy missiles and some REAL nasty chemical/bio weapons. They tested the bio ones on prisoners some time ago.
In Pyongyang there are front streets and back streets – what the captured, fooled tourists see and …. the rest.
And consider ONLY the elite top 10% live in Pyongyang. Proles can’t even visit.
The whole country redefines the idea of “Potemkin”. Peel back the studio paint and it is almost Eritrea with East Asians.
D.A.
NYC
Hello,
I know the use of AI is forbidden, but I hope you’ll grant an exception because I happened to know that the man who gives primacy to biology over imagination to which JKR is replying to IS NOT a nobody.
I knew he was a specialist at the Tavistock (UK gender clinic for minors) but I had to ask the AI in order to quickly refresh my memory:
Marcus Evans is a British psychoanalyst who served as a consultant psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where he held senior roles including Head of Nursing and Associate Clinical Director of the adult and adolescent departments . With over 40 years of experience in mental health, he has been a prominent critic of the clinic’s approach to treating gender dysphoria in young people. In 2019, he resigned from the Tavistock’s board of governors in protest over the dismissal of a report by Dr. David Bell that raised concerns about the clinic’s practices
His wife, Sue Evans, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and former psychiatric nurse who also worked at the Tavistock, particularly in its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). In 2004, she became one of the first whistleblowers to raise alarms about what she perceived as the clinic’s hasty referral of children for medical treatments without adequate psychological assessment . She later participated in legal action challenging the legality of providing puberty blockers to minors, a case that contributed to a landmark 2020 High Court ruling restricting such treatments for under-16s
Together, Marcus and Sue Evans co-authored the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults, advocating for a psychotherapeutic approach over immediate medical intervention. Their work and public statements have been influential in debates over gender-affirming care for youth
FWIW, I’m certain it is definitely not forbidden here to use AI™ as a powerful search-engine. I find it quite useful.
Reporting from Ukraine reports worrisome activities on the Polish/Belarusian border. Poland has just closed the Russian consulate in Krakow after investigators uncovered evidence linking Moscow to a massive fire that destroyed a huge shopping center in Warsaw, and Poland is rapidly ramping up defenses. Malgorzata?
Yes, the information about the Russian consulate in Kraków and the fire in Warsaw is correct.
About the border: apparently there are plans for a common maneuvers (Russian and Belarusian armies) on the border between Belarus and Poland with up to 100,000 soldiers.
The russian terrorist state is using up soldiers at such a horrific rate in Ukraine that one wonders where they are finding them.
Paying REAL well is where they’re finding them. Average salary in Russia is $8K USD in the big cities, military signing bonuses are topping $40-50K and quite popular in forgotten, obscure third worldy regions of economic misery.
Ukraine will run out of men long before Russia will unfortunately. That metric is probably the most important one of the war now.
D.A.
NYC
source: Perun podcast (highly recommended), youtube
FWIW, I believe I read a few wks ago that Ukraine is getting excellently-trained soldiers from Colombia.
Oh, please, no.
I first encountered Scatman Crothers performing the song “Coonskin No More” in the opening credits of the 1975 animated/live action movie “Coonskin” by Ralph Bakshi, tagline “This film offends everybody!”, which it certainly did.
I’ll check for it – Scatman is an “unsung” legend… or whatever…
The picture of the dead ballerina in the corpse flower is just tutu unsettling.
And she’s still en pointe.
I LOVE the AP piece about using the ducks for pest control in the vineyards. That is the way to go. I have a friend who owns a family farm in California and they’re using goats to eat the areas they’re managing growth to protect against fire. It seems such methods are becoming increasingly popular and it’s such a win-win strategy. Things like this lighten my heavy heart.
“Harvard University set to launch FREE college courses online for every US Citizen. Highlighting basic U.S. Government, understanding the Constitution, and How to recognize a Dictatorship takeover 101. Harvard University”
From a Sub Stack post. It seems appropriate and I hope it’s true.