Welcome to CaturSaturday, July 5, 2025, and National Graham Cracker Day, a comestible good for two things: spreading chocolate frosting on it or, alternatively, making S’Mores with graham crackers, marshmallows, and Hershey’s chocolate. Below you see a S’More: the best thing to do with graham crackers (the marshmallow isn’t burnt enough). Traditionally the marshmallows are toasted over a campfire, but now you can make the whole thing in a microwave, which won’t toast the marshmallow.
Some history:
S’more is a contraction of the phrase “some more”. The first known s’more recipe appeared in a “Campfire Marshmallows” cookbook in the early 1920s, where it was called a “Graham Cracker Sandwich”. The text indicates that the treat was already popular with the Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls and Girl Scouts. In 1927, a recipe for “Some More” was published in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. Newspaper recipes began appearing as early as 1925.
The contracted term “s’mores” appears in conjunction with the recipe in a 1938 publication aimed at summer camps. A 1956 recipe uses the name “S’Mores”, and lists the ingredients as “a sandwich of two graham crackers, toasted marshmallow, and ½ chocolate bar”. A 1957 Betty Crocker cookbook contains a similar recipe under the name “s’mores”.
It’s also Bikini Day, National Apple Turnover Day, and International Cherry Pit Spitting Day.
There’s a big Wikipedia article on cherry pit spitting, but here’s the record:
The Guinness World Record for the “Greatest distance to spit a cherry stone” is held by Brian “Young Gun” Krause for a spit of 28.51 metres (93 ft 6.5 in) at the 2004 International Cherry Pit-Spitting championship. Krause also competed in the freestyle competition on the same day where he spat a stone 33.62 metres (110 ft 3.5 in), unofficially beating his own record.
Here’s Brian Krause, one member of family of cherry-pit spitters:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 5 Wikipedia page.
I am off to the Arctic this evening, so posting may be nonexistent for a few days. Bear with me; I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*Late-breaking news: Texas experienced some huge floods in the Hill Country yesterday, and two dozen people died, most of them girls at a camp. The Guadalupe river rose nearly 30 feet in less than three hours:
Search and rescue teams were working throughout the night in Central Texas after flooding that began early Friday swept through a summer camp and homes, killing at least 24 people and leaving as many as 25 girls from the camp missing. Flooding was continuing in some areas early Saturday morning.
The missing girls had been at Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River near Hunt, in Kerr County, according to the county’s sheriff. Desperate parents posted photos of their children online, seeking any information, and others went to reunification centers to try to find missing loved ones. An unknown number of other people were also missing, Kerr County said in an update on Friday night, citing the sheriff, Larry Leitha.
The deadly flooding surprised many, including Texas officials, who said that some National Weather Service alerts had underestimated the risks. The most urgent alerts came in overnight, in the early hours of Friday.
The rain that caused the flooding in Hunt, which is around 60 miles northwest of San Antonio, eased up on Friday night, but a flood wave was moving down the Guadalupe River. Forecasters warned that even small amounts of additional rain could make flooding hazards worse. Heavy rain was falling overnight in other pockets of Central Texas that were under flash flood warnings, affecting more than 30,000 people.
*Yesterday Trump signed the Big Beautiful Budget Bill into law. From the AP:
President Donald Trump signed his package of tax breaks and spending cuts into law Friday in front of Fourth of July picnickers after his cajoling produced almost unanimous Republican support in Congress for the domestic priority that could cement his second-term legacy.
Flanked by Republican legislators and members of his Cabinet, Trump signed the multitrillion-dollar legislation at a desk on the White House driveway, then banged down a gavel gifted to him by House Speaker Mike Johnson that was used during the bill’s final passage Thursday.
Against odds that at times seemed improbable, Trump achieved his goal of celebrating a historic — and divisive — legislative victory in time for the nation’s birthday, which also was his self-imposed deadline for Congress to send the legislation to his desk. Fighter jets and stealth bombers streaked through the sky over the annual White House Fourth of July picnic.
“America’s winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump said, noting last month’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, which he said the flyover was meant to honor. “Promises made, promises kept, and we’ve kept them.”
The White House was hung with red, white and blue bunting for the Independence Day festivities. The U.S. Marine Band played patriotic marches — and, in a typical Trumpian touch, tunes by 1980s pop icons Chaka Khan and Huey Lewis. There were three separate flyovers.
Trump spoke for a relatively brief 22 minutes before signing the bill, but was clearly energized as the legislation’s passage topped a recent winning streak for his administration. That included the Iran campaign and a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulingshe’s fought for.
Well, not all promises kept. Republicans fear that the bill’s cuts in Medicaid constitute a violate of a Trump campaign promise: not to touch medical care. This, they say, puts the Republican majority of the House in danger.
Trump pressed ahead anyway.“I hope he remembers the warnings and the advice that I gave him last night,” Tillis told reporters Sunday. “Because if this bill gets passed in its current form, I’ll remind him next year when we lose the majority in the House.”
But in Trump’s eagerness to score a signature legislative win and extend the tax cuts he put into place nearly 10 years ago, he also walked away from the campaign promise he made not to touch health care — risking Republicans’ majority in Congress.
I’d be glad if the Republicans lost their majority in both houses of Congress, but remember that Trump has not only most of the Supreme Court on his side, but also that a thin Democratic majority in Congress will be unable to override Trump’s vetoes of their legislation, vetoes he’d clearly make. If you’re young, you can play the long game and campaign locally, but I am beginning to fear I’ll die under a conservative Republican administration (is “conservative Republican” redundant?)
*According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump now has the power to nullify laws by his own Diktat: even laws that were passed with the assent of both parties and were given the legal imprimatur of the Supreme court (article is archived here).
Attorney General Pam Bondi told tech companies that they could lawfully violate a statute barring American companies from supporting TikTok based on a sweeping claim that President Trump has the constitutional power to set aside laws, newly disclosed documents show.
In letters to companies like Apple and Google, Ms. Bondi wrote that Mr. Trump had decided that shutting down TikTok would interfere with his “constitutional duties,” so the law banning the social media app must give way to his “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.”
The letters, which became public on Thursday via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, portrayed Mr. Trump as having nullified the legal effects of a statute that Congress passed by large bipartisan majorities in 2024 and that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld.
Shortly after being sworn in, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban and has since repeatedly extended it. That step has been overshadowed by numerous other moves he has made to push at the boundaries of executive power in the opening months of his second administration.
But some legal experts consider Mr. Trump’s action — and in particular his order’s claim, which Ms. Bondi endorsed in her letters, that he has the power to enable companies to lawfully violate the statute — to be his starkest power grab. It appears to set a significant new precedent about the potential reach of presidential authority, they said.
“There are other things that are more important than TikTok in today’s world, but for pure refusal to enforce the law as Article II requires, it’s just breathtaking,” said Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor who has written about the nonenforcement of the TikTok ban, referring to the part of the Constitution that says presidents must take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
I don’t throw words like “fascism” around readily, but I can certainly allude to “dictatorship” (if not “autocracy”) in this case. And no, the President does not have the Constitutional power to nullify laws. This is from Article II, section three of our Constitution (my bolding):
He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Will the Supreme Court take action here? I doubt it. . . .
*Colin Wright’s Substack, “Reality’s Last Stand”, has a post about the University of Pennsylvania’s new ban on men participating in women’s sports, including a report on media’s reaction to Penn’s act.
On Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania reached an agreement with the Trump administration’s Department of Education regarding trans-identified male swimmer Lia Thomas’s participation on the women’s swim team. Following a federal investigation, the university has agreed to revise records set by Thomas and to restore titles and accolades to the female athletes he displaced. UPenn will also issue personal apologies to the affected swimmers, bar male athletes from competing in women’s sports, and adopt biology-based definitions of “male” and “female” under Title IX.
This correction was inevitable. Reality, in the end, reasserts itself. But the mainstream press hasn’t budged. Instead, they continue to misinform their readers, deploying headlines designed to obscure plain facts.
Consider a representative sample of mainstream media headlines. The New York Times claimed that Penn had agreed “to Limit Participation of Transgender Athletes.” TheWashington Post reported that the school would “bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams.” NBC News, USA Today, and BBC all referred to “ban[s]” on “trans athletes.”
These headlines aren’t just misleading; they’re false. Lia Thomas wasn’t barred from female sports for being “transgender”; he was barred for being a male. Any other male, whether he identified as transgender or not, would be barred for the same reason. Trans-identifying males remain fully eligible to compete in UPenn athletics—on the men’s team.
Instead of focusing on the women who benefit from the university’s course correction, the media has centered its attention on Thomas. Headlines have emphasized that Thomas was “stripped of titles,” and have largely overlooked the women whose titles were restored: Anna Kalandadze, Virginia Burns, and Kayla Fu, whose records in the 500-meter, 200-meter, and 100-meter freestyle, respectively, have now been reinstated.
Predictably, proponents for allowing males to compete in women’s sports have wasted no time distorting scientific evidence to denounce UPenn’s decision. Two CNN reporters, for instance, claimed that the idea “transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in sports” is “not what the research shows.” They pointed to a 2017 review, which claimed that there was “no direct and consistent research to suggest that [trans-identifying males] . . . have an athletic advantage in sport.” But that conclusion flowed largely from the lack of studies on the question—an issue driven less by uncertainty than by the assumption that the answer was self-evident. Since then, hard data have emerged confirming what anyone with functioning eyes already knew: that trans-identifying males’ use of testosterone-suppressing drugs and cross-sex hormones only moderately reduces, but comes nowhere close to eliminating, the performance gap between male and female athletes.
There is more about the reactions of the media and political reaction, but, as readers know, I think this was the right decision even if made under pressure from the government. Penn made the wrong decision in the first place, one unfair to biological women athletes, and this correction sets a precedent that should be followed by other schools—unless there are sports in which men, cis or trans-identified, don’t have any athletic advantage.
*The United Nations has withdrawn its nuclear inspectors (who weren’t doing a very good job anyway) from Iran, for since the attacks by Israel and the U.S. they have not been allowed at the sites, and Iran is escalating its rhetoric against the inspectors (article is archived here).
The United Nations atomic agency is pulling its inspectors out of Iran over safety concerns, severing the link between the agency and Tehran, which earlier this week suspended cooperation with the international monitor, according to people familiar with the matter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s team of inspectors were driven by road out of Iran on Friday despite international departures from Iran’s main airports resuming normal operations in the wake of a 12-day conflict with Israel, two of the people said.
The inspectors have been housed in Tehran unable to visit Iran’s nuclear sites since Israel attacked the country on June 13. They were housed at a hotel in the capital but may have later moved to a U.N. location, according to one of the people.
Iran has ratcheted up years-old rhetoric against the agency since then and there have been death threats against IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi from lawmakers and regime-tied media.
The IAEA later confirmed the inspectors’ departure. In a tweet on X, the agency said Grossi “reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible.”
Their departure makes the prospect of any significant international access to Iran’s nuclear sites extremely unlikely, allowing it to carry out nuclear work unchecked. Iran’s activities are, however, being watched closely by Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, and the IAEA has access to satellite imagery of its sites. It also raises the prospect of a standoff over Iran’s participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans it from nuclear weapons and requires regular inspections of its atomic program.
. . .Earlier this week, in the face of international pressure, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian implemented a new law from Iran’s parliament suspending cooperation with the agency.
That move meant the IAEA would be blind to Iran’s nuclear work and the state of its nuclear facilities, following Israeli and U.S. attacks last month on the country’s main sites.
Trump says the attacks on Iran obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. A Pentagon official said the strikes had set Iran’s program back by up to two years.
European countries are rebuking Iran for this decision, arguing that it would make it harder to reach an agreement that would prevent Iran from getting the bomb. But that’s nonsense. Everyone with two neurons to rub together knows that Iran is dead-set on getting a bomb. And once it does, Israel is toast and the rest of the Middle East is endangered. The only way to stop Iranian progress towards nukes is for Israel and/or the U.S. to keep bombing nuclear sites, or, preferably, to topple of the Iranian theocracy and depose Khamenei. Granted, the latter is harder to achieve, but I’m convinced that it’s what most of the people of Iran want. Still, the government has all the power and weaponry, even if it has been weakened by its war with Israel and by the U.S. bombing.
*We’ll finish with something I report annually: who won the Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island. And once again, after giving last year’s contest a pass, habitual winner Joey Chestnut won his 17th Nathan’s victory, downing 79.5 wieners in ten minutes! (The second-place contestant ate only 46.) Wikipedia says this:
Joseph Christian Chestnut (born November 25, 1983) is an American competitive eater. As of 2024, he holds 55 world records across 55 disciplines, and is ranked first in the world by Major League Eating. Chestnut has won the Mustard Yellow Belt a world record 17 times. He is widely considered to be the greatest competitive eater in history.
And his performance (from the AP link above):
Famed competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut reclaimed his title Friday at the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest after after skipping last year’s gastronomic battle in New York for the coveted Mustard Belt.
Chestnut, 41, consumed 70 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, falling short of his record of 76 wieners and buns set on July 4, 2021. It marked the 17th win in 20 appearances for the Westfield, Indiana, eater at the internationally televised competition, which he missed in 2024 over a contract dispute.
Defending champion in the women’s division, Miki Sudo of Tampa, Florida, won her 11th title, downing 33 dogs, besting a dozen competitors. Last year, she ate a record 51 links.
Last year, Major League Eating event organizer George Shea said Chestnut would not be participating in the contest due to a contract dispute. Chestnut had struck a deal with a competing brand, the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods.
Chestnut told The Associated Press last month that he had never appeared in any commercials for the company’s vegan hot dogs and that Nathan’s is the only hot dog company he has worked with. But Chestnut acknowledged he “should have made that more clear with Nathan’s.”
Aren’t vegan hot dogs still hot dogs? But let’s move on:
Last year, Chestnut ate 57 dogs — in only five minutes — in an exhibition with soldiers, at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. He said that event was “amazing” and he was pleased to still have a chance to eat hot dogs — a lot of them — on July Fourth.
“I’m happy I did that, but I’m really happy to be back at Coney Island,” he said.
Last year in New York, Patrick Bertoletti of Chicago gobbled up a 58 to earn the men’s title.
Here’s a video of the whole contest. Note that Chestnut eats the dogs separately from the buns, and he appears to put two dogs at once into his maw.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili rebukes Andrzej:
Hili: You hardly ever sit here anymore.
Andrzej: I’m changing my habits.
In Polish:
Hili: Tak rzadko tu teraz siadasz.
Ja: Zmieniam obyczaje.
*******************
All cat memes today, as we’re not having a Caturday this week. First, from CinEmma:
From Meow:
From Now That’s Wild:
I came across this tweet, and it seems to make sense. The reason? I suppose because members of each political party are getting angrier at members of the other, and things just aren’t going right with the world.
Ever feel like everything online is getting angrier? You’re not imagining it. Tweets with anger have surged since 2013, while neutral content has declined. 📉
And it matters for policy—our new paper shows how emotions shape what people support. https://t.co/Iewn6DQGaH pic.twitter.com/m6Jqkg5oLX— Stefanie Stantcheva (@S_Stantcheva) July 2, 2025
From Masih, a woman pleading for the life of her father, sentenced to death by the Iranian theocracy for political “crimes,” including “helping injured protesters after the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Also using Starlink to give people internet access when the regime shut it down”.
This is shocking and heartbreaking.
I’m calling on the international community, especially journalists, to watch this video and help help my friend @jinbabamiri to save her father.Her father, Rezgar Beigzadeh, an Iranian-Kurdish man, has been sentenced to death by the Islamic… pic.twitter.com/Hc5jp4Lg8I
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) July 4, 2025
From Malcolm, another unholy but still touching relationship between a cat and a d*g:
This cat hugs this dog, & they show affection to one another. Kind interactions bring out the best. pic.twitter.com/5zq5sgLGEM
— Hakan Kapucu (@1hakankapucu) May 9, 2025
If you’ve been following the pressure on people who supposedly utter “hate speech” in the UK, this will not surprise you:
🚨 For the first time since records began, the UK is no longer classified as an “Open” country in a leading global ranking of freedom of expression.
This latest drop continues a pattern of decline since 2014, across indicators including media freedom, internet censorship,… pic.twitter.com/EmmNXQA8Ot
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) July 3, 2025
One from my feed. I think the people are okay, as you’re supposed to be safe in a car, but I wonder about the car itself:
Lighting hitting a car. pic.twitter.com/7pgpLYNrbR
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 4, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was eight. Had she lived, she would be 91 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-07-05T10:36:56.455Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a big “sprite” photographed from the ISS. These electrical discharges occur high above thunderclouds and are orange-red, like this one:
Whoa.That's a sprite, an elusive, high-altitude electrical discharge from a thundercloud photographed by NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers from the ISS earlier today.With reported sightings going back more than a century, this phenomenon was first photographed in 1989.
— Paul Byrne (@theplanetaryguy.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T21:40:14.222Z
This thread has some great responses. I’ve added two:
At the back of your kitchen cupboard is something pickled or preserved in a jar that you were given for Christmas several years ago that you’ve never quite felt like eating.Throw it out now.
— Moose Allain (@mooseallain.bsky.social) 2025-07-02T19:07:38.404Z
When my in-laws sold their flat in Spain about 8 years ago, we helped clear out their cupboards. Here are some of the beautiful historic artefacts we uncovered.
— Moose Allain (@mooseallain.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T07:46:16.456Z
The finest wine known to all humanity
— Tom Rawstorne (@rawsty.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T06:57:42.454Z
You can toast marshmallows beautifully brown on a gas stove. I demonstrated this to an Austrian date at 3 AM when I was 17.
That date sounds like a good story all on its own. 😏
Yes, it was after a Viennese ball and the poor guy had never heard of marshmallows, let alone ones browned/burnt on the stove.🤓
The things we do when at 3 AM when we’re 17…
🤓🤓
Oy…the chaos continues:
Please listen/watch TWiV #1232 clinical update with dr dan as they detail some of the anti-science of this administration public health agencies. First 25 minutes are particularly important.
Noticed that the U.S. National Hurricane Center now refers to the “Gulf of America” (nee Gulf of Mexico) in its official forecasts
I think that the payoff to get the last texas republican holdout on budget bill was a promise to include $85M to move the Space Shuttle Discovery which is displayed at one of America’s Museums of science, industry, and technology just outside washington dc to Houston, Tx home of Johnson Space Center. Currently the retired shuttles are on the Intrepid in new york city, at Kennedy Space Center in FL, California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Smithsonian Uber-hazy center near Dulles Airport outside dc….three on east coast, one on west coast. Probably ok to move one to center of country, but the one in the nation’s capital and national museum?? Another effort to delegitimize the federal government which fully funded and created this incredible world-leading technology.
If there truly are any sports where the women who play them agree that men don’t have a sex-endowed advantage, the solution is to eliminate the sex-based categories entirely and let both sexes compete all together. If there is some other good reason to segregate the men from the women, like locker-room space, men ought not to be able to compete with the women simply by masquerading as them.
A friend of mine lives in a small Ontario city that doesn’t have enough players to run separate male and female soccer leagues, so her son (17) plays in a co-ed league. What she’s noticed is that when a boy comes in to play the ball against a girl, they all, on both teams, just by apparently unspoken convention of chivalry ease up a bit, partly to avoid unintended physical contact that might flatten or injure a girl, but also they back off to give the girl a chance to play the ball rather than smothering and overpowering her. She wonders if men disguising themselves as women do this too.
The reason I know her was that her son was, briefly, in adolescence caught up in the trans cult but managed to shake it off. My friend is a force of Nature. Don’t mess with a woman’s children.
There should be some sports where men and women might play equally. One I keep bringing up is corn hole, which, curiously enough, has big games that show up sometimes on ESPN. But these have separate leagues for men and women. My hypothesis is that one or both sexes just want it that way.
Equestrian sports, and very possibly rifle shooting (men may have an advantage with pistols.)
The nice co-ed game you write about Leslie requires a pretty high social trust, close (presumably community) bonds.
Social trust is the most important metric of any functioning society (think Japan vs Somalia). All other metrics flow from it. Took me decades to work that out.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Some time ago, I discovered that my internal, ineffable identity was that of a Gilbert’s Potoroo rather than a member of the H. sapiens species. I of course applied to Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, and the Environment to be awarded the official ENDANGERED status that I have long felt I must have. Needless to say, there exists no scientific research whatsoever showing that I am any less endangered than any of those ordinary cis-Gilbert’s Potoroos.
Re social heath in general depending on social trust, that’s a provocative insight which seems right. Can you recommend some books or articles that expand on this, preferably with examples from recent history (say since 1950)?
When I was a kid, I liked Graham Crackers with milk poured over them.
Dunking them is the usual way.
After having split them along the vertical axis so you have two long half-crackers to dunk.
Thanks for the memory.
IIRC the brand in our household was perforated down the middle, which made splitting easy (and tempting).
No, unfortunately, “conservative Republican” is not redundant. Here is a revealing graph showing the increase in the debt under both Democratic and Republican administrations. There’s more to being a conservative that being fiscally responsible, but there’s not less.
I think we can be concerned about mid-terms, and the presumption that republicans will lose control. What republicans will very effectively campaign on are the simple points: You have tax breaks in one form or another. The other team wanted to raise your taxes (which is sort of true in phasing out the 2017 tax break, as scheduled). The other team wanted men in women’s locker rooms and they wanted open borders. Also arguably true, given past campaign platforms.
A plurality of Americans will weigh how they feel things are going for themselves, and will vote accordingly. So I don’t think we can feel confident about midterms.
Plus the sneaky, gutless bastards set the cuts to go into effect December 31, 2026.
re: Spanish domestic archeology pic above.
I have a bunch of antique spices and ancient medications even now in my home. I’ve lived here 15 years but some I must have taken with me almost since moving to NYC decades ago.
But (OK, some meds do go off but a lot don’t – check the chemistry*)… meds and spices are expensive and many last nearly forever. And I like the old labels.
D.A.
NYC
*Don’t pull that stunt with anti-biotics, vaccines or insulin! Turf them in time. Vanilla and curry powder, however, will outlive us.
Iran cannot be trusted, and the UN and others who keep touting the IAEA as essential to Iran’s compliance with international norms are naive. The plan for the near term will have to be surveillance by American and Israeli intelligence, followed up by bombing of Iranian nuclear assets as they are reconstituted.
In other news, my mother received a fully populated spice rack when she and my father were married in 1956. In 2000, when my parents moved from their house to be closer to my sister, the fully populated spice rack—still on the kitchen wall for 44 years—was finally removed and discarded. The spices? Still in their little jars, never having been used. (Morton iodized) Salt and (black) pepper were the only “spices” we knew as kids with one exception. My paternal grandmother put paprika on chicken to add a little color.
This is PCC(E) at the conference in Brooklyn last week.
He and McWhorter are the standouts of course.
I’m off frame to the right, eating my strawberry cheesecake, pretending I paid for my ticket!
The Duties & Responsibilities of Scholars | Jerry Coyne, Jennifer Frey, Louis Menand, John McWhorter
(1:15)
D.A.
NYC
Thanks!
I am heartsick for those parents in Texas. One of the most searing stories I’ve ever read was this account of the deaths due to flash flooding in the same area in 2015. And now, ten years later, history is repeating itself except, if anything, even worse.
“Aren’t vegan hot dogs still hot dogs?”
I assume your question was rhetorical, but it did remind me of an experience at a conference in the late 1980s in Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia. The first morning, dozens of us conference participants staggered down to a breakfast buffet at the hotel, which included, among many standard dishes, a plate of hot dogs. I asked the young man supervising the food about this and he said that they knew that Americans like sausage with their breakfast, so he was pleased to be able to offer a large plate of those hot dog sausages…. Fair enough, I thought.
Let us stop calling this the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which for sure it isn’t; and start calling it the Reverse Robin Hood Bill, taking from the poor to give more to the rich. And, of course, it runs up the deficit by $3T or so into the bargain – the only way it made it through the Senate on reconciliation was that the Republicans avoided consulting the Senate parliamentarian and themselves defined the “base case” for deficit calculation as already including the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
Let us not tell your host what to call a bill, especially when the name is a joke and not the same name that Trump calls it. Capiche?
I thought it just maintained tax cuts already in place, plus removes taxes from tips and overtime – which would seem likely to help some of those on lower incomes.
Seeing the bottle of Blue Nun brought back memories, both fond and sad. More than 50 years ago, when we were in our early 20s, my close friend J.R. (Rick) Barnes learned that Blue Nun was the favorite wine of Bob Dylan, who Rick idolized. After learning that, it became our wine of choice whenever our small band of friends met up. And the kind proprietor of our local wine shop made sure to always keep a supply, although he told me once that we were about the only folks who ever bought it. Rick, a life-long musician, guitarist, and song writer, passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. He had become, in moderation, a bourbon drinker in his later years. But I think I will search out a bottle of Blue Nun and invite our dwindling band over to raise our glasses in his memory.
Just don’t get the impression it is a decent representative of German wine!
Re: “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”……….one of the main reasons Trump won was because his predecessor refused to execute the border laws.