Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, August 5, 2025 and National Oyster Day. I’m thinking of going to New Orleans come fall to eat, and oysters will be on the menu, perhaps in a po boy. Here’s a fried shrimp po boy, but in a week there’s a limit to what one can eat in New Orleans. A visit like that requires careful gustatory planning:
It’s also Green Peppers Day,and National Underwear Day. Here’s some underwear history:
In the Middle Ages, western men’s underwear became looser fitting. The loincloth was replaced by loose, trouser-like clothing called braies, which the wearer stepped into and then laced or tied around the waist and legs at about mid-calf. Wealthier men often wore chausses as well, which only covered the legs. Braies (or rather braccae) were a type of trouser worn by Celtic and Germanic tribes in antiquity and by Europeans subsequently into the Middle Ages. In the later Middle Ages they were used exclusively as undergarments.
. . . . Braies were usually fitted with a front flap that was buttoned or tied closed. This codpiece allowed men to urinate without having to remove the braies completely.
Here’s “A 1532–1533 portrait by Titian of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, in a codpiece”:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The WaPo reports that Texas Democrats in the state legislature have fled the state to prevent a quorum for a vote that, by redistricting, would create more Republican seats in Congress.
The Texas House can conduct business only when two-thirds of its 150 members are present. A successful boycott would require participation from at least 51 of the chamber’s 62 Democrats. A total of 57 joined in, said State Rep. Jon Rosenthal (D). Members traveled to Boston and New York, he said, with the largest group landing in Chicago. All plan to remain gone until the conclusion of the session that ends Aug. 19.
“Our goal right now is to kill this session,” Rosenthal said.
Abbott said Democrats were willfully abandoning their jobs and he would go to court to remove and replace them if they do not show up on Monday.
In addition, Democrats could each face $500 daily fines from the legislature and political blowback. As part of the special session, lawmakers are considering legislation to respond to last month’s deadly floods, and blocking action on that issue is likely to be unpopular. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has threatened to arrest legislators who break quorum, but he won’t have jurisdiction over them if they stay out of state.
While I abhor this kind of politically-based redistricting, the mass flight of Democratic lawmakers disturbs me. After all, they are leaving so they don’t have to go through the Democratic process of voting, because they don’t like the results. While it’s clever of the Dems to flee Texas, I think that, as in the other two similar cases, they will lose. And surely the Republicans can bring this issue up again.
UPDATE: New York is trying to balance out what may happen in Texas by redistricting in favor of blue areas:
New York is joining the fight to redraw congressional maps.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state leaders said they would begin the process of redistricting in New York to benefit Democrats in response to Texas Republicans’ plans to alter that state’s congressional map ahead of schedule to create more GOP seats.
Texas Republicans at the behest of President Trump have ripped up the political rulebook to pursue a mid-decade redistricting, Hochul said Monday. That’s forcing the hands of Democrats to pursue a similar strategy, she said.
If politically based gerrymandering is wrong for Republicans, it’s also wrong for Democrats.
*The nutters are loose–and at Harvard! Three Harvard researchers, including a professor of theoretical physics, thinks that an icy comet far from Earth may be an alien spacecraft.
One thing about 3I/ATLAS is for certain: It’s definitely not from Earth’s solar system.
But what exactly is the intriguing interstellar object discovered speeding through our cosmic neighborhood? Most astrophysicists widely agree 3I/ATLAS displays all the telltale signs of an icy comet.
Now, a trio of researchers led by Avi Loeb, a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University, are positing a very different theory: What if 3I/ATLAS isn’t just some random space rock that arrived in our solar system by happenstance but an intelligently controlled alien spacecraft?
Even the authors of the research paper positing the wild idea aren’t fully sold on it, but – hey – extraterrestrial visitors are always fun to think about.\
. . .A likely comet known as 3I/ATLAS made news earlier in July when it was confirmed to have originated outside Earth’s solar system, which makes it just one of three known interstellar objects ever discovered in our cosmic neighborhood.
What’s more, the object, which scientists estimate to be more than 12 miles wide, is whizzing at 37 miles per second relative to the sun on a trajectory that on Oct. 30 will bring it within about 130 million miles of Earth, according to NASA.
But is 3I/ATLAS definitely an icy comet?
The three researchers, who most prominently include Loeb, recently published a paper speculating about whether the object could be “hostile” alien technology.
Loeb is famed for encouraging astrophysicists to have an open mind about extraterrestrials, but his theories and research often rankle other scientists in the field, who push back on some of his bolder claims. He is cofounder of the Galileo Project, a research program at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics dedicated to the search for extraterrestrials.
The paper Loeb cowrote, uploaded July 16 to the preprint server arXiv, is more a “pedagogical exercise” examining the unusual trajectory of 3I/ATLAS and how fast it is traveling through space than a study meant to offer definitive conclusions. The paper has not been peer-reviewed, it’s important to note.
Loeb further explained the paper in a post on the online publishing platform Medium, writing that it was simply an “interesting exercise in its own right, and is fun to explore.”
“This hypothesis proposes that our cosmic neighborhood is dangerous, filled with intelligent civilizations that are hostile and silent to avoid detection by potential predators,” Loeb wrote.
Here’s the abstract of the arXiv paper:
At this early stage of its passage through our Solar System, 3I/ATLAS, the recently discovered interstellar interloper, has displayed various anomalous characteristics, determined from photometric and astrometric observations. As largely a pedagogical exercise, in this paper we present additional analysis into the astrodynamics of 3I/ATLAS, and hypothesize that this object could be technological, and possibly hostile as would be expected from the ‘Dark Forest’ resolution to the ‘Fermi Paradox’. We show that 3I/ATLAS approaches surprisingly close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, with a probability of ≲0.005\%. Furthermore the low retrograde tilt of 3I/ATLAS’s orbital plane to the ecliptic offers various benefits to an Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (ETI), since it allows the object access to our planet with relative impunity. The eclipse by the Sun from Earth of 3I/ATLAS at perihelion, would allow it to conduct a clandestine reverse Solar Oberth Manoeuvre, an optimal high-thrust strategy for interstellar spacecraft to brake and stay bound to the Sun. An optimal intercept of Earth would entail an arrival in late November/early December of 2025, and also, a non-gravitational acceleration of ∼5.9×10−5 au day−2, normalized at 1 au from the Sun, would indicate an intent to intercept the planet Jupiter, not far off its path, and a strategy to rendezvous with it after perihelion.
Yep, nutters. . . .
*A lion (WITH A COLLAR) that was part of a research project in Zimbabwe was lured into a “hunting zone” by an idiot and then shot to death as a trophy. The hunter has an excuse (he didn’t see the collar, baiting lions into hunting areas is customary, etc., and he didn’t know the lion was a prime breeding male, the killing of which is illegal). But none of them wash:
he killing of a collared lion involved in a research project in Zimbabwe by a trophy hunter has been condemned by wildlife groups, echoing the infamous case of a lion called Cecil whose death at the hands of an American tourist in the same country a decade ago was met with international outrage.
The latest lion, known as Blondie, was part of an Oxford University study and wore a research collar sponsored by Africa Geographic, a safari company. Africa Geographic said Blondie was killed by a hunter in June close to the country’s flagship Hwange National Park after being lured out of a protected area and into a nearby hunting zone with the use of bait.
After Blondie’s killing became a new rallying cry for those opposed to hunting, a spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s National Parks told The Associated Press on Thursday that the hunt was legal and the hunter had the necessary permits. Zimbabwe allows up to 100 lions to be hunted a year. Trophy hunters, who are usually foreign tourists, pay tens of thousands of dollars to kill a lion and take the head or skin as a trophy.
Africa Geographic CEO Simon Espley said Blondie’s killing made “a mockery of the ethics” trophy hunters claim to prescribe to because he wore a clearly visible research collar and was a breeding male in his prime. Hunters say they only target ageing, non-breeding lions.
“That Blondie’s prominent collar did not prevent him from being offered to a hunting client confirms the stark reality that no lion is safe from trophy hunting guns,” Espley said.
Hunting lions is fiercely divisive, even among conservationists. Some say if it is well managed it raises money that can be put back into conservation. Others want killing wildlife for sport to be banned outright.
Some countries in Africa like Kenya have commercial hunting bans, others like Zimbabwe and South Africa allow it. Botswana lifted a ban on hunting six years ago.
Tinashe Farawo, the spokesperson for the Zimbabwe parks agency, said money from hunting is crucial to support the southern African nation’s underfunded conservation efforts. He defended the hunt and said they often happen at night, meaning the collar on Blondie may not have been visible.
He said he had no information on Blondie being lured out of the park with bait — which is usually a dead animal — but there “is nothing unethical or illegal about that for anyone who knows how lions are hunted. This is how people hunt.”
“Our rangers were present. All paperwork was in order. Collars are for research purposes, but they don’t make the animal immune to hunting,” Farawo said. He declined to name the hunter.
I wish they’d name the hunter. They did name the man who killed Cecil: Walter James Palmer of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a dentist. (Cecil was also wearing a collar for tracking.) The dentist suffered widespread opprobrium and lost patients, which is fine with me, though a woman tried to vandalize his sign, which is not okay with me. But what is most NOT okay with me is killing lions for sport. There is no surfeit of lions so they don’t need culling, and Zimbabwe just lets people shoot them for the money. I cannot fathom the dark mindset of a person who would kill one of these magnificent creatures just to put its head on his wall. x
*Shades of Luigi Mangione! Remember that last week a shooter in New York killed four people: three civilians and an off-duty police officer? One of the murdered people was a woman named Wesley LePatner, Global Head of Core+ Real Estate and the Chief Executive Officer of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust. In other words, she was a capitalist, and probably one with money. Never mind that she had children, and was by all accounts was a lovely person. No, she was a capitalist, and so we shouldn’t mourn her death. And the Free Press found a number of morons actually celebrating LePatner’s death!
“My initial reaction was relief.” That’s what Penny, a 30-year-old sociologist from Tampa, Florida, told me about seeing the news of Blackstone real estate executive Wesley LePatner’s killing in the lobby of a Manhattan office building.
“Her death, as a valuable instrument to such evil corporations, is nothing to mourn. Thousands of Americans die every day from situations that her company exacerbates, such as the affordable housing crisis.”
I reached out to Penny via direct message on Reddit, after I found one of her comments about the news of LePatner’s murder. Her comment made a joke about the amount of money the victim spends on her children’s private school. When I wrote to Penny directly, asking how she made sense of the news, she got back to me right away.
In no time at all after shooter Shane Tamura went on a rampage Monday, killing four innocent people before turning the gun on himself, the shock and horror over what happened competed with a frenzy of social media posts, including Penny’s, that celebrated LePatner’s death on mainstream sites from YouTube to Reddit to Instagram.
On the subreddit r/ProductivityCafe (“a hybrid community dedicated to boosting productivity”), one post asked members how they felt about Monday’s shooting.
“For no particular reason i am just pointing out that blackstone is one of the companies most responsible for wealth inequality and corrupt politics in the USA,” one person replied.
“Worse things have happened to better people. Sometimes at the hands of Blackstone,” said another.
Here were some of the replies on the subreddit r/TheBusinessMix, dedicated to sharing daily news updates in business and politics:
“Fun fact: Blackstone owns about 70k single family houses and are responsible for helping to artificially inflate home prices.”
“Karma is very busy this year. . . ”
“Maybe don’t work for cartoonishly evil corporations.”
There are more like these, but I won’t go on. They’re horrible, and the people who say this kind of stuff are, well, I can’t use the word on a family-friendly website. What about her kids and her husband? Do these idiots have any fellow feeling for other people? My only question is whether these people are worse than people who shoot lions for trophies. They’re certainly in the same league.
*There’s no doubt that basketball phenom Caitlin Clark has revitalized the WNBA, helping virtually everyone in the league. And, having watched many videos of Clark being targeted by opposing players who hit her, knock her over, and foul her, and of the referees doing nothing, there’s also no doubt that she’s a target? Why? According to this WSJ op-ed, it may be because she’s a white woman in a largely black league. The article even suggests that Clark might have grounds for a lawsuit.
Caitlin Clark has done for the Women’s National Basketball Association what Michael Jordan once did for the NBA—made it more valuable, watchable and marketable. Instead of protecting its transformative star, the league’s leadership ignores the relentless targeting of Ms. Clark, treating its greatest asset as if she were a PR headache. That approach could turn into a legal liability for the WNBA.
Since she joined the league last year, Ms. Clark’s impact has been seismic: Merchandise sales soared 601%, Indiana Fever viewership jumped 170%, the team’s value tripled, League Pass subscriptions climbed 366%, app engagement rose 613%, and her endorsements topped $11 million. She’s the economic engine driving the league forward.
Yet she routinely faces intentional hits, excessive fouling and uncalled abuse while referees look away. Teammate Sophie Cunningham said what fans already know: “The star player of the league is not being protected.” Ms. Clark herself noted: “Everybody is physical with me. They get away with things others don’t.” Three injuries have sidelined her for 10 games and the All-Star Game, with ratings plummeting 55% without her.
Is it because Ms. Clark is white? A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, a three-time league most valuable player, thinks so. She has said that race is a “huge thing” and that “it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” Under civil-rights law, race-motivated patterns trigger scrutiny even without explicit discriminatory intent.
Systemic missed calls include viral replays of Ms. Clark being fouled multiple times in a single possession. “Every single one of them is a foul,” analyst Rebecca Lobo said. Ms. Clark absorbed 17% of flagrant fouls last season—double her peers’ rate. This isn’t merely bad officiating—it’s dangerous and unequal. She endures blindside checks and midair collisions—plays that trigger reviews in other leagues. She is a flagrant foul away from a career-altering injury.
The league has fostered a hostile workplace for Ms. Clark through excessive fouling, targeting, and hostile comments from other players and owners. These aren’t isolated—they’re documented, continuing and ignored by officials. The disparity in treatment invites real scrutiny. Not a single player has been suspended for flagrantly fouling Ms. Clark.
. . .UConn Hall of Fame Coach Geno Auriemma says Ms. Clark’s treatment isn’t merely rookie hazing: “She’s also being targeted. I don’t remember when Michael Jordan came into the NBA, guys looking to go out and beat him up.”
Ms. Clark faces a textbook hostile work environment, as the Supreme Court described in Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993), with severe or pervasive conduct altering her conditions. Statistical disparities like those she faces often prompt federal probes and lawsuits. The precedent is clear: In Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine (1981), courts outlined disparate treatment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, letting employees allege less favorable treatment than peers due to race—warranting investigation without direct animus. That shifts the burden to the employer to prove nondiscriminatory motive.
Clark will not sue, for if she did she’d face even worse hazing and a decline in her reputation, but she has every right to do so. Have a look at some of what she’s endured, and these are just a few of many similar incidents:
Do it the good old American way: lawyer up!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili reports on Andrzej’s doings (he’s “The Administrator”, but at least she has food!
Hili: The administrator is trying to be reasonable. A comical ambition for a man whose personality is closer to that of a cat than a human. He stopped moaning “to die – to sleep” and went to the doctor. He was glad the line would be long, so he could finally read a book. He makes sure our bowls are full, so there’s hope.
Hili: Administrator próbuje być rozsądny. Komiczna ambicja człowieka, którego osobowość jest bliższa kotom niż ludziom. Przestał marudzić „umrzeć – zasnąć” i poszedł do lekarza. Ucieszył się, że kolejka będzie długa, więc nareszcie poczyta książkę. Pilnuje, żeby nasze miseczki były pełne, więc jest nadzieja.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From America’s Culturel Decline Into Idiocy:
From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored 2:
From Masih: Unbelievably odious theology-based misogyny. Wait until the end:
Shocking CCTV footage captures the horrifying moment a man brutally kicks a woman to the ground in the city of Gachsaran, simply because her headscarf had slipped off.
The person who sent this video to me says he was attacking any woman who didn’t obey the regime’s forced hijab… pic.twitter.com/CBsb4aMU5g
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 4, 2025
A related post retweeted by J. K. Rowling:
A Taliban-supporting cleric has publicly praised the arrest of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban. He declared that “women do not have the right to look at others with both eyes.”
Afghan women are being erased while the world watches in silence. Where is the UN? https://t.co/YBO9jMZMH8 pic.twitter.com/jw61ze2OkH
— Jahanzeb Wesa (@JahanzebWe) August 2, 2025
From Malcolm. Do not disturb the slumbers of Ocean Cat!
You must not move. the Ocean cat has chosen you pic.twitter.com/pdWtplzQd7
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 23, 2025
From my Bluesky feed; a scan of the ocean for weird stuff:
"This station is located on the north wall of the canyon. We will start at 3,700 meters and move up the slope to 2,900 meters. We will be looking for invertebrates and fishes."@schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 820 #MarDelPlataCanyon #MarineLife http://www.youtube.com/live/lcM82Sr…
— Livestream Oceanographic (@livestreamocean.bsky.social) 2025-08-04T12:28:38.101Z
Three from my Twitter feed: First, is the second sone, which is great, really a rap song?
4. First rap song ever recorded, 1946
pic.twitter.com/Cbl7IdQuke— Earth_Wanderer (@earth_tracker) August 4, 2025
And look at Iran before the Revolution! A graphic example of what religion does:
Incredible Transformations: Before & After Snaps/Vids Showing How Our World Has Evolved 🧵
1. Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution!
pic.twitter.com/jl6JBeVtt2— Earth_Wanderer (@earth_tracker) August 4, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
A 36-year-old Czech Jewish woman was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. She didn’t survive until the camp’s liberation the next year. https://t.co/pCNIUkZZOZ
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 5, 2025
Two from Matthew. First, look at these cute baby scallops:
Tiny, colorful baby scallops — a total cuteness overload in one dish!You might think, “This person posts the same creature every year!” But honestly, seeing the same life return year after year is something truly wonderful𓂃🫧
. . . and ancient paints. You could still use them!
Wow, this 3,400 year-old ancient Egyptian paint box still contains original pigments!Looks similar to a modern-day set!An inscription tells us it belonged to Amenemope, Vizier during the reign of Amenhotep II.📷 Cleveland Museum of Art http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1914.680#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T17:16:36.200Z
2 THOUGHTS FOR TODAY:
#1 It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. -Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (b. 5 Jul 1958)
#2 Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (5 Aug 1850-1893)
If that was rap, I’d be listening to rap all the time.
It is great old gospel music from way back when.
Well, yes. If that’s the first rap song ever recorded, it’s also the first rap song I’ve ever enjoyed.
As always, the proof of the conspiracy is that there is no evidence! It’s all been locked up by the gub’mint!!
Time to buy stock in straightjacket-manufacturing companies…
I have a theory (which is mine) that gerrymandering is the root cause of all of America’s dysfunctional politics.
That’s because un-gerrymandered districts require candidates who appeal to middle-ground voters. In gerrymandered districts the outcome is not in play, which leads to candidates being chosen on the basis of who best appeals to the party activists, not to middle-ground voters.
The upshot is elected Democrats who appeal to about 15% of the electorate and elected Republicans who appeal to the opposite 15% of voters, and hardly anyone in tune with the 70% in the middle.
I suspect that our primary system plays a greater role, but it interacts significantly with gerrymandering. The primaries are where incumbents face the greater threat to their reelection campaigns. By the time the general election rolls around, the party faithful have already selected their uncompromising candidates. This is generally true even for the party that is not favored by the gerrymandered district. Yes, the more moderate voters sometimes bear responsibility for turning out in such dismally low numbers for the primaries, but in closed primary states like my own, we independents are effectively barred from voting.
I neglected to mention that gerrymandering cannot explain the increasing dysfunction and polarization of the US Senate. Other factors are at work.
Unlimited money and dark money is the root cause of America’s dysfunctional politics. Another reason billionaires are bad for “democracies” where you can purchase politicians. Sure, Musk wasn’t able to turn the Wisconsin judiciary with money, but that is an outlier.
Its not all due to money though. Hillary and Kamala lost to Trump despite vastly outspending him in their campaigns.
“If politically based gerrymandering is wrong for Republicans, it’s also wrong for Democrats.” If we continue to worry about what’s wrong and don’t take action which might just be necessary if we ever want to win (the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the Supreme Court), we may just never win any of those entities. The GOP has decided that right or wrong means nothing to them and 38% of Americans believe that Trump is on the right path. Yikes! If we don’t take similar action (in some instances), we’ll never be able to save our democracy.
Isn’t what’s happening an exercise in democracy? The implication here (and I’m not necessarily disagreeing), is that Republican actions erode democracy while Democratic ones save it. But they are doing the same thing! We just happen to have elected a detestable government via the democratic (small “d”) process.
But in this particular example, Trump ordered the Texas Republicans to do a mid-decade gerrymander. It seems to me the Dems must fight back in this case.
I’m not an American so I don’t know the history of gerrymandering in the US but in this particular case there’s no question Trump ordered it.
Yup, it was ordered by Trump, pure and simple so he can shore up the 2026 midterms. If Democrats don’t fight back, then just give up and cede the entire government to Trump’s autocracy. I fully support the Texas dems. I also support (D) governors gerrymandering their own states if Texas goes through with this blatant power grab. Has anyone seen the new TX districts? It’s frickin’ ridiculous.
A minority of states adopted nonpartisan committees to draw fair districts-almost all blue states and a couple small (population-wise) red states. The only blue state that is aggressively gerrymandered is Maryland. But if states like Florida and Texas disregard any form of voting fairness, then large blue states should abandon their nonpartisan committees and fight fire with fire. If anything, perhaps it will create a healthy debate about how gerrymandering is anti-democratic. Unfortunately, it was the current SCOTUS that said political gerrymandering is a-ok.
Colorado is among that minority, and it’s interesting that in a very blue state, the Districts drawn up by a non-partisan panel has resulted in four Democrat representatives and four Republican representatives. Hopefully one or two of those Republicans will be replaced by more centric Republicans [not holding my breath for a Democrat to be elected in those districts]
You crack me up, Frau (in a good way, I should add) in that you never miss a chance to bitch out Trump. Never!
Perhaps Jerry the US need more of this action:
https://open.substack.com/pub/persuasion1/p/a-welcome-u-turn-in-ukraine?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7li62
Less of the gerrymandering more direct people power.
I have not been following the shooting in New York. But is it possible that this one was at its core a copy-cat shooting, inspired by Mangione?
I doubt it. The shooter selected the NFL offices based on a grievance involving CTE. But once he got there, he was shooting randomly.
I don’t understand why Avi Loeb keeps pushing his idea that we are being visited by aliens. It seems nutty to me. I’m curious about how he arrived at that point. The probability that we are being visited is vanishingly small.
I suspect that people send him money to continue.
No idea. But there are people who see prophecy in cloud formations, and conspiracy under every hat.
“Under every hat” indeed. Maybe a vast international Big Tinfoil meta-conspiracy is behind everything: a conspiracy to make people believe in conspiracies. Damn, they’ve gotten to me also….
I haven’t been to New Orleans since the antediluvian era, but the soft-shelled crab po’boy from Mother’s is my choice for last meal on earth.
Caitlin Clark is a talented heterosexual woman, not just a talented white woman. While many of the hostile players are obviously black, they are less obviously lesbians. Many news reports say she is too white and too straight for the WNBA. If I was being really mean I’d say she is too talented, too.
To support the racism hypothesis, or a lawsuit, you’d have to study if other white players in the league who possess the ball as often as she does — there can’t be many; she is an outstanding point guard and rebounder, not just a great shooter — are flagrantly fouled by black players as often as she is. And then check if white players are fouling her, too. If she is being singled out for disproportionate abuse compared to the other white players, and white players are in on it, too, there is something special about her that is drawing the bullying. Possibly just her transformational talent in the bucket of crabs analogy.
I don’t want to be too quick to mark this down to racial animus exclusively.
There once was a crab in Nantucket
Which found itself stuck in a bucket
Its panicky climb
Got nowhere this time
But just caused the others to suck it
(That last line needs improving. Any suggestions? AI™ didn’t help.)
Not in my book. I like it the way it is. The only other rhyme that fits at all is “shuck it”. But that’s not quite what the other crabs actually do. (And does one even shuck crabs? Oysters and scallops, yes.) “Suck it” (back down) is it.
Have you seen the old “Nantucket” contest where the Chicago Tribune and the New York Press did dueling limericks over progressively more clever (and clean!) instalments of the family struggle involving Nan, a Man in Manhasset, and her Paw in Pawtucket? Huge improvement over the original. The clever bit is that even though each limerick repeats the town name in the last line, normally a sign the poet ran out of gas, in all three the sense is a wordplay (OK, a pun) that works splendidly.
There once was a crab in Nantucket
Which found itself stuck in a bucket
Its panicky climb
Got nowhere this time
But just caused the others to cuss it!
It had to land somewhere, right?
verb
gerund or present participle: cussing
another term for curse (sense 2 of the verb).
I think you are correct to hesitate. This appears to be envy that is heightened by racialized resentment. It’s not resentment of her talent necessarily; many gifted athletes have graced the WNBA. But there seems to be anger that it is a white girl, in this particular sport, thought by some to be the special provenance of black excellence, who brought the vast attention and revenue to the league.
That bit about her being the one who brought in so many viewers is the story I heard, as well. Sour grapes.
Finally, I really have been wondering what Hili’s thinking about, lately…how she’s feeling. Thanks for keeping the dialogue going, Andrzej.