Welcome to CaturSaturday, August 30, 2025: only two more dasy to go until we’re into September. It’s the Sabbath for Jewish cats, who employ non-Jewish cats (שבת גוי קעץ) to do their work, and also National Toasted Marshmallow Day. I like mine burnt black, so I surely ingested a lot of carcinogens when I was young. But toasted marshmallows are a crucial ingredient in S’Mores, one of the great culinary inventions of the West. The one below, however, has a marshmallow that isn’t sufficiently toasted, nor is the chocolate melted.
It’s also National Mai Tai Day, National Slinky Day, International Bacon Day, and National Beach Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 30 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I’m happy to hear that the U.S., after “consultation with Europe,” has decide to start making weapons available to Ukraine.
Europe has begun buying American weapons for Ukraine in earnest, only weeks after President Trump struck a deal with NATO allies to do so.
The latest sale, announced by the State Department on Thursday, will send 3,500 extended-range cruise missiles and GPS navigation kits to Ukraine once Congress formally approves it, as expected. They cost $825 million, paid for by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, with some unspecified financial assistance from the Pentagon.
The missiles can be fired from fighter jets, and have a similar range to the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles that Ukraine has used to strike Crimea and into Russia.
The sale marks one of the first purchases by European countries on behalf of Ukraine since Mr. Trump and other NATO leaders reached the deal. It is a policy shift for the United States, which had provided about $67 billion worth of weapons and other military aid directly to Ukraine during the Biden administration.
It will also offer a financial windfall for American weapons producers while shielding Mr. Trump — who has expressed skepticism of devoting U.S. military support to Ukraine — from accusations of direct involvement in the war..
“It’s not a game changer for Ukraine’s Air Force, but it might signal that there’s a productive conversation between Europeans and the Trump administration, in terms of future supply of modern equipment to Ukraine,” said Rafael Loss, a defense and security expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
It’s not clear whether the European countries who have bought these weapons will give them to Ukraine or sell them, but what’s important is that Ukraine gets weapons, and that they come from the U.S. This of course is not a move towards peace between Russia and Ukraine, as it will piss off Putin big time, but it shows that Trump has pretty much given up on bringing us “peace in our time,” and, importantly, is supporting the small beleaguered nation that was attacked for no reason by a despot.
*Although U.S. Presidents have Secret Service protection for life, Vice-Presidents get it for only six months after leaving office. That means that Kamala Harris’s time is about up, but Biden had, before leaving office, extended it for a year beyond that. Now Trump has curtailed Harris’s protection, just as she’s about to go on a book tour. I will not read her book.
President Donald Trump has revoked the Secret Service detail for former vice president Kamala Harris that President Joe Biden had previously extended, according to multiple people familiar with the decision and a copy of a letter terminating the detail.
Federal law gives vice presidents six months of Secret Service protection after they leave office, though Biden, before his presidency ended, had extended her detail for another year, according to a person familiar with the decision. The person spoke about it on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The White House informed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem on Thursday that her department, which includes the Secret Service, could end protection for Harris on Monday, according to a copy of a letter reviewed by The Washington Post.
A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, confirmed that Trump had canceled Harris’s extended Secret Service protection. The official emphasized that vice presidents typically only have a detail for six months.
White House spokespeople did not immediately comment on why Trump made the decision.
Well, we know why Trump did it: Harris was his opponent and he’s not going to let her have any perks. Here’s her new book, which comes out on September 23 (the title refers to the period between when Biden said he wasn’t running for reelection and the election itself). Click to go to the Amazon site. I think the subtitle should be “Do you think I fell out of a coconut tree?”:
Ms. Cook finds herself in that position because of President Trump’s decision on Monday to seek her ouster, and her own decision on Thursday to file a lawsuit challenging her attempted dismissal. Those two actions set the stage for a landmark legal battle, one that is bound for the Supreme Court, over the president’s explicit attempts to take control of the central bank.
“Governor Cook has been thrust into a role she did not seek and doubtless would prefer to shed — suddenly being cast in a larger-than-life struggle to defend an institution that has helped foster the economic and financial success of the U.S. over the post-World War II period,” said David Wilcox, who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former leader of the Fed’s research and statistics division.
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington will hold the first hearing in the case, which will focus on Ms. Cook’s request for a temporary restraining order. If the court grants the order, it will allow her to continue serving on the Fed’s board while she contests her firing.
Ms. Cook was not expected to be in this position. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his desire for lower interest rates, or of his anger at central bank officials for refusing to deliver them. But for months Mr. Trump had focused his ire on Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, repeatedly threatening to fire him and, at one point, even waving around a letter that purported to do so.
Then, last week, Mr. Trump turned his attention to Ms. Cook after an administration official accused her of mortgage fraud tied to her purchase of two homes in 2021, before she joined the Fed. She has not been charged with any crime.
Ms. Cook, who said from the start that she would not be bullied into resigning, must now defend not only herself but also the Fed as a whole. She must do so without the formal institutional backing of the central bank, which for legal reasons cannot defend her directly. Instead, she will be represented at Friday’s hearing by her own private attorney.
In fact, Ms. Cook’s lawsuit names as a defendant not just Mr. Trump but also Mr. Powell and the Fed’s board of governors. The decision to include her associates at the central bank reflected a need to prevent anybody from executing what the president had demanded before the courts ruled on the case. Still, at least on paper, Ms. Cook is suing two of the world’s most powerful men and one of its most important institutions.
It’s very strange that while she intends to defend the Fed and its actions, she’s also naming it as a defendant in her lawsuit! The explanation above—that Cook’s suit will prevent the Fed from lowering its interest rate—is not clear from me. Somebody with more legal savvy than I should explain it in the comments.
*Texas is cracking down on abortion pills, with the first step being the state House of Representatives approving a bill that allows Texas residents to sue companies who provide abortion pills—even to people outside of Texas, where they are legal.
A measure that would allow nearly any private citizen to sue out-of-state prescribers and others who send abortion pills into Texas has won first-round approval in the state House.
It would be the first law of its kind in the country and part of the ongoing effort by abortion opponents to fight the broad use of the pills, which are used in the majority of abortions in the U.S. — including in states where abortion is illegal.
The bill passed in the House on Thursday and could receive a final vote in the Republican-dominated state Senate next week. If that happens, it would be up to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to decide whether to sign it into law.
. . .Even before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed state abortion bans, pills — most often a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol — were the most common way to obtain abortion access.
Now, with Texas and 11 other states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, and four more that bar most of them after the first six weeks or so of gestation, the pills have become an even more essential way abortion is provided in the U.S.
Under the bill, providers could be ordered to pay $100,000. But only the pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives could collect the entire amount. Anyone else who sues could receive only $10,000, with the remaining $90,000 going to charity.
The measure echoes a 2021 Texas law that uses the prospect of lawsuits from private citizens to enforce a ban on abortion once fetal activity can be detected — at about six weeks’ gestation. The state also has a ban on abortions at all stages of pregnancy.
. . . Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice, a group that helps women access abortion, including by traveling to other states for it, said the law is problematic.
“It establishes a bounty hunting system to enforce Texas’ laws beyond the state laws,” she said.
While most Republican-controlled states have restricted or banned abortions in the last three years, most Democratic-controlled states have taken steps to protect access.
And at least eight states have laws that seek to protect prescribers who send abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned.
This cannot be constitutional. A woman who gets pregnant can sue companies that provide legal and FDA-approved abortifactants? How can that be legal? Even given the present Supreme Court, I can’t see how they can allow one state to ban actions in other states where those actions are legal. This will not stand, even if it passes (I’m not betting on that, though).
*As I’ve said, while I’m happy for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have found each other, I don’t think their recent engagement is the equivalent of the Second Coming. But a professor at the University of Tennessee does: he apparently canceled class because he couldn’t process the Big News! And it was on the day of a midterm exam (see video below):
A University of Tennessee professor is going viral for cancelling class just moments after news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement broke — sending ecstatic college kids running for the exit.
Professor Matthew Pittman was dubbed “favorite teacher ever” as he was filmed letting his students leave class to “process” the big news.
“Taylor and Travis just got engaged,” he said in the clip.
“Due to this information, I can’t focus, you all can’t focus. Class is canceled, get outta here. We need time to process this information.”
A video of the teacher announcing the cancellation of class. BUT SEE BELOW!
BUT. . . as the Knox News in Knoxville reveals, the whole thing was a setup! It’s FAKE NEWS!
Pittman, who in the video pretends to be a biological chemist, actually teaches a social media strategy course at UT. And, students never got to leave class early. The TikTok was filmed before class ever started that day, according to Pittman.
“We have a biochem midterm today, but Taylor and Travis just got engaged,” Pittman said in the video.
The 200 students in the class played along, reacting as their professor spoke and then running out of the room on camera.
The video has more than 274,000 likes on the UTK social media TikTok account, with thousands of comments believing Pittman’s lie was real. Even the Empire State Building, Marriott Bonvoy and Betty Crocker official accounts left comments.
“Yesterday was something I wanted to do, but the students always help refine the ideas, and volunteer for specific roles,” Pittman told Knox News in an email when asked how he came up with the unique video concept.
Though the University of Tennessee video was a setup, Pittman’s appreciation for Taylor Swift is not a lie. He has been following Swift since “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” came out in 2008, the professor said.
The weird thing is that the New York Post, which carried the article above the video, hasn’t admitted the article was dead wrong.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a philosophical discussion is proceeding:
Hili: Could a herd animal be an individualist?
Andrzej: Sure, but the rest of the herd will say it’s a heretic.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy zwierzę stadne może być indywidualistą?
Ja: Tak, ale wtedy inni członkowie stada mówią o nim, że jest heretykiem.
******************
From Bored Panda: A sweet potato (or yam; I can’t tell the difference) that looks like a seal (no ears, so it’s not a sea lion). Photo is uncredited; h/t Ginger K.
From Cat Memes:
From Meow. The girl is Paula Chandoha, whom I knew because she used to work in the Museum of Comparative Zoology when I was a grad student. Her father, Walter Chandoha, was a famous animal photographer who took this shot (Wikipedia quotes him as saying, “Cats are my favourite animal subject because of their unlimited range of attitude, posture, expression and coloration.”)
Masih is quiet again today, so we have a tweet from her substitute. This is one that is Masih-approparite but Rowling retweeted. I can’t embed it as it’s been made private. But you can see the video by clicking on the screenshot:
From Simon. Obama deserved it more than Trump will (I am guessing), but I didn’t think Obama deserved it:
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-08-29T11:59:31.380Z
From Luana, who wonders if this applies to non-black people as well. You can download the paper here.
New argument in defense of abusive ad hominem arguments:
“Ad hominem arguments are typically viewed as fallacious within dominant white Western argumentative frameworks…I argue the nuanced use of abusive ad hominem arguments within African American Argumentation (AAA) is a… pic.twitter.com/ZTCCAP99CM
— Brandon Warmke (@BrandonWarmke) August 29, 2025
From Malcolm; an explanation of the Trump Personality Cult:
Brilliant explanation of the Trump Cult‼️ 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/5ahzcOM4YJ
— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) August 9, 2025
One from my feed; this is very sweet, and I hope it’s true.
A bird that brought all its friends to thank the lady who rescued it
pic.twitter.com/xgCaHTDMe7— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 29, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
An 18-year-old Czech Jewish woman died in the camp.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-08-30T09:39:38.013Z
. . . . and two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Ceiling Cat bless America!
Latest @theguardian.com cartoonwww.theguardian.com/commentisfre…
— Ben Jennings (@bjennings90.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T17:22:40.265Z
An amazing set of picturex:
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
— Patrick Vallely (@pjvphotography.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T16:18:28.171Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The more physics you have the less engineering you need. -Ernest Rutherford, physicist, Nobel laureate in chemistry (30 Aug 1871-1937)
But is that true? I don’t see it, myself. But that could very well be because, intelligence-wise, me and Ernest Rutherford are on opposite sides of the planet.
I wonder if he really meant, the more physics you have the less chemistry you need.
Like Brooke, I don’t see obvious truth in the original, but I’d enjoy seeing it developed as an argument.
I do like the five-minute trump cult tik tok…”epistemic closure” is an important expression.
Agree. Very convincing.
I liked it as well, and thought it certainly applied to people in the “Trump cult.”
But I also thought most of the basic points — minus the Cult of Personality — also applied to many people who have gone far down the critical justice/DEI/Identity path. They, too, tend to live in self-confirming bubbles, ignore evidence, feel oppressed, and focus on revenge rather genuine solutions.
The psychologist is describing a broader cultural phenomenon than that exhibited by the extreme political Right. And her advice for reconciliation — that we ought to recognize nuance and avoid shaming them — should probably reflect that.
+1
+1
I think that in order to get back to sanity (from both cults) one would need the willingness to hear out the other side. As long as the person remains in the silo, any attempt to free oneself is bound to be thwarted by next day’s load of propaganda.
I thought the defense of the ad hominem might be a humorous defense of the ‘yo momma’ joke, but it is not.
Yo’ mamma is the first thing I thought of too.
Well, yes, it sort of is. “Yo mama” jokes are part of “signifyin,” a major theme of the paper.
I had assumed “signifyin” was a typo in the abstract. Silly me.
I think it belongs in the same pile of papers as that, shall we say, remarkable analysis of the sociological/cultural relevance of the erstwhile Olympic sport of “breaking”, written, if I recall correctly, by an Australian participant in the event. It was… truly groundbreaking (sorry).
If we say that Trump pulled Harris’s Secret Service protection for partisan reasons, we must also conclude that Biden failed to extend Pence’s Secret Service protection for the same reasons.
If Trump had extended his SS protection only to have it pulled by Biden, then yes. But presumably it just ran its normal course, as was the norm.
But I concede that it would have made sense for Biden to extend SS protection to Pence since Trump was pretty sanguine about threats to Pence.
I agree. I don’t think that we “must” conclude anything about Biden’s failure to take a non-customary action. Failure to extend (inaction) can but does not necessarily imply the same motivation as cancellation (action).
The idea that “social media strategy” is a proper course for a university is kind of dubious to me. But I will say that the professor deserves an A for his course.
As for Taylor Swift, I am happy about one thing about her engagement, and it’s the fact that Swift is a Democrat and she’s chosen to get married to a muscle-bound non-woke male. One thing I’ve hated about the woke left is the devaluation and denigration of the male sex. Maybe this will be a message to the more woke female Swifties that it’s okay to like and appreciate men just for being men.
+1
What’s with the “Do you think I fell out of a coconut tree” crack? I don’t get it.
It’s one of Harris’s favorite “jokes” during her campaign.
Ah. Guess I wasn’t paying that much attention. Thanks for the clarification.
It wasn’t a joke, it was a folk saying of her mother’s.
Can I offer a friendly comment/correction? Prof. Coyne writes that Lisa Cook was “fired by Trump using the excuse that Cook claimed residency in two separate states, which is illegal…”
I believe that the issue was slightly different: Cook filed two mortgage applications roughly a week or two apart, in both of which she claimed that the property for which she was applying for a mortgage would be a “primary residence.” Mortgage interest rates for a “primary residence” are typically lower, and thus the suspicion is that she falsely claimed two primary residences in order to benefit from lower mortgage rates. It would not matter if the two residences were in the same state: the issue is suspicion of mortgage fraud, not official residence fraud.
(Being a resident in two different states is not necessarily illegal — normally states allow you to claim only one “domicile,” which is slightly different, and determines eligibility for voting, for example.)
Paul Krugman nicely explained that Lisa Cook’s mortgage security documents referenced two “principal” residences, not “primary” residences, and that this is a distinction with a major legal difference. More importantly, her attempted firing follows a Putin-like strategy of announcing “I will find ways to use the law to terrorize anyone I want to terrorize.”
I have read the Krugman piece and I have to disagree. The way to fight selective prosecution is to eliminate rules nobody follows or or prosecute everyone who breaks that rule. Not by whining about being prosecuted.
Cook allegedly did “the thing everyone does” which is lying to get even more money. Notably an offense only available to those with a lot of money. She exposed herself for greed and now whines about that exposure being exploited by her political opponents.
I have very limited sympathy.
Thanks for pointing that out — I had missed it. Adam Levitin’s discussion of the difference between “principle” and “primary” is a good one.
My guess is that members of the Fed are named in the lawsuit in order to formally prevent them from taking action on interest rates while the lawsuit is still making the rounds.
My guess is that Trump is trying to fire Lisa Cook in part to test the legality of the President dismissing officers of the Federal Reserve. If his firing of Cook passes muster, he may go after Powell next—or he may simply use the threat of dismissal as a bludgeon to pressure him to do what Trump wants. In Powell’s case, there is no “cause” for his firing. Yet.
Love the Science Girl video of the bird rescue and rehab. There is still some good in the world!
The easiest way to tell a yam from a sweet potato is by the skin; a yam’s skin is very bark-like and thick, while a sweet potatos skin is smooth and thin.
And in a photo?
The professor at the University of Tennessee that pulled the Taylor Swift stunt should have anticipated it being taken for real. Not bizarre enough for the times.
Plus I’ve noticed the right loves any excuse to lambaste university profs (who are assumed to be all raging woke leftists). The fact that a few of them ARE raging woke leftists adds to the problem.
I just noticed that Prof. Coyne asks why Lisa Cook included the Board of Governors and Jay Powell as defendants in her suit. The text of the suit says
“5. …… The Board is sued collectively, and its Governors are sued individually in their official capacities, to the extent that any individual Governor has the ability to take any action to effectuate President Trump’s purported termination of Governor Cook.
Defendant Jerome H. Powell is the Chair of the Board of Governors, which is headquartered in Washington, DC. Defendant Powell is sued in his official capacity as Chair of the Board, to the extent that he has any ability to take any action to effectuate President Trump’s purported termination of Governor Cook.”
In other words, she asks that they be enjoined from firing her on behalf of Trump.
Thank you.
Kamala probably doesn’t need protection; who would care enough to bother targeting her?
Also providing munitions to Ukraine, Azerbaijan has extended the middle finger at Russia by starting to provide Ukraine with Soviet-calibre artillery shells. Why would this help? Ukraine has something like 350 Soviet era artillery pieces that don’t take Ukrainian-calibre shells, and so are mostly sidelined.
First Russia provoked Azerbaijan by shelling an Azerbaijani facility in Ukraine, and then by striking an Azerbaijani oil depot also in Ukraine (Odessa). But Azerbaijan is undeterred, which also points to a weakened Russia. All good!
Thanks for that Pika post. Very cool!