Monday: Hili dialogue

October 27, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the beginning of the “work” week: Monday, October 27, 2025, and National American Beer Day. I’m trying to think of an American beer I like, but every craft beer seems to be overhopped these days. How about this one? You don’t need a man bun to drink it!

It’s also National Black Cat Day in the UK, National Parmigiano Reggiano Day, National Potato Day, and Sylvia Plath Day (the poet was born on this day in 1932, and killed herself at age 30.  Here she is (her greatest poem is here):

Rayless, public domain

And to celebrate UK Black Cat Day, here’s a photo from reader Laurie, who happens to live in London:

For National Black Cat Day, her uncle’s namesake, Miss Alcestis Jerry, wishes to pay homage.  

And a photo from Dublin taken by Christina Purcell. Their specialty: finch and chips. (Just kidding!)]

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 27Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: June Lockhart, famous for her roles in the t.v. show “Lassie” as well as “Lost in Space” (I watched a lot of the former, but never saw the latter), has died at 100.

June Lockhart, the soft-spoken actress who exuded earnest maternal wisdom and wistful contentment in two very different mid-20th-century television roles, on the heartwarming children’s series “Lassie” and the futuristic “Lost in Space,” died on Thursday at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 100.

Her death was announced by a spokesman, Harlan Boll.

Ms. Lockhart replaced Cloris Leachman in the role of Ruth Martin, a farm wife and the foster mother of Jon Provost’s character and his courageous collie, Lassie, in 1958, at the beginning of the show’s fifth season. After six years of dispensing homespun wisdom, Ms. Lockhart was herself replaced, along with her human co-stars, in favor of a forest-ranger character (Robert Bray) who would guide the show’s canine heroine through her further adventures.

In 1965, Ms. Lockhart returned to series television, playing a wife, mother and interplanetary explorer turned castaway on “Lost in Space.” Her television family included a robot who seemed to announce “Danger, Will Robinson,” alerting the show’s boy hero (Bill Mumy) to extraterrestrial menace, as often as Lassie’s sensitive ears and nose alerted her to earthly emergencies. The series, which combined an over-the-top villain (Jonathan Harris as Dr. Smith) with low-budget production values, became something of a camp classic, acquiring a devoted following years after its original run.

Here’s an episode of “Lassie, which takes me right back to my youth.  Lockhart appears at 1:27.  I had no idea that Cloris Leachman played Ruth Martin before Lockhart!

*Les flics have made some arrests in the Louvre jewel heist., in which four men took more than $100 million in royal jewelry.

The police have made arrests in the brazen jewelry heist last week at the Louvre Museum in Paris, French authorities said on Sunday, without saying how many people had been taken into custody.

The robbery was carried out by four people. Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement that the arrests were made on Saturday evening and that one man was arrested at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was trying to leave the country.

It was not immediately clear whether the police had recovered any of the stolen jewelry, worth more than $100 million, which included gem-studded royal tiaras, necklaces and earrings.

The arrests were a major breakthrough in the case. They came one week after the daylight robbery at the Louvre, which put an uncomfortable spotlight on security lapses at the world’s most visited museum.

The arrests were first reported by French news media citing anonymous sources, apparently catching the authorities by surprise.

“I deeply regret the hasty disclosure of this information,” Ms. Beccuau said in her statement. She said that the leaked information would hinder “the 100 or so investigators who mobilized in the search for both the stolen jewelry and for all of the criminals.”

Ms. Beccuau said it was too early to provide further details, adding that she would provide more information after the police finish questioning the suspects.

They used DNA evidence!

Ms. Beccuau said that she would provide more information only after the police finished questioning the suspects.

In a recent interview with Ouest-France newspaper, Ms. Beccuau said that investigators had collected more than 150 forensic samples. That included DNA traces and fingerprints at the crime scene and on objects that the thieves left behind, including power tools, gloves and a motorcycle helmet.

Ms. Beccuau also said that investigators had analyzed video surveillance footage to track the thieves’ escape, although she did not provide details on the route they took.

“The amount of media coverage this organized robbery has received gives me a glimmer of hope that the perpetrators won’t dare to move the jewelry too far,” Ms. Beccuau told the newspaper. “And that we’ll be able to find it if we act quickly.”

Now we don’t know if the jewels were hidden, had the gems removed, or were sold already to some rich miscreant. It’s possible the criminals (if they ARE the criminals) could have hidden the loot and then recover it after they get out of jail. I suspect it will be long sentences after any conviction. And the fact that DNA evidence helped with the case suggests that at least one of the perps has been arrested before, for in France they take DNA from all suspects and criminals and put it in a national database. (UPDATE: The evening news last night said that at least one suspect had a criminal record.)

The French have 4 days after arrest to either release the suspects or charge them.

*Shoot me now department: Kamala Harris has intimated that she might run for President in the next election, proclaiming that she’s devoted her life to public service.

Former vice president Kamala Harris said in an interview that she “possibly” will run for president, adding an early twist to what is already likely to be a hard-fought and complicated race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

Speaking to the BBC for a segment that will air Sunday, Harris said she has not yet decided whether to seek the White House for a third time.

But when she was asked if her nieces would see a woman president, Harris said, “In their lifetime, for sure,” and then asked if it might be her, she added, “Possibly.”

“I am not done,” Harris said in the interview, part of a tour she is conducting in conjunction with the publication of her book, “107 Days,” about her lightning-fast campaign for the presidency last year after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign.

“I have lived my entire career a life of service, and it’s in my bones … There are many ways to serve. I have not decided yet what I will do in the future beyond what I am doing right now.”

Harris appeared to bristle when the interviewer, BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, suggested that Harris has not performed well in early polls for the 2028 Democratic primary race.

“I think there are all kinds of polls that will tell you a variety of things,” the former vice president said. “I never listen to polls. If I had listened to polls, I never would have run for my first office or my second office, and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here in this interview.”

While many Democrats insist they will not focus on the 2028 race until after next year’s congressional elections, party leaders are privately engaged in intense conversations over what kind of image and message they should present to voters after last year’s devastating second loss to Donald Trump.

Among those considered potential candidates are several prominent governors, including California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’ JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Maryland’s Wes Moore and Kentucky’s Andy Beshear. Other figures — including former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Ro Khanna of California — are also said to be considering running.

The race promises to be a fight between a variety of figures with vastly different ideas on how the Democratic Party can recover from the Trump era. It will feature an unusually blunt debate over what the party should be in the years to come, given the broad rejection of the Democrats by large majorities of rural voters and those without college degrees. In the meantime, the party has been slow to complete a thorough autopsy of what went wrong in 2024.

Against that backdrop, Harris presents a complex figure for Democrats. She is appreciated by many in the party as the first woman to serve as vice president, and the first Black and Asian American person to fill that role.

Enough of this identity stuff: we need a candidate who can win! Among those mentioned above, I’d much prefer Buttigieg, Booker, and Pritzker (not mentioned).  But not Harris, whom I’ve always disliked (though not as much as Trump!). Do you think I just fell out of a coconut tree? The “joy” bit touted by the Dems in the last election was cringeworthy.

*Man, we’re really kicking Canada in the tuchas!  Trump has raised tariffs on Canadian goods by another 10% because an Ontario station ran an ad showing Ronald Reagan opposing tariffs.

The U.S. will impose an additional 10% tariff on Canada, President Trump said on Saturday, a punitive measure in response to an ad campaign that he said misrepresented comments by former President Ronald Reagan.

“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

The ad campaign, released by the Canadian province of Ontario, uses audio from a 1987 radio address delivered by Reagan, in which he explains that despite putting tariffs on Japanese semiconductors that year, he was committed to free-trade policies. While tariffs can look patriotic, Reagan said, “over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” lead to “fierce trade wars” and result in lost jobs.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” called the ad “a kind of propaganda against U.S. citizens.”

“What was the purpose of that other than to sway public opinion?” he asked.

Trump had threatened to cut off trade talks with Canada on Thursday over the ad, claiming it misrepresents Reagan’s comments, and was being used to influence the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of a hearing on the administration’s tariffs next month. In response, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he would call off the campaign, effective Monday. But the ad still ran on Friday night during the first game of the World Series—a fact Trump noted in his Saturday post, saying that the ad “was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY.”

The ad ran again Saturday night during the second game of the World Series.

From the Guardian:

The dispute comes as both countries face critical deadlines in the next few weeks. Next week marks the cutoff for public comments on the scheduled review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which faces its mandatory six-year assessment in July 2026. The following day, 4 November, Carney, will deliver a federal budget expected to focus on reducing reliance on US markets.

Here’s the ad, and I don’t see much distortion of what Reagan said, nor did Trump specify what was wrong.  But Trump is ticked off that Reagan’s being used against him. Right now, tariffs on goods from Canada range from 35% to 50%, but some goods are excempt because of North American trade agreements. What my dad told me when I was a kid aligns perfectly with what Reagan says (my dad was an economist with the government after he left the Army).

*Dinosaur mummies, with fossilized skin and scales rather than just bones, are very rare, but two more have been found in Wyoming.  And they give us a good idea of what the dinos looked like in real life.

During a 1908 dig in Wyoming, the fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg made an unfathomable find: a dinosaur skeleton covered in scaly skin.

The duck-billed Edmontosaurus specimen ended up at the American Museum of Natural History. When it was unveiled in 1909, The New York Times proclaimed the find “was not only a skeleton, but a genuine mummy.”

A year later, in the same part of Wyoming, Mr. Sternberg and his sons discovered a second Edmontosaurus mummy, which they shipped to a museum in Germany.

Nearly a century later, a team of paleontologists returned to Wyoming’s “mummy zone” and unearthed two more Edmontosaurus mummies that preserve an array of rarely fossilized features, including the first example of dinosaur hooves. In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers describe the fossils and propose a mummification process that involved microbes and took place more than 66 million years ago.

“For the first time, I think that we’ve got Edmontosaurus’s look completely down,” said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. “Based on our drawings, you can put it in a Hollywood movie and it’s going to be accurate head to toe.”

Here’s the paper in Science; click screenshot to read for free. The first author, Paul Sereno, is an evolutionary paleontologist here at Chicago, and has made a number of striking finds:

The abstract:

Two “mummies” of the end-Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus annectens preserve a fleshy crest over the neck and trunk, an interdigitating spike row over the hips and tail, and hooves capping the toes of the hind feet. A battery of tests shows that all the fossilized integument (skin, spike, hoof) are preserved as a thin (< 1mm) clay template that formed on the surface of a buried carcass during decay prior to loss of all soft tissues and organic compounds. Unlike the underlying permineralized skeletal bone, the integument renderings of these “dinosaur mummies” are preserved as a thin external clay mask, a templating process documented previously only in anoxic marine settings.

Here’s a picture of one mummified duck-bill, used with permission by Sereno and Keillor, and photo taken by Tyler Keillor at the new Fossil Lab. It’s pretty amazing.

And several of the reconstructions in the paper, showing feet, head and body. Click photos to enlarge:

Fig. 3. Pedal hooves, digital pads and fleshy profile in E. annectens. See paper for full caption.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili does not want to move:

Andrzej: Hili, have mercy, I’m trying to find something in this book.
Hili: Try looking for it in another one.

In Polish:

Ja: Hili, litości, ja czegoś szukam w tej książce.
Hili: Poszukaj tego w innej.

*******************

From Facebook: a cat movie

From Merilee; I can’t vouch for its accuracy!

From The Language Nerds; good advice for everything. Here’s another protip: if somebody asks you a question that you’ve answered earlier, don’t remind them of that: just answer the question again. Reminding them that they asked the question before is a form of shaming, and nothing’s to be gained by doing that.

From Masih, a woman blinded by the Iranian regime (there are so many of them!) speaks out. Sound up, and there are English captions. Masih’s would-be assassins will, as the blinded woman notes, be sentenced this coming Wednesday.

From me via Maarten Boudry:

Richard Dawkins tweets about Anna Krylov’s refusal to do any reviewing for Nature, and gives the Heterodocx STEM link.

One from Malcolm. The U.S. needs more of these!

From Luana, satire of Greta, probably the most-satirized person in Scandinavia:

One from my feed; the hijabis get what they deserve.

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

27 October 1938 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Beppy Abrahamson, was born in Amsterdam.She was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber. —Children at AuschwitzLesson: https://lekcja.auschwitz.org/dzieci_EN/Podcast: https://youtu.be/aYKx_zpLSqA

— Auschwitz Memorial (@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social) 2025-10-27T03:00:06.626768853Z

And one from Matthew. I can’t embed the first one, but click on the screenshot to see the short video:

28 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Two “mummies” of the end-Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus annectens preserve a fleshy crest over the neck and trunk, an interdigitating spike row over the hips and tail, and hooves capping the toes of the hind feet.”

    This is the kind of news I need – hopefully this specimen will go on tour one day…

  2. “Lunch” from Maine brewing company is best craft beer I have found in the states. Tough to find but worth the effort.

      1. Right on! Genny Cream Ale is a winner from my local brewery–and if you guys ever get to Rochester, be sure to stop at my favorite eating and drinking place: the Genesee Brew House, right on the grounds of the Brewery, with an unmatched view of High Falls. And try a 12-Horse Ale, too!

      4. Lightly hopped: Dale’s Pale Ale, Founder’s All-Day Ale.

        Cream Ale: If you ever run across Liebotschaner, from The Lion in Wilkes-Barre, give it a try. Most likely available in northeastern states. My Czechoslovakian coal-chemist technician once proclaimed that it was “like a good Czech beer!”

      5. How ironic. When I attended Kent State from 79=83, everybody that was counter culture and cool, and didn’t wanna drink corporate beer, drank Genny Cream. When I moved to Houston in 1984, I quickly discovered that everybody that was counter culture and cool, and didn’t wanna drink corporate beer, drank Shiner Bock.

        I’ve been to the Spoetzel Brewery in Shiner, Texas many times. Every year in May, all of the beer can and breweriana collectors from Texas, and several nearby states, meet at the Spoetzel Brewery for a big show. And on November 8th, Ill be at a show in Moravia, Texas, population 26. The show will be held in an old building from the 19th Century. Ten different types of Shiner Beer will be available.

        I have several old Genesee cans from the 50s and 60s in my collection. No Genny Creams, but I do have a Genesee Twelve Horse from the Early 60s. It was a stronger, drier, hoppier beer than Genny Cream.

  3. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (27 Oct 1858-1919)

  4. I did not know that Armstrong spoke Yiddish. Now I am a little surprised that he didn’t record any Yiddish numbers. I mean, Bobby Hackett kind of blew it out of the water on the Andrew Sisters’ “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” as far as trumpets go, but there were plenty of other Yiddish songs around.

    1. At first I thought that that must be Neil Armstrong. OK, I read the excellent A Fire on the Moon recently, and maybe I was influenced by that famous joke (alas, not a true story; there is no Yiddish per se in the joke, but the set up involves Jewish neighbours.)

      I remember the episode of All in the Family where Archie tries to get Sammy Davis, Jr. (playing himself in a guest role) to join his club The Kings of Queens so that they can’t be accused of discrimination. Since Davis was Jewish, Black, and Puerto Rican, he ticked all the boxes.

      I’ve run across people several times saying that one couldn’t show anything like that, or, say, Fawlty Towers, today, seemingly missing the point that the bigots (Archie, Basil) are the butt of the jokes.

      1. Wait, what ‘famous’ joke? I need to know it.

        As for me, at first blush, I thought that Louis Armstrong was somehow being mixed up with a different famous black man – Colin Powell – since Powell was well known to have worked for and befriended a Jewish family as a youth and learned some Yiddish as a result.

  6. Great dinosaur news. I like dinosaur news.
    On teslas yesterday: I suppose every few weeks I see a cybertruck in the wild here in Manhattan. Wouldn’t own one (I don’t drive anyway..) but MAN they look so damn COOL!
    D.A.
    NYC

    1. I have always thought the cybertruck to be a really ugly design, but had only seen them on the road coming at me in the other lane. This weekend, we were having an outdoors cafe lunch and I saw one parked a couple of hundred feet away from about a 2 o’clock angle (front quarter) and remarked that I found it streamlined and had nice lines from this new (for me) perspective. I was seated. My wife still thought it ugly, but then she suffers from a severe case of Musk derangement syndrome.

      1. From my perspective, they look like something the highschool shop class built, armed with just a sheetmetal brake.

      2. I’ve not met a woman who finds it anything but horrible. I’ve asked quite a few.
        I keep telling them “IT ISN’T FOR YOU. Its for guys who like to show off what cool guys they are!”
        D.A.
        NYC

  8. I saw the Ontario-produced advertisement live during the game. It was notable. Even at the time, I thought it would be provocative, but I didn’t expect it to provoke the President himself!

    And, you’ve just gotta love the mummified dinosaur remains. When I was a child, reading Roy Chapman Andrews’s account of dinosaur collecting in Mongolia, dinosaurs were mysterious, stupid, ponderous creatures, some of which (Brontosaurus, for instance) were so heavy that they could only live in swamps, where life in water would provide the necessary buoyancy for them to remain upright. What little we knew then!

  9. Thankful for the Community Notes under that 3 minutes 11 seconds of unintelligible jabbering that, we are told, wasn’t about hijabs at all. The two young women are way more annoying and disrespectful of public space than the lady in the hijab is. If the Note is accurate, I think the feminists and the Islamophobes struck out on this one. Is that the best they can do?

    And I’m surprised to see animal crossings over highways in the Netherlands. I thought people all got around by train and bicycle over there. Parks Canada built carefully landscaped animal overpasses over the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park about 30 years ago. Merely fencing the highway would have resulted in two non-intermating grizzly bear populations, which would work against the goal of a single Yukon-to-Yellowstone grizzly habitat. There was initial skepticism that the bears would find and use the overpasses but trail cameras have proved they do.

    The other hazard bears face is getting hit by trains. Grain spills out of grain cars heading west after the harvest. It accumulates between the rails and ferments in the rain, drawing bears who become too drunk from eating it to respond appropriately to locomotive horns (which are really loud!) Both railways (CN and CPKC) that run through the mountains have adopted more meticulous grain-loading and handling practices to reduce spillage.

  10. I read that June Lockhart’s parents (both actors; her father received an Oscar nomination) were introduced to each other by Thomas Edison!

    Plath’s “Daddy” is devastating, as is “Lady Lazarus.”

  11. Here in Southern California, a huge wildlife crossing is under construction. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing should be completed sometime next year —

    https://annenberg.org/initiatives/wallis-annenberg-wildlife-crossing/

    Awareness and funding for the project got a huge boost from P22, the mountain lion who made his way from the mountains, across a ten lane freeway, and into urban Los Angeles, where he lived out the rest of his life (in Griffith Park, mainly, but he was also occasionally spotted in residential neighborhoods.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-22

    1. Lovely! Yay!
      Honest to Pete, when the vid-caps of animals going over it at night start to appear you will be thrilled.

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