Friday: Hili dialogue

November 7, 2025 • 6:45 am

It’s also Welcome to the end of another “work” week: Friday, November 7, 2025, and National Doughnut Appreciation Day. Here I am in 2005 appreciating the largest donut I’ve ever seen, the “Big Dat” from Dat Donuts, not far from the University. And I ate the whole thing:

It’s also  American Football Day, Eat Smart Day, and National Chinese Take-out Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In the NYT’s morning newsletter, there’s a section called “An all-out war” about the spate of politically-motivated gerrymandering going on as each party furiously tries to draw congressional districts that will maximize its seats in the House:

Lawmakers realized in the 19th century that they could increase their party’s political power by redrawing legislative districts. The term of art is gerrymandering, named after the map for the Massachusetts State Senate drawn under Gov. Elbridge Gerry. (One district looked like a salamander. Get it?) Typically, legislators gerrymander once a decade, after the census.

Today, gerrymandering is a weapon of constant political warfare. State legislators, both red and blue, are furiously redrawing congressional maps in a quest to control the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.

The skirmishing began in August, when Trump persuaded Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, which will probably let them send five more Republicans to Congress. California fought back on Tuesday and will probably deliver five seats to the Democrats. Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina have also drawn new maps. A dozen or more other states are considering it.

Each side believes it is at an unfair disadvantage unless it rejiggers its maps.

Why it matters

This is a crisis with few parallels in American history, election lawyers told my colleagues Richard Fausset and Nick Corasaniti. “The wheels are coming off the car right now,” Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied gerrymandering, told them. “There’s a sense in which the system is rapidly spiraling downward, and there’s no end in sight.”

Here’s what he means: If the cycle continues, gerrymandering could happen before every midterm election, in any state, to the benefit of whatever party’s in charge. The turnabout could confuse voters, deepen their cynicism and create a situation in which House delegations from some states don’t reflect the political diversity of their residents.

All this spells trouble for representative democracy. It lets politicians with Sharpies pick their voters, instead of the other way around. New districts that are considered “safe” for one party are more likely to elect a partisan warrior. Incumbents are less likely to be voted out of office. That’s great news if you’re in power. Less so if you’re not.

“I don’t think this is pearl-clutching,” Nick said when we spoke yesterday. “It’s pretty dark.”

These problems are already evident across the country. Earlier this year, The Times looked at the nearly 6,000 congressional and state legislative races in November 2024. Very few were true contests. “Nearly all either were dominated by an incumbent or played out in a district drawn to favor one party overwhelmingly,” my colleagues wrote. “The result was a blizzard of blowouts, even in a country that is narrowly divided on politics.”

“Dominated by an incumbent” is not something I consider unfair, unless I don’t know what they mean.  Incumbents have been tested, and if they did a good job they have an advantage, and probably have an advantage even if they were so-so.  However, districts drawn to favor a specific party is another matter, and now it’s leading to wars between states: Texas draws districts to favor Republican congresspeople, while California retaliates by redrawing districts to favor Democrats.  The only way to stop this is to adopt no-redistricting laws, but that would have to be done state by state, not by Congress. Or so I think.

*Reader Loretta sent a link (archived here) to a Torygraph article about how the “objective” BBC (does anybody trust it anymore?) grossly slanted coverage of gender issues, including flat-out omission of important stories (covered by other media) about those issues.

The BBC’s trans coverage is subject to “effective censorship” by specialist LGBT reporters who refuse to cover gender-critical stories, one of the broadcaster’s own advisers has warned.

BBC staff have expressed concerns that the LGBT desk – which is shared by all the corporation’s news programmes – has been “captured by a small group of people” promoting a pro-trans agenda and “keeping other perspectives off air”.

This has led to “a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories … celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity”, a leaked internal BBC memo concludes. It said it reflected a “cultural problem across the BBC”, which treats issues of gender and sexuality as “a celebration of British diversity” rather than a complex and contentious subject.

The latest accusations of BBC bias come after The Telegraph revealed that a Panorama documentary doctored footage of a Donald Trump speech, and that the corporation minimised reports of Israeli suffering in the Gaza war to “paint Israel as the aggressor”.

. . . The debate around transgender rights, and children being given irreversible medical interventions such as puberty blockers, has been one of the most highly charged issues in politics, society and medicine in recent years.

It led to a Supreme Court ruling that “sex” referred to biological sex rather than gender identity, and the independent Cass Review of gender identity services, which resulted in the closure of the controversial Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock clinic in London.

But stories reflecting the views of people who challenged the concept of gender identity were largely suppressed by the BBC’s LGBT reporters, according to a memo written by a former member of the broadcaster’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.

The Telegraph has seen a copy of the 19-page memo, which was sent to members of the BBC Board last month and is now circulating in government departments.

It was compiled by Michael Prescott, who until June was an independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, and sent to executives because of his “despair at inaction by the BBC executive when issues come to light”.

It warns that the BBC is not only risking bias in its coverage of trans issues, but is confusing viewers by failing to make it clear that transgender women are biological males, or even transgender at all.

You can read the memo archived here (h/t S Wes). Other relevant articles include one by columnist Suzanne Moore saying she’s not going to pay the t.v. license fees because “the BBC’s trans lies are grotesque” and another article about a BBC newsreader who, by rolling her eyes when she said “pregnant people” instead of “women”, broke the Beeb’s rules and was subject to a complaint (she wasn’t punished).

This is the start of a tweet thread from a reporter who tried to warn the BBC (“DG” is Director General):

. . . and a summary of the leaked dossier, which you can read in full at the link above:

*In his latest op-ed, “Do dumb ideas ever die?” NYT columnist Bret Stephens takes on what he sees as a tried-and-true clunker of an idea: socialism. The motivation, of course, was the election of Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Socialist, as NYC mayor. Many of his highly-touted programs are explicitly socialistic and Stephens has some beefs.

it isn’t just the Trump administration that is reawakening the moral and intellectual zombies of the past. Everywhere one looks there are policy necromancers.

The platform of the national Democratic Socialists of America calls for a 32-hour workweek “with no reduction in pay or benefits”; “free public universal child care and pre-K”; “college for all”; the cancellation of “all student-loan debt”; “universal rent control”; “massive public investment to transition away from fossil fuels”; “guaranteed support for workers in the fossil fuel industry,” and “expansive paid family leave.” Not only would American workers stand to benefit, but so would everybody else, since the D.S.A. wants to offer these benefits to anyone who wishes to come to United States through an open-borders policy.

How would the D.S.A. pay for all this? By soaking the rich, along with “for-profit corporations, large inheritances, and private colleges and universities.” Why did nobody think of this before?

Oh, wait — many did. “Bolivarian socialism,” welcomed by the Jeremy Corbyns of the world, took Venezuela from being South America’s richest country to a humanitarian catastrophe. Sweden attempted a form of socialism in the 1970s and ’80s, only to reverse course after it experienced massive capital flight and a financial crisis during which interest rates hit 75 percent. France’s Socialist government imposed a 75 percent tax on earnings over one million euros in 2012; it dropped the tax two years later as the wealthy packed their bags. Britain’s National Health Service, whose advocates chronically complain is “underfunded,” is in a state of perpetual crisis even as health care, according to the BBC, gobbles up roughly one third of government spending.

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” Margaret Thatcher once observed. To put it another way, you can’t abolish billionaires, as Zohran Mamdani, the D.S.A.’s poster child, would like, and still expect them to keep footing your bills.

But Stephens doesn’t just single out Democratic socialism as a dumb idea; he also goes after the antisemitism of the Right:

If socialism is foolish, there’s something worse: the “socialism of fools,” antisemitism, now rapidly ascendant on the MAGA right.

Consider last week’s interview of Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist, by Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host turned podcaster. Among Fuentes’s core beliefs: “I think the Holocaust is exaggerated. I don’t hate Hitler. I think there’s a Jewish conspiracy. I believe in race realism.”

As for Carlson, he lobbed softball questions at Fuentes, found much to agree on when it came to their shared hatred for Christian supporters of Israel, and then draped his arm around his guest for a cuddly photograph. And even that wasn’t quite as repulsive as the passionate defense of Carlson mounted by Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. As Roberts saw it, Carlson had done nothing wrong in making nice with Fuentes. Rather, it was “the globalist class” and their “mouthpieces in Washington” who were the real bad guys.

“Globalist class”? Whoever could Roberts have in mind?

Roberts later tried to distance himself from Fuentes without reference to Carlson’s role in boosting and promoting him — a case, as it were, of trying to have your Jew and eat him, too. But the deeper issue with the Heritage Foundation and its allies isn’t that they have an antisemitism problem. It’s that they have a surrender problem — surrender to any dreadful idea, so long as it has a critical mass of supporters on the ever-growing fringe.

Nick Fuentes is the real thing: a latter-day Nazi (or Ku Klux Klanner), and it’s sad that antisemitism is increasing on both the right and the left.  Or perhaps it was always there, but lay dormant until Israel tried to defend itself against Hamas. I don’t know about Carlson, and I don’t use “antisemite” lightly, but if there is one, it’s Nick Fuentes. Carlson, of course, has been a bad piece of work for a long time. I’m getting emails from people who give me examples of socialism working in certain areas (buses, childcare) in other cities of the world. They’re not NYT, but we will have to see if Mamdani can keep his campaign promises.

*The filibuster rules requires 60 votes in the Senate to shut down debate and pass a bill, which makes it hard for the majority (now the Republicans) in closely-divided Senate to do anything.  Only doing away with the filibuster would allow the dominant party in a closely divided Senate to pass legislation if it votes as a bloc. Now the rule has put Trump at odds with Senate Republicans, something that doesn’t happen too often, as Trump wants the Senate to end the filibuster to rubber-stamp his wishes:

President Trump has picked the one fight with the Republican-led Senate that he might not be able to win.

All year, Republican senators have mostly managed to find their way to yes when Trump asked, blessing everything from controversial nominees to tariffs to foreign strikes. Most recently, the president has doubled down on his demand that GOP senators do away with their chamber’s longtime filibuster rule to bypass Democrats and end the record-setting government shutdown.

But many Republicans are saying no—for now—with implications for Trump’s agenda. It also marks the most direct break GOP senators have made with the White House during his second term in office.

At breakfast Wednesday with Republican senators at the White House, Trump had made a case on live TV that doing away with the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold was the only way to end the record-breaking impasse. He also said it would help Republicans—who have a 53-47 majority in the Senate—win next November by enabling them to move bills along party lines to restrict mail-in voting and require voters to present identification before casting ballots.

The change would also open the door for Republicans to pass any number of contentious bills this Congress that the filibuster—or threat of a filibuster—has blocked.

. . . . . Resisting, Trump told Republicans, would be a “tragic mistake,” and argued Democrats would kill it anyway if Republicans don’t.

After Trump made his case, the cameras panned to show Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), who has promised to defend the filibuster, listening to Trump’s argument in silence.

Once the media left, Trump continued his pitch, said one senator who attended the breakfast. But the president didn’t demand a vote to get rid of the filibuster, “and Thune’s not going to do it unless he’s pushed,” the senator said.

Back at the Capitol later that day, Republican senators mostly dug in. Some dodged when asked how they would personally vote, but stressed that there aren’t enough Republican votes to kill the filibuster. Other GOP lawmakers were adamant they would never flip from no to yes, even if they understood Trump’s argument.

And that’s where it stands now. The Senate could end the filibuster by a simple minority vote, and it looks like some Senate Republicans are softening, but this may be one case in which Trump simply doesn’t get his way. A majority party could become a minority party in the next election, and if the filibuster is there to ensure a solid majority, both parties should support it.  One thing that Trump cannot do is override that rule in the Senate (the House has no filibuster rule).

*Nancy Pelosi, 85, has been in Congress for 39 years, was the first female Speaker of the House, and held that position for a total of 8 years over two separate terms. She’s just announced that she’ll be retiring after next year:

Representative Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that she will retire when her term concludes in early 2027, ending a remarkable career in which she rose to become one of the most powerful women in American history.

Ms. Pelosi, 85, was the nation’s first and only female House speaker, and she will have represented San Francisco in Congress for 39 years when she leaves office. She has served during an era of seismic change for American society and her own city, from the throes of the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage, and through the meteoric rise of the tech sector and the nation’s extreme polarization.

She entered political office later in life and became a hero to Democrats for the way she wielded immense power to push Obamacare, climate change legislation and infrastructure programs through Congress.

“With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” she told her constituents in a nearly six-minute video posted on X early Thursday morning, with clips of San Francisco’s iconic cable cars and colorful Victorian homes flashing in the background.

“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she continued. “We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”

Ms. Pelosi, who likes to use the phrase “resting is rusting,” led the House Democrats for 20 years, eight of which she spent as speaker. She has also been a prodigious fund-raiser and raised more than $1.3 billion for Democratic campaigns, according to her aides.

I am a fan of Pelosi, both for her ability to keep the Democrats together, resist extremism, and push through legislation.  If and when the Democrats take the House again, I hope they get someone of her tenor. In today’s NYT, Michelle Goldberg thinks that more Congressional Democrats should retire, as she thinks that an infusion of new, young blood, as instantiated by future Mayor M_md_ni, is what we need to win elections.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is importuning Andrzej again:

Hili: I’m trying to think.
Andrzej: About what?
Hili: About what else you could buy me.

In Polish:

Hili: Próbuję sobie wyobrazić.
Ja: Co próbujesz sobie wyobrazić?
Hili: Co byś mi jeszcze mógł kupić.

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

From Clean, Funny, and Cute Animal Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From The Language Nerds:

Masih and Rowling are pretty quiet. Here’s some humor from Simon:

From Luana. This program was characterized as a back door to becoming a tenure-track faculty member, and to get one of these fellowships you had to show dedication to DEI:

From Malcolm; cat rescue in Ukraine (yes, the left picture is a video):

Two from my feed. Look at this lovely video!

The d*g wants a brewski!

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was imprisoned in Auschwitz at age fifteen. She did not survive.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-11-07T12:01:47.683Z

Two from Dr. Cobb, who speaks about Crick at Cambridge (UK) tomorrow. This post he calls “‘Twas ever thus”:

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

— Dr Selena Wisnom (@lswisnom.bsky.social) 2025-11-03T10:04:16.468Z

. . . and look how fast those cilia go!

Cool rotifer feeding with it's cilia beating🐙🧪

— Heather Bruce (@arthropodlegs.bsky.social) 2025-11-01T20:41:13.155Z

19 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. -Edith Sitwell, poet (7 Sep 1887-1964)

    Reply

    1. I used to go to coffee place called Sitwell’s. I wondered if it was named after Edith but never asked. I understand what Sitwell is trying to say. Unfortunately, those who are proud of it might not think of themselves as stupid. They are not proud of being stupid. Instead they are proud of being clever, a cleverness that others see as stupidity. Not believing in god is seen as being stupid — at least not very bright — by many believers. After all, the evidence is all over the place: that one exists is evidence enough for some. But I think I’m being rather clever and I hope they are patient with me 🙂

      Reply

  2. “Ratf**cked” is an excellent account of some of the first leveraging of a few dollars to buy statewide legislative majorities which could then gerrymander their state to get Congressional majorities a few years later. Paperback around ten bucks on amazon at
    https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628

    I really wish the author had chosen a different title, not that this one offends my Victorian sensibilities, but because it would be an excellent read for U.S. high school government classes, but with this title is unlikely to pass muster with any local school board…except of course in CA.

    Reply

  3. With regard to the trans kerfuffle, Martine Croxall, a BBC news presenter, took a hit for her lack of impartiality over her reluctance to say “pregnant people”:

    “The presenter changed her script to instead say “women”, and the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) said it considered her facial expression as she said this gave the “strong impression of expressing a personal view on a controversial matter.”

    We live in strange times.

    Reply

  4. It’s also National Hug a Bear Day and I was expecting a photo of you with Toasty, but I guess I will have to settle for a giant donut.

    Reply

  5. The BBC has been spinning government politics for some time. Back in 2014, during the independence campaign, Alex Salmond fully answered a question at a press conference. I watched it live. The question was from the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson, and it was about corporation tax, which was a hot topic at the time. Whatever you think about Alex, he is a top-notch economist, having worked in the oil industry. He knows his stuff and he answered in detail.

    But later, on the UK national news, Robinson stated that Alex Salmond had not answered the question. Not just a mistake. Not just lying by omission, it was a deliberate barefaced lie by Robinson. The BBC got a lot of complaints, I don’t think they did anything about it, but the damage was done anyway.

    I cancelled my TV licence and haven’t had one since.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/2g5dbm/two_videos_two_stories_nick_robinson_falsely/

    As you say, the BBC is now shoehorning trans people into everything. Despite being only a tiny percent of the population they are appearing on multiple quiz shows, gardening programs, soap operas, programs about women and all sorts of stuff. They should be represented of course, but in proportion with their numbers. Nutmeg reports this information weekly on Glinner’s blog, and when she does, I’m glad I don’t have a licence.

    The BBC website has a section for LGBTQ+ that paints an idyllic picture. They never report on negative things, such as when the Surrey Pride organiser was found guilty of child abuse or when a little girl was kidnapped and a sexually assaulted by ‘Amy’ George. It’s been obvious for a while that transactivists have been controlling the narrative. It is appalling that the BBC even refers to men as ‘women’ without using the ‘trans’ prefix.

    It’s amazing that such a ‘poor oppressed minority’ has such power. 🙄

    Reply

  6. The BBC’s coverage of genderwang is nothing next to its wild and amaaazing coverage of “Palestine”. One would think the UK population is 50% drag queens and 50% active terrorists.

    On Comrade Mandami (and I’ll try to stifle myself on this one going forth b/c I’m told not everybody actually lives in NYC…) —- but — firstly he CAN’T do most of the things he promises due to the legal setup of the NYC mayoralty.

    Secondly, he’s smart enough to know this and he lies ALL.THE.TIME. Like MAGAs with Trump his supporters don’t care.

    The strangest thing about this election is the gender skew. His support is very, very female. 85% of 18-29 y.o. women voted for him. The support reduces as you go up the age brackets but still very …girly.

    D.A.
    NYC

    Reply

    1. Mamdani is sort of a mirror image of Trump. Like Trump, said to be charismatic (I don’t see it in either one).

      The only good thing is that there’s only so much damage he can do as a mayor (compared to president, which fortunately he cannot ever be).

      Reply

    1. I think that the worse thing about the filibuster as it exists in 2025 as I understand it, is that now a Congressman can just say he is filibustering and everything stops as opposed to the good ole days when some old fart actually had to stand on his feet and drone on for hours to keep the floor. This is not too different from my disgust last week on discovering that now, in major league baseball, an intentional walk can simply be declared without the throwing of any pitches. What a lazy, bullshit species we Americans have become. You kids get off my lawn!

      Reply

    2. As I recall, the Senate filibuster rule was instituted to protect the minority from the excesses of the majority. As I further recall, the Senate itself was instituted to protect the minority states from the excesses of the majority states. If the filibuster is anti-democratic, then so is the Senate itself. Am I correct, or way off base here?

      Reply

      1. Yes, IIRC there was great concern farming states would become second class states while urban centers dominated.

        Reply

        1. Yes. I think John is correct about compromise for balance, though it was not just urban states, but the old guard like my Virginia which though agrarian was hugely populated at that snapshot of time.

          Reply

      2. The Senate is anti-democratic if you consider the minority 47 Democrats represent 24 million more constituents than the majority 53 Republicans. At least you can’t gerrymander Senate seats…

        Reply

    3. Yes, it is “anti-democratic” if by that you mean “anti-majoritarian.” It happens to share that feature with many other governing elements of our—let me check my notes—REPUBLIC.

      The reason we can’t get shit done is because of self-absorbed, uncompromising, sanctimonious, and arrogant moralizers both in politics and among the voters whose mode of “governing” is to get 50.1% of the vote and then fuck over the other half. All for the good of those others, of course.

      But cheering the system when it delivers—for you—and demanding to burn it down when it doesn’t? No Founders could have anticipated that, could they?

      Reply

  9. There’s so much to be angry about in today’s news that I will focus my attention on the donut. When I was in graduate school, I didn’t have a car. My wife and I would rent a car for a day every two weeks or so in order to go to the laundromat, where we huddled for a couple of hours until our clothes were again clean. Next door to the laundromat was a donut shop. Amazing donuts and bear claws! And with coffee, donuts are the bomb! We loved laundry day.

    Reply

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