Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, February 23, 2025, and we’re into Thanksgiving week (next Thursday). It’s also National Espresso Day, celebrating the only way to have black coffee (I usually have a latte, though). I recommend that if you drink the stuff, you should invest in a $200-$300 espresso machine (I have a Breville, not as fancy as the one shown below but close to this one), which will pay for itself in a month if you get your fix at Starbucks. Mine has lasted for years. Also, get a burr grinder:
It’s also National Cashew Day, Eat a Cranberry Day (don’t), and Fibonacci Day because it’s 11/23, the first four numbers in the Fibonacci series.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 1 Wikipedia page.
Oh, and they’ve put the Christmas lights up on trees on our Quad, and here’s a few trees photographed this morning near our equivalent of the Student Union:
Da Nooz:
*I once suggested that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was the most dangerous high-level person appointed by Trump, simply because he could help start a war. But then I changed my nominee to RFK, Jr., whose orders could cause pandemics or epidemics. And, indeed, the latter guess was correct (watch for a measles outbreak). I recently posted about the change in the CDC website suggesting that vaccines could cause autism (as Paul Offit notes, they don’t), but now we hear that RFK, Jr. himself not only ordered that change, but demanded that the CDC change its whole position on the issue. (h/t Bat). This is no surprise:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific consensus and bend the health department to his will.
In an interview on Thursday explaining why the C.D.C. website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link.
But he cited gaps in vaccine safety science. He said he ordered the C.D.C. to change its guidance in part because high-quality large studies had not been conducted to examine a potential link between autism and other shots given in the first year of life. Those include the hepatitis B vaccine and a combination shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough.
In his view, sweeping statements like “vaccines don’t cause autism” are unproven, and have been deployed by public health leaders who want to ease parents’ fears. He said he is not saying vaccines cause autism; he is simply saying there is no proof that they don’t.
“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” Mr. Kennedy said in the interview, his first with a major print publication. He added, “The phrase ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not supported by science.”
It is highly unusual for a health secretary to personally order a change to scientific guidance.
First, nothing is “proven” in science:we just gain more and more confidence about a theory as evidence comes in to support it. And, indeed,we now have plenty of evidence that vaccines do NOT cause autism. See here, for example, where pediatrician and infectious disease specialist Paul Offit discusses the evidence:
Currently, 24 studies performed in 7 countries on 3 continents involving thousands of children and costing tens of millions of dollars have all found the same thing. Children who have received the MMR vaccine were not at greater risk of developing autism than those who didn’t receive it. Researchers could have done a hundred studies, or a thousand studies, or a million studies but that still wouldn’t have proven that it couldn’t happen. You can never prove never. However, at this point, I think it is fair to state that a truth has emerged. MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism; and neither does thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, or aluminum salts, a vaccine adjuvant
. . . . You can’t prove the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You can only say that they were nowhere that you looked. You can’t prove that I have never been to Juneau, Alaska. (I have never been to Juneau, Alaska.) You can only show a series of pictures of buildings in Juneau with me not standing next to them. RFK Jr. uses a technicality in the scientific method to assure that no one can “prove” that he’s wrong. But he is wrong. Vaccines, probably the best studied of all environmental influences, have never been shown to cause autism. It is now fair to say that vaccines don’t cause autism. And that I can’t fly.
If RFK Jr. wanted to be honest with the American public, he would make it clear on the CDC’s website that chicken nuggets also might cause autism, which has never been and will never be disproven.
RFK, Jr. doesn’t seem to understand how science works.
*The WSJ points out similarities between Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine. Except he’s favored the wrong side in the latter conflict:
President Trump’s push to end Russia’s war with Ukraine takes a page from the playbook he used to obtain a cease-fire in Gaza. By force of personality and deadlines, he is trying to jam through a plan to stop a grinding conflict between two reluctant warring parties.
A breakthrough would fulfill Trump’s goal of finally stopping the brutal war, which he vowed during his days on the campaign trail to end within 24 hours after returning to the White House.
So far, Trump has succeeded in securing a measure of support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said a 28-point draft U.S. plan could be the basis for resolving the conflict. But Trump’s demand that Kyiv accept the proposal within a week has spurred deep anxiety in Europe and Ukraine, whose officials are looking for ways to rework what they see as a one-sided plan.
“Trump’s 28-point plan for ending the war in Ukraine follows the same script as his 20-point plan for Gaza—a short term, transactional take it or leave it approach to quickly end the fighting but not the war,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Both were clearly designed to heavily favor one of the combatants—Russia in case of Ukraine; Israel in Gaza,” Miller added.
Like the Gaza plan, the White House blueprint was worked on by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. But this time, Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev was involved in the consultations, officials have said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “will have to learn to like it,” or will have to keep fighting, Trump said. It was a sharp shift in tone from recent statements in which Trump suggested the U.S. could bolster Ukraine by sending long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles and predicted the country might recapture all territory seized by Russian forces since 2022.
A White House spokeswoman also insists that Trump is still open to suggestions from Kyiv and Moscow, building on the president’s success in getting a cease-fire in Gaza. “Just like you saw with respect to Israel and Gaza, we are hearing out both sides of this war to understand what can you commit to do to end the war,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.
In Gaza, after repeated attempts at securing a cease-fire, Trump warned Hamas in late September that it had “three or four days” to agree to the detailed U.S.-crafted cease-fire deal or they would “pay in hell.” Trump also privately pressured a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the terms.
Trump announced agreement on the deal on Oct. 8. Many elements of the Gaza plans remain incomplete, including disarming Hamas, deploying an international security force, standing up a new governing authority and settling on a reconstruction plan. Both sides still mount isolated attacks, though a fragile cease-fire remains in place.
Trump is using a similar pressure campaign against Kyiv, though some former officials say the stakes are even higher than they were in Gaza as Ukraine’s sovereignty and Europe’s security is at stake.
The problem, of course, is that Trump has a one-size-fits-all strategy with respect to almost everything. If a tactic seems to work in one situation, he uses it in a similar situation. But here he’s equating Putin with Israel, so he’s got things exactly the wrong way round. I think I see tiny signs of him learning, like trying to quell the rancor between him and Mamdani, but demanding that Zelensky decide to give up a big part of his country in a week or so is simply asking too much. You can’t make a lasting peace with demands alone; you have to have a plan. Trump has effected a cease-fire in Gaza, but nobody thinks that’s going to lead to a lasting peace—not without the help of other countries.
*In Andrew Sullivan’s latest post, “The question of decency“, Sully opposes George Orwell’s notion of decency, something that pervades his writings, with the indecent Donald Trump.
Decency. This was Orwell’s deep theme — not exactly a moral virtue as Aristotle might conceive of it, but more of a cultural and ethical baseline. Orwell saw it primarily in ordinary people, especially the English, and rarer among intellectuals: “It is not easy to crash your way into the literary intelligentsia if you happen to be a decent human being.” He rebuked Jonathan Swift because he “couldn’t see what the simplest person sees, that life is worth living and human beings, even if they’re dirty and ridiculous, are mostly decent.”
. . . . I love this passage, from his review of Gandhi’s autobiography:
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.
. . . Democracy requires decency because it requires mutual respect: to defend others even as we disagree with them, to accept decisions others have made and elections we have lost, to distinguish between robust rhetoric and dehumanizing cruelty, to accept objective truth when it proves us wrong, to maintain a baseline of civility, to accept that we are all in this together. Politics is inextricable from culture, and a decent culture will sustain democracy while an indecent one will ultimately unravel it.
This is why I reject the shallow accusation that I have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It’s too glib, too dismissive. Yes, some have gone overboard in opposing this president; from Russiagate to the Bragg indictment, overreach has been real. I’ve acknowledged it. But the core impulse to reject Trump outright, to see him as uniquely hideous in American political history — as a national, collective disgrace — remains a vitally important one.
Because Donald Trump is the most indecent man, by far, to ever hold the presidency. He has openly mocked the disabled and the sick; he has reveled in stories of torture and murder; he has spent decades grabbing women “by the pussy” and bragged about it; he has derided prisoners of war … for being captured. He parlayed his own divorce into tabloid coverage and spoke publicly of wanting to date his own daughter. He began his political rise by pushing a Birther conspiracy he knew was a racist lie. We have become inured to his references to “shit-hole countries” and “the 51st state” and “Gavin Newscum,” to a misogyny that made Jeffrey Epstein a close friend, and to his gratuitous depiction of his predecessor as a mere “autopen” in the White House itself.
The indecency is in substance as well as style. It is one thing to be a realist in foreign policy, to accept the morally ambiguous in an immoral world; it is simply indecent to treat a country, Ukraine, invaded by another, Russia, as the actual aggressor and force it to accept a settlement on the invader’s terms. It is one thing to find and arrest illegal immigrants; it is indecent to mock and ridicule them, and send them with no due process to a foreign gulag where torture is routine. It is one thing to enforce immigration laws; it is another to use masked, anonymous men to do it. It is one thing to cut foreign aid; it is simply indecent to do so abruptly and irrationally so that tens of thousands of children will needlessly die.
. . . But what I want to say to those deriding me is: you still know I’m right. You know who this man is. The record is so clear, the core indecency so manifest and disgusting you cannot look away. This is not about “mean tweets.” It is about a brutal assault on common decency in a democracy. And common decency — as conservatives once knew, and Orwell grasped so keenly — matters. It really does.
Sullivan is properly outraged (remember the “Quiet, Piggy” remakr to a reporter last week?) and his solution is obvious, and good: we just keep calling the man out for his indecency, which happens on a daily basis. And that goes for Republicans, too.
*A painting by Gustav Klimt went at auction for over $236 million, making it the most pricey piece of art yet sold at auction.
A storied Gustav Klimt painting sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday night, setting a new auction record for the turn-of-the-20th-century Viennese artist. It is the most expensive work ever sold at Sotheby’s and the most expensive Modern artwork ever sold at auction.
Titled Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914), the work was estimated at $150 million and offered in an evening sale dedicated to material from the trove of Leonard Lauder, the great art patron who died in June at 92. While Lauder gave his unparalleled Cubist collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013, he held on to other art treasures, including three Klimt paintings and six Henri Matisse bronzes. Two dozen of these works are being offered for sale this evening at Sotheby’s new global headquarters at the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue.
The building, which has a smaller footprint than Sotheby’s former home on York Avenue, was bursting at the seams with attendees. Champagne flowed. The sale was held on the fourth floor, with just 200 seats. The anticipation and excitement were intense.
The bidding lasted for about 20 minutes. The evening’s auctioneer, Oliver Barker, opened the action at $130 million, and the price climbed steadily by intervals of $2 million, then $5 million.
The fight slowed as the price approached $170 million, but eventually Sotheby’s staffer David Galperin came in at $171 million with a surprise bid. “You took your time, David,” Barker said. “Where have you been? Welcome to the party.”
And then a three-way battle was joined, with Galperin competing with a fellow Sotheby’s rainmaker on the phone, Julian Dawes, and in the room, advisor and former Sotheby’s exec Patti Wong, who eventually fell away. There were six bidders in total.
When the price reached $200 million, applause erupted. Dawes won soon after with a $205 million bid.
Here’s the painting from Wikipedia, which adds this:
Elisabeth Lederer was the daughter of Jewish industrialist August Lederer and Serena Lederer, some of Klimt’s most prominent patrons.[3] Elisabeth became the second member of the Lederer family to sit for Klimt, after his 1899 portrait of her mother, Serena.
. . .In Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, Klimt depicts 20 year old Elisabeth in a flowing, white dress, as he had done for her mother in Portrait of Serena Lederer. For Elisabeth however, it is not a loose gown but a close fitting top and a skirt with styling recalling the plus fours, which were the latest fashion of the time. Over this she wears a white chiffron shawl with floral patterns.[2] The sitter’s eyes drift as they look toward the viewer, and her expression is described as tranquil yet engaged, contributing to the ethereal quality of the portrait.[6] The carpet beneath Lederer combines bold pink-orange tones with black and white borders reminiscent of Josef Hoffmann‘s designs for the Wiener Werkstätte, while its irregular green and white circles recall Chinese jade.[1]
The portrait belongs to a group of Klimt’s late works in which the influence of East Asian art is especially pronounced
Here’s the subject with her depiction, captioned in Wikipedia, “Serena Lederer with Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer in her Vienna apartment, photographed c. 1930.”
I like Klimt, although I don’t think the one above is one of his best. However, it is a Klimt, and therefore worth big bucks. But this better one, Adele Bloch-Bauer I , went for a paltry $135 million in 2006.
*On the space-exploration front, Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin had a successful launch of a Mars-bound mission ten days ago. One of its rockets launched two spacecraft that will go to Mars (no people aboard, of course), and the mission was a big success.
Blue Origin launched its huge New Glenn rocket Thursday with a pair of NASA spacecraft destined for Mars.
It was only the second flight of the rocket that Jeff Bezos’ company and NASA are counting on to get people and supplies to the moon — and it was a complete success.
The 321-foot (98-meter) New Glenn blasted into the afternoon sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA’s twin Mars orbiters on a drawn-out journey to the red planet. Liftoff was stalled four days by lousy local weather as well as solar storms strong enough to paint the skies with auroras as far south as Florida.
In a remarkable first, Blue Origin recovered the booster following its separation from the upper stage and the Mars orbiters, an essential step to recycle and slash costs similar to SpaceX. Company employees cheered wildly as the booster landed upright on a barge 375 miles (600 kilometers) offshore. An ecstatic Bezos watched the action from Launch Control.
“Next stop, moon!” employees chanted following the booster’s bull’s-eye landing. Twenty minutes later, the rocket’s upper stage deployed the two Mars orbiters in space, the mission’s main objective. Congratulations poured in from NASA officials as well as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, whose booster landings are now routine.
. . . .The identical Mars orbiters, named Escapade, will spend a year hanging out near Earth, stationing themselves 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. Once Earth and Mars are properly aligned next fall, the duo will get a gravity assist from Earth to head to the red planet, arriving in 2027.
Once around Mars, the spacecraft will map the planet’s upper atmosphere and scattered magnetic fields, studying how these realms interact with the solar wind. The observations should shed light on the processes behind the escaping Martian atmosphere, helping to explain how the planet went from wet and warm to dry and dusty. Scientists will also learn how best to protect astronauts against Mars’ harsh radiation environment.
Here’s a video. What a piece of work is man (and woman!); this is fricking amazing!:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the discussion is confusing:
Hili: I’m not sure we really need to import everything from China.
Andrzej: We do, because we believe we’re fighting climate change.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie jestem pewna, czy naprawdę musimy wszystko sprowadzać z Chin?
Ja: Tak, bo wierzymy, że walczymy z globalnym ociepleniem.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild. This being Australia, I’m surprised the snake is non-venomous:
From Things With Faces:
From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:
Emma defends Juliet Turner, who just got her Ph.D. (below). Some churlish man said Juliet should be reproducing instead:
Don’t worry your balls about it.
Juliet is looking at how a reproductive queen cooperates with the rest of the colony for the benefit of her multiple babies. Sounds right up your street.😉@juliet_turner6 https://t.co/JCUaORMeMe
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 22, 2025
The original tweets:
you could be having nine beautiful children and instead you’re playing with ants all day
— Nikolas (@Nikolaoz) November 21, 2025
From Larry the Cat via Simon. Time to get up!
Happy #Caturdaypic.twitter.com/DOm3IfA0NZ
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 22, 2025
From Malcolm. This woman has mad skills, but this scares the bejeezus out of me:
With over 40 years of flying experience, aerobatic legend Kapanina has earned countless world titles, showcasing precision that defies gravity.pic.twitter.com/0dC7irVPMc
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 5, 2025
One from my feed, and one of the best tweets ever (sound up):
Handling things with maturity be like👇🏾😂 pic.twitter.com/dQwRmgyhbh
— 𝕺𝖒𝖔𝕺𝖌𝖆𝕿𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 (@eraytee7) November 21, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A Norwegian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was two years old, and would have been 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/NmB91Qqbc2
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 23, 2025
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a lovely bucolic and duck-heavy video:
May I offer you some ducks in this trying time? Two minutes of duckie goodness and variety!#birds 🌿
— Get To Know Nature (@gettoknownature.bsky.social) 2025-11-22T13:27:50.789Z
A weapon used by Romans to scare the enemy: the medieval equivalent of a haka:
The post:
Roman bronze dragon’s head standard, AD 190-260.Originally mounted on a pole, with a long fabric tube attached to the back of the head. When charging on horseback, the wind inflated the tube and the dragon shrieked! Niederbieber fort. Landesmuseum Koblenz. 📷 me#RomanFortThursday#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T16:39:43.386Z
A reconstruction of the noise:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity. -Steven Brust, novelist (b. 23 Nov 1955)
Perhaps health should be one of those areas where government doesn’t get involved? At the end of the day, government has no special knowledge, only the monopoly on violence.
Government’s traditional role in health was public health, where the monopoly on violence comes in very handy in dealing with epidemics and threats of contagion reaching our shores. That’s why the U.S. Surgeon-General wears an Admiral’s uniform, and many in the U.S. Public Health Service wear lower ranks, too. Public health down to the municipal restaurant inspector and VD contact tracer is a true public good, neither diminishing when shared nor priceable. Like a lighthouse.
I do agree, deciding who pays to get your knee repaired is not the government’s business.
Like I said, boss: Much as I loathe the Dems now (after actually volunteer working for Hillary a decade ago, giving her Money(!), and always voting Dem since US citizenship in 2002)…. I couldn’t vote for Trump for 3 reasons:
Ukraine – he seemed to be on the wrong side of that forever.
Israel – fine now, (then) but what if Bibi doesn’t like the chocolate cake at Mar a Lago? (Instability of narcissists)
…. and a huge clincher then and now —- RFK! The nepo baby idiot conman himself is the Most Dangerous Living American. I hate him with venom. I’ve bored y’all often here with my rants about him. Glad you’re totally aboard! 🙂
Hegspeth is a non event, nobody cares and he can’t do much damage anyway.
I like the Klimt but that’s a doozie of a price. Art collectors give the wealthy a bad name.
Happy Sunday folks,
D.A.
NYC
ps – the Mandami (NY’s most dangerous) – Trump confab was a fun humiliation ritual for that obnoxious little puppy to enter the lion’s den. Get ’em Donny.
Trump was positively back slapping friendly with Mamdani, after he spoke of Israeli “genocide.”
“Mamdani accuses US of funding Israeli ‘genocide’ during notably warm meet with Trump”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mamdani-accuses-us-of-funding-israeli-genocide-during-warm-meeting-with-trump/amp/
Re R.F.K. / C.D.C. / M o u s e —
“I’ve seen [aircraft] maintenance manuals written in blood.” (NTSB investigator quoted in Aviation Safety Network report on maintenance errors, 1999).
Complex system faults get noticed only through their visible effects. For aircraft and public health that often means deaths. RFK’s visible legacy will likely be orders of magnitude worse than any airplane crash.
IMO this mess points out a non-obvious benefit of Universal Basic Income. Many more self-respecting CDC employees would quit (some loudly) if they could readily avoid poverty.
I have used Saeco “superautomatica” machines for years. When my Vienna finally gave up the ghost I bought a Breville, but I could never get satisfactory coffee from it (probably my fault), so bought a Philips 2200 (they bought out Saeco) and this is really a Saeco design. Four years of daily use and it’s still going strong.
I have been experimenting with buying green beans and roasting them myself. It’s a very smelly/smoky activity so best done in the summer, outdoors.
UK news: “British police force used false intelligence to secure a ban on Israeli fans … West Midlands police concluded it was “high risk” for Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters to go to a Europa League game at Aston Villa on November 6, leading the local authority to recommend they be banned.
“In a confidential report setting out its justification, the force detailed violence when Tel Aviv played Ajax in Amsterdam last year […] The national police force of the Netherlands has said the claims were incorrect. …
“[The police force] has already been accused of compromising its political independence and pandering to the loudest voices in the city. Among them is Ayoub Khan, the pro-Gaza independent MP, who led a petition with Jeremy Corbyn to ban Israelis from arriving in a “diverse and predominantly Muslim community”. He said the fans’ attendance would damage “community harmony” and normalise genocide.” (paywalled link)
Thought I’d highlight where Andrew Sullivan set the trap:
“Because Donald Trump is the most indecent man, by far, to ever hold the presidency.”
Creating conditions of the friend/enemy distinction – it’s been done before :
The Concept of the Political
Carl Schmitt
1932
So if I think he’s indecent, and you do too, then we are friends. If that other person thinks otherwise, they are holding back progress – they are indecent – they are enemy.
Is it possible to make a value judgment without it being a “trap”?
On my To Do List is exploring Sullivan’s views on past and ongoing U.S. global regime change activities.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is a truly beautiful painting. However, $205MM says to me that there is too much wealth concentrated in too few hands and those hands have nothing better to do with it.
Yes, instead of allowing the rich to pay their servants $50,000 in salary, we should dispossess the rich and use the proceeds to pay each now-laid-off servant $20,000 to do nothing, thus infinitely increasing the hourly wage of the servant compared with when he was exploited in work. That’ll get you through the first year of the revolution. After that, yer on yer own.
The ultra-rich (everyone who has one dollar more than I do) have always known that such sentiments have currency among the dangerous classes. The wealthy must devote much effort to make sure the state’s monopoly on the use of violence is appropriately deployed to ensure their docility.
Kinda harsh there, Leslie, in tone. But 100% true.
For me – and probably you – and many others that kind of price for a painting is obscene and we wouldn’t buy it even if we could.
But it is an edge case, of what idiots w/ money do with (their) money. THEIR money – and despite edge cases the whole system works incredibly well…
And who am I to judge? I can spend 15 bucks on a dog toy for my boy….
D.A.
NYC
We should break generational entrenchment of wealth by taxing gifts/donations/inheritance harshly.
We should make sure, that wealthy people do their share for society and prevent the ultra rich from squeezing more money from society than the can ever need.
If we do that, I have no issues with people paying whatever absurd amount for whatever they like. I have lost confidence, that the riches of a random rich person are the reward for enriching society through excellence. More often it’s generational wealth combined with a system rigged to protect said wealth.
Your use of “harshly” gives the game away. It’s about envy, not justice. So what if wealth is inherited and protected? What’s it to you? Don’t you lock up your bicycle to protect it against people who think they have a better right to it than you do?
I rather take the reverse view. Your plan is first intended to make it impossible for the rich to spend absurd amounts on art because there won’t be any rich. I reject out of hand your presumption to do that. There is no justification, other than green envy, to presume that the government knows better what to do with my vast billions (which I spend my “me-time” in my vault like Scrooge McDuck tossing the erotically heavy handfuls of $1000 gold coins in the air just to hear the sweet ring-jingle of pure gold) than I do, or that my heirs will. Sure my daughter might run off with a surfer and snort it all up her nose, or my son might use it to become President, but God knows what the government will do with it.
You don’t seem to grasp that vast inequality is what makes the juice worth the squeeze, why ambitious people move to America to get filthy stinking rich, even the illegals do. Why would we work just to give much of our fortune to the state, more than we already paid in income taxes while we were alive? That final tax return, when most assets are deemed to have been sold at fair market value for capital gain unless protected in a trust, is already a bitch. We say we’ve already paid our share, thank you very much. Just because we have a lot left doesn’t mean you are entitled to it.
You also have to have spaces on the low end in order that people will be motivated to work as cab drivers, doormen, waiters, concierges, butlers, footmen, boarding-school teachers, landscapers, yacht chandlers, cosmetic surgeons, Lamborghini mechanics, and veterinarians (for pets and race-horses). The uber-wealthy are their customers. We don’t just sit on hoards of cash in our counting houses. Our wealth, even icky inherited wealth, is invested out there in the real world so people with actual merit can grow the economy, and yes some is being spent on things like expensive art. Think how much economic activity the sale of that Klimt painting generated in the art industry and the ever-widening circle of hangers-on as the money paid for it was spent or invested.
(Using the first person here just to keep the participants in the conversation straight. I don’t really have a vault. I keep my retirement money hidden in an old mattress down at the storage locker depot. Since this is all tongue-in-cheek you oughtn’t feel the need to rebut me. But I really don’t resent the rich their wealth. And those who want to confiscate some arbitrary fraction of it aren’t my friend.
Your last paragraph doesn’t work. Even if you were “just kidding” in the sense of “I don’t actually believe the BS I just wrote”, I’d still have to rebut you for the benefit of the people who unironically hold those positions. I have debated professors of economics and entrepreneurs that trotted out your spiel – so letting it stand when it is quickly dismantled would just keep all of that around. Thus I have move from my phone to my keyboard…
I don’t have a problem with filthy rich people like Musk or Gates. I care less about who can spend more money than I do than about a system working. The economic system won’t be working properly without a corrective to the tendency of wealth to concentrate. I rather have wealth be re-dispersed after the death of an individual. The alternatives are either to have the state do it while they are alive (with predictable selectivity since it’s unlikely that leaders will disown themselves) or let the wealth concentrate and slide back into de-facto aristocracy where the family you are born nearly fully determines your future instead of your abilities.
Going through your post, you start out by drawing a false equivalency between taxation and theft. Taxing inheritance is not comparable to having a bike stolen. Then you set up a straw-man that I don’t want there to be any rich. In Germany I did the numbers and taxing wealth transfer with 50% would allow for a roughly two thirds reduction of income tax. So instead of taxing those who do productive work you could tax those who get money without productive work. Productive people could get rich more easily!
I really laughed out loud when I completed my inheritance tax bingo with the “I have already payed taxes” argument. The dead don’t pay taxes. The living that get assets and cash do. They get an income / windfall – so they have to pay taxes on them.
The final paragraph sadly is once again something people still think. It has been well demonstrated, that the richer the person, the lower the fraction of disposable income will be spent on consumption. Instead it’s invested where investor greed sets incentives for companies to chase short term gain at the expense for long term failure – Boing is a good example, but there are countless other examples out there as well. The most ironic line was “Our wealth, even icky inherited wealth, is invested out there in the real world so people with actual merit can grow the economy” since the system is set up so that people with actual merit get less a reward for their merit than the investor – unless the people with actual merit con the rich investors.
So I guess you think economic success should be determined by luck of birth instead of merit/ability/dedication/hard work – that’s a sign that it’s more about greed and fear of loss than justice. (See – I can do tounge-in-cheek ad hominems as well)
Please be more civil in your answers.
Presumably the “dangerous classes” are meant to exclude the actual super-rich themselves. IMO one sociopathic multibillionaire can do a whole lot more damage than if the money were distributed among the nation’s common sociopaths (say $1000 to each of ten million¹ sociopathic US adults).
. . . . .
¹ Statistical estimates of the prevalence of sociopathy vary widely, and suffer from obvious sampling biases.
Agree.
“RFK, Jr. doesn’t seem to understand how science works.” Actually, IMHO, he understands perfectly well. He just denies its conclusions when it contradicts his own opinion. He is, indeed, the most dangerous man in America.
Drip coffee can be excellent, too, especially if you make it in a Technivorm Moccamaster. Use a burr grinder, of course. I get my coffee in bulk from Coffeebeandirect.com. It’s incredible.
“RFK, Jr. doesn’t seem to understand how science works.” I agree. He tends to give bad studies the same credence as good ones, and just doesn’t seem like he knows how to weigh evidence. I think he’s sincere in what he believes, which is almost worse than being a liar. At least a liar knows he’s wrong and can be rehabilitated. Kennedy’s entire brain structure is flawed. The brainworm didn’t do him any favors, either. (Oops. Just saw John Dentinger’s post above. Maybe he’s not sincere, but I think his brain is so addled that he actually is sincere.)
We love Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I so much that we have a full size copy on the wall in our guest bedroom. The story behind it is absolutely fascinating, and a sweet victory for the family against a dishonest Austrian government.
Finally, the New Glenn launch as, as you say, “fricking amazing.”
Jerry wroote:
The adjective “paltry” refers to the comparison with the price for which the Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold this month, $236 million.
The problem with this comparison is that 1 dollar in 2025 buys much less than 1 dollar bought in 2006. In fact, $1 in 2006 is equivalent, in terms of purchasing power, to $1.87 in 2025. (I used the CPI Inflation Calculator of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, available on the web. CPI = Consumer Price Inflation.)
If you want to sensibly compare the prices of the two paintings you have to do so either in 2006 dollars (requiring you to translate the price of the painting sold in 2025 into 2006 dollars) or in 2025 dollars (requiring you to translate the price of the painting sold in 2006 into 2025 dollars). You have to do the comparison in constant dollars. The unit of value in which the two prices are expressed has to be the same. (You wouldn’t compare the height of two people with one person’s height is given in feet and inches and the other person’s in meters and centimeters.)
The Klimt painting Adele Bloch-Bauer sold for $135 million in 2006. In 2025 dollars that is $252 million (rounded to the nearest milliion).
Thank you.
“Both were clearly designed to heavily favor one of the combatants—Russia in case of Ukraine; Israel in Gaza,” Miller added.
No matter what one thinks about past injustice, no matter the righteousness of your cause, there is no equity in war. I can think of some concrete reasons why the two sides above are—and always were—favored. It has nothing to do with who Trump likes or what concessions to the stronger side he supposedly allows.
Then tell me of the concrete reasons why the US should favor their geopolitical rival Russia. I’m really curious since I can’t think of any that track with reality.
Hope you’re not about to trot out the “pry Putin away from Xi” pipe dream…
Jerry calls the Hili dialogue confusing:
Here’s how I understand it: When goods are produced in China, for consumption in Poland, the associated CO2 emissions don’t count in the calculation of how much CO2 was produced in Poland.
If a country wants to be responsible for less CO2 emission, one way is to outsource CO2-intensive production to other countries.
Of course, if you are really concerned about how much CO2 your way of life is responsible for, you should look at how much CO2 was emitted in the production of the goods you consume, irrespective of where these goods were manufactured. (I neglect services (for examples, haircuts, violin lessons) here since most services are not traded across borders.)
Nor do the emissions from the ships and aircraft that transport the raw materials to China and the goods to Poland (and the discarded plastic packaging back to Asia for pretend-recycling.) International shipping and aviation, each accounting for 3-4% of global emissions, are not booked to any one country.
Yes. I like to torment my fellow Aussies: “So you’re all into climate change problems, and anti-nuke, but you sell coal and uranium to China…?”
If there were an Australians Club in NYC I’d have been thrown out decades ago.
🙂
D.A.
NYC
One benefit of the obvious failure of COP 30, and the recent analysis (UN?) that the 1.5℃ Paris Agreement limit is just so much wishful thinking, is that maybe we’ll stop pretending that “climate mitigation” is any sort of solution. Maybe. That ship has departed. For myself personally, I have a good actuarial chance of not being around to see the IMO unavoidable crises over declining water resources (e.g. Iran nearly having to evacuate Teheran, Lake Meade’s steady decline, India & Pakistan). Maybe AI or space aliens will save us; I see no prospect of us saving ourselves. I await various grasping-at-straws half-arsed attempts at geoengineering, carbon capture, etc.
What with the Great Replacement and India and China being ~ZPG countries already, I take comfort that the world we will be leaving for our great-grandchildren will be mostly the great-great-grandchildren (because of shorter generation time) of great-great-grandparents who are currently living in Nigeria and Somalia.
Canada has lots of fresh water for those thirsty golf courses in Arizona. Unfortunately it almost all flows north where only 3% of the continent’s population lives and is therefore wasted from the point of view of the other 97%. Making it flow south has been proposed several times but the schemes are, in a word, ambitious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_Development_Canal
Note this scheme even spawned a made-in-Canada conspiracy theory.
Impressive conspiracy-theorising, that. It even includes the Freemasons (no Jews though). Maybe there’s something in the water.
And I expect getting that water from the Great Lakes to the Colorado River would be somewhat problematic.
If anyone wants a full 30-minutes of Svetlana Kapanina flying aerobatics from ground prep through taxi and take-off, the show, and landing, a ten-year old Russian air show video should be at url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQONtYjDlMw
She is amazing…this ain’t ai…it is real aerobatics from a champion videoed in real-time.
For those who are interested in engaging with the RFK Jr. supporters rather than castigating them, you could pay attention to your own words. Above is a great example:
Claim: Vaccines do not cause autism.
Objection: You never proved that.
Response: Countless studies show no evidence that MMR causes autism.
I am not terribly vested in this issue and don’t follow it closely, but as a casual observer I have seen time and again the broader claim about vaccines supported by the narrower evidence pertaining to one type of vaccine—MMR. I can forgive RFK Jr. acolytes for seeing this as a sleight of hand. It’s not 1986 folks. Kids get far more vaccines now—and far more doses. So, quit rolling out the same MMR line. Show the safety studies done for every other vaccine on the US childhood schedule. Show the studies done for the sequencing and cumulative vaccine load in young children. Show the studies comparing entirely unimmunized healthy children to fully immunized. Explain why the US recommendations for childhood vaccines are better than the less expansive recommendations in some European countries: produce the evidence as to why ours is better—if it is. Compare countries with mandatory vaccination schedules and those with recommended ones and show the studies documenting that coercion is the better path to public health.
So, roll out the data—and admit it if there are gaps in the research. Will you convince the RFK Jr. diehards, both left and right? No. You don’t need to. As much as one likes to caricature opponents, there are many thoughtful, educated people who have questions, and snide slurs about how “You don’t know how science works” simply stoke suspicion in the more thoughtful among them. Because many of us do know a bit about people: when the ad hominems and other insults roll out, you are right to wonder about the science or any other form of claimed expertise under question.
Agree
Another thought which is inhibited in the conditions you describe :
What is autism?
I looked at this and took away that there are more degrees of freedom on that word than .. well, I don’t know what.
IMHO RFK, Jr. is Woke Right – so in this scenario, I expect him and his thinktank to do activism to push into areas anyone would ostensibly agree with (“better health”, e.g. “diversity” for the Left), but apply postmodern style sleight-of-word / Dialectic to support the ideology – perhaps re-define “autism” – which itself is broad, but now an activist gets top-down power over it instead of scientists/doctors/physicians asking if more accurate conditions under “autism” can be discerned.
Etc.
Thanks for the very nicely produced video of last week’s New Glenn launch. The two spacecraft were put in a parking orbit at the L-2 Lagrange point a point at which there is a balance of sun and Earth gravity and an object there can station keep on minimum fuel. It will wait there for several months until Earth and Mars come into proper alignment for the craft to be kicked out of this parking orbit and take advantage of a gravity-assist from Earth to begin its ultimate trip to Mars. Sky and Telescope Magazine has a pretty good article on the mission details at url
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/escapade-mission-launches-for-a-long-trip-to-mars/
I don’t drink lattes – they’re ruined espressos. But I like coffee made with a French press. I can make it just how I like it. Cheaper and far simpler than an espresso maker. The morning ritual of a cup of java just can’t be missed. I’m addicted. There are worse addictions.
Regarding many projects and `accomplishments’ of president sunken cost fallacy, I refer the reader, and Mr Zelensky, to Kipling’s “Dane-Geld” (1911).
Regarding RFK, jr, I don’t believe he has any measurable understanding of how science works as a process, and has no desire to, since it would conflict with his means to power. I don’t see much evidence that he really cares one whit about his causes. It has looked from the beginning like his particular method of opportunism.
“Show the safety studies done for every other vaccine on the childhood schedule”
For completely unrelated reasons having to do with my job (I’m an immunologist) and entirely coincidentally, I was just reading this paper; “Association Between Influenza Infection and Vaccination During Pregnancy and Risk of Autism”Spectrum Disorder” (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.3609).
Now this one looked at flu vaccines, which contain thimerosol, aluminum salts and all the other things evil pharmaceutical companies put into vaccines. (Their ultmate goal is to control us with nano-devices they put into the vaccines*, you understand. Or so the skeptics and say.) So this vaccine isn’ton the childhood schedule, but it contains the excipients that people were worried about. It is the medical procedure of vaccination itself that is under attack. Many skeptics claim they don’t work and many people believe that. It is deeply troubling that one of the most successful medical achievements that humans have devised is being undermined by know-nothing rubes scaring an ignorant population. We are doomed.
Anyway, the conclusion; “Maternal influenza vaccination in the second or third trimester was not associated with increased ASD risk.”
This is only one of many studies evaluating vaccine safety. Not all studies involve children or autism; everyone can get vaccinated and fhere are many vaccines available. But claiming these ideas have not been tested is lying. More work is always to be done; there will be new questions and new findings. And those may change our perspective. But to deny what we know through evidence to be true, wll that’s just willful ignorance.
*this is a real claim made by the deranged wing of the vaccine skeptics cabal.
Dammit. I keep screwing up. This was is response to Doug’s thoughtful comment above. Apologies for my stupidity
….and oh my goodness re-reading what I wrote above i see it looks like I was calling Doug an “ignorant rube”. My abject apologies for that too! Doug was asking for evidence, which is right and proper, not claiming g it hasn’t been done. I’m sorry, Doug, I didn’t mean that. It’s RFK and his acytes who are making the claim.
E
No worries, Edward!
Re “the first four numbers in the Fibonacci series”, here’s some math(s) pedantry:
(1) A series is a sum of a list of numbers. A sequence is a just a list of numbers. The given link to “Fibonacci series” is to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence.
(2) Though 1,1,2,3,5,8,… was indeed Fibonacci’s original sequence, the usual one today is 0,1,1,2,3,5…. So January 12th (USA) or 1st December (the rest of the planet 🙂) are good candidates for the annual day, and 01/12/35 should have a special celebration (and maybe an even bigger one on New Year’s day 2358).
And many years ago, one of my precocious high school math students asked, after reading in his math book that the Fibonacci series (yes i think it way have said series rather than sequence, Barbara) was named after Leonardo of Pisa, why wasn’t it called the Pisa series…?
My general opinion of current math(s) textbooks (a.k.a. doorstops) is no secret. I don’t know about the era you taught in (the Mesozoic? 🙂).
GPT-5 tells me: Leonardo of Pisa is known as “Fibonacci” because of a patronymic contraction of the Latin phrase filius Bonacci — meaning “son of Bonacci” — which became the family name Fibonacci used in his writings and by later historians.
And regardless, notable stuff done by individuals is seldom named for a geographic location. Else we might have the Cambridge laws of motion, Zurich theory of relativity, etc. Admittedly we do have the Brandenburg Concertos, but they are named not after the German principality but rather its Margrave, Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Was JSB sucking up for some patronage?
It was early 1970’s and we did work it out pretty much as you did but with a trip to the local jr college library …. as chatgpt was science fiction at best in those days.
On RFK. As a law student I took “environmental law” – when that meant stopping pollution (1999) rather than destroying capitalism, Israel and civilization. (It has changed.. haven’t you noticed?)
But I was surprised to learn that a lot of environmental law is toxic torts which are usually… ambulance chasing at scale. The payoffs are less certain, and the time frame is longer.. but “environmental lawyer” is very often…. scumbag ambulance chaser. For power plants, chemical factories and pharma (vaccines).
Exhibit A is….
D.A.
NYC
Too bad a number of those ambulance companies have paid billions in criminal and civil penalties with less-than-scrupulous heed to patient safety. Here’s just the largest paid by our latest media darling:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history
There seems to be a bit of a confusion withe the date. The opening welcomes me to February 23rd, while further down it invites me to check the page for November 1st to see what happened on November 23rd.
Series vs sequence is rather a thorny convention in some historical cases. The modern definitions are that this is a sequence (a sequence of distinct values, rather than terms in a sum or factors in a product, which would be a sequence), but the historical naming was series.
There are a LOT of field specific terms that go against the formal definitions, as I deal with routinely in the teaching side of my life.
Re the appeasement plan, I expect a TACO. He’s caved on issues which offered less resistance. Maybe he’ll get his Nobel by other underhanded means.
First off, I apologize for my late answer. It is clear that no single vaccine causes Autism. It is clear that Thimerosal (a Mercury compound) didn’t cause Autism. However, that does not completely absolve vaccines. Children have gone from 3 vaccines to 18 (or so I have read). Could vaccines have some cumulative effect? Hard for me to say (either way). Do I think RFK was a good pick? No. Do I think RFK was a surprising pick (his background is the left side of the anti-vaccine movement)? Yes.
Technically correct. However, one can never prove, as a matter of principle, a negative. That is why innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. However, that applies to everything. You can’t prove most claims. How can you prove that this comment was not written based on a conversation with Barack Obama and Claudia Schiffer?
With regard to vaccines and autism, there was never even any hint that there was a connection. However, autism is usually diagnosed around the time that children receive many vaccines, so it sort of sounded plausible to people who are somewhat gullible. Andrew Wakefield consciously used that in an attempt to discredit some types of vaccines. Why? Because he held stock in a rival company and wanted to claim that their vaccines were safer. He was stripped of his licence to practice medicine in the UK.
Taking that into account, wondering if maybe there is some cumulative effect is on par with well, maybe the Moon landings were faked. There is a difference between an open mind and an empty head. There is a difference between healthy scientific scepticism and putting every conspiracy theory on the same level as peer-reviewed research.