Welcome to Wednesday, November 26, 2025, and a Hump Day (“ཧམ་པ་ཉིན་མོ།” in Tibetan). Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I may take a well-deserved break from writing here, though I will have no Thanksgiving dinner since nobody loves me. It’s also National Cake Day, though pies are better. But a cake is better than no cake, and here from Wikipedia is a German chocolate cake (the name comes from the “German” brand of cooking chocolate, not the nation):
It’s also National Jukebox Day and Blackout Wednesday, referring to the fact that it’s a big drinking day (college students returning home for the holiday get soused in bars).
I’m not sure if there will be much posting tomorrow as even Professor Ceiling Cat (emeritus) deserves a day off. That would mean that the Hili dialogue, most of which I prepare the afternoon before, would be truncated. Bear with me: I do my best.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Zelensky is clearly not happy with the pro-Russian peace deal proposed by Trump, and Trump has indicated that the 28 provisions he suggested aren’t final, nor was his one-week deadline for Ukraine to sign on. (Remember when Trump said he’d settle that war on Day 1 of his presidency?). Now Zelensky and Trump are trying to leaven the agreement and make it easier on Ukraine, but the WaPo thinks that may be problematic.
All these negotiations may be for nothing, however, as the work to make the 28-point U.S. plan more acceptable to Ukraine is precisely what will doom it with Russia, analysts say.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the U.S. had made “tremendous progress” toward a peace deal by bringing Russia and Ukraine to the table.
“There are a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out and will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States,” she said in a post on X. The Ukrainians have said the crucial matter of territory will be resolved directly between Trump and Zelensky.
. . .Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he expected the Americans to soon present to Russia their interim version of the deal following input from the Ukrainians and Europeans, but warned that if it strayed from what Putin demanded at the Alaska summit in August, there would be a problem.
“Because if the spirit and letter of the Anchorage agreement are erased, based on the key understandings contained therein, then, of course, we’ll be in a fundamentally different situation,” he said.
The work to come up with a peace plan that would somehow be acceptable to all sides and end nearly four years of war came as dozens of Russian missiles slammed into Kyiv overnight, hitting apartment buildings and power infrastructure.
Lt. Col. Jeff Tolbert, a spokesman for Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, said the talks continuing through Tuesday with the Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi “are going well and we remain optimistic.” He added they were synchronized with the White House.
I am not optimistic. Putin wants nearly all of the Donbas region of eastern and southern Ukraine—a lot of territory—and some thinks he wants all of Ukraine, but that would have to involve further fighting if a peace deal isn’t struck. Trump’s solution is, at present, unacceptable to Zelensky, and that puts him in a tough spot: either “fight his little heart out”, as Trump rudely said, or give up a lot of his country. As for what I think of Putin, it’s not suitable for a family-friendly website.
*The NYT has two articles about how Mamdani’s election has changed the city’s political landscape towards Israel. First, Mamdani criticized a synagogue for hosting a group that encouraged Jews to move ot just to Israel, buit also to the West Bank:
It was the first high-profile incident since Zohran Mamdani’s election involving one of New York City’s most sensitive flash points: the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
A rowdy protest descended last Wednesday on Park East Synagogue, one of New York’s most prominent Modern Orthodox congregations, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel as well as to settlements in the occupied West Bank. Chants of “death to the I.D.F.” and “globalize the intifada” rang through the air.
Mr. Mamdani, the mayor-elect, responded the next day, saying through a spokeswoman that he “discouraged the language” used at the protest and that New Yorkers must be “free to enter a house of worship without intimidation.”
But it was what he said next that alarmed some Jewish leaders: He chastised the synagogue, saying through his spokeswoman that “these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Mr. Mamdani, who will become mayor on Jan. 1, has struggled to build bonds with segments of the Jewish population, many of whom opposed his candidacy in part because of his sustained criticism of Israel and his pro-Palestinian activism.
And though Mr. Mamdani has said he will protect Jewish institutions amid heightened levels of antisemitism and hate crimes, his initial response to the protest did little to quell that unease and was criticized by some Jewish leaders.
It remains debatable whether Israelis moving to the West Bank, or even living in the “restricted” areas of the West Bank itself, violates international law. You can find arguments for and against that on YouTube. For now I find that moving Jews to the West Bank is at best unwise, especially before a final pace deal is negotiated. But regardless, Mamdani should have kept his mouth shut. His ambit is New York, not the Middle East.
Second, and more serious, Democrats are set to “primary” other Democrats running for Congressional seats because the incumbents are too “soft on Israel.”
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York’s mayoral election this month may have scrambled what had been a clear political imperative for candidates in the city: the need to support Israel.
In a number of congressional races across New York City, challengers are betting that the success of Mr. Mamdani — a vigorous critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians — portends a potential vulnerability for pro-Israel incumbents.
Representative Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat whose district includes Upper Manhattan and portions of the Bronx, is facing a primary challenge from Darializa Avila Chevalier, who helped lead protests against the Israel-Hamas war at Columbia University and has criticized Mr. Espaillat for supporting the sale of weapons to Israel and receiving donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Representative Daniel Goldman, a Jewish Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, seems headed to a primary battle, too. Councilwoman Alexa Avilés, a harsh critic of Israel, and the city comptroller, Brad Lander, who has attacked the Netanyahu government, have both signaled interest in running for his seat.
“There is no denying that U.S. taxpayer dollars are undergirding what is happening: the utter destruction of Gaza,” Ms. Avilés said in an interview. “You can now run for even higher office, as mayor of New York City, and say these things head-on.”
And in the Bronx, Representative Ritchie Torres, another firm ally of Israel, is being challenged by Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman who is trying to court voters opposed to Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas.
“I will invest in the community,” Mr. Blake said on social media when he announced his run. “Ritchie invests in bombs.”
Ritchie invests in bombz? What are these opponents saying? Was Israel not supposed to go after Hamas? Crucially, what would someone like Blake say was the proper action Israel was supposed to take? Remember, Gaza is largely destroyed, and you can blame Hamas for that, as the terrorists hid behind civilians, but the war isn’t over and Hamas is still in charge. It’s as if the “primary-ists” are saying, “Our opponents were too hard on Hamas.”
*A glitch on the “X” (Twitter) site on Nov. 22 revealed that a number of propaganda feeds are actually false, not coming from where they purport to (here and here)
A temporary glitch on X led to a credibility bloodbath for a variety of foreign propaganda accounts that were either posing as Americans or lying about their locations in other ways.
Days prior, Head of Product Nikita Brier had announced a new feature revealing the origin and current location of users. When it rolled out, though, only account owners could view it. That all changed on Friday night, though. In what is assumed to have been a mistake, everyone’s origins and current locations were made public for about an hour before disappearing.
In one instance, it was revealed that one of Hamas’ biggest simps [sympathizers] has been lying about being in Gaza.
The above was posted when it was 65 degrees at night (and 80 during the day), just to give you an idea of the kind of propaganda being spewed. For years, the above account has claimed to be reporting from the ground in Gaza. He’s made hundreds of posts pushing fake claims about genocide, famine, and his own supposed hardships. In reality, his account was created in the United Kingdom, and he’s currently residing in Poland.
This is only one of several examples:
I guess when he said he and his “children” were freezing, he forgot he was still in Eastern Europe. He’s not the only one who got exposed, though. A large number of other accounts that obsess over Israel and Jews, many claiming to be Americans, were also revealed to be foreign ops.
There are a lot more examples, but what needs to be understood is that this is all coordinated. Foreigners, possibly funded by other governments, are creating accounts and using bots to game the algorithms to gain notoriety. They then use those platforms to push vile content under the banner of “America First.” Every bit of it is meant to demoralize and divide Americans, and specifically, the Republican Party.
Another:
One final one. Click on links to go to them:
Last night [Nov. 22], for around an hour, X enabled the feature that shows the actual location from which a tweet originates. Surprise! All those Gazans, tweeting about starving and dodging enemy fire? Actually located in Russia and Pakistan. Those “America First” advocates, who are hostile to Israel? Not exactly American: they are in Ireland, Pakistan, etc.
This I’m not down with since X is now deceiving readers on X by posting lies about their location. I suppose you could defend this as free speech, but it comes from a source that’s not what you think.
*The French now say they’ve caught all four people (two men and two women) accused of strealing over $100 million in historic jewelry from the Louvre. But that don’t have the jewels.
French authorities said they’ve detained four more people in connection to the Louvre heist, including a man suspected of being the only thief to remain at large after purloining the nation’s crown jewels.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said two men, ages 38 and 39, and two women, 31 and 40, have been taken into custody for questioning. Beccuau said all four detainees came from the Paris region, without disclosing further details.
Police said they suspected one of the men of being part of the team of thieves who used a truck-mounted lift last month to break into an upper gallery of the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight.
He was detained in the town of Laval, in western France, though he is from Aubervilliers, the Paris suburb that was home to the other suspected thieves.
Tuesday’s arrests mean investigators believe they have tracked down the entire crew of thieves, having already detained three suspected thieves in the aftermath of the robbery. Prosecutors brought preliminary charges against the three for criminal conspiracy and organized theft. A woman was also arrested on charges of complicity in organized theft and criminal conspiracy.
There has been no word on whether investigators are any closer to tracking down the jewels themselves. Authorities fear the jewels risk being broken down and sold off. The longer the jewels are missing, experts say, the less likely they are to be recovered.
. . . The thieves made off with eight pieces of jewelry from France’s royal and Napoleonic-era collections valued at 88 million euros, equivalent to around $101 million, though French officials say that sum doesn’t begin to capture the jewels’ historical value to France. Thousands of diamonds studded the jewels, as well as sapphires and emeralds the size of lozenges.
Besides sniffing out where the accused thieves may have hidden the jewels, there’s no way to find them (and that presumes they haven’t been removed from their settings) except to to convict them, give them strict prison sentences, and/or make a deal with one or more of them to trade the information for a lighter sentence. They might sing if they’re threatened with stiff punishment: AI tells me they could each get up to 25 years—a long sentence.
*Presumably based on its phylogenetic distribution, or so so the NYT tells us, kissing on the lips has existed for at least 16 million years (h/t Peggy, article archived here).
British scientists say they’ve traced the age of the kiss, to anywhere from 16 million to 21 million years ago, and have found that it was far more common among other species than previously understood.
Ants? They smooch. Fish? Kissers. Neanderthals? Yep, they puckered up, too — sometimes even with us.
But kissing, the researchers said, has always been something of a so-called evolutionary mystery. It doesn’t present much benefit for survival, it has minimal reproductive benefits, and it’s mostly symbolic.
“Kissing is a really interesting behavior,” said Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University who led the study. Dozens of societies and cultures use it, it’s common, and it has weighted symbolism. But, she said, “we’ve not really tested it from an evolutionary perspective.”
In prehistoric kissing, it seems, could be the primitive origins of our search for intimate connection. The act inherently requires vulnerability, and trust. It’s not always sexual and is often used among and between genders simply to show affection, and often between parents and offspring.
Though researchers found evidence of kissing in several species, they narrowed the focus of the study mostly to the behavior of large apes, like gorillas, orangutans and baboons.
But the vast use of the practice surprised Dr. Brindle. She said she had expected examples of kissing among apes and humans, but was surprised to see the gentle behavior shared between bugs, albatrosses and polar bears.
“For some reason, I didn’t expect this many of them to kiss,” Dr. Brindle said.
Among their research groups were Neanderthals, which, despite their differences, shared microbes with modern humans. It leaves open the chance, the study said, that the two swapped spit in not-so-distant history.
Dr. Brindle said she hopes the study can be a foundation for further studies on kissing, and determine — as the study itself notes — whether it is more than Ingrid Bergman’s preferred pastime. Other scientists, she hopes, might start recording their observations of these behaviors while in the field.
“If we had more data on this,” she said, “then we could really start to kind of unpack the potential kind of adaptive advantages of kissing.”
And that’s the whole article.
Well, an ant kiss is not homologous to a human kiss: ants touch mandibles to pass food to each other, an act called trophalaxxis. I don’t know about fish and the article gives give no references. I suppose the age of the kiss is estimated by seeing which primate (and all primates in between) is our most distant relative that still kisses. For 15-20 myr that would be gibbons and orangutans. Still, they may touch lips, but is it a romantic gesture, the way it’s used in humans? (I presume they’re not referring to cheek-kissing.) If the researchers are really making claims that the evolutionary/genetic basis of kissing was present in our relatives with other primates 15-20 myr ago, they’d have to show that all the primates in that group of lineages kiss as some sort of bonding gesture. Sadly, the NYT doesn’t give that information. This is an example of bad science reporting. And it doesn’t even mention the tongue!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has become super cuddly:
Hili: I’m not here to convert you.
Andrzej: But…
Hili: I only came to sit beside you.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie przyszłam cię nawracać.
Ja: Ale…
Hili: Chciałam tylko posiedzieć koło ciebie.
*******************
From Stacy:
From The Dodo Pet:
From Things With Faces, some unhappy plantains:
From Masih: a burqa-wearing Aussie MP (Pauline Hanson) wears a burqa into Parliament after she was denied permission to introduce a bill banning the garment.
In the first image, you see an Australian MP wearing a burqa in Parliament to debate banning the burqa for women.
In the second image, it’s me and my friend, two women who have actually lived under the reality of forced burqas and hijabs imposed by the Taliban and the Islamic… https://t.co/HwD12SiPzj pic.twitter.com/Bi1KTO5R2T— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 25, 2025
And a video, with other MPs objecting vigorously to the wearing of the garment as “disrespectful of faith”. It is a stunt, especially since they won’t debate such a bill:
From Emma. A biological male wins the “strongest woman” contest. The NY Post now tells us that his medal has now been taken away because, competing as a trans-identified male, he violated the competition’s rules.
“This is bullshit. Can we go?”
The Strong(wo)man policy for trans-identifying males is suppression of testosterone to less than 10nM for 12 months.
This isn’t sufficient for any sport, but it especially isn’t sufficient for a sport that centres on strength as its output.… https://t.co/fZPHGTKgl9
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 25, 2025
From Malcolm; how fiber-optic cables are splices. It’s complicated!
Fusion splicing two fiber optic cablespic.twitter.com/Y4OjCLcWGm
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 5, 2025
From Lee Jussim via Luana; how the American Association of University Professors has gone downhill fast (you can find Jussim’s piece here):
New Post, link in reply.
“The AAUP … [was] once was a principled organization advocating and articulating principles of academic freedom, and the justifications for it. It has become a vehicle for progressive activism…[over a 100 years ago] it warned that academic freedom… pic.twitter.com/EQYtqo7z18— The Dark Fiddling Pirate Jussim (@PsychRabble) November 21, 2025
One from my feed; turkeys FTW!
How the tables have turned..🐶🐾🦃🦃🦃😅 pic.twitter.com/4lIdx8lpJR
— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) November 24, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Fench Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old. Had he lived he would be 88 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-11-26T11:46:03.900Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, I knew right off that the medals are reversed. Hegseth is an idiot. NOTE: Hegseth deleted his post but I found a copy online; several people pointed out that Kelly’s medals were reversed because the photo was a mirror image!
. . .and the decline of Scientific American (a screenshot):
“I will have no Thanksgiving dinner since nobody loves me…”
We love you! Sorry that we cannot send you a dinner, but we feast on the daily intellectual nutrition you provide and give thanks for it!
He should move to NYC! We love svete boomer smart Jewish atheists here! I’m GenX but I’m very widely adored.
We can order in Thai and I’ll even supply him with a cigarette ($20 a pack!) if we can rassle up some Landlord beer he likes.
Plus… it is warmer here (less ice injuries) and our mayor isn’t an idiot…. yet. Don’t worry though… we’ve got an idiot in waiting. 🙂
He won’t come though – we simply don’t have the ducks!
D.A.
NYC
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. -Eugene Ionesco, playwright (26 Nov 1909-1994)
Bit of Aussie background here: New Hijabi enjoyer Pauline Hanson (Queensland, like our Deep South) became famous in the 80s for her restrictionist stance on (particularly Asian) immigration. Very stupid.
Lately, however, she’s against rising Islam in Oz. I’m 100% behind this. Culture matters.
It took her a few decades but she’s learnin’. (Weirdly she hasn’t aged… at all.)
Ugh. Don’t even start me on the “West Bank” (actually Judea and Samaria). This “international law” pant wetting is insane: how would we feel if… say.. the Mayor of Moscow or Osaka pronounced you or I couldn’t or shouldn’t move to… Chicago?
The WB/J&S was won – in a war of annihilation started by the Arabs – against Israel.
The Pals aren’t refugees, they’re GAMBLERS who lose at every spin and cry as the’re kicked out of the casino. Gimme a break…
“International Law” here is a sick joke, btw, a popularity contest won by Islamists and commie pukes in the 1970s. This absurdity does my head in.
D.A.
NYC
I am reading about Poland being betrayed by the allies during and after WW2.( I didn’t know about this growing up in a Communist household.)Because they wanted to appease Stalin and he would pitch a fit if they did anything to help Polish independence. Same thing going on today with Ukraine, nobody wants to really take on Putin. The book is A Question of Honor by Lynn Olson. It also explains how FDR’s vision of the UN was compromised by Stalin and his lying about his real geopolitical motives. In our CP household we were gung-ho UN. There are so many mistakes in the past that still cause problems. I am learning about them every day, wish I had investigated earlier.
I never met Jerry but through WEIT a feel I know him a little and am better for it.
” The WB/J&S was won – in a war of annihilation started by the Arabs – against Israel.”
More precisely, it was re-won in 1967. The WB/J&S was absolutely within the legal borders of Israel in 1948.
This is the second time in two weeks that Mamdani has made vague, unsourced reference to “International law” regarding Israel. There is no such relevant law. A reporter needs to ask him point-blank to which “International Law” he is referring.
The only supposed “International law” which gets mentioned re J&S is Article 49(6) of the 4th Geneva Convention, which forbids “forced transfer” of populations by an occupying power. Voluntary immigration by individual families is not “forced transfer”. And, the Geneva Conventions only apply during war between two or more countries. There is no war as Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, and the only sovereign nation involved is Israel – Jordan has zero sovereign claim, and ceded any sovereign claim.
Dr. Eugene Kontorovich has documented dozens of examples of occupation around the world which mirror the J&S situation or worse, and in NONE of them has the UN, or its judicial arms like the ICC or ICJ, taken the stance that they apply to Israel. International law that only applies to one country is not proper International law:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2835908
Mamdani is turning out as bad as many feared: he doesn’t understand that he’s just city mayor.
Thank goodness he’ll never be president.
Yes Mr. Lambert. Our new mayor – and the legions of “River to Sea” kids (mainly women, ahem) inspires me to write an article for my column on “international law” and what it actually means…
He’s a disaster – my main hope is he doesn’t have the power or mechanisms to do much of what he promises. Fingers crossed. He can still wreck a lot of stuff though.
Jerry is a swell chap – in person he’s just like on WEIT. Not a phony. He’d never be alone if he moved to NYC: he’d be a duck upon a happy pond. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
What Kurt said, we your readers love you. How about open comments tomorrow from all of us dining alone, comments from the orphan’s table? I will then be able to report on my experiment with cranberry curd.
I second this suggestion!
Jesus loves you! Even if you are not having dinner and even though He loves you anyway, don’t forget to give thanks to the Almighty J.
It is clear to me that the dog (a Doberman) is playing with the turkeys, but the turkeys aren’t playing back.
And a big sigh about the state of Scientific American. While growing up, I would avidly read and peruse over and over a stack of ancient ones in my parent’s basement. I understand the reasons – they must dumb down to survive and all – but still it’s a sad tale.
The same with National Geographic, only it’s gone wonky Christian because of their current ownership. For some un-godly reason I get emails about their issues, and I swear every other issue has either an article on “Meet The Real Jesus” (and its clear the publisher believes in the myth), OR an article that is basically: “Still Think Cannabis is Harmless? Well, Think Again!!”
Just for interest, does anyone recognise the music used in the dog vs turkeys vid?
I’m guessing Reinhardt & Grapelli, but could be wrong, and I’ve no clue about the title.
’12th Street Rag.’ Loads of versions on YouTube.
OK thanks.
I didn’t know that National Geographic is now owned by Christians. What on earth next?
About a decade ago they did a front cover story about trans.. for some reason.
As we often note around these parts, F.K., institutions (BBC, Pan Am, Time magazine etc) can decrep and decay.. before we notice.
Cheer up – new institutions come about. Take twitter/X for instance. Much of it is for loudmouths (ahem!) but decent smart people post there also – which is how I got into it before I became a twitter/x addict…
D.A.
NYC
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
I though the NG was owned by Disney Publishing. Are you saying that Disney Publishing is Christian leaning?
Dunno, but it seems every other issue of NatGeo I see at the supermarket checkout is Christian-themed. There’s always new information coming out about Jesus’ tomb or Mary’s holiday hints or something.
Weather forecast for Chicago tomorrow is a dreary cloudy and cold, high of 32F. Good day to go into your warm lab, put your feet up and just read all day without worrying about having to write. Maybe have a second coffee-style drink early on. Hopefully you will still take a few minutes to pass on The Princess and anything sent by Dr Cobb for Black Friday morning. Luxuriate!
Btw, if you were in Newport News, my wife says you would be welcome to join us. When I was working we always had a grad student or two over on Thanksgiving because their families lived too far away to go home for just a day. In older age, I guess we should consider making that emeritus profs.
Sweet.
Of course… we people alone at Thanksgiving (me and dog included…) could have a zoom old time!
D.A.
NYC
“The Verge” has published an article that takes a closer look at the glitch on “Twitter/X”.
“Shortly after the feature launched, X removed information about where accounts were created. And disclaimers were placed on locations for where accounts were based, noting that travel, VPNs, and proxies could lead to inaccurate data. This is certainly true for some accounts, however, it’s extremely unlikely to be true for even a majority of those being called out.
Some of these troll accounts are likely state-sponsored influence campaigns. Foreign entities like Russia and China have a vested interest in sowing chaos in the American political system. But it’s also likely that many are driven by monetary gain. While earnings from monetization on X can be paltry by Western standards, it can be life-changing in developing nations.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/827298/about-this-account-reveals-the-scale-of-xs-foreign-troll-problem
Incidentally, Motasem Dalloul appears to be living in Gaza. He posted a video on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/5pillarsuk/videos/gazan-journalist-motasem-dalloul-posted-a-video-of-himself-walking-around-the-ru/1155205946788054/
Thank you, ironically titled Mr. RPGNo1! 🙂 You make a good point though: there’s been a disturbance in the force, a mania even, at X recently as many “Pro America”, MAGA, hard left, right wing ACTUAL racist, Scottish nationalist and (naturally) Pro-Palestine accounts prove to be maintained in Sth Asia and Nigeria, etc.
A good move. Freedom of speech requires transparency.
D.A.
NYC
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd—- (mine is legit. Only NYC could produce such an obnoxious loudmouth as me. So won’t you come to my Thanksgiving WEIT zoom? 🙂
Re the appeasement deal having “a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out” — a rotting corpse has a few delicate metabolic deficiencies.
Jerry, come to LA to have Thanksgiving dinner with us and meet our new cat! We love you!
Remember when Trump said he’d settle that war on Day 1 of his presidency?
No doubt this is the same sort of allegorical day over which we’re told the events of Genesis took place.
I was glad to see the cheat in the World’s Strongest Woman competition was stripped of his title. How the organisers of the competition failed to notice he wasn’t eligible is beyond me.
Regarding turkeys: North Carolina Public Radio today made sure to inform listeners that, while Minnesota produced more turkeys, North Carolina produced more pounds of turkey meat because NC turkeys were larger. (I wonder if NC and NC Public Radio concern themselves with these larger turkeys’ quality of life.) Apparently, US states will not pass up the smallest opportunity to toot their horns. I reasonably assume that it is a manifestation of “American Exceptionalism.” Wear it out, Amurica.
I also hear on today’s NPR’s “All Things Considered” that some claim that the first Thanksgiving get together was somewhere in what is now Texas/the U.S. Southwest, between Native Americans and the Spanish in the 1590s, not in the early 1600s with the English Puritans. Why not also claim that the first Thanksgiving was between or among two or more Native American tribes/nations 5,000 or more years ago? Or between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons in Eurasia 30,000 or more years ago?
The U.S. secretary of transportation in part suggests that dressing better increases civility on passenger planes. I wonder what his recommendation is for buses, trains, cruise ships and ferry boats.
Finally, NPR tells about Bloomberg News revealing Trump envoy Witkoff’s alleged coaching of Russians on how and what to say to persuade Trump. They somehow manage not to say how Bloomberg got this information. Did some U.S. intelligence agency listen in on U.S. envoy Witkoff’s conversation with the Russians and leak it to Bloomberg? If not, then how?
I don’t see Bloomberg saying from where they got the recording: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-25/witkoff-discusses-ukraine-plans-with-key-putin-aide-transcript
Maybe I missed it. But it is not unusual for journalists to keep their sources secret.
And I thought that it was all right for diplomats to do this sort of thing 🙂