Friday: Hili dialogue

December 19, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, December 19, 2025, the fifth day of Hanukkah and National Hard Candy Day. Here’s a short video about complex hard candies are made:

It’s also National Oatmeal Muffin Day (ugh, but they’re better than rhubarb muffines), Holly Day, National Emo Day, and National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day. Why do people wear them (see here for a panoply of them)? Chat GPT gives a long answer which is summarized this way:

Ugly Christmas sweaters are about irony, humor, nostalgia, and togetherness—a way to make the holidays less polished and more playful.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Nooz will be truncated today as I was busy all day yesterday, when I prepare most of the dialogues.

*The suspect in the killing of two people at Brown University (and perhaps the killing of an MIT professor) was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire. I don’t know how they tracked him to that place, but it was surrounded by cops and as they closed in, the suspect apparently killed himself.

The body of a man suspected in the killing of two students at Brown University and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was found in a storage unit in New Hampshire on Thursday night, law enforcement officials said.

The authorities had swarmed the storage facility, in Salem, N.H., earlier in the evening in pursuit of a man wanted in connection with the two deadly attacks, which had stunned New England and set off days of frustrated searching.

Federal investigators obtained a warrant for a unit that they believed was linked to the person they were seeking, according to one official with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing matter. Col. Oscar Perez, the police chief in Providence, R.I., where Brown’s campus is, said the suspect had died by suicide.

Colonel Perez identified the person as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. He said the man was a 48-year-old former Brown student whose last known address was in Miami, and that the motive was not clear for the attack at Brown or the shooting Monday night of the M.I.T. professor in Brookline, Mass. But Christina H. Paxson, Brown’s president, said it was “safe to assume” that the suspect had, during a brief stint as a graduate student in the early 2000s, spent considerable time in the campus building where the Brown attack unfolded.

And the MIT connection (apparently a similar rental car was seen near MIT, as well as the suspect himself):

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that the suspect in the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was his former classmate.

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente had attended the same academic program in Portugal as Nuno F.G. Loureiro, the M.I.T. professor, from 1995 to 2000. Dr. Loureiro, 47, graduated with a degree in physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 2000, according to his M.I.T. profile.

. . .Security footage showed Mr. Neves Valente within a half mile of Dr. Loureiro’s residence, the authorities said.

Ms. Foley said Mr. Neves Valente drove to Salem, N.H., and entered a storage facility within hours of shooting Dr. Loureiro. He was seen in security footage entering a storage unit, wearing the same clothes he had worn in Brookline.

I’m amazed at how quickly the cops can apprehend these suspects. One of the factors appears to be the presence of security cameras everywhere. While you may consider that an infringement on privacy, if it can keep mass murderers at bay, it’s okay with me.

*I’m not quite sure what this means yet, but it’s going to cause a fracas: the NYT reports that “Trump moves to end access to gender-related care for minors.”

The federal government on Thursday acted to put an end to gender-related care for minors across the nation, threatening to pull federal funding from any hospital that offered such treatment.

The move reflects the laserlike focus on the issue by President Trump, who in his first days in office called gender treatments for minors “a stain on our Nation’s history.” The administration’s action is not just a regulatory shift but the latest signal that the federal government does not recognize even the existence of people whose gender identity does not align with their sex at birth.

If finalized, the proposed new rules, announced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a news conference Thursday morning, would effectively shut down hospitals that failed to comply. Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly 45 percent of spending on hospital care, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group.

It follows other efforts by the administration to pull back from or eliminate policies that recognize gender identities beyond being born male or female.

“We want our hospitals returning to healing, not harming, the patients entrusted in their care, or they’re going to pay a very steep price,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at the news conference.

The new rules come one day after a divided House of Representatives voted to approve legislation that would criminalize gender transition treatments for minors and would subject providers to up to 10 years in federal prison. The House is expected to pass another bill Thursday that would bar Medicaid payments for gender-related treatments for minors. The two bills have little chance of passing in the Senate but showed how far the ultraconservative Republican majority was willing to go to deliver on President Trump’s campaign promise to end such medical treatment.

But the proposed rules go much farther, by trying to force hospitals nationwide to stop providing the treatments altogether. A 60-day public comment period will follow, and the rules will most likely be subject to legal challenges before going into effect. If finalized, the rule would be “a death sentence — hospitals have such razor-thin margins as it is,” said Caroline Farrell, a former C.M.S. lawyer, and now an attorney with the firm Foley Hoag. The proposed rule “means just forcing them to stop the care,” she said.

Gender-related treatments for minors, which can include puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapies and, in rarer cases, surgeries, have been a subject of fierce debate worldwide but are endorsed by most medical groups in the United States.

I haven’t read the bill itself, but it seems a bit harsh to prohibit every single bit of medical care related to gender.  What about children who are deeply distressed to the point of suicide (not “suicidality”) and need at least psychiatric care. Andresumably children with “precocious puberty,” a medical condition in which you begin puberty way too early, can still be treated with blockers.  I’ve often said that blockers, other hormones, or surgery should not be given to children with gender dysphoria until they are of age to make a decision (usually past the age of puberty), but surely there must be valid medical exceptions. And is psychiatry—part of medicine—off-limits as well?  It should not be, because gender dysphoria should be treated with compassionate but objective therapeutic (not “affirmative care”), which can be considered a medical intervention.

*The WaPo has an editorial-board op-ed wholeheartedly endorsing Trump’s oil blockade on Venezuela.

A Russian oil tanker en route to Venezuela turned around last week after the U.S. military seized another tanker, full of Caracas crude, bound for Cuba and China. That’s how deterrence is supposed to work, and it underscores why President Donald Trump has announced a full blockade of all sanctioned tankers going in and out of Venezuela. He is moving to choke off the lifeblood of Nicolás Maduro’s illegitimate regime in hopes that the socialist dictator abdicates without firing a shot.

There are three significant risks. First, a blockade risks provoking a confrontation on the high seas that could drag the U.S. into a land war in South America. Second, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis will worsen if Trump stops the export of oil, which could trigger a fresh wave of mass migration toward America’s southern border. Third, if Maduro goes, there’s no guarantee whoever replaces him will be friendlier to U.S. interests.

Nevertheless, the oil blockade is a more coherent and legally defensible strategy to bring about regime change in Venezuela than continuing airstrikes on alleged drug smugglers, which have killed at least 95 people.

The administration frames its Venezuela policy as a drug war against “narco-terrorists,” and Trump this week issued an executive order declaring fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction.” That added to the atmospherics, but according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual reports, Venezuela plays little role in the fentanyl trade. It’s far more enmeshed with cocaine. Considering how poorly Iraq went, another president playing the WMD card gives us déjà vu.

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump will keep striking boats until “Maduro cries uncle.” But whatever product these speedboats are moving is nothing compared to oil for Maduro’s bottom line. If the U.S. really wants to drive a wedge between Maduro and his generals, squeezing oil exports will make it harder for the regime to meet payroll.

Again I’m conflicted (wonky day today).  Yes, we have sanctions to prevent Venezuelan oil from reaching other countries, mainly Cuba and China, but do we have the right to do this to foster regime change? Trump, of course, casts this as a way to keep drugs from reaching the U.S., but that’s not the only aim.  I would like to see Trump at least say that we will NOT send ground troops into Venezuela, nor start a ground war, and I would like, as far as possible, proof that small boats incinerated by our military are carrying drugs.

*Luana called my attention to a piece in a usually satirical site, the Babbline Beaver, about the arrest of canceled professor Francis Widdowson, formerly of Mount Royal University in Canada. Widdowson’s cancellation, which seems unjustified, is based on her questioning whether a Canadian Residential school was “genocidal, and whether a number of bodies of children are buried in unmarked graves around those schools. (there’s no evidence for that, but she was demonized anyway and eventually fired.) Anyway, Widdowson was arrested for trespassing into a campus lawn after she was invited to give a talk about the “graves” and was disinvited by the university disinvited her.  As Luana says, Widdowson “decided to go anyway and speak to students outside.  They banished her from campus and prohibited her from entering.  She showed up anyway and was mobbed then arrested.” From the BB:

Those of you tracking the decaying state of free speech and respect for facts and reason in our woke-mind-virus infected neighbors to the north are probably familiar with the Kamloops Indian Residential School graves hoax. You can read a detailed summary here.

This is a case study of moral panic triggered by fake science peddled by tribal grifters infused with anti-Catholic bigotry. Since launched, it has been adopted as a colonialist-atonement cause célèbre by the Canadian press, academia, and government.

The narrative roiling Canada for over four years asserts that ground-penetrating radar revealed unmarked graves of 215 native children killed at an Indian residential school in British Columbia formerly operated by the Catholic Church.

Before we go further no human remains have been excavated and confirmed. Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the hoax continue working overtime to deflect attempts to dig up the apple orchard that they claim is full of dead children.

Do a search on “Kamloops Graves” and you will be inundated with sensationalist stories from both mainstream media outlets and . In a campaign that would impress George Orwell, this bit of fabulism has been elevated into a species of “my truth” that will live forever in the bowels of leading Artificial Intelligence training sets.

Standing against this onslaught has been Dr. Frances Widdowson, the formerly tenured then fired professor from Mount Royal University. Her recently released book “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us” has mobs of “anti-denialist” indigenous rights protestors foaming at the mouth.

Widdowson was released without charges.  She is an abrasive person, and when I met her I didn’t find her very congenial, but that’s of no matter: she’s been heavily demonized for simply asserting what is true: we don’t know if there are a gazillion dead Native American children buried in unmarked graves in a Canadian residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. There is no evidence for the claim, but in Canada it’s simply unacceptable to even ask that question. And the Canadians won’t permit people to actually try to verify the assertion by looking for bodies. Read the link given above to see what we do and don’t know.

*Trump announced yesterday that he had settled “eight wars in ten months,” and that surely includes the war in Gaza. But the war in Gaza is far from being settled: there is a precarious cease fire and, as the WSJ reports, Hamas is not upholding its promise to disarm and disband.

President Trump’s phased peace plan for Gaza is struggling to move beyond its initial stage, hitting obstacles in Hamas’s refusal to disarm and Israel’s unwillingness to retreat from the enclave until that happens.

The 20-point peace plan that Trump touted as bringing peace to the Middle East helped end two years of brutal warfare and achieve the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages as well as the bodies of all but one of the dead. The initial phase left Gaza divided in two, with Israel controlling a little over half of the enclave and Hamas the rest.

The second phase of the plan requires Hamas to give up governance, disarm and transfer control of the territory to an international force of troops and a technocratic committee of Palestinians who would run it. A Board of Peace, chaired by Trump, would oversee the process. Israel would retreat from most of Gaza and the massive undertaking of rebuilding the shattered land would commence.

But Hamas still controls half of Gaza and refuses to disarm, creating a domino effect that stalls the plan and risks leaving it in limbo between war and peace.

Most countries won’t send troops into Hamas territory as long as the U.S.-designated terrorist group remains there. Some countries are considering sending troops into the territory controlled by Israel, but many, especially Arab countries, don’t want to appear to be supporting an Israeli occupation.

It is a problem that many observers predicted.

“I think the most important sticking point here is reality,” said Ofer Shelah, director of national security policy research at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “From the get-go, the whole idea of what’s beyond phase one was very vague, but this U.S. administration does not do details, does not do complicated, and does not do long term.”

Crikey, even I predicted that this would happen! You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this would happen given that no other Arab state is interested in taking part in the pacification.  The war will not be settled, nor Gaza reconstructed, until Hamas disbands and disarms, and they don’t see any reason why they should.  Until they do, the war cannot be considered nearly over, and the vaunted “two-state solution” is a no-go.  I wonder if all those countries like Canada and the UK which have recognized Palestine as a sovereign state are happy recognizing a sovereign state ruled by terrorists.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron seem to be in the closet:

Andrzej: What are you doing here?
Hili: Keeping my distance from the crowd.

In Polish:

Ja: Co tu robisz?
Hili: Unikam tłumów.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Chicago Born and Raised:

From Masih: three women (two of them with an eye shot out) bring Iran to court, but in Argentina. The English translation from Farsi is given first:

Three women are set to bring the Islamic Republic to trial in a court in Argentina on charges of “crimes against humanity.” Kowsar Eftekhari and Mersedeh Shahinkar, two eye-injured victims of the Woman, Life, Freedom Revolution, and Mahsa Piraei, the justice-seeking daughter of Minoo Majidi, are the three names present in this case as plaintiffs.

This request to initiate criminal investigations has been filed in Argentina’s judiciary with the assistance of the “Iran Human Rights Documentation Center” and the support of the Strategic Accountability Project at the Atlantic Council.

This complaint requests that the Argentine court investigate the role of senior members of the intelligence apparatus, military forces and police, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and also civilian officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s government in this widespread and organized attack against civilians. This indictment names 40 individuals who have committed crimes against humanity, including targeted blinding and murder, but their identities are currently being kept confidential.

The Islamic Republic had previously been tried and convicted in this country for the bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina.

Since the request is only for criminal investigations and not a civil lawsuit, the plaintiffs have no claim for financial damages.

Powerful women who now stand to reveal the hideous and criminal face of the Islamic Republic to the world more than ever.

But I wonder if anything can be accomplished by initiating a court case against Iran in Argentina.

From Luana. Vavilov died at 55 after being put in a gulag by the Soviets. His crime? Sticking up for genetics and opposing the ridiculous theories of the charlatan Lysenko. This man is a hero.

From Simon, who says, “I guess i found something i agree with him on.”

From Malcolm, a very fast dog:

One from my feed; a flying (or rather, gliding) fish:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/2001969370864783746

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. The first one he describes as “Munching its way through condensed spirals of chloroplasts”.  I seems quite full at the end!

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress – though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known"- Bertrand Russell, 1976.Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T16:53:05.725Z

Clearly from Matthew’s new biography of Crick, which I’m well into now (it’s superb):

Was Rosalind Franklin a secret football fan? Cryptic note in her US address book.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-12-18T10:44:10.663Z

5 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The line about mixing politics and medicine or politics and science yielding politics has regularly been heard from Vincent and Dr. Dan over the past year on TWiV. I think it was Paul Offitt who took it one step further when considering real world outcomes for children when he offered that mixing politics and science gives you death.

    Reply

  2. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    You must protest / It is your diamond duty / Ah but in such an ugly time / The true protest is beauty. -Phil Ochs, folksinger (19 Dec 1940-1976)

    Reply

  3. I went looking for details on the gender-care bill, and found them on this substack. The act is called “Safety, Effectiveness, and Professional Standards of Care for Sex-Rejecting Procedures on Children and Adolescents.”

    According to the declaration, sex-rejecting procedures are defined as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations that expose minors to “irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects.”

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  4. I don’t think it’s correct to say that security cameras keep killers at bay, for in this case they did not inhibit the killer’s actions, they merely aided in his apprehension.

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  5. Per WaPo, apparently the Brown case was greatly aided by someone who followed the shooter around before the shooting, after seeing him acting suspiciously in a bathroom there. The guy got the plate number.

    Reply

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