Sunday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Sunday, the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s January 25, 2026, and we have cold and snow. Here’s the forecast: we won’t get above freezing this week (temperatures are in Fahrenheit, and the highs and lows are given for each day):

A view on my walk to work. We’re advised to stay inside, but really, 11°F (-11° C) feels balmy and I was invigorated by being outside. Here’s a photo on my walk to work, I think there are 2-3 inches of snow.  Right after I took the photo, a car came by in the opposite direction, towing a skier on a rope, who happily waved at me and said “hi!”.  It’s winter in Chicago!

Appropriately, it’s National Irish Coffee Day.  The problem with this drink is that you should be having it in the afternoon, but the caffeine would keep me up at night (I have one cup of coffee per day, at about 6 a.m., and that’s it).  The delicious and warming drink is made with coffee, a bit of sugar, whisky (Jameson, please) and heavy cream, added as a floating layer by running it over a spoon, comme ça:

It’s also National Fish Taco Day and Burns Supper (the poet was born on this day in 1759, and the supper consists of soup, haggis, mashed potatoes, and mashed “neeps,” or turnips). Here it is with the traditional glass of whiskey. There is often bagpiping when the haggis is served:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 25 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news (as of yesterday afternoon and this morning): A U.S. citizen was killed by a border patrol officer in Minneapolis yesterday, and the photographs contradict the Administration’s description of what happened (article archived here). From the NYT:

Federal officials sought to portray a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident killed by Border Patrol agents on Saturday as a domestic terrorist, saying he wanted to “massacre” law enforcement, even as videos emerged that appeared to directly contradict their account.

The man, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive-care nurse described by the Minneapolis police chief as a U.S. citizen with no criminal record. Federal officials said he was armed, but there is no sign in videos analyzed by The New York Times that he pulled his weapon, or that agents even knew he had one until he was already pinned on the sidewalk.

An agent had already removed Mr. Pretti’s gun when two other agents opened fire, shooting him in the back and as he lay on the ground. At least 10 shots were fired, killing him. Mr. Pretti had a legal permit to carry a firearm, said the police chief, Brian O’Hara.

The shooting on a frigid morning in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood renewed protests and clashes with law enforcement in a city where tensions have reached a breaking point after weeks of aggressive federal immigration action. Federal agents deployed tear gas and flash bangs to drive demonstrators away from the shooting scene as they demanded that local police officers arrest the agents who killed Mr. Pretti.

Officials said protests in Minneapolis had remained mostly peaceful, with a few exceptions. But as dusk fell, officials deployed the National Guard to ensure that demonstrations did not turn violent. At least 1,000 people turned out for a vigil for Mr. Pretti in Whittier Park on Saturday night, despite subzero temperatures.

A colleague of Mr. Pretti, Dimitri Drekonja, said he had worked as a nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis. “He was a really great colleague and a really great friend,” Mr. Drekonja said. “The default look on his face was a smile.”

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Video analysis: Video footage posted to social media and verified by The Times shows Mr. Pretti stepping between a woman and an agent who is pepper spraying her. Other agents then pepper spray Mr. Pretti, who is holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other. His weapon remains concealed until federal agents find and take it from him. Concealed or open carry is legal for permit holders in Minnesota. Read more ›

• Federal claims: President Trump and administration officials declared without evidence that Mr. Pretti intended to attack federal agents. Gregory Bovino, the official in charge of the president’s Border Patrol operations, said that Mr. Pretti was intent on a “massacre.” Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said, “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage.” Their accounts directly contradict video evidence of the encounter. Read more ›

• Investigators blocked: Drew Evans, who heads the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said federal agents had initially barred state investigators from the scene of Saturday’s shooting. Mr. Evans said his agency took the rare step of obtaining a search warrant for access to a public sidewalk, but were still stymied. Federal officials eventually left the scene after clashing with protesters, but the demonstrations had grown large enough by that point to prevent state agents from investigating.

• Self-investigation: Federal authorities said the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Border Patrol, would lead the federal shooting investigation, with assistance from the F.B.I. But senior Homeland Security and Justice Department officials said it was already clear that Mr. Pretti and local officials were to blame.

• Minneapolis outrage: Mayor Jacob Frey accused the Trump administration of terrorizing his city. “How many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” he asked. At least two other people have been shot there by federal agents this month, including Renee Good, 37, who was killed on Jan. 7. Read more ›

• “Force of good”: Accolades poured in for Mr. Pretti from those who knew him. Ruth Anway, another nurse who worked with him, described Mr. Pretti as a passionate colleague and kind friend with a sharp sense of humor. “He wanted to be helpful, to help humanity, and have a career that was a force of good in the world,” she said. Read more ›

The upshot: all signs so far are that Pretti was killed by ICE agents, and though he had a weapon, he was not brandishing it in a way that would justify killing him (there are police protocols on how to deal with armed people, and these were violated). This has all the signs of a murder, with the administration blaming the victim.  I do not trust the government accounts, nor do I trust DHS to conduct an objective investigation of the killing.  I think it’s time for ICE to get out of Minnesota, as what they are doing is not only ripping the country apart, but seems palpably illegal, like the armed response of a dictatorial regime.  I do not know how immigrants with criminal records should be apprehended, as local law enforcement won’t help ICE, but right now it’s more important to stop the violence than continue ICE operations.  The treatment of Pretti by federal agents is both thuggish and incomprehensible.  He seems to have been a good guy, doing a valuable job, and his death is a tragedy.

All this turmoil in America now has, as I’ve said, got me quite depressed, and the turmoil is spilling over onto this website. For the time being, I ask readers not to use threads, including this one, to further comment on what’s happened in Minnesota. If for no other reason, I make this request for my own well-being. Readers had their say in yesterday’s thread, and please do not use this one to continue the discussion. I gave me opinion above, and for the time being I think that should be the last of this discussion.  Please honor this request.  After the snow settles and more facts emerge, we may continue the discussion later.

*More scary health news from the administration: the head of Trump’s advisory panel on vaccines has declared that some—and maybe all— immunizations, considered essential (including polio vaccine!!) should be optional (h/t Peggy).

*Philosopher and now self-anointed biologist Colin McGinn (he says several times that he has two degreees and psychology but also claims he’s a biologist) has responded to my critique of his views about the evolution of “knowledge”. His piece is on his website and is called “Coyne on McGinn” (he doesn’t link to my piece).  I am not impressed. He touts his credentials a lot, and apparently you can’t really apprehend his argument without having read his entire oeuvre. A few quotes:

I am not just a philosopher of mind but have written on many philosophical subjects. I was also trained as a scientist and have two degrees in psychology.

. . . . Coyne is wrong to say that biologists (scientists generally) are more cautious than philosophers; the opposite is true. I am both.

. . . The person out of his lane here is Jerry Coyne. I can guarantee that I have studied a lot more science than he has studied philosophy to judge from these comments (I do have a first-class degree in the science of psychology and used to teach experimental psychology).

After that credential-mongering, he denies what is clearly apparent from his piece.

. . . . This was an opportunity for constructive dialogue between disciplines, but it came out as tetchy incomprehension. All I can suggest is to read a philosophy book on epistemology: Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy would be a good place to start. Coyne never sent me his comments to get my response.

. . . . I was expecting my readers to be philosophers, so I didn’t spell out everything for the non-philosophical reader. This is true of everything on my website; it is not for beginners and I keep it concise.  [It’s apparently not for evolutionary biologists, either.

. . . Pain is important because it is highly motivating and very widespread. There can be other theories, such as tactile knowledge, which would deliver different results for later knowledge. See the articles footnoted. I was simply presupposing earlier work in the present article instead of repeating it.

I see, although his article concentrated on pain as the “primal knowledge”.

. . . Pain is more than adaptive reflexes; it is a sensation.

How does he know that other species feel pain as a sensation? If they don’t, where in evolution did it become a sensation? I stand by what I said, and you can read both articles and judge for yourself. However, apparently you have to have read McGinn’s other works, as well as a lot of other books, as well as being a philosopher, to be able to read his article.  But nowhere does he say: “Warning, for philosophers only.” I’m not going to write a long response to McGinn because it’s not worth it.  The evolutionary scenario he proposes, as well as his understanding of “knowledge” are misguided.

*Ryan Wedding, a erstwhile snowboarder who competed in the Olympics for the U.S., has been arrested in Mexico for big-time drug smuggling and murder, as well as other crimes. There was a fifteen million dollar bounty for information leading to his arrest, but the government hasn’t revealed if anyone claimed it. This is one of those weird stories that makes you wonder how it all happened:

*Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan, in a piece called “The Abyss,” continues his plaint about what Trump is doing, even suggesting that we’re lapsing into a monarchy (that will have to end, though, in three years). He also says that most Americans don’t care about Trump’s depredations, which isn’t really true, but his approval rating still hovers around 40%.  Sully doesn’t spare the invective:

An abyss is being in mid-air in this rupture in our civilization.

It is where lies and truth are entirely interchangeable; where the rule of law has already been replaced by the rule of one man; where the Congress has abdicated its core responsibilities and become a Greek chorus; where national policy is merely the sum of the whims and delusions of one man; and where every constitutional check on arbitrary power, especially the Supreme Court, is AWOL. In that abyss, even an attempt to explain events through the usual rubric of covering a liberal democracy is absurd. Because that rubric is irrelevant.

And so the wheels spin.

The only honest way to describe what is in front of our noses is that we now live in an elected monarchy with a manic king whose mental faculties are slipping fast. After 250 years, we appear to have elected the modern equivalent of King George III, and are busy dismantling the constitution Americans built to constrain him.

The situation is not irrecoverable — the forms of democracy remain even if they are functionally dead. We have centuries of democratic practice to fall back on. But every moment the logic of the abyss holds, the possibility of returning to democracy attenuates. Tyranny corrupts everything and everyone — fast.

. . .How does one even respond to such an obscenity? As a proudly pro-American European by birth, maybe I feel this more acutely. But for this draft-dodging pig to erase the sacrifice of 1,160 men and women from America’s allies in the post-9/11 war on terror is a disgrace. And for what? NATO is all but destroyed for just the momentary, sick pleasure of mockery.

And, yes, all of this is now infused with a triumphant, delusional, and hyperactive mania that will only get worse. Trump’s hubris extends to his speeches, where the mood is essentially sing-songy boredom — as if to say: “Why do I even have to explain myself to these morons when my glories are so self-evident?” And so there is no preparation, no coherence — just a stream of addled, entitled, demented consciousness.

. . . .All of this is devastating enough. More devastating is how Americans are responding. They aren’t. They don’t really care. The president can violate two of the most cherished and basic tenets of Western civilization — that might does not mean right, and that citizens have inalienable rights the government cannot infringe upon — and most Americans just shrug. Almost every person who was outraged by the senile blather of Biden hails Trump’s senile blather as greatness, four-dimensional chess, the art of the deal, etc. The honesty required for any real democratic deliberation is completely absent. We live in a totalitarian culture of lies everywhere — but primarily from the very top. The White House doctors photos to humiliate American citizens. The lies are the point.

The world sees this too. The menace and malaise can longer be attributed merely to Trump, but to America as a whole. A critical mass of the people of this country want to tear up the Constitution in order to seek revenge and retribution on their domestic opponents and end our alliances for the shits and giggles of pissing on the entire world.

That’s strong stuff, perhaps stuff that could be written only by a naturalized Brit who became an American out of love for this country.  I don’t fear the waning of democracy, but yes, to see Trump’s perfidy portrayed as Mencken might portray it is sobering.  Sullivan ends by saying what little we, as distressed citizens, can do: “All we can do now — as this abyss engulfs us — is to tell the truth about it.”  That’s not very much. We can vote, of course, and write our representatives (that won’t do me much good as my Representative and both of my Senators, as well as the governor, are Democrats), but only through the vote can we have a real effect. One can demonstrate, of course, but I don’t that will do much good right now.

*In physics news, Nature reports that it’s not just single atoms or electrons that can be in a state of superposition—a condition in which particles can exist in several states simultaneously (e.g. Schrödingers cat in the box), but large groups of atoms can as well. (h/t Andrew).

Schrödinger’s cat just got a little bit fatter. Physicists have created the largest ever ‘superposition’ — a quantum state in which an object exists in a haze of possible locations at once.

A team based at the University of Vienna put individual clusters of around 7,000 atoms of sodium metal some 8 nanometres wide into a superposition of different locations, each spaced 133 nanometres apart. Rather than shoot through the experimental set up like a billiard ball, each chunky cluster behaved like a wave, spreading out into a superposition of spatially distinct paths and then interfering to form a pattern researchers could detect.

“It’s a fantastic result,” says Sandra Eibenberger-Arias, a physicist at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin.

Quantum theory doesn’t put a limit on how big a superposition can be, but everyday objects clearly do not behave in a quantum way, she explains. This experiment — which puts an object as massive as a protein or small virus particle into a superposition — is helping to answer the “big, almost philosophical question of ‘is there a transition between the quantum and classical?’,” she says. The authors “show that, at least for clusters of this size, quantum mechanics is still valid”.

The experiment, described in Nature on 21 January¹, is of practical importance, too, says Giulia Rubino, a quantum physicist at the University of Bristol, UK. Quantum computers will ultimately need to maintain perhaps millions of objects in a large quantum state to perform useful calculations. If nature were to make systems collapse past a certain point, and that scale was smaller than what is needed to make a quantum computer, “then that’s problematic”, she says.

I though we already knew that everyday objects do obey quantum theory, and classical mechanics is simply quantum mechanics write large, and obeys with high precision the “laws” of classical physics. But if you want to read the article, click on the title below (warning! You must be a physicist!)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss mortality:

Hili: Death spares you the stress.
Andrzej: That’s the gospel truth, but some people believe in eternal life without stress.
Hili: I read a fairy tale once about happy hunting grounds.

In Polish:

Hili: Śmierć oszczędza stresów.
Ja: To święta prawda, ale niektórzy wierzą w życie wieczne bez stresu.
Hili: Gdzieś czytałam taką bajkę o szczęśliwych łowach.

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

From Stephen, an obviously fake but hilarious photo. Trump gets yet another trophy!

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From The Language Nerds; learn about contronyms:

Masih is getting pushback from those blockheads who love the Iranian regime:

Calling Truth “Propaganda”: How Regime Smears Target Masih Alinejad

Patrick peddles regime smears by dismissing Masih Alinejad as “propaganda.” The facts tell a very different story.

Who Masih Alinejad is

Since fleeing Iran’s crackdowns in 2009, Alinejad has built the largest… https://t.co/21aBhUUdF1

— Nima Far (@nima__far) January 24, 2026

From Luana: the head of the Liberal Democrats in the UK is not so liberal when it comes to free speech:

We in the Liberal Democrats are firmly against “freedom of speech”, which has a long history of being misused by fascists and climate deniers. https://t.co/Fs7H2zYJOF

— Climate Warrior🐬 #ClimateJustice🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 (@ClimateWarrior7) January 15, 2026

From reader Bryan, very inventive performance art:

Shoji Yamasakı is a pertormance artist behind the ongoing project Littered Mvmnts. He studies trash caught in the wind, and translates their erratic movement into precise, choreographed performances. pic.twitter.com/y7IpjgT2pC

— Interesting As Fuck (@interesting_aIl) January 24, 2026

From Jay: a woman talks to her woke ophthamologist:

This woman is hilarious 😂 pic.twitter.com/qBdCDcf0ru

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) January 23, 2026

One from my feed; insane haute couture and an imitator:

Recreating a runway

How did he do
pic.twitter.com/Uxf18y755N

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) January 24, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Jewish boy from the Netherlands was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven years old, and would be 91 today had he lived. https://t.co/zjE5UzXUFG

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 25, 2026

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, can you find all 12 mistakes?:

An observation test for your inner 8-year-old. You’ll be doing well to spot 12 deliberate mistakes.From Treasure magazine, 1963Official answers coming soon(Even if you don’t reply, could you please ‘like’ or share this one?)

— Helen Day (@lbflyawayhome.bsky.social) 2026-01-24T08:16:57.067Z

Some good Charles Addams cartoons. Remember him? (He died in 1988.)

Couple more Addams bangers, all with a genuinely eerie quality to them.

— Kasey Gifford (@kaseygifford.bsky.social) 2026-01-19T02:51:58.139Z