Welcome to the first Monday in February: February 2, 2026, and it’s National Tater Tot Day, celebrating the commerical nubs of grated and deep-fried potato. They’re good, though I almost never have them. Some of the history:
Tater tots were developed in 1953 when American frozen food company Ore-Ida founders F. Nephi Grigg, Golden Grigg, and Ross Erin Butler Sr. were trying to devise a recipe to use leftover slivers of cut potatoes that would otherwise be thrown away. They chopped up the slivers, added flour and seasoning, then pushed the mash through holes and sliced off pieces of the extruded mixture.
The product was first offered commercially in stores in 1956. Originally, sales were slow; the family speculated the product was priced too low, so it had no perceived value. When the price was raised, people began buying it. By 1960 Ore-Ida captured 25% of the frozen potato market.
The Tots can also be made into a casserole with ground beef and other stuff; I’ve always wanted to try it but haven’t (it’s popular in the Midwest). Here’s what it looks like, and you can find a recipe here. It uses just a few common ingredients, and takes only 5 minutes to prepare (and 40 minutes to cook). Somebody make one!
It’s also California Kiwi Fruit Day (a friend calls them “gorilla balls”), Crêpe Day, Heavenly Hash Day (a dessert), Hedgehog Day, Marmot Day, World Wetlands Day and World Ukulele Day.
Here’s the best song I know that incorporates a ukulele. The song was, of course written by George Harrison, who loved the ukulele, and here Macca plays an instrument that belonged to the late Harrison. One of the YouTube comments says this:
Look at all the great musicians! This is a live performance from the Concert for George, performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall on November 29, 2002: the first anniversary of Harrison’s death.
And of course it’s Groundhog Day, based on a belief that goes back to Germany in the Middle Ages. I’ll post the result below after they haul out the hapless rodent in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT describes how the federal courts are dismantling the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, and in a big way: there are many cases with similar outcomes.
The Trump administration has gone to great lengths to arrest and detain as many people as possible during its immigration crackdown. But in recent weeks, a deluge of court cases has led federal judges to release hundreds of immigrant detainees back into the country, and threatens to overwhelm the court system.
In case after case, federal judges have found that the Trump administration has been ignoring longstanding legal interpretations that mandate the release of many people who are taken into immigration custody if they post a bond.
The surge in such cases has dominated the court dockets in some districts, overwhelming government lawyers who have to defend the detentions. And the wave of people who have been set free has upended the Trump administration’s effort to keep detained immigrants locked up indefinitely, even if they do not pose a public safety threat.
Lawyers representing detainees have been filing rafts of what are known as habeas corpus petitions — court filings that compel the government to justify holding someone in custody. In the vast majority of cases, judges are siding with the detainees and ordering their immediate release, or ordering immigration judges to hold bond hearings, according to 10 lawyers interviewed by The New York Times, who said their practices had filed dozens of habeas petitions over the last couple of months.
Jessie Calmes, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta, said that she had filed at least 40 petitions since November. Every one had been granted, she said.
“A lot of these people have been here more than 10 years and have U.S.-citizen kids,” she said. “They’re people who were picked up on the way to work, at their job site or for a traffic violation.”
The surge in habeas petitions has strained federal courts in some states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, with hundreds of new cases a month in some court districts, according to a person with knowledge of the
And the explanation:
The wave of habeas petitions traces to a key change the Trump administration made in how immigration detention decisions are made.
For decades, immigration judges — who are separate from the federal courts and overseen by the Justice Department rather than the judiciary — granted bond to immigrants in detention who were not public safety threats or flight risks, allowing them to live and work in the community while pursuing their cases.
But last year the Trump administration moved to make virtually everyone who is in the country unlawfully subject to mandatory detention. When the policy change was affirmed by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, it took discretion away from immigration judges.
Well, I’m glad that everyone gets adjudicated now instead of just snatched up and deported. But what puzzles me is that immigration justices are said to be overseen by the Department of Justice, but Trump’s policy change has been affirmed by that very department. So why are the judges taking precedence here when, one would think, they should be judging cases by the policy created by the DOJ. Regardless, it’s clear people want deportation policy applied most strongly to undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes beyond entering the U.S. illegally.
*I’m still betting on (and still ambivalent about) the likelihood that the U.S. will attack Iran in a week. But remember—I am not pundit. The NYT’s Bret Stephens is, however, and in his latest column he ponders the question, “Can we let Iran get away with mass murder?”
So far, a U.S.-based Iranian human rights group says it has verified the killing of more than 5,500 protesters and is still reviewing 17,000 additional cases. Many thousands more were injured, and independent reports indicate that tens of thousands of Iranians have been arrested or arbitrarily detained. An Iranian doctor in the city of Isfahan told The Times of having seen “young people whose brains were smashed with live bullets, and a mom who was shot in the neck, her two small children were crying in the car, a child whose bladder, hip and rectum was crushed with a bullet.”
That’s just one eyewitness report among many. Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s judiciary promises punishment “without the slightest leniency.” His name is Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei. Will the world let him get his way?
ran could always become more pliant, if only to play for time. But the odds are growing that the president will order some sort of attack once sufficient U.S. forces are in the region, which could happen as early as this week. That, in turn, makes it more likely that Israel will become involved — either because it will respond to Iranian retaliatory missile strikes or because it will seek to pre-empt them by hitting first. Whichever way, this will not be a Venezuela-style sub-three-hour war.
Is the military option wise? The argument against it is that it’s unlikely to achieve much.
. . .And something else: Do we really want to live in a world in which people like Mohseni-Ejei, the judicial leader, can terrorize people with utter impunity? Have decades of vowing “Never again” — this Tuesday marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz — taught us nothing more than to offer pro forma condemnations when thousands of protesters are gunned down by modern-day Einsatzgruppen?
I know that, for now, thoughtful Americans are much more alarmed by the thuggish killing in Minneapolis on Saturday of Alex Pretti and by the smears to which he’s been posthumously subjected by senior members of the administration. I also know that the president who is so grotesquely at fault for inflaming the situation in Minnesota makes an unlikely champion of protesters in Iran.
But if Pretti’s death is a tragedy, what do we say or do in the face of the murder of thousands of Iranians? Are they, as Stalin might have said, just another statistic?
I think Stephens’s answer to his title question is “no.”
*And we have to look at the National Review which reports a pathbreaking settlement in favor of a young person who “detransitioned.”
A woman who received a double mastectomy at the age of 16 under the guise of transgender-related healthcare was just awarded $2 million in the first successful medical-malpractice lawsuit brought by a destransitioner.
Fox Varian sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon for facilitating her gender-transition double mastectomy in 2019, independent reporter Benjamin Ryan who attended Varian’s recent trial, said. Although a host of detransitioners have sued doctors who rush to “affirm” gender confusion with life-altering surgeries, Varian’s is the first known successful lawsuit.
Claire Deacon, Varian’s mother, was led by her daughter’s psychologist to believe that breast removal was the only way to heal Varian’s gender dysphoria, she told the jury. At first Deacon told Varian’s psychologist Kenneth Einhorn that top surgery was “never gonna happen” if she could help it.’
“This man was just so emphatic, and pushing and pushing, that I felt like there was no good decision,” she said, according to an Epoch Times report. “I think it was a scare tactic: I don’t believe it was malice, I think he believed what he was saying … but he was very, very wrong.”
The idea of her 16-year-old daughter receiving a mastectomy made her “physically ill,” Deacon said. But Deacon was led to believe by Einhorn that Varian would be unhappy unless she was affirmed in her gender dysphoria. It was the “the hardest, most difficult, gut-wrenching” decision, Deacon told the jury.
Defendants Einhorn and plastic surgeon Simon Chin implied that Varian wanted the medical procedure, and was even at risk of suicide should she not receive a mastectomy. Chin’s attorney called Deacon’s consent a “critical fact” of the case, and asked jurors what might have happened to a potentially suicidal Varian had Chin refused the surgery.
Varian’s legal team argued that the matter in question was not if the surgery should have been performed on her because she was a minor, but if the doctors correctly assumed Varian had gender dysphoria. Defendants did not notify Varian of “the risks, hazards, and alternatives” before surgery, her legal team claimed.
We will see a lot more of these cases, since “affirmative care” is not “objective care”, but a form of rah-rah pushing of those with gender dysphoria to get hormones and then surgery. Especially when this is performed on kids under 18 or so, one can persuasively argue that such children cannot make rational decisions; nor do doctors always apprise patients of the risks of transitioning. This verdict alone is going to put a big chill on the “affirmative care” movement for children with gender dysphoria: $2 million is a lot of dosh.
UPDATE: There’s an article about the case in this morning’s Free Press, “A legal first that could change gender medicine” by Benjamin Ryan (article archived here). An excerpt:
I spoke about the trial with three prominent pediatric gender-care psychologists who have been critical of the field: Amy Tishelman, Laura Edwards-Leeper, and Erica Anderson, the latter of whom served as an expert witness for the plaintiff. All three said that pediatric gender medicine is facing a long-overdue legal reckoning.
Varian’s case, Edwards-Leeper said, “should be a wake-up call to American medical and mental health organizations to stop ignoring the growing body of research showing how the patient population has changed and revealing serious flaws in current practices. If we do not course correct immediately, I predict we will see either continued lawsuits and detransition tragedies or increasing bans on care, both of which will hurt the gender-distressed youth the field is trying to help.”
“They had every opportunity to slow this down, to do the work, to follow the standards, to say not yet, to ask questions, to explore,” Deutsch said during his closing argument of Einhorn and Chin’s care of Varian. “And instead, they did nothing. They abandoned all of the guardrails, and then tried to sell to you that no guardrails exist. And a vulnerable child paid the price.”
*The documentary “Melania” about Trump’s wife has been universally panned by critics. And it still isn’t recouping its cost, but the AP reports that it’s actually doing quite well for a documentary:
Promoted by President Donald Trump as “a must watch,” the Melania Trump documentary “Melania” debuted with a better-than-expected $7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The release of “Melania” was unlike any seen before. Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million for the rights, plus some $35 million to market it, making it the most expensive documentary ever. Directed by Brett Ratner, who had been exiled from Hollywood since 2017, the film about the first lady debuted in 1,778 theaters in the midst of Trump’s turbulent second term.
While the result would be a flop for most films with such high costs, “Melania” was a success by documentary standards. It’s the best opening weekend for a documentary, outside of concert films, in 14 years. Going into the weekend, estimates ranged from $3 million to $5 million.
But there was little to compare “Melania” to, given that presidential families typically eschew in-office memoir or documentary releases to avoid the appearance of capitalizing on the White House. The film chronicles Melania Trump over 20 days last January, leading up to Trump’s second inauguration.
The No. 1 movie of the weekend was Sam Raimi’s “Send Help,” a critically acclaimed survival thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. The Walt Disney Co. release debuted with $20 million. The film, with a $40 million budget, was an in-between kind of release for Raimi, whose hits have typically ranged from low-budget cult (“Army of Darkness”) to big-budget blockbuster (2002’s “Spider-Man”).
. . .But most of the curiosity was on how “Melania” would perform. A week earlier, the White House hosted a black-tie preview attended by Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy, Apple chief executive Tim Cook and former boxer Mike Tyson.
. . . . “Melania” didn’t screen in advance for critics, but reviews that rolled out Friday, once the film was in theaters, weren’t good. Xan Brooks of The Guardian compared the film to a “medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.” Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it a “cheese ball informercial of staggering inertia.” Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “To say that ‘Melania’ is a hagiography would be an insult to hagiographies.”
But among those who bought tickets over the weekend, the response was far more positive. “Melania” landed an “A” CinemaScore. Audiences were overwhelmingly 55 and older (72% of ticket buyers), female (72%) and white (75%). As expected, the movie played best in the South, with top states including Florida and Texas.
Here are the critics’ and public’s ratings of the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. I have never seen such a huge disparity, nor a critics’ rating that low! The Popcornmeter must reflect a dogpiling of Republicans on the site, as well as those “old, white females”:
*Michael Shermer has an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, “I’ve reported on UFO sightings for decades—and come to this conclusion.” What is the conclusion?
I have been following and writing about UFO phenomena and the people who believe they represent alien visitation since the 1990s, and until recently the topic was always largely treated by the public and media as fringe and beneath serious consideration. That began to change in 2017, when The New York Times published a front-page story about the Pentagon having established the secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program to learn what was really going on with all these sightings, many of which happened over military facilities.
Since then there have been Congressional hearings involving, not tinfoil-hat-wearing kooks, but — for example — former Navy pilots David Fravor and Ryan Graves and government intelligence employees Luis Elizondo and David Grusch, who told Congress and millions of online viewers that the U.S. government was covering up evidence of alien visitation. The UAP acronym, gradually adopted by the Pentagon around 2020, signifies the subject’s transformation into the official conversation.
All of this was packaged into a documentary released last year by the noted filmmaker Dan Farah, “The Age of Disclosure,” which has been widely reviewed in mainstream media and discussed not only on popular podcasts with UFO enthusiasts but at the highest levels of government, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
. . .In my own classification system, I put reported UFO and UAP [“unidentified anomalous phenomena”] sightings in three categories: 1. ordinary terrestrial (balloons, camera/lens effects, visual illusions, etc.), 2. extraordinary terrestrial (Russian or Chinese spy planes or drones capable of feats unheard of in the U.S.) and 3. extraordinary extraterrestrial (alien presence).
I strongly suspect that all UAP sightings fall into the first category, but other commentators suggest the second, noting that they could represent Russian or Chinese assets using technology as yet unknown to American scientists, capable of speeds and turns that seemingly defy all their physics and aerodynamics.
That hypothesis is highly unlikely. It is simply not possible that some nation, corporation or lone individual — no matter how smart and creative — could have created an aircraft of any sort that would be centuries ahead of the West’s present technologies. It would be as if the United States were flying biplanes while the Russians or Chinese were flying Stealth fighter jets, or we were still experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets while they were testing SpaceX-level rocketry. Impossible. We would know about all the steps leading to such technological wizardry.
Finally, could UAPs really be space aliens? It’s not impossible, but it is highly improbable. While intelligent life is probably out there somewhere, the distances between the stars are so vast that it is extremely unlikely that any have come here, and what little evidence is offered by UAP believers comes in the form of highly questionable grainy photographs, blurry videos and stories about strange lights in the night sky.
What I think is actually going on is a deep, religious-like impulse to believe that there is a godlike, omnipotent intelligence out there who 1. knows we’re here, 2. is monitoring us and is concerned for our well-being and 3. will save us if we’re good. Researchers have found, for example, an inverse relationship between religiosity, meaning and belief in aliens; that is, those who report low levels of religious belief but high desire for meaning show greater belief in extraterrestrials. They also found that people who self-identified as either atheist or agnostic were more likely to report believing in ETIs than those who reported being religious (primarily Christian).
From this research, and my own on the existential function served by belief in aliens, I have come to the conclusion that aliens are sky gods for skeptics, deities for atheists and a secular alternative to replace the rapidly declining religiosity in the West — particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, where, not coincidentally, most UAP sightings are made.
It’s a religion, Jake! That’s what I concluded a while back from the fervor of adherents, who refuse to listen to any evidence against their faith. Where are the crashed spacecraft and pickled bodies that the adherents claim are somewhere in the U.S.?
*The Wall Street Journal has a list and description of “20 songs that defined America“: basically a song for each decade since the 1840s. I’ll list the last 8 (songs that arose since 1956), and make a few comments:
First, the criteria:
In the 19th century, a song that sold 2,000-5,000 copies of sheet music could be considered a hit; a blockbuster moved 10,000-20,000. By the 1890s, the industry’s scale exploded, with top songs selling more than 100,000 copies, and rare megahits supposedly reaching the million mark (their publishers at the time may have been inflating numbers, according to the Library of Congress).
When radio—then record players, then TV, then MTV, then streaming services—emerged, tallies were taken differently, and success was measured accordingly. But almost since its founding, America has had hit songs that often defined an era.
Here’s a look at 20 such songs, the artist that made them famous, and what they reveal about their times.
12.) Hound Dog (Elvis Presley, 1956)
13.) I Want to Hold your Hand (The Beatles, 1963)
14.) Stayin’ Alive (The Bee Gees, 1977)
15.) Billie Jean (Michael Jackson, 1983)
16.) Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks 1990)
17.) Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana, 1991)
18.) Porcelain (Moby, 1999)
19.) Hey Ya! (Outcast 2003)
20.) Uptown Funk (Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, 2014)
It’s not a bad list, though I’d put Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” (released 1954) in place of “Hound Dog,” since I think the Haley song was really the first popular rock and roll song. I still remember the first time I heard it, when I was a kid in Greece, and I recognized that something new had arrived. Songs after the Nirvana record I can’t comment, as that’s where my experience stops. As for why “I Want to Hold Your Hand” defines the era, the paper says this:
What it says about America: Amid protest and upheaval, America embraced catharsis and connection in its pop music. “You can make the case that the same girls who were flocking to these stadiums, 10 years later were marching in the streets for women’s liberation,” says Fink. With Beatlemania, argues Fink, “huge masses of women got used to smashing through police barricades.”
Well, I don’t agree that the song is a harbinger of feminism—that’s stretching it. It was simply the first really popular song of the best rock group that ever existed. And there’s a good argument for adding to the list Sam Cooke’s “A change is gonna come“, as there are really no soul songs, much less songs that limn the civil rights movement of the Sixties, an epochal change in America. Pity that the song came out in 1964, in the same decade as the Beatles’ song. Here it is anyway, because I love it:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili casts a cold eye on postmodernism:
Hili: What is this postmodernism?
Andrzej: It’s a synonym for post-rationality.’
In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest ta ponowoczesność?
Ja: To synonim postracjonalności.
*******************
From The Language Nerds, a gorgeous sign. Find the mallard!
From Give Me a Sign:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Masih. This protestor was killed by the Iranian regime not long after being arrested:
Do not stop talking about Iran.
This is what is happening right now.
Taha Soleimani, a 19-year-old young man, disappeared on Friday, January 9.
Twenty days later on January 29, his body was returned to his family from Kahrizak, bearing clear signs of torture.
Taha was buried in… pic.twitter.com/KUO26BsTJK— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 1, 2026
From Malcom; imagine what a poorer world it would be without owls!
Owl’s are cats with wings. 😄 pic.twitter.com/KNCl7pUcyD
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) January 31, 2026
From Luana,
We don’t talk enough about the student protests at Wellesley College in Feb 2014 against an outdoor public sculpture called “Sleepwalker” which students claimed was “harming” them. https://t.co/PE4bFFo1cJ pic.twitter.com/lJDt1yppxI
— Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) January 31, 2026
The Brooklyn-based artist had installed the piece outside of the college’s Davis Museum, which was hosting a concurrent exhibition of his work. Sleepwalker was immobilized in the frosty landscape, but students saw a threat and created a petition for its removal from the lawn. Their claims that the sculpture produced apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts about sexual assault on the all-women’s campus—well-founded or not—in many ways presaged the debates still raging today about free speech and abuse.
From Simon. The public doesn’t agree with this tweet, though:
LOL. Exactly 😎 pic.twitter.com/SdHLxDf8mY
— Lakota Man (@LakotaMan1) February 1, 2026
One from my feed: shadows of elephants.
Nature gives us better effects than movie. pic.twitter.com/u66rveeCa3
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) February 1, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Belgium Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as his train pulled into Auschwitz. He was 8 years old. https://t.co/rEm84e1WBS
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 2, 2026
Two from Matthew. There are a lot more images and manuscript pages at this remarkable site documenting sixteenth-century Mexico:
One of the most extraordinary documents ever created by humans. The 12 volume manuscript "General History of the Things of New Spain", created in 1577 by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and a group of Nahua elders, authors, and artists, it describes the culture of indigenous Mexico.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-01T16:30:32.356Z
A remarkable fossil—of an insect!
I usually stick to echinoderms, but this insect was so stunning.This is a Cretaceous aged Neuropterid insect, Hemerobidae sp.#FossilFriday
— David Clark (@clarkeocrinus.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T15:53:40.272Z
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
Jobs are like going to church: it’s nice once or twice a year to sing along and eat something and all that, but unless you really believe there’s something holy going on, it gets to be a drag going in every single week. -Thomas Michael Disch, science fiction author and poet (2 Feb 1940-2008)
Music. First here are my contributions on World Ukulele Day. Benny “King” Nawahi and his “Queen of the South Sea Isles” and George Formby with “Mr. Wu’s a Window Cleaner.”
Politics. “Regardless, it’s clear people want deportation policy applied most strongly to undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes beyond entering the U.S. illegally.” Actually, there’s a majority that want all illegals out, at least that’s what CNN reported.
“The Popcornmeter must reflect a dogpiling of Republicans on the site, as well as those ‘old, white females’.” Given that the majority of the people who’ve gone to see this are probably MAGA, is the viewer rating that surprising? I think it’s more likely that politics bias is reflected in the reviewers’ input. A bad review gives them a moment on the virtual barricade.
100% agree with Shermer. The exact nature of the UFO/etc. religion though is unclear – is it supernatural? I think not really – but not 100%. It is very funny.
Gnostic cult religion seeks escape from a prison that is perceived through gnosis – awakening to a divine spark that is incarcerated by a demiurge – an evil demon artisan of the universe. This demiurge can take any form, really, and does not have to be literally a red guy with horns.
Hermetic cult religion seeks to transform the world.
New Age religions can a blend of those.
I think Gnostic thought fits best for UFOs. The UFO Gnostics have a secret interpretation of the ordinary that points to some salvation – maybe the aliens will come take us away, give us techno toys, or blow us up to the cosmos.
(Bold added):
“Now is a great time for new religions to pop up. There are people who get religious about jogging, they get religious about sex…. Health foods have become the basis of a religion. ESP, of course, flying saucers, anything is fertile ground now. There’s a new messiah born every day.”
-Tom Wolfe (writing in 1980?)
20 Years of Rolling Stone; What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
Friendly Press
1987
Re : Rock Around the Clock – agree – IMHO that original recording holds up today – very simple, clear, great sound, memorable, etc. – I can see how it would stand out.
Excellent! Thank you, Andrzej.
One of the critics of the new Melania movie said this:
“The movie is so bad that if it were shown on a plane, people would still walk out.”
🙂
Pure TDS. Movies on planes are shown on seat-backs. Movies are picked by passengers.
It’s a joke! But I do agree that Trump has a derangement syndrome.
Or we could use it to bomb Iran.
That’s hilarious! Drop copies all over the country.
A quick google will reveal that the movie had massive buyouts by rich MAGA folk to make it look like it sold out in places it didn’t- the lies and fakery of MAGA is always evident. Though I’m sure there were some pro-MAGA cities where it was popular without shenanigans.
I went to a birthday party on Saturday and everyone was talking about Trump shitting himself in the oval office. It seems to be true. Ugh.
X.com and BlueSky don’t mention (at least one their home pages) any problems with Trump. They are not exactly Trump-friendly places (the posts are decidedly anti-Trump),
Could be something along the lines of those liberals-in-the-street interviewed just after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania who said so confidently it was chilling: “Of course Trump set it up. They just didn’t tell the patsy he was gonna get his head shot off.”
You are so right (as in correct). I encounter folks who think the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was not for real, all the time.
NOVA on PBS recently aired an episode about the UFO phenomena, with those truth claims by expert pilots and so on, along with analysis by some dedicated investigators. At first, I was wondering if the show would go lightly on the debunking, but actually they did a good job showing how many of these are very explainable. Not UFOs, but simply misinterpretations of infra-red imagery which is what these latest military sightings tend to be.
The Tater Tot creation is a convenience version of what is, in the UK, a cottage pie – the minced beef version of a Shepherd’s Pie – though the topping over here is mashed potato rather than convenience food (though it cannot be long before someone puts mash in a can or box in the freezer aisle).
I agree about Rock around the clock though my first exposure to Rock was Elvis. My HS brass band even had a March version of the great Bill Haley number.
But then I heard Fats Domino and recognized the real thing
I filed a habeas corpus petition once, had to look up how to do it. Its basically: “OY! why you got my guy in your clink?” – hehehe They replied and let him go I think.
There’ll be many more detrans lawsuits I think. I hope.
D.A.
NYC
ps Nice to hear about other WEIT’s various experiences at the Pyramids last evening.
GO if you get the chance, despite the camels and MERS. 🙂
On the cute scale that owl cleans up! I didn’t know one could keep them as a pet, how radical! (prob a lot of work, a friend who keeps birds assures me). I’ll stick with dogs though and I am getting another dog this week!
Certainly those songs were generational, and excellent.. but from a “facts” perspective publishers’ claims about sales I think are a bit like Hamas death numbers: unreliable and inflated.
D.A.
NYC
UFO’s: All fall into Shermer’s category 1. I roll my eyes when news outlets take this stuff seriously. It makes me wonder how naive they are about the rest of their reporting as well.
Melania: The press hates her so they hate her movie a priori.
Iran: No one knows, probably not even Trump. He’s still pressuring for a “deal,” but I don’t think the Iranians will accept his terms.
Deportation: This is classic Trump. He blows everything apart and the courts slowly put things back together again but not before there’s a big mess. The net outcome? Also typical Trump: some bad, some OK, but there’s always chaos. I feel for the people who are wrongly detained and then released. They’re never made fully whole. Trauma cannot be reversed.
I think they’ll be fine, Norman. All people who enter a country illegally, or who illegally over-stay a visa, know before they cross the border that their continued residence depends on the country’s immigration laws being haphazardly and ambivalently enforced. Sometimes they evade them, sometimes they get caught. Sometimes they get paroled (“forgiven”), sometimes they don’t. Anyone who would be traumatized by arrest for breaking the law of the country they snuck into should go somewhere else, or stay home.
It is to America’s credit that many migrants come illegally because they can get away with it, most of the time, and support themselves through work. (It’s a tribute to the energy of the IRS that they have ways to collect income taxes from aliens who work illegally!) You should be thankful that your welfare couch is not so generous that it draws unemployable people from around the world to lie on it, with idle time to commit crimes and agitate against American values.
The only way to resolve this ambivalence is for Congress to pass an Border Rationalization Act that says anyone can enter and work in the U.S., just walk in. The Executive would then be legally able to detain and deport only those who got in trouble with the law, and then after a suitable period the survivors would automatically get Green Cards. This is pretty much what many commenters want, even if they say they don’t favour open borders. Maybe the Democrats should campaign on this for the mid-terms in their appeal to independent voters without losing their base. Congress can, after all, make any law it wants and tell the Executive to enforce it.
This isn’t quite true. Illegals make heavy use of the welfare system. Of course, they also use the medical and school systems. The rule is “don’t ask, don’t tell”.
In theory, there already are limits on public assistance for illegal and legal immigrants. Enforcement is around zero.
Some number of years ago, Mint published an anti-immigration article (definitely not approved by Mint itself). Of course, this triggered a huge controversy and lots of comments.
Many of the comments amounted to
“If I checked the immigration status of people applying for welfare, I would be immediately fired”
I’m trying to be scrupulously fair here, hoping to thus justify one-on-one. I’m pointing to the study from the Cato Institute which I haven’t read yet that claims that “immigrants”, and I’m not sure yet how they define the term, draw less welfare than the native born (which is heavy use to begin with.)
If Cato means “all non-citizens” then yes, you’d expect that large group of aliens to use a lot less welfare than the native-born because they include aliens on work visas and student visas who would not be drawing welfare at all. Additionally, the native-born include children of illegal aliens (and all other aliens.) If for some reason the children of illegals (who would be fully eligible for welfare because citizens) draw more welfare, this would bump up the welfare dependency of the comparator native-citizen group. And yes, if the immigration status of welfare recipients is unknown, then the data are corrupt.
So that’s where my benefit-of-the-doubt supposition came from that illegal aliens flocking to the U.S. are coming to work, not to draw welfare. Even if some do end up on welfare just as some do commit crimes, that would be beside my point unless the welfare they draw outweighed their benefit as tax-paying workers. A Cato spokesman made the point that it would be more productive to make welfare harder to get for everyone.
You won’t be surprised that this issue has been studied to death.
From “Los Angeles and Welfare” (by George Borjas, America’s leading immigration economist)
Having lived in California for a long time, I followed the budget crisis there with some interest. Last night, I ran across this item in Instapundit: “20% in Los Angeles County receive public aid.”
I am sure that I’m not the only one who’s noticed how almost all of the discussion over California’s budget problems managed to avoid using such words as “immigrant” or “illegal”. So I decided to do a few calculations using the 2008 Current Population Survey to follow up on Instapundit’s remark. Well, here are some interesting results for your perusal–no remarks are needed:
All statistics give the fraction of households in the LA metro area that receive some type of assistance–either cash, food stamps, or Medicaid:
All households: 20.9%
Native households: 12.7%
Immigrant households: 33.2%
Immigrant households with a citizen head: 26.4%
Immigrant households with a non-citizen head: 40.1%
Just to put this to bed:
Ref: https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-welfare-native-born-americans 27 Jan 2025.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” changed my life.
I was waiting to get a haircut when I was ten years old, and picked up the freshly printed Life Magazine announcing the Beatles. I hadn’t heard them or of them, and remember being simultaneously excited and skeptical that their music could be so good.
A few weeks later, I was with a male friend who brought me to his house. This friend had a sister, who we were told actually had some Beatles 45’s. Well, I just HAD to hear this music. We went into her room (the first time I had been in a female’s room outside of my own sisters) and she put “I Want to Hold Your Hand” into her compact phonograph.
In ten seconds my childhood ended. Three very quick bluesy chords ending with the kick drum and simultaneous cymbal crash, root chords in a building crescendo, and then a repeat ending with kick and crash – my mind was blown. I liked the song – but that beginning!
A couple a days later, I was walking along a sidewalk singing that tune out loud. Some kids shouted to me “That song sucks!” and for the first time in my life I shouted at someone in public “The Beatles are great!”. I may have been only ten, but, in retrospect, I was now a teenager. And somehow I knew I belonged to something larger – my generation. And music was going to be important to us.
Ha. True enough….but likely your being in semi-intimate proximity to a girl (who I’m imagining was older) had something to do with it. It almost certainly did for her, given that she let you in there in the first place.
Totally charming story. Thanks for sharing the circumstances.
Immigration judges do not handle habeas petitions, those are before a US District Judge. The District Courts are the ones being swamped because of the policy change. The article does not make clear that there are two separate adjudicatory systems involved. Immigration judges are, by new policy, ordering detention and district court judges are granting habeas petitions.
Yes Mr. Bogart. My (only) experience of filing a H.C. petition was before a federal judge on a criminal matter, not an immigration judge.
I only did a bit of immigration law.
D.A.
NYC
I don’t know what Trump is planning with our ships floating near Iran. Maybe he thinks that the Iranians will take that as a sign that NOW is the time to storm the castle. The bloodshed will be horrific, and it would be terrible if all that happens but the regime remains.
“Yeet the teet” (an actual quote) was asking for legal trouble
I feel bad for Jan Himmel, the 8 yr old boy, killed by a plan of action. He never got to live a life, his life. As Dawkins says, We are the lucky ones. But man, Jan was here, he was lucky, until he wasn’t. I’m lucky too, and still lucky, so far. But Jan, snuffed out.
Although I now live on the West Coast, I was born and raised in the Midwest in a multi-generational Midwestern family and had not even heard of tater tots casserole until now.
That’s because it’s out of fashion. I haven’t seen one, either, but people are still making it, and i’d like to try it.
From my numerous observations, Tater Tots are a quite frequent staple in public elementary school cafeterias. Kids once piled them high on their trays but now there are signs commanding limits. To the ravenous juvenile palate they are apparently indistinguishable from French Fries. I have little doubt that the casserole (significantly more labor-intensive for cafeteria staff as compared to Tots alone) would go over no less well, but portion control likely would be “problematical.”
My local pub serves TaterTot poutine with miso gravy, blue cheese, and chopped scallions. Damn good.
David,
Can I surmise you are from that blessed Midwest south of the Illinois/Wisconsin line? I saw it a bit in the Chicago metro, a bit more in the Deep South where it appears to have done a reverse migration, but mostly among people I know from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Head north and ask for “Tater Tot Hotdish” (but casserole down South).
The best bets now for finding the dish are likely a Minnesota political picnic or a church potluck with an aging congregation and lower- to middle-class roots.
Regarding aliens: The enthusiasts never offer any ideas as to ET’s motivation for visiting Earth. They don’t actually land on Earth and do things very often. What could they actually gain by flying around in our sky and occasionally buzzing military aircraft?
The theory seems to be that there exist intelligent technologically advanced beings that live near us (in cosmic terms) who not only can cross interstellar distances to visit us but, moreover, choose to do so because they think it is fun to play peekaboo with Air Force and Navy pilots.
Curious how the music list jumps from 1963 to 1977. In between that early ’60s sound and the late ’70s disco craze is what many would say is THE classic rock era—completely invisible on this list.
“But it includes only one song per decade,” you might say. Ah, but not quite. We have three from the 1990s. Would anyone like to place a wager on when the WSJ columnist came of musical age? Or is this an intentional Baby Boomer diss?!
Approximately 68 to 78 was indeed THE classic rock era. Much of the music played on classic rock radio stations in the US is from that period, from my experience. Rock music from before and after that period tends to far less sophisticated. Some peak exemplars musically speaking would be pieces like Firth of Fifth (Genesis), Close to the Edge (Yes), and Kashmir (Led Zeppelin).
Regarding UFOs being aliens: https://xkcd.com/1235
I just started reading The Secret Life of the Universe by Nathalie Chabrol, which of course reminded me of Carl Sagan. Sagan’s take on UFO sightings was that they are a psychological phenomenon similar to the appearances of the saints in times gone by.
Shermer left out an important possibility:
Top secret, experimental aircraft being tested by our military.
Imagine seeing a drone being tested, at night, in the 1960s, or ’70s.
As for this:
“…they could represent Russian or Chinese assets using technology as yet unknown to American scientists, capable of speeds and turns that seemingly defy all their physics and aerodynamics.”
Yes, they could also be Russian or Chinese. Such sightings wouldn’t have to actually use technology unknown to our scientists; in order to baffle people, they’d only have to be unknown to most people (including military people who aren’t classified to know super secret stuff.)
There’s a wonderful book about this stuff: Dreamland, by Phil Patton. Though somewhat out of date (Area 51 is no longer a secret, and the aircraft Patton wrote about are now well known,) it’s still a wonderful read. It’s one of my desert island books.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/phil-patton/dreamland-3/
If they were Russian, Russia would not be floundering in Ukraine.
Don’t be too sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avangard_(hypersonic_glide_vehicle)
There is no way I would watch the Melania movie until cannabis is fully legalized where I live.
Attacking an evil regime in Iran which has no Nukes but making no military threats against an evil regime in Russia might be a clue as to why Iran wants some Nukes.