Welcome to another cold, gray day, at least in Chicago: it’s Friday, February 6, 2026 and Bubble Gum Day. Here’s a large bubble blown by Chad Fell, who holds the world record for bubble size: a 20-inch-diameter (50.8 cm) behemoth bubble blown in 2004. He specializes in this stuff: the record required three pieces of gum. Here he blows a 15-incher and tells you how to blow big bubbles.
It’s also The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, National Chopsticks Day, National Frozen Yogurt Day (where has it gone?), and Ronald Reagan Day (he was born on this day in 1911).
The Google Doodle is apparently chaging every day, depicting a new sport, now that the Olympics have begun. Today is ice hockey (click screenshot below to see an animated page with today’s schedule (the games, in Milan, run through February 22):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 6 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Supreme Court ruled that California can indeed implement its redistricting plan (i.e., “gerrymandering”) that gives extra House seats to Democrats. Earlier they allowed Texas to do the same thing, creating more Republican seats.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon cleared the way for California to use a new congressional map intended to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a one-sentence order, the justices turned down a request from a group of California Republicans that would have required the state to continue to use the map in place for the last several federal elections in the state while their challenge to the map moves forward.
There were no public dissents from the court’s ruling.
The court’s order came exactly two months after the justices, over a dissent by the court’s three Democratic appointees, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use a new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state. In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the lower court had agreed with the challengers that the “legislature’s motive was predominantly racial.” But the majority put that ruling on hold in its Dec. 4 order, with Justice Samuel Alito – who penned an opinion (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorusch) concurring in the ruling – stating that “it is indisputable … that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
California’s path to the enactment of its new map was slightly more complicated than in Texas. The California Legislature adopted the new map in August, but under the state constitution an independent redistricting commission – rather than the Legislature – normally has the power to redistrict. The legislation adopting the new map therefore proposed a ballot initiative, known as Proposition 50, that would amend the constitution to allow the use of the new map from 2026 through 2030. By a roughly two-to-one margin, the state’s voters approved the initiative in a special election on Nov. 4.
Three days later, the challengers went to court to try to block the use of the map. They argued that the map violated the Constitution because it relied too heavily on race in drawing 16 congressional districts that impermissibly favored Latino voters.
A divided three-judge district court – which Congress has tasked with hearing congressional redistricting cases – turned down their request, leaving the new map in place. Writing for the majority, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton concluded “that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming.” Staton also rejected the challengers’ contention that even if the voters had partisan motives when they approved Proposition 50, “they were simply dupes of a racially-motivated legislature.”
. . . On Wednesday afternoon, with five days remaining before the Feb. 9 deadline requested by the challengers, the court turned down the challengers’ request to intervene.
Apparently it’s ok to gerrymander to favor a political position, but not to include or exclude membrs of different ethnic groups. As NPR noted,
The “impetus” for adopting both states’ maps was “partisan advantage pure and simple,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in a concurring opinion, which fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not reviewable by federal courts.
I don’t like this whole idea of politically-motivated redistricting. As we see with Texas and California, it leads to Gerrymandering Wars. There are procedures to create districts of equal representation without preference to the identity or politics of voters.
*Television journalist Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released an emotional video after their mother was abducted on Sunday and is still missing. Two ransom notes have apparently been received.
The television news anchor Savannah Guthrie said in an emotional video on Wednesday night that she and her siblings were ready to listen to ransom offers from whoever might have abducted their mother, but that the family would first need proof that she remains alive.
In the video, Ms. Guthrie, an anchor on the “Today” show, tried to hold back tears as she sat between her older siblings, Annie and Camron, and read from a piece of paper. She said that her family had heard about purported ransom letters that had been sent to news outlets seeking money in exchange for the release of their mother, Nancy.
“We are ready to talk,” Ms. Guthrie said in the video. “However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive, and that you have her.”
The plea for proof of life was a dramatic turn in the mystery of what happened to Nancy Guthrie, 84, after her son-in-law dropped her off at her home in a quiet neighborhood just outside of Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday night. She did not show up for church the next morning, prompting a large-scale search that has grown only more desperate.
The Guthries and police officials have said that Nancy Guthrie is mentally sharp but has trouble moving around and requires daily medication.
“She needs it to survive,” Savannah Guthrie said in the video. “She needs it not to suffer.”
Chris Nanos, the sheriff in Pima County, Ariz., has said that investigators have no suspects and do not know how many people might have been involved in the kidnapping or what their motivations might be. The sheriff’s department is expected to hold another news conference on Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain time.
President Trump spoke with Ms. Guthrie by phone earlier Wednesday, and he said on social media after her video was posted that he had directed all federal law enforcement to be at her and the local police’s disposal.
“The prayers of our Nation are with her and her family,” Mr. Trump wrote. “GOD BLESS AND PROTECT NANCY!”
The pain of the family (and their religiosity) is clear from the video below. This story is still leading the NBC news every day, but I do wonder if other people who have loved ones missing are jealous because when a celebrity is involved the case gets a lot more intention. The statement “we are ready to talk” implies that the Guthries are willing to pay to get their mother back, but who wouldn’t?
Here’s a news video including the complete plea of the Guthrie family. There were two ransom notes, but the deadline for the first one passed without any word from the kidnappers.
*The WaPo discusses Trump’s proposed building of a huge ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House (now demolished), saying it will be as tall as the main building. In a separate article, the paper shows the big change the ballroom will make in OUR residence (it belongs to the American people, not Trump).
The planned 90,000-square-foot addition, which Trump has said is necessary to host VIP events, represents the most significant change to the White House complex in decades. In a Truth Social post Tuesday, he defended its appearance and size.
“It is totally in keeping with our historic White House,” he wrote. “This beautiful building will be, when complete … The Greatest of its kind ever built!”
In the roughly 130-word post, Trump also unveiled an architect’s rendering of the building: a towering neoclassical structure adorned with stately columns and an imposing pediment — the triangular structure above the portico — whose apex, according to Trump, matches the main mansion’s North Portico. The rendering was prepared by Shalom Baranes Associates, the firm handling the project, according to the White House.
Trump’s announcement came as construction crews continued their work on the underground infrastructure needed to support a building of that size — and as opponents awaited a decision from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on whether to order that work to stop.
The president’s administration is also in the middle of a nine-week push to win approval for the project from two federal review committees. The goal is a green light by early March and a start to aboveground construction as early as April.
“This space will serve our Country well for, hopefully, Centuries into the future!” Trump wrote.
With historic preservationists saying they’re worried the 90,000-square-foot structure will overshadow the iconic main mansion, Leon and members of the two committees have asked whether the administration can reduce the building’s size.
I’m wondering what would happen if the project were stopped by the courts? Would they rebuild the East Wing? That doesn’t seem to be in the cards because Trump. Here are projections of the former East Wing and the new one with the ballroom, both appearing (uncredited) in the Post article; I’m not sure whether these are Trump’s renderings, but the East Wing is suddenly GIANT.
Old:
New (note that it’s nearly as high as the main building):
*In a WaPo editorial (I’m trying to quote them before the paper disappears), two law professors at NYU, Richard Epstein and Max Raski, criticize singer Billie Eilish’s “progressive” land acknowledgements at the Grammy Awards: “No Billie Eilish, American are not thieves on stolen land,” (Article is archived here.) I noted recently when I read the book Empire of the Summer Moon that the Plains Indians, at least, had no notion of “owning” land, and that roughly a half dozen tribes could use the same land for hunting, squatting, and making war.
In 2022, Los Angeles County unanimously adopted a land acknowledgment proclaiming “that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples.” Accepting generational guilt, the county further “acknowledge[s] that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma.” What the resolution fails to mention is that some of this mayhem was inflicted by one Native American tribe on another. Consider the fierce conquest of the southern Plains by the Comanche or the prevalence ofNative American slavery before the European arrival. It also fails to mention that “we” — presumably White people — inflicted similar harms on one another across centuries of war, displacement and conquest.
Los Angeles inserts no time dimension into its denunciations, thus implying this principle applies identically to dispossessions that took place 1,000 or 10 years ago. Thankfully statements of apology, however sincere, don’t transfer title backward to the original owners, for if they did, civilization would collapse.
he land long ago taken from X, has in the interim centuries been conveyed to Y and Z, and countless others who then have built, torn down and built again homes, hospitals and schools for millions. The effort to undo the past would involve trillions of dollars in transfer payments and coercedtitle shifts that would unsettle every home mortgage, every mining and oil lease, and every graveyard in the United States.
To prevent this social catastrophe, every nation has always adopted a bifurcated view of property, poetically articulated in the Harvard Law Review by the influential California jurist Henry Ballantine in 1918. Principle No. 1 reads: “For true it is, that neither fraud nor might/Can make a title where there wanteth right.” From this it looks like all titles remain perpetually subject to challenge.
But every society also understands that people should be allowed to enjoy security in their purchases and not have to worry about what happened centuries ago. Thus, a second principle to protect these interests, as Ballantine writes, imposes strict limitations on when to sue, for “the great purpose is automatically to quiet all titles which are openly and consistently asserted, to provide proof of meritorious titles, and correct errors in conveyancing.”
. . . . Fortunately, Eilish does not actually practice whatshe preaches, for otherwise anyone would be free to squat in her mansion, by asserting the property belongs to the Tongva, not her. But the same legal doctrines that protect her also protect Americans against sweeping claims that they live on stolen land. Performative politics usually ends when celebrities get off stage and become, however briefly, ordinary people.
I’m wondering whether the Tongva even had a concept of private land ownership. The authors don’t deal with that question, which becomes less important in light of present property law that the authors discuss (see archived article for details).
*So much for the canard that Israel is an “apartheid state”! An Arab woman known as “Captain Ella” (her rank is now Lieutenant Colonel) has been appointed as the IDF’s Arab spokesperson. She’s the highest-ranking Arab Muslim woman in the IDF.
Maj. Ella Waweya was selected on Tuesday by the military to replace Col. Avichay Adraee as the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesperson.
Waweya, 36, who is known as “Captain Ella,” is among the most senior female Arab Muslim officers in the military.
She was born in the central Arab town of Qalansawe and joined the IDF voluntarily in 2013, initially hiding her service from her family.
Currently, Waweya serves as Adraee’s deputy and boasts more than half a million followers on TikTok and 170,000 on X.
Adraee, who served as the Arabic-language spokesman for the past 20 years, was set to retire.
Waweya would be promoted to lieutenant colonel, and a handover ceremony was expected to take place in the coming weeks.
Adraee had become a familiar face during the ongoing war, particularly due to the military’s use of his social media pages to issue evacuation warnings ahead of strikes in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Yemen, and even Iran.
With millions of followers across his social media accounts and hundreds of interviews on Arabic-language media channels, including Al Jazeera, Adraee became the IDF’s face — and somewhat of a celebrity — in the Arab world.
Now Lt. Col. Ella will run the Arab-language communications for the IDF. Here’s a video of the new spokeswoman, and a bit about her story. I seriously doubt that there are any Jews in Hamas, and those who call Israel an “apartheid” state don’t know what they’re talking about. Do you ever hear them calling Palestine an “apartheid territory”? This is one tough woman! Follow her on her (X) Twitter page.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems unaware that thousands of people hear their conversations. But Andrzej reminded me that they have a lot more conversations that aren’t reproduced.
Hili: We’re very lucky.
Andrzej: What do you mean?
Hili: That no one hears all our conversations.
In Polish:
Hili: Mamy dużo szczęścia.
Ja: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: To, że nikt nie słyszy wszystkich naszych rozmów.
*******************
From The Language Nerds:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
Masih’s written a letter to Mamdani in Tablet Magazine (you can see the letter here). As I expected, Jews for Mamdami is like Chickens for KFC. (See who Mamdani appointed to be the head of NYC’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.)
.@NYCMayor, while mass killings are unfolding in Iran, you have chosen silence.
I invite you to engage with me, to listen, and to educate yourself so you can be a mayor who truly represents all who call this city home, writes @AlinejadMasih. pic.twitter.com/oKNCKTHT3f
— Tablet Magazine (@tabletmag) February 5, 2026
From Jay; a frustrated but persistent kitten FTW:
The best cat video I have ever seen ❤️pic.twitter.com/zMLmxUdbJc
— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) February 5, 2026
From Luana. I don’t know if this is the case, but the likely outcome is below it:
— marilyn ♡ (@marilynomics) September 19, 2025
From Malcolm. I believe this is the famous school cat named “Room 8“:
Classmates 🥰🧡 pic.twitter.com/U2NBvqKcYG
— No Cats No Life (@NoCatsNoLife_m) January 26, 2026
One from my feed: sound up to hear the pathetic meow at the end. Poor kitty: he needs to go on a diet, but instead they laugh at him!
The absolute indignation on his face 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/mCN4ZEiclS
— According2Taz (@according2_taz) February 5, 2026
. . . and one I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was five years old and would be 87 today had he lived. https://t.co/Dh2mRzZ9qL
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 6, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, bollards!
Bollards save lives AND bring immense joy and happiness to the world.#WorldBollardAssociation
— World Bollard Association™️ (@worldbollardassoc.bsky.social) 2026-02-01T21:55:22.569Z
Armadillos in the wheel! Sound up:
Our armadillos take their exercise very seriously. Happy belated #ArmadilloDay from our Ambassadors, Chaco and Willow the three-banded armadillos, and Dillon the nine-banded armadillo!🎥: Behavioral Husbandry Manager, Heather G.
— Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance (@denverzoo.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T18:13:23.717714804Z
I don’t know where frozen yogurt has gone, but until you mentioned it I hadn’t realized it was missing, and now that you have I still don’t miss it.
That is the point. I doubt Elish has thought this through or fully subscribes to the underlying philosophy (although she might), but let’s not forget that Marx said, “All property is theft.” The stolen land canard is one of those memes spread by the Neo-Marxists to deligitimize everything associated with our way of life in favor of the millenium that revolution would bring.
That quote is Proudhon, not Marx.
And Paul Erdös, the mathematician famous for living on the charity of friends, once remarked “Some French philosopher once said private property is theft. I say private property is a nuisance.”
Good call!
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/index.htm
That kitten is VERY persistent!
Re Billie Eilish’s virtue signaling, there is an excellent post by Frederick Alexander at Substack: Celebrity Activists Are Dangerous Morons, subtitled When the stupidest people in the room have the biggest microphones.
Re Mamdani’s (and the other wokerati’s) silence on Iran, Alexander has another excellent post: Letter to a Young Activist.
Thanks Mark!
“Within a month, Greta Thunberg would ditch the keffiyeh for a lizard-patterned onesie and release a spoken-word manifesto called Asteroid about the ancestral trauma of the Mesozoic Era”
https://www.gadflynotes.com/p/celebrity-activists-are-dangerous-morons –
Excellent, re-tweeted.
Wish I could write that well.
D.A.
NYC
Ditto.
“Celebrities are so convinced that good intentions are the same thing as good outcomes that thinking becomes optional.”
Took me several seconds to get the “Gemma Pell” joke.
Than you should find this one also:
The German translation of a French chanson:
Solange, tu es la.
Solange du da bist.
I saw the last IDF Arabic spokesman, Mr. Adraee, interviewed I think on Dan Senior’s podcast awhile ago: deeply impressive guy who learned Arabic as a second language: a task so tough my hat off to anybody who can do it properly. It is VERY hard. I’m sure this new charismatic young lady will do Israel proud.
D.A.
NYC/I’m in CT for a bit with the new Toy Australian Shepherd puppy I flew to North Carolina (nice town…) for a day to pick up on Wednesday. Nothing like a puppy to focus your thoughts and love. 🙂
Billie Eilish, political prostitute : “No one is illegal on stolen land.”
This stunning, rhythmically melodic phrase (and fits in one measure of 4/4), highlights a contradiction by conjoining two thought-terminating cliches (Lifton, 1961), and fits a pattern of political sloganeering termed tifa. Tifa is described at length in the RAND report given below. Characteristic number 4 is of interest in the present case (shown – not necessarily the other three) :
“Tifa have the following four identifying characteristics:
[..1-3 omitted….]
• Characterizing or resolving dialectical contradictions: Tifa are often
the resolution of a CCP dialectical contradiction between competing
ideas. These tifa frequently insist that the party must simply integrate
or plan as a whole two seemingly contradictory concepts or priorities.”
Political Discourse, Debate, and Decision Making in the Chinese Communist Party
Howard Wang
May 12, 2025
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3821-1.html
Robert J. Lifton, 1961 :
https://books.google.com/books/about/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Tot.html?id=FU_ifHrIIg0C