Tuesday: Hili dialogue

February 10, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, February 10, 2026, and Teddy Day.  If you have one, send me a photo and a bit of information about it. If we get ten, I’ll post them. But in the meantime, here’s mine: Toasty, a bear I got him day I was born and has been with me since (he’s in my office now). He’s battered and has lost a lot of fur, but, like me, he persists nevertheless. (My mother sewed his head back on and replaced the eyes several times.)

It’s also International Cribbage Day, “Have a Brownie” Day (why the scare quotes? Are we supposed to just pretend we had a brownie?), National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, National Flannel Day.

There is again a dearth of things that I’d like to write about, though readers are welcome to send me pieces they think would interest me (note that there’s no guarantee that I’ll write about them, but I do welcome submissions). Bear with me (like Toasty); I do my best.

There is another Google Doodle marking the Olympics today, this time highlighting ski jumping; it goes to a site telling you how the jumpers remain airborne. Click to read:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Congressional talks on immigration appear to have stalled as Democrats have taken a hard position and apparently won’t budge, while Republicans haven’t offered a response. This may lead to a partial government shutdown.

As a Friday deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security approaches, Democrats and Republicans appeared no closer on Sunday to a deal to keep the department running.

“If I had to say now, I probably would expect there is a shutdown,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

In the wake of federal immigration officers’ killings of two American citizens in Minnesota last month, Democrats have demanded a host of new restrictions on immigration enforcement operations as a condition for a new spending bill.

They include barring immigration officers from wearing masks, requiring them to show visible identification and mandating the use of judicial warrants when they enter private property to make arrests.

“Dramatic changes are necessary to the manner in which the Department of Homeland Security officers are conducting themselves before any funding bill should move forward,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Republican leaders have rejected those proposals as an unrealistic wish list, calling the new restrictions overly burdensome to an immigration crackdown that they generally support.

“They are threatening the safety and security of our agents so that they can’t do their job,” Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is something we need to look at carefully. The request that we should put ICE agents in harm’s way is absolutely intolerable.”

Mr. Jeffries said Democrats had not heard a response to their proposals from the White House or Republican leaders in Congress. “The ball is in the court right now of the Republicans,” he said.

We discussed this not long ago, and a couple of readers suggested that masks might be okay to prevent doxxing, but badges with numbers should be prominently on display.  That might be a good compromise, as ICE agents have been doxxed, endangering themselves and their families.  But there should be body cameras given the history of ICE apprehensions. You can see the list of Democratic demands here.

*Now that Hong Kong is under the rule and law of the People’s Republic of China, suppression of dissent has intensified. The latest disturbing evidence of this is the sentencing of Hong Kong democracy advocate Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison.  Lai is 78 (and a British national), so this is a life sentence. Because there is no extradition to mainland China despite the PRC running the islands, Lau will serve his sentence in Hong Kong, where he’s being held now.  The charges: publishing seditious materials and collusion. It’s grossly unfair, as he is a political prisoner.

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul who spent decades as a defiant thorn in Beijing’s side, was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison, the harshest penalty ever handed down for a national security offense in the semiautonomous territory.

The landmark ruling completes a yearslong effort by Beijing to dismantle the influence of a man it blamed for masterminding Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

Mr. Lai, 78, smiled and waved at the public gallery after his sentencing. His wife, Teresa Lai, sat emotionless with her arms folded, and weeping could be heard in the back of the gallery.

His daughter, Claire Lai, said the sentence was “heartbreakingly cruel.” She added: “If this sentence is carried out, he will die a martyr behind bars.”

In December, Mr. Lai was found guilty of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” that stemmed from meetings he had held with politicians in the United States. He was also convicted of conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily, the now-shuttered Chinese-language pro-democracy newspaper he founded in 1995.

For decades, China has branded Mr. Lai a traitor seeking to undermine the Communist Party rule over Hong Kong and China. They have accused him of being the “black hand” behind the antigovernment protests that engulfed Hong Kong in 2019. Mr. Lai had taken part in some of the demonstrations and supported them through Apple Daily.

Even in a hyper-capitalistic city filled with self-made millionaires, Mr. Lai’s rags to riches story stood out. He fled a poverty stricken China as a stowaway when he was a boy and worked his way up the city’s garment factories. That led to the launching of his own brand of casual wear in 1981, which earned him his first fortune.

Western governments have joined Mr. Lai’s family in calling for the release of Mr. Lai, a British citizen, describing his trial as politically motivated.

Lau, who has health problems, has already been in solitary confinement for well over five years. And President Trump has promised to get him out, saying it would be “easy” to get Lau released ()and presumably moved to the US). It’s time for Trump to make good on his promises; perhaps that will require a prisoner exchange.

*The new article by Ann Bauer in The Free Press, “Mob rule comes for my yoga studio,” is one of many examples where “progressives” try to force themselves into spaces where they don’t belong. Bauer and her family moved from Boston to Minneapolis in 2014 and encountered this:

Yoga was one thing I’d managed to keep separate from politics. But when I returned, after they dropped Covid restrictions in 2022, the rules had changed.

“I know I’m not supposed to talk politics,” said one instructor after another, “but this is too important.” Then they would launch into a speech on Palestine or trans athletes or immigration, and welcome input. I could feel the sanctity of this place sliding away, just as it had at coffee shops, barbecues, business meetings, and libraries. Eventually, I’d have to lie or leave.

Instead, I spoke to leadership at CorePower, first the local studio managers and then the regional one. I asked them to abide by the policy of no politics in the studio and, in a nearly choreographed way, they shrugged and smiled their namaste smiles and gave me that side-eye that said I know what side you’re on and why you’re asking, and told me in kindergarten teacher voices that there was nothing they could do. These were unprecedented times. Excitement was high. People’s higher selves were in control.

Finally, I had my own reckoning with a teacher at the studio, who grilled me about my political leanings and didn’t like what she heard. It became one more obstacle in my life. She taught a ton of classes at my studio and refused to speak to me after. She couldn’t keep me from registering but she could make it unpleasant. Soon, when I entered, her colleagues at the desk would also turn stony and stop talking, disgustedly waving me through.

My husband, son, and I left a few months later, selling two houses and much of what we owned. We’d found a marvelous opportunity to start a new publishing platform in Kentucky. We were moving toward something. But we were also escaping Minnesota and thousands of things like CorePower that made life hard. We were just done, and desperate to get out.

Our new city is purple, leaning to the moderate side of blue. We live in multifamily housing and go to an office. I have a new yoga studio, coffee shop, and library. We’ve had only a handful of political conversations with the people we’ve met here over the months, and if we disagree, we do so pleasantly and without accusation. It is a wonder to live like this. We’re grateful, every single day.

It’s a tragedy the yoga studio I used to love has been ruined by shouted ideology and shunning, just like nearly every public space in the Twin Cities. But I have to admit I had a moment of pleasure, watching that scene, thinking Thank God. Thank God we got out.

But even a liberal can justifiably object to being propagandized with Lefist stuff when they just want to do yoga, and really, businesses and yoga studios should maintain institutional neutrality. All yoga-ites should be treated the same so long as they behave themselves. It seems to me, though I don’t have data, that this kind of personal propagandizing and virtue signaling comes more often from the Left than the Right. Democrats should stop doing this to a captive audience, like those who patronize businesses. It only turns people off on the Left, which means fewer Democrats when it comes to elections.

*If you’re contemplating sending your kid to college, the Washington Post has a long list of colleges with free tuition (article archived here). I had no idea there were any colleges that gave free tuition to all students (without an income threshold), but the paper has 87 pages of colleges offering free tuition—some without income requirements.  The first page is below:

The cost of higher education can be intimidating.

Americans are increasingly questioning whether college is worth the price, as student loan debt tops $1.6 trillion and the average tuition has doubled in the past 30 years. At the same time, new federal caps on how much parents can borrow for college could place higher education further out of reach for some families.

Against that backdrop, a growing number of schools are making college more affordable by providing free tuition to undergraduate students from low- and middle-income families. The movement dates back 20 years but has gained momentum in the past decade, largely fueled by state policies.

We set out to catalogue free tuition programs and found nearly 1,000 — in 45 states, at two-year colleges, four-year universities, vocational schools and elite private campuses. You can look up schools using the tool below. And if your school offers free tuition but is not on the list, let us know by filling out this submission form.

The University of Chicago offers free tuition to students coming from families making less than $125,000 per year “with typical assets” (whatever that means). Further, AI tells me this: “Furthermore, [University of Chicago] students from families with incomes under $60,000 (with typical assets) receive free tuition, fees, and standard room and board. This policy is part of their need-based, “no-loan” financial aid approach to increase accessibility.

And just to show you that not everything is horrible in the world, information.net has published a graphic (with links) to the Most Beautiful News of the Year 2025. Here’s the list (click to enlarge), and let’s look at the second one. (Links are at the original site, but click below to go there):

Trachoma is a dreadful and highly infectious disease caused by a bacterium, and a major cause of blindness. Once you’re blind from it there’s no cure, so this really is good news. The link at the second square gives the details:

The number of people requiring interventions against trachoma, the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness, has fallen below 100 million for the first time since global records began. There were 1.5 billion people estimated to be at risk in 2002, dropping to 97.1 million as of November 2025: a 94% reduction (as recently as 2011, 314 million people were estimated to be at risk and to require interventions).

This milestone reflects decades of sustained efforts by national health ministries, local communities, and international partners implementing the World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed SAFE strategy (Surgery to treat trachomatous trichiasis, the blinding stage of trachoma; Antibiotics to clear infection; and Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement to reduce transmission and sustain progress).

“The reduction of the population requiring interventions against trachoma to below 100 million is testament to strong country leadership and consistent implementation of the SAFE strategy,” said Dr Daniel Ngamije Madandi, Director of the Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases Department at WHO. “Progress across all trachoma-endemic WHO regions shows that SAFE is both effective and adaptable across contexts. WHO remains committed to supporting countries through the provision of technical assistance to achieve the global elimination of trachoma as a public health problem by 2030.”

Following the recent validation of Egypt and Fiji as having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, the total number of countries validated by WHO now stands at 27 – including at least one country in every trachoma-endemic WHO region.

Global progress for trachoma has been supported by a diverse range of stakeholders, including implementing non-governmental organizations, academic institutions and donors, many of which collaborate through the International Coalition for Trachoma Control (ICTC), as well as the donation of more than 1.1 billion doses of azithromycin by Pfizer Inc. through the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI). These partnerships have enabled health ministries to distribute valuable donated medicines efficiently and effectively, while strengthening community health systems.

We may not eliminate it, but humans have wiped out two diseases completely. Can you name them?

One more:

Once hunted almost to extinction, the group of humpback whales currently migrating down Australia’s east coast has bounced back — and then some.

In a preliminary report to the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, marine scientists estimate there were more than 50,000 eastern Australian humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in 2024.

That’s around 20,000 more individuals than the estimated pre-whaling population of the early 1900s.

So if you’re down about the state of the world, remember that, as a whole, things are better than they were 150 years ago, and a big part of that is human well-being: medical and economic issues in particular.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej speaks truth to felinity:

Hili: Did you see any positive news today?
Andrzej: No, the media do their best to avoid it, because it results in financial losses.

In Polish:

Hili: Widziałeś dziś jakieś pozytywne wiadomości?
Ja: Nie, wszystkie media starają się ich unikać, bo to przynosi straty.

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

From The Language Nerds: get it?

 

From This Cat is Guilty:

From Stacy:

From Masih, a very sad tweet about a murdered protestor and his dog. Do watch until the end, and have the sound on:

From Luana; Fetterman breaks ranks again. I can’t see any problem with showing an ID at the polls to verify that you are who you say you are when you get a ballot:

From Larry the Cat via Simon, who’s a Brit:

Some science from Emma’s husband via her:

One from my feed; look at those happy penguins!

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was only three years old, and would have been 85 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-02-10T11:23:59.658Z

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, a sheep’s brain on drugs:

And more Larry, who has a big anniversary coming up (he is 19 now: a Senior Cat):

Dominic Dyer: @number10cat.bsky.social Larry the Cat will have been in Downing Street 15 years next week, he is the most stable thing about British politics these days

— Laura Phillips (@lauraphillips.bsky.social) 2026-02-06T22:49:39.037Z

30 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  2. Rumours are that Labour MPs want Starmer to go, but that he told them: “If you depose me then I’ll call a snap election and you’ll all lose your seats” (which they indeed would, with Labour at about 18% in the polls).

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  3. Re: liberal propagandizing where it doesn’t belong:

    Beauty and makeup interests me (though less and less these days). There’s many Reddit subgroups dedicated to these topics. I know Reddit is super lefty on average, but I was still appalled to see social-media beauty influencers and makeup-brand owners like Lady Gaga called out in these groups for not taking a stand publicly on topics like Palestine or ICE. As though people who talk about or produce beauty products have a duty to promulgate political stands. I think similar things happened when BLM was big if a company — any company — did not explicitly endorse and donate money to BLM.

    Of course, the stand the Redditors want beauty influencers and brand owners to take is the woke-approved stand. One YT beauty influencer had the nerve to come out and support Israel after Oct 7, and she’s been largely branded as racist and cut off by other influencers.

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  5. Toasty is looking good! My childhood toy, Sooty, is canine rather than ursine, and is in worse shape. He’s completely flattened because all of his stuffing fell out a very long time ago. My mother kept him for decades and gave him back to me about 20 years ago. He is now protected in a Riker display case.

    Yep. You’re right, there’s little news today. Trump likes to make news, so we can be sure that he will soon fill the vacuum. Something’s about to happen.

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  6. “I can’t see any problem with showing an ID at the polls to verify that you are who you say you are when you get a ballot.”

    Agreed! Most countries have voter ID laws. We already require ID for so many things much less important than voting. And it’s a very obvious and easy way to help prevent fraud.

    So really the question should be why anyone would be against it.

    Is it because they are interested in committing voter fraud?

    Or is it because they believe their voter constituency is so addled and nonfunctional that they can’t figure out how to carry ID with them when voting?

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    2. If I recall, one objection has been that many poor Americans would have difficulty acquiring what the Republicans would deem an acceptable form of ID. Some might not be able to take off work to get, say, a passport, a drivers license, or perhaps a specialized voter ID card. If the cards could be issued free of charge, and if it didn’t require any missed work time, and especially, if Election Day were a federal holiday so that no American need deal with missing work, an ID would be fine, in my opinion. But–again, as I recall–these were not exactly high priorities for the Republicans pushing the idea.

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      1. “If I recall, one objection has been that many poor Americans would have difficulty acquiring what the Republicans would deem an acceptable form of ID.”

        This speaks less to the general concept of preventing fraud through ID, and more to its application. Surely a reasonable form of ID can be worked out.

        And…there are a lot of poor Republicans too. So if this is really an issue of poor people not having any form of ID, then it will hurt the Republicans as well.

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      2. I didn’t see your excellent comment until just now, too late to delete my comment below, which essentially repeats yours.

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    3. It’s easy enough to find out why people object to IDs for voting. From a quick search I find some folks rightly claim that the form of ID required can be restrictive; driver’s licenses? Not everyone drives. Social security card? Not everyone who is eligible to vote qualifies for SS so they don’t have a card. Some have suggested a bill, as is required for other kinds of ID. Would a utility bill qualify? It does establish AN address, but not necessarily the residential address.

      It’s more complicated than it seems. Are we going to have to come up with national IDs? State IDs? There are a whole host of problems with those ideas too, not the least of which is that many people have a deep aversion (not necessarily rational) to citizen IDs.

      I agree an ID requirement to vote would solve some problems, but it seems to me it creates others. Nevertheless, I feel it is a problem that can be fixed in a reasonable(ish) way. But it isn’t as simple as it seems.

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        1. Very few, I’m sure. It’s not my position. Still I see the point. Which ID(s) will be acceptable? Aye, there’s the rub. We can expect giant, loud arguments from all sides about that.

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      2. My mother and brother, who did not drive, always had an ID issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s similar though simpler than getting a driver’s license, and it’s accepted as identification anywhere that would take a driver’s license.

        I assumed most nondrivers had one – or at least knew about it.

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      3. What problems? Vote fraud has not been a genuine issue in any federal or statewide election in over 60 years. You have to go back to Kennedy-Nixon, and there the issue was not fraudulent cast ballots. What is the problem ID is intended to solve?

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        1. This seems to me an okay way to eliminate ANY abuse. I had to show my voter registration card when I voted in person in Chicago (now I vote by mail), and I didn’t have a problem with that. Are you saying that there is already ZERO instances of people voting more than once using different names?

          It doesn’t have to have swayed elections to be considered a problem that can be ameliorated. What is YOUR problem with it?

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          1. Multiple different forms of identification are required to get a passport or Driver (Real) ID, or Voter ID. Many of them, like a Social Security card, take a fair amount of time to get if you don’t have them- several days or weeks. Perhaps more for a birth certificate?

            And they all cost money – $200.00 or so for a passport, from $10 up to get a drivers license, most are more. Where I live, a drivers license is $39 and an enhanced one is $75. We banned poll taxes in the US in 1964, because they were discriminatory. They were $1.00 to $2.00 dollars per year.

            You also need proof of residence – what if the bills are not in your name? What if you live in an apartment with others and your last name is different?

            IF the government would pick up the cost AND made sure that every eligible voter who wanted to vote got their ID well before the midterms, I could accept it. But the talk of the town is that Trump is trying to do something nefarious about the midterms, hence taking every voting material, including the voting machines, from Georgia.

            Considering that voter fraud is NOT a problem, and there are zero plans to pick up the costs, I can see no good reason to support the idea that photo ID’s are a good idea.

    4. A word I might suggest for that half of the socialist constituency is “feckless”, the people who depend on free stuff to survive. Many of them might truly not have a single piece of paper with their picture on it and would be disenfranchised if they were told they had to go get one somehow. (The other half is those with zeal to tax the productive classes to provide the free stuff to their feckless allies, and who hope themselves to be employed as commissars in the effort.)

      To be fair, the only situation in which you must under penalty of law produce photo-ID (specifically a driver’s licence) is at the request of the police when driving a motor vehicle on a public road. If you are stopped for, say, jaywalking, you just have to identify yourself. If you don’t, the police can arrest you until they figure out who you really are to write the ticket out to. But there is no general obligation to carry photo-ID. All the other circumstances where it is requested, you can choose not to show it if you are willing to do without whatever the gatekeeper demanded photo-ID as a condition for giving it to you.

      The argument with voting is that it is such a fundamental pillar of democracy that the right to vote should be extended to the anonymous feckless. I don’t agree — I agree that photo-ID should be required to vote in every election, preventing voter fraud being also a fundamental pillar of democracy — but I think that is a fair presentation of the other side’s argument.

      P.S. At least in Ontario, you can get an Age of Majority Card for $35 Canadian intended for people who don’t have driver’s licences, essential for buying booze and weed. (Remember, if your driver’s licence is suspended or revoked, you won’t be able to use it for identification!) Photo-ID for voting is not at all controversial in Canada. I understand that there is a racial dimension in America to rejecting voters who don’t have photo ID, (as there is in almost every public policy dispute) so there is that.

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    5. Another recollection: I believe the Republican proposal made it clear that student IDs would not be acceptable. Nowadays, that might be a good thing, as students have embraced authoritarianism so fervently (half-joking about “good thing”), but still, of course, there should be no such cynical manipulation deployed to undermine one of our most basic and cherished freedoms.

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    6. Voter ID requirements aren’t a problem in the abstract. It’s a problem in the real world implementation, and much like literacy tests, the demonstrated abuses that have already occurred when Republicans have instituted voter ID laws. Moreover, the purported problem of in person voter fraud is so vanishingly rare, you really have to make sure that the “solution” doesn’t create even worse problems.

      One of the most infamous was Alabama passing voter ID laws in 2015, and then immediately closing down DMV offices in predominantly black areas. Another infamous one was Texas allowing concealed carry permits as acceptable but not student IDs. It’s not hard to get on Google and find examples of Republican politicians admitting that the motivation behind voter ID laws is to improve Republican chances of winning elections (as opposed to reducing fraud).

      So yes, Democrats are rightly suspicious of Republican motivation behind voter ID laws given the demonstrated history of using them to disenfranchise voters. When in person voting fraud is such a negligible problem in the first place, there’s no pressing need for a solution. And since we live in the real world as opposed to the abstract, you can’t ignore the near certainty of abuse of voter ID laws at the hands of the Republican politicians.

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    7. A bipartisan commission examining voting a decade or so back recommended that everyone be required to present ID. But they also recommended that gov’t pay for and take the responsibility for issuing IDs to everyone. Because really, really poor people can’t even afford IDs.

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    8. In the 40yrs that I’ve voted in PA, I have to sign the register. My signature is compared with the one on file, so that’s the ID system at present in PA. I think it’s debatable whether there’s more risk of fraud with that system vs. cards that can be lost or stolen.

      There’s also the risk, if you were trying to vote as someone else, that you would be recognized by a poll worker who knows the actual person. Any widespread effort would likely run afoul of that tripwire.

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  7. It can be somewhat depressing to see friends whom you respect and family you love disengage their thinking and run with the political herd. It doesn’t get easier when they bleat and moo all day. It’s even more maddening when they denounce views that you know they themselves held back in the pre-Obama days—and the sharp shift they neither acknowledge nor explain.

    Progressives have long been proselytizers, but their “progressive” offspring put to shame the pushiness of fundamentalist street preachers and the persistence of door-knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hear politics all the time on my wife’s campus from people I barely know or have only recently met. (My wife is not political.) Despite living in a deep-red state, the only parallel I can think of from the right was in June of 2020, those early pandemic months, when I was driving cross-country and struggling to find a place to get a cup of coffee in ANY of the Midwest college towns. Apparently, self-serve cups and dispenser handles were going to kill us all. Science or something said so. I mentioned that difficulty to a middle-aged cashier at a convenience store, and she simply said “They’re gonna destroy this country.”

    I then heard through her mask a “Take care, hun.” Perhaps I should be offended, after all.

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  9. That video clip of the penguins made me sad. If they were that happy to see snow for a few moments then they might have been missing their natural environment.

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  10. The only stuffed animal in my possession (next to my bed) is a stuffed dinosaur, which has been with me only during adult years. But my large vicarious collection is kept for me by my developmentally disabled son Aaron, who lives in an Adult Family Home I visit often, sometimes bringing a new stuffy. Current favorites include Fox, Llama, and Kangaroo, unfortunately not available at the moment to photogaph.

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