Welcome to CaturSaturday, August 15, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats and I Love Cowboys and Cowgirls Day. Here for the Sabbath is a photo of a Jewish cowboy that I post periodically. As I said when I last posted it, “A rare Jewish cowboy, photo in the Eastern California Museum in Independence. The last time I went the photo was gone and nobody knew about it or even remembered it. I’d kill to have it”.
He looks like he belongs in a yeshiva, not on a horse!:
It’s also the Assumption of Mary (i.e., the myth that she was taken bodily to heaven when she died), International Homeless Animals’ Day, National Best Friends Day, National Failures Day, National Relaxation Day, World Honey Bee Day, and National Lemon Meringue Pie Day.
Sadly, there will be no Caturday felids this week, but I haven’t given up on the feature; I just haven’t had time to prepare a good one and, as you know, comments are few. The cat items will, I hope, return in a week in full force.
I also urge readers to send me in some photos for the readers’ wildlife feature, which is already critically endangered. Don’t make me guilt-trip you by pointing out all the work I do for your enjoyment, and note that there is little reciprocity!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Luigi Mangione, accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, may plead guilty in his upcoming federal trial, which poses complications for his upcoming state trial on different charges (article archived here).
Here’s what we know about Mr. Mangione’s legal cases, and how his lawyers are handling them.
What charges is Mr. Mangione facing?
In his federal case, Mr. Mangione faced two stalking charges resulting in death. If he had not pleaded guilty on Friday, that trial most likely would have begun in January.
In state court, Mr. Mangione is charged with several counts, including second-degree murder, which could lead to a possible sentence of 25 years to life. That trial is scheduled to start next month.
Why are there two cases, and is that unusual?
The law does allow for someone to face state and federal charges stemming from the same alleged crime.
The federal charges were brought during the Biden administration, when the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would happen first. But shortly after President Trump returned to office, his attorney general said she would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione, signaling that her prosecutors were moving quickly to trial. (A judge later dismissed two federal charges, including one that carried a potential death penalty if Mr. Mangione was convicted.)
The judges overseeing the cases have each said that they are proceeding as if the case in their court were the only one.
What about double jeopardy?
From the moment Mr. Mangione was charged by state and federal prosecutors, his legal team had argued that being tried in both jurisdictions violated his rights.
“One plus one is two,” Mr. Mangione declared in February as he was led out of a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs. “Double jeopardy by any common-sense definition.”
Legal experts, though, say that double jeopardy protections are not always clear-cut.
Now that he has pleaded guilty in federal court, his lawyers are expected to argue that under New York’s double jeopardy law, state prosecutors cannot try him for murder because the state charges stem from the same criminal act as the federal case.
However, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, could counter that the state murder case addresses a different harm than the federal stalking case, and that it should therefore be allowed to proceed to trial.
And that’s what I think the state prosecutor will argue; one case is “stalking with death” and the other is second-degree murder. These seem superficially like the same charges, but the prosecution says “they are different harms.” That may be a distinction without a difference, but the legal system will sort it out. For sure Mangione should spend a long, long time behind bars, and it would be a crime itself if he gets only a short sentence for “stalking with death” and the state case therefore can’t go to trial. It may be that higher courts—even the Supremes—may have to sort this out, as New York has special laws dealing with double jeopardy. Although Mangione is assumed to be innocent, if he strikes a plea deal he’ll have to tell the judge that he did the killing.
Ripped from the headlines: Mangione did take the plea deal and made the admission:
Luigi Mangione admitted on Friday that he shot and killed a health care executive, Brian Thompson, outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2024, as he pleaded guilty to two federal charges of stalking resulting in death.
“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan,” Mr. Mangione told the judge. “I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.” Federal prosecutors said they would seek the maximum sentence of life in prison when Mr. Mangione is sentenced in December.
Judge Margaret M. Garnett accepted the plea and informed Mr. Mangione that he should expect to serve at least 85 percent of whatever sentence she gave him. Mr. Mangione showed virtually no emotion during the proceeding but answered questions clearly.
Mr. Mangione, 28, was not charged with murder in the federal case, which accused him only of stalking Mr. Thompson, who was the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He still faces a murder charge in state court, where he is scheduled to go on trial next month, but his lawyers said they had filed a motion to dismiss the state indictment because it violated his legal protection against double jeopardy, which generally prevents a person from being tried twice for the same crime.
*Here’s a NYT article that bears reading: “Afghan women erased from public life in five years of Taliban rule” (article archived here).
The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan five years ago this week, returning to power after two decades and restoring an Islamic government that had severely restricted women’s rights.
In those few years, women and girls have been systematically erased from most public life, experts say. And, some add, the limitations imposed on half the population could hobble Afghanistan far into the future.
The harsh restrictions on women and girls are a return to conditions that prevailed the previous time the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, in the late 1990s. More than 160 decrees have been issued targeting women and girls, barring them from secondary and higher education and restricting their employment, movement, dress, speech and decision-making.
“No other country in modern times has dismantled the rights of half its population through law, policy and practice to the same extent,” the United Nations agency on women said on Wednesday. “At the same time, overlapping humanitarian and economic crises and deepening poverty are also having a disproportionate impact on women and girls.”
The official restrictions have reinforced social pressures, and many women say their communities increasingly press them to conform, a new U.N. Women report found, based on recent surveys. “Half a decade of escalating restrictions has narrowed where Afghan women can go, what they can do and how they can live,” it said. “The results are alarming.”
. . .Many Afghans surveyed expressed disappointment with the course of their lives in recent years. Still, women reported levels of isolation and distress that suggest a growing mental health crisis, the U.N. report said.
More than half of men surveyed — about 55 percent — said their lives were worse than they had expected they would be before August 2021, compared with 65 percent of women who reported a similar sentiment. But their reasoning was starkly different.
Male respondents reported frustration with a lack of economic opportunities, while many women also blamed reduced access to education, for themselves or their children, and rules restricting women’s jobs and lives.
. . . The report highlights the isolation many Afghan women now experience as a result of the restrictions. A vast majority of the women surveyed — 90 percent — said they must have a male family member’s permission to leave the house. And more than half said they went out only once or twice a month. Among male survey respondents, more than 95 percent reported leaving their homes daily.
The Taliban promised that women’s education would not be harmed when they took over, and I saw that as an arrant lie. And so it proved to be. Women can’t even get secondary education, and are.largely confined to their homes. There are two quotes I will add from the piece. First, “Afghanistan is the only country in the world to formally prohibit access to education for girls and women beyond the primary level.” The only country in the world! Second, ““The greatest danger facing Afghanistan today is not only that 20 million women and girls are being systematically erased from public life,” Ms. Ahmadi wrote. “It is that the world is slowly learning to live with it.” Indeed.
That is the saddest part. We must not forget the women of Afghanistan, and yet I don’t know what we can do about it except keep it before people’s eyes. Do look at the photos accompanying the article. Every woman is in a burqa. This cloth sack symbolizes the way women have been sequenstered and forgotten under the Taliban. And this is, of course, because of religion.
*Over at the Washington Post, curmudgeonly columnist George Will makes fun of the University of Michigan’s new policy of not telling students their grades during their first semester—a policy designed to improve students’ mental health (see my report on it here, and the article is archived here).
Golly, to err is human, to forgive is to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” It is unfolding even among individuals who will not line up across the line of scrimmage from Ohio State’s stress-inducing student-athletes. As your coaches, our priority is to allow you freshmen to “acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys.” So, we will not respond to your mistakes with extrinsic motivations — e.g., criticism. We coaches are here to help you transition to academia. Thrashing OSU would be fun, but first and foremost we are “investing in students’ well-being and growth by fostering a culture of connection and collaboration — rather than competition.”
Granted, the quoted words do not sound like coach-speak from those responsible for filling the Big House, the nation’s largest stadium (capacity 109,901). The words sound like what they are, an emanation of today’s academic mind.
They are from the official explanation of why, beginning in autumn 2027, classes in Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will be pass/fail for first-semester freshmen, who will be spared the stress of final letter grades. The grades will be given but hidden. They will not appear on transcripts. And they will not be factored into grade point averages. The least surprising news from Ann Arbor, the self-described “Athens of the Midwest,” is that students like the new policy.
. . .The Chronicle quotes one expert who thinks Michigan’s change could relieve undergraduates of “undue” pressure. But how much, if any, pressure is proper if competition is regrettable, and collaboration and cooperation are aspirations?
And if the spirits of today’s presumptively fragile freshmen can be crushed by grading their work, will they mature out of this “formative” period by second semester? Or by senior year?
Other universities have or have had variations of Michigan’s new policy. Johns Hopkins University abandoned its policy when, the administration said, it delayed “development of study skills and adaptation to college-level work.” But delay is obviously Michigan’s spirit-protecting intention.
. . .Is it not possible that Michigan’s postulated “mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals” is a self-fulfilling diagnosis? Tell young people that their professors presume them to be crisis-afflicted, and young people might conform to authority figures’ expectations.
And if “intrinsic motivations” are sufficient for learning, and are, as Michigan implies, somehow superior to dictated motivations, such as grades, supplied by professors, the university itself seems almost superfluous. Other than as an excuse for the football team.
The more I think about this policy, the dumber it seems. It delays for a semester the regimen a student will face, and then throws them into the same maelstrom the second half of their junior year. It is coddling students when they should be pushed to grow up. But that should have started a lot earlier—in secondary school.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: For now, we polka.” Sadly, Nellie’s taking a break this week, this week’s column is really by Will Rahn.
→ Speaking of Abdul: Or AES, as he’s come to be known. Unlike Hong, he enjoyed the full backing of Bernie and AOC, who campaigned with him. He built his campaign around Israel (duh) and Medicare for All, which is the idea that a country that is rapidly running out of money for the current Medicare system will somehow expand it to insure everyone in America. (And by everyone, needless to say, I also mean all the people who are here illegally.) Much like the notion that Israel will somehow be replaced by a People’s Republic of Palestine, it’s all pure fantasy, the kind of thing you have to have attended grad school to be stupid enough to believe.
Anyway, AES, a stocky little landlord with a patchy beard and a lot of money, first came to national attention when he decided to campaign with Hasan Piker, the communist millionaire and Hamas enthusiast who plays video games in a suit, praises Mao Zedong, and allegedly (he denies it)electrocuted his dog on camera. Democrats, do you really want Chairman Dogzap to be your kingmaker?
→ A stupid new New York Times word: I love New York Times trend pieces. The basic idea is this: Find three people and/or one celebrity doing a thing that people have always done, and you can call it a cool new trend. Here’s one from 2011 on people eating chicken pot pie. Here’s a 2015 banger about people wearing T-shirts in the fall. And, from long ago, the piece that popularized the then-ubiquitous early aughts term metrosexual.
Now we have a new addition to the lexicon: Hobbyamory, which is basically just when single people have hobbies. Let’s allow the paper of record to fill us in on this hot new phenomenon:
[Some guy] is among a growing number of singles emphasizing multiple hobbies over dating. Rather than spending hours swiping and messaging on apps, these singles are investing their time, energy, and disposable income in passions like rock climbing, cake decorating, and cyanotype printmaking. They say their social calendars are packed, their friend groups are expanding, and their lives feel rich, with or without a romantic partner.
Wow! Hobbies! What a concept! And single people pursuing them? Stop the presses! Listen, as a guy who used to play a lot of Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop war game played with little space marines you lovingly build and paint, I can attest that there are many hobbyists who have never dated anyone. It wasn’t a hobby for cool, sexy people in the traditional sense—unlike my current, middle-aged-dad avocation, which is collecting Casio watches. . .
→ Speaking of lesbians: I keep hearing that the WNBA is falling apart. But what I find odd about this is for the first time in my nearly twoscore years on this planet, people are actually talking about the WNBA. As Peter Thiel reminds us, the biggest leap is from zero to one, and now all of America can name at least one WNBA player: the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark. And then there are Sophie Cunningham and Angel Reese. The league’s been around for 30 years and it’s never been more talked about or more watched. It’s having its best season by just about every metric.
The “WNBA in disarray” narrative stems from the idea that the league is beset with fraught racial dynamics and the ongoing battles over transwomen playing in women’s sports. But it seems a win that we’re talking about the WNBA at all. Besides, I think these “scandals” have more to do with the people who cover the WNBA, who seem a little cuckoo. A USA Today columnist invoked the lynching of Emmett Till in a piece criticizing Clark. And Cunningham’s breakout year has, of course, had something to do with her belief that while everyone deserves respect, she doesn’t think biological men should play women’s sports.
The belief that people born male should not be allowed to compete against people who were born female is not a controversial one. Or, rather, it is controversial only among a very vocal segment of the population, namely radical activists and the aforementioned sports columnists. “Sophie Cunningham Got a Bitter Taste of Karma After Drawing Flagrant Foul in Fever-Sky,” read a Sports Illustrated headline on Saturday after Cunningham was clotheslined and bloodied on Saturday. (The publication, which had Cunningham pose in its swimsuit issue this year, later toned down the headline.)
Thankfully, the WNBA has put together a “task force” to address the trans issue and, potentially, solve the long-standing mystery of what a woman is. An answer finally seemed at hand. And then, Wednesday evening, the task force statement landed:
Today’s meeting covered a wide range of topics, including ongoing discussions on transgender athletes and the continued hate and vitriol directed at players online. We will continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months. We will approach these important conversations thoughtfully and in alignment with the values of our league. There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.
Okay! No answer yet on what a woman is. . . .
Yes, Rahn’s items are too long and nobody, no matter how hard they try, can imitate Nellie. Check back next week!
*The WSJ reports on Britain’s newest women’s chess champion, a girl only eleven years old!
Less than a minute remained on the clock during the biggest chess match of Bodhana Sivanandan’s short career last weekend, but to her, it was practically an eternity.
As Sivanandan stared at the board, with Britain’s women’s chess championship on the line, it took her all of 12 seconds to calculate the decisive move: a knight sacrifice that would result in her capturing the queen. Understanding what was about to happen, her opponent had little choice but to extend her hand and resign.
The only thing more stunning than the move was the age of the person who made it. At 11 years old, Sivanandan had just been crowned as Britain’s youngest ever women’s chess champion.
“I didn’t have much time,” she says. “But I had enough to see that move and look for it and make sure it was good. So I didn’t doubt myself.”
Since taking up the game six years ago, Sivanandan has emerged as one of the greatest prodigies chess has ever seen. She is already the highest-rated woman in England, and the sight of her toppling much older and more experienced men and women has become the norm. Last year, Sivanandan became the youngest girl to defeat a grandmaster in classical chess when she bested 60-year-old Peter Wells. She recently toppled France’s No. 3-rated player, grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi.
“She’s an absolute rock star, regardless of the fact that she’s a young girl, and on pace to be one of the best players in the world, regardless of gender,” says Danny Rensch, Chess.com’s chief chess officer. “She has a presence of like, ‘I’m gonna kill you no matter what.’”
Sivanadan’s Wikipedia biography is here, and here’s a short interview with her. She is so young! And she’s so small she has to sit on a pad when she plays in so she can reach the board:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to ask a silly question, but it isn’t so silly. Andrzej explains: “The flood that inundated the Sumerians was real, but it happened before biblical times, meaning before the ‘creation of the world’.”
Hili: I need to check something real quick.
Andrzej: What is it?
Hili: Was that biblical flood before the creation of the world, or after?
In Polish:
Hili: Muszę szybko coś sprawdzić.
Ja: co takiego?
Hili: Czy ten biblijny potop był jeszcze przed stworzeniem świata, czy już po?
*******************
From Stacy:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From CinEmma:
From Masih, another ridiculous persecution by the theocracy of Iran:
Authorities shut down a blogger’s Instagram page and opened a criminal case against her family for feeding stray dogs.
Their crime? A religious song was playing, a government chant used to fund religious pilgrimages to Iraq. They called it blasphemy. pic.twitter.com/tetqgkOsHu
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 14, 2026
From the Number Ten Cat. I presume that the inside of 10 Downing Street has air-conditioning:
Notice many people wearing fur coats today? This weather is no fun for cats. https://t.co/g2rFba7SO1
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 13, 2026
Now here’s a thought:
damn pic.twitter.com/bifQmovsHB
— 🇺🇸 (@spagati727) August 13, 2026
What is “Woke 1”? Jeff Maurer discusses this, but I can’t see his full post on his Substack. Here’s what’s visible for “WHY was Woke 1?“:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tried to giggle away Francesca Hong’s old tweets by observing that “Woke 1 was crazyyyy!” People’s heads fucking exploded in response to that. And I get it: Woke 1 — which people called “The Great Woke” before Woke War 2 — was not a giggle-worthy event if you lost your job, were socially excommunicated, or worse. And now AOC — who was a four star general in Woke War 1 — is breezily laughing off the era like she’s looking at a picture of herself in low-rise jeans and a Mumford & Sons t-shirt. You bet your sweet bippy that’ll evoke a “fuck you”.
Many people have used this moment to ask: “What was Woke 1?” Matt Yglesias gave what I thought was a good definition, Idrees Kahloon, Dave Weigel, and Michael Bahareen offered long-form thoughts, and Tyler Austin Harper gave us the view from inside academia. Personally, I’d define Woke 1 as “An attempt to use social pressure to coerce people to endorse far-left views.” Or, if you’d prefer a more jokey definition: “A reign of extremely polite terror carried out by people with ‘Be Kind’ stickers on their laptops.”
But I’ll let other people hammer out the definition — I’d like to ask: Why did Woke 1 happen? This was far from the first time that people have used social pressure to try to compel behavior — in fact, you could argue that a series of relationships designed to compel behavior is the very definition of society. Everyone would love to brow-beat others into agreeing with them — Woke 1 is now a proper noun because people succeeded to an uncommon extent. Why did that happen?
From James Maurer a good ad. Ken Paxton, you may remember, is running as a Republican for a U.S. Senatorial seat this fall, while Talarico is the Democrat who will opppose him in a race that looks tight.
This is a good ad and I’m guessing that it will become the template for all four-figure-pen-theft incidents in politics going forward. https://t.co/PT71XY5ozI
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) August 14, 2026
From Malcolm; I don’t know why orange cats are supposed to be weird. All cats could do this:
orange cat behaviour 😺 pic.twitter.com/qGgSZzXgEw
— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) August 4, 2026
One from my feed. This was on the news last night. I hope the guy didn’t hurt the octopus; it looks as if it was okay:
A Filipino fisherman reeled in more than he bargained for, when an octopus attached itself to his face, leaving him battling to free himself of the tentacled troublemaker. pic.twitter.com/yohImNTOUi
— ABC News (@ABC) August 14, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 9 years old and would be 91 had she lived. https://t.co/wIeZ3mrS6V
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 15, 2026
Two from Matthew. First, the search for Amelia Earhart continues:
TIL: This October, Purdue University is finally going to send its expedition to Nikumaroro (Kiribati) in an effort to definitively learn what happened to Amelia Earhart and her plane, which have gone missing since 1937.She departed Oakland in May 1937.www.usatoday.com/story/graphi…
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar.bsky.social) 2026-08-14T17:04:02.165Z
Monkeys make interspecific friends; the article in Primates can be found here:
Monkeys make friends with other species, and that can tell us a lot about how keeping pets came about.Great article by @cyrilgrueter.bsky.social et al., reporting friendly primate interactions with a whopping 55 non-primate species!🧪🐒🐕link.springer.com/article/10.1…
— Joanna Bagniewska (@joannabagniewska.com) 2026-08-14T09:57:41.163Z
I have a degree in law in another country (another continent actually), so I don’t know how things work over there. But from a logical point of view it seems inconceivable to me that you could go around the double jeopardy situation by just using different words for the exact same fundamental facts. I don’t mean it in any disrespectful way but I sometimes marvel at the capacity of some lawyers to argue anything and everything: I will judge you for killing someone and then I will judge you for ending someone’s life… two different things, you know.
Not the same thing but i was once selected as a juror for a trial in which the defendant was basically charged with “driving without a license” and “not having a license while driving”. Just before the trial started, he pleaded guilty to one and the other charge was dropped in an apparent compromise.
Two state (same state) prosecutions for the same offense, or two Federal prosecutions for the same offense, would constitute double jeopardy. But each state is a separate jurisdiction, and the Federal government is yet another one; and so Federal and state prosecutions, or – in theory anyway – prosecutions by two different states, would not necessarily be double jeopardy (though it’s difficult to see how two separate states would be able to prosecute an offense taking place in only one of them).
Federal civil rights prosecutions have perhaps most notably been used to pursue cases in the southern states where state prosecutions (e.g. for murder of civil rights activists) failed – no double jeopardy.
Or consider the bribery of a Customs officer in country X (not the US) to permit illegal entry of goods. That is almost certainly a crime under the laws of country X, and prosecutable there – and it is in the US prosecutable as a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime in the US for a person to bribe a foreign official. Same offense – bribing the Customs officer – but no double jeopardy.
It’s all a question of different jurisdictions having the independent right to prosecute; but the facts and the charges in the Mangione case will determine whether a double jeopardy defense can succeed in the New York state case.
I’ll be watching the Luigi M. trial downtown with interest – amazing case and one being tried in the very courts I used to practice in (State, not Federal) with MY dirtbag clients. 🙂
The TX pen theft scandal is kinda weird but a better question is WHO spends $1,000 on a PEN? Mont Blanc pens are nice, but a GRAND? Sheesh!
D.A.
NYC
“Every woman is in a burqa. This cloth sack symbolizes the way women have been sequestered and forgotten under the Taliban. And this is, of course, because of religion.”
One religion in particular.
There is an article in City Journal in which the author asserts that the U of Michigan’s foolish policy may actually not be a concern for hothouse flower freshman: “[T]he university found that “DFW” (dropout/failure/withdrawal) rates showed ‘intersectional patterns of inequity that parallel those seen in graduation rates: wealthy, white, continuing generation students are substantially more likely to complete these courses with passing grades.'”
Yes, but don’t you think it’s better that everyone know how they did first semester?
Feedback has always been considered an important part of the learning process—from basic education to AI. Discarding this very basic tool is a catastrophe. Even universities offering a pass/fail system in official grades should at least give an unofficial numerical grade to students to inform them of their progress.
This is especially important in the first semester of college, when many students transition from the relative ease of high school assignments to the more rigorous (so it is to be hoped) college level.
Absolutely. I decry this new policy at the U of Michigan. There is nothing traumatizing about a fair, objective evaluation of how one did in a course 🙂
I have wondered if the policy involves an unspoken motivation for student retention — retention of students who pay tuition, that is. There is much pressure on reducing DFWI rates, as I experience while teaching every semester, and it seems pretty clear to me that it’s’ about keeping concerns over enrollment.
Wonder no longer — “follow the money” (cui bono) is a generally useful heuristic, and this grift is part of an interlocking network of similar grifts (a “vast conspiracy”, if you prefer). It’s simple economics to prefer getting income while externalising its costs. So K-12 passes its likely gonnabe failures along to universities, who are glad for the warm bodies; who then pass them on to employers, whose DEI policies load the costs of the substandard work onto some combination of their other employees and their customers. By the time the smell becomes too obvious to ignore, it’s nobody’s fault. Or maybe it’s even considered a laudable Social Justice feature, not a bug.
Since ~1964, Caltech has had a freshman P/F policy for the first two terms (originally the full year).
It looks like Luigi Mangione is getting what he wanted all along — free government healthcare for life.
On a long drive yesterday I was listening to NPR while they had aired a detailed interview of a journalist who went to Afghanistan. The journalist (a women, surprisingly enough), was able to interview one of the higher ups about the policies toward women. The interviewee spoke excellent English and patiently and politely dodged the tougher questions, but also let on that the decision about what to do about women rested with their supreme leader, who is very reclusive and does not take any advice. Even after Islamic clerics from the world over had explained to him that his policies go well beyond Sharia law. So there is little chance in a change until maybe after this person leaves is deposed or dies.
Meanwhile, a common response from regular Taliban members, all younger men, was expression of sympathy for women. They seemed to think that the rules should be relaxed, but there was nothing they could do.
And meanwhile they were all frustrated at the severe limitations in trade and other assistance from much of the outside world (except Russia and China), that being bc of their continued heavy suppression of women’s rights.
I wonder if that Filipino fisherman has seen “Alien” or if he will now.
“Woke 1:” As I said to my wife yesterday, the press should simply ignore that phrase. Just because it was uttered by AOC doesn’t mean that one should take it seriously. As if she’s the most interesting person in the world, they’re hanging on every word.
She’s trying to give everyone an out, and the press would be happy to have one.
“I don’t always laugh off repressive authoritarian leftism. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”
Yes. You recognized my allusion!
Just saw this over at City Journal:
“Personally, I’d define Woke 1 as ‘An attempt to use social pressure to coerce people to endorse far-left views.’”
Let me fix that definition: “Woke 1 evolved from a social pressure campaign to one that also harnessed the coercive power of the state across the Anglosphere to compel obedience to far-left dictates.” In the U.S., few such dictates have been rolled back anywhere the blue team exerts control.
Michigan grades. What exactly is wrong with competition aside from the reality check that one might not be as good as your press releases? That’s fine; few of us are. (Of course, competition also demonstrates who shouldn’t be on the field.) What’s so virtuous about collaboration? Is that not simply an approach which can prove exceptionally beneficial for a growing number of projects yet hinder others that can still be done largely alone? Ah, a culture of connection. Apparently, a simplified version of Howards End has become a touchstone of the academy: Only connect. Perhaps it is crucial that our engineers be “people persons,” but please explain why.
Cue Jon Gallant: We need a sociological explanation of the demographic changes in academia that have led us to downgrade some elements of its former culture and reify others.
I also don’t think Woke 1 is over, especially in deeply blue areas. Nor is it realistic to claim that it’s over in purple areas. There can be no Grand Mullah controlling the self-seeking one-uppery behavior of Wokeness. It is a headless, invasive weed.
And/or chicken.
What underlay the advance of postmodernism/decolonialization/victimhood-hierarchy? Femininization has been postulated as one possible demographic explanation. Here is another: expansion of the academic population with new hordes (of both sexes) who drifted into grad school without real interest in their nominal subject. This population expanded in the 60s/70s with the boomer generation, and a cohort of males who stayed in higher ed to avoid Vietnam (see “Broken English Departments” by Reynolds Cotter). The economic crisis of 2008 led to a further expansion in post-grad enrollment, even as undergrad enrollment declined. In short, a steady increase in the number of academics who prefer to do anything other than the sort of research/scholarship that was once called academic work.
The Jewish cowboy photograph is a wonderful thing to keep reposting, and the fact that the museum lost track of it says a lot about how regional collections are catalogued — or are not. Small museums often hold the only copy of something and have no digitisation budget, so an item can effectively vanish while still sitting in a drawer. Hili’s dialogue today is unusually philosophical for a cat whose main interest is the contents of the fridge. Thanks as always for the Saturday post.