Welcome to Friday, October 23, 2026, with November coming on fast. And it’s National Mole Day, celebrating not the animal but the unit of measurement. Note that the holiday is time-specific, spanning 12 hours, and has already begun.
National Mole Day
More specifically, the celebrations take place between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. In the U.S., the time and date are written 6:02 10/23. The time and date are derived from Avogadro’s number. Avogadro’s number is approximately 6.02×10^23. Hence, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in one mole of a substance, one of the seven base SI units.
From Wikipedia:
The Avogadro number is an exact number equal to the number of constituent particles in one mole of any substance (by definition of the mole), historically derived from the experimental determination of the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 (12C) before the 2019 revision of the SI, i.e. the gram-to-dalton ratio, g/Da.
Here’s the Italian scientist Amadeo Avogadro, from whom the constant comes. He looks a bit scary:
It’s also Global Champagne Day, National Boston Cream Pie Day, National iPod Day (RIP), Swallows Depart from San Juan Capistrano Day, and National Slap Your Irritating Co-Worker Day.
On or around October 23rd, the Day of San Juan, the swallows gather in a swirling, breathtaking mass before departing for their winter home—a 6,000-mile journey to Goya, Corrientes, Argentina. Then, with what seems like clockwork precision, they return to the exact same spot in San Juan Capistrano on or about March 19th, St. Joseph’s Day, to the delight of locals and visitors who gather to welcome them home.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 23 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT hasn’t yet sided with Putin in the Ukraine/Russia war, and in fact they’re still criticizing both him and, of course, Trump, who seems to be courting the Russian dictator. In a new headline called “Putin Nears a Prize: Restoring Ties With the U.S. While Giving Up Nothing” (subtitle “Russia has sought to separate the war in Ukraine from potential business deals and diplomacy with the United States. Its efforts now appear to be working”), Putin is clearly cast as the overall winner. It gets goodies and its war with Ukraine isn’t impeded. (The article is archived here.)
Now, exactly a year after the oil sanctions, Mr. Putin has never been so close to his goal of normalizing relations with Washington without having to make any compromises on Ukraine.
Over the past week and a half, Mr. Trump has set aside years of U.S. foreign policy by openly embracing Mr. Putin and easing the economic pressure on the Kremlin. At the same time, Mr. Trump has vilified President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the putative American ally trying to defend his nation against a Russian invasion.
On Oct. 9, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would buy Russian diesel, asking for no concessions from Mr. Putin in return. The Trump administration went on to pressure Ukraine to stop striking oil refineries — Kyiv’s most powerful lever — and suspended Russia sanctions that Mr. Trump had just signed into law. Mr. Trump declared that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.”
The diesel deal was in part a political calculation by Mr. Trump before the midterm elections, as he tries to lower fuel prices. But that action and others that followed also reflect the president’s long-evident affinity for Mr. Putin, which the Russian leader has assiduously cultivated even while continuing the war and denying Mr. Trump a coveted prize.
Ever since Mr. Trump returned to office, Russia has sought to separate the conflict in Ukraine from potential business agreements and closer diplomatic ties with the United States. The Trump administration held back, even as it slashed aid to Ukraine, largely continuing a Biden administration policy of refraining from economic deals with Russia until Mr. Putin stopped the war.
. . .“In my personal view, victory has already been achieved,” the pro-Putin journalist Marina Akhmedova wrote on social media on Wednesday. “It is not just a matter of the 20 to 25 percent of territory we have liberated,” she added, referring to Russian-occupied land in Ukraine. “It is also about how the United States now engages with Russia.”
Many analysts call the economic incentives offered by Mr. Trump the wrong solution to a war being waged over political and security questions. Still, during his visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday, Mr. Witkoff said that the diesel deal was “another example of what we can achieve by working together.” Mr. Putin, in turn, suggested a deal on Russian fertilizer.
I don’t see how the U.S. can ethically separate helping a dictatorship from the fact that the dictatorship invaded a democratic country that is (or was) our ally. It’s like Churchill giving economic aid to Hitler after he invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia.
*The field of “fat studies” has become polluted by an ideology arguing (misleadingly) that being obese carries no health penalties. (The mantra is “Healthy at Any Size.”) This, at least, was the message of a panel discussion at Harvard Medical School and described by the Free Press.
Obesity isn’t unhealthy. Medical paperwork is violence. We’re living under fascism for fat people. All these arguments have been asserted not in an uber-woke Reddit thread—or, not only there—but at a panel sponsored by Harvard Medical School.
“Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies” took place on September 30, and I had the pleasure of attending, via Zoom. The event featured a research-based criticism of established obesity medicine from a series of qualified experts and scientists. Just kidding. It was, instead, a bizarre panel conversation of far-left, Covid-mask-wearing activists seeking to promote—at an elite medical school—an alternative version of reality. It was also a disturbing reminder that, in some of our most powerful institutions, progressive activism is still freely eroding well-established fact.
The event was hosted by New York Times contributing writer and famed left-wing author Roxane Gay, evidently in her capacity as a visiting professor and artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School. (I wasn’t aware medical schools employed artists-in-residence.) She was joined on the panel by the socialist writer Da’Shaun L. Harrison, a biological male who identifies as transgender and uses they/them pronouns, and whose scientific credentials include authoring the book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for transgender nonfiction. Harrison is perhaps best known for going viral in September after claiming at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago that GLP-1 medications like Ozempic are part of a “genocide” against fat people.
The other “expert” on the panel was activist and consultant Ragen Chastain, whose day job is essentially telling medical providers that the assumption that obesity has severe negative effects on overall health—which is the consensus of U.S. and global health authorities—is wrong. This is a core tenet of “fat positivity,” the movement that united to reframe obesity not as a disease but as another laudable identity in the diversity rainbow. Partly in response to the brutal weight shaming and utterly unrealistic body standards of the early aughts, it gained traction online in the late 2000s and early 2010s, moving from corners of the internet like Tumblr and ultimately making its way to magazine covers and elite media outlets. But alas, the science still doesn’t seem to have drawn the conclusions desired by the fat positivists. And so, they persist.
To be clear, none of the three main speakers at this Harvard Medical School event (a current Harvard medical student also participated) are medical doctors or scientists of any kind. Yet that didn’t stop them from making many of the same bold claims about health and medicine.
Have a look at this!
The most viral moment from the event came when, after an audience question mentioned health insurance companies, Gay cheered, “Free Luigi,” to applause. Unsurprisingly, a Harvard visiting professor openly expressing support for a targeted assassination made headlines and led to a Harvard spokesperson telling Fox News, “The views expressed by speakers at events are their own and do not represent Harvard Medical School or Harvard University.”
Calls for Fat Revolution!
First, Harrison claimed that the United States currently exists under “body fascism,” which he cogently defines as “a state, wherein everything that we know about how bodies are supposed to exist in the world, are supposed to function as, and are supposed to look like, has been perfected and overemphasized in modern society, as a way to discipline and punish . . .fat folks and fat bodies.”
Translation for normal people: He thinks modern American society so oppresses, mistreats, shames, and controls fat people that it constitutes a form of body-focused fascism. . . . Harrison, based on his past public comments, supports violent revolution.
And here, in a nutshell, is their argument (bolding is mine):
Next, Chastain questioned whether obesity even causes health issues.
Before you start wondering why you’ve been lied to your whole life: There is a clear, established causal pathway in medical literature that outlines how excess body fat leads to negative health outcomes like heart disease through increased inflammation. The American Heart Association states that obesity contributes directly to hypertension, sleep disorders, and type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control, for its part, says obese people are, compared to healthy-weight people, at increased risk for “stroke, many types of cancer, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and breathing problems, mental illness, body pain, and difficulty with physical functioning.”
Chastain, however, argued that the negative health outcomes associated with obesity might actually have nothing to do with obesity itself and everything to do with society’s hatred of fat people.
This flat denial of reality is what really angers me: it’s comparable to biologists and anthropologists denying that there are not two sexes, but rather there’s an entire spectrum. You can read Luana’s reaction in her Heterodox STEM piece from June, describing her two encounters with “Fat Studies” lectures at Williams College.,
*To the best of my knowledge, Ilhan Omar hasn’t appeared after the feds raided her home save for a brief appearance on Instagram that I posted yesterday and now a 30-minutes interview with Christ Hayes at MS NOW (see link below). She’s still issuing statements, though, The latest is that she’s going to move out of her Washington, D.C. home because the raid made her feel unsafe:
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar will move out of her Washington, D.C., home that federal agents searched last week, she said Wednesday, noting that attention brought on by the raid has made her feel unsafe there.
Federal authorities are investigating potential fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork and have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives, a person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Omar, who was born in Somalia and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said Wednesday in her first interview since the search that she is “confident in the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The progressive Minnesota Democrat has been a frequent critic and target of President Donald Trump, who has on multiple occasions pushed for the prosecution of his perceived political enemies.
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In the interview with MS NOW, Omar said she was rattled by the search weeks out from the Nov. 3 midterms, which will decide control of the House and Senate. She is running for reelection in a deep blue district centered in Minneapolis and is expected to retain her seat.
Omar recalled waking around 6 a.m. to Homeland Security investigators banging on her door with a warrant. They searched for four or five hours and seized 17 items, including phones, notebooks, a Somali language children’s book and a vintage camera that her husband had received as a gift, she said.
The Justice Department has shared few details about the case other than saying it was a criminal investigation.
Omar came with her family to the U.S. at age 12, after they obtained asylum. She became a U.S. citizen five years later, in 2000.
“It would be a huge undertaking to, I suppose, indict a 12-year-old for so cleverly conspiring to defraud immigration services to come to the United States. I’m sure there are a lot of smart 12-year-olds, but that seams like a leap,” she said in the interview.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but several sites, including yahoo! news, highlight a curious statement in the interview relating to the rumors she married her brother, and the “not to my knowledge” bit is at 14:59.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., dismissed long-standing allegations that she married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme during a Wednesday interview, although she stopped short of categorically ruling out a family relationship with her former husband.
“Not to my knowledge,” Omar told Chris Hayes on MS Now when asked whether there was any “weird kernel of truth” to allegations involving Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom she previously married.
That statement, however, doesn’t seem like hedging to me, but rather an offhand response to the question. We’ll see what happens when this plays out. The latest update, reported by Newsweek and other sources, is that Ilhan Omar isn’t her real birth name:
A federal court filing submitted Wednesday by the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, obtained by Fox News, refers to the congresswoman as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” The filing concerns efforts to keep materials sealed in relation to the federal search warrant for Omar’s Washington, D.C.-area home.
*Speaking of Congress, division, and faith, one of the most acrimonious contests for the Senate is the Michigan race between Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers. El-Sayed tars Rogers with his ties to Trump, and, in the other direction, El-Sayed is tarred with his supposed ties to terrorism. Bolding is from the Washington Post article:
Both laced their substantive policy answers with unrelated personal attacks.
Michigan’s open Senate seat is key for both parties’ hopes for controlling the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 advantage. Republicans view it as the best opportunity to flip a seat, even as they’re on defense elsewhere in the country. Democrats are aiming to hold every seat they have while flipping four Republican-held ones.
Here are five takeaways from the debate, aired live from WXYZ Detroit’s studios in Southfield, Michigan.
Family ties and the Muslim Brotherhood took a back seat
The headlines that dominated this race all week were largely — but not completely — a footnote.
El-Sayed would be the nation’s first Muslim senator, and Republicans have leaned into attacks related to his religion and identity.
El-Sayed protested that Rogers has been questioning his loyalty to the country, and said, “It is really quite beneath you.”
“I know you want to make this about being a victim,” Rogers retorted. “This is about an ideology.”
El-Sayed would not let up on Rogers’s ties to Trump
El-Sayed repeatedly challenged viewers to play “MAGA Bingo” when Rogers was talking, diminishing the former congressman’s positions as recycled Trump talking points designed to change the subject and paper over Rogers’ true views.
He described Rogers as “hip to hip with Trump” and called him the president’s “sock puppet.”
They disagreed sharply on many policies
Trump was also at the center of several policy differences.
Rogers called Trump’s tariffs on Canada “a mixed bag” while El-Sayed said they “clearly have hurt” people. El-Sayed called the war in Iran unnecessary and responsible for the rising prices of gas and groceries, while Rogers said it’s necessary to contain the threat Iran poses to the world.
Rogers defended Trump’s immigration enforcement surge, saying it contributed to a nationwide drop in violent crime. El-Sayed said it contributed to illegal searches of citizens and neighborhoods terrorized by masked agents.
Rogers painted El-Sayed as a democratic socialist
Rogers tried to link El-Sayed to his party’s most left-leaning flank.
While some prominent democratic socialists, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), have campaigned with the Democrat, El-Sayed does not consider himself a member of the movement.
But Rogers characterized El-Sayed’s campaign slogan of “Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for all” as signifying a democratic socialist agenda that would result in a huge tax increase that could bankrupt the economy.
The race remains close
Despite national media attention and record spending in the state, polls consistently show El-Sayed with a narrow edge, barely outside of the margin of error — a margin much smaller than Democrats are holding in Michigan’s other statewide races.
Here’s a short video news report on their recent debate. The election will be one to watch closely, as it’s pretty much neck and neck right now, but a rush of voters might favor one side or another at the polls.
*Van Gogh’s famous painting “The starry night” has now been assigned a specific date by a group of astronomers:
Scientists doubling as art detectives have traced Vincent van Gogh’s “ The Starry Night ” to a celestial scene that suggests a new date for one of the world’s most famous paintings.
Their findings indicate that rather than being a product of van Gogh’s imagination, “The Starry Night” may have been inspired by what he saw as he gazed heavenward from his French asylum 137 years ago.
A South Korean team reported Thursday that after years of forensic astronomy and research into the Dutch artist, they have matched his masterpiece to a predawn sky over France’s Saint-Remy de Provence right around July 22, 1889.
That’s a month later than the long-accepted time frame for the postimpressionist painting depicting a crescent moon and Venus surrounded by a sky of swirling stars with a village nestled below and cypress trees looming on one side.
Art historians have long dated the painting to June 1889, soon after Van Gogh checked into the asylum. He’d cut off his left ear several months earlier during an argument with painter Paul Gauguin.
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A team led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, the CEO of a Seoul telescope maker, is now disputing that date in a study appearing in the journal Scientific Reports.
The sky that is most similar to the painting occurred around July 22, 1889, said Kim, who is also a doctoral candidate at Kyung Hee University. He noted that the few days before and after could have inspired van Gogh as well.
. . . . The latest study addresses “a real puzzle” that in mid-June 1889, the moon was not the thin crescent painted by van Gogh, said Jose Luis Aragon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has studied “The Starry Night” as a physicist, but did not take part in the new research.
This of course assumes that van Gogh was painting from real life, not from his imagination, and I wouldn’t bet on the former. Besides, the time from crescent to crescent is about 30 days, so what’s the difference between late June and late july? And is the position of Venus (which I can’t identify among those bodies) crucial? But we’ll never know, of course. Still. . . . Here’s the painting:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still harassing Andrzej:
Hili: How many times a day are you wrong?
Andrzej: Seven.
Hili: How do you know?
Me: I’m guessing.
Hili: Ile razy dziennie jesteś w błędzie?Ja: Siedem.Hili: Skąd wiesz?Ja: Zgaduję.
*******************
Via Divy on FB: a cat and d*g sleeping together make a weird combination:
From Terrible Maps. What’s with Greece and Albania?
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Masih: a heartbreaking video of a woman blinded by the Iranian regime for protesting, still wanting to look good on stage in a meeting in Poland:
Just before stepping onto the stage, Farideh asked me a simple question: “Should I leave my hair down, or tie it back?”
I said let it go.. but my heart broke. She can no longer see her own reflection in the mirror. She still wants to look beautiful, to stand tall, and to be seen.
Farideh was blinded in both her eyes by the Islamic Republic during the uprising in 2022, in Sanandaj.
She’s a hero and that is why I invited her to join our delegation in Poland while I receive an award.
With Farideh joining us, our delegation now carries three women blinded under Islamic regimes. Fahimeh is from Afghanistan. Her husband blinded her, just for women’s rights activities. And Kosar was only 22 years old when she took to the street after the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini in the hand of morality Police, shouting for freedom. The Islamic Republic shot her in the face and took one of her eyes.
Yesterday we visited Auschwitz. I walked where millions of innocent people were murdered. We could not hold back our tears. And you know what broke my heart even more? The dictators and oppressors who commit crimes against humanity are the same ones who deny the Holocaust in our country.
The Islamic Republic denies the Holocaust, they even hold cartoon contests mocking it, while they are committing their own crimes against our people in the streets of Iran.
This is what evil does. It denies the crimes of others while committing its own. That is why we must never be silent. We must speak, we must document, we must bear witness, so the world cannot say we did not know.And at the end, I want to thank Poland for opening your doors to these brave women, for standing with us, for giving us this platform so the voices of the blinded women of Iran and Afghanistan can be heard. Poland knows the price of freedom, and that is why freedom echoes here.
My dream is to take these bra women to university campuses in Europe in America to tell the truth what it means living under Islamic Stats.
Hear Our Stories!@FahimaSarfaraz
@kosareftekharii— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 22, 2026
The Number Ten Cat continues to drag Trump (and his VP):
Of all the lies told in this history of the world, this might be the biggest
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 22, 2026
From Malcolm; cat manipulation:
Interesting switches on cats 🐱cat https://t.co/Rnojdj1UYb
— Vexira Darneth (@VexiraDarneth) October 20, 2026
Two from my feed. First, an infant with good taste in music.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a baby with no teeth, no job, and no idea who Barbara Ann is absolutely losing their mind to “Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann!” by The Beach Boys! 😂🎶 https://t.co/RIjA3vaOA5
— G-PA (@IndianaGPA) October 22, 2026
Do you recognize the song? Think Frank Sinatra.
Violin teacher of 40 years gets teary after a surprise goodbye performance by her students 🥹 https://t.co/YUsx50VZZw
— Restoring Your Faith in Humanity (@HumanityChad) October 21, 2026
One I reposed from The Auschwitz Memorial:
Two from Doctor Cobb. First, a gorgeous piebald dear, with patches of pigment:
— Good Trailcams (@goodtrailcams.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T21:00:21.133Z
This isn’t AI, but it’s close, and nearly as unethical:
Ever wondered if a wildlife photo was staged? "Photography game farms" use captive animals for awards and stock photos, misleading viewers. Learn more in this episode of the 'Conservation, Entangled' series by Izzy Sasada.Find all the episodes in Mongabay's YouTube!mongabay.cc/Conservation…
Music: Here’s an unreleased song written by Paul McCartney but never formally recorded by him or the Beatles. “Goodbye” was sung by Mary Hopkin in 1969, and you can see her version here. It was a hit for her, reaching #2 in the UK but blocked from the top spot by, ironically, the Beatles song “Get Back.” McCartney’s demo was later released in an Abbey Road boxed set.
This is a mono-to-stereo remix of Goodbye—a rare home demo recorded by Paul McCartney during the sessions for Abbey Road.
One particularly interesting aspect of McCartney’s demo is his vocal performance. Not only does he sing the lyrics from a female perspective, but he also performs the backing vocal phrases within the same breath and during the same take.
For this remix, those backing vocal elements were separated and placed in another channel—similar to how backing vocals would normally appear in a stereo recording. With a bit of processing, the result creates the illusion of two singers: one performing the lead and another providing backing vocals.
To add a little more flair, McCartney’s verse where he sings the “da-da” vocal phrases has been super-imposed during the final verse so that it accompanies the lyrics, giving the impression of an additional backing vocal.
The demo itself was recorded by McCartney at his Cavendish Avenue home, not far from EMI Studios, using his personal home recorder. The recording was intended as a guide for Mary Hopkin, who had recently been signed to Apple Records.
A mono version of this original demo was eventually released decades later on the Abbey Road Super Deluxe Edition box set in 2019, giving fans a rare glimpse into McCartney’s songwriting process during that period.
With the added percussion, the demo now takes on a minimalistic production feel reminiscent of Blackbird from The Beatles—the same album that also featured “Mother Nature’s Son.” Paul would continue exploring this stripped-down musical style after the breakup of the band on his first solo album, McCartney.
From Wikipedia:
To assist Hopkin in learning the song, McCartney recorded a solo demo at his home, 7 Cavendish Avenue, London, in early February 1969. This demo was later released on the Abbey Road: 50th Anniversary Edition in 2019. The song was arranged by Richard Hewson, who had also orchestrated “Those Were the Days,” and produced, along with its flip side, “Sparrow”, by Paul McCartney on 1 March 1969 at Morgan Studios in Willesden. To better match Hopkin’s voice, the key was raised from C major to E major. The recording was Apple’s first official double-A-side, and the first Apple record to feature a full-fledged picture sleeve.
Hopkins’s “Those Were the Days,” produced by McCartney in 1968, was a huge hit, reaching #1 in the UK and #2 in the U.S. I well remember groups (mostly of women, curiously) singing the song together in college. More from Wikipedia.
For the recording, Hopkin sang and performed acoustic guitar, while McCartney played bass guitar, an acoustic guitar introduction and solo, along with lap-slapping percussion and drums. Backing vocals, horns and strings, in Hewson’s arrangement, were overdubbed.[11] The session was filmed by Apple’s Tony Bramwell for a promotional clip. In the footage, Hopkin can be seen miming to the song inside the studio, combined with shots of her and McCartney in the control room listening to a playback.
The McCartney demo (again, Hopkins’s released version is here):
Jeebus, as I read it, I figured the HMS fat studies piece was your Friday excerpt from Nellie; there was even a hint with it coming from TFP. But no. I guess this claptrap is real. And the full moon above the hills is a cooking pot…
Was this an official HMS-sponsored conference or simply an HMS-adjacent activity trading on the medical school’s name and reputation by inference? Maybe there is some fat (no pun intended) that can be cut from Harvard’s budget.
I found Helen Pluckrose’s and James Lindsay’s treatment of “disability and fat studies” within the context of their book Cynical Theories (2020) very enlightening.
And a little morning googling finds that the conference/panel discussion was sponsored by the Harvard Medical School Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health and the Harvard English Department.
This HMS Masters program describes itself thusly at its website: “The Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health is a nine-month Harvard Medical School graduate program for those interested in using storytelling to promote health.
The Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health is the only master’s degree program in the world to offer evidence-based, multidisciplinary storytelling and an arts-driven curriculum focusing on health interventions. Students will have expert mentors guide them through using the storytelling medium of their choice (for example, film, creative nonfiction, podcasting, or graphic design) to craft a novel public health intervention.”
So in answer to my own question in Comment #1, it seems that this entire program, not just the panel, is at best medical school adjacent and maybe more an element of english, drama, and rhetoric. Similar false authenticity by association is conferred when departments of math education teach courses in “decolonizing mathematics” thus showing zero knowledge of the history of mathematics that actual math graduates and mathematicians have.
And a big me too to Jared’s plug for Cynical Theories…one of my go-to resources.
Well, if Omar doesn’t feel safe because law enforcement arrived with a warrant at her current home and could do it again, she won’t feel safe anywhere in the U.S.
As for fat-positivity, the thing that really surprises me is that they haven’t adopted a new term for being fat, one which they feel doesn’t carry the negative cultural associations of “fat.”
Soon, I guess, they’ll switch to »weighty«.
Or “enlarged”?
Sturdy could be a dandy, much more positive term for the morbidly obese.
Back in the 1970s, people were saying “Thin is in, but fat’s where it’s at!” I saw a member of the Fat Liberation Front (or whatever it was called) on a talk show. She said that she had no objection to the word “fat.” “That’s what it is –fat. I prefer it to ‘overweight.’ Over WHAT weight? Who decides?” This has been going on for at least half a century, although I don’t know when medical professionals started enabling this.
I’m not casting stones. I myself am obese. However, I am not kidding myself that it is healthy.
My male cousin was a bit overweight when he was a kid. His clothes were “husky” size—an actual designation on the clothing rack.
Ah yes, I remember the Husky rack. I had to buy off that rack when I was a kid.
Several of my family are heavy, and they all have health problems related to it: bad knees and hips, heart problems, limited ability to perform everyday tasks, diabetes. Some of them have been using Ozempic to great benefit, both for controlling diabetes as well as for getting them down to a reduced level of body fat that allows them to perform activities that they couldn’t do in the past, such as walking, tying their shoes, picking up something from the floor, and being (semi) comfortable in an airplane seat. Even if you believe that you can still be healthy if fat, there’s no denying that carrying a lot of excess body fat causes a degradation in the ability to perform and enjoy almost any physical task.
Or “big boned,” a la Cartman on South Park.
Gravitationally gifted?
Or, in light of the first item in today’s post, “mucho mole”?
The earth is flat disk.
The moon is made of cheese.
Putin is a humanist.
Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
🙄
Ironically, there is at least some truth to the idea that “negative health outcomes associated with obesity might actually have nothing to do with obesity itself,” but not because of society’s hatred of fat people.
Rather, there is likely at least some truth to the idea that the gene combinations that cause people, ceteris paribus, to be fat are the same gene combinations that lead to certain negative health outcomes. In other words, people with these genetic traits will have these negative outcomes (at least to some extent) whether they actually get fat or not, and their slimming down reduces these health risks only to some degree, not to the level of persons without these genetic traits.
This is my lay understanding of the matter, anyway.
Omar has been receiving numerous death threats, and the number has increased recently. She does not feel threatened because of law enforcement agents showing up at her house, but because the media revealed her home address in the reporting of that incident, which prompted the upsurge in threats.
A number of individuals have already been successfully prosecuted for threatening Omar, so one might give her concerns a bit of credibility.
Indeed. I thought about that, but also thought that her home address would be well known. That was a stupid thing to think!
If Van Gogh based “Starry Night” on a real night sky, then perhaps that enhances its wonder. Think of it this way: many people (perhaps millions) would have seen the same sky, but only one created this image.
I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised that some amazing photographs that I see in major wildlife photography contests are staged from wildlife farms. There is big money to be won in some of the contests, along with a lot of exposure.
“… a lot of exposure,” nice. 🙂
A High School teacher told me that a lot of nature “documentaries” are staged; he said that the TV show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (remember Marlon Perkins?) used zoo animals. “They don’t go out with a camera and wait for something to happen –‘Oh look! A cougar showed up! Let’s follow it and see what happens.'” It was obvious once he pointed it out.
A Disney True Life Adventure was notorious for showing lemmings “jumping” off a cliff to their deaths. They were pushed.
The Mouse is mean.
Believing that obesity is healthy does not make it healthy.
I’m not a fan of Ilhan Omar (or whatever her real name is), but I can certainly understand why she wants to move out of her Washington, DC home. It’s frightening to be such a controversial figure when everyone knows where you live.
Van Gogh‘s “The Starry Night” is an unforgettable painting whether or not it captures the positions of the stars on a specific night. The distortion of reality in the painting is the paradigmatic representation of deep mental anguish.
The newspaper for use in the litter box is a great idea! Kids have such great imaginations. Once they are squeezed by societal norms, that childlike imagination is usually squeezed out as well.
Finally, that baby captures perfectly the sheer joy that is The Beach Boys “Barbara Ann.”
Or, on postmodern beliefs from, I think Dawkins’ introductory essay in Krauss’ “The War on Science”:
“…someone being comforted by believing that X is true, does not logically imply that X is true. To paraphrase Steven Pinker, you may choose to believe that the tiger chasing you is a rabbit, but your chosen belief, no matter how fervent, cannot alter the fact that the brute is a tiger….as you will soon painfully discover.”
I am not sure what is “postmodern” about delusional beliefs. Perhaps you can clarify?
Today, October 23 is International Snow Leopard Day.
This day is recognized by all the countries where snow leopards roam.
Some of these 12 countries are problematic for each other, such as India and Pakistan but still work together in the interest of snow leopards.
Snow leopards do not recognize borders between countries. They just roam. The problems could start for snow leopards if countries start erecting border fences and barriers to separate snow leopards that have low genetic diversity. Snow Leopard Trust under Charudutt Mishra is working with local communities in these countries to preserve snow leopards.
I am not overweight, I am underheight!
Goats: With our community goat, Toby, the street beside me scores a respectable ~0.8 goats/person. Toby is a wonderful asset, keeping all sorts of things out of the landfills – weed & vine yard trimmings, banana peels, avocado skins & pits, coffee filters & grounds, tea bags (sans staple!). It’s astonishing how fast he can put away an entire cabbage.
At 0.01, those goats in Norway must be working hard on producing the milk for gjetost.
And at 0, that must be rounding for Sweden. The Santa Claus equivalent there, the Jultomte, travels with a sleigh pulled by the Julbok – the Xmas Goat, as depicted in Jenny Nyströms quintessential Xmas illustrations.
Fat: I once went to a 24hr grocery store @ 2am, just out of curiosity. It seemed that everyone was morbidly obese. When I mentioned that to someone they said that that’s when they go out of embarrasment at otherwise being seen.
(& Jim – answer to yr ? back on the Wed Hili.)
Thank you….or I guess I could have taken a nice three-hour Fall drive to Staunton to a live visit and ask himself, but who knows who recalls what after fifty years. Did not recall it being his mom.
Interesting about the convenience store observance. I had noticed the same thing and thought it was a case of the midnight munchies.
One of my favorite Mary Hopkin (note: she tends to be over-essed) songs is “The Fields of St. Etienne”.
Ukraine seems to be at a stalemate, with both sides taking shots at the other with no real movement. I strongly oppose the Russian invasion and any US support for Russia. I also support providing support to Ukraine for weaponry.
Ukraine can’t remove the Russians themselves, so the options are either to provide a very much stronger military response involving other countries to kick Russia out, or negotiate a settlement to recognize the captured lands as being under Russian control. If we, as a US & European team, lack the will to formally support Ukraine with our own militaries because of the potential bigger conflict that could come from that, then the negotiated settlement seems the only way forward. It’s not the solution I want but I don’t see any other way.
Churchill could not have reacted to the Anschluss or to the occupations to Czechoslovakia by the Nazis because he was not in the government at the time. Neville Chamberlain was still Prime Minister, and Churchill was not invited back in till after the invasion of Poland.
Today is also the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
As a former (occasional) immigration attorney, I doubt Omar will be deported, for various reasons:
And I don’t want deportation fiends on the right to be empowered if that happened. The case for her deportation in the context of immigration law is shaky at best.
Even more so, while she might be deported “to Somalia,” she won’t stay in Somalia. She’ll end up – in a day – in a mansion in Dubai that -we- paid for after her and her family’s grift and crime.
My friends from Somaliland, and I have many now after my articles, are particularly invested in this given that Omar’s father was part of what was called the Issaq genocide of Somalilanders by… her family.
As I see it, there’s an American jail cell with her name written on the front.
D.A. (J.D.)
NYC
Re: “Goodbye”:
Confused about the “added” percussion reference. Paul does tap his feet during a filmed promo for Apple where he plays the song to George Martin, or was it Paul slapping his lap during Hopkin’s version that was “flown in” for this remix?
I’m not a home right now, so I can’t check my Abbey Road SDE.
On Mary’s version, Paul plays acoustic guitar, bass, drums, piano, ukulele, adds lap-slapping percussion, and provides backing vocals. I’ve also heard a mix of the backing track from Mary’s commercial version with Paul’s demo vocal replacing Mary’s vocal. It’s nice, and of course sounds “Beatlesque.”
Also floating around out there is a version of the John-written “Grow Old With Me,” which was recently covered by Ringo (with Paul), but with Ringo’s main vocal replaced with John’s demo vocal…
…and “Sour Milk Sea,” a George-composition written during the “White Album” era, recorded by Jackie Lomax during the late-sixties (produced by George–and featuring a backing band comprised of Paul, George, Ringo, Eric Clapton, and Nicky Hopkins!) that also has had the lead vocal stripped and replaced with George’s demo vocal.
(The feeling among some fans and scholars [but not me] is that if “Free As A Bird,” “Real Love,” and “Now And Then” are considered Beatlesongs, why can’t these?)
The funniest thing about the pro-fat conference at Harvard might be the title: Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies. So it’s, our bodies refuse to submit to the authorities! It’s not about health.
“He thinks modern American society so oppresses, mistreats, shames, and controls fat people that it constitutes a form of body-focused fascism. . . . Harrison, based on his past public comments, supports violent revolution.”
Somehow I can’t imagine that a violent revolution by fat people would go well for them.