Wednesday: Hili dialogue

January 14, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Te Rā o te Puku” in Māori), Wednesday, January 14, 2026, and National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day, celebrating another great contribution of America (and Jews) to world cuisine.  Below is a huge sandwich from Harold’s Deli in Edison, New Jersey, right off Route 95 if you’re driving north. It’s my dream to go there. Note the pickle bar (I’d have a half-sour.)  I wish a reader would go there and send photos and comments. (I wouldn’t recommend mixing corned beef and pastrami in one sandwich, though.

It’s also Caesarean Section Day (celebrating the “first successful Caesarean [also spelled as Cesarean] delivery or C-section, in the United States, which was made by Dr. Jesse Bennett on January 14, 1794″),  International Kite Day, which started in India, and Feast of the Ass. celebrating all the donkeys mentioned in the Bible, including Jesus riding on his ass into Jerusalem before the Crucifixion.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The situation in Iran has become more and more serious, with the death toll of protestors reports as high as 3,000. (The NYT article is archived here.)

As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade.

Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”

Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags.

In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.

The state broadcaster said the images show the danger that protests pose to Iran’s society: “There are individuals in these gatherings who want to drag ordinary people — people who have nothing to do with these events — and their families into this situation. So that they too are drawn into the chaos,” the reporter in the voice over said. “I have never seen images like these in my life before.”

Those who still support Iran’s theocratic government and those in the streets calling for its downfall agree: These are days of brutality unlike anything they have ever seen.

The toll of dead and injured across the country is unclear. Human rights groups are struggling to reach their contacts inside Iran and follow the methodology they normally use to verify information but say they have counted more than 500 dead.

Multiple American officials say that U.S. intelligence agencies have conservatively estimated that more than 600 protesters have been killed so far.The agencies have noted that both the current protests and the crackdown are far more violent than those in 2022 or other recent uprisings against the government.

A senior Iranian health ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. The figure included hundreds of security officers, he said.

Another government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had seen an internal report that referred to at least 3,000 dead, and added that the toll could climb.

If confirmed, the death toll would be among the worst in recent Iranian history.

. . .For the past five days, the Iranian authorities have shut down the internet, international phone lines and sometimes even domestic mobile phone connections. That has left rights groups, journalists and families alike struggling to understand the scope of what has happened.

But videos trickling out of the country and the messages of some Iranians who occasionally get satellite internet connections offer a devastating picture of bloodshed.

The article goes on to describe snipers on rooftops killing protestors, emergency rooms full of gunshot victims, and in general protestors being shot down like so many clay pigeons.  At least to me, this is the most absorbing story happening in the world. The government keeps killing protestors, and people, undeterred, keep protesting. This is a people who have had enough of the oppressive theocracy, and it’s time for that theocracy to step down. But that’s hard to envision, for, after all, it’s a theocracy, and they have the weapons. Sometimes, again my own reason, I hope that the U.S. can somehow intervene, and that would have to be via weapons since withholding oil won’t get rid of the government. But then who would form the new government? The son of the previous Shah, a Shah who was also dictatorial?

In the meantime, Trump has canceled scheduled talks with the Iranian regime and issued this statement:

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

This sure sounds like he’s planning some kind of military intervention, but Trump has threatened a lot of stuff that he hasn’t done (viz., annexing Greenland).

*A Washington Post editorial board op-ed suggests what the U.S. needs to do—and should do—to help bring down the Iranian regime.

The Trump administration is split on how to proceed. Iran is offering to reopen talks on its nuclear program to get the U.S. to back off. Vice President JD Vance wants to give these talks a try before Trump launches airstrikes. Another faction sees the offer of talks as a desperate play for time. Indeed, Iran refused to engage in negotiations after the Twelve Day War, saying the U.S. was making “unreasonable demands.” What’s changed? For his part, Trump has signaled that he may do both: strike first, talk after.

Trump has military options to make good on his threats. A kinetic approach might involve bombing the bases that belong to security forces or directly targeting top government officials. It could be as simple as directing drones to take out paramilitary militias as they drive to violently put down protests.

Trump has already imposed added tariffs on any country that trades with Iran, but neither I nor the editors think that, even on top of an oil restriction, will topple the government. So here’s their “solution”:

Repressive regimes only collapse when fissures emerge within their ranks. Protests can be catalysts for a crack-up, but they are themselves often insufficient. The brave Iranian people are providing meaningful pressure from inside the country. By repeatedly taking to the streets to be beaten and killed, they raise the human cost and increase the odds that some elements among the fragmented security services start to refuse the orders they’re being given to massacre civilians.

Adding pressure from the outside can tighten that vise. The key is to ensure that it’s seen as being in support of the people on the street, not as part of a larger agenda. If a militia commander feels the walls closing in, he may defect. If he perceives that he is defending his country against nefarious foreigners, he may fight harder.

The biggest unknown is what Trump ultimately wants to achieve. This can end in one of two ways: the regime collapses or it holds on. Trump may think, with enough pressure, he could hammer out a durable nuclear deal and avoid fresh chaos that an imploding regime might create. But the prospect of truly resetting the geopolitics of the Middle East and beyond — Russia and China would be hardest hit — is more tantalizing. Whichever goal Trump decides on, easing pressure on the regime at its point of maximum vulnerability would be a mistake.

But we’re already adding pressure, and pressure that is seen as supportive of the protestors and NOT part of a larger agenda.  This is a phoned-in “solution” that offers nothing new. Nobody in the administration (save Vance, who has no influence here) has talked about easing pressure on Iran.  A nuclear deal is, in my view, not even being considered now—not when people are dying en masse in the streets. The question for the Post editors is this: “Are you being cagey about the U.S. using military action? Otherwise, the U.S. is already doing exactly what you’re suggesting.”

*At the Free Press, Yascha Mounk decries “The West’s deafening silence on Iran.” The subtitle is “I searched five major progressive publications for coverage of Iran’s uprising. Combined results: zero.”  We’ve already seen that the NYT and WaPo, which can be considered “progressive” are covering Iran big time. It’s a big story. So whaat did Mounk look at? (He’s founder and editor of Persuasion, a liberal magazine.)

. . . the sympathies of every single person who believes in freedom and equality and the basic rights of women should be with those courageous millions in Iran. And yet, across the West, there has been a deafening silence in the face of these historic protests.

This silence has been evident in mainstream media outlets, from the British Broadcasting Corporation to National Public Radio, that have been oddly slow to grasp the importance of this moment. Worse, when those outlets did deign to cover the events, they often downplayed the significance of the protests; in a few especially egregious cases, reporters even seemed to harbor sympathies for the country’s brutal regime. (At the outset of the protests, The Guardian even published an op-ed by Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister.)

The silence has been even more deafening in the left-wing newspapers and magazines of the anglophone world. On Saturday morning, I searched the principal publications of the American left for any mention of Iran. There was nothing on the websites of The Nation or The New Republic or Jacobin or Slate or even Dissent.

. . .There are some straightforward explanations for why a lot of attention is currently elsewhere. There is good reason for American media outlets to focus on what is happening in Venezuela, and in Minnesota, and more broadly on the various outrages perpetrated daily by the White House. And it is genuinely hard to report on a country that tightly controls foreign journalists and currently has a nationwide internet blackout. At Persuasion, we have been lucky to publish a moving essay by an anonymous Iranian who has written for us before. On the podcast, I have been fortunate to have a deep conversation with Scott Anderson about the country’s revolutions, past and present. But is it really so difficult to have some staff writer type up a report about what is happening in the country, or to source an op-ed by some Iranian in exile about their hopes for their country?

So Mounk is considering not just progressive outlets, but mainstream media, and he’s wrong about the MSM in the U.S. But if the silence in the “principal publications of the American Left” is real, and persists, Mounk has an explanation, which I’ve put in bold below:

The silence is far from random; it is a choice. And while I suspect that this choice is not fully conscious, and that the people making that choice haven’t fully spelled out the logic which motivates it, even to themselves, it ultimately goes back to a very simple calculation that (as he pointed out more eloquently than anybody else) has plagued leftist intellectuals ever since the days of George Orwell.

The sympathies of every single person who believes in freedom and equality and the basic rights of women should be with those courageous millions in Iran.

For far too many progressives and leftists, their founding commitment is not to some principle or aspiration for the world. It is to believing that their own countries and societies are at the root of profound evil. This creates in their minds a simple demonology: Anybody who is on “our side” must be bad, and anybody who is on the “other side” is presumptively good. As Orwell said about some of the intellectuals of his day, their “real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism.”

It has in the past week not been difficult to find especially harebrained leftists who follow this logic to its bitter end: ones who malign Iranian protesters as hapless agents of imperialism, or for that matter are unwilling to acknowledge that Nicolás Maduro was a terrible dictator. But most are a little more subtle than that. They don’t go all the way toward celebrating Khamenei or Maduro, nor can they quite bring themselves to hope for the downfall of the regimes they built.

Well, we’ll see how long Slate (which really is biased in a bad way) or The Nation neglect Iran. At first I rejected Mounk’s explanation, but the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right. It can’t just be American neglect of the rest of the world, which is a reality given we’re a parochial nation, for we sure pay a lot of attention to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.

*As the WaPo reports, two transgender athletes (one in collega and the other in high school) have brought a case before the Supreme Court suing West Virginia and Idaho for banning trans-identified males competing against women in sports.  Here are the questions at issue as posted by the Court (h/t Bat).

The article is mostly about a trans-identified male in West Virginia, and the case that Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, has brought, but the two cases really involve the same issue.  Note that both parts above involve decidiging whether self-identified gender trumps biological sex in sports. An excerpt from the WaPo.  The Supremes heard the arguments yesterday, but the decision won’t come down until this summer:

Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers argue that the ban discriminates against her for being transgender and violates her constitutional equal-protection rights.

The state counters that the ban is necessary to preserve fairness in women’s sports and that Pepper-Jackson should receive no exceptions. Trans women have an unfair physical advantage, no matter their age, because the athletes were designated male at birth, the state argues, adding in its brief that “biological males are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than biological females.”

Although the Supreme Court in 2020 found that trans workers were covered by federal antidiscrimination laws, it has recently handed defeats to advocates for transgender rights. Last year, the high court’s conservatives upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender transition care for minors. They also sided with a group of parents who sued to opt their kids out of lessons featuring LGBTQ storybooks.

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans agree with bans on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. The science concerning the biological advantages of trans female athletes remains hotly debated.

The science may be “hotly debated,” but all of it goes to show that those who transition from male to female gender retain the physiological and physical advantages that men have over women in sports. The public knows this (apparently better than the Post!), and the “unfair physical advantage” is real.

Pepper-Jackson was designated male at birth. Heather Jackson, Pepper-Jackson’s mother, has testified that she noticed early that there was a difference between her youngest child and two older sons.

Pepper-Jackson had typically feminine preferences, gravitating toward dresses and asking her mother why their bodies were not alike. Eventually, she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the medical term for the distress a person feels when their gender identity and their assigned sex are misaligned.

. . . Being from a family of runners, Pepper-Jackson wanted to run cross-country, but in 2021 her middle school principal told her mom that Pepper-Jackson couldn’t join the team. Only months earlier, West Virginia had passed a ban on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. Pepper-Jackson and her mother sued, and lower-court rulings have allowed her to compete as her case plays out.

The Supreme Court plans to hear Pepper-Jackson’s case at a time when 29 states ban trans women from playing on women’s sports teams.

Pepper-Jackson says West Virginia’s ban violates her equal-protection rights. She also contends that the ban violates Title IX, a federal civil rights statute that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education.

My position on this issue has been clear: I favor these bans, with the possible exception of sports in very early grades. But for sports what is relevant is not gender but biological sex, and trans-identified males, while they’re trans, remain biological males. If transitioning via surgery and hormones created a level playing field, that would be a different issue, but all the data say it doesn’t. And remember that surgery and hormones may not be required to identify as a women if you’re born a man. In some places, simple self-identification may be all that’s required. It will be interesting to see how the justices rule on this case. I suspect they’ll go along with what the American people want—not because of that but because sports involves biological rather than self-identified sex.  And if the court rules as it should, will it be another 6-3 decision?   After hearing the arguments, the SCOTUSblog concludes that “Supreme Court likely to uphold trangender athlete bans.” An excerpt:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to uphold laws that prohibit transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ school sports teams. After nearly three-and-a-half hours of arguments in a pair of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, a majority of the justices appeared to agree with the states that the laws can remain in place, even if it was not clear how broadly their ruling might sweep.

This bit shows that you can’t simply redefine sex for the purposes of athletics, and that making sex self-identified has broader implications:

Chief Justice John Roberts was also skeptical of the challengers’ arguments, asking Hartnett to address “whether or not we should view your position as a challenge to the distinction between boys and girls on the basis of sex or whether or not you are perfectly comfortable with the distinction between boys and girls, [and] you just want an exception to the biological definition of girls.” And if the court were to adopt such an exception, Roberts suggested, “that would have to apply across the board and not simply to the area of athletics.”

Unsurprisingly, the liberal justices argued that transgender athletes (apparently only trans-identified males were the subject of discussion) should be able to participate on teams corresponding to their gender identity, not their biological sex. You can read more about the arguments at SCOTUSblog.

This short exchange between Justice Alito and the prosecution’s lawyer shows that the prosecution can’t even define the classes they’re trying to protect. This supports the SCOTUSblog’s conclusion:

*One of the military aircraft used to destroy a Venezuelan “drug boat” last September was painted to look like a civilian plane.

The Trump administration’s first deadly strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat, in early September, was conducted by a secretive military aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane, multiple officials confirmed to The Washington Post on Monday.

The crewed aircraft did not have any weapons showing when the attack occurred, two officials said, speaking, like some others, on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Instead, the munitions were fired from a launch tube that allows them to be carried inside the plane, not mounted outside on the wing.

Use of the plane prompted legal debate after the Sept. 2 operation over whether the concealment of its military status amounted to a ruse that violated international law, said current and former officials familiar with the matter. Eleven people were killed, including two who survived the initial attack by U.S. forces but died in a controversial follow-on strike.

Feigning civilian status and then carrying out an attack with explicit intent to kill or wound the target is known as “perfidy” under the law of armed conflict, a war crime, according to legal experts.
“If you arm these aircraft for self-defense purposes, that would not be a violation” of the law of war, said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised U.S. Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the Pentagon’s counterterrorism campaign that followed 9/11. “But using it as an offensive platform and relying on its civilian appearance to gain the confidence of the enemy is.”

The Trump administration has claimed that its lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the waters around Latin America are lawful because President Donald Trump has determined the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. That contention is widely disputed by legal experts, who say the U.S. is not at war with drug traffickers and that killing suspected criminals in international waters is tantamount to murder. Several analysts and former national security officials have said the entire campaign is, at its foundation, unlawful.

“This isn’t an armed conflict,” said Huntley, director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. “But what makes this so surprising is that even if you buy their argument, it’s a violation of international law.”

Indeed! My view has always been that you have to give the boat a chance to surrender first before there’s any thought of blowing it away, and if there are any survivors, they are not to be killed. But it’s even worse if the plane was disguised as a civilian aircraft. In that case there should be no attack, for that is PERFIDY.  It’s not clear whether that first plane was the only disguised one, or if there have been others involved in these attacks. It’s also not clear to me why they even need to disguise planes given that a small boat has no way of attacking a plane.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again criticizing Andrzej—or maybe she’s just concerned about his health. Either way, Andrzej isn’t having it:

Hili: What’s that?
Me: Gingerbread in chocolate.
Hili: That’s unhealthy for you.
Me: Et tu, Brute?

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest?
Ja: Pierniki w czekoladzie.
Hili: To dla ciebie niezdrowe.
Ja: I ty Brutusie.

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

Via Anna Krylov:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Stacy. Get it?

From Masih; the toll in Iran could be as high as 12,000. The regime apparently has no killing limit:

Click to hear some horrific messages that Masih got from Iran (I don’t know how these got out). I can’t embed the tweet, but if you click on it you’ll go to the original (English translations are provided, and there’s also video):

This was reposted by J. K. Rowling. A brave Iranian woman sings a lovely song of freedom on the streets until the cops make her stop:

From Malcolm; a lovely time-lapse of the Milky Way over Maine:

One from my feed.  landing gear down!

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Reposted by Matthew. I’ve put the picture below and put an arrow at the Earth and Moon in case you think, as I did, that they were a speck of dust on the computer screen:

Pale white dot. And an even tinier Moon.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T06:02:52.725Z

Notice that the arrow is pointing at two dots: Earth and our Moon:

And it’s not clear whether the cat story is true. If you want to see the evidence, go here.

Today is the 98th anniversary of Thomas Hardy’s heart being cut out so it could be buried in Dorset, at which point it was, unfortunately, eaten by a catWell, according to legend… 🧵

— Coates is Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T09:38:27.907Z

Discussion post

January 13, 2026 • 10:28 am

I have put most of the news in the Hili dialogues, and, frankly, am afflicted with a bad case of Weltschmerz (I believe Dr. Cobb shares my ailment).  So today I’m proffering space for you to talk about anything you want, and it need not be limited to the news. I expect many people will want to give their opinions on the ICE killing in Minnesota, but remember that there are huge protests, and thousands of deaths, in Iran, with the possibility of regime change.  A government blackout is preventing us from hearing much about what’s happening, but video and messages have been smuggled out. That’s the news I’ll concentrate on in Hili Nooz until things are resolved one way or the other. The Iranian protestors, knowing that they could be shot, are still congregating en masse in the streets of many cities.

Finally, astronauts are coming back to Earth early because one of them has an undisclosed illness.

So talk about what you want, but please adhere to Da Roolz. For this one post I’ll relax the frequency restrictions, so you can make up to 15% of the total comments (about one comment in six).  Please try to avoid one-on-one arguments, and be civil, and, if I can add one more thing, don’t keep emphasizing the same point over and over again.

Okay, that’s it. Ready, set, go. . . .   and if I get fewer than 50 comments, I’ll be even more depressed.

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 13, 2026 • 8:30 am

Well, folks, this is it, the last batch of wildlife photos I have. As for more, there is nada, zip, zilch, and bupkes in the queue.  It is very sad, isn’t it.

But today we have photos of otters from reader Christopher Moss. Christopher’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. The first batch was sent on December 29:

Just after the sun went down this evening I spotted a pair of otters on the other side of the pond. I assume they are Lontra canadensis, the North American river otter. They are about 80m away, and the photos were taken through a window. But when you’re desperate for readers’ wildlife photos, maybe they will do. The otters played in a small area of open water for a while and then I lost sight of them in the gloom. This is the third or fourth time I have seen otters in our pond (which is in northwest Nova Scotia, near the border with New Brunswick).

Eventually one otter came back up, and was then joined by a second:

One of the otters came back for a trout:

We’re arguing over whether there are three or four pups. I do have a still of five otters at once:

Here’s a video showing all five at once:

A few minutes later my son called out that they were all standing up looking at something, and – guess what? – this fellow was a few feet from them:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 13, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, January 13, 2026, and Korean American Day. Wikipedia has a long list of Korean Americans. I’ll pick one from each sex at random; can you identify them?

This person has been featured on this site and I recognized her name.

XOXO Festival, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

. . . and who is this?

Frantogian, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Rubber Ducky Day, National Peach Melba Day, and Public Radio Broadcasting Day.  Here’s the world’s largest rubber duck. It’s HUGE (61 feet tall). It needs to be put in the water:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The protests in Iran continue, and now the death toll is said to exceed 500—but is undoubtedly much higher since the Iranian government doesn’t release names and many people are missing.

Iran’s 12-day war with Israel and the U.S. last June broke the regime’s carefully nurtured image of invincibility, many ordinary Iranians say. Now the aftermath is helping to fuel a wave of protests over the past two weeks that has left at least 500 people dead as the Islamic Republic attempts to regain control.

Footage seeping out of the country shows mass protests are continuing despite the crackdown. Human-rights-group assessments say security forces have already gunned down hundreds, and possibly thousands, of protesters. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran if deadly force is used, and on Tuesday aides are scheduled to brief him on specific measures the U.S. can take to respond to the killings.

Iran’s leaders have weathered similar storms before. This time, the regime is in a far weaker position.

The ayatollahs’ rule was shaped by the bloody eight-year war that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq launched in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The social compact that endured since that trauma was that Iranians would acquiesce to hardship and restrictions in return for a strong state that protects them from foreign attack.

That assumption came crashing down when Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah attacked Israel in 2023, triggering a regional war that brought death and destruction into the heart of Tehran last summer.

Israeli strikes across Iran destroyed much of its military leadership, and the follow-on U.S. bombing campaign struck a heavy blow against Iran’s nuclear program. It was a humiliation for a regime that had invested so much of the country’s national wealth into a proxy network that was designed to deter exactly this sort of assault on the homeland.

Now protesters are braving arrest or bullets as they demand not just changes in policy, but the downfall of the Islamic Republic itself.

“This was the last straw. The regime over the years had argued that although it has not been able to bring about prosperity or pluralism for the Iranians, at least it had brought them safety and security. Turns out, it didn’t,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “Now the people have reached the point of saying: Enough is enough.”

It looks as if the earlier protest against the U.S. and Israel after their previous attack on nuclear facilities wasn’t enough to keep the public allied with the theocracy. I hope with all my heart that this protest not only overthrows the regime, but replaces it with a democracy, and allows people to once again be secular and modern, as they were before 1979.

*The Washington Post has analyzed the footage of the ICE agent’s deadly interaction with Renee Nicole good, and concludes that the ICE agent killed a driver who wasn’t aiming to run over him  (h/t Lou).

A deadly encounter in Minneapolis on Wednesday between federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and a 37-year-old woman escalated in a matter of seconds.

. . . . A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis.

Video taken by a witness shows Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle, a burgundy Honda Pilot SUV, stopped in the middle of a one-way road in a residential area of south Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. That footage and other videos examined by The Washington Post do not show the events leading up to that moment.

The agent, who has not been publicly identified, can be seen standing behind Good’s SUV, holding up a phone and pointing it toward a woman who also has her phone out. The two appear to be recording each other.

The agent then walks around the passenger side of Good’s vehicle.

A pickup truck pulls up, and two additional agents exit the vehicle and approach Good, the video shows. A voice can be heard saying to “get out” of the car at least two times. One of the agents puts a hand on the opening of the driver’s side window and with his other hand tugs twice quickly on the door handle, but the driver’s door does not open.

That same agent puts his hand farther in the opening of Good’s window, and almost simultaneously, the SUV begins to back up.

The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle, still appearing to hold up a phone. The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.

As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.

Videos examined by The Post, including one shared on Truth Social by Trump, do not clearly show whether the agent is struck or how close the front of the vehicle comes to striking him. Referring to the officer, Trump wrote in his post that it was “hard to believe he is alive.” Video shows the agent walking around the scene for more than a minute after the shooting.

Good’s SUV travels a short distance before crashing into a car parked on the opposite side of the street.

There are more videos and photos from Twitter (X), but you can see them at the link above, or read the article that is archived here (videos don’t appear). All I can say is that the front wheels appear to be turned away from the agent as he fires the second and third shot through the side window. It’s not at all clear whether the car clipped him before that, nor whether Good was already hit (or dead) when the second and third shots were fired.

Car was clearly swerving away from him. Plus, moments early they were yelling at her to "move!" her car.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T23:41:34.211Z

I’ll put the photo below in case Bluehair removes it; it shows the ICE agent firing the wecond two shots through the open driver’s-side window.

I’m not yet ready to join the chorus of people who call the ICE agent a murderer, and I would prefer to see a trial (remember, I was on O.J. Simpson’s defense team, and didn’t form an opinion until I saw the evidence). For in a trial both sides are fighting hard, though, as I found, often for different goals. The prosecution is often determined to convict (sometimes distorting the evidence), while the defense is trying to make the prosecution prove its case. This is supposed to keep the prosecution honest, though I found (always as an unpaid defense expert) that the prosecution, which is supposed to be interested in the truth, often seemed to be concerned not with the truth but with getting a conviction. If the ICE guy who shot Good goes on trial, the defense will have to make the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the ICE agent committed either manslaughter or murder, i.e., he wasn’t authorized to use deadly force because he didn’t have good reason to think he was endangered..

*Meanwhile, over at the Free Press, Jed Rubenfeld, professor of Constitutional Law at Yale, gives a legal analysis of the case, including the culpability of the shooter. I’ll reproduce a few Q&A’s, with Rubenfeld asking and answering. The Qs are in bold and the As in plain text. The name of the officer who killed Good was Jonathan Ross.

Does Ross have ‘absolute immunity’ from prosecution by Minnesota? 

No, he does not.

Vice President J.D. Vance and other administration officials said Thursday that Ross cannot be prosecuted by Minnesota. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action—that’s a federal issue,” Vance said. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

That’s not true. The Supreme Court rejected this exact argument in 1906. . . .

Can the federal government cut Minnesota out of the investigation?

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Thursday that Minnesota doesn’t “have any jurisdiction in this investigation,” and according to Minnesota authorities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is preventing Minnesota personnel from participating in the investigation. Is that legal?

Yes, it is. The federal government can indeed cut Minnesota out, but only from the federalinvestigation. The feds can’t prevent Minnesota from conducting its own investigation.

However, the feds do have control of some of the evidence, like Good’s car, which they impounded. Minnesota won’t get to use evidence from the car.

What about the second and third shots?

Ross seems to have fired his first shot through Good’s windshield. At that moment, he may have been standing in front of or nearly in front of Good’s car—possibly right as, or right after, she struck him. But it seems that Ross fired the next two shots through the driver’s side window, at point-blank range, when he was standing to the side of the car and Good was trying to drive off.

If that’s true and if Ross’s second or third shot caused Good’s death, some legal analysts have said that he is guilty of homicide regardless of whether his first shot was justifiable. In support, they point to the general rule, announced by the Supreme Court in the 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner, that officers cannot use deadly force against a fleeing suspect unless “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” Once Ross was out of the vehicle’s path and Good started to drive off, some argue, Good no longer posed a significant threat to Ross or anyone else.

But in some circumstances, an officer can keep shooting at a fleeing suspect even after the officer is out of immediate danger.

It is all very complicated, and only a trial, which I think will happen, can settle these issues, at least with regard to “reasonable doubt.”

*Finally (yes, we have three items about this), Jeremiah Johnson at The Dispatch says that the death of Renee Good was inevitable given the nature of ICE (and who they’re hiring), and that there will be more such tragedies.

There are a lot of things you could say about the shooting. You could say that it’s tragic in the plainest sense of the word: A woman is dead. You could point out that it is extremely unclear why ICE officials were stopping her in the first place, or what legal authority they were exercising at that moment. You could point out how unnecessary the entire incident was, how eyewitness accounts emphasize that Good was not acting in a threatening manner, and that she attempted to wave the agents past her vehicle (and did wave one vehicle past). And of course, you could emphasize that, even if she had mildly disobeyed an officer, even if she had driven in their general direction at 5 miles per hour, the penalty for that behavior should not be almost immediate execution via gunshot.

But what’s most important to say is how utterly predictable Good’s death was. This was not an unforeseeable tragedy or a freak accident. It was the inevitable outcome of an immigration enforcement apparatus that has been poorly trained, sheltered from consequences, and empowered to behave recklessly.

Reporting shows that ICE is filled with substandard agents. Its aggressive push to hire more agents uses charged rhetoric that appeals to far-right groups, but the agency has run into problems with recruits unable to pass background checks or meet minimum standards for academic background, personal fitness, or drug usage. One career ICE agent called new recruits “pathetic,” according to The Atlantic, and a current Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that “There is absolutely concern that some people are slipping through the cracks,” and being inadvertently hired.

At the same time, ICE and its partner agencies like Customs and Border Patrol have been put in charge of a massive immigration crackdown of unprecedented scope. To carry out that mission, they’ve been empowered to act with near total impunity. They routinely violate the rights of observers, protesters, and citizens. They often operate masked and without proper identification, deliberately obscuring who they are and whom they answer to. Combine a massive new mission with anonymity and poor training, and you have a recipe for violence.

For the past year, ICE has been involved in a series of escalating incidents that rarely result in repercussions for anyone involved. ICE agents have recklessly caused traffic accidents and then, in one incident, arrested the person whose car they hit. They’ve tear-gassed a veteran, arrested him, and denied him access to medical care and an attorney. They have attacked protesters merely for filming them in public. They’ve pepper-sprayed a fleeing onlooker in the eyes from a foot away. They’ve pointed guns at a 6-year-old. They’ve knelt on top of a pregnant woman while they arrested her. They have arrested another pregnant woman, then kept her separated from her newborn while she languished in custody. They have repeatedly arrested American citizens, and they’ve even reportedly deported a citizen, directly contradicting court orders.

As these violent acts keep occurring, the response from the Trump administration is to propagandize and lie as flagrantly as it can. J.D. Vance, offering absolutely nothing whatsoever to back up his words, has called Renee Good a deranged leftist. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim Wednesday that Good was a “domestic terrorist” was said without a shred of evidence. But it’s part of a pattern. The administration and its agencies claimed they are not arresting citizens when they are. They claimed an Iraq veteran assaulted officers when video shows he plainly did not (and no charges were filed). They denied pepper-spraying an infant, when they did. And far from trying to cool tensions or prevent further violent incidents, the administration routinely employs bombastic language on social media, in an attempt to normalize brutality, violence, and lawlessness as standard operating procedure.

*The NYT summarizes the winners of the Golden Globes, with the award often considered a precursor to an Oscar.

At the 83rd Golden Globes it was a big night for Brazil, Hamlet and Paul Thomas Anderson.

The period drama “Hamnet,” which looks at the family life of William Shakespeare, took the big prize of the evening, best motion picture drama. Jessie Buckley won best actress for her role as Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes. In the other major movie category, “One Battle After Another” won best picture, musical or comedy, and Paul Thomas Anderson took home awards for best director and best screenplay. “The Secret Agent” won best foreign language film and its Brazilian star, Wagner Moura, won best actor in a motion picture drama.

The medical procedural “The Pitt” took home best television show in the drama category and its star Noah Wyle won best actor for his role on the show. Additionally, “Adolescence” won in multiple categories including for best limited series. Owen Cooper took home best supporting actor and both Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty won acting prizes for their roles on the show.

And after five nominations, Timothée Chalamet finally won his first Golden Globe, for his role in “Marty Supreme.”

I must must must see “Hamnet,” which was vigorously recommended by every friend I know who’s seen it. I am not into awards so much, but I did expect Jennifer Lawrence to win for her performance in “Die My Love,” a movie that got pretty good reviews, but despite their verdict on the movie itself, all of them mentioned Lawrence’s star turn. However, “Hamnet” cleaned up. See it, and of course read the book by Maggie O’Farrell, which was superb. I haven’t seen either movie but still predict that Hamnet will win a Best Movie Oscar. For one thing, its subject is less dark than that of “Die My Love.”

If you want to see all the winners, the list and rest of this article are archived here. There’s even a Golded Globe award for podcasts, for crying out loud (“Good Hang with Amy Poehler”).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is peeved at Andrzej (again):

Andrzej: Why did you look at the ceiling?
Hili: I’m praying to regain my patience with you.

In Polish:

Ja: Czemu spojrzałaś w sufit?
Hili: Modlę się, żeby odzyskać do ciebie cierpliwość.

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

From Clean, Funny, & Cute Animal Memes:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Stacy:

Here Masih goes one on one with Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks. While I don’t think regime change should be effected by American or Israeli intervention, it can be promoted by that intervention in a nonmilitary way (e.g., withholding oil). But maybe Masih would also want me to STFU.  Masih is quite exercised, but that’s no surprise given what’s going on (in addition to Iran trying to kill Masih several times). All I can say is that for several years I’ve been backing Masih and her call for regime change.

Please listen to this. #FreeIran1/2👇🏻 (📹 Masih Alinejad)

— ⚫️🐦‍⬛ 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@theskyisnotblue.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T08:33:21.601Z

. . . and I didn’t know that this happened:

From Malcolm. This doesn’t show me, though, why the rings don’t fall into Saturn from gravitational attraction. Perhaps a nice reader will explain.

Some news from Emma:

One from my feed. Don’t ask me if it’s real, ’cause I don’t know.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two posts from Dr. C. O. (Corn Onthe) Cobb. He says of the first one, which he composed, “Here’s a depressed tweet from this morning. Mainly due to the situation in the USA but also the threat to Greenland…”

Increasingly when I wake up and read the news I feel we are in the 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS. Unlike in the original (double spoiler alert), there are no cops, no grown-ups who will step in to fix things. The rot is everywhere.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T07:11:00.062Z

. . . and some real science:

We used to do real science

— Paul Fairie (@paulisci.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T01:59:23.341Z

Should there be even more curbs on free speech?

January 12, 2026 • 10:00 am

Reader Gingerbaker called my attention to a Substack post by Elder of Ziyon (henceforth “EoZ”), who also has an extensive and useful pro-Israel website I’ve cited several times. The post, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, advocates for restrictions on the kind of freedom of speech presently allowed by America’s First Amendment.  The Elder’s view that the courts’ construal of our First Amendment needs to be modified is in fact shared by many, though the restrictions demanded are varied. All, however, try to restrict varieties of “hate speech.”

There are already well-known exceptions to freedom of speech as outlined in the First Amendment.  These, adjudicated by courts over the years, include speech that is defamatory, constitutes harassment, poses the thread of imminent and predictable violence, “fighting words,” false advertising, and so on (Wikipedia has a list of more exceptions).

The EoZ uses as his example the fundamentalist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahir, which is active in Western countries. Several of them have banned it for its Islamist views, but it’s banned even more widely. As Wikipedia notes,

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in Bangladesh, China, Russia, Pakistan,India, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and “across Central Asia”, Indonesia, and all Arab countries except Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE. In July 2017, the Indonesian government revoked Hizb ut-Tahrir’s legal status, citing incompatibility with government regulations on extremism and national ideology.

Why the banning in paces like America?  EoZ explains:

The justification for these bans usually begins with the group’s stated aims. Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects liberal democracy and advocates replacing it with a global Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law. It presents Islam not merely as a religion but as a political system destined to supersede Western civilization. Its rhetoric is frequently antisemitic, dismissive of pluralism, and grounded in a vision of Muslim supremacy.

It is no stretch to say that the group’s ideas are hostile to Jews, to women, to dissenters, and to the moral assumptions that underlie liberal societies. If Hizb ut-Tahrir ever held power, its worldview would translate into repression.

There is a problem, though. Hizb ut-Tahrir is explicitly non-violent. It does not carry out attacks. It does not issue operational instructions for terrorism in Western countries. Its leaders insist, consistently and publicly, that their method is ideological persuasion rather than armed struggle. Their ideas are corrosive, but they remain ideas.

It appears to have used socialist concepts to build itself this way specifically to take advantage of Western freedoms and inoculate it from being banned legally in the West.

This brings up the question of where free speech ends and where limiting speech is better.

The EoZ gives this photo in his article, widely published without attribution, but it’s not clear that the people pictured are from Hizb ut-Tahi. Still, the issue under discussion is instantiated by that poster.

The EoZ notes that banning peaceful organizations for what they believe is not only a very slippery slope, but one that’s been descended many times.  And, for example, calling for the destruction of America or replacement of democracy with ideologies like Communism still counts as free speech in America. So why ban this particular group?  According to EoZ, it’s because the “violence” that may be produced by such organizations is delayed,  so that minds can be changed by gradually contemplating a group’s message, eventually leading—in the case of Hizb ut-Tahir—to the replacement of democracy with Islamist autocracy.

At the same time, pretending that Hizb ut-Tahrir is merely another set of opinions that should be ignored is willfully naive. Its ideology does not sit in a vacuum. It is a sustained narrative that delegitimizes Western society, portrays Jews and non-Muslims as exploiters, and presents the destruction of the existing order as morally necessary. It may not tell followers to commit violence, but it devotes considerable energy to explaining why violence committed by others is understandable, justified, or admirable. Over time, that difference becomes less sharp than Western legal categories would like it to be.

The problem, as I see it, is that the West’s concept of free speech is unnecessarily expansive and out definition of incitement is needlessly and extraordinarily narrow. We tend to locate responsibility almost entirely at the moment of explicit instruction, as though speech and action are cleanly separable until a specific verbal threshold is crossed. That approach forces societies to wait until violence is imminent before acting, while treating years of ideological conditioning as irrelevant. It assumes that moral preparation is harmless so long as it avoids certain words.

Hizb ut-Tahrir operates comfortably within that space.

But this case can also be made for many organizations, including the Communist Party and the many Islamist groups of young people who adhere to Islamism and want to see the end of “Turtle Island”.  Groups like antifa and sundry anarchists feel likewise.  Should they be banned, too? But the EoZ somehow sees Hizb ut-Tahrir as an exception, probably because it’s a threat to Jews, and the EoZ is ardently pro-Jewish (he mention that threat several times.)

 . . . . the problem posed by Hizb ut-Tahrir is not that it holds extreme beliefs, but that it functions as a preparatory environment. It habituates listeners to a worldview in which violence by others becomes morally intelligible. That places it in a different category from ordinary dissent or even radical critique, and it justifies a different kind of response.

This does not require banning ideas. It requires acknowledging that speech operates within systems. A society can restrict organizational activity, funding, coordination, and amplification when those structures predictably serve as pathways toward violence, without criminalizing theology or private belief. That approach is narrower, more defensible, and far less likely to metastasize than ideological prohibition.

Free speech in the West has gradually ceased to be treated as an instrument and has come to resemble an article of faith. . .

. . . The question, then, is not whether Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned. It is whether Western societies are capable of developing a more mature understanding of incitement, one that accounts for moral enablement and foreseeable harm without granting the state a license to police belief.

I find this unconvincing, and I see no distinction between Hizb ut-Tahrir and the many other groups that want to replace democracy (in this case American democracy) with various forms of autocracy or theocracy, including groups that cry, “Globalize the intifada”—an explicit call for Islamic theocracy and violence. But note that this group doesn’t even call for violence, so how is it possible to blame future violence on its pronouncements?

The reasons I’m unconvinced are several, and not new.  First, it’s probably impossible to determine when a group’s beliefs or utterances promote eventual violence rather than imminent or predictable violence.  There’s a difference between a lone moron on the Quad crying “Gas the Jews”, and a person saying the same thing in front of a synagogue or group of Jewish people (who in America aren’t violent anyway). If someone eventually torches a synagogue, even citing certain groups in a written manifesto for the actions, those groups cannot be retrospectively indicted for violating the First Amendment, as we cannot be sure how much they contributed to the violence. “Imminent” is far easier to prove than “much later”. After all, many people who commit acts of violence are deranged, and have a mixture of motives that may be mixed up with mental illness. Thus, although P. Z. Myers, contemplating Joe Lonsdale, has said “maybe it’s time to hang a few billionaires to teach a lesson to those greedy parasites“, I don’t think Myers should be arrested even if someone who reads his site hangs or kills a billionaire after citing Myers’ posts.

Just think of all the manifestos written by violent criminals who have cited a variety of influences! We can’t simply go back and arrest them all because they contributed to violence, for contributions are fuzzy, unpredictable, and often mixed up with mental illness or a propensity to be violent per se.

Second, the remedy for “hate speech” like the nonviolent calls for Islamism by Hizb ut-Tahrir is, as we all know, counterspeech. And that involves pointing out how Islamism is a repressive, theocratic form of government that is inimical to the well being of its believers—and of any country that adopts Islamic tenets. Women and gays are oppressed, people of other faiths (or of no faith) are endangered, and free speech itself is usually outlawed or greatly restricted.  That alone guarantees the failure of Islamism to replace American democracy, but in fact there is no way, given our Constitution, that a democracy would vote itself out of power in favor of Islamism or any government that violates the Constitution. (I’m not speaking of Trump’s probable violations of the Constitution to buttress his own power, as they will eventually be sorted out by the courts.) Even despite Trump, America remains a democracy, though a currently dysfunctional one.

Third, as John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, allowing people to say odious things has a number of beneficial effects, including “outing” those people who believe such stuff and would otherwise remain underground. Such odious views also help us us to sharpen our arguments against them, and their utterance also gives us the chance to correct the misapprehensions of their opponents (see this blog post on “Mills’s trident”).

Now I understand where EoZ is coming from. The Elder is certainly Jewish and is appalled by hearing things like “globalize the intifada”. Jews are being attacked throughout the world, and the EoZ holds antisemitic speech responsible. Indeed, many countries, like Germany and Canada do ban antisemitic speech or “hate speech” that demonizes identifiable groups.

Why shouldn’t we follow them? In my view, the reasons for banning “hate speech” are weaker than for allowing it, so long as that speech doesn’t lead to imminent and predictable violence or violates other restrictions the courts have put on the First Amendment. People can differ on this, just as I differ with the good Elder of Zion. But Mill laid out the reasons against speech bans in 1859, and in my view his reasons are still good.

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 12, 2026 • 8:15 am

Please send your photos, as I have only one set left!

Athayde Tonhasca Júnior is here with photos of a trip to a special place in Greece. Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Between Heaven and Earth

Meteora (Μετέωρα) is a majestic rock formation comprising countless peaks, caves, crevices and overhangs in the Thessaly region, northern Greece, a 3.5-hour or so drive from Thessaloniki:

These pillars were formed about 60 million years ago, when the seabed receded and exposed the rocks to winds and waves. Thanks to its remoteness and inaccessibility, Meteora for centuries has been a magnet for misanthropic characters seeking salvation in solitude or common folk escaping from marauders and assorted enemies:

Hermits and monks from all over the Byzantine Empire converged on the area to build proto-monastic communities, which with time grew into monasteries. Out of the 33 that were founded throughout the centuries, six are active today:

The word meteoron (pl. meteora) means ‘between earth and sky’, ‘lofty’ or ‘elevated’. Meteora was a bastion of Greek Christian orthodoxy during the 400-year Turkish occupation (for a gripping account of how the occupation ended, see The Greek revolution: 1821 and the making of modern Europe, by Mark Mazower):

The first monks climbed up Meteora’s peaks by using scaffolds propped up by joists that were wedged against holes in the rock. Later, rope ladders and nets were deployed until the first stairs were carved into rocks in the early 20th century:

Until the 1920s, many monasteries winched visitors tucked inside nets, a 370-m journey in one case. According to tradition, a wary visitor asked a monk whether the rope of his transporting basket was ever replaced. ‘Yes’, he answered; ‘when it breaks’. Bridges and stairs chiseled into the rocks have made ascent a lot easier, but supplies are still hauled up in some monasteries:

Here, a group of tourists (highlighted) cross a narrow bridge, the single access to a monastery:

Meteora comprises the most important group of Greek monasteries after Mount Athos. The six active ones (two are now nunneries), the massif and the village of Kastráki (in the distance) are a UNESCO World Heritage Site:

If you live on the narrow top of a mountain, you need to be resourceful and imaginative with your gardening…:

….and your booze supply. This 16th-century oak cask once stored up to 12,000 l of wine:

The monasteries’ churches, in typical Byzantine fashion, are packed with priceless frescoes, icons and mosaics depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and assorted saints in a jumble of gold, colours and shapes. Alas, photos are not allowed inside the churches, so you will need to look up online to find out more. This photo was taken from the outside, so no sin was committed:

The monasteries are not for people with impaired mobility or couch potatoes. All but one require moderate to hard climbing – up to 300 steps. Too hard for many visitors, who stay put by the road and pass the time photographing the landscape:

Now the bad side of Meteora. If you are thinking about visiting the monasteries for peace and contemplation, forget it: they have been turned into mega-tourist attractions. The narrow access road through the mountains is lined with coach after coach disgorging hordes of tourists and rude pilgrims, there are long queues for the entrance fee (5 Euros, cash only) and the buildings are claustrophobically crowded. Having said that, Meteora retains its magnificence. If you go, pick a cold, rainy day outside the religious calendar, and get there early:

Monday: Hili dialogue

January 12, 2026 • 6:45 am

Well, the work week is upon us again: it’s Monday, January 12, 2026, the beginning of a long and dispirited week, and National Marzipan Day (I have a marzipan pig as a Christmas treat; my sister sends me one every year in memory of the time we lived in Germany). Marzipan is traditionally molded into various shapes and then colored, most often as small fruits. Here’s how they’re made in Sicily (sound up):

@bakinghermann

Sicily’s fruit-shaped marzipan 🇮🇹 #fruttamartorana #italianfood #vegan

♬ original sound – Julius Fiedler

It’s also Kiss a Ginger Day (if you’re a redhead, you’ve got it made), National Curried Chicken Day, International French Onion Soup Day (not eaten by many French people), National Glazed Doughnut Day (the worst type, espeically in the Krispy Kreme form, which seems to be mostly air), and National Hot Tea Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The protests in Iran are growing, and the government has imposed a complete blackout of the Internet (they don’t want news going out or the protestors communicating with each 0ther).

For a third night in a row, nationwide antigovernment protests rocked Iran, according to witnesses and videos verified by The New York Times, posted on BBC Persian and social media, even as the government intensified its crackdown and the military said it would take to the streets in response to the unrest.

In Heravi Square in Tehran, thousands of people marched through the streets, clapping rhythmically and chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, videos verified by The Times showed. “You can’t see the start and end of the crowd,” shouted a protester moving the camera.

Videos and information from Saturday’s protests were hard to obtain, trickling in only with hours of delay, as the government maintained the internet blackout it imposed Thursday and blocked calls from abroad. Iran’s Telecommunication Ministry said in a statement that security officials had decided to shut down the internet because of the “situation unfolding in the country.” But the death toll appeared to be rising.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have not updated their casualty numbers since Thursday, when both were reporting 28 protest-related deaths. But two other rights groups focused on Iran, the Washington-based HRANA and the Norway-based Iran Human Rights, each said their tally was about 70 killed, among them minors and about 20 members of the security forces.

The Iran Human Rights group said that Rubina Aminian, a 23-year-old college student, died when she was shot in the head on Thursday after leaving her college campus and joining protests in Marivan, a Kurdish city in northwest Iran.

“The situation is extremely worrisome; this regime has always prioritized its survival over all else, and it will do so again, at the cost of people’s lives,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights.

Here’s a video of Masih, quite distressed and exercised, describing on CBS News the unrest in Iran (and the Internet blackout, which has cut off her main source of information; h/t Frank). She says the Iranian people are calling for help from President Trump.

Noa Tishby said this on her instagram page:

A Tehran doctor told @time on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths, “most by live ammunition.”

The death count, if confirmed, would signal a feared crackdown presaged by the regime’s near-total shutdown of the nation’s Internet and phone connections since Thursday night. It would also constitute a direct challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier in the day warned that the regime would “pay hell” if it killed protesters who have taken to the streets in growing numbers since Dec. 28.

But as of now, the AP puts the toll at “at least 544”, though that comes from activists.

*According to the Times of Israel and other sources like the Wall Street Journal, if the U.S. goes after Iran, that country has threatened to strike U.S. bases but also Israel (it’s always good to throw in attacks on Israel if you’re under siege).

Tehran threatened on Sunday to retaliate against Israel as well as US military bases in the event of American strikes on Iran, issuing the warning as Israeli sources said the country was on high alert.

With Iran’s clerical establishment facing the biggest anti-government protests since 2022, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in recent days amid reports of a growing death toll from a crackdown on demonstrators.

US media reported that Trump had been presented with options for potential strikes, including on non-military sites in Tehran.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaking in parliament on Sunday, warned against “a miscalculation.”

“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s elite paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.

“We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat,” he said.

Any decision to go to war would rest with Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Three Israeli sources, who were present for security consultations over the weekend, said Israel was on a high-alert footing for any US intervention, but did not elaborate on what that meant.

Note that Khameni is a religious leader, but is the one who makes the big decisions.  I still don’t think Trump will physically attack Iran, nor do I think that would be wise, as it would set a bad precedent for our interfering in other countries’ purely internal affairs. On the other hand, there are more indirect ways he can penalize Iran, as the next post shows.

*The WSJ suggests how Trump can make good on his threat to the Iranian regime without having to strike it with the military.

President Trump has warned Tehran that Washington is “locked and loaded” if the regime slaughters peaceful protesters. Iran is calling his bluff. With at least 42 confirmed dead, the president’s warning is now a policy test. Will America enforce its red lines?

Mr. Trump has proved he isn’t Barack Obama on Iran policy. Whereas President Obama made a nuclear deal enriching Tehran’s theocrats, Mr. Trump withdrew from that flawed agreement and pursued a sanctions strategy robbing the regime of oil revenue. When Iranians took to the streets starting in 2017, unlike Mr. Obama in 2009, Mr. Trump offered robust political support to protesters and torpedoed the conventional wisdom in Washington that doing so would be the kiss of death.

Now, as the regime is firing at hospitals and warning of no leniency, protesters inspired by President Trump’s promise are beseeching him to help, even naming streets after him. Will Mr. Trump replicate Mr. Obama’s 2013 red-line debacle in Syria, which undermined U.S. deterrence globally, locked in a teetering regime for more than a decade, and plunged the Middle East into bloody conflict begetting a refugee crisis?

The Islamic Republic is betting that it can suppress this latest uprising with lethal force while the West watches. Mr. Trump can prove them wrong. How? By tracking and confiscating oil tankers, something the U.S. has done with Venezuela. These tankers, dubbed the “Shadow Fleet,” are illicitly transporting Iranian oil to China and undermining Mr. Trump’s policy of maximum pressure.

This approach allows the U.S. to inflict acute pain on the regime without immediate military strikes against Iranian territory. It also buys time for Iranian protesters to grow their numbers on the street.

President Trump has warned Tehran that Washington is “locked and loaded” if the regime slaughters peaceful protesters. Iran is calling his bluff. With at least 42 confirmed dead, the president’s warning is now a policy test. Will America enforce its red lines?

Mr. Trump has proved he isn’t Barack Obama on Iran policy. Whereas President Obama made a nuclear deal enriching Tehran’s theocrats, Mr. Trump withdrew from that flawed agreement and pursued a sanctions strategy robbing the regime of oil revenue. When Iranians took to the streets starting in 2017, unlike Mr. Obama in 2009, Mr. Trump offered robust political support to protesters and torpedoed the conventional wisdom in Washington that doing so would be the kiss of death.

Now, as the regime is firing at hospitals and warning of no leniency, protesters inspired by President Trump’s promise are beseeching him to help, even naming streets after him. Will Mr. Trump replicate Mr. Obama’s 2013 red-line debacle in Syria, which undermined U.S. deterrence globally, locked in a teetering regime for more than a decade, and plunged the Middle East into bloody conflict begetting a refugee crisis?

The Islamic Republic is betting that it can suppress this latest uprising with lethal force while the West watches. Mr. Trump can prove them wrong. How? By tracking and confiscating oil tankers, something the U.S. has done with Venezuela. These tankers, dubbed the “Shadow Fleet,” are illicitly transporting Iranian oil to China and undermining Mr. Trump’s policy of maximum pressure.

This approach allows the U.S. to inflict acute pain on the regime without immediate military strikes against Iranian territory. It also buys time for Iranian protesters to grow their numbers on the street.

Iran gets a fair amount of prized heavy crude oil from Venezuela, which it apparently processes and resells, often to China. I’m not sure how “acute” the pain to Iran will be, though. Much as I want the regime to fall, it’s not good optics for us to be attacking every country whose politics we don’t like and who can’t do a lot of damage to us.  North Korea would be an obvious target save for its proximity to South Korea, which would be destroyed.

*Maryellen MacDonald, professor emerita of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written an op-ed in the WaPo called “Gen Zers aren’t talking—and it could cost them.”  (Note that Gen Z is supposed to eomprise people born between 1997 and 2012: between 14 and 29 years old.

Gen Z’s interaction anxiety has expanded beyond “telephobia.” Despite craving closeness, they’re now reluctant to engage in face-to-face conversations. Opting for texting might seem like a convenient alternative, but this avoidance is costing the generation in more ways than they realize. What will it take to get Gen Z talking?

The social consequences of talking aversionare obvious: Businesses are starting to worry that young employees won’t be able to engage effectively with co-workers and customers.Young adults are lonelier. Dating is declining, and friend groups are shrinking.

But the problem isn’t just a matterof social awkwardness. Talking is important brain exercise, a desirable difficulty that enhances our cognition — in the moment of talking, and over our lifetimes. Young adults frequently listen to other people’s speech via podcasts, YouTube, TikTok and the like, but these activities don’t provide the same cognitive stimulation. The mental effort required to speak is much greater than what’s needed to understand someone else, and the cognitive benefits of talking exceed those of listening.

Those benefits are extensive: Talking about goals boosts mental focus and follow-through. Athletes are routinely coached to talk to themselves to improve perseverance, focus and mood. Talking about a topic speeds up learning and makes it more durable. And it continues to tune our brains all the way to old age, when high rates of socializing guard against dementia.

Young adults who avoid conversation are missing out on all of that. We don’t yet know the long-term consequences of losing talk-based cognitive, emotional and social enhancement, but the link between silence and dementia is worrisome.

What caused this talking avoidance? The pandemic is one likely culprit, as it removed opportunities for young people to practice socializing while they transitioned to adulthood. Remote work further reduces talking practice and degrades social skills. Helicopter parenting also clears away many challenges of childhood, leading to lower coping and social skills. For over-snowplowed adults still living at home, the parent concierge remains ready to take on phone calls and other talking challenges. It’s a vicious cycle: Reluctant talkers gravitate to non-talking activities like looking at their phones and moving through life with earbuds, which discourages anyone from striking up a conversation.

Actually, though I don’t interact much with Gen Zers since I’m a quasi-geezer, I do interact with people over 40, and have found that many of them prefer texting to talking.  This saddens me as texting is not only slower and less detailed than regular conversation, but does lend a certain and unwanted formality to interacting with friends. Right off the bat I can think of two people who I really want to talk to, but who seem to prefer texting. And yes, I do think that the latter is injurious, as there’s a whole lot of cues you miss when talking: facial expressions, for one thing, including laughing, which comes out as “LOL” in text. Seriously, who really “laughs out loud” when they’re texting? I’ve done it maybe twice in a gazillion years. Get off my lawn!

*Get this:  a group of Buddhist monks, accompanied by a rescue dog, are walking from Texas to Washington D.C., scheduled to arrive in the capital in February. That’s a long walk for both Buddha and Buddha’s Best Friend.  But I don’t want to be snarky, as they’re walking for peace:

A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route.

In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It’s a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it’s resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics dividing the nation.

Their journey began Oct. 26, 2025, at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas, and is scheduled to end in mid-February in Washington, D.C., where they will ask Congress to recognize Buddha’s day of birth and enlightenment as a federal holiday. Beyond promoting peace, their highest priority is connecting with people along the way.

“My hope is, when this walk ends, the people we met will continue practicing mindfulness and find peace,” said the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, the group’s soft-spoken leader who is making the trek barefoot. He teaches about mindfulness, forgiveness and healing at every stop.

And people love them, waiting for hours by the roadside to see them. Does this mean we all have a Buddha-shaped hole in our souls?  (Sorry, I don’t mean to be so flippant!) Although Buddhists believe in things like karma and reincarnation, which are manifestly ubevidenced, they are in general one of the least harmful relgions. But wait–there’s more!

Preferring to sleep each night in tents pitched outdoors, the monks have been surprised to see their message transcend ideologies, drawing huge crowds into churchyards, city halls and town squares across six states. Documenting their journey on social media, they — and their dog, Aloka — have racked up millions of followers online. On Saturday, thousands thronged in Columbia, South Carolina, where the monks chanted on the steps of the State House and received a proclamation from the city’s mayor, Daniel Rickenmann.

. . . .Hailing from Theravada Buddhist monasteries across the globe, the 19 monks began their 2,300 mile (3,700 kilometer) trek at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth.

Their journey has not been without peril. On Nov. 19, as the monks were walking along U.S. Highway 90 near Dayton, Texas, their escort vehicle was hit by a distracted truck driver, injuring two monks. One of them lost his leg, reducing the group to 18.

Well, more power to them and Aloka, and I’m sad that one monk lost his leg.  This won’t really bring peace in the world, but it’s brought happiness to a lot of people.  Here’s a five-minute news report:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is lonely but not alone. In fact, Kulka and Szaron are right there! (Remember that HIli hates Kulka but is friends with Szaron.)

Hili: Loneliness is a very painful feeling,
Me: But you’re not alone.
Hili: Sometimes the presence of others only deepens the feeling of loneliness.

In Polish:

Hili: Samotność to bardzo przykre uczucie.
Ja: Przecież masz towarzystwo.
Hili: Czasem obecność innych zwiększa poczucie samotności.

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

From The 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:  I just looked this one up on Snopes, and (fortunately for the woman) it is false. Beware of fake-news memes!

I don’t know where I got this, but I like it:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff.  What a toy!

The numbers of Iranian dead are growing quickly. This is from noon yesterday and I’ll update it this morning:

From J. K. Rowling, posting about Iran. Are they going to demonize her for this, too?

I came across this tweet while browsing.  What do you think of the paintings?  What’s irritating is that they don’t tell you which painting surpasses the Mona Lisa:

From FB, a lovely way to honor the death of Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. I’d like to be the person who controls the lights on the Empire State Building:

From Malcolm; Niagra Falls in winter and summer. I don’t think they ever freeze over.

One that I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb, famous author. First, a colorful montage of beat scat:

Get yourself a friend who will send you postcards of brightly colored bear scat, because she knows you, and only you, will adore it. @staycurious.bsky.social this makes my WEEK.

— Bethany Brookshire (@beebrookshire.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T20:34:29.436Z

I may have posted this, but why not see the lovely shrimp again?

The world feels rough right nowSo please enjoy this shrimp, filmed off Cozumel, Mexico. It may be a larval reef shrimp, but we don’t know what species or how long it lives or what it eats. The world is still full of wonder and beauty and mystery. 🎥 @pedrovalenciam scuba diver on Insta

— Rebecca R Helm (@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T20:20:53.607Z