Welcome to Sunday, February 5, 2023: National Frozen Yogurt Day (I mistakenly said yesterday was Frozen Yogurt Day, but it was really National Homemade Soup Day).
But today is World Nutella Day, National Chocolate Fondue Day, California Western Monarch Day, Dump Your Significant Jerk Day, but also National Shower with a Friend Day, National Fart Day, and, in Denmark, it’s Crown Princess Mary’s birthday. Here she is, turning 51 today. Some day, perhaps, she’ll be Queen of Denmark, though she was born of Scottish parents and raised in Australia. From Wikipedia:
Mary has been named one of the world’s most fashionable people in Vanity Fair‘s annual International Best-Dressed List and has posed and given interviews for magazines including Vogue Australia (where she used pieces of foreign designers, such as Hugo Boss, Prada, Louis Vuitton or Gaultier, and Danish designers, like Malene Birger and Georg Jensen), Dansk (Danish Magazine, dedicated to Danish fashion) and German Vogue (where she was photographed between pieces of Danish modern art in Amalienborg Palace).
It’s also [Johan Ludvig] Runeberg’s Birthday, celebrating the national poet of Finland, who wrote in Swedish. This is all very confusing!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT reports a horrible fact that compounds the enormity that was the apparent murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and may well have contributed to his death:
The two emergency medical technicians who first arrived to treat Tyre Nichols after he was severely beaten by Memphis police officers did not provide any care for 19 minutes after getting to the scene, a regulatory agency concluded on Friday as it voted to suspend their licenses.
Members of the Tennessee Emergency Medical Services Board voted unanimously to suspend the licenses of the E.M.T.s, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge, who could be seen on video largely standing around as Mr. Nichols, 29, writhed in pain on the ground.
In the case of the E.M.T.s, the emergency medical services board found that for 19 minutes, neither had taken Mr. Nichols’s vital signs, conducted an examination of him, or administered oxygen. Mr. Sandridge, who, as an advanced E.M.T., was also authorized to administer an IV line and perform cardiac monitoring, did not do so, the board found. Mr. Nichols died three days after the Jan. 7 beating.
. . .Dennis Rowe, an ambulance service operator on the board, said there was “every reason to believe” that the E.M.T.s’ inaction “may have contributed to the demise of that patient.”
The suspension is temporary, and there will be a later hearing to determine if the two will be permanently barred in the state from acting as EMTs. I suppose licensing is state by state, but I hope that if they apply to work in other states, the licensing board will know about this.
*Here’s the ending of Andrew Sullivan’s latest piece on the tendency of the American Mainstream Media to force every story into a preexisting ideologican narrative. I summarized his piece in the Nooz yesterday, but couldn’t resist adding his conclusion:
We live in the freest, most multiracial democracy in the history of the planet. Of course traditional prejudices linger, ebb and flow, and the past has helped define the present. But they do not come near to definitively describing the infinitely fascinating interactions between all of us, in every possible combination, our shared humanity, the cross-racial friendships and marriages, our individual personalities, our different upbringings. They cannot account for the extraordinary changes since the 1960s. The transcendence of race and sex and orientation happens all around us every day — and reducing our entire world to these allegedly irreconcilable abstractions of “hate” is a pathological distraction from reality.
And reality is so much more interesting than the dogma the MSM now brings to almost every story, almost every time. You don’t have to ignore racism’s enduring effect in society. But you can see the world in a lens other than the neo-Marxist vision of permanent, zero-sum group-warfare in which some groups are always the oppressor and some the oppressed.
Journalists used to do this — searching for truth rather than enforcing pre-existing narratives, alert to the surprising “specific” more than the predictable “structural” and “systemic”; and be alert to the twists and turns of this diverse culture, rather than constantly returning to history to insist it’s always repeating itself. And you know what? Readers were interested, rather than bored, engaged rather than condescended to — and the press thrived.
Now look at it. The US media has the lowest credibility — 26 percent — of 46 nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. And “moral clarity” journalists seem intent on driving it even lower.
This is one of the best pieces I’ve read from Sullivan this year.
*The U.S. finally got some cojones (sorry, for I have used a harmful word) and shot down the Chinese spy balloon:
The balloon was brought down over the Atlantic Ocean shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops for all flights in and out of Wilmington, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Charleston, S.C. The agency, which had said the action was to “support the Department of Defense in a national security effort,” lifted the order at 3:20 p.m., allowing normal flight activity to resume.
But wait! There are at least two more balloons!
The discovery of this balloon and others — the presence of a second craft loitering over Latin America was disclosed on Friday, and officials say there is likely a third operating near U.S. interests elsewhere — is highly embarrassing to the Chinese. One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity citing the matter’s sensitivity, said that Beijing was “freaked” by the incident.
“They’re in a very tough place,” this person said. “And they have very few cards to play right now.”
Could there be 99 Luftballons? I couldn’t find any video to embed, but you can see a 4.5-minute video of the balloon going down on a Fox News site. The commentators take the government to task for not shooting the balloon down earlier, as, they say, it was surely tracked as it crossed the northern Pacific ocean and could have been taken down safely. However, the WaPo adds:
Without elaborating, officials have insisted that the administration had taken steps to thwart the craft’s ability to collect information that would undermine U.S. national security.
“We took very early action to make sure those sites don’t show anything that anybody would find interesting,” one defense official said.
What the U.S. wants to do now is recover the balloon and find out what technology the Chinese used here. That may be hard as it appears to have landed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. The Chinese may be embarrassed, but although this may increase U.S./Chinese tension, it’s not going to bring on a war or anything. After all, we do the same thing to them.
*Speaking of China, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese are helping Russia pursue its war with Ukraine.
China is providing technology that Moscow’s military needs to prosecute the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine despite an international cordon of sanctions and export controls, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Russian customs data.
The customs records show Chinese state-owned defense companies shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology and fighter-jet parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defense companies.
Those are but a handful of tens of thousands of shipments of dual-use goods—products that have both commercial and military applications—that Russia imported following its invasion last year, according to the customs records provided to the Journal by C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in identifying national-security threats. Most of the dual-use shipments were from China, the records show.
. . . The Journal analyzed more than 84,000 shipments recorded by Russia’s customs office in the period after the West launched the economic pressure campaign that focused on commodities the Biden administration red-flagged as critical to the Russian military. The official Russian customs records, which C4ADS said might not include all records, detail each shipment into the country, providing dates, shippers, recipients, purchasers, addresses and product descriptions.
A Demand for ChipsRussia’s imports of computer chips and chip components are nearing pre-war averages.Chip importsSource: Russia Federal Customs Service via C4ADS, U.N. ComtradeNote: Imports under tariff code 8541. Monthly average is from 2014 to 2021April 2022MayJuneJulyAug.Sept.Oct.102030$40millionTotalFrom ChinaMonthly averageThe Journal also identified from the records more than a dozen Russian and Chinese companies targeted by the U.S. under the Russia pressure campaign, as well as all other sanctions programs.
Industry and government officials said the data offers substantial evidence of how Russia is able to sidestep the centerpiece of the West’s response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
A new Axis of Evil!
*According to the Associated Press, Mexico supplies 92% of America’s avocados, and it’s a lucrative business given their price in supermarkets. And now, just like the demand for turkeys peaks at Thanksgiving, so the demand for avocados peaks during the Superbowl, as Americans of Size dig into big bowls of guacamole during the game. There’s big bucks to be made, but the Mexican growers and wholesalers face a dangerous trek from tree to game—so dangerous that they need a police escort for a 40-mile drive:
It is a long and sometimes dangerous journey for truckers transporting the avocados destined for guacamole on tables and tailgates in the United States during the Super Bowl.
It starts in villages like Santa Ana Zirosto, high in the misty, pine-clad mountains of the western Mexico state of Michoacan. The roads are so dangerous — beset by drug cartels, common criminals, and extortion and kidnap gangs — that state police provide escorts for the trucks brave enough to face the 40-mile (60-kilometer) trip to packing and shipping plants in the city of Uruapan.
Truck driver Jesús Quintero starts early in the morning, gathering crates of avocados picked the day before in orchards around Santa Ana, before he takes them to a weighing station. Then he joins up with other trucks waiting for a convoy of blue-and-white state police trucks — they recently changed their name to Civil Guard — to start out for Uruapan.
“It is more peaceful now with the patrol trucks accompanying us, because this is a very dangerous area,” Quintero said while waiting for the convoy to pull out.
With hundreds of 22-pound (10-kilogram) crates of the dark green fruit aboard his 10-ton truck, Quintero’s load represents a small fortune in these parts. Avocados sell for as much as $2.50 apiece in the United States, so a single crate holding 40 is worth $100, while an average truck load is worth as much as $80,000 to $100,000.
The imports were halted for a while last year when a U.S. inspector was threatened (all imported fruits have to be vetted), and that cost growers big time. Now things are resuming. When you dip your chips into a bowl of green mush a week from today, give thanks to the federales who ensure safe shipments!
*Some idiot committed a copycat crime by cutting open a cage containing a Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) named Flaco—in captivity for a decade—in the Central Park Zoo. The owl escaped and is now flying aimlessly around Manhattan. So far attempts to capture Flaco have failed. It’s cold there, and he probably doesn’t know how to hunt, so people fear that Flaco will die unless he’s recaptured. I bet it’s a copy of the animal releases (and a vulture murder) in Texas. I hope they lock the miscreant up and throw away the key! Here’s a news report about the owlnapping.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to be developing an eating disorder
A: This is Szaron’s bowl.Hili: I’m just checking whether his food is better.
Ja: To jest miseczka Szarona.Hili: Ja tylko sprawdzam, czy jego chrupki nie są lepsze.
And a photo of Szaron:
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From Jesus of the Day:
From Elsie, a Mike Lukovich cartoon about Florida schools (published in the Chicago Tribune):
Also from Jesus of the Day:
From Masih. The ability of Iranian women to overcome their oppression always amazes me. Look at this!
Meet brave Niloufar Aghaei & Elaheh Tavakolian. The Islamist regime in Iran deliberately shot one of their eyes for protesting.
Niloufar wrote on her Instagram: “Anyone whose goal is to control women who like reading, poetry, music and coffee is fighting a losing battle” pic.twitter.com/VKEmOs5wYX
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 3, 2023
From Malcolm. A quokka, the world’s happiest-looking animal, chows down on a beet. The population (in Australia only) is small and listed as “vulnerable”, so please help them. It would be a tragedy if these happy creatures were to go extinct.
Quokka eating beetroot.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/9Jv5oYxQkW
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) January 29, 2023
From Barry, ducks and a patient kitten, along with the d*g tweet that I can’t get rid of (I showed it the other day, but I haven’t learned how to separate linked tweets).
— Aida fitri lestari (@DeweSing) February 2, 2023
From Athayde, a segment apparently from BBC’s “question time”. He says, “The word ‘woman’ has been banned from Scotland.” Have a look at the comments in the thread following this post:
Excruciating #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/h5wrNFbxS8
— teresa smith (@treesey) February 2, 2023
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed at age four:
5 February 1940 | A Hungarian Jew, Andras Sommer, was born in Zalaegerszeg.
In 1944 he was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/40ar2AYuon
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 5, 2023
Tweets from Matthew. First, a beetle named after the lovely and talented Kate, one of my favorite actors. But what about a frog named after ME???
It's a cheering thought, on this grey Friday afternoon, that there exists in this world a beetle named after Kate Winslet https://t.co/pfGxyjtKyI pic.twitter.com/DA6zK548dD
— Lev Parikian (@LevParikian) February 3, 2023
There are three tweets by Ashby in this thread, all showing why the endeavor is ludicrous, and then he answers questions and goes after the dodo enthusiasts:
Sigh. Cloning a dodo is absurd. Here's a couple of tweets about why:
1. The idea of editing a pigeon's genome until it "becomes a #dodo" is as ridiculous as it sounds. The odds of success are so vanishingly tiny that it's incredible anyone is funding it.https://t.co/vYh6hjxHCL
— Jack Ashby (@JackDAshby) January 31, 2023
The caption makes this tweet:
Tiddler on the Floof. pic.twitter.com/LDXyjjRkbB
— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) February 1, 2023