Category: Hili Dialogue

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 12, 2025 • 6:45 am

Top o’ the morning to you on Thursday, June 12, 2025, and National Red Rose Day.  Here are some roses I photographed at the flower market in Bogotá, Colombia in 2020 (the U.S. gets many of its flowers, and nearly all its roses, from Colombia).

It’s also Clean Your Teeth Day, as I have a dentist appointment downtown this morning for my biannual cleaning. Posting may be very light today, even limited to this post. Bear with me; I do my best.

It’s also National Jerky Day, National Peanut Butter Cookie Day, International Cachaça Day (celebrating the spirit distilled from sugarcane used in making the famous Brazilian cocktail caipirinha), International Falafel Day, and Loving Day, celebrating the legal end to the ban of mixed-race marriage that occurred in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967(!).   Here are Mildred and Richard Loving, plaintiffs in the case, photographed in 1967:

Fair usage; Bettmann/Corbis via New York Times

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

Da Nooz:

*A few pieces of nooz about the protests about arresting immigrants. First, the protests are spreading, and we even had some in Chicago on Tuesday.

The streets of Los Angeles were quiet on Wednesday morning after an overnight curfew imposed by the mayor in the city’s downtown. Cities across the country prepared for more demonstrations later in the day.

The curfew in Los Angeles, which lifted at 6 a.m. local time, brought calm to the area, where five days of protests over the federal immigration raids have occasionally turned violent. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California blamed President Trump for unrest that began with federal deportation raids on Friday.

Tensions remained high after the U.S. military announced that 700 Marines would join National Guard troops in the city on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the U.S. military’s Northern Command said that the Marines, who have arrived in the area, were undergoing preparatory training, would help protect federal property and personnel, including immigration enforcement agents.

On Tuesday, protests that began in Los Angeles grew in size and intensity across the country. Some demonstrators in downtown Chicago threw water bottles at police officers and vandalized at least two vehicles. In New York, officers made dozens of arrests near federal buildings in Lower Manhattan, the police said. In Atlanta, they used chemical agents and physical force to drive a few dozen protesters from their foothold on a highway.

More protests were planned in several cities on Wednesday, including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Seattle. Some organizers said that local demonstrations this week were a prelude to nationwide ones planned for Saturday against President Trump and an unusual military parade in Washington, D.C.

. . . . Arrests: Since protests began last Friday in response to federal immigration raids in Los Angeles’s garment district, hundreds of people have been arrested in several cities, including more than 330 in Los Angeles, more than 240 in San Francisco and a dozen in Austin, Texas, officials said. The encounters have turned tense at times, but the protests have remained largely confined to small sections of cities.

Many of these arrests may be of protestors, not immigrants.  The protestors should of course be allowed to demonstrate all they want, so long as it’s in accordance with the First Amendment. And there should be no violence or vandalism. Protestors who do such things deserve to be arrested, regardless of whether you feel their cause is just. That’s civil disobedience: the willingness to take the punishment for breaking what you see as an unjust law or acting illegally but in a cause you see as just.

*There are already 15 detained “terrorists” in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. a tactic for avoiding American legal jurisdiction. Fifteen prisoners remain, some convicted and some in legal limbo. Now Trump is preparing to send detained immigrants there.

The Trump administration is preparing to begin the transfer of potentially thousands of foreigners who are in the United States illegally to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starting as early as this week, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The foreign nationals under consideration hail from a range of countries. They include hundreds from friendly European nations, including Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and Ukraine, but also other parts of the world, including many from Haiti. Officials shared the plans with The Washington Post, including some documents, on the condition of anonymity because the matter is considered highly sensitive.

The administration is unlikely to inform the foreigners’ home governments about the impending transfers to the infamous military facility, including close U.S. allies such as Britain, Germany and France, the officials said.

The plans, which are subject to change, come as immigration hard-liners inside President Donald Trump’s Cabinet push for more deportations and arrests of undocumented migrants.

The preparations include medical screening for 9,000 individuals to determine whether they are healthy enough to be sent to Guantánamo, notorious for its history as a prison for suspected terrorists and others captured on battlefields in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some of these details were reported earlier by Politico.

It is far from clear whether the facilities there can accommodate 9,000 new detainees, an influx that would amount to a massive increase from the several hundred migrants moved to and from the base earlier this year.

But Trump administration officials say the plan is necessary to free up capacity at domestic detention facilities, which have become overcrowded amid Trump’s pledge to implement the biggest deportation of undocumented migrants in American history. A document reviewed by The Post said that “GTMO,” the government acronym for the base, “is not at capacity.”

Another bad move. First—and I’m not sure about this—does being at Guantánamo mean that incarcerated foreigners aren’t subject to all the provisions of the U.S. legal system? They do have the right of habeas corpus, according to the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration has been notably unwilling to provide justification for holding undocumented immigrants. Second, if the foreign governments aren’t informed, then they can provide no legal assistance to their citizens, something that should be done.  Third, we all know the sordid history of suspected terrorists held in that place, and it isn’t pretty. Now it’s not clear that this will happen, but it’s a bad idea as well as an inhumane one,

*The WSJ reports that California governor Gavin Newsom is using his opposition to Trump’s anti-immigration actions in California as a way to advance his own political career.

Gavin Newsom is, once again, in the eye of a tempest. “It is a profoundly important moment,” the California governor said in an interview Monday evening as protesters massed in the streets and U.S. Marines made their way to the state on the president’s orders.

It is also an important moment for Newsom, widely seen as a top potential Democratic presidential candidate, who has leaned into the conflict to position himself as the leader of the opposition. “Seven hundred brave men and women are being used as pawns in Trump’s war on the Constitution,” he told The Wall Street Journal of the Marine deployment, speaking from the Los Angeles County emergency operations center where he has been holed up helping coordinate the protest response. “Our Founding Fathers didn’t live and die for this.”

Newsom traveled to Los Angeles on Sunday to try to quell sometimes-violent protests there, prompted by the Trump administration’s mass immigration arrests. On Monday, President Trump said Newsom should be arrested, calling him grossly incompetent. Newsom, in turn, accused Trump of “authoritarian overreach” and insisted the rule of law itself was at stake.

It is a moment of both opportunity and political peril for the two-term leader of the nation’s most-populous state, whom Trump has singled out to blame for the violence and rioting he says local officials have failed to control. Newsom’s pugilistic response to Trump’s provocations has gladdened the hearts of Democrats hungry for a crusader. But at a time when Newsom has attempted to moderate his image, playing to the Democratic base runs the risk of cementing his profile as a left-coast progressive and associating him with images of urban unrest.

Asked about his presidential aspirations, Newsom, who will leave office next year, didn’t deny he might seek higher office. “I’m not thinking about running, but it’s a path that I could see unfold,” he told the Journal. The 57-year-old said it was too early to make a decision and he would wait to see if the moment felt right.

I’ll bet he’s gonna run, as the credible competition is very thin.  Now people are saying that he’s got no chance since he leads California, seen as a progressive state. In today’s Free Press there is in fact an article called “Why Gavin Newsom will never be president.” I’m not sure about his candidacy, but remember that Americans in general want illegal immigration cut way back. Whether Trump’s way of doing that will redound to his credibility with Republicans remains to be seen, but I have a feeling that the Right won’t care that much about Trump calling in the National Guard or the Marines. I suspect the bottom line in 2028 will be whether people feel they’re better off economically.

*Charlotte Allen joins nearly the whole world in panning the new Disney version of “Snow White” (at Quillette): “It’s no longer 1937. . . “.  A few excerpts:

The Disney company’s 2025 live-action version of Snow White is just as terrible as nearly everyone says it is. The film has attained an abysmal score of 1.7 on IMDb from 360k ratings and 2.2k reviews (although the site warns, “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title.”) At Rotten Tomatoes, meanwhile, the film has racked up a more generous audience score of 71 percent and a critics’ score of forty percent (although many of the positive reviews are of the “not quite as terrible as you have heard” variety). The upshot has been an eye-wateringly expensive box-office flop as well as a critical disaster. Disney’s animated 1937 adaptation of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale—the first animated feature film ever made—remains a beloved classic (7.1 on IMDb nearly ninety years after it was released, and no unusual voting activity flagged). So how did Disney manage to take a bankable property and produce something this bad?

The new Snow White is bad because, while its 24-year-old lead, Rachel Zegler, is a decent singer, she can’t act very well and she’s been woefully miscast—probably because she is half-Latina and thus qualified the movie for post-#OscarsSoWhite “representation and inclusion” points. (With a Peruvian mother, I’m half-Latina myself, so why didn’t someone ask me to play Snow White?) In Disney’s animated 1937 version (titled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), our heroine was a sweet and cheery innocent, but Zegler’s character has been rewritten as a Mary Sue girlboss who shows off what a smartypants she is by reciting all the dwarfs’ names in reverse alphabetical order upon being introduced to them. And instead of cleaning their house in return for their hospitality, she makes them do their own cleanup. It’s “Whistle While You Work” for thee, but not for me. If you found yourself hoping that this obnoxious know-it-all would remain dead after biting into the poisoned apple, you were not alone.

I don’t care at all if she’s a Hispanic cast as a “snow white” character, but I do care about Ziegler’s modification of the film into some kind of woke fantasy, and I especially don’t like the seven dwarves being P.C.’ed into computer-generated characters called “magical creatures” (see below). That took jobs away from real dwarves, who wanted those roles!

The new Snow White is bad because the seven dwarfs are crudely rendered CGI motion-capture creations. They look less like the Doc, Grumpy, and co. we fondly remember than what one critic described as “garden gnomes.” Unlike the 1937 cartoon originals with their seven distinctive comic personalities, the new uncanny-valley dwarfs are difficult to tell apart, except for Dopey, who looks like Alfred E. Neuman in a medieval hat. (The new Snow White, by the way, won’t even let Dopey be Dopey; he has to have a lugubrious back story in which he doesn’t speak because he’s “afraid.”)

And the new Snow White is bad because it gets rid of the handsome prince. Why? At Disney’s D23 Expo in September 2022, Zegler bragged that she and her fellow cast members were bringing a “modern edge” to the story. Asked by Variety to elaborate, Zegler enthused: “I just mean that it’s no longer 1937. … [Snow White] is not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.” Well, OK—but try telling that to the 99 percent double-X chromosome Hallmark Christmas-movie-binge demographic, for whom “Someday My Prince Will Come” is the whole point. . . .

The girlboss heroine, the anonymous CGI dwarfs, and the substitution of romance with ambition are all bad and depressing things, but they are not the worst thing about the new film. The worst thing is its failure to recreate or even understand the story it is trying to tell or the power that story has exerted over generations of readers and re-tellers. Snow White cost US$270 million, making it one of the most expensive movies Disney has ever produced—a fortune in shoots and re-shoots as the project floundered amid delays, antagonistic media reports, and Zegler’s running social-media commentary about feminism, Trump, the Americans who voted for Trump, and Israel’s Gaza war. Disney selected Marc Webb to helm the project, a top-rated fantasy director who had previously made The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its sequel.No fewer than seven writers pitched in on the screenplay, but only Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train, 2016) received a screen credit. (Greta Gerwig is reported to have been called in on a script-rescue mission mid-shoot, and since she has a track record of turning preadolescent girlhood favourites like Little Women and Barbie dolls into instruments of feminist consciousness-raising, it is possible that she tanked the new Snow White single-handedly.)

The review goes on, and it’s snarky for sure, but I ain’t gonna see this movie, and I doubt that many here have, either. The movie has apparently gone beyond the point of where ideology trumps entertainment, and the public doesn’t like that. Here’s the trailer:

*Harvey Weinstein is serving a 48-year sentence in California for sex crimes, and was convicted in New York, but a New York case, in which he was convicted of rape and sexual assault, was thrown out because of issues with the judge. Now, in the retrial, all hell is breaking loose in the jury room:

Jury deliberations in Harvey Weinstein’ sex crimes retrial teetered Wednesday as the foreperson again requested to speak to the judge about “a situation” he found troubling.

The man — who complained Monday that other jurors were pushing people to change their minds and talking about information beyond the charges — was being questioned in private, at his request.

While the jury was in court to hear the answer to an earlier request to re-hear the text of a rape law, the foreperson signaled to Judge Curtis Farber that he wanted to talk.

“He said words to the effect of ‘I can’t go back in there with the other jurors,’” Farber explained later. The foreperson was sent to wait in a separate room, where he penned a note saying, “I need to talk to you about a situation.”

When briefly brought into court, the foreperson said he wanted to speak in private. He, the judge, prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers then went behind closed doors.

The discussion was closed to the press and public, but Farber later said the foreperson had expressed that he didn’t want to change his position — whatever it may be — and was being bullied.

“He did indicate that at least one other juror made comments to the effect of ‘I’ll meet you outside one day,’ and there’s yelling and screaming,” the judge said.

Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala characterized the foreperson’s concerns more severely, saying that the man had said he was concerned for his safety after his fellow panelist talked about meeting him outside and added, “you don’t know me.”

“I don’t think the court is protecting this juror. Period,” Aidala said, going on to ask for a mistrial.

Apparently the foreperson is stubborn and said nothing would make him change his mind. That’s not a good thing to say, even if you’re thinking it!

The episode was the latest sign of strain among the jurors. On Friday, one of them asked to be excused because he felt another member of the group was being treated unfairly.

Weinstein’s lawyers asked unsuccessfully for a mistrial then, and again after the foreperson expressed his concerns Monday. The jury kept deliberating and went through Tuesday without sending any more messages about interpersonal tensions.

The seven female and five male jurors started their fifth day of deliberations Wednesday by re-hearing accuser Jessica Mann’s testimony that he raped her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013. The group wrapped up Tuesday’s deliberations by asking to revisit that testimony.

Well, it doesn’t matter much, does it—even if Weinstein is found not guilty. He’s 73 and serving 48 years in California, so he’ll die in prison no matter what happens.

I’ve never been on a jury; I’ve been in the pool several times, but was never selected. In fact, I’ve never even been questioned; I just sit in the jury pool and they fill the jury with people before they get to me, Now, I guess, I’m too old to fulfill this civic duty, as Illinois has age limits.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are on the beat:

Szaron: Where are you going?
Hili: To check what this sunbeam is landing on.
In Polish:
Szaron: Gdzie idziesz?
Hili: Sprawdzić na co świeci ten promień.

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

From Jay, who gives this a progressive headline:

Inhumane! Thunberg, Kidnapped, Forced to Fly Economy in Back-Row, Non-Reclining Seat

From The Language Nerds (click to enlarge); what happens in different countries of Europe when you try to speak their language.  I think France is wrong, at least in my experience,

From Stacy:

From Masih, another Iranian woman missing an eye. The English translation:

We are the daughters of White Wednesdays and stealthy freedoms, the voice of protest of the #Woman/Life/Freedom generation; Campaigns led by the courage of dear Masih Alinejad against compulsory hijab and in the direction of overthrowing The Islamic Republic was formed. We proudly stand in the front line against compulsory hijab. There is a sea of ​​blood between us, the subversives, and the scoundrel Faezeh Hashemi. Certainly, a prince who defends his father’s crimes and a bloodthirsty government is a cursed person, but we are ordinary people and we gave our lives for it. Reformist, conservative, the whole story is over. No to compulsory hijab. #Woman/Life/Freedom

From Luana, a Big Lie in USA Today:

From Malcolm. LOOK AT THIS CAT!

Two from my feed:

A polychaete worm with a weird body:

Fancy footwork from a Swima polychaete #OkeanosExplorer ex1711 dive 11 #MarineLife

— Lisa (@tuexplorer1.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T13:04:45.395Z

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Polish baker lived but two months in the camp before he perished.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T09:54:31.253Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  First, life can live nearly everywhere on Earth, even boiling hot springs—or on a PVC windowsill:

Weird sigil-like lichen growing on a PVC window-sill

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T11:34:23.131Z

And if you’re teaching evolution, you may want to read this:

Its here! Finally published. http://www.tes.com/magazine/tea…

— EvoNerdette (@bethmorillo-hall.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T05:04:38.835Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 11, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Wednesday, June 11, 2025, and a Hump Day (“Siku ra Hump” in Tsonga). It’s also National German Chocolate Cake Day, a great dessert named after its inventor, Samuel German,—so it’s not a cake from Germany. From Wikipedia:

German chocolate cake, originally German’s chocolate cake, is a layered chocolate cake filled and topped with a coconut-pecan frosting. Originating in the United States, it was named after English-American chocolate maker Samuel German, who developed a formulation of dark baking chocolate that came to be used in the cake recipe.

Here’s one; a slice would be very good with coffee for breakfast:

Tracy Hunter from Kabul, AfghanistanTracy Hunter from Kabul, Afghanistan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Corn on the Cob Day and Pizza Margherita Day, celebrating the pie topped with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella cheese.

Here’s some unusual corncobs: glass gem corn, a heirloom variety. These specimens were sent to me by a friend.  The stuff is edible, and can be popped, but I save it because it’s lovely:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Marines have arrived—in Los Angeles.  Fortunately, the violence seems to have abated there. While protests have spread to other cities, fortunately they’re (mostly) peaceful:

After a night of small and mostly peaceful protests in Los Angeles, 700 Marines deployed by the Trump administration arrived in the Los Angeles area alongside about 4,000 National Guard troops. The moves enraged Democratic leaders in California, who say city and state law enforcement departments have been able to handle the unrest, which has resulted in some property damage and injuries.

On Capitol Hill, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, a top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, sharply criticized the decision to deploy troops, calling it “premature” and “downright escalatory.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the deployments, saying in his testimony to the committee that “we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country.”

On Tuesday morning, streets in downtown Los Angeles were quiet. Some of the protests in Los Angeles over the last four days, including a rally on Monday afternoon, centered on a group of federal buildings downtown. National Guard troops have been stationed there but have largely stayed in the background of the protests.

The Marines would protect federal law enforcement officers and property in greater Los Angeles, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.

The use of military force on domestic soil is rare and is usually reserved for the most extreme situations. The state of California sued to block the use of National Guard troops on Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that he would sue to prevent the Marines’ deployment.

. . . Protests have spread to other cities, including San Francisco, where Mayor Daniel Lurie said a protest on Monday involving thousands of people was larger and “significantly calmer” than the demonstrations a day earlier, when violent clashes took place. In Santa Ana, Calif., officials said that federal agents used tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets against protesters who threw bottles and rocks.

*Speaking of the above, we now know that some undocumented immigrants picked up in L.A. have already been deported, and in pretty dire ways. I’ve put the scary part in bold:

 Less than 48 hours after Juan Fernando was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his job at a clothing factory, he was transported back to the country he had left behind.

The 23-year-old member of Mexico’s Indigenous Zapotec community had been living as an undocumented immigrant in the United States with his parents for four years. His arrest at Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles on Friday and subsequent removal happened so quickly that his parents said they didn’t have time to get an attorney.

On Sunday, federal authorities dropped him off at an international bridge and told him to cross back to Mexico, his family recounted in an interview with The Washington Post. He told them he thought he had signed a consent to a coronavirus test but may have inadvertently signed off on his deportation instead.

“The way they deported him wasn’t right,” said his father, Javier, 42, who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because he does not have legal immigration status. He said his son does not have a criminal record. “He is a calm, working man. We are asking for justice because they violated his rights.”

As protests over workplace raids in California’s largest city continued Monday and the Pentagon announced it would be sending 700 Marines to backstop National Guard troops, immigration lawyers, advocates and relatives were scrambling to find information about those detained. Mexico’s foreign minister said four immigrants detained in the raid had already been removed from the United States, a speed that some advocates said was unusual.

The Trump administration has not released a total count of how many immigrants have been picked up in the raids that sparked a wave of unrest in Los Angeles and demonstrations around the country. But as the protests continued, a picture of who was detained was slowly coming together.

The Department of Homeland Security released information on 16 people who they said had criminal histories that included charges or convictions of crimes including robbery, sexual battery and drug possession, according to the agency. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News on Monday that those picked up in the raids represent the “worst of the worst.” But immigrant advocacy groups say they have collected information indicating that more than 200 people were detained and that many do not have criminal records.

Now I’m not sure what “rights” an undocumented immigrant has, but surely they include a right to a hearing before they dump someone onto an international bridge.  And that holds even if the person has a criminal record. We are a country of laws, and even if one enters illegally, that has to be established before you boot someone out.  Most Americans would agree that undocumented immigrants with criminal records should be deported pronto, but I stand by my claim that there should be hearings for all. As for the Marines, I doubt they need them to preserve order, but remember that it’s the crowds who became violent, and blaming that violence on the presence of law officers is not on.

*This is rich (and dangerous): RFK Jr. has removed every member of a CDC panel charged with giving advice on vaccines:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all the members of a key committee that recommends vaccines, and when and how often adults and children should get them.

Kennedy wrote Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that he would do a “clean sweep” of the panel’s 17 members, all of whom were appointed during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

The panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director about which vaccines children and adults should get. Current members include infectious-disease doctors, pediatricians and epidemiologists.

“The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” Kennedy said in a subsequent statement, arguing that the change would help restore public trust in science.

Kennedy had earlier been collecting names for potential new members of the panel.

Public-health leaders, and Democrats, decried the move.

“Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful,” said Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

ACIP members undergo conflict-of-interest screening and are required to recuse themselves from decisions that could present a conflict.

“It isn’t a rubber stamp,” said Kathy Edwards, a vaccine researcher who previously served on the ACIP. “All of these things are meticulously evaluated.”

I believe Edwards.  Vaccination is too serious a matter to make the accusation that these people, who have been vetted, are just giving advice to Big Pharma.

*Greta Thunberg and her companions refused to watch the video of the October 7 massacre (described by the BBC in quotations as a “massacre”), a viewing prescribed by the IDF. I guess they just don’t want to know what happened.  (I’m told they simply closed their eyes during the presentation, which I find odious and reprehensible.) Four of the crew, including Greta, voluntarily left Israel on a plane, while eight others refuse to leave and will be deported:

Activists of the protest flotilla were brought to Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday morning, ready to depart from Israel. According to the Foreign Ministry, some of the activists will be deported in the coming hours.

“Anyone who refuses to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial body in accordance with Israeli law, in order to approve the deportation,” the Foreign Ministry clarified.

Four of the activists are departing the country, including Greta Thunberg. However, eight have refused to leave and will be transferred to Givon detention facility.

The activists were given the option to sign a voluntary departure form or face arrest after 96 hours. Among those refusing to leave is French MEP Rima Hassan

Hassan has previously drawn wide criticism for her denial that the Bibas family, excluding Yarden Bibas, were murdered, her claim that the October 7 massacre was “legitimate”  and her insistence that Palestinians in Europe should be allowed to join the “resistance.”
The German ambassador to Israel confirmed that a representative spoke with Yasemin Acar, a German national, ahead of the deportation. The German activist has previously made headlines for celebrating Iran’s attacks against Israel and for expressing solidarity with Hamas, according to KAN

French officials said that six French nationals were aboard the vessel, and one has voluntarily agreed to leave the country, while the remaining will be deported following a judge’s order in the coming days.

Israeli authorities screened footage of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and other pro-Palestinian flotilla participants upon their arrival in Ashdod on Monday, shortly after the IDF intercepted their ship, the Madleen, in international waters.

According to Defense Minister Israel Katz, the activists refused to continue watching the film after seeing the brutality of the attacks.

“These antisemitic flotilla activists closed their eyes to the truth and once again proved they prefer the murderers over the victims,” Katz said. “They continue to ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas against Jewish and Israeli women, the elderly, and children.”

From the Times of Israel:

“I do more good outside of Israel than if I am forced to stay here for a few weeks,” Thunberg told her lawyers, according to Zedan. “If we choose to stay here against the will of the Israeli authorities and are arrested for a few weeks, it will harm our cause.”

A photo of Greta on the plane, waiting to go home:

*From the AP’s reliable “oddities” section: an endangered loggerhead turtle, rehabbed after one of her flippers was amputated, was released back into the ocean:

An adolescent loggerhead sea turtle named Dilly Dally crawled into the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday morning, months after having a front flipper amputated at a Florida turtle hospital.

The turtle was brought to Loggerhead Marinelife Center in January suffering from predator wounds to the front flipper. The veterinary crew at the Juno Beach facility assisted in Dilly Dally’s rehabilitation and care.

“Every time we can release a turtle back into the wild is special and not just for us but for all the interns and volunteers and everyone that puts an effort to getting these turtles back out there. It’s always a really special day,” said Marika Weber, a veterinary technician at the center.

Stormy weather on Wednesday almost caused Dilly Dally’s release to be postponed. But they packed the turtle up and drove the short distance to the beach. A crowd of beachgoers cheered as the turtle made its way to the ocean.

A satellite tracking device attached to Dilly Dally’s shell will allow the center and the public to follow her journey.

The center partnered with the Smithsonian to get the satellite tag, which was attached on Tuesday.

Here’s a video of the release. The turtle doesn’t look as if can get around very well. I guess someone made the decision that the turtle would have a better life as a tripod in the ocean than in an aquarium. I hope so, but the satellite tag will tell if Dilly behaves normally.  Remember, when she lays eggs she has to haul herself up on the beach and dig an egg-hole with her flippers:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s doing entomology again:

Hili: There are ants coming out of this tree stump.
A: And what are they doing?
Hili: They are sunbathing.
In Polish:
Hili: Z tego pnia wychodzą mrówki.
Ja: I co robią?
Hili: Opalają się.

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

From Things With Faces, cut up lotus root:

From Meow, a special cattuccino:

From CinEmma, an essential item:

Cunk on Islam (30 seconds; h/t Phil):

Masih and Titania are quiet today, but here’s a trans-identified man explaining why he took selfies in the bathroom at Disney world (retweeted by JKR):

Apparently a lot of Jews in the UK are contemplating “Aliyah“: the immigration of Jews of the diaspora to Israel (h/t Malgorzata):

From Malcolm; this kid made $10K by sinking 4 shots, and the last one is a corker:

Two from my feed. A Greta meme, and yes, I think the Israelis gave her a pastrami sandwich!

This must have been taken with a drone:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz memorial:

An Italian Jewish boy, only two years old, was gassed together with his brother and mother upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T09:42:27.835Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, via Tori Herridge. There’s a thread of five posts:

Bubble rings blown by whales in an apparent attempt to interact or communicate with humans (as just heard on Radio 4 Today) (a thread with thoughts) 1/5

— Rowan Hooper (@rowhoop.bsky.social) 2025-06-10T06:54:09.860Z

. . .  and a groaner of a science joke:

#booksky

— Bookshelfie (@bookshelfie.bsky.social) 2025-06-09T16:21:25.344Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 10, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 10, 2025, and National Black Cow Day, celebrating the root beer float. In lieu of the drink, you can have this Steely Dan song. “It’s over now/Drink your big black cow/and get out of here.”

It’s also National Egg Roll Day, National Frosted Cookie Day, National Herb and Spice Day, and National Iced Tea Day, celebrating the “table wine of the South.”

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

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Sly Stone (not the actor but the musician) died yesterday at 82.  From the NYT:

As the colorful maestro and mastermind of a multiracial, mixed-gender band, Mr. Stone experimented with the R&B, soul and gospel music he was raised on in the San Francisco area, mixing classic ingredients of Black music with progressive funk and the burgeoning freedoms of psychedelic rock ’n’ roll.

The band’s most recognizable songs, many of which would be sampled by hip-hop artists, include “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “Family Affair,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”

Here’s my favorite of their songs, “Hot Fun in the Summertime” from 1969 (it sounds a bit like the Fifth Dimension):

*Today on tap is another day of L.A. residents’ battle against the apprehension of immigrants thought to be in the U.S. illegally. This time, the National Guard is around, and, as of last night, they called out 700 Marines!

The city geared up for another day of protests Monday after anti-ICE demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles escalated over the weekend.

The California chapter of the Service Employees International Union planned for a rally before the arraignment of its president, David Huerta, who was arrested on Friday while protesting a raid by ICE agents in Los Angeles.

U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal “Bill” Essayli said that agents were executing a warrant at a work site in Los Angeles when Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle.”

Videos captured people surrounding vans, shouting and chanting. As word spread, more people showed up, and the protests grew and lasted into the night.

President Trump deployed the National Guard on Saturday night over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with the president saying that local leaders didn’t move quickly enough to address the clashes.

Newsom called on the Trump administration to rescind the deployment of the National Guard, saying the move was a breach of state sovereignty. In a social-media post Monday, Newsom threatened to sue Trump, saying the deployment was illegal and had inflamed tensions in the city.

Trump sent the troops “to manufacture chaos and violence,” the Democratic governor said earlier in a post on X. “Now things are destabilized and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.”

On Sunday, protesters gathered outside the detention facility where Huerta was detained and stood off against National Guard troops.

Newsom says that California will sue Trump over the deployment of the state National Guard.

Finally, there’s one long thread (31 tweets) in which “Wokal Distance” claims that the protests against the arrest of undocumented immigrants were highly organized by outside forces. For some reason I can’t embed the first tweet, but click on the screenshot to see the allegations:

*I’ve seen the anti-ICE (or whoever’s doing the arresting) protests characterized as “peaceful”, but that’s not the impression I get. Just a few quotes from the WaPo:

At least 27 people were arrested in Los Angeles Sunday on the third day of protests against immigration raids, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol. Authorities used tear gas and less lethal munitions to disperse protesters who gathered near an immigration detention center downtown. Police said people in the crowd threw objects and that other protesters set fire to vehicles.

. . .Waymo has cut off taxi service to parts of Los Angeles after five of its self-driving vehicles were torched during weekend protests about immigration raids.

Images Sunday of downtown show Waymo vehicles covered with graffiti. One photo shows protesters waving Mexican and Guatemalan flags while standing atop a Waymo vehicle, while another appears to show a protester hitting the vehicle with a skateboard. The Los Angeles Times reported that some Lime e-scooters also were tossed into the blaze. [The Waymo cars were set on fire.]

Protestors are also firing dangerous fireworks, like Roman candles and M-80s, at law enforcement. Cars are on fire and the protestors are wearing masks. Why would you wear masks if you are protesting peacefully? On the other hand, law enforcement is also wearing masks, and why are they doing that? This is what’s known as a “shitshow”, or, more accurately, a dumpster fire.

*The “Freedom Flotilla, otherwise known as the “selfie yacht” (see below), has met an ignominious end, captured without incident by the IDF. (See also NYT article here.)

Shayetet 13, the elite IDF naval unit, intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla early on Monday morning at around 3 a.m., according to the ship’s operators and military officials. 

The IDF boarded the Madleen, and took the crew and the ship to the Port of Ashdod, where they would be sent back to their respective countries, with Defense Minister Israel Katz instructing that the passengers view footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

The IDF had previously estimated that the flotilla would arrive in Israeli territory an hour earlier.

The Israeli Navy had also reportedly made contact with the Madleen prior to Israeli forces boarding, and had instructed it to change its course.

Katz had also instructed the IDF to show Thunberg and the rest of the Madleen passengers footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
“It is appropriate that antisemitic Greta and her fellow Hamas supporters see exactly who this terrorist organization they came to support and whom they are working for is, what atrocities they committed against women, the elderly, and children, and against whom Israel is fighting to defend itself,” he said.

I love that they’re making them watch the October 7 attacks. But of course these are hard-core activists and that will have no effect on their thinking.

A statement from the Israeli foreign ministry:

With recent reports of a “celebrities yacht” heading to Gaza, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to clarify the following:

The maritime zone off the coast of Gaza is closed to unauthorized vessels under a legal naval blockade, consistent with international law.

The yacht is claiming that it is delivering humanitarian aid. In fact, it is a media gimmick for publicity (which includes less than a single truckload of aid) – a “selfie yacht”.

Humanitarian aid is delivered regularly and effectively via different channels and routes, and is transferred through established distribution mechanisms. Over the past two weeks, more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.

The Gaza maritime zone remains an active conflict area, and Hamas has previously exploited sea routes for terrorist attacks, including the October 7th massacre.

Unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts.

We call on all actors to act responsibly and to channel humanitarian aid through legitimate, coordinated mechanisms, not through provocation.

. . . and two tweets from the Ministry:

And a (critical) video from Talk TV:

*New York is pondering passing an assisted-dying bill, and the Free Press has objections: “Will New York soon make it too easy to die?”

 [In New York] assisted dying is not yet legal. That’s why, for the past decade, Nancy has been part of a movement to change the law in her home state.

Now, they’re closer than they ever have been. In April, New York’s “Medical Aid in Dying Act” passed the state assembly by a vote of 81 to 67. It has until the end of the legislative session—June 12—to face a vote in the Senate. On Thursday, June 5, Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said she believed there were enough votes for the legislation to pass and “it is likely that it will come to the floor.” Perhaps as soon as Monday, June 9.

If the legislation passes, New York would join the 11 other states that have legalized assisted dying in various forms. (It is also legal in the District of Columbia.) For those who have seen difficult deaths or are daunted by the prospect, the kind of death Nancy describes—peaceful and pain-free—is what they are hoping the law will all but guarantee.

But those opposed to assisted suicide—their preferred term—warn that such laws endanger the vulnerable by reshaping social norms so that, for some, the right to die becomes a duty to die. Moreover, New York’s legislation, they argue, is on the “outer edge” of liberalization, eliminating safeguards that exist in other states where medical aid in dying (MAID) is legal.

I spoke to people on both sides to better understand their concerns. To both proponents and opponents, New York’s assisted suicide bill is not only a matter of individual rights. To put it bluntly, the people who would be eligible to end their lives are already capable of doing so without help from doctors or lawmakers.  [JAC: What does that mean? That they can commit suicide on their own?] But this bill would signal medical and societal approval for that choice and, in doing so, have ethical implications that reach far beyond the patients it is designed for.

, , , Far from offering “peace and comfort,” said Michelle Uzeta, interim executive director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, legalizing assisted suicide will only endanger “vulnerable communities—poor, disabled, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ folk” since these are the groups “most at risk of being denied or unable to access care, being steered toward death, and having their lives devalued.”

And one of the objections:

, , , Richard Doerflinger is a bioethicist in Washington State who has been tracking assisted suicide laws for nearly 40 years. In his estimation, the New York bill may be the worst law of its kind in the United States.

“There is no waiting period in the New York bill. That’s the first time I’ve seen this,” he said, noting that most states with MAID laws have a minimum waiting period. In Oregon, it is 15 days, though a 2023 law allows this to be waived when the patient is expected to die before the waiting period ends.

“In New York, any patient could decide “in a moment of despair at first getting his or her diagnosis, ‘Oh my God, I just want to die,’ and sign off, and that’s the end of the process,” Doerflinger said. The patient could request the prescription, have it approved, and be dead within 24 hours.

And another:

“Why does it matter if depressed people inadvertently get assisted suicide?” Dugdale asks. “Well, as a society, we have always said that we treat depression and we prevent depressed people from killing themselves.” Some people fear that legalizing MAID will create a world in which suicide is seen as a treatment option even if a disease could be effectively managed.

. . . The assisted-suicide advocates I spoke with have many admirable qualities. Chief among them is their strong will and clear-mindedness. But they risk assuming that everyone facing a devastating diagnosis is of a similar disposition. What they might not appreciate is that in insisting on control at the end of life, they are chipping away at the agency of those who have so little to begin with and whose motivations may be compromised by depression, uncertainty, loneliness, ambivalence, grief, poverty, or despair.

Well, it’s advisable to have doctors and psychiatrists judge whether a disease can be “effectively managed” so that the patient doesn’t wish to end their life if there’s hope. In countries and states that have similar bills (with medical advice), I haven’t heard of widespread dissatisfaction with how they’re implemented.  And I think it’s a bit of an imposition for someone to tell a patient who wishes to die that they can’t—they have to live, even in unbearable circumstances. Well, do what you can to give them hope, but if that hope can’t be restored, I say that the state should allow them to die.

*The runaway zebra in Tennessee has been recovered and is back in his reserve again.

A runaway pet zebra that was on the loose for more than a week in Tennessee was captured on Sunday, his owners and authorities said.

Ed the zebra, who became an internet sensation, was captured safely after being located in a pasture near a subdivision in the Christiana community in central Tennessee, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

“Ed was airlifted and flown by helicopter back to a waiting animal trailer,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Ed’s owner, Laura Ford, told CBS News that a team from Texas helped capture him and he is “safe and 100% healthy.”

“This has been a long, stressful week and I am so happy that it ended the way it did and no one got hurt,” she said.

Video posted by the sheriff’s office shows Ed wrapped in a net with his head sticking out as he is carried by the helicopter to the trailer.

Ed arrived in Christiana on May 30, the sheriff’s office said. His owner reported him missing the next day.

The zebra was spotted and filmed running along Interstate 24, forcing deputies to shut the roadway. But Ed escaped into a wooded area.

There were several sightings posted to social media. Ed was filmed trotting through a neighborhood.

The zebra quickly became the subject of internet memes. One fake posting showed Ed dining at a Waffle House, a southern staple. Others had him visiting other Tennessee cities or panhandling on the side of the road.

Here’s Ed being airlifted to a truck. Poor Zebra! Ed was just trying to find the grassy plains!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making Lamarckian jokes:

Hili: I ate a know-it-all mouse.
Andrzej: And?
Hili: I do not feel any wiser.

In Polish:
Hili: Zjadłam mysz, która zjadła wszystkie rozumy na świecie.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Nie czuję się mądrzejsza.

 

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

All kitty memes today. Here’s one from The Dodo Pet:

From CinEmma:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

Masih is quiet again, but here’s JKR (and Martina) standing up for women:

Amnesty International, which has really gone down the drain, predictably defends Greta and her Gaza flotilla.  Malgorzata commented, “The text is predictably horrible. But I had a look at some comments. Quite a lot of them give hope that some humans are still thinking beings. Not all are indoctrinated drones like Amnesty.”  I put the first two comments below:

From Malcolm, a music-loving d*g:

From Barry. I wonder if this really is mimicking a mouth with teeth:

#PsakibriefingScience break.The Malaysian Dead Leaf Mantis mimicking a mouth with teeth to scare off predators.

— Fire Captain 🔥 (@rescuecaptain.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T01:24:28.965Z

One from my feed; Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices:

 

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was six years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-10T10:24:32.623Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. This woman has tamed a wild roadrunner:

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stop for a moment and watch this little roadrunner utterly ecstatic to show his mama the treasure he found 🥹🥹🥹

— Claire Zagorski, MSc, EMT-P (@clairezagorski.bsky.social) 2025-06-08T18:17:20.296Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 9, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, June 9, 2025, and, sadly, National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day. I am baffled why people not only ruin a good strawberry pie (one of my favorites) by loading it down with not only vegetables, but vegetables that are bitter, hard, and gritty. Well, to each their own. Here is a rhubarb pie shown in Wikipedia, and it’s one of the few desserts I’d refuse:

Cameron Nordholm, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Donald Duck Day, marking this: “Donald Duck’s first appearance on screen was in the animated short film ‘The Wise Hen’, on June 9, 1934”;  and International Dark ‘n’ Stormy Day, honoring a great drink made with dark rum and ginger beer over ice, sometimes with syrup added.

Here’s Donald’s first appearance; note that the cartoon is called “The Wise Little Hen.” You can see Donald’s first appearance at 2:06; he’s dancing a hornpipe sans pants:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has ordered the National Guard to California to stave off crowds of demonstrators who are mobbing ICE agents trying to arrest undocumented immigrants. The WSJ says that the Guard has already arrived in Los Angeles. From the NYT:

Further protests against immigration raids were scheduled to take place in the Los Angeles area on Sunday, hours after President Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering at least 2,000 National Guard members to assist immigration agents clashing with demonstrators.

The announcement late Saturday by Mr. Trump — who said that any protest or act of violence that impeded officials would be considered a “form of rebellion” — was an escalation that put Los Angeles squarely at the center of tensions over his administration’s immigration crackdown and made rare use of federal powers to bypass the authority of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Mr. Trump praised the National Guard for their work in Los Angeles overnight, but Mayor Karen Bass reminded residents that the troops had not arrived. As of around 7 a.m. on Sunday, the streets were quiet. Protests against immigration raids were expected to continue for a third day, with one event at City Hall set for 2 p.m. local time.

On Saturday, law enforcement officers faced off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day in the Los Angeles area, in some cases using rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Mr. Newsom described Mr. Trump’s order as “purposefully inflammatory,” saying that the federal government was mobilizing the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle.”

Bill Essayli, the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official in Southern California, said in an interview on Saturday night that National Guard troops would arrive in Los Angeles County within 24 hours. At least 20 people were arrested on Saturday, mostly in the largely Latino and working-class suburb of Paramount, in addition to the more than 100 people arrested at the protests on Friday, Mr. Essayli said.

Protests had broken out in the L.A. area on Friday and Saturday as federal agents mounted raids on workplaces in search of undocumented immigrants. The Los Angeles Police Department detained a number of protesters near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, but said demonstrations in the city were peaceful. Some of the protests that broke out in other areas, including Compton and Paramount, south of downtown Los Angeles, were more confrontational.

Here’s a video posted by a conservative turned progressive (h/t Luana)

While I admire the protestors willing to put themselves on the line for their views, I wouldn’t get in the way of the law like they do. But I do feel that anybody who gets deported deserves to have a legal hearing first.

*I thought the feud between Trump and Musk was cooling off, but it seems that it hasn’t. True to form, Trump is threatening Musk with “consequences” if Elon donates some money, as he said he might, to Democrats.

President Trump warned former right-hand-man Elon Musk to stay out of the midterm elections, threatening “very serious consequences” if he backed Democrats in the campaign.

Musk, who crossed Trump by staunchly opposing his “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill over deficit concerns, said last week that anyone who votes for this bill should be fired. Some Democrats have suggested that they try to win Musk over to their side, despite his being villainized by the party for his sweeping cuts to government staff. The billionaire spent about $300 million backing Trump and Republican candidates in the 2024 elections.

Asked by NBC News on Saturday if Trump was concerned that Musk could start funding Democratic candidates, Trump said “he’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” but declined to provide specifics.

In the NBC interview Trump said he had “no reason to” repair his relationship with Musk, after their breakup played out in real time on Thursday. Asked whether his relationship with the billionaire businessman was over, Trump said, “I would assume so.”

Musk deleted social-media posts in which he attempted to connect the president with convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. As the men’s relationship imploded on Thursday, Musk wrote on X that Trump’s name appeared in documents stemming from a federal investigation of Epstein, insinuating that he was in some way linked to the late disgraced financier’s criminal behavior.

On Friday, Musk wrote, “I will apologize profusely as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.” Both posts have been removed from Musk’s X feed.

One more example of Trump’s ineradicable tendency to take revenge on those who, he thinks, have crossed him. But Musk is now a private citizen and can do what he wants.  Just one more mess that Trump could prevent if he were rational (not that Musk is, either; he shouldn’t have brought up the Epstein matter unless he had evidence).

*The Guardian has taken out after Steve Pinker big time, implying that he’s a racist,   (h/t Barry, Luke) It’s all guilt by association:

The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking “legitimation by association” by platforming more mainstream figures.

The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.

Pinker’s appearance marks another milestone in the efforts of many in Silicon Valley and rightwing media and at the fringes of science to rehabilitate previously discredited models of a biologically determined racial hierarchy.

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher at UK anti-racism non-profit Hope Not Hate, said that Pinker’s “decision to appear on Aporia, a far-right platform for scientific racism, provides an invaluable service to an extremist outlet by legitimising its content and attracting new followers”.

He added: “By lending his Harvard credentials to Aporia, Pinker contributes to the normalisation and spread of dangerous, discredited ideas.”

The Guardian emailed Pinker for comment using his Harvard email address but received no response. Nor did he reply when approached through his university press office or his publishers.

In the hour-long recording published this week, Pinker engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about economic progress, artificial intelligence and social policy with host Noah Carl.

During the podcast, Pinker expressed agreement with claims made by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a prominent figure in the “human biodiversity” movement that seeks to promote race-based theories of intelligence, and like Pinker a one-time participant in a human biodiversity email list convened by Steve Sailer.

When Carl cited “evidence collected by sociologists like Charles Murray suggesting that part of the family breakdown in some communities in America seems to be attributable to the state taking over the traditional function of the father”, Pinker responded: “I think that is a problem.” He added: “It is a huge class-differentiated phenomenon, as Murray and others write it out.”

I haven’t heard the podcast, nor do I read Aporia, though I am a bit aware of Noah Carl. But what the Guardian is doing here is really smearing Pinker, trying to make him out to be a racist because of who he’s associated with.  The relevant question is this, though:  Has Pinker expressed any sentiments that would brand him as a racist? I’ve read nearly all of Pinker’s books and essays, and talked to him a fair bit, and never have I heard a single word that would make me think him racist.  The guilty-by-association trope is a lazy strategy used by people who don’t want to do the work of adjudicating the science or parsing the arguments, and is a speciality of one of the worst sites on the internet, called Pinkerite (I won’t link to it).  The writer knows nothing about heredity or the genetics of differences between groups, but simply dismisses the whole endeavor as “race pseudoscience.”  Her latest endeavor involves not just calling Pinker a racist explicitly, but also adding both Adam Rutherford and Michael Shermer to that class.

Finally, I still fail to understand why so many people have it in for Pinker, and this was well before the Aporia magazine podcast.

*As I wrote yesterday, The Freedom Flotilla, a single boat bringing not only Greta Thunberg, but a bunch of her activist pals and a a small bit of  aid (apparently for about a dozen Gazans), is approaching Israel. You can track it live here, and as I write this on Sunday afternoon, this is where the boat is. It may be nearly at Gaza now, in which case I’ll update this.

UPDATE: The boat and Greta have been intercepted by the IDF; the Jerusalem Post reports:

Shayetet 13, the elite IDF naval unit, intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla early on Monday morning at around 3 a.m., according to the ship’s operators and military officials.

The IDF boarded the Madleen, and took the crew and the ship to the Port of Ashdod, where they would be sent back to their respective countries, with Defense Minister Israel Katz instructing that the passengers view footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

If you read the link, you’ll find a clever twist on what the “crew” will make Mary Ann and the crew do before they’ll be sent back.

Israel has said it will stop the boat, for it’s trying to run a sea blockade that Israel has imposed around Gaza.  This is not just a decision by Israel: it’s in accordance with the UN’s own Palmer Report, enacted in 2011 after another seies of ships, the Mavi Marmara Gaza Freedom Flotilla, clashed with Israeli commandos trying to board it. Nine members of the flotilla were killed, In response, a UN panel enacted the following (from Camera.org):

Concerning Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, the Palmer Report determined:

Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.

Concerning the actions of the flotilla participants, the report found:

the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade. The majority of the flotilla participants had no violent intentions, but there exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.

On the justification for Israel’s resort to force:

Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection.

The report was critical of how the Israeli commandos reacted, accusing them of using excessive force. It recommended that

An appropriate statement of regret should be made by Israel in respect of the incident in light of its consequences. Israel should offer payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families, to be administered by the two governments through a joint trust fund of a sufficient amount to be decided by them.

Israel, as I reported yesterday, has vowed to stop Greta and her compadres:

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has vowed to block an aid vessel carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching Gaza, by “any means necessary.”

The Madleen departed Sicily last Sunday, aiming to breach Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza, deliver humanitarian aid, and draw attention to the worsening humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

According to a live tracker on board the vessel, it was sailing north of the Egyptian coastal city of Rosetta on Sunday morning, roughly 160 nautical miles from Gaza.

Katz said Sunday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to “prevent the ‘Madelaine’ hate flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza.”

“To the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propaganda spokespeople, I say clearly: You should turn back — because you will not reach Gaza,” he posted on Telegram.

*On Saturday, NBC News reported revelation that the price of tickets to concerts of pop icons is becoming stratospheric. This is also the subject of a recent article in the NYT.

On Feb. 11, Mr. [Ignacio] Vasquez got on Ticketmaster’s online queue for the BeyHive presale, offered exclusively to those who signed up on Beyoncé’s website. After waiting his turn, Mr. Vasquez was surprised to see tickets listed at a minimum of $600 each and many at more than $1,000.

“The prices were just outrageous by the time I got in there,” Mr. Vasquez said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is not going to work — I’m not going to do that,’ so I just quit it.”

In recent years, concertgoers have paid eye-popping prices for tickets to see popular artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Oasis on tour. But Gen Z fans — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are paying much more for concert tickets than previous generations did when they were young adults. In 1996, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $25.81, or about $52 adjusted for inflation, according to data compiled by Pollstar, a trade publication that covers the live music industry. By 2024, average ticket prices had risen to $135.92. The live music industry has put today’s young adults in an impossibly expensive position.

For Gen Z, spending on concerts can be budget busters. In a survey of 1,000 Gen Z respondents published last year by Merge, a marketing agency, 86 percent admitted to overspending on live events. Fear of missing out, or FOMO, was cited as a top reason. Another survey by AAA, the automobile owners group, and Bread Financial, a financial services company, found that Gen Z and millennials were willing to spend more and travel farther to attend live events than older generations are.

The increase has been more than twice the rate of inflation:

About 50 years ago, fans of Bruce Springsteen paid as little as $8, or $44 adjusted for inflation, to see him perform on his Born to Run tour. Costs rapidly rose over the next few decades.

“The price of the average concert ticket increased by nearly 400 percent from 1981 to 2012, much faster than the 150 percent rise in overall consumer price inflation,” Alan B. Krueger said in an address at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, when he was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

After people were cooped up inside during the Covid-19 pandemic, attendance at concerts and other large gatherings resurged as audiences craved more in-person experiences. In 2023, the top 100 tours around the world brought in a record-breaking $9.2 billion, up 65 percent from 2019, according to data from Pollstar.

This increased demand, mixed with limited seats, high service fees and loose regulations (and an ongoing antitrust lawsuit) over how tickets are bought and sold, has resulted in a global surge in concert ticket prices.

Call me a geezer, but I can’t bear large concerts in stadiums or halls. You can’t really get near the artist and are forced to crane your neck to look over the heads of everyone standing up, or watch big video screens, which is a waste of money. The three best concerts I’ve ever been to involved seeing the Band, the Rolling Thunder Review (with Dylan and Joan Baez), and the Allman Brothers.  They were all in small theaters or even bars, and the Band played in a small gym-like space at the University of Maryland.  In the first and last concerts mentioned I was only a few feet from the stage, and really could absorb the music. I’d never pay $500 to see anyone, especially Taylor Swift, in a huge venue.  NBC also reportered that a few artists like Neil Young are striving mightily to keep their ticket prices down, which is admirable.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a good suggestion:

Hili: Start immediately with repairing the world.
Andrzej: How?
Hili: Pet me.
In Polish:
Hili: Natychmiast zabierz się za naprawianie świata.
Ja: Jak?
Hili: Pogłaszcz mnie.

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

From Meow: a cat whose marking spell “Meow”!

From The Dodo Pet, a happy rescue story:

From CinEmma, a mighty cat:

 

From Masih, more details of an Iranian woman stabbed to death, apparently because she was “shameless” (did she not wear a hijab?).  The cops aren’t doing anything about this guy who admists to murdering her (read the whole tweet).

Here is a post by Simone Biles excoriating Riley Gaines for opposing the participation of trans-identified men (“trans women”) in women’s sports.  Biles’s enmity is the subject of a column by Colin Wright on his Substack, “Simone Biles owes her legacy to the rules Riley Gaines is defending.”

From Luana, whose school (Williams College) is the first in the country to announce that it won’t process any new NSF or NIH grants because Williams doesn’t comply with the granting agencies’ stictures against DEI programs. Williams apparently prefers to have DEI rather than grants.  I don’t know how Luana, who has federal grants, feels about this, but I’ll ask her.

From Bryan; a man demonstrates how nylon was discovered (you can read more about its composition and discovery at this site):

From Malcolm, a compilation of skills:

One from Simon:

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T23:53:56.546Z

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death the day he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-09T09:07:04.922Z

And one from Dr. Cobb, whose biography of Francis Crick should be out in the fall:

Crick wrote a children’s book about scale/size of things in the universe for DK in the mid-70s. It was never published, despite including a rather good poem he wrote about people living on the moon, and some great artwork being commissioned.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T08:34:11.676Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 8, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the sabbath for goyische cats: it’s June 8, 2025, and it’s Jelly-Filled Donut Day. Here’s the Polish version in a window filled with pączki,  filled yeast donuts, seen in Katowice in December of last year. I bought two and consumed them in my hotel room. Superb!

It’s also Pentecost, World Oceans Day, and National Children’s Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The immigrant who was sent to El Salvador by mistake has been brought back to the U.S., only to face charges of human smuggling:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement, was returned to the United States on Friday to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration said was a large human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.

His abrupt release from El Salvador closes one chapter and opens another in a saga that yielded a remarkable, months-long standoff between Trump officials and the courts over a deportation that officials initially acknowledged was done in error but then continued to stand behind in apparent defiance of orders by judges to facilitate his return to the U.S.

The development occurred after U.S. officials presented El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for federal charges in Tennessee accusing Abrego Garcia of playing a key role in smuggling immigrants into the country for money. He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country of El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.

“This is what American justice looks like,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing Abrego Garcia’s return and the unsealing of a grand jury indictment.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys called the case “baseless.”

“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

Federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee, determined that Abrego Garcia will be held in custody until at least next Friday, when there will be an arraignment and detention hearing

Well, the evening news on Friday reported that he was stopped by the cops for ferrying workers between construction sites, but it wasn’t clear that he had done anything illegal. As you may remember, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia home. What will happen now is unclear, but at least the man gets his day in court, even if he does wind up get sent back to El Salvador.

*The notorious Olsen-Kennedy study of puberty blockers, which found no evidence that the blockers improved mental health (or had any effect on mental health), was funded by American taxpayers but was nevertheless withheld from publication by the lead author because she apparently didn’t like a result that comported with “affirmative care”.  At last the study has now been published (as a preprint), as well it should have been:

A much-anticipated study on the use of puberty blockers among a group of nearly 100 minors with gender dysphoria has finally emerged in pre-print form. The study found that, contrary to what Dutch researchers who founded the field of pediatric gender medicine in the 1990s and 2000s found in their seminal 2011 paper, children’s mental health markers did not improve while on the drugs. Instead, the children had fairly good mental health overall that simply remained constant during the year or two they spent on blockers.

In October, New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi reported that the study’s lead author, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, had long withheld the study, which finished gathering its data in 2021, from publication for political reasons. She did not want its null findings, which she found unexceptional, to be weaponized. This came after British researchers had also tried and failed to replicate the Dutch study’s finding that blockers improved mental health. Having explicitly hypothesized that blockers would improve mental health, the British researchers also sat on their null findings for years and finally published them in 2021.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who is perhaps the nation’s leading pediatric gender care doctor and heads a gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, asserted in a sworn court statement in November that the Times mischaracterized her words.

Yesterday, the Times dropped its own long-awaited assessment of pediatric gender medicine: a six-part podcast series called The Protocol, led by Ms. Ghorayshi. I highly recommend everyone listen to the full series, which examines how the treatment for pediatric gender dysphoria pioneered by the Dutch—prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors with persistent, insistent and consistent gender dysphoria—found its way to the United States. There, clinicians abandoned many of the protocol’s guardrails in favor of the so-called gender affirmative method. Under this philosophy, the child’s wants, needs and self perception were now considered paramount. I wrote a summary of the Times podcast in this X thread if you want to check it out.

I haven’t yet read the preprint, which is linked above (or go here), but have a look at the last sentence of the conclusions, which is very bizarre, as if they’re trying to save the use of blockers by showing that they could preserve mental health in people after puberty.
Results Ninety-four youth aged 8-16 years (mean=11.2 y) were predominately Non-Hispanic White (56%), early pubertal (86%) and assigned male at birth (52%). Depression symptoms, emotional health and CBCL constructs did not change significantly over 24 months. At no time points were the means of depression, emotional health or CBCL constructs in a clinically concerning range.
Conclusion Participants initiating medical interventions for gender dysphoria with GnRHas have self- and parentreported psychological and emotional health comparable with the population of adolescents at large, which remains relatively stable over 24 months. Given that the mental health of youth with gender dysphoria who are older is often poor, it is likely that puberty blockers prevent the deterioration of mental health.

*The NYT reports that Israel is arming groups of Gazan protestors who are fighting against Hamas.

Israel has been arming a Palestinian militia in Gaza as part of a broader effort to fight Hamas in the enclave, according to officials. After a daylong controversy over the allegations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel acknowledged on Thursday that the country had been working with “clans in Gaza.”

Two Israeli officials and another person familiar with the matter said the Israeli authorities had provided support, including weapons, to Yasser Abu Shabab, a well-known gunman who leads the militia in southern Gaza. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Mr. Abu Shabab is believed to command a relatively small armed group in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. He became notorious in the territory last year amid accusations — which he disputed — that he had looted and resold truckloads of humanitarian aid intended for hungry Gazans.

One of the people described Israel’s move as more symbolic — to bolster the impression that Hamas was losing its grip over Gaza’s Palestinian residents.

It was not clear what effect the move to arm a Palestinian militia would have on the security situation in Gaza. But Israel’s decision offered a window into the country’s struggles to find an alternative to Hamas’s rule in the territory after more than a year and a half of war — and its willingness to experiment with potentially risky strategies to do so.

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel had “activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas,” calling it “a good thing” that saved the lives of Israeli soldiers. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked in a video posted on social media, saying he decided to approve the move after being advised by security officials. But he avoided any mention of sending weapons.

For the moment I’m somewhat in favor of this, for it’s two gangs of thugs fighting each other (Abu Shabab, a Bedouin, was imprisoned by Hamas), and anything that occupies the fighting capacity of Hamas just gives the IDF a better chance to eliminate it. That does not mean that Abu Shabab should be in charge of Gaza or of a Palestinian state, but arming the group doesn’t necessarily mean that this is a desperation move on the part of Netanyahu to find an alternative ruler of Gaza. On the other hand, it’s not good optics for Israel to give arms to terrorists.

*A company is trying to build the next Corcorde, which will take you between New York and Paris in four hours.

When the Concorde was grounded in 2003, done in by strained economics  and a fiery crash on a Paris runway, it appeared to be the end of the line for supersonic travel. Nothing emerged to replace it. In fact, the speed of air travel moved in the opposite direction, with many routes getting slower in recent years as congestion and air-traffic control inefficiencies jammed up the skies.

A former Amazon software engineer named Blake Scholl founded a company to change this. A decade ago, he launched Boom Supersonic, betting that his Denver-based startup could tap in to the allure of ultrafast travel—a desire that has never quite been extinguished despite the financial and practical challenges that ended the Concorde’s nearly 30-year run. Scholl sees a world where round-trip trans-Atlantic business journeys happen in a single day.

“The thinking has been, ‘Supersonic flight would obviously be great, but nobody is doing it so therefore it must be impossible,’ ” the 44-year-old chief executive said during a recent interview. “Not true.”

Earlier efforts, including the Concorde, failed because of ill-conceived business models or other organizational problems as big aerospace companies struggled to shift to making new kinds of products. The technology needed to achieve supersonic flight, he argued, has been available all along.

. . . .But Boom has recently scrambled to raise money. Its valuation, once close to $1 billion, was around $500 million at the end of last year, and the company has slashed its fundraising goals. Last fall it laid off roughly half its 260 employees. Boom has yet to begin building a full-size jet.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian is among Boom’s doubters, calling the jet “a very, very expensive asset” for the roughly 75 travelers it is expected to carry—a fraction of a typical wide-body jet. He said he remembers the Concorde as a cool experience, but one he partook in only through free upgrades, never with his own money. He has no plans to buy Overture jets. “I wish them well,” he said.

Scholl is unfazed. He blames the lack of supersonic travel on an aerospace industry dominated by a pair of entrenched players, Boeing and Airbus, unwilling to shake up long-held business models.

The company earlier this year flight-tested a smaller prototype and is working to ready a full-size production model for flight tests by 2027.

I doubt I would want to pay the substantial fare it would take to fly to Paris at supersonic speeds, but it’s nice to think of being able to take off at, say, 6 a.m. and be in Paris for lunch (at Chez Denise, of course). The problem is that I’d have to get to New York first, and that still means a long flying day. I’m betting the whole enterprise will fail.

*Also from the NYT we have a story about a potential violation of academic freedom: “A professor was fired for her politics. Is that the future of academia?” (article archived here; h/t Enrico)l”). It’s the story of Maura Finkelstein (yes, she’s Jewish), a tenured professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania who was deep-sixed for supposedly proselytizing for Palestine in her classes, making Jewish students uncomfortable.

This is what did Finkelstein in; she responded to a campus-wide email from the college President soon after October 7, 2023, a response that said, in part, “The terrorism Hamas perpetrated on Israel and the Jewish people is deplorable,” [Kathleen] Harring wrote. “The conflict in the Middle East has played out over millenniums, but no matter the history Hamas’ decision to invade a sovereign nation and murder its citizens was an evil one.” Finkelstein replied to the entire College:

“There is no doubt that Saturday’s surprise attacks are devastating,” she wrote. “We must mourn all civilian deaths. These are terrifying times. But we cannot mourn without also acknowledging the fact that Israel is a settler colonial state, Palestinians have been living under occupation since 1948, and Gaza is an open-air prison, the densest and perhaps most dangerous place in the world.”

Finkelstein then emailed students in both of her classes to say she would spend their next meeting discussing any questions they had about Oct. 7. Both classes were small, with 10 to 12 students, and in each Finkelstein said the discussion that day centered on questions students emailed her beforehand, a number of which were some variations on: What is Hamas?

But she also had a history:

Finkelstein arrived at Muhlenberg in 2015, when she was in her mid-30s, after two years as visiting assistant professor at Mills College in the Bay Area. She taught about India, where her first book, an ethnography of Mumbai mill workers, is set, and later about Palestinians, including a class called “The Anthropology of Palestine.” In the classroom, she told me, her aim was to push students “to think beyond the limits of their own imagination” but also, as an influential high school history teacher once did for her, to give them information they may have previously been denied. That high school teacher, James Biedron, had, via mock Middle East peace talks her senior year, first prompted Finkelstein to research historic Palestine and ultimately, she said, to find “a place to land” in her Jewish identity, as an anti-Zionist Jew.

Outside the classroom, Finkelstein was already, as she phrased it, “loud.” She invited Sa’ed Atshan, the head of peace-and-conflict studies at Swarthmore College and a Palestinian Quaker, to campus in 2018 to give a lecture. “It’s very difficult for us to discuss Palestine here in the United States,” Finkelstein told attendees. “This discussion is fraught and uncomfortable, and so we must have it.” She took a trip with other educators to visit Palestinian territories that same year and wrote about the experience in an online essay in which she criticized Hillel, a Jewish student group, for centering support of Israel over “Jewish religious and cultural life” at Muhlenberg and on other campuses. On the door of her office, in a campus building shared with Hillel, there was a whiteboard that read in Arabic, “Long Live Palestine.”

One student from Finkelstein’s classes complained to the college, saying, according to the eventual Department of Education investigation, that Finkelstein used her class to “continuously push the narrative that Hamas is doing what needs to be done to liberate people in Gaza from Israel” and calling it “the most uncomfortable classroom environment I have ever stepped foot in.” That student was not named in the report, but a student in Finkelstein’s class that semester said on X that he had “horrible experiences” in her class. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two other Jewish students at Muhlenberg told me they either heard or understood from others that Finkelstein made students uncomfortable in her classes, though they couldn’t connect me with any of those students. One said he had no personal experience with Finkelstein but “1,000 percent” thought she should be fired because she was “brainwashing students with her class full of hate.” Another said he thought Finkelstein had undue influence online, where people might take her comments about the Gaza war more seriously because of her status as a college professor.

It’s not clear to me whether Muhlenberg did violate academic freedom by proselytizing her classes in ways not relevant to the goals of the class, but even if she did she was no afforded due process, and, after they simply let her go, an appeal adjudicated by a faculty committee of five voted “unanimously that the Muhlenberg administrators had failed to prove Finkelstein showed ‘flagrant disregard’ for the rules and norms of the college and recommending that her termination be reconsidered.” Plus an outside firm hired to investigate Finkelstein could not find a single student who felt uncomfortable or unsafe. On top of that, AAUP and FIRE investigations found the Muhlenberg committed no fire-able offenses. But Finkelstein threw in the towel and quit, and this makes her nearly unique in the last two years:

According to data collected by the free-speech organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), [Jodi Dean of Hobart and William Smith Colleges] and Finkelstein were among more than 40 professors investigated by their colleges and universities for pro-Palestinian speech after Oct. 7. Of those, eight professors without tenure protections were fired; two had tenured job offers rescinded; and one with tenure, Finkelstein, was fired.

Although I oppose what Finkelstein said, and Muhlenberg, as a private college, need not conform to free-speech standards, and perhaps Finkelstein’s actions in class did infringe on academic freedom, but it wasn’t to the degree that they should revoke her tenure and fire her.  In my view, a promise on her part not to further proselytize in her classes might have been sufficient.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili muses on her ancestry:

Hili: Do I have a common ancestor with a chimpanzee?
A: Of course. Though he may have a common ancestor with you. You never know with ancestors.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ja też mam wspólnego przodka z szympansem?
Ja: Oczywiście. Chociaż może to on ma wspólnego przodka z tobą. Z przodkami nigdy nic nie wiadomo.
And a picture of the loving Szaron.

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

From Barry:

From Armin, an inquiry given to ChatGPT and its answer:

Even a bot knows the meaning of evidence—of the lack thereof.

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih is still quiet, but here’s a moving story that for obvious reasons was retweeted by J. K. Rowling:

From Luana: a conundrum:

From Simon:

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T23:11:46.797Z

From Malcolm, and, given how laden this guy is, it’s a great catch:

From my feed; you can’t get much lazier than this while playing:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A French Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was three.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-08T09:16:48.755Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb; the first he labels “Important info!”:

This map answers the important question if a country’s name (in English) can be spelled using elements from the periodic table. Now you know. Source: buff.ly/MVOIcN1

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T07:26:09.350Z

And a beautiful fly; but what are the leg armatures for? Don’t ask me, but a Google inquiry reveals this:

Courtship:
In male Dolichopus popularis, the second pair of legs, particularly the tarsi (the “foot” part), are often modified and used during courtship rituals. These modifications can include the presence of specialized structures or hairs on the legs.

I should have guess that when the caption said that this was a male.

It's a good time for finding the fancy male Dolis with their modified leg armature, like this Dolichopus popularis at Cali Heath @yorkswildlife.bsky.social reserve yesterday. @dipteristsforum.bsky.social #long-leggedflies #dolis

— Ian Andrews (@suillia.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T07:36:42.176Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 7, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 7, 2025 and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s National Black Bear Day,  Here are some Ursus americanus cubs being human-raised until they’re ready to be released into the wild:

 

And it’s Graduation Day at the University of Chicago. I’m locked in my building but have access to Botany Pond, so the ducks won’t go hungry. Yesterday they had their “montiversary,” as they hatched on May 6 and hit the water on May 7. (I guess today is “First Swim Day”.)

It’s also National Fun Day, Metric System Day (will we ever join?), Sweet Potato Day, National Beer Day, National Coffee Cake Day, and International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, in which at least half a million Tutsi, and members of other groups, were slaughtered.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In a telling sign of enmity, the PA daily—the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority—has urged Hamas members in Gaza to kill their leaders, release all the hostages, and then commit suicide! (The PA and Hamas have never liked each other.) This is from Palestinian Media Watch, with the PA daily quotes doubly indented:

While the Palestinian Authority has spent months leveraging the civilian suffering in Gaza to criticize its political rival, Hamas, today the official PA daily took things a step further. The paper called on Hamas leaders to emerge from their tunnels in Gaza armed with two bullets: one to be used on the Hamas political leadership living in luxury in Qatar, and the other on themselves—arguing that suicide would be preferable to the disgrace they should feel for the countless Palestinian deaths they have caused.

“Leave [the tunnels] with your handgun, with two bullets in its magazines… and then admit your crime. Then aim it [the gun] at the heads of your admired [Hamas] politicians, in [foreign] capitals… Ask yourselves what benefit this gun has, and the answer will come to you from the last bullet, since your suicide is better than disgrace.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 5, 2025]

Hamas should unconditionally release all Israeli hostages, the PA daily continues, because Israel is killing three times the number of hostages every day.

“Enough, Hamas leaders. Release them [Israeli hostages] now. Unconditionally remove the handcuffs of death from more than two million [Gazan] hostages who are still alive, and from twenty [Israeli hostages] who you are still haggling over.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 5, 2025]

This reflects the ongoing messaging from the Palestinian Authority, which continues to defend the horrific atrocities committed against Jews on October 7 as “legitimate resistance,” while simultaneously criticizing Hamas for enabling Israel’s reentry into Gaza and its subsequent counteroffensive. In doing so, the PA seeks to bolster its popular support by defending the October 7 massacre—an event widely celebrated among Palestinians—while also shifting responsibility for the claimed 55,000 deaths in Gaza onto Hamas.

Despite this, recent polls indicate that Hamas remains significantly more popular than Fatah, especially since the October 7 attack elevated Hamas terrorists to the status of Palestinian icons. According to surveys conducted in May 2025, 59% of West Bank Palestinians still believe that the October 7 assault on Israel was the “correct decision” [PSR]. In the hate-saturated Palestinian consciousness, their one day of glory, in which they raped, tortured, burned families alive, and murdered nearly 1200 Jews, was worth the cost of 55,000 Gazans lives.

This enmity is one reason why there can’t be a two-state solution now. It can’t be run by Hamas because they’re terrorists, and it can’t be run by the PA because they’re less popular than Hamas, even though the PA also fosters terrorism, as in their “pay for slay” program that rewards Jew-killing. So who runs the “Palestinian state”?

*The WaPo, in yesterday’s morning announcement, says: “What happened? Their alliance publicly imploded. Musk used X to fire off memes, put-downs and explosive allegations against the president. You can scroll through every insult here.” The Epstein accusation by Musk is particularly nasty:

Here are a few if the back-and-forth tweets between Musk and Trump in chronological order: the Battle of the Narcissists:

 

 

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly and snarky news column in the Free Press, called this week “TGIF:  The real housewives of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

→ Biden press sec turning on Biden: Speaking of trashy, the Dems are turning on each other all over the place. Some are announcing they’re not even Dems. That’s what former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has done. Karine has declared herself an Independent Voter and announced a new tell-all about Biden, positioning herself as a lone, brave voice of truth. Her book is called Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines. Which is strange, because she spent two years viciously enforcing those party lines and lashing out at anyone who dared challenge the acuity of her boss. She was the press secretary in charge of the biggest press-driven cover-up of a president in history. She promoted the term cheap fakes to describe real videos of an obviously confused old man wandering deliriously through the world. And now Karine wants to claim independence and make it her whole thing, like she’s a Free Press columnist or something.

But here’s my real issue: Only now that Biden’s down does Karine Jean-Pierre have the guts to kick him. Biden’s out of power. He’s done. He’s dying. So now the knives can come out! Now for the unveiling of how bad it always was. Where was all this independent-minded reporting when Biden was powerful? Crickets. I guess we need these Biden takedowns for the historical record. But I reserve my admiration for folks who kicked Biden while he was president. Which is why I admire only myself. Just keeps it cleaner.

→ Dyke March bans me, specifically: Organizers of the New York Dyke March—the special lesbian event at New York Pride weekend—banned Zionists from participating. So now, to participate, you need to believe that the country of Israel should be disbanded and all Jews should be expelled from that land, and also be into home renovations and motorcycles. Right. Well. I’m fine, thanks for asking. See, every time I go for a walk, it’s a Dyke March. I don’t need a special flag. My Tevas say enough. My many children. My tactical clothing. It’s all that’s required.

In other news, Ana Kasparian, executive producer and host of the popular online leftist news show The Young Turks, is toying around with blaming Jews for 9/11. She wrote: “I’m old enough to remember the ‘dancing Israelis,’ who happened to be Mossad agents filming and celebrating as the planes hit the World Trade towers.” There’s nothing people won’t blame on the Jews. Except for good things. Ana will never give us credit for anything good.

Meanwhile, over at the University of Michigan, in a botanical garden, hundreds of blooming peonies were destroyed, and signs were added that read: PLANT LIVES DON’T MATTER. HUMAN LIVES DO. This will surely win people over to the cause of the Palestinians. Then in Toronto, outside a pizza shop, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was doing one of his on-camera pizza reviews when someone screamed at him “Fuck the Jews.” We’re entering the stage of antisemitism when many great and highly differentiated people start to get one very specific word hurled at them.

Ana Kasparian? Seriously?

→ Something new in the trans sports battles: A leaked medical report from 2023 appears to indicate that Imane Khelif, a boxer who competed in and won women’s boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics, is a biological male.

Doraine Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School, told Newsweek: “The IOC would not revoke medals won by athletes who were eligible according to the rules it set for the boxing competition in Paris. . . . those rules did not require competitors to be biologically female.” If you have XY chromosomes but a ponytail? You, too, can win women’s boxing. Are you a male who wants to (legally!) punch women in the face, and are you okay being called Paula for two (2) days? I’ve got just the sport for you.

Now something interesting is happening. Around the company, women are balking. In Washington State, audience members booed when a male handily won the girls 400-meter dash. Which, to be clear, I think is mean and people shouldn’t do—the teenager should never have been put in that position—but it’s interesting to note that the taboo around this is falling and frustration is mounting. When a male won the girls’ high jump at Oregon’s state track and field championships last week, two teens stepped off the podium in protest. This kind of broad pushback is new.

I do think that there’s been a sea change in the boosterism heaped upon trans women competing in sports against biological women, so I predict that women’s sports, which have been changing their rules to prohibit this, will increasingly do so. I’m not sure what the Olympic women’s boxing rules are now.

*Here’s a mystery: a lot of large balloons in the water around the North Korean warship that capsized upon launching.

North Korea confirmed Friday its capsized warship was upright and stable, but a layer of intrigue lingers around the salvage work: Why the armada of massive balloons?

Satellite imagery shows dozens of balloons floating around the 5,000-ton destroyer that toppled into the water at a May 21 launch event attended by the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

The balloons aren’t thought to have played a leading role in righting the vessel, a task that appeared to have been primarily accomplished with cranes, maritime experts said. But the balloons could have helped keep the ship afloat, obscured the view from the skies or lifted objects off the destroyer, they added.

North Korea’s use of balloons for salvage operations of a warship lacks a modern precedent, said Decker Eveleth, a weapons analyst at CNA, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank, who reviewed recent satellite imagery of the warship.

“It’s all a mystery,” said Eveleth, who counted roughly 40 balloons. He estimated that each balloon measures about 20 feet wide.

North Korea is no stranger to using balloons in unusual ways, having sent thousands filled with trash into South Korea last year.

The warship-adjacent balloons weren’t mentioned in a state-media report championing the salvage operations on Friday. The “Choe Hyon-class” warship represents a crown jewel in one of Kim’s top priorities: modernizing his Soviet-era naval fleet.

The 41-year-old dictator has vowed to have the destroyer fixed by the end of this month, a timeline that naval experts have called ambitious. The vessel, which is currently at a shipyard in the northeastern port city of Chongjin, will be moved to a dry dock in Rajin, state media reported. The repair work should take seven to 10 days.

Warships and balloons have a historical connection. So-called “barrage” balloons—blimp-shaped floating devices—created aerial obstacles or defended ground targets during both world wars. More recently, Russia has deployed tethered aerial devices for border surveillance and intelligence gathering.

Nick Childs, a senior naval analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, said modern navies wouldn’t turn to large balloons to provide buoyancy to a submerged ship. Instead, the balloons could signify that North Korea lacks equipment like heavy-lift cranes.

Here’s a Sun video suggesting what caused the disaster and also showing the balloons:

Who knows? But I’m pretty sure that whoever The Great Leader deems responsible for the capsized ship will be executed. Four of them have already been arrested.

*Transgender U.S. military troops faced a deadline yesterday to leave the service. If they do so now, they get some money, but the gutsy ones are staying to fight in court.

As transgender service members face a deadline to leave the U.S. military, hundreds are taking the financial bonus to depart voluntarily. But others say they will stay and fight.

For many, it is a wrenching decision to end a career they love, and leave units they have led or worked with for years. And they are angry they are being forced out by the Trump administration’s renewed ban on transgender troops.

Active duty service members had until Friday to identify themselves and begin to leave the military voluntarily, while the National Guard and Reserve have until July 7. Then the military will begin involuntary separations.

Friday’s deadline comes during Pride Month and as the Trump administration targets diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying it’s aiming to scrub the military of “wokeness” and reestablishing a “warrior ethos.”

Warrior ethos my tuchas! These troops were doing satisfactory service, and are being deep-sixed because of their chosen gender presentation. I still see no big problem with transgender troops, and I have heard no reports of trans womn attacking biological women in the service. This order should be rescinded, but it won’t be.  More:

“They’re tired of the rollercoaster. They just want to go,” said one transgender service member, who plans to retire. ”It’s exhausting.”

For others, it’s a call to arms.

“I’m choosing to stay in and fight,” a noncommissioned officer in the Air Force said. “My service is based on merit, and I’ve earned that merit.”

The troops, who mainly spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals, said being forced to decide is frustrating. They say it’s a personal choice based on individual and family situations, including whether they would get an infusion of cash or possibly wind up owing the government money.

“I’m very disappointed,” a transgender Marine said. “I’ve outperformed, I have a spotless record. I’m at the top of every fitness report. I’m being pushed out while I know others are barely scraping by.”

That Marine makes my point.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is, I’m told, really waiting for a miracle.

Andrzej: Are you waiting for somebody to open the door for you?
Hili: No, I’m waiting for a miracle.
In Polish:
Ja: Czekasz aż ktoś ci otworzy drzwi?
Hili: NIe, czekam na cud.
And a picture of the affectionate Szaron:

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

From CinEmma:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Meow:

Masih is still quiet, so we have JKR explaining why a lot of people are misinterpreting the UK Supreme Court’s decision on sex (i.e., you can’t legally change your natal sex by getting a certificate):

It’s good to see Obama again, and a bit of rationality (note, though, that his administration deported several million undocumented immigrants):

From Luana. The authors resisted publishing this study, and you can see why. But, thank Ceiling Cat, it’s now published:

Greta is sailing motoring to Gaza with enough supplies for a dozen people. Isn’t it hypocritical of her to use gasoline instead of the wind? (For more on this train wreck of a mission, see here; h/t Norman).

From Simon, a post by a comedian:

Starting to really regret my DOGE tattoo

— Brent Terhune (@brentterhune.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T23:05:22.862Z

From Malcolm, some kitty amusement:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was ten years old, and had he lived, he'd be 93 today.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T09:40:35.903Z

One post from Dr. Cobb. Now what is Satan knitting?

Good one 😆

— Nina Willburger (@drnwillburger.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T17:47:12.094Z

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

June 6, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, June 6, 2025, and it’s both Atheist Pride Day and Hug an Atheist Day. Below is a picture of the actual vinyl record album I was listening to in 1967 when I had my instant conversion to atheism. You can read about it here (archived):

It’s also National Applesauce Cake Day, National Fish & Chip Day,  the anniversary of D-Day in 1944, National Churro Day, National Doughnut Day, and National Higher Education Day,  And tomorrow is Graduation Day at the University of Chicago.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has instituted a new ban on travelers coming from 12 countries. 

President Trump on Wednesday signed a travel ban on 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, reviving an effort from his first term to prevent large numbers of immigrants and visitors from entering the United States.

The ban, which goes into effect on Monday, bars travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Mr. Trump also imposed restrictions, but stopped short of a full ban, on travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. People from those countries cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas.

The decision resurrects a policy from Mr. Trump’s first term, which caused chaos at airports and led to legal challenges. It is the latest move in Mr. Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration, after he blocked asylum at the southern border, barred international students from Harvard University and ordered immigration raids across the country.

The decision came days after an Egyptian man in Colorado was arrested and charged with carrying out an attack on a group honoring hostages being held in Gaza. Trump administration officials had warned that there would be a crackdown after that attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Mr. Trump said in a video message announcing the travel ban. “We don’t want them.”

Egypt was not on the list of banned countries.

The current version of the travel ban is more likely to withstand legal scrutiny than Mr. Trump’s initial efforts during his first term, legal experts said.

Here’s the NYT map of countries from which travel is banned (red) or from which visas are restricted (orange).

I can see the reasons for restrictions on some but not all of these countries. But damn, I want to go to Cuba, and Americans can’t go there unless they’re part of a formal exchange, have special permission, or are doing group travel.

*By a vote of 14-1, with the one dissenter being the U.S., the U.N. Security Council vetoed a resolution for a cease-fire in Israel, along with the release of the hostages and other things. The U.S. vote blocked the resolution.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and the resumption of full-scale humanitarian aid deliveries to the enclave.

Ten nonpermanent members of the 15-seat Council had put forth the resolution for a vote. It was the first time since President Trump took office that the Council had considered a cease-fire resolution on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The United States was the only member to vote against the measure; the other 14 members of the Council, including Russia, voted in favor, once again highlighting Washington’s isolation on the global stage over its policy of unconditional support of Israel.

“We believe this text reflects the consensus shared by all Council members that the war in Gaza has to come to an immediate halt, all hostages must be immediately and unconditionally released, and civilians in Gaza must not starve and must have full and unimpeded access to aid,” said a joint statement from the 10 nonpermanent members, which was read by Slovenia’s ambassador to the U.N., Samuel Zbogar, at the Council meeting ahead of the vote.

A Security Council resolution must receive nine votes in favor and no vetoes from the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — to be adopted. Since the war broke out after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, the United States has vetoed four Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire and has abstained from one, allowing it to pass, last June.

Dorothy Camille Shea, the interim U.S. representative at the U.N., repeated Washington’s message that Israel had the right to defend itself, and she blamed Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians, saying the war would end if the group surrendered.

“Any product that undermines our close ally Israel’s security is a nonstarter,” Ms. Shea said, explaining the “no” vote.

The NYT then repeats a story that, as I’ve explained before, has been debunked:

Gazan officials said that on June 1, Israeli soldiers shot and killed more than 20 Palestinians standing in line to receive aid. The Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots toward “suspects” who approached them.

The countries voting for a ceasefire include the four other permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, the UK and the Russian Federation), and the nonpermanent members (Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Somalia).  Shame on these countries: do they have a solution to the problem of Hamas?  And aid is being distributed in Israel, with the “starvation” problem reflecting not an Israeli-imposed dearth of food (there was enough food in Gaza to last 6-8 months before the temporary blockade) but the wholesale theft of food by Hamas, which either sequesters it or sells it on the open market.  Further, there is no way that Hamas would even obey this UN resolution, for if it releases all the hostages, it loses its only bargaining chip.

* The James Webb telescope has discovered, the most distant galaxy ever found and therefore one of the earliest galaxies formed.  Remember that the Big Bang occurred about 13.8 billion years ago, and this galaxy was formed about 0.003 billion years after that (it would have been nice had they done the calculation):

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) excels at a lot of things, but there are two things it does better than any other scientific instrument in human history: spotting early galaxies and breaking its own records!

Now, the $10 billion NASA space telescope has done both things again, detecting a galaxy that existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, a feat that the team behind this research has dubbed a “cosmic miracle.”

Currently, as the earliest and most distant galaxy ever detected, this “the mother of all early galaxies,” this new JWST discovery has been fittingly designated “MoM z14.”

“First and foremost, at the moment, this is the most distant object known to humanity. That title changes every so often, but I find it is always cause for pause and reflection,” team member and Yale University professor of Astronomy and Physics Pieter van Dokkum told Space.com. “MoM z14 existed when the universe was about 280 million years old – we’re getting quite close to the Big Bang.

“Just to put that in context, sharks have been around on Earth for a longer timespan!”

Since it began sending data back to Earth in the summer of 2022, the JWST has excelled in detecting galaxies at so-called “high redshifts.”

Redshift refers to the phenomenon of the wavelength of light from distant and thus early sources being stretched and shifted toward the “red end” of the electromagnetic spectrum as it traverses expanding space.

The earlier and thus further away an object is, the greater the redshift.

But we know even more: we know what elements are in those stars!

The presence of carbon and nitrogen in MoM z14 indicates that there are earlier galaxies to be discovered than this 13.52 billion-year-old example.

That is because the very earliest galaxies in the universe and their stars were filled with the simplest elements in the cosmos, hydrogen and helium.

Later galaxies would be populated by these heavier elements, which astronomers somewhat confusingly call “metal,” as their stars forged them and then dispersed them in supernova explosions.

“MoM z14 is not one of the very first objects that formed in the universe, as the stars in those galaxies are composed of hydrogen and helium only – we would not see carbon or nitrogen,” van Dokkum said. “It could be part of the first wave of formation of ‘normal’ galaxies, that is, the first galaxies that have elements like nitrogen and carbon – but we’ve thought that before!”

Here’s the galaxy with the caption, “1 × 1′′ NIRCam RGB images (F090W, F115W, F277W) spanning 0.90-2.77 μm show a red compact source that is visible at ≳2 μm, but absent in short-wavelength bands.”

licensed under the CC Attribution 4.0 International license.

That James Webb Space Telescope is fricking amazing! It always stuns me when I realize that we can find out these truths about the universe, and do so using only stuff made from what we can wrest from our own soil and atmosphere and then make into various instruments.

*The WSJ proclaims that the Houthis are not only remarkably successful is hitting ships going through the Red Sea, but have in fact brought the U.S. to a stalemate:

Officials are now dissecting how a scrappy adversary was able to test the world’s most capable surface fleet. The Houthis proved to be a surprisingly difficult foe, engaging the Navy in its fiercest battles since World War II despite fighting from primitive quarters and caves in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The Houthis benefited from the proliferation of cheap missile and drone technology from Iran. They fired antiship ballistic missiles, the first-ever combat use of the Cold War-era weapon, and they innovated how they deployed their weaponry. The latest technologies have transformed maritime warfare, much the way they have rewritten the script for land wars in Ukraine—forcing militaries to adapt in real time. The U.S. is developing fresh ways to intercept the newest drones and missiles but still relies largely on expensive defense systems.

. . .Some 30 vessels participated in combat operations in the Red Sea from late 2023 through this year, around 10% of the Navy’s total commissioned fleet. In that time, the U.S. rained down at least $1.5 billion worth of munitions on the Houthis, a U.S. official said.

The Navy was able to destroy much of the Houthis’ arsenal—but it has yet to achieve the strategic goal of restoring shipping through the Red Sea, and the Houthis continue to regularly fire missiles at Israel.

Military and congressional leaders who have begun scrutinizing the campaign for lessons worry about the strain of such grueling deployments on overall force readiness. The Pentagon is also investigating the lost planes and a separate at-sea collision—incidents that all involved the Truman strike group—with results expected in the coming months.

Central Command—also known as Centcom, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East—declined to comment on ongoing investigations or on the campaign’s performance and impact.

The effects of the deployment will be felt for years. It drew resources from efforts in Asia to deter China and pushed back maintenance schedules for carriers. That could create critical gaps in the second half of the decade, when the giant warships will have no choice but to dock for service.

Despite the wear and tear, Navy officials said the fight with the Houthis offered invaluable combat experience, and the Red Sea conflict is viewed inside the Pentagon as a warm-up for a potential “high-end” conflict with China.

I presume the last sentence refers to U.S. involvement in a potential invasion of Taiwan by China, something that may be happening sooner than 2027, when China hinted it would invade the island nation.

*The Washington Post reports on a paper from the Royal Society’s Biology Letters recounting how in several places around Sydney, Australia, cockatoos will line up along a fence to take their turn drinking from a water fountain, turning on the fountain with their powerful feet.

Each night around sundown, cockatoos in western Sydney gather for a ritual: After waiting in line on a fence, they take turns at a drinking fountain, gripping the handle with their feet and leaning forward to release a bubbling stream of cool water.

The complex maneuver requires strength, fine motor skills and a healthy dose of innovation. It has been documented for the first time in what researchers say constitutes a new “urban-adapted local tradition” — providing an insight into how the birds change their behavior in response to their environment.

That’s according to a study published Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters focused on sulphur-crested cockatoos — large sociable parrots with white bodies and yellow crests that are commonly found in Sydney.

The “drinking-fountain innovation” is the second time researchers have found the birds adapting their behavior to suit their environment, following a “bin-opening innovation” recorded by the same team in the city’s south, where birds were found to open the lids of household trash cans to access food waste.

Lucy Aplin, an associate professor at the Australian National University and University of Zurich, said the study was carried out as part of the Clever Cockie project, aimed at understanding how city living can drive behavioral change and social sharing. She said cockatoos are an excellent case study, as they are “opportunistic and successful” in human environments, while Australia’s relatively short history of urbanization means that evolutionary changes can be effectively ruled out.

Of course you’ll be wanting to see this behavior, and here it is (the paper will give you more information; the birds are successful only about half the time):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is supervising another job: the fixing of the well by Mariusz, who, married to Paulina, lives upstairs:

A: What are you doing here?
Hili: I’m giving advice to Mariusz about the well repairs.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty tu robisz?
Hili: Doradzam Mariuszowi przy naprawie studni.

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

From CinEmma, a prescription for a d*g:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Things With Faces, a driftwood bunny:

Masih is back again with a new post, and another sad one—another Iranian woman killed by the regime.

From Luana, a crazy courtroom moment (there are others in the thread). This moron, who appeared on video in the courtroom while driving his car (and with a suspended license), is promptly sent to jail:

From Malcolm, birdwatching cats:

Two from my feed. This first one required what the kids call “mad skills”:

. . and two from a thread of the world’s most dangerous jobs:

One that I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish girl, born on this day in 1927, was sent to Auschwitz at age fifteen. She died there.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-06T09:05:00.275Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, about Crick’s notorious parties; clicking will take you to a short clip in which historian Lisa Jardine (daughter of Jacob Bronowski), implies that Crick’s parties were wild, though I”m sure they weren’t the same as Diddy’s “freak offs”:

There isn't much in my CRICK biography (out in November) about the Cricks' notorious Cambridge parties, but this 2011 clip of historian Lisa Jardine will give you some idea of what went on. (And yes, there is a lot of striking new material about Rosalind Franklin and her friendship with the Cricks).

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T08:58:13.633Z

And Colossal Biosciences is now going after its critics (the video at issue is about 90 minutes long!):

A representative of an anonymous client is trying to get me to remove this video conversation with @devoevomed.bsky.social about Colossal Biosciences "dire" wolvesSounds like Dr Lynch's critique of their poor science communication struck a nerve. Check it out herewww.youtube.com/live/C9_gJ6_…

— Flint Dibble (@flintdibble.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T12:57:20.391Z