Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is facing an unpalatable truth

Hili: This is not the right world.
A: We do not have any other.

by Matthew Cobb

PCC(E) is travelling, so posting will be light.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili and Jerry have been chatting:

Jerry: I’m going to Katowice.
Hili: What for?
Jerry: I’m going to give two lectures there.
Hili: Tell them that I approved the texts.

Jerry: Jadę teraz do Katowic.
Hili: Po co?
Jerry: Będę tam miał dwa wykłady.
Hili: Powiedz im, że je zatwierdziłam.

Two bits of BlueSky news. Firstly, the precise genetic mechanism of the peppered moth story (and many other Lepidopteran coloration examples) has been identified. It is a short piece of RNA called a microRNA. The article just appeared in Science.

Our miRNA story is now in @science.org ! We found a microRNA, not a protein, that finally solved a long-standing evolutionary mystery of wing coloration in butterflies and moths. (1/n)www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

— Shen Tian 田申 (@tianshenbio.bsky.social) 2024-12-05T21:35:54.747Z

Secondly, if I may be immodest for a moment:

Giving what will probably be my last ever lectures at @officialuom.bsky.social today (I “retired” in September but have given 20 lectures this semester…) One on the history of genetic information, the other, at *5pm on a Friday* on mammals. Both to first year students. Then, that will be that.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2024-12-06T08:59:34.106Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Jornu di gobba” in Sicilian), December 4, 2024, and National Cookie Day. Here are my favorite commercial cookies (of course they’re called “biscuits” in the UK):

It’s also International Cabernet Franc Day, Wildlife Conservation Day, National Sock Day, Wear Brown Shoes Day, and International Cheetah Day. Here’s a wild cheetah I photographed in South Africa this year:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*This seems to have some on so suddenly that I didn’t become aware of it until last night (Polish time).  South Korea appears to be in substantial political and social turmoil because its president, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law in the country—for a time. When he declared the speech, nearly 300 South Korean troops stormed the Parliament.  After the country’s Parliament voted against the move, he rescinded martial law, but the damage had been done. (Article archived here.)

Yoon Suk Yeol won South Korea’s highest office in 2022 by a threadbare margin, the closest since his country abandoned military rule in the 1980s and began holding free presidential elections.

Just over two years later, Mr. Yoon’s brief declaration of martial law on Tuesday shocked South Koreans who had hoped that tumultuous era of military intervention was behind them. Thousands of protesters gathered in Seoul to call for his arrest. Their country, regarded as a model of cultural soft power and an Asian democratic stalwart, had suddenly taken a sharp turn in another direction.

But the events that led to Mr. Yoon’s stunning declaration on Tuesday — and his decision six hours later to lift the decree after Parliament voted to block it — were set in motion well before his razor-thin victory. They were a dramatic illustration of South Korea’s bitterly polarized politics and the deep societal discontent beneath the surface of its rising global might.

. . . . .Mr. Yoon, a conservative leader, has never been popular in South Korea. He won election by a margin of only 0.8 percentage points. The vote, analysts said, was more a referendum on his liberal predecessor’s failures than an endorsement of Mr. Yoon.

. . .From the start, however, Mr. Yoon faced two obstacles.

The opposition Democratic Party held on to its majority in the National Assembly and then expanded it in parliamentary elections in April, making him the first South Korean leader in decades to never have a majority in Parliament. And then there were his own dismal approval ratings.

Mr. Yoon’s toxic relationship with opposition lawmakers — and their vehement efforts to oppose him at every turn — paralyzed his pro-business agenda for two years, hindering his efforts to cut corporate taxes, overhaul the national pension system and address housing prices.

The article also describes social problems in South Korea, including skyrocketing real-estate prices and a lack of jobs that has made young people discontented, less likely to marry and have children.

. . . . by Tuesday night, Mr. Yoon had turned startlingly defiant. He declared that “the National Assembly, which should have been the foundation of free democracy, has become a monster that destroys it.”

Not long after, as protesters rushed to the gates of the National Assembly, lawmakers voted to lift the president’s measure. Mr. Lee, the opposition leader, who survived a stabbing attack in January and later staged a hunger strike against the Yoon government, said Mr. Yoon had “betrayed the people.”

Hours later, Mr. Yoon said he would comply with the legislature’s order. But even then, with his political future now thrown into profound uncertainty, he added a plea.

“I call on the National Assembly,” he said, “to immediately stop the outrageous behavior that is paralyzing the functioning of the country with impeachments, legislative manipulation and budget manipulation.”

Yoon has apparently even accused his opponents of being in league with North Korea, and said this: “The martial law is aimed at eradicating pro-North Korean forces and to protect the constitutional order of freedom,” he said.”  Well, the turmoil in government and the prospect of military rule has abated for the moment, but the opposition is calling for Yoon’s resignation, and threatening to impeach him if he doesn’t step down. North Korea, of course, is watching this with delight, and probably trying to figure out how to use it to the DPRK’s advantage.

*Another one of Trump’s cabinet picks, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for Secretary of Defense, had of course gotten in trouble for accusations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking, and lack of relevant experience. Now Trump is pondering replacing him.  Guess who might be the candidate? (Article archived here.)

President-elect Donald Trump is considering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a possible replacement for Pete Hegseth, his pick to run the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the discussions, amid Republican senators’ concerns over mounting allegations about the former Fox News host’s personal life.

Picking DeSantis, a 2024 GOP primary rival for the presidency, would amount to a stunning turn for Trump. But he would also find in the governor a well-known conservative with a service record who shares Trump’s—and Hegseth’s—view on culling what they see as “woke” policies in the military.

Trump allies increasingly think Hegseth may not survive further scrutiny, according to people close to the president-elect’s team, which considers the next 48 hours to be crucial to his fate.

DeSantis, who served as a Navy lawyer in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, was on an earlier list of potential defense secretary candidates that transition officials presented to the president. Trump ultimately went with Hegseth. But as Hegseth’s nomination has faltered, that list has been revived and DeSantis is again among the choices Trump is considering, the people said.

The discussions are in their early stages, one of the people said, adding that Trump has floated DeSantis’s name in casual conversations with guests at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida club.

DeSantis is tasked with replacing Florida senator Marco Rubio, who is Trump’s choice for Secretary of State. And guess who is plumping for Rubio’s job should he be successfully confirmed?: do

Already, DeSantis has been preparing to name an interim replacement for Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump has nominated as his secretary of state. Allies of Trump have been pushing for that person to be Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in law, who in March was elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

My guess: DeSantis, who does have service experience, won’t get the job given his paucity of leadership experience in the Navy. But what do I know? The only certainty is that Trump is going to have one wonky Cabinet.

*I have taken to reading Bret Stephens’s op-ed columns in the NYT as he usually has a sensible take on things. His latest, which intrigued me because of the Chicago connection, is called “Can Rahm Emanuel flip the script again?” (You may remember that Emanuel was Obama’s chief of staff, a Representative from Illinois, mayor of Chicago (not a popular one), and now is Ambassador to Japan. Stephen’s thesis is that Rahm, who is politically savvy, could turn around the abysmal performance and prospects of the Democratic Party (column archived here).

There’s a buzz around Rahm Emanuel — the former Bill Clinton adviser, former Illinois congressman, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, former mayor of Chicago — possibly becoming the next head of the Democratic National Committee. The progressive left despises his pragmatism and liberal centrism. He has a reputation for abrasiveness. And his current job, as ambassador to Japan, has traditionally served as a posting for high-level political has-beens like Walter Mondale and Howard Baker.

But he also has a gift for constructing winning coalitions with difficult, unexpected partners.

. . . . Emanuel’s tenure as ambassador was distinguished by his role in engineering two historic rapprochements — last year between Japan and South Korea and this year between Japan and the Philippines — that, along with the AUKUS defense pact with Britain and Australia, form part of a broad diplomatic effort by the Biden administration to contain China.

. . . . So how do Democrats reclaim their old advantages?

“From ’68 to ’88, a 20-year run, you had ‘law and order,’ ‘welfare queens,’ Willie Horton — that was the Republican message,” Emanuel recalls. “Bill Clinton comes around and takes the equation of crime, immigration, drugs, welfare, the whole basket of cultural issues, and gets them off the table.” All of these required Clinton to pick at least as many fights with his party’s left as he picked against Republicans, and even now there are parts of the Democratic Party that are still sore about it.

“As I always say to the left, what part of the peace and prosperity were you most upset with?” he asks. “Which part did you hate? Was it the income growth, the employment growth, the drop in welfare rolls, the drop in crime, the fact that America was respected around the world, peace in the Middle East? Which part did you hate most?”

Emanuel doesn’t think it’s impossible for Democrats to repeat Clinton’s feat, though whether it will take one bad election or more remains to be seen. As in his views about the geopolitics of Asia, where Chinese blundering and bullying should play to America’s advantage, so too in domestic politics. Trump “is going to turn the Oval Office into eBay,” he predicts. It will be the Democrats’ challenge to illuminate the fact. The trick in both cases is not to undermine your own side as you try to defeat the other.

“I think Democrats prefer losing and being morally right to winning,” he says. “Me, I’m not into moral victory speeches. I’m into winning.”

Given his abrasiveness and straight talking that made him an unpopular mayor of Chicago, this strategy may not play well with progressives on the Left, who, in the end, did undermine their own side.

*The Editorial Board of the Washington Post has come out strongly against Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. The op-ed is “Hunter Biden pardon undermines Democrats’ defense of justice system” (archived here).

President-elect Donald Trump is selecting radical MAGA loyalists for top national security positions, signaling his intention to upend the professionalism and independence of institutions that wield some of the federal government’s most awesome powers. Political opponents, journalists and others could be victims. And President Joe Biden just gave him cover.

To be clear: Mr. Biden had an unquestionable legal right to pardon his son Hunter. But in so doing on Sunday, he maligned the Justice Department and invited Mr. Trump to draw equivalence between the Hunter Biden pardon and any future moves Mr. Trump might take against the impartial administration of justice. He risks deepening many Americans’ suspicion that the justice system is two-tiered, justifying Mr. Trump’s drive to reshape it — or, because turnabout is fair play, to use it to benefit his own side.

Mr. Biden, of course, argues that pardoning his son strikes a blow for fairness in law enforcement. His statement on the pardon — in which he uses the words, “I believe in the justice system, but …” — claims that “no reasonable person” could “reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.” Yet such considerations were apparently not so compelling when he pledged previously not to pardon Hunter. And his son clearly broke the law. A federal jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty of three firearm-related felonies in Delaware. Hunter also pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges that carry a penalty of up to 17 years in prison. The gun charges, essentially that the younger Mr. Biden lied on a purchase application form when he denied using drugs, are particularly hard to ignore. Such laws, however rarely enforced, are on the books to help keep firearms out of the hands of those who might pose a danger to themselves or others.

. . . Any Democrat who refuses this week to condemn Mr. Biden’s pardon will have less credibility to criticize Mr. Trump, his meddling at the Justice Department and his choices for key positions in that agency. No one should be surprised if Mr. Trump invokes the Hunter Biden pardon to justify clemency for many more of his allies, potentially including Jan. 6 insurrectionists. With this one intemperate, selfish act, the president has undermined, in hindsight, the lofty rationales he offered for seeking the presidency four years ago and indelibly marred the final chapter of his political career.

I can hear it now when Trump pardons the insurrectionists, “If crooked Joe Biden can pardon his own son, I have every right to pardon those who were simply standing up for democracy.” The last sentence is correct: Biden will go down in history as at best a mediocre President, and at worst a self-serving one.

*The journal Science reports a study by Kevin Hatala, Louise Leakey and their colleagues, also published in the journal, that two species of hominims coexisted at the same time and place (what is now Kenya, and 1.5 million years ago).  Here’s the original paper (click to read):

. . . and the editor’s summary:

It is now well accepted that hominin evolution is a story of many lineages existing contemporaneously. Evidence for this pattern has mostly come from fossils being dated to similar time periods. Hatala et al. describe hominid footprints from 1.5 million years ago in the Turkana Basin in Kenya that were made by two different species within hours or days of each other (see the Perspective by Harcourt-Smith). Analyses showed that the footprints were made by individuals with different gaits and stances, and the authors hypothesize these to be Homo erectus and Paranthropus boilei. Although fossils of both species occur in the area, these footprints show that they coexisted and likely interacted. —Sacha Vignieri

And from the Science news piece, which gives a photo:

One day 1.5 million years ago, two or three individuals of our genus Homo walked along a muddy lakeshore. Hours before or after they passed, another member of the human family, likely the smaller brained, big-jawed Paranthropus, hurried along the same shoreline. These early hominins would have seen giant cranes, ancient horses and antelopes—and, possibly, each other, according to a new study of their intermingled footprints published today in Science.

Fossils had hinted that different types of early hominins were contemporaries in Africa at about this time, but the tracks provide the strongest evidence yet that these two species, each with their own distinct upright stride, were in the same place on the same day.

“It’s very exciting—we are getting two very clear, distinctive gait patterns from different species of hominins in a matter of hours or even minutes,” says Charles Musiba, a paleoanthropologist at Duke University who was not part of the study. “They may actually have come across each other.”

These ancient footprints trample the old view, proposed in the 1950s by the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, that no two hominin species overlapped in time and space, says William Harcourt-Smith, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History who wrote a commentary accompanying the new paper.

To occur in the very same layer, the two prints were likely made within days of each other, as fossilizing footprints require special conditions: usually humans making impressions in mud that are very quickly filled up with volcanic ash or other quick-depositing sediments.

Fossils of both species, one in our genus Homo and the other one of a “robust” hominim that went extinct without leaving descendants, are also found in the same layer of sediments, supporting the authors’ claims.  Hatala et al. discuss the different gaits of these individuals; individuals in Homo, for example, walked more flat-footed than we do now. Here’s a photo of one Homo footprint taken by the paper’s first author:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have a difference of opinion about what weather is worse:

Hili: It’s cold and wet outside.

A: I prefer frost and snow.

Hili: I totally don’t understand it.

In Polish:

Hili: Na dworze jest zimno i mokro.
Ja: Wolę mróz i śnieg.
Hili: Tego zupełnie nie rozumiem.

And a photo of Szaron:

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

From Jesus of the Day. I’m usually bad at these things, but surprisingly, I saw what it was almost immediately. Don’t let on in the comments lest you spoil it for others:

From Cat Memes:

. . . and I couldn’t resist this from Meow (it’s got eyebrows, too):

From Masih. I can’t embed this tweet with a horrific video, but if you click below you can see it on X. As Masih says, “This video, sent to me by a woman from Tehran, shows her scars from being lashed for not wearing hijab.”  Note: if you are repelled by the effects of severe lashing by isogynists, do not click!

This is what happens to you in Iran if you don’t cover your hair.

Found while perusing X:

From the “you couldn’t make this stuff up” file:

A “misinformation expert” at Stanford, @jeffhancock, billed the state of Minnesota $600/hour to prepare an expert declaration on the dangers of AI-generated content. He swore under penalty of perjury that everything stated in the… pic.twitter.com/UIWfMfRMm1

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) December 3, 2024

From Free Black Thought via Luana: our conference at USC next month!

Register to attend the Censorship in the Sciences conference at USC and hear @mdcbowen and @omni_american explain why they started FBT.

As a bonus, you’ll hear keynotes from @jon_rauch, @JMchangama, @wil_da_beast630, and @glukianoff, as well as talks by @Musa_alGharbi,… pic.twitter.com/oEnsMtNY6K

— Free Black Thought (@FreeBlckThought) December 3, 2024

Another book I don’t have to read. . .

It's hard to describe just how dull the Merkel memoirs are.

— Stanley Pignal (@spignal.bsky.social) 2024-12-04T06:43:17.052Z

From my Twitter (X) home feed, which so far is much more interesting than my Bluesky home feed (I don’t follow anyone on either platform):

That’s the most human looking face I’ve ever seen on a monkey. pic.twitter.com/QCi69qL20M

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) December 3, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

He lived at most four days after this photo was taken. https://t.co/wkZHjJ6iz5

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 4, 2024

Two posts by Dr. Cobb, First, a Korean opposition member desperate to overturn the martial law described above. Matthew says, “N.b.,  the coup is over, the President is a fool, but this guy is smart!

Lee Jae-myung, Leader of South Korea's Democratic Party, live-streamed himself scaling the walls of the National Assembly to bypass military barricades so that he could vote to overturn the President's martial law.

— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T16:55:41.973Z

It is a truth universally acknowledged that this tweet is unfair to the American novel:

Goal of the protagonist in:French novel: "to fall in love"British novel: "to get married"Russian novel: "to become a great man"American novel: "to kill that fuckin' whale, man. I want that GOD DAMN whale to die. FUCK, I hate whales so much!!"

— Existential Comics (@existentialcomics.com) 2024-12-03T18:49:34.818Z

Welcome to The Cruelest Day : Tuesday, December 3, 2024 and National Apple Pie Day, supposedly the culinary distillation of America (“as American as apple pie”).  But many countries have their own version of the pie, the best being the French tarte Tatin, best served with crème fraîche (not in the version below):

It’s also National Green Bean Casserole Day, National Peppermint Latte Day, (part of the ongoing drive to convert all adult beverages and snacks, viz., seltzer and granola bars, into confections), Let’s Hug Day, Giving Tuesday, and World Trick Shot Day. 

Here are some trick shots in pool:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT explains why President Biden, who swore he’d never pardon his son Hunter over convictions on federal gun-possession and tax charges, changed his mind, (The article is archived here.)

Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family, but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push. A pardon was one thing he could do for a troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.

When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision.

“Time to end all of this,” Mr. Biden said, according to a person briefed on the call.

Apparently Hunter had been angling for a pardon for a long time, and his father felt that impending jail time would produce a drug relapse in his son, though he’d have trouble getting drugs in a federal prison. The upshot was that the pardon was written and drafted by Joe Biden after family consultation:

The endgame was, for the most part, a family matter. The final discussions about pardons excluded senior White House staff, including only the Bidens and defense lawyers. After the decision was made, aides were told to execute their orders, according to a person familiar with the situation.

I detect the influence of Jill Biden here, who apparently also pressured Joe to stay in office beyond the time he should have resigned.  The article supports this:

Behind closed doors, Mr. Biden was said to be influenced by members of his family for months as his thinking on the matter changed, several people around him said. The first lady had been at Hunter Biden’s side as he stood trial in a Delaware court over the summer. She was supportive of the decision to pardon the man she had raised since childhood and whose addiction had challenged and then damaged their family.

“Of course I support the pardon of my son,” she told reporters on Monday as she unveiled holiday decorations at the White House.

After the pardon, Biden disguised his anguish over Hunter’s going to jail by using others to couch Hunter’s convictions as politically motivated:

The statement that followed from Mr. Biden on Sunday offered a window into the mind-set of an aggrieved president who, in the end, could not separate his duty as a father from his half century of principled promises as a politician.

. . .The president’s decision also left current White House officials, some of whom had publicly said Mr. Biden would not issue a pardon for Hunter Biden, scrambling to explain the reversal.

“The president took an action because of how politically infected these cases were and what the political opponents, what his political opponents, were trying to do,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Angola, where Mr. Biden is making a diplomatic trip this week.

In the end, Biden seems to have simply cracked when he thought of his beloved son going to jail, and his paternal instincts took over. I believe Joe could have commuted Hunter’s sentence, though I’m not sure, which would give him some jail time, but only a limited amount, and would still look bad. But not as bad as the full pardon. In the end, Biden lied to the American public, giving us all a pretty correct notion that some people are above justice—if they’re relatives of those in power. He pretended that the convictions were politically motivated, but they weren’t, and the no-jail plea deal fell apart not because of Republican pressure, but because of a judge’s decision.

I deeply sympathize with Biden’s agony over his son’s convictions and impending jail time, but he gave up a principle for nepotism, and history will not judge his kindly. Nor will it judge him as a particularly good President.

*The WSJ news column describes how Biden’s legacy will be tarnished. (Article archived here):

Joe Biden made the central purpose of his presidency clear in his Inauguration Day address: “We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile,” he said at the U.S. Capitol, where a violent mob had tried that month to overturn his 2020 election victory. Biden’s aim would be to unify the nation and shore up its democratic institutions.

That is one reason why the president’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, on Sunday may further damage his already tarnished legacy: The reprieve he ordered threatens to undercut one of the main propositions he offered for his election.

Biden’s political brand as a presidential candidate—his value proposition as a leader—was largely a promise to restore democratic norms and to fight the cynicism that had helped Donald Trump build his MAGA movement on claims that self-dealing leaders had corrupted the government. Biden had repeatedly promised to respect the independence of the justice system and avoid interfering with the prosecution of his son, including by issuing a pardon.

. . .His reversal “is not fully consonant with what he ran on,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. While Kessler said he empathized with Biden’s impulses to protect his son, the pardon comes as Trump will soon retake office on promises to overhaul a criminal justice system that he says unfairly targeted him and his followers. To lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Trump has nominated Kash Patel, a loyalist who has said he would fire its senior leaders and prosecute agents he thinks abused their authority.

Trump has pledged to pardon people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and seek “retribution’’ against his political opponents, which Democrats say threatens the independent disposition of justice. The Hunter Biden pardon “clouds the message” that Democrats will employ to protest those moves, Kessler said.

And that is perhaps the worst part of the whole Hunter Biden pardon. It gives Trump the excuse to pardon the insurrections of January 6 by saying, “Well, Biden did it, too. The rioters were only angry at what happened to me.” Trump would have done it even without Biden’s pardon, but, along with Biden’s refusal to resign well before the election, this casts a deep shadow over Biden’s presidency.

*An excellent article in The Critic describes the debate at the Oxford Union over the proposition, “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide”. As you may recall, the debate, heavily attended by pro-Palestinian activists (Jewish people were said to be too scared to show up), voted overwhelmingly to affirm the proposition.

The most infamous debate in history of the Oxford Union is, by common acclaim, the endorsement in 1933 of the proposition that “this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country”. “Abject, squalid, shameless …disquieting and disgusting” was Winston Churchill’s verdict, while The Times dismissed the affair as “children’s hour”. Now, after more than ninety years, that debate has competition in the annals of infamy.

On 28 November, the Union debated the proposition that “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide”. That the students in attendance supported this modern blood libel was not unexpected, though the lopsided result — 278 to 59 — was surprising. But that was not the main source of shame. It is what was said, by the speakers and more importantly by the members in the chamber, that will haunt us for far longer than the 1933 debate.

. . . The atmosphere both inside and outside the Union was febrile. The crowd chanting genocidal slogans was audible in the chamber where the debate was, if it is possible, even more unhinged. The first problem was the motion itself. The proposition levelled the most damning charge imaginable and dared those opposing it to defend the indefensible. The opposition was set up as genocide deniers, to the obvious delight of the raucous crowd.

The second problem was the choice of speakers. It seems clear that the Union wasn’t interested in a real debate. Only two of the eight invited speakers, both opposing the proposition, were interested in an evidence-based exchange on the specific terms of the debate. The rest were polemicists and provocateurs. Two speakers, one from each side, left the debate early: one after storming out, the other after being forcibly removed.

Only the distinguished barrister Natasha Hausdorff and journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti even attempted to debate, as that art has traditionally been practiced in the Union. Had all of the participants been so committed, the night would likely still have been a debacle — that is what the crowd around the antisemitic bear pit obviously wanted — but it might not have been the disgrace that it was.

And the worst bit:

. . . The most chilling message, however, came not from any of the speakers or from a heckler but from something the crowd as a whole didn’t say. During his remarks, Mosab Hassan Yousef, who spoke against the proposition, asked for a show of hands of those in the room who, if they had had advance knowledge of the 7 October attacks, would have warned Israel. Not even a quarter of the crowd raised their hands.

The silent expanse of unraised hands spoke louder than the final vote. The vote, after all, merely endorsed an abstract and laughably counterfactual verdict against Israel. The sparse show of hands went much further. It said that a large majority of students believed that, for their country’s alleged sins, Israeli citizens deserved to be raped, murdered, kidnapped, and tortured, pitilessly and indiscriminately.

. . . At that moment, the debate ceased to be an abstract proposition. A room full of future journalists, professors, public servants, judges, and MPs openly and unashamedly endorsed the inhuman logic of a pogrom.

We’re getting used to this kind of vicious antisemitism in the West, but we shouldn’t; we should be calling it out and fighting it as hard as we can. Although the Jews are the first victims, the tenets of Western culture and democracy are the next targets.

*In a similar vein, and according to Commentary, UCLA has engaged in blatant antisemitic hiring practices, which imply that they’re about to be hit by a huge lawsuit.

The latest and most illuminating example comes from UCLA, where a newly filed complaint alleges that the college Cultural Affairs Commission has in place a policy of anti-Jewish bias in its hiring process. Bella Brannon, editor of the Jewish student newspaper Ha’am, filed the petition with the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) Judicial Board earlier this week.

The crux of the allegation is that Alicia Verdugo, head of the Cultural Affairs Commission, told staffers not to hire Jewish applicants. Specifically, she told subordinates, “please do your research when you look at applicants” because “lots of zionists (sic) are applying.” However, the directive was not Israel-specific; applicants were being rejected after having identified themselves as Jews unrelated to anything regarding Israel or the war in Gaza. Finally, staffers were told that at an upcoming retreat a “no hire list”—that is, an anti-Jewish blacklist—would be shared.

According to Ha’am, “every student who indicated their Jewish identity in their applications for Cultural Affairs Commissioner (CAC) staff was rejected.” One rejected applicant, for example, answered a question on the application about an issue of importance by noting that “as a Jewish student at UCLA, it is imperative that I have the right to express my identity.” Another rejected applicant had mentioned Judaism when asked about attendance at the staff retreat, explaining that they are Sabbath observant.

A CAC hiring document obtained by Ha’am allegedly says: “We reserve the right to remove any staff member who dispels [they mean “espouses”] antiBlackness, colorism, racism, white supremacy, zionism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, ableism, and any/all other hateful/bigoted ideologies.”

. . . Everyone knows what these activists mean when they say “Zionist.” Shops with signs that say “Zionists not welcome” are actually displaying signs that say “Jews not welcome”—and no one, but no one, is foolish enough to believe otherwise, no matter what they say.

Remarkably, college students and administrators are starting to give up on even trying to gaslight the public. If someone says “don’t hire this person because they keep Shabbat and therefore are a Zionist,” they are not making a political argument; they are explicitly expressing an anti-Semitic hiring policy.

If by now you don’t hear “antisemitic” when you read “anti-Zionist,” then you haven’t been paying attention.

*Finally, I suppose it’s appropriate that the Oxford Dictionaries (publisher of my favorite lexicon, the OED), have declared “brain rot” to be the word of the year (but it’s actually two words!):

Many of us have felt it, and now it’s official: “Brain rot” is the Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year.

Oxford University Press said Monday that the evocative phrase “gained new prominence in 2024,” with its frequency of use increasing 230% from the year before.

Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is daring Andrzej to give her orders. She’s a cat, after all.

A: Hili, When we are eating , cats must not sit on the table.

Hili: Say it again.

Ja: Hili, przy naszym jedzeniu kotom nie wolno siedzieć na stole.

Hili: Powiedz to jeszcze raz.

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

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor:

From Masih; another Iranian woman arrested for showing her hair not only continues to show it, but displays her midriff as well:

Roshanak Molaei, who bravely resisted a street harasser’s sexual assault in a video that went viral, was sentenced to whipping. Her sentence has now been carried out, and she has been released from Qarchak Varamin prison.

This is what gender apartheid and a misogynistic regime… https://t.co/W8jGIL0uIV pic.twitter.com/8sbHkE9lkL

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 1, 2024

From Luana: Einat Wilf is an eloquent defender of Israel, but I don’t know what Trump can do that the IDF can’t!

OK. Let’s help the incoming President. What are your suggestions for “ALL HELL TO PAY” if all hostages – to the last one – are not released by Jan 20 2025? pic.twitter.com/O6c5iC8QQP

— Dr. Einat Wilf (@EinatWilf) December 2, 2024

Emma invents a new dish:

I’m at a lush all-in resort which usually caters for my vegetarian/GF arse. But tonight nothing fits the bill, so I’ve had to get creative.

I’ve invented a new dish. I think it might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

Layer of French fries.
Drizzling of aioli (the strongest…

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 27, 2024

From my feed: a border collie herds the wrong animals. What if the ducklings don’t want to go in the puddle? And where is their mother?

A border collie gently guiding ducklings into a puddle pic.twitter.com/CkiErMt42Z

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) December 1, 2024

From Malcolm; cats having a problem with water. They can almost get out without getting wet!

Cats having a problematic relationship with waterpic.twitter.com/mNil1OI7JG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 1, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch girl murdered with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T08:25:35.784Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a 350-year-old skull showing what smoking a clay pipe can do to your dentition:

Male skull showing wear pattern to teeth resulting from long-term pipe smoking, c.1660. As he clenched the pipe, the abrasive clay wore facets in the enamel of the teeth. Eventually these facets left holes in the bite. This skull was excavated from the Patuxent Point site, Calvert County, MD.

— Dr Lindsey Fitzharris (@drlindseyfitz.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T14:47:46.961Z

From Larry, the First Cat, with two following posts:

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me, a partridge in a pear tree.Ate it.

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T08:58:36.901Z

Larry its advent not Christmas.

— Bronwen (@bronwengrey.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T09:08:42.267Z

We had this discussion last year and being a cat Larry completely ignored everyone.

— Kim Marshall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 (@kimmarshall.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T12:21:57.418Z

Welcome to the first Monday in December, December 2, 2024 to be exact. And it’s National Fritters Day, celebrating an underappreciated comestible. Battered substances are found worldwide, including pakhora in India, but in the US the best example of the genre are corn fritters, preferably drizzled with a bit of sweet syrup. Here are some corn fritters in Sonoma, California, sans syrup:

It’s also National Mutt Day, Walt Disney Day (he was born on this day in 1901), Play Basketball Day, International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, and Safety Razor Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After saying he would never do so, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who was accused of charges of illegally buying a gun and of tax evastion (article archived here).

President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter on Sunday night after repeatedly insisting he would not do so, using the power of his office to wave aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion.

In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”

He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Mr. Biden said in the statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong.”

He added: “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

It was a remarkable turnaround for a man whose presidency and five-decade career was built in part on the idea that he would never interfere with the administration of justice. In 2020, he made the case that former President Donald J. Trump should be ousted from office to restore that kind of independence in America’s democracy, and he argued the same in 2024.

But in his statement, Mr. Biden sought to make the case for interfering after all, accusing his political enemies of going after his son in ways that anyone else would not have been. He said that he still believed in the justice system, but added, “I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.”

. . .After the president’s son was convicted on three federal felony counts for illegally buying a gun, Mr. Biden said he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son.

“I said I’d abide by the jury decision,” Mr. Biden told reporters during the Group of 7 summit in June. “I will do that.”

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly said that Mr. Biden would not issue a pardon for his son, often chiding reporters for asking the question.

In the summer of 2023, she was asked whether there was “any possibility” that the president would end up pardoning his son. She answered simply, “No.” When the reporter tried to ask the question again, she cut the question short and said: “I just said no. I just answered.”

Biden lied, as did his minions, and this will only help erode whatever place in American history he secured.  It also shows that nobody is against the law–unless you’re the son of the President.

Here is part of Biden’s statement (h/t Luana); you can read the full pardon here.

Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter: pic.twitter.com/lGi4Ur786u

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) December 2, 2024

*According to the Wall Street Journal, there’s bipartisan objections to Trump’s choice of the new FBI director (he’s going to dump the old one):

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace FBI Director Christopher A. Wray with Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist who has vowed to fire the agency’s leadership and dramatically reshape its mission, was met with bipartisan concern that his appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.

Republicans and Democrats alike argued that replacing Wray — who has held the job since 2017 — with Patel showcases Trump’s efforts to appoint close allies who espouse his views and have expressed support for his plans to take aim at the country’s justice system.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said that Trump “has the right” to make appointments and that he was not surprised the president-elect is picking “people that he believes are very loyal to himself.” But he also praised Wray, calling him “a very good man” and saying he’d had no “complaints” or “objections” about his stewardship of the agency. He noted that Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term.

. . . Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee once Republicans assume control of the Senate next month, criticized Wray in a post on X, saying he had “failed” at fundamental duties as FBI director. He added that Patel must “prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI.”

Trump’s selection of Patel comes as the president-elect has rolled out proposed nominations and appointments that appear aimed at putting his political allies in key positions where officials and agencies had contradicted or angered him in the past.

Trump’s announcement Saturday night does not amount to a formal nomination, and Patel can’t take over the FBI unless Trump fires Wray or the FBI director steps down before the end of his 10-year term.

Regardless of competence, Trump is filling the executive branch with toadies and loyalists, regardless of their competence. There’s no evidence that Wray was out to damage Trump, but it doesn’t matter. And the same goes for the National Institutes of Health (see next item).,

*Yup, the NIH, which supported me throughout my research career, and underwrote many important scientific advances, including the Human Genome Project, is about to be reshaped by Trump as well (article archived here):

The National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, has an enviable track record. Research supported by the agency has led to more than 100 Nobel Prizes and has supported more than 99 percent of the drugs approved by federal regulators from 2010 to 2019.

No surprise, then, that the agency has been called “the crown jewel of the federal government.” But come January, when President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans take charge, the N.I.H. may face a reckoning.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the new administration’s selection for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the N.I.H., routinely castigates federal scientists and is a staunch critic of conventional pharmaceuticals and vaccines, with a long record of spreading falsehoods about vaccine safety.

He has said that he would steer the agency into a yearslong “break” from infectious disease research, focusing instead on chronic diseases.

And Mr. Trump’s pick for N.I.H. director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford professor who gained notoriety during the pandemic for supporting the widely maligned idea that the coronavirus should be left to spread freely among healthy Americans,has called for a dramatic restructuring of the N.I.H., which he has said is led by small-minded bureaucrats.

While even the agency’s defenders acknowledge that the N.I.H. needs modernization, the radical reforms now proposed would be difficult, if not impossible, without years of legal wrangling and significant support from Congress, experts say.

. . . But many fear that the next administration will nonetheless weaken the N.I.H., divesting from critical research with long-lasting consequences for science, innovation and public health.

That is my fear, too. Bhattacharya was a proponent of letting covid run free in groups of people that it didn’t much endanger, creating “herd immunity,” a controversial strategy. While he has his defenders, I am dubious about both him but especially about vaccine denialist RFK Jr. (proposed HHS head, the organization that runs the NIH) to oversee scientific and medical research in the U.S.  Fortunately, these appointments, unlike that of the FBI director, can be reversed in a Democratic administration–if we get one in four years.

*This is not a joke. A town in Ontario was fined $10,000 for refusing to celebrate Pride Month (story archived here; h/t Jez). O Canada!

Emo is a township of about 1,300 people located in the far west of Ontario, along the border with Minnesota.

In a decision handed down last week, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that Emo, its mayor and two of its councillors had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by refusing to proclaim June as “Pride Month.”

The town was also cited for failing to fly “an LGBTQ2 rainbow flag,” despite the fact that they don’t have an official flag pole.

The dispute began in 2020 when the township was approached by the group Borderland Pride with a written request to proclaim June as Pride Month.

Attached to the letter was a draft proclamation including clauses such as “pride is necessary to show community support and belonging for LGBTQ2 individuals” and “the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression represents a positive contribution to society.”

Emo was also asked to fly an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag for a week of your choosing.”

Borderland Pride then asked Emo to “email us a copy of your proclamation or resolution once adopted and signed.”

Although symbolic proclamations are standard fare in larger municipal governments such as Toronto or Hamilton, this didn’t happen all that often in Emo.

Tribunal hearings would also reveal that Emo doesn’t really have a central flag pole, aside from a Canadian flag angled over the front door of the Emo Municipal Office.

The claim of discrimination ultimately hinged on a single line uttered by Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker. When the proclamation came up for consideration, McQuaker was heard to say in a recording of the meeting, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”

As Human Rights Tribunal vice-chair Karen Dawson wrote in her decision, “I find this remark was demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which Borderland Pride is a member and therefore constituted discrimination under the Code.”

And so the town was fined $10,000 (Canadian) and “McQuaker and Emo’s chief administrative officer were also ordered to complete an online course known as ‘Human Rights 101’ and “provide proof of completion … to Borderland Pride within 30 days.”  The Canadians take such compliance seriously: there were FIVE DAYS OF HEARINGS. But me this smacks of unwarranted compulsion; it’s fine to celebrate Pride Month, but in Canada you can apparently force communities to do so.

*Finally, remember that piece of “art” consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, a work that sold for $6.2 million to a cryptocurrency mogul? Well, according to the AP’s “oddities section,” the owner just ate the banana.

A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million last week ate the fruit in Hong Kong on Friday.

Chinese-born Justin Sun peeled off the duct tape and enjoyed the banana in a press conference held in The Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city’s priciest hotels, in the popular shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.

“It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good,” he said.

“Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, was a phenomenon when it debuted in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, as festivalgoers tried to make out whether the single yellow piece of fruit affixed to a white wall with silver duct tape was a joke or a cheeky commentary on questionable standards among art collectors. At one point, another artist took the banana off the wall and ate it.

The piece attracted so much attention that it had to be withdrawn from view. But three editions sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to the gallery handling sales at the time.

Last week, Sun, founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, made the winning bid at the Sotheby’s auction in New York. Or, more accurately, Sun purchased a certificate of authenticity that gives him the authority to duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it “Comedian.”

Oy! Anybody can duct-tape a banana to a wall, but you can’t call it “Comedian” and it’s worthless without the artist’s written imprimatur. The sheer insanity of creating and then selling such a work for a huge sum of money is matched by the arrant consumption of the work. That said, apparently Sun can re-create the work with a new banana (they go bad, you know) and new duct tape, so he has the work regardless. Apparently it’s the “certificate of authenticity” that is so valuable! (You can make a similar installation.)

Here’s a video of Sun eating the banana:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is outside on the window ledge:

Hili: Why are you looking at me so intently?

A: Because the reflection in the window overlaps with you in a funny way.

Hili: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?

Ja: Ponieważ odbicie w szybie zabawnie nakłada się na ciebie.

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

From David; it’s easy to see the survival advantage of larger ears, but this is too fast for such evolution, and it’s the same guy:

From Meow. I’m sure I’ve posted it before but I like it!

From Jesus of the Day. None of it is correct.

An extra from Cat Memes: “The most perfect cat tattoo”:

From Masih: an Iranian woman badly flogged simply for showing her hair. How much longer can Iran tolerate this kind of despicable punishment?

This is the brutal reality of life for women under the Islamic Republic in Iran. A woman in Tehran sent me this photo of her scarred back, flogged for the “crime” of showing her hair. Yet, she refuses to be silenced.

Holding a Woman, Life, Freedom slogan, she took this photo as… pic.twitter.com/7q8A6lZINx

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 1, 2024

As I reported the other day, the Oxford Student Union voted  by an overwhelming majority (278-59) in favor of this resolution “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” Various venues report the atmosphere as one of “chaos,” with considerable heckling and shouting down of anti-motion speakers. Here is one report on what happened, but we’ll have to wait for the videos, hopefully unedited so one can hear the disruptions.

Anyone who sees this headline will think that one of the most important universities in the world voted against Israel, and this is further proof that the whole world is against us…
But the truth is that I was there at this event, and I saw the whole truth with my own eyes and… pic.twitter.com/JcYb5IZapo

— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) November 30, 2024

From reader Malcolm; how to draw shadows. Don’t forget!

How to draw shadows correctly

[📹 Art Room]pic.twitter.com/ofx08HcoE6

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 30, 2024

Two from my feed. Look at this old commercial airplane!

Crazy Things from the Past ~ A Thread 🧵

1. Seats of an airplane, 1930 pic.twitter.com/D6Ibp4okCw

— Raghu (@IndiaTales7) December 1, 2024

No need for coworkers! And how does he do the popping-off bit?

Bro has 30 years of experience at 20 pic.twitter.com/8T51fI0SwJ

— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) December 1, 2024

One who survived (my repost):

One who survived!

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T07:43:01.551Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Neither of us know the answer to this first one:

Monday quiz: match the person with their cat 1) Iris Murdoch a) Cigarette2) Albert Camus b) Sans Lendemain3) Cardinal Richelieu c) Langbourne4) Michel Foucault d) General Butchkin5) Peggy Guggenheim e) Ludovic le Cruel6) Florence Nightingale f) Bismarck7) Jeremy Bentham g) Insanity🗃️

— Briony Neilson (@brionyneilson.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T05:21:58.916Z

Video of a dust storm on Mars!

Dust Storm Conditions over Mars ' North Polar CapFull size video: flic.kr/p/2qtp1Vt 🔭Full size 5k image: flic.kr/p/2qto3UyCredits:Processing: AndreaLuck CC BYRaw Data: ESA/DLR/FUBerlinESA Mars Express 2006-11-16All timestamps & additional info are available on Flickr in the links above.

— Andrea Luck (@andrealuck.bsky.social) 2024-11-11T00:12:15.030Z

It is DECEMBER, the month of Christmas and, most important, of the personal holiday of Coynezaa, which extends from Christmas through my birthday (December 30).  Celebrated worldwide, it honors the wonder of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus).

Here’s the December page from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, which I love.  Celtic Studies Resources says this:

The image below is a detail from the Très Riches Heures of Jean, duc de Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65) calendar image for December. It features a wild boar hunt. The building in the background is the Château de Vincennes, where the Duc de Berry was born in 1340, on November 30. The forest bordering the estate was famous for its game (and was reserved as a royal forest). The leaves are still on the trees, though they do suggest late autumn, on the cusp of winter.

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

Da Nooz:

*Trump has given his nomination for the director of the FBI, and it looks dire. One could say that Kash Patel would be the first Indian-American director of the agency, but that would be the only bit that would appeal to the Left. Instead, the guy wants to wreck the bureau! (Article is archived here.)

“shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies ‘to heel'”???? What is going on here. Is Patel going to catch criminals or not?  So far Trump’s nominations have all seemed problematic to me, some deeply so.  We will have to buckle up for four years of a bumpy ride.

*Benny Gantz, Israel’s former defense minister and member of the War Cabinet until given his pink slip this year, has criticized Netanyahu for caving to America’s pressure to agree to a cease-fire with Hezbollah. Now, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Gantz argues that that cease-fire is deeply problematic. (article archived here).

The lesson of Oct. 7, 2023, is that Israel must be uncompromising and proactive when it comes to protecting itself. Underpinning the current, temporary cease-fire arrangement with Hezbollah is the strong likelihood that Israel will be forced to return to another painful and costly round of fighting in Lebanon. A sustainable agreement must not only address the threat from Hezbollah and promise effective and reliable international involvement, but it must be clear about the source of regional instability: the Iranian regime.

. . . Lebanon has become Iran’s plaything. The fundamentalist regime in Tehran envisions using Hezbollah to destroy Israel and, ultimately, to dominate the region. This can never be allowed to happen.

. . . Hezbollah has been holding the state and people of Lebanon hostage for decades. To change the reality in Northern Israel and Lebanon, restore security and stability to Israel, enable Lebanon to wrestle free of Iranian domination, and continue building a prosperous future for the region, Israel must pursue a more long-term comprehensive plan. Southern Lebanon must be stabilized. That stability must prove itself over time. The following steps are essential:

He then proposes that Israel must be given the freedom to act against threats throughout the country, not just near the border, that the UN forces in Lebanon (the cowardly UNIFIL) must be strengthened, that the U.S. must get involved in peacekeeping, that the UN Security Council must impose a weapons embargo on all Lebanese organizations save the police and Lebanese army, and that peace talks between Israel and Lebanon must begin, monitored by the U.S. Good luck with this! But he finishes with the truth:

Unlike the Iranian regime, which seeks to subjugate Lebanon and exploit its people, Israel seeks to coexist with its neighbor to the north. Israel’s wars have always been waged against Hezbollah and other terror organizations—never against the people of Lebanon.

It’s only a matter of time before people start accusing Israel of “genocide” against Lebanon. Indeed, I think that’s already happened.

*And  here is something more that the NYT has found to blame on our election loss to Trump: our messed-up dating culture! It’s by New York playwright Sarah Bernstein. It’s all about “bro culture” and the “manosphere”. And that, says Ms. Bernstein, has given us the Trumpster.

Click to read, or find it archived here.

An excerpt, starting with two representatives of “bro culture”:

Joe Rogan. Elon Musk. Representatives of bro culture are on the ascent, bringing with them an army of disaffected young men. But where did they come from? Many argue that a generation of men are resentful because they have fallen behind women in work and school. I believe this shift would not have been so destabilizing were it not for the fact that our society still has one glass-slippered foot in the world of Cinderella.

Hundreds of years after the Brothers Grimm published their version of that classic rags-to-riches story, our cultural narratives still reflect the idea that a woman’s status can be elevated by marrying a more successful man — and a man’s diminished by pairing with a more successful woman. Now that women are pulling ahead, the fairy tale has become increasingly unattainable. This development is causing both men and women to backslide to old gender stereotypes and creating a hostile division between them that provides fuel for the exploding manosphere. With so much turmoil in our collective love lives, it’s little wonder Americans are experiencing surging loneliness, declining birthrates and — as evidenced by Donald Trump’s popularity with young men — a cascade of resentment that threatens to reshape our democracy.

. . . Recently, men’s and women’s fortunes have been trending in opposite directions. Women’s college enrollment first eclipsed men’s around 1980, but in the past two decades or so this gap has become a chasm. In 2022, men made up only 42 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds at four-year schools, and their graduation rates were lower than women’s as well. Since 2019, there have been more college-educated women in the work force than men.

. . . Our modern fairy tales — romantic comedies — reflect this reality, promoting the fantasy that every woman should have a fulfilling, lucrative career … and also a husband who is doing just a little better than she is. In 2017, a Medium article analyzed 32 rom-coms from the 1990s and 2000s and discovered that while all starred smart, ambitious women, only four featured a woman with a higher-status job than her male love interest.

This doesn’t seem logical to me How can an cultural change favoring women cause this kind of backsliding. Yes, the denigration of men, both black and white (viz. the pro-Harris speeches of Obama) might make them resentful? And if you look at the reasons people voted for Trump, it’s mainly the economy and immigration, not resentment of men or women. (Why would women resent their sex’s success, anyway?) The whole article is mishigass, and Ms. Bernstein should stick to playwriting. Or did the times want to blame Trump’s victory on yet another societal issue?

*President Zelensky of Ukraine has made a proposal to end the fighting in his country as Russia tries to grab as much of the country as it can. It involves bringing the part of his country still controlled by Ukraine under the aegis of NATO (i.e., NATO membership), with the Russian-controlled part subject to diplomatic negotiation:

An offer of NATO membership to territory under Kyiv’s control would end “the hot stage of the war” in Ukraine, but any proposal to join the military alliance should be extended to all parts of the country that fall under internationally recognized borders, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a broadcast interview.

Zelenskyy’s remarks on Friday signaled a possible way forward to the difficult path Ukraine faces to future NATO membership. At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership.

However, one obstacle to moving forward has been the view that Ukraine’s borders would need to be clearly demarcated before it could join so that there can be no mistaking where the alliance’s pact of mutual defense would come into effect.

“You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country,” Zelenskyy said in an excerpt of the interview with Sky News. “Why? Because thus you would recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one is Russia.”

Under the Ukrainian Constitution, Ukraine can’t recognize territory occupied by Russia as Russian.

. . . “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do, fast. And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he said.

An invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is one key point of Zelenskyy’s “victory plan,” which he presented to Western allies and the Ukrainian people in October. The plan is seen as a way for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in any negotiations with Moscow.

This is a bit confusing to me. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits recognizing Russian-controlled parts of the country as “not Ukraine”, but it is willing to talk about giving away some of those parts in a diplomatic settlement.  And will Trump agree to this when he takes office? Russia, after all, wants desperately to prevent any of Ukraine from joining NATO.

*The WaPo reports on the earliest known recording of country music (article archived here). This one was found on a was cylinder, was recorded by a black man, and was from 1891! (See recording below.)

John Levin had no idea what he’d stumbled upon at first. About 10 years ago, the collector paid about $100 for a box of wax cylinders at an auction in Pennsylvania coal country. Those cylinders — the oldest commercial medium of recorded music — sat in his house for years until Levin put one of the unlabeled, decaying brown tubes onto his custom player and heard an old country song. Like 133 years old.

Levin immediately knew what he had.

“A true unicorn,” he says now.

In the world of early recordings, unicorns are cylinders that are reputed to exist but that have never been found. A session with cornetist Buddy Bolden, say, or a monologue from Mark Twain. What Levin heard coming out of his player was another name on his undiscovered list, New Orleans performer Louis Vasnier. The unlabeled cylinder he’d bought contained Vasnier singing and braying his way through “Thompson’s Old Gray Mule,” a song later recorded by hillbilly masters Uncle Dave Macon and Riley Puckett.

This month, Archeophone, a specialty label devoted to restoring recordings dating back to the 19th century, released a 45-rpm record of the 1891 performance. Label co-founder Rich Martin’s research on Vasnier comes with a revelation: The oldest country recording in existence was recorded by a Black man.

Martin wants to revisit the complicated relationship country music has had with race. Credit and record deals have typically been hard to come by for Black musicians. It took until 2000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame to induct its first Black artist, Charley Pride, and only two others have joined him. (There are 155 members in total.)

“Black artists by and large, who were the ones who performed and recorded, get wiped out of the picture because they say, ‘Well, it’s not really country,’” Martin says. “So ours is partly a project of reclamation.”

And the recording (Vasnnier, as you might guess from his name, was from New Orleans):

Martin’s research found that Vasnier’s musical performances were advertised with banjo accompaniment, but “Thompson’s Old Gray Mule,” a song written by Thomas P. Westendorf in 1884 (as “Old Thompson’s Mule”), features a piano. The song opens with Vasnier naming the title and record company before the music starts and he sings the story of the farmer’s mule. The sound will take some getting used to for anyone expecting the fidelity of modern recordings, but the singer’s voice is powerful and cuts through the technological limitations of the medium. The highlight of the song has to be the chorus, where Vasnier delivers a comic, snorting re-creation of the donkey delivering “eh-aws.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is jocular:

Hili: Are there moderate fanatics?

Andrzej: No, this is a contradiction.

Hili: It’s a pity, it would be easier to live with them.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy są umiarkowani fanatycy?
Ja: Nie, to jest sprzeczność.
Hili: Szkoda, bo łatwiej by się z takimi żyło.

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

From Meow:

Another cat (or a cat-on-a-cat, this one from Cat Memes:

A restroom sign from Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs: Someone was either authoritarian or had OCD:

Masih reports another arrest of a woman protestor in Iran:

17-year-old Negar Dabbagh was arrested in Iran for insulting @khamenei_ir the Leader of Islamic Republic , encouraging protests,
criticizing the murderous regime and bravery removing her compulsory hijab.
Her “crime”? Speaking out against a regime terrified of its own people… pic.twitter.com/HhCPoHJ77i

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 25, 2024

From Luana: Olfactory oppression! For more about the thesis, go here.

I kid you not – this is an actual thesis from a PhD in “Olfactory Ethics”— From her thesis: “The broad aim of this thesis is to offer an intersectional and wide-ranging study of olfactory oppression by establishing the underlying logics that facilitate smell’s application in… https://t.co/3uoXN0OIhp

— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) November 30, 2024

From my Bluesky feed (it’s hard to find posts to put here from that venue), the moon over Rio.

— Moon lover (@mo1nlover.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T06:36:43.598Z

From Malcolm: a one-minute horror film:

1 minute content but Horror Film effect 🔥 pic.twitter.com/5hClFT9Sld

— Black cat (@Cat__offi) October 18, 2024

From my Twitter feed:

Growing up is understanding that in Titanic, Rose decides to throw away a $250 million pendant in memory of an unemployed man who she had sex with one time.

Meanwhile, her husband worked hard all his life to maintain her and give her and her children a life of luxury, who… pic.twitter.com/CR90t6PCqA

— ฿₳₮₮ⱠɆ ฿ɎⱤĐ (@BattleByrd) November 30, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial. I stood on this platform, and it is an overwhelmingly sad experience. I retweeted the post.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well as Roma and others, were sent to their deaths from this platform.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T08:04:34.323Z

A funny story reposted by Matthew:

Fabulous story from John Banville about his late wife, Janet Dunham. You can find the full interview here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n…

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T08:01:58.550Z

Also from Matthew: a 114-year-old genuine color photo:

Travel back 114 years to the winter glow of 1910 and this evocative French autochrome of a lone woman with her umbrella, taken in a country lane by Antonin Personnaz (1854-1936). It almost feels like a painting! (It was taken in colour and is not colourised)

— BabelColour (@babelcolour.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T20:14:59.525Z