Category: Hili Dialogue

Saturday: Hili dialogue

November 30, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, November 30, 2024: a special truncated edition of Hili as I’m getting acclimated to Europe. And it’s National Pie Day: here is a Thanksgiving pecan pie made by my friend Michelle (the one who baked cat cookies for me at CSICon):

It’s also National Mousse Day and National Mason Jar Day:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Justin Trudeau, the woke PM of Canada who is apparently not long for government service, flew to Mar-A-Lago to stave of the tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Florida and met with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club on Friday evening, less than a week after the U.S. president-elect threatened heavy tariffs on imports from North American trading partners.

Neither the Trump transition team nor the Trudeau administration had provided a summary of the meeting by late Friday. Trudeau dined with Trump along with Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, and Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), set to be national security adviser, according to a photo posted on social media by Senator-elect David McCormick (R., Pa.).

The threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico suggested Trump is eager to reopen the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a free-trade accord that came into force in 2020. The USMCA replaced the decades-old Nafta pact, which Trump had repeatedly described as the “worst trade deal ever made” for widening the U.S. trade deficit and costing America millions of manufacturing jobs, especially in the auto sector.

. . .On his Truth Social social-media platform on Monday, Trump said he would levy tariffs of 25% on imports of all goods from Mexico and Canada, accusing both countries of facilitating illegal immigration and fentanyl abuse in the U.S.

Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke a few days ago and they both described the meeting as positive. President Biden has criticized Trump’s approach with the tariffs.

Tight economic links between the U.S., Canada and Mexico mean that disrupting trade with tariffs would have far-reaching effects. Tariffs would likely drive up the price of steel and aluminum in the U.S. because Canada and Mexico are major suppliers of those metals to the U.S. market. The U.S. also buys almost all of Canada’s oil.

It would also drive up the price of everything for Americans, since goods are transported by vehicles that use oil. Trump apparently wants to start his term doing exactly what Americans voted against: imposing higher costs of living. As my father told me when I was a child (he was an economist), “Jerry, tariffs are never a good thing,”

*The Oxford Union had one of its customary debates, but this one was whether Israel was an apartheid state responsible for genocide. And the pro-Israel side lost!  Unforgivable!

The Oxford Union voted for its controversial motion “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide” last night, with the society’s buildings surrounded by tight security and protesters rallying outside. The House saw 278 votes in favour and 59 votes against.

Can you believe that vote? Oxford students lack both a moral compass and a sense of history. They should be debating that for Hamas, not Israel.  Hamas is, after all a true apartheid state, along with most Arab countries in the Middle East (how many Jews lived in Gaza before October 7, 2023?), and as for genocide, just read the original Hamas charter, which the terrorists continue to hold.  No Jews left behind!

Speaking in Proposition were Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, Union President Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, Israeli-American activist Miko Peled, and Palestinian-American poet Susan Abulwaha. Speaking in Opposition were British broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti, British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, Arab-Israeli journalist Yousef Haddad, and spy Mosab Hassan Yousef. Yousef is the son of terrorist organisation Hamas’ founder who then defected to become a spy for Israeli intelligence. He has been criticised for his hatred of Islam.

Outside the society’s buildings, around two dozen pro-Palestine protesters rallied on St Michael’s Street, their chants audible from the chamber. Oxford Action for Palestine, which called the protest, wrote that its purpose is to show “Zionists are not welcome in Oxford”. A protester told Cherwell that their reason is twofold: to show solidarity with Palestinian speakers, and to stand against the Union’s platforming of speakers.

Even with Natasha Hausdorff (the future Mrs. Ceiling Cat) speaking, the anti-“Zionist” faction won resoundingly. Elite schools in both the US and UK, it seems, are afflicted with Jew hatred, as it’s the fashionable thing to espouse.

*And speaking of a dearth of neurons among pro-Palestinian Brits, that was also on display by a bunch of artists who re demanding—DEMANDING—that London’s famed Tate Museum cut its ties with Jewish donors. No, not Zionist donors, but Jewish ones.

More than 600 artists are demanding London’s prestigious Tate Museum cut ties with Jewish donors and arts organizations in the latest of a wave of cultural pressure campaigns targeting Israel-linked philanthropy.

In an open letter to the institution ahead of next month’s Turner Prize ceremony, current nominee Jasleen Kaur joined past winners Charlotte Prodger and Lawrence Abu Hamdan in demanding that Tate sever connections with three major art organizations: the Zabludowicz Art Trust, Zabludowicz Art Projects, and Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Their letter cites unsubstantiated claims from the International Court of Justice and United Nations about Israel’s “genocidal” response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre, while accusing the targeted organizations of “artwashing” – a term used to describe partnerships with museums and artists to obscure ethically dubious political connections.

Artwashing! As if those organizations give money to the Tate to hide the so-called humanitarian crimes of Israel.  It is, there seems, no form of good stuff that Israeli groups can do without it being characterized as a form of “washing” (remember “pinkwashing”?):

“Tate’s partnerships with these organizations directly undermine its commitment to equality and social impact,” the letter states. “We believe Tate has a profound moral duty, if not a legal one, to divest from its affiliations with the Israeli state.”

The Zabludowicz family’s ties to Israel stem primarily from Poju Zabludowicz’s business dealings.

As CEO of real estate investment firm Tamares Group, he previously funded the British Israel Communication and Research Centre and technology companies with Israeli security contracts.

In 2023, the Zabludowiczes were forced to close their private London museum after facing years of similar anti-Israel pressure.

This shows as much as anything that antiZionism is the same thing as antisemitism.

*As always, I’ll add three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary in the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Thankful edition.” Here Nellie tells us what she’s thankful for:

→ Freedom of speech: I’m thankful this year for the First Amendment. I never understood how precious it was, or how rare, but watching European countries send cops to people’s houses for barely controversial Facebook posts has shocked me. I know we have European readers and writers, so please know I stand with you, and I hope you don’t take it personally when I say I’m so glad our forefathers fled your lands and burned the boats. We’ll do our best now to save you through a process that I can only describe as colonialism (Free Press expansion into Europe). God bless America. And Little America, as we’ll call England!

‘Tis true that the UK is into punishing “hate speech,” or anything construed as hate speech, like people with yarmulkes showing up at pro-Palestinian demonstrations.  That last sentence of Nellie’s is going to anger some people in Blighty.

→ The Kamala Harris campaign: I’m thankful for Kamala Harris’s campaign. First of all, they raised $1.5 billion dollars and spent it in 15 weeks. It sounds wasteful. But in fact, taking $1.5 billion dollars from some of America’s silliest people and then giving it away to hardworking ones is what I call distributive justice. Just think of the caterers who had to work around literally dozens of Kamala staff’s allergies and gluten intolerances. They deserved that cash. Think of the event planners, young women who want to save up for their own extravagant eco resort weddings. Kamala gave them a shot at Hawaii instead of the Dominican Republic. Think of the driver of that abortion van clocking overtime during the DNC who just told himself “eyes ahead, not your problem, eyes ahead.” So many worthy Americans.

But most importantly: I’m grateful that this movement refuses to accept they could have done anything better. Anything at all.

→ Matt Gaetz withdrawing: It was fast and complete. He went from MAGA superstar to appearing on Cameo selling birthday greetings, in record time. He made Anthony Scaramucci look like a veteran statesman. Never have I seen such quick justice. And I feel it’s a good omen for the next four years. Yes, these years will test us. Yes, the word shameless will likely be used a lot. But clearly, some shame worked. Courses were corrected. I’m thankful for that.

*This is a surprise: Syrian rebels have entered Aleppo, the largest city in the country and its commercial hub:

Insurgents breached Syria’s largest city Friday and clashed with government forces for the first time since 2016, according to a war monitor and fighters, in a surprise attack that sent residents fleeing and added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.

The advance on Aleppo followed a shock offensive launched by insurgents Wednesday, as thousands of fighters swept through villages and towns in Syria’s northwestern countryside. Residents fled neighborhoods on the city’s edge because of missiles and gunfire, according to witnesses in Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war, said dozens of fighters from both sides were killed.

Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were ousted from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

. . . . But this time, there was no sign of a significant pushback from government forces or their allies. Instead, reports emerged of government forces melting away in the face of advances, and insurgents posted messages on social media calling on troops to surrender.

Robert Ford, who was the last U.S. ambassador to Syria, said the attack showed that Syrian government forces are “extremely weak.” In some cases, he said, they appear to have “almost been routed.”

This is a major embarrassment to the al-Assad regime—you know, the one that gassed its citizens. However, this is not necessarily  a good thing: as Malgorzata opined, “This is two groups of bandits fighting each other, except for the Kurds” (also a faction of the rebels).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili stil despises Kulka, and the coffee is located near the kitchen window. Hili’s order is designed to get rid of her nemesis:

Hili: Make yourself coffee.
A: Why?
Hili: Kulka probably wants to go out through the kitchen window.
In Polish:
Hili: Zrób sobie kawę.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Kulka pewnie chce wyjść przez okno w kuchni.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs: a clever car owner:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih; the translation from Farsi is below:

In support of the 44th week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign on 6 December 1403 which is ongoing with the hunger strike of prisoners in 25 different prisons of the country every Tuesday. Issuing “bulk” death sentences, the strategy of Iran’s autocratic government to create terror” November 25 is International Day of Violence Against Women. The world should hear our protest and recognize gender apartheid as a crime and punish its perpetrators in Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

#Union_against_gender_apartheid #No_to_execution #woman_life_of_freedom #Global_campaign_no_to_execution_in_Iran https://t.me/no_to_execution_in_iran

Reader Simon calls this a groaner:

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony. However, eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero.🖖

— Mr. Spock 🖖 (@spockresists.bsky.social) 2024-11-27T18:24:57.307Z

From Malcolm; a dog flummoxed by Halloween cat decorations:

From my feed:

This wrecks me—every single time.

— Joseph Fasano (@josephfasano.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T12:49:34.194Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

A Belgian girl gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was six

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T08:05:32.375Z

Two tweets from Matthew; the first is a groaner:

Of course this is just 4 characters, but still it's comedy gold…

— Paul Eggleston (@pauleggleston.bsky.social) 2024-04-07T19:49:03.081Z

And the physicist Brian Cox’s cat, Herschel:

Here’s a picture of my cat asleep with its feet on its head. I can’t do this.

— ProfBrianCox (@profbriancox.bsky.social) 2024-11-15T15:50:10.964Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

November 29, 2024 • 6:07 am

PCC(E) is travelling to Poland, so posting will be light until he is installed.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is practising her moves for when Jerry arrives:

Hili: Don’t you want to read a book?
A: Why?
Hili: So I can disturb you.

Hili: Czy nie chcesz poczytać jakiejś książki?
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Żebym ci mogła przeszkadzać.

And some good news from Midway Island:

screenshot of wisdom news

Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 28, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, November 28, 2024, and THANKSGIVING DAY. This evening I’ll be winging my way to Warsaw, and then to Dobrzyn and my surrogate family, including parents and cats. Nominally it’s Turkey Day, but officially it’s National French Toast Day, a breakfast I love, and which I’d get on special days as a kid.

Google has a special Thanksgiving Doodle; click to see where it goes:

Remember that posting will be light for a few days as I get to Dobrzyn, schmooze and cuddle with the cats, and get settled before heading in a week or so to Katowice for my talks. Matthew will take over Hili tomorrow morning, and then I’ll post as I can. I do my best.

And Happy Thanksgiving from Mr. Natural (h/t Krod):

It’s also Turkey Leftover Day, Letter Writing Day, and Red Planet Day (celebrating the launch of the robotic interplanetary probe Mariner 4, a robotic interplanetary probe, on November 28, 1964; communication ended three years later).  Here’s the first image ever, taken by Mariner 4, showing craters on Mars. Now of course, we’re doing much better. 

Mariner 4- NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT assesses Donald Trump’s immigration plans and finds a number of barriers to mass deportations (article archived here). Here are fiour:

1. Who are the targets? Trump aides say they will prioritize migrants with criminal records and previous removal orders, who number in the hundreds of thousands. The federal government already knows where to find most of these people, thanks to their previous contact with law enforcement, and can quickly deport many.

The question is who comes next. Trump also wants to deport undocumented migrants with clean records (aside from the blemish of breaking the law to enter the United States). And he has said he’ll go after people with Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows some migrants from specific countries to stay in the United States legally. These migrants could be harder to find and detain, especially in cities and states that call themselves sanctuaries for the undocumented. Those places have refused to cooperate with most federal deportation efforts.

2. Will courts sign off? Undocumented migrants have due process rights, so their cases typically have to work through the courts. But immigration courts have yearslong backlogs. Trump officials want to use arcane laws, like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to bypass this process. That will likely lead to lawsuits — similar to those that stifled Trump’s first-term immigration policies.

Trump has two advantages. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, are friendlier to conservatives than they were in his first term. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the president has broad powers over immigration.

3. Where will migrants be held? Right now, officials don’t have anywhere to put tens of thousands more migrants, let alone hundreds of thousands. The government will have to build, buy or lease more detention centers.

4. Will other nations cooperate? Some countries, such as Venezuela, don’t take deportation flights from the United States. Others might resist taking in a sudden surge of migrants, especially those with criminal records. The administration could persuade nations to cooperate with a mix of favors and threats — trade deals and tariffs — but that would require careful diplomacy.

The other issues include the expense (billions) and Congress’s willingness to foot the bill and labor shortages. I’m guessing that the deportations won’t be nearly as extensive as Trump has promised. And, by the way, here’s a graph, by year, of the deportations carried out under various Presidents. Obama seems to have been the Biggest Deporter, and Biden the smallest.

*The Times of Israel reports that the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is holding, but just barely. Lebanese are approaching areas of southern Lebanon that are still held by the IDF for 60 days, and this approach is a violation of the agreement.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Tuesday fired warning shots at people trying to approach several southern Lebanon villages after Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered “forceful action” to keep Hezbollah members from returning while a ceasefire deal with Lebanon was being implemented.

Several suspects were hit by fire in Meiss al-Jabal, according to the IDF, which said it has shifted from active fighting in Lebanon to focusing on enforcing the agreement.

The military said it was working to prevent people from reaching areas where troops are still positioned in southern Lebanon, and several routes to villages had been blocked.

Israeli Air Force planes were still patrolling the skies and troops were still at positions in southern Lebanon. Overall, the calm appeared to hold, with rocket and drone fire on Israel halting since the early hours of the morning.

Earlier, the IDF said it fired warning shots at several vehicles in Lebanon that approached an area on the border where it was still prohibiting movement.

. . .The IDF has 60 days to withdraw under the deal, which ended 14 months of Hezbollah-initiated fighting. During that time, the Lebanese Army is to gradually take responsibility for southern Lebanon and an American-led committee will be established to adjudicate complaints regarding potential ceasefire violations, the IDF said.

Hezbollah forces will leave southern Lebanon, and its military infrastructure will be dismantled. The US has also reportedly provided a side letter specifying Israel’s rights to respond to any violations of the ceasefire.

. . . . An Israeli security official said Israeli forces remained in their positions hours after the ceasefire began and would only gradually withdraw.

He said the pace of the withdrawal and the scheduled return of Lebanese civilians to their homes would depend on whether the deal is implemented and enforced by all sides. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the deal and its implementation with the media.

The full text of the deal can be seen here.  Many people have expressed the hope that this deal will also lead to a ceasefire in Gaza, but the U.S. has said nothing about that and it’s extremely unlike that Israel would be party to any ceeasefire that didn’t make Hamas surrender unconditionally and also release the hostages taken on October 7 of last year.

*Via Jez, an op-ed in the WSJ: “The U.N.’s anti-Israel ‘genocide purge,”  with the subtitle: “Alice Nderitu said Israel’s campaign in Gaz doesn’t meet the definition of genocide. She was fired.” This is, as the kids say, a heinous and gnarly story.

The United Nations long ago lost credibility as a moral arbiter, but its assault on Israel is hitting a new low. On Wednesday the U.N. will refuse to renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan who is the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide.

Ms. Nderitu is an accomplished mediator, whose U.N. bio describes her as a “recognized voice in the field of peacebuilding and violence prevention.” She has served in that role since 2020 and her tenure has been marked by careful study of humanity’s worst crime. She is being dismissed because she has stood firm in her belief that Israel’s war with Hamas isn’t genocide.

In 2022 her office issued a guidance paper on “when to refer to a situation as ‘genocide.’” The paper noted U.N. officials should “adhere to the correct usage” of the term because of the political and legal sensitivities that surround it and “its frequent misuse in referring to large scale, grave crimes committed against particular populations.”

Her guidance paper argued that what was happening in Gaza was not a genocide:

As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify. The war against Hamas has had many deaths, but Israel’s strategy is intended to dismantle a terrorist regime, not eliminate an ethnic group. The Jewish state has gone to great lengths to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, even as Hamas uses civilians as shields so their deaths can be used as propaganda.

That’s not what the anti-Israel cabal at the U.N. want to hear. On Nov. 14 the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices issued a report supporting accusations of genocide. The report announced it had found “serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws” and “the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank.”

Ms. Nderitu serves at the pleasure of Mr. Gutterres, and Mr. Turk and the anti-Israel faction want her out. A U.N. spokesman sent us a statement that “Alice Nderitu is leaving the U.N. as her contract is expiring.” It added that “genocide is strictly defined in international law and any legal determination” is made by “appropriate judicial bodies.”

And so the UN fired her as she wasn’t with the rest of the organization in hating Israel, and she made the mistake of applying international law to Israel.

Yet the Secretary-General has the authority to extend Ms. Nderitu’s contract, and U.N. contracts are often renewed when their terms expire. Ms. Nderitu’s removal is a political choice.

Ms. Nderitu may be out, but her refusal to endorse a lie in service of a political agenda has been a profile in courage. Can anyone with integrity survive at the U.N.?

The answer, of course, is “No!” The only thing that can explain the organization’s complete obsession with Israel, and neglect of other states that are far, far worse (viz., Syria) is some form of antisemitism. And the firing of Nderitu is just the latest example of the U.N.’s irrational obsession.

*Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins claims that the arguments against biological men (“transwomen”) competing in women’s sports (her example is volleyball, subject to a lawsuit) are unsubstantiated, and involves women casting themselves as victims.  She’s badly wrong, for we already have the data to keep sports segregated, for the time being, by biological sex.

Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair. The best we can ask is that it be meaningful, that it teach us something about ourselves. This is the context in which transgender athletes enter into sport, and the people who would reduce this self-seeking to an unfair “them” against “us” are missing the point entirely: Sport doesn’t tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims. So it’s a step backward for so many women athletes to cry frailty in the debate over trans participation.

“Frailty”? That is a very odd way to couch the argument for fairness based on biological advantage.  But Jenkins wasnts to signal her virtue, so she continues:

Spoiler: I don’t know who is right in the scientific dispute over whether athletes who were assigned male at birth have lingering advantages from nanomoles of testosterone, or disadvantages from their suppression — hormone studies are all over the map, and anyway, every sport has different demands. Good luck using exceptional height and weight on the uneven bars. But the lawsuit brought by San José State co-captain Brooke Slusser and 10 other Mountain West volleyball players asking emergency injunctive relief to bench a San José State player for, in their view, not being a proper woman doesn’t clarify the matter. What it does, from the unfortunate way it’s written, is make female athletes out to be fretful weaklings.

The dispute is both scientific and ethical, and we already have the scientific data to keep biological men from competing in women’s leagues at any age after puberty.

The starting point in this controversy should be that women have agency and power. But the lawsuit is a recitation of tears and fears about someone who played NCAA volleyball for three years, without incident, until her gender identity was called into question this fall. At which point the legal equivalent of shrieking at spiders began. The word “harm” is used 12 times in the suit, “injury” 15 times, “safety” 35 times, “concerns” 37 times, and “protection” more than 50 times.

Now I don’t know much about this lawsuit, but the point is not just a single volleyball player or a single sport, but about general athletic capabilities.

Finding absolute fairness in all this is impossible — there are too many competing rights. Slusser may have been owed an explanation and chance at consent, but her teammate is entitled to medical privacy and is eligible under current NCAA rules. The lawsuit reflects none of these nuances. It just says, “This hostile environment has taken a severe emotional toll upon Slusser … and other women connected to the SJSU Team who have not conformed to the ideological orthodoxy mandated.”

There may be an unanswerable argument against transgender women competing on the basis of overwhelming physical advantage, but it hasn’t been made here. Instead, the suit is just a litany of suggestions that wilting women are endangered. Virtually every NCAA volleyball or basketball team in NCAA Division I practices against men — it’s standard to seek preparation against players who are bigger, stronger, quicker. But, suddenly, playing against this particular young woman was a threat, with players allegedly unable “to even get their hands up in time to deflect a ball away from their face.” A Utah State player expressed the conviction that “men have unmatchable physical advantages over women in volleyball” and she and teammates became upset at “how unfair and unsafe they thought it was that they were expected to play against a biological male.”

“Ideological orthodoxy”?  And Jenkins appears to be completely ignorant about the athletic advantage of postpuberty males, both trans and cis, over postpuberty women. There are now considerable data, and to me they do constitute an “unanswerable argument against transgender women competing [against biological women] on the basis of overwhelming physical advantage. I’ve written about them before. Meanwhile, the madness continues:

*If you’re buying diamonds, as in an engagement ring, would you go for natural diamonds, or the much cheaper, but for all practical purposes identical, synthetic diamonds? The NYT discusses people’s views on this issue. Synthetic diamonds are chemically the same as natural ones (pure carbon) and are made in a similar way: applying pressure to carbon. Synthetics even have some advantages, like greater hardness, that make them ideal for things like drills.  And of course the prices of synthetics are lower: as Wikipedia notes, “As of 2017, synthetic diamonds sold as jewelry were typically selling for 15–20% less than natural equivalents; the relative price was expected to decline further as production economics improve.”

The four Cs — carat, cut, color, and clarity — have traditionally been used to evaluate diamonds. Now, couples buying diamond engagement rings have another choice to make: natural diamonds, which are mined from the earth, or lab-grown diamonds, which are man-made but chemically identical.

The once straightforward process of picking a stone is now fraught with confusion. Along with their style preferences, couples are now considering the ethics and sustainability of each type of diamond.

“I was surprised by how much uncertainty and how much of an opinion existed out there on both sides of the fence,” Chris Lawlor, 35, of New York, said about his experience designing an engagement ring for his fiancée in 2021. “People didn’t seem to be on the same page.”

Mr. Lawlor, a founder of Black Creek Digital, an artificial intelligence computing company based in New York, had looked at both natural diamonds and those created in factories using machines that mimic the pressure needed to produce natural stones.

. . . Today’s consumers are increasingly seeking ethical diamonds, which can be both lab-grown or natural diamonds that are sourced or created with minimal environmental impact and without contributing to human rights abuses.

Rings can also be pricey. The average cost nationwide of an engagement ring was $5,500 last year, according to a survey by the wedding planning company the Knot, though prices can easily move into six-figure territory or higher.

Price is often a major factor driving the decisions of couples who opt for lab-grown diamonds. Because stones made in a lab are continuously produced, there is plenty of supply, lowering the cost. Couples looking for a specific cut, color or size also have a larger catalog to choose from.

Given the chemical and physical identity of lab-grown vs. natural diamonds, and the price of natural diamonds, I’d prefer the synthetic ones, but of course when you are buying a diamond ring, it is not always your choice! Here’s a video showing how synthetic diamonds are made:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is preparing for winter, which she hates:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m catching the last rays of sun.
In Polish:
Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Łapię ostatnie promienie słońca.

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

From Cooking with Cajun (I agree!):

From Meow:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih: Hunger strikes in Iranian prisons against executions!  Here’s the Google translation:

In support of the 44th week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign on 6 December 1403 which is ongoing with the hunger strike of prisoners in 25 different prisons of the country every Tuesday. Issuing “bulk” death sentences, the strategy of Iran’s autocratic government to create terror” November 25 is International Day of Violence Against Women. The world should hear our protest and recognize gender apartheid as a crime and punish its perpetrators in Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

#No_to_execution #Tuesdays_no_to_execution #Union_against_gender_apartheid #Global_campaign_no_to_execution_in_Iran

From Luana: how DEI statements are almost perfect ways to increase ethnic diversity:

From Malcolm, an amazing video of a gravity-defying goat:

From my feed:

And another wonderful animal tweet:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

28 November 1901 | A Polish Jew, Norbert Armer, was born in Krakow. A bakery aid.In Auschwitz from 14 January 1942.No. 25542He perished in the camp on 7 February 1942.

— Auschwitz Memorial (@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social) 2024-11-28T06:00:02.122Z

Two Bluesky posts from Dr. Cobb. First, an arrant and illegal violation of the First Amendment:

Here we go again: Dogma is infiltrating America's public schools. Texas to encourage teaching Genesis in kindergarten – ncse.ngo/texas-encour…Kids deserve better than this. #creationisminschools #freedomofreligion #freedomfromreligion #texas #edusky #k12

— National Center for Science Education (@ncse.bsky.social) 2024-11-27T15:44:09.539Z

. . . And in one continuous day of driving, you can visit every salaciously-named town in Great Britain:

I actually knew the chair of Shitterton's parish council. The hamlet put up a huge stone with the name, because the smaller metal signs kept getting stolen.Also, my local bus stop in Oxford is Crotch Crescent, and there's a Butts Lane nearby. I'm juvenile enough to absolutely love it. 🍑

— Joanna Bagniewska (@joannabagniewska.com) 2024-11-26T22:03:15.064Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

November 27, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“হাম্প ডে” in Assamese): Wednesday, November 27, 2024, and National Bavarian Cream Pie Day. This is a calorific pie filled with a mixture of whipped cream and custard.  I don’t have a pie picture, but here’s a Bismark filled with bavarian cream, It would be good for breakfast.

Tanis Coralee Leonhardi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Electric Guitar Day, Pie in the Face Day, National Craft Jerky Day, and What Do you Love About America Day.  (God bless us every one!)

I’ll be heading out to Poland tomorrow evening, and you can expect more photos of Hili, but until I get settled, posting will be light. I do my best.

Here’s Bill Gates getting a pie in the face (I wonder if it was a Bavarian Cream Pie?):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Well, Trump’s stupid plan to impose tariffs on goods from China and other countries is still in the offing.  It will hurt only the American consumers and retailers.  (Article archived here.)

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office, a move that would scramble global supply chains and impose heavy costs on companies that rely on doing business with some of the world’s largest economies.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump mentioned a caravan of migrants making its way to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to levy a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the border.

“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” the president-elect wrote.

“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he added. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

In a separate post, Mr. Trump also threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States.

“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” he said.

Taken together, the tariff threats were a dramatic ultimatum against the three largest trading partners of the United States, and a move that threatens to sow chaos in America’s diplomatic and economic relationships even before Mr. Trump sets foot in the White House.

There’s no call to hurt the American consumer because immigration is too high (and it surely can’t be that high coming from Canada!).  And the tariff on Chinese goods because they don’t kill drug dealers shipping to America? That seems an excuse for putting tariffs on Chinese goods to “help” American manufacturers. My dad was an economist, and used to lecture me that tariffs are never good for anybody. I think he was right.

*The Washington Post, however, reports that Mexico, the U.S.’s top trading partner, has vowed to retaliate if Trump hits the country with tariffs (article archived here).

Mexico’s president responded angrily Tuesday to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose a 25 percent tariff on its products if the country didn’t curb the flow of irregular migrants and fentanyl, warning that the penalties would only wind up causing inflation and unemployment in the United States.

President Claudia Sheinbaum also made clear that Mexico would retaliate with its own tariffs if Trump went ahead with his plan.

“President Trump, it isn’t with threats or tariffs that we resolve the migratory phenomenon or the abuse of drugs in the United States,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference, reading a letter she had written to the incoming U.S. leader. “What’s needed to confront these great challenges is cooperation and understanding.”

Trump on Monday night said he would impose the 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada on his first day in office, to halt the “invasion” of drugs and migrants. He also vowed to introduce a 10 percent tariff on goods from China, the source of precursor chemicals to make fentanyl.

Canada’s leaders also reacted with dismay to Trump’s message. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a statement that their country “places the highest priority on border security” and had worked closely with the United States to disrupt the flow of fentanyl.

Mexico is the top U.S. trading partner, and Canada is not far behind. If Trump imposes the tariffs, he would be violating the free-trade treaty that has bound together the three North American countries for decades, and led to an explosion of commerce and production lines that cross borders. More than $1.5 trillion worth of goods are exchanged annually among the three North American nations. Trade between the United States and China amounts to approximately $600 billion.

The Mexican and Canadian leaders emphasized that not only would their countries be hurt by the tariffs — U.S. businesses and consumers would, too. Canada supplied around 60 percent of American crude oil imports last year, the officials said. Sheinbaum noted that Mexico’s top exporters included U.S.-based automakers General Motors and Ford Motor Company, which have built sprawling modern production facilities around the country.

Trade war in the offing! Thie will do no good for anybody, and consumers, who voted for Trump largely because of the cost of living, are going to be hit with higher costs should the Orange Man follow through with his threats.  I’m not sure he will.

*In a prescient article in the Times of London two days before the election, Andrew Sullivan explained “Why Trump may be about to state the biggest comeback in American history.” (h/t Steve). This did not appear on his “Weekly Dish” site.

It may seem incomprehensible to many, but it is simply a matter of fact that this absurd man has dominated American politics and culture for nearly a decade, is more favourably viewed than ever, has survived two impeachments, multiple damning lawsuits, two assassination attempts and is now within spitting distance of the most astonishing comeback in American political history.

It is, in part, his demagogic genius. Say what you want, but he has campaigned with relentlessness, drama and gusto. The energy of this nearly 80-year-old may be a function of his mental illness, but it’s still impressive. His campaign has seen him in classic American imagery: glowering in court; having an assassin’s bullet graze his ear and somehow miss him; a peerless photo-op in an apron at a McDonald’s; a vast spectacle in Madison Square Garden; and a series of crystal-clear promises: Deport The Illegals; Cut Your Taxes; End the Wars.

. . . And Trump’s core instinct is what the Jesuits call in tune with the times. He has understood the one thing America’s elites have yet to come to terms with, and unlike them, he can speak it in English anyone can understand.

The American people are done with running the world as they have since 1945, done with de-facto open borders where the distinction between citizen and non-citizen has become moot, and done with being subjected to elite culture-war projects that border on what most normal people regard as insane.

Culturally, the Biden administration went full on in imposing a new regime of wokeness. They hired on the basis of race and sex — from the cabinet to every single department; they replaced biological sex with subjective gender, allowing boys to compete with girls in sports and children to undergo irreversible sex reassignment even before they had experienced puberty (even though they have stated such surgery should be reserved for adults). They saw all Latinos as a single, liberal racial bloc (and called them Latinx for trans inclusion!), and gays and trans as a single “queer” entity. And they regarded any opposition to these leftist moves as proof of bigotry. As woke leftists trashed the reputation of higher education in America, and veered into violence and grotesque antisemitism, the Biden administration seemed helpless.

In foreign policy, after a period of stability and no new wars under Trump, Americans saw Biden’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan, and then two protracted, open-ended military commitments in Ukraine and Gaza, which America seemed unable to direct, influence or control. And Americans also saw the same elite that had taken them into Iraq and Afghanistan make obvious preparations to defend Taiwan, an island a few hundred miles from China and 10,000 miles away from Kansas. Advantage: Trump.

Harris gets indicted, too:

Harris started strong, shutting down any internal opposition, putting on an impressive convention, and giving a superb speech and sharp debate. And then she stalled. She had nothing, it seemed, to say. Her inability or refusal to answer simple questions in plain English became cringe-worthy. Before July, almost every Democrat and legacy media institution knew she was a non-starter, a terrible campaigner, and a dreadful manager. Then they willed themselves into disbelieving it. But denial became hard to sustain when you’re looking at Harris’s slow car crash.

For me, the last straw was her CNN town hall. After a day off to prep, she still could not tell us what her first Congressional priority would be, what policies of the last four years she would change, how she would prevent illegal immigration, and why she was now in favour of building the wall she once called “stupid, useless, and a medieval vanity project”.

, , , , The Democrats also missed a critical new reality in American politics: it’s about class, not identity. The Biden-Harris messaging was directed to women, “queers”, African-Americans and “Latinx” people. Trump messaging was about how well working-class people did before Covid, and how they could prosper again. “Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you” was a potent message. And if the polling pans out, Trump could assemble the most multi-racial coalition since Nixon, winning record numbers of black, Latino, Muslim and gay votes.

Of course Sullivan hedges his bets by using “may” in the title, giving him a pass no matter who won, but in hindsight he can claim to have at least said that Trump had a chance. And he did. Too bad for us.

*Under pressure from the U.S., Israel has agreed to a cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Times of Israel reports:

As Israel gears up to sign a US-brokered ceasefire with Lebanon, and by extension with the Hezbollah terror group, these are the key points of the deal that have been revealed so far, according to officials who have briefed the media.

The deal that would end the fighting on the northern front calls for an initial two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon, and Hezbollah would end its armed presence south of the Litani River, which is about 18 miles from the border with Israel.

As Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army will deploy thousands of soldiers into these vacated areas, alongside the UN observer force that is already in place.

. . . . According to Israel’s Channel 12, there is no intention for Israel to set up a buffer area inside Lebanon, similar to the security zone that it occupied from 1982 until 2000. Troops will completely withdraw to the international border.

In addition, Lebanese civilians will be allowed to return to their homes in the southern Lebanon villages and towns they evacuated.

The TV report said that Lebanon has committed to overseeing all arms purchases and arms production in the country to ensure that nothing reaches Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has for years been smuggling in vast stockpiles of weapons from Iran and set up missile production factories.

The U.S. threatened to withhold military aid to Israel if it didn’t engage in this ceasefire. Note that Hezbollah is forbidden is for Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israel, to “regroup”, and to stop importing arms from Iran.  That isn’t such a great deal if Hezbollah continues firing oodles of missiles at Israel, as it has been doing since October 8 of last year. Once again the Biden administration is trying, through pressure, to run the war of the only democratic country in the Middle East. This deal, of course, will change come January.

*And we learn from the AP’s “oddities” section that the world’s oldest man just died:

For nearly nine months, John Alfred Tinniswood held the title of world’s oldest man, marking his 112th birthday during his reign.

His record-holding status ended Monday when Tinniswood died in a care home in northwest England near Liverpool, where he was born on Aug. 26, 1912, his family said in a statement.

Tinniswood attributed his longevity to “pure luck.”

“You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it,” the retired accountant and great-grandfather told the Guinness World Records when he earned the title in April.

If there was any secret to it, though, he said moderation was key to a healthy life. He never smoked, rarely drank and followed no special diet, apart from having fish and chips every Friday.

“If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much — if you do too much of anything — you’re going to suffer eventually,” Tinniswood said.

He took over the record when the previous record-holder, a 114-year-old Venezuelan, died last year.  Note his advice not to walk too much, and I heartily approve of having fish and chips once a week!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enigmatic, but Malgorzata explains:
It’s an old saying I heard in my childhood:
Breakfast: eat yourself
Dinner: share with your friend
Supper: give away to your enemy.
It’s an idea that it’s healthiest to eat plenty in the evening, moderately in the middle of the day and nothing in the evening. So if you give your supper to your enemy he will be weaker and you will be stronger.
The dialogue:
Hili: What do we have for supper?
Andrzej: My grandmother used to say: Give your supper to your enemy.
Hili: That’s unwise.
In Polish:
Hili: Co mamy na kolację?
Ja: Moja babka mówiła: kolację oddaj wrogowi.
Hili: To nierozsądne.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor (blame Neil deGrasse Tyson!):

From Cole & Marmalade:

From Masih, who’s spearheading a campaign to document oppression of Iranian woman. Here an underage girl exposes her married karate teacher for coming on to her. I hope the guy is in trouble.

A lovely view of the Carina Nebula, 8,500 light-years from Earth:

The Carina Nebula

— Space view (@allabtgalaxy.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T17:40:53.806Z

From Malcolm. I may have posted this before, but it’s awesome. I thin the movie may be “Psycho.”

From NY Congressman Ritchie Torres, my latest Democratic hero:

A solicitous crow. Some people answer it. But it looks like a magpie to me. . .

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted. This Czech girl died in the camp at about fourteen.

27 November 1929 | A Czech Jewish girl, Hana Neuschulová, was born in Ústí nad Labem.She was deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt ghetto on 6 September 1943. She did not survive.

— Auschwitz Memorial (@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social) 2024-11-27T09:00:03.339Z

Three posts from Dr. Cobb. The first two begin a thread started by Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl:

OK, so I am living in Iceland 🇮🇸 right now and some major shit went down yesterday that I have to tell you about. 🧵

— Hope Jahren (@realhopejahren.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T13:32:00.024Z

There's this cat named Diego that lives in a Walmart on the west side of Reykjavik.

— Hope Jahren (@realhopejahren.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T13:36:03.847Z

A variety of wasps. The one at the lower right is one I don’t know.

Just some wasps 😏

— Matt Bertone (@bertonemyia.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T16:12:38.321Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

November 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 26, 2024, and and National Cake Day. How about a cake in a milkshake, available only at Portillo’s in Chicago and suburbs?. I haven’t yet had one but I must, and soon:

It’s also Good Grief Day, explained in this way:

“Good grief!” is a phrase often used by Charlie Brown, the main character from Charles Schulz’s comic strip, Peanuts. Schulz was born on this day in 1922, and today is dedicated to both him and his enduring comic strip. Peanuts ran almost fifty years—from October 2, 1950, until February 13, 2000, which was one day after Schulz’s death. Schulz created all aspects of the comic, from the script to the art and lettering. Today, reprints of Schulz’s comic appear in many U.S. newspapers.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has picked three more apparently unqualified people to run the nation’s healthcare agencies, in this case the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday night named three doctors to oversee the nation’s vaccine supply, disease response and other responsibilities central to America’s public health, plucking physicians who bring a mix of conservative credentials and Fox News appearances.

The flurry of announcements included one long-expected decision: Trump picked Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, to lead the Food and Drug Administration, a roughly $7 billion agency charged with making decisions touching the daily lives of every American. But the president-elect defied some predictions by picking Dave Weldon, an internal medicine physician and former GOP congressman, to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and surprised many in his own party by announcing Janette Nesheiwat, a family and emergency medicine physician, to be the next U.S. surgeon general.

If confirmed by the Senate, the trio of doctors would oversee two of the nation’s key health agencies and command some of the most influential pulpits in public heath.

. . . The three announcements, made separately, hit on similar themes: Trump criticized federal agencies’ past work, said they’d lost Americans’ trust and called for leaders to refocus on chronic disease — a priority of his ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Makary and Nesheiwat have been Fox News contributors, an emerging theme in Trump’s selections across the government. The president-elect has picked at least seven people who have been hosts or frequent commentators on the conservative TV channel.

The CDC and FDA picks bore the imprint of Kennedy, whom Trump has tapped to serve as the nation’s top health official and who has laid out a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Weldon and Makary were recommended by Kennedy’s advisers, according to a person familiar with the choices who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Make sure your health insurance is up to date!

*The College Fix, a right-wing site that monitors academic missteps, has a piece called “Biden-Harris admin’s NSF spent over $2 billion imposing DEI on scientific research: Senate report“. Click below to see the full report (h/t Anna):

An excerpt (and remember that the report comes from a Senate subcommittee). Have a look at the report and the grants awarded in the areas of social justice, environmental justice, gender, and race.

The federal government has spent over $2 billion dollars over the last three years infusing and embedding diversity, equity and inclusion concepts into scientific research – tainting the efforts with ideology and diminishing discoveries — according to the recently published findings of a report commissioned by a Senate subcommittee.

The National Science Foundation has awarded taxpayer dollars “to projects that divide Americans and support investigations or publications that are of questionable scientific value,” the 43-page report states.

A leading critic of the encroachment of DEI into STEM, Anna Krylov, said the findings illustrate a misuse of public funds by the NSF.

“[I]nstead of funding science, they dump money into pseudoscience, miseducation, and ideological indoctrination,” she said in an email to The Fix.

Published in October by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the Senate report traces the problem to the “beginning of the Biden-Harris administration.”

The National Science Foundation under this leadership, the report states, “increasingly funded research and programs that color scientific investigation and engagement projects through the lens of political ideology, undermining objective hard science disciplines…in which facts and theories can be precisely measured, tested, and independently reproduced.”

From January 2021 through April 2024, the NSF awarded 3,483 grants amounting to more than $2.05 billion to “questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle,” the report states.

If you think this is pure Republican grandstanding, you’re mistaken. Look at some of the grants that were awarded (on YOUR money if you’re American) and then regret all the real science that wasn’t funded because of the big push to turn the NSF into an ideological grant-dispensing machine.

Apropos, I just saw an article in Canada’s National Post by Lawrence Krauss called, “Get the DEI out of science funding, Elon.” His conclusions are pretty much the same as the ones from the Senate report. This is how many of us who see ourselves as liberal wind up in bed with conservative institutions and publications: the Left has moved further left, putting us left-centrists closer to the Right. And here’s an article on the same topic, reaching the same conclusions, from The Free Press.

*Also at the Free Press, Democrat Seth Moultin (reviled for implying that trans women aren’t women and criticizing his party by concentrating too much on trans issues), has a profile called “Rep. Seth Moulton: Democrats are wearing an ‘ideological strait jacket’” (article archived here).

In a parallel universe, progressives would be rallying around Democratic congressman Seth Moulton. They would respect his courage for saying what so many of them have been thinking since Donald Trump thumped Kamala Harris in the presidential election. They would be urging him—publicly—to run for president. A billionaire, probably in Silicon Valley or New York, would have launched a super PAC called “Moulton 2028,” calling the congressman “the voice America needs.” They would love him.

But in this universe, the one we actually inhabit, they hate him.

“We’ve worked so hard at becoming tolerant that we’ve become intolerant,” Moulton, who represents the suburbs north of Boston, told me Wednesday.

The hate started exactly two weeks ago, when Moulton told The New York Times, in an article explaining why Kamala Harris lost, that the Democratic Party had become overly focused on trans issues.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the Times. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Moulton’s daughters are 6 and 3, and he told me he was talking about team sports they might play when they’re older. When I asked what prompted him to make comments that he must have known would antagonize his fellow Democrats—who have long adhered to the orthodoxy that trans women are women who should be able to compete in women’s sports—he replied: “I was speaking authentically as a dad about a concern that I know other dads share, and we just ought to be able to debate it.”

Now look at all the trouble he’s in!:

Since then, progressives have called him a “Nazi cooperator,” “transphobic,” and “offensive.” Democrats have said he should resign. His campaign manager has stepped down. Massachusetts Democratic governor Maura Healey, who is gay, attacked Moulton for “playing politics.” Even Jake Auchincloss, who, like Moulton, is a former Marine and now a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, has distanced himself from Moulton’s trans remarks. (Moulton declined to comment on Auchincloss.)

Meanwhile, the chair of Tufts University’s political science department threatened to bar students from interning in Moulton’s office, which prompted the college’s high command to assure the congressman they still like him (Tufts is a major recipient of National Institutes of Health grants; probably not wise to lash out at a member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation.) Which prompted the editorial board at The Tufts Daily, predictably, to condemn Moulton.

“[W]e believe that cutting ties with Moulton’s office is not a suppression of speech,” the board wrote. “In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is our way of expressing our disgust with Moulton’s brazen scapegoating of an already oppressed community.”

All this despite the fact that 66 percent of Americans oppose trans girls playing on girls’ sports teams, and that Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you” campaign ad was one of the most widely watched (and effective) of his reelection bid.

Tufts is disappointing.  Get a load of this doublespeak: “cutting ties with Moulton’s office is not a suppression of speech. . . it is our way of expressing our disgust with Moulton’s [words].” If that’s not suppression of speech I don’t know what is: he is being punished and ostracized because he didn’t go along with ideologically “correct” speech. And THAT is suppression of speech.

*The use of drones has revealed hundreds more “Naza Lines,” a series of lines and pictures in the Peruvian desert made over a thousand years ago, and visible only from above. (NYT article archived here).  When I was younger I traveled around Peru with my girlfriend, making my way to Nazca, where for the munificent sum of $30 US, we hired a small plane to take us up to see the Nazca lines. They were stunning. I presume you can still do that, but it’ll be way more expensive now.

Here, from Wikipedia, are two aerial views:

“The hummingbird”

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“The astronaut”:

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The significance of these lines is still a mystery, but here’s a summary from the NYT article:

Gouged into a barren stretch of pampa in southern Peru, the Nazca Lines are one of archaeology’s most perplexing mysteries. On the floor of the coastal desert, the shallow markings look like simple furrows. But from the air, hundreds of feet up, they morph into trapezoids, spirals and zigzags in some locations, and stylized hummingbirds and spiders in others. There is even a cat with the tail of a fish. Thousands of lines jump cliffs and traverse ravines without changing course; the longest is bullet-straight and extends for more than 15 miles.

The vast incisions were brought to the world’s attention in the mid-1920s by a Peruvian scientist who spotted them while hiking through the Nazca foothills. Over the next decade, commercial pilots passing over the region revealed the enormousness of the artwork, which is believed to have been created from 200 B.C. to 700 A.D. by a civilization that predated the Inca.

“It took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 figurative geoglyphs,” said Masato Sakai, an archaeologist at Yamagata University in Japan who has studied the lines for 30 years.

Dr. Sakai is the lead author of a survey published in September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found 303 previously uncharted geoglyphs in only six months, almost doubling the number that had been mapped as of 2020. The researchers used artificial intelligence in tandem with low-flying drones that covered some 243 square miles. Their conclusions also provided insights into the symbols’ enigmatic purpose.

. . . Among the depictions were plants, people, snakes, monkeys, cats, parrots, llamas and a grisly tableau of a knife-wielding orca severing a human head. Of the new figures, 244 were suggested by the technology, while the other 59 were identified during the fieldwork unaided by A.I.

The Nazca people carved the designs into the earth by scraping back the pebbled, rust-colored surface to expose the yellow-gray subsoil. Little is known about the shadowy culture, which left no written record. Aside from the etchings, pretty much all that exists of the civilization are pieces of pottery and an ingenious, still functioning irrigation network.

And their meaning?

Dr. Sakai said that geoglyphs were drawn near pilgrimage routes to temples, which implies that they functioned as sacred spaces for community rituals, and could be considered planned, public architecture. The newly discovered geoglyphs are mainly located along a network of trails that wound through the pampa. They were most likely made by individuals and small groups to share information about rites and animal husbandry.

But, but. . . they can be fully seen only from far above, so how could the information be shared? I am dubious about the explanation, but if you get to Peru, go to Nazca and see them for yourself. You’ll need a plane.

*And speaking of DEI, the Wall Street Journal has a news article called “Christopher Rufo has Trump’s ear and wants to end DEI for good.”

The first time then-President Donald Trump asked Christopher Rufo to come to Washington for a meeting with his team, the result was a 2020 executive order banning race or sex stereotyping in the federal government.

Now Rufo has an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, where he will present the president-elect’s team with a plan to geld American universities by withholding money if they don’t pull back on diversity measures. It is the latest chapter in Rufo’s quest to end activities that he says divide Americans and foster bias against different groups, including white men.

From his perch outside Seattle, the 40-year-old documentary filmmaker and writer has become one of the country’s most influential—and effective—culture warriors, waging public fights against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in schools, businesses and government.

Rufo exposed plagiarism in the academic scholarship of Harvard President Claudine Gay and in the writings of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. His reports played a role in Gay’s subsequent resignation in January of this year and damaged Harris’s campaign. He has also taken aim at diversity practices in large companies, most recently at Boeing.

A father of four who relishes throwing rhetorical grenades at the progressive left, he said he isn’t pursuing a role in the Trump administration but wants to help shape its agenda.

JD Vance, among many others in the new Trump administration, is listening.

Vance views Rufo as “a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to universities, a spokeswoman said, adding that the vice president-elect believes Rufo “recognizes schools and universities exist to equip American students to face tomorrow’s challenges, not to indoctrinate them with the fringe beliefs of the far left.”

. . . . Rufo said he is meeting with members of the Trump administration next month. He has said he thinks colleges and universities have been taken over by the left, and he wants to recapture them by cutting federal money to schools that continue to engage in DEI practices. He also wants to excise race-based affirmative action from any institution with which the federal government does business.

He has a particular animus toward elite universities, which he says traded merit and rigor for neo-Marxism and discrimination against white and Asian people.

“It’s time to really put the hammer to these institutions and to start withdrawing potentially billions of dollars in funding until they follow the law,” he said.

Just a few years ago Rufo was a fairly obscure figure, largely written off by liberals as a conservative activist. And indeed, that’s what he is, but his ascendancy has been quick, and he has a great deal of power. Despite his being on the right, I do have some sympathy with his aim of getting rid of DEI, which has become an ideologically motivated vehicle for circumventing federal law and imposing an ideological agenda on colleges.  DEI is going to have a hard time in the next four years!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a hankering for birds:

Hili: The migrating birds have flown away, only ours are left.
Andrzej: So what?
Hili They are also difficult to catch.
In Polish:
Hili: Ptaki wędrowne odleciały, są tylko te nasze.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Też je trudno złapać.

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

From Science Humor:

From Stacy:

From The 2024 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails:

From Masih; a girl cries when forced by her school principal to put on her headscarf:

From Jay, a Monty Python sketch 45 years ahead of its time. Almost every word is apposite:

And a follow-up tweet about Cleese’s defending leaving the scene in when people tried to delete it from the stage version.

A bodega cat from Barry:

— Bodega Cats (@bodegacats.bsky.social) 2024-11-23T14:25:13.052Z

From my feed, a seemingly happy fox:

Red fox in winter 🦊🌨️

— Ibra (@ibra1.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T19:45:22.241Z

This lad grew up to be President of the U.S.:

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish boy murdered by cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was four.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T12:15:21.178Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a tuxedo cat in Morocco (the thread has more of this cat and others in tourist destinations):

Climed to the top of Aït Ben Haddou, the spectacular fortified village in Morocco dating back to at least the 11th century, where they filmed Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Game of Thrones etc. It’s an incredible place, but the thing I want to tell you is that I met this cat #ProofOfCat

— Alex von Tunzelmann (@alexvont.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T06:02:00.119Z

Do watch this video to see what these weird things are. I’m not gonna tell you!  (Matthew said, “Who knew?”)

I'm sorry, WHAT NOW?TIL – Mares' Eggs exist. Trust me – this is worth 1:47 min of your time.Only in Oregon, folks (well *almost* only in Oregon) 🤯Seriously – if you're a biology nerd…or any kind of nerd – watch this NOWvideo.cascadepbs.org/show/oregon-…

— Cri 🕊🐝🐜📝🎭⚽😷 (@crawlieswithcri.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T04:29:52.115Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

November 25, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a new “work week: it’s Monday, November 25, 2024, and National Parfait Day.  I also remind you that on Thanksgiving (Thursday), I’m heading to Poland until December 11. I’ll be in Dobrzyn with my human and felid friends, and then on to the Silesian Science Festival in Katowice, a five-hour train ride from Włocławek, the biggest town near Dobrzyn.

TUBS, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Blasé Day, National “Eat With a Friend” Day (the scare quotes imply that you’re only supposed to pretend to eat with a friend), and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 25 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has sworn to begin mass deportations of undocumented immigrants on Day 1 of his Presidency. The NYT describes how American immigrants are preparing for this (article archived here).

President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to slash immigration — both legal and illegal — and ramp up deportations on Day 1.

Immigrants are racing to get ahead of the crackdown.

Foreign-born residents have been jamming the phone lines of immigration lawyers. They’re packing information meetings organized by nonprofits. And they’re taking whatever steps they can to inoculate themselves from the sweeping measures Mr. Trump has promised to undertake after he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

“People that should be scared are coming in, and people that are fine with a green card are rushing in,” said Inna Simakovsky, an immigration lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, who added that her team has been overwhelmed with consultations. “Everyone is scared,” she said.

People with green cards want to become citizens as soon as possible. People who have a tenuous legal status or who entered the country illegally are scrambling to file for asylum, because even if the claim is thin, having a pending case would — under current protocols — protect them from deportation. People in relationships with U.S. citizens are fast-tracking marriage, which makes them eligible to apply for a green card.

In total there are about 13 million who have legal permanent residency. And there were an estimated 11.3 million undocumented people in 2022, the latest figure available.

That’s a lot of people who arrived here illegally or are awaiting adjudication of their claims, claims that must nearly always be based on fear of persecution in their home countries. It’s clear that most people of both parties want immigration curbed, and that is equivalent to deporting those who would have been barred previously from entering under federal law.  I may be a curmudgeon, but if people arrived here illegally, they can be removed legally. If you think that’s harsh, the article also adds this:

Deportations are not uncommon. Mr. Trump deported about 1.5 million people during his first term, according to analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. President Biden has removed about as many. President Obama removed 3 million in his first term.

The issue is the optics of mass deportation, which wouldn’t be so good.  One can also hope that Trump barked louder than he will bite. But I see no ethical reason why everybody who arrived here illegally or under fals pretenses should get to stay forever.

*Ukraine now has its hands on big American missiles that have been fired at Russian targets. So have cruise missiles donated by Britain. The WSJ describes the threat they post to Russia.

A half-dozen U.S. ballistic missiles, fired by Ukraine, slammed into an ammunition depot some 75 miles across the Russian border early Tuesday, setting off further detonations that turned the sky red.

The following morning, 10 British-provided cruise missiles pounded the vicinity of a Kremlin-run sanatorium that was apparently used as a military headquarters, smashing one after another in the town of Marino, located in Russia’s Kursk region about 20 miles from the front line there.

These two strikes, the first Kyiv launched with Western-supplied missiles after receiving authorization from the U.S. and allies, show the range of military targets now available to Kyiv.

The U.S. and its allies have permitted the use of the hard-hitting and difficult-to-intercept missiles at a critical time for Ukraine, which is struggling to hold back mounting Russian offensives along the 800-mile front line. Striking deeper in the rear will help Ukraine slow Russia’s war machine before it delivers more troops, supplies and bombs onto the front lines, where they are most dangerous.

How much of a difference the new capability will make on the battlefield depends on how many missiles Ukraine receives and how effectively it uses them.

The permission comes late for Kyiv, which made the first requests to strike inside Russia using U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow and U.S. Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, this spring. It already had permission to fire shorter-range artillery into Russia.

Here’s a WSJ picture, with attributions, of the US missiles:

. . . and the UK cryuse missiles, with attributions to the drawing:

The British missiles have a range of 155 miles; the US ones 186 miles. That won’t get them to Moscow, but plenty of military target and troops are in range. But don’t think the Russians (with their infusion of worm-ridden North Korean soldiers) won’t retaliate. I will be curious to see how Trump, according to his promise, will end the war on “Day 1” of his administration.

*There have been pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli riots in Montreal, for crying out loud. First three tweets and then a story:

And some antisemitism, masquerading as anti-Zionism, in Toronto.  The store’s site can be seen here.

From the Montreal Gazette, a description of the riots: (I didn’t realize the riots were also against NATO):

Three people were arrested after pro-Palestinian, anti-NATO protesters smashed windows, clashed with police officers, and set vehicles ablaze on Friday evening.

The protest coincided with the arrival of approximately 300 delegates from NATO member states and partner countries attending a high-level summit, running from Nov. 22 to 25 in Montreal, focused on Ukraine, climate change, and the alliance’s future. The protest also came as the second day of the wave of student-wide pro-Palestinian protests across Montreal.

An initial group of protesters gathered at Émilie-Gamelin Parc downtown at around 4:30 p.m. before marching toward the Quartier des Spectacles, according to Manuel Couture, a spokesperson for the Montreal police. By 5:30 p.m., another group had converged at Place des Arts, and the two demonstrations merged.

The protesters then marched down St-Urbain St. At 6:10 p.m., tensions escalated as demonstrators set an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on fire in the middle of the crowd. As the march continued, objects — including small explosive devices and metal items — were hurled into the street, targeting police officers. By 6:40 p.m., protesters had smashed shop windows near St-Urbain and René-Lévesque Blvd., and set two vehicles ablaze.

Couture said police deployed chemical irritants and conducted crowd-dispersal manoeuvres to regain control. Three protesters were arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers and obstructing police work.

Couture said that the protesters had dispersed by 7 p.m.

According to fliers posted on social media, Friday’s protest was organized by Divest for Palestine, an anti-capitalist group describing itself as a “collective of citizens, activists, and civil society groups involved in the Palestinian struggle.”

An Instagram post by the group said the protest was endorsed by dozens of organizations, including student groups such as Divest McGill and the Concordia Research and Education Workers Union, as well as other groups like Independent Jewish Voices Montreal and Montreal Antifa.

The protest came amid heightened tensions following Thursday’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Concordia University, where protesters flooded the Hall Building and clashed with pro-Israel counter-demonstrators outside.

It’s Canada, Jake, and this upsets me because Canadians are supposed to be nice. The protestors aren’t nice; they are hateful. Now I don’t know what happens when Justin Trudeau leaves office, but perhaps Canadian readers can prognosticate.

*Speaking of antisemitism, here’s a short (15-minute) talk by Bari Weiss called “The old world is not coming back”, about the reappearance of Jew hatred in a world where we thought it had vanished  (a transcript is here).  It begins slowly, with a recitation of the litany of recent antisemitic incidents that most of us know, but begins heating up at 10:30,

*The AP reports that a First Amendment controversy is brewing in Oklahoma. They want to put Bibles in public schools.

A group of Oklahoma parents of public school students, teachers and ministers filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop the state’s top education official from forcing schools to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12.

The lawsuit filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court also asks the court to stop Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters from spending $3 million to purchase Bibles in support of his mandate.

The suit alleges that the mandate violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it involves spending public money to support religion and favors one religion over another by requiring the use of a Protestant version of the Bible. It also alleges that Walters and the state Board of Education don’t have the authority to require the use of instructional materials.

“As parents, my husband and I have sole responsibility to decide how and when our children learn about the Bible and religious teachings,” plaintiff Erika Wright, the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and parent of two school-aged children, said in a statement. “It is not the role of any politician or public school official to intervene in these personal matters.”

The plaintiffs are represented by several civil rights groups, including the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.

Now this is clearly not just against the Oklahoma Constitution, but against the First Amendment of the American Constitution. But I suppose they have to argue first on Oklahoma grounds.  On the Friday NBC evening news, the Oklahoma Attorney General said he was sure that the Bible-allowing provision would be upheld, but I’m not as sure as he. And I am sure that it will be appealed no matter what the Oklahoma court rules. It doesn’t matter whether ANY Bible is used, for forcing religious material like that into the public schools is simply illegal.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili continues to mourn the onset of winter:

Hili: Sunsets are coming earlier and earlier.
Andrzej: Yes, nights are longer and electricity bills are higher.
Hili: Zachody słońca są coraz wcześniejsze.
Ja: Tak, noce są coraz dłuższe, a rachunki za prąd coraz wyższe.

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

From Meow:

From Seth Andrews:

From Cat Memes. The naughty cat was very bad!

 

From Masih; another Iranian protestor facing execution:

From Barry, some fierce and scary predators:

David Attenborough [whispering]:“As the predators close in on their helpless prey, we can only watch in silent horror, for it is not man’s role to interfere in the hierarchy of nature.”

— Uncle Duke (@uncleduke1969.bsky.social) 2024-02-13T17:37:33.840Z

From Malgorzata. It’s been two weeks now and I haven’t seen any news, but then again I haven’t scrutinized the MSM:

From my feed; some clever people:

From Rowling via Luana.  I love JKR though tons of people hate her, and for no good reason:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

A Dutch boy gassed to death with Zyklon B (cyanide) upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was three.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-11-25T11:50:12.401Z

Two tweets from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb; the first a Darwin embroidery:

Here's my embroidered version of this sketch:

— Mary Bates (@marybates.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T17:40:57.475Z

This is hilarious, and it shows how great the Savoir’s power is: he can convert water to both red and white wine!

Jesus was at Walgreen’s again.

— Captain Fanta (@sassy0210.bsky.social) 2024-11-23T17:15:06.092Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

November 24, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, November 24, 2024, and National Sardines Day, a day of celebrating a fish I abhor and (can you believe it?) is often put on pizza, for crying out loud. Well, here is some information about this odious fish:

Sardines (“pilchards”) are a nutrient-rich, small, oily fish widely consumed by humans and as forage fish by larger fish species, seabirds and marine mammals. Sardines are a source of omega-3 fatty acids. Sardines are often served in cans, but can also be eaten grilled, pickled, or smoked when fresh.

The term sardine was first used in English during the early 15th century, and may come from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, around which sardines were once abundant.

For your delectation (not mine):  “pickled sardines at a market on the Spanish island of Majorca”. I was likely at this market, but don’t remember sardines.

© Friedrich Haag / Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Carménère Day (a red wine that can be excellent), D. B. Cooper Day, celebrating the miscreant described below, who absconded from a flying plane on this day in 1971, and Mother Goose Parade Day, held annually on the Sunday before Thanksgiving in El Cajon, California. 

D. B. Cooper, also known as Dan Cooper, was an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, Cooper told a flight attendant he had a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to approximately $1,500,000 in 2024) and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, Cooper instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About thirty minutes after taking off from Seattle, Cooper opened the aircraft’s aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. Cooper’s true identity and whereabouts have never been determined conclusively.

And scenes of Mother Goose Parades from the past:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*From the Torygraph: Trump’s cabinet so far:

Scott Bessent, a hedge-fund billionaire and Trump loyalist, has been nominated for the Treasury Secretary, while Lori Chavez-DeRemer. a first term Representative who just lost her House set, has been tapped as the future Secretary of Labor.  My kishkes are roiling already.

*The NYT asks us, “Israel is not an ICC [International Criminal Court] member. How can the court prosecute Israeli leaders?” (article archived here)

Why does the court claim jurisdiction in the case?

More than 120 countries have joined an international treaty, the Rome Statute, and are members of the court. The court, based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, was created more than two decades ago to prosecute crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and the crime of aggression.

The court has accused Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant of using starvation as a weapon of war, among other charges, in the conflict with Hamas in Gaza. And it accused Muhammad Deif, a key plotter of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, sexual violence and hostage taking.

Powerful countries, including Russia, the United States and China, do not recognize the authority of the court. They have not ratified the Rome Statute, do not honor international warrants issued by the court and would not turn over their own citizens for prosecution.

Has the court sought to prosecute members from nonmember countries?

Yes. Russia is not a member of the court, but in 2023 it issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is not yet a member but granted the court jurisdiction and invited it to investigate. Ukraine is on track to become a member of the court in 2025.

The court also issued arrest warrants for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the former president of Sudan, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former leader of Libya. Neither country is a member of the court.

In 2017, the court’s prosecutor began to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including any that might have been committed by Americans. In response, Washington imposed sanctions on and revoked the visa of Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor at the time. The court later dropped its investigation.

Can the court enforce arrest warrants?

While the court’s reach may be virtually universal in theory, its power is ultimately in the hands of its members.

The court cannot try in absentia those accused of crimes and has no mechanism to make defendants stand trial. It relies on member states to act as enforcers and to detain suspects before they can stand trial in The Hague. Not all member states, however, abide by the agreement.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said on Friday that he had invited Mr. Netanyahu to visit his country, which is a member of the court, and that he would overlook his formal obligation to act on the court’s arrest warrant.

In September, Mr. Putin visited Mongolia, another member, without being arrested.

It remains to be seen what will happen with Netanyahu and Gallant.  The entire EU and Great Britain, for example, have said they’ll arrest these guys if they set foot on their land. But, as you see, some countries overlook the mandates and others may have sworn to obey them but then neglect them.  After all, the evidence that Netanyahu and Gallant have committed “crimes against” humanity is nil.

*Over at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan takes Biden to task for increasing the chances of WWIII by allowing U.S. missiles to be fired at Russia from Ukraine.

There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:

experts are well aware, and the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized this, that it is it is impossible to use such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists of the countries producing such weapons.

The tiny tsar continued:

We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities. And in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond also decisively and mirrored.

And he looked on edge, bedraggled and belligerent, his arms and hands not moving a millimeter in what sure looks like AI.

There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploitsand Congressional bathrooms.

Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.” When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question.

I didn’t used to worry about this but now I have to say that my worries are growing. After all, now that the tiny tsar is in power in Russia, and the burger-scarfing Orange Man is about to take office, can we really have confidence that rationality vis-à-vis nukes will reign?

*The Washington Post has a nice interactive reprise of Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis specimen discovered in 1974 and which provided considerable information about early hominins (e.g., they were bipedal). Called “Lucy’s legacy,” and archived here, though without the interactive feature, it’s well worth a read (h/t Barry).  We’ve forgotten all the excitement that obtained when they dug up Lucy in 1974.

Fifty years ago, our understanding of human origins began to change with the discovery of Lucy, a remarkably complete, 3.2-million-year-old human relative unearthed from the sandy soil in Hadar, Ethiopia.

Lucy, formally known as A.L. 288-1, was about as tall as a kindergartner, with a body that blended features of apes and humans. Her Ethiopian name is Dinkinesh, which means “you are marvelous” in Amharic.

Understanding of human origins was still nascent in the 1970s. Fossils of hominins — the group that includes modern humans and our close ancestors — had been dated to 1.8 million years ago at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. A 2.5-million-year-old fossil of a hominin species called Australopithecus africanus had been discovered in South Africa. Lucy’s discovery on Nov. 24, 1974, by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, pushed things back nearly a million years, a major leap in scientific knowledge that still resonates a half-century later.

Here, for example, is a diagram from the paper (artist unidentified) showing how Lucy was intermediate between the presumed ancestral condition and modern humans with respect to her posture and bipedalism.

Today, we see only our species of humans — Homo sapiens — and often wonder if our abilities and features are unique. Lucy’s body had similarities to apes and to modern-day humans. [JAC: note that they show a modern ape, a chimp, as if was an ancestral form. It wasn’t, for chimps are alive today, but we have reason to think that the common ancestor of modern humans and modern chimps was reasonably close in appearance and behavior to a modern chimp].

Today, the map of early human evolution is much more complicated, and Lucy is one of a panoply of human ancestors in a complex and bushy family tree stretching back some 7 million years. Lucy was not the only Australopithecus. Even older than her, Ardipithecus— discovered in 1994 —blended apelike and humanlike characteristics. Side branches like Paranthropus appear in the fossil record, then disappear.

“The common conception is that we’re finding the grandmother [of humanity], and we’re never finding that,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Culturally, these are our ancestors — they are our connection to the past.”

We don’t have a good “family tree” of hominins connecting modern humans to earlier forms, like Homo erectus.  We may some day, given more fossil discoveries and perhaps unearthing of ancient DNA, but for the time being my diagram of human evolution showing all identified species is littered with question marks.

*Associated Press reports on reactions to RFK Jr.’s plan to stop fluoridating water, a move that I find misguided.  But so be it: this is what America apparently wants. (They’re going to need a lot more dental care).  And apparently local communities can and have stopped it as well:

For about 50 years, adding cavity-preventing fluoride to drinking water was a popular public health measure in Yorktown, a leafy town north of New York City.

But in September, the town’s supervisor used his emergency powers to stop the practice.

The reason? A recent federal judge’s decision that ordered U.S. regulators to consider the risk that fluoride in water could cause lower IQ in kids.

“It’s too dangerous to look at and just say ‘Ah, screw it. We’ll keep going on,’” said the town supervisor, Ed Lachterman.

Yorktown isn’t alone. The decision to add fluoride to drinking water rests with state and local officials, and fights are cropping up nationwide.

Communities in Florida, Texas, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and elsewhere have debated the idea in recent months — the total number is in the dozens, with several deciding to stop adding it to drinking water, according to Fluoride Action Network, an advocacy organization against water fluoridation. In Arkansas, legislators this week filed a bill to repeal the state’s fluoridation program.

There is some evidence that fluoride in drinking water at twice the levels permitted is associated with lower IQ, but no evidence for normal levels (0.7 mg/liter).  From another article:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.

“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.

Even the lowering of IQ is negligible: 2-5 points with a diet having excessive fluoride, but almost nobody ingests that much. One thing is for sure: dentists are going to get a lot more business and we’ll wind up having the teeth like those of many people in the UK (I asked my dentist). I’m not worried about the IQ business; rather, this is part of a big conspiracy theory by RFK Jr.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is cold. When I worried that she was leaving Dobrzyn, Malgorzata assured me, “Don’t worry. She is just going inside where it’s much warmer.”

A. Where are you going?
Hili: To the warmer lands.
In Polish:
Ja: Dokąd idziesz?
Hili: Do ciepłych krajów.

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

From Cat Memes:

 

From Things with Faces, a carrot that looks just like Homer Simpson:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih, who claims that the anger against the Iranian regime is still seething among the people, one of whom (second tweet) has sewed his lips together (does he not eat?):

Here Neil deGrasse Tyson defends Scientific American‘s publishing garbage on gender, justifying it by saying, “Well, Laura Helmuth lost her job.” But we don’t know whether she quit or was fired, and the owners of the magazine tolerated its mishigass for years, trashy and miguided pieces that were many of the magazine’s articles. Further, the articles denigrating the sex binary and implying that it’s fine for trans women to participate in sports were not from Helmuth, but from articles in the journal by others that were presumably reviewed by Helmuth. Blame not just her, but the magazine’s owners, who finally saw the light, but only after Helmuth’s obscenity-filled rant on Twitter.

Tyson has been wonky on sex and gender before, as I’ve reported (see for instance here and here.)

A tweet from Cathy Young via Luana.  This country is going to hell on the Red Ball Express:

From my feed:

From Simon, God’s attempt to show that all people are equal:

White, black, brown, yellow, Democrat, Republican, man, woman, straight, gay, transgender, Jew, Christian, Muslim, young and old — you will all taste the same to the zombies.

— God (@thetweetofgod.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T23:34:37.525Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. This first one seems to be real, but I have read only the completely insane introduction:

Received 31 July, accepted 7 August. "All articles are peer reviewed" and in PubMed Central. Key findings: "We practice Neurosurgery on Saturn in a country called Illusionland" pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC…

— Richard Sever (@richardsever.bsky.social) 2024-11-23T01:17:16.542Z

Meet the Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus), an Asian antelope, and, according to Matthew, there are several thousand of them loose in Texas. They were introduced as game animals and now constitute a free-ranging population.

The best thing about this planet is that every few days I'll learn about an animal I've literally never seen or heard of before, like the Nilgai which is just a stupidly massive antelope

— Capn Borscht (@capnborscht.bsky.social) 2024-03-22T13:16:39.172Z