Greetings on this gray and drizzly Chicago day of Thursday, January 19, 2023, and National Popcorn Day. On a diet but want a filling and tasty meal? Make a big bowl of popcorn, which has almost no calories, add salt, and drizzle it with olive oil.

It’s also World Quark Day, Tin Can Day, Women’s Healthy Weight Day (I thought that all weights were healthy), Gun Appreciation Day (a right-wing-created holiday that’s not for me), Husband’s Day in Iceland (men are given gifts and a special lamb dish, Hangikjöt, is served). Here’s the dish:

Finally, it’s Theophany / Epiphany (Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy), and its related observances:

Timkat, or 20 during Leap Year (Ethiopian Orthodox)

Vodici or Baptism of Jesus (North Macedonia)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 19 Wikipedia page.

Wine of the Day: Chateau Guirard is best known for its lovely (and pricey) Sauternes, a luscious sweet wine that is France’s best “sticky”—and perhaps the world’s. (Sauternes is made in Bordeaux from sémillon and sauvignon grapes that have been infected with mold, which sucks the water out of the grape and concentrates the sweetness.)

I didn’t even know that Guirard made a dry white wine, but when I saw a bottle for $17, and learned that it was made organically from both semillon and sauvignon blanc, I snapped it up. (You can also buy wines of similar composition made  in America, and some of them are okay, but you can’t taste the semillon.) In this bottle was hoping to get the honeyed flavor of the semillon grape without the sweetness, and I drank the bottle (half per night) with a dinner of chicken thighs (the best part of the bird), rice, and green peppers.

The nose reminded me of pears and lemons; the wine was a pale straw color. I don’t drink much white Bordeaux, and I was surprised at how different this tasted from my usual white wines. It had stuffing and a lovely perfume that was better the second day than the first.  This is a wine probably best enjoyed with richer seafood, like smoked salmon, but it was also good with chicken thighs.  It’s usually more expensive than what I paid, at at higher price points I would consider another wine: perhaps a sauvignon blanc or chinon blanc. But if you can find it at less than $20, try a bottle.

Da Nooz:

*Good Lord, I hadn’t heard of this plan but I can’t say I oppose it. According to the New York Times, the U.S. is starting to talk to Ukraine about reclaiming Crimea, which of course the Russians simply annexed nine years ago. The Russians might finish this war with less territory than they started with! (I still think Ukraine is going to lose land, though.):

For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Now that line is starting to soften.

After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases.

The moderation in position has come about as the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said — though they cautioned that the risk remained.

But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russia’s onslaught.

Now it’s not absolutely clear that these plans would wind up putting Crimea into Ukrainian hands, but I can’t imagine that the plan is just to show Russia how vulnerable it is. And let’s throw in some American made tanks for Zelensky, just as a Christmas present.

*In a column at the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin pins the rise of American anti-Semitism, which is a real phenomenon, on the political Right. She says “the cause is no mystery, either. What is it? The answer is in the first sentence above:

For example, the BDS movement is, I think, anti-Semitic, since one of its aims is removal of Israel as a state: “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That, in effect, is a recipe for genocide of the Jews. As far as I know, every member of the Democratic Congressional “squad” endorses BDS. It’s ironic that two signs of the progressive Left, with the Left as a whole traditionally inclusive, are dissing the Jews as “Zionists” on one hand and ignoring the oppression imposed by Islamic countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Palestine on the other.

*A woman and a boy were killed in a rare polar bear attack in Alaska. That must be a painful way to die, and the miscreant bear was going after a whole village:

A polar bear killed a woman and her year-old son in a remote village in western Alaska on Tuesday after it chased “multiple residents,” officials said in one of the few fatal polar bear attacks to take place in the past century.

The attack occurred near a school in the remote village of Wales, Alaska, which is on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula that juts into the Bering Sea toward Russia. About 170 people live in Wales, according to the Census Bureau, and most residents are Inupiaq.

A spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers identified the victims as Summer Myomick, 24, and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, 1. Ms. Myomick was a resident of St. Michael, Alaska, about 230 miles southeast of Wales, the spokesman, Austin McDaniel, said.

A local resident shot and killed the polar bear as it was attacking the pair, the Alaska State Troopers said in a statement. State troopers said that they were notified of the attack at 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

. . . While attacks on humans are extremely rare, polar bears are more likely to attack a person when they are “nutritionally stressed” and in “below-average body condition,” according to a 2017 study published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin.

You know what tthat means: the bears are hungry because the sea ice, from which they hunt seals, is shrinking due to global warming. Polar bears are already listed as “threatened”, but they could become “endangered”. And the more endangered they are, the more Alaskans are endangered as well.

*Speaking of global warming, Greenland is rapidly becoming the canary in the coal mine for global warming. A report in the WaPo (by Chris Mooney—remember him?) says that Greenland is getting hotter and losing ice, and it’s happening quickly:

*Finally, the world’s oldest person has died. It was a woman, of course, as they live longer than men, and she was a French nun, Lucile Randon. The AP reports:

A French nun who was believed to be the world’s oldest person but had been reportedly growing weary of the burdens of age has died a few weeks before her 119th birthday, her nursing home in southern France said Wednesday.

Lucile Randon, known as Sister André, was born in the town of Ales, southern France, on Feb. 11, 1904, and lived through the two world wars. As a little girl she was astonished by her first contact with electric lighting at school and, more recently, survived COVID-19 without even realizing she’d been infected.

Spokesman David Tavella said she died at 2 a.m. on Tuesday at the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in the southern port city of Toulon.

The Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people thought to be 110 or older, listed her as the oldest known person in the world after the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka, aged 119, last year.

The oldest living known person in the world listed by the Gerontology Research Group is now American-born Maria Branyas Morera, who is living in Spain, and is 115.

In better days, Sister Andre was known to enjoy a daily glass of wine and some chocolate. She toasted her 117th birthday in 2021 with Champagne, red wine and port.

“It made me very, very, very, very happy,” she said in a telephone interview at the time with The Associated Press. “Because I met all those I love and I thank the heavens for giving them to me. I thank God for the trouble they went to.”

She looks tired of living in the photo below, and the idea that this might happen to me is very scary. As the song “Old Man River” goes, “I’m tired of living, and scared of dyin’.”

If you want to know the verified record for longevity, Wikipedia says this under “oldest people‘:

The longest documented and verified human lifespan is that of Jeanne Calment of France (1875–1997), a woman who lived to age 122 years and 164 days. She claimed to have met Vincent van Gogh when she was 12 or 13.

All ten of the oldest documented people in history were women, as are all of the ten oldest living people.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sick of winter:

Hili: I’m coming inside.

A: This is the third time today.

Hili: I’m checking whether the winter has gone away.

Hili: Wracam do domu.

Ja: To już dziś trzeci raz.

Hili: Tak, sprawdzam, czy ta zima już sobie poszła.

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

From Cat Attack via Merilee:

Something I found on Facebook:

From Malcolm, a great balancer. Be sure to watch all four balancing tricks.

A toot from God on Mastodon:

From Masih. Translation from Farsi:

A new video of Aida Rostami, a young doctor who secretly treated the wounded of the Iranian revolution in Ekbatan town, has recently been published.  See Aida Rostami’s free and light dance on autumn leaves. This flame, this light and this beauty was extinguished by the criminals of the Islamic Republic on December 21

She’s gone.

ویدئوی جدیدی از آیدا رستمی، پزشک جوانی که در شهرک اکباتان مجروحان انقلاب ایران را به شکل پنهانی مداوا می‌کرد، به تازگی منتشر شده است.
رقص رها و سبک‌بالانه آیدا رستمی بر روی برگ‌های پاییزی را ببینید. این شعله، این نور و این زیبایی، ۲۱ آذرماه توسط جنایتکاران جمهوری اسلامی خاموش شد pic.twitter.com/594OKpNiii

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 18, 2023

This new statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. embracing his wife Coretta Scott King, just unveiled on the Boston Commons, is not a good one. Not only does it now show them, but it looks mildly salacious:

Friend of mine walked over to the new statue on the common today. Dear God it's awful. pic.twitter.com/FSSeNF5yaE

— Will ❤️‍🔥 (@NHBullmoose) January 14, 2023

From Malcolm. This bird IS doing a model’s walk!

How to walk the catwalkpic.twitter.com/OcOu9f7he0

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 16, 2023

From the Auschwitz Memorial, two siblings, four and six, were gassed upon arrival

19 January 1940 | A Hungarian Jewish girl, Sarolta Grünwald (pictured left), was born in Csongrad.

In June 1944 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber. She was 4 years old. Her two years older brother Sandor was killed with her. pic.twitter.com/hc5w1c8Cpl

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 19, 2023

Tweets from the world-renowned Professor Cobb. First, a really messed-up indoor soccer game. These guys should have their footy licenses confiscated.

I would pay to watch this pic.twitter.com/x3lPF4Thle

— Max Rushden 💛🖤 (@maxrushden) January 18, 2023

This guy is a fraud! The BBC must have been hard up for entertainment back then. . .

Probably my favourite clip of British TV ever.
A man who can jump on eggs without breaking them… pic.twitter.com/O2c3WgqyIl

— Rae Earl (@RaeEarl) January 18, 2023

What’s wrong with her answer? Nothing!

She was so serious 😭 pic.twitter.com/65uuwOZdKA

— Mesh🇧🇧 (@rahsh33m) January 17, 2023

Because I have only a handful of readers’ wildlife contributions, there won’t be a photo post today: the wildlife photos will be sporadic until I receive more. Please send in your good photos. Thanks!

Welcome to Hump Day ( “Lá Cromáin” in Irish), January 18, 2023, and National Gourmet Coffee Day. It’s fine if you want good beans, but this is the kind of “gourmet coffee” you don’t want (it’s better called “gourmand coffee”):

It’s also National Peking Duck Day, Thesaurus Day, and Winnie the Pooh Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A defector from Russia’s paramiliary force has defected to Norway, implying that he’ll expose Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine. Well, that would be one witness:

Andrei Medvedev, who says he commanded about 15 fighters in the Wagner mercenary group in Ukraine, has applied for asylum in Norway after being detained by local security forces for illegally crossing the nation’s border with Russia in the early hours of Friday, his lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, said.

Norwegian immigration authorities confirmed that a man matching Mr. Medvedev’s description was detained and had requested asylum, but declined to comment further, citing security and privacy concerns.

In a video published on Monday, Mr. Medvedev told a Russian human rights activist, Vladimir Osechkin, that he had crossed into Norway on foot and requested asylum after surrendering to the police. He said he was willing to collaborate with international investigators into potential war crimes committed by Wagner, a major paramilitary force at the center of the Kremlin’s war efforts in Ukraine.

Mr. Risnes, the lawyer, said Mr. Medvedev’s case is the first of its kind in Norway, adding that it could set a precedent for how the West handles the defection of Russian fighters.

However, it may not be as damaging as it looks, for the guy has a history:

Mr. Medvedev’s own accounts of his life and military service have been contradictory at times, and he has declined to provide evidence for his most explosive claims.

Mr. Medvedev, who grew up in a Siberian orphanage and had served at least four years in jail for robbery, said he had witnessed summary executions on the front lines of Wagner fighters accused of cowardice and desertion, as well as dramatic casualty rates suffered by inmate units sent by commanders on suicide missions. The claims have not been independently verified.

Two people who knew Medvedev before confirmed he was in the paramilitary unit, but couldn’t corroborate his claims about war crimes.

*In yesterday’s NYT, writer Jesse Singal discusses the question, “What if diversity trainings are doing more harm than good?” A lot of us have known for a while about data that these sessions were ineffectual, but Singal also argues that they’re harmful:

Diversity workshops can foster better intergroup relations, improve the retention of minority employees, close recruitment gaps and so on. The only problem? There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory trainings that blame dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net-negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about.

. . . Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.”

. . .If diversity trainings have no impact whatsoever, that would mean that perhaps billions of dollars are being wasted annually in the United States on these efforts. But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.

That’s partly because any psychological intervention may turn out to do more harm than good. The late psychologist Scott Lilienfeld made this point in an influential 2007 article where he argued that certain interventions — including ones geared at fighting youth substance use, youth delinquency and PTSD — likely fell into that category. In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatory, or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed, may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate pre-existing biases.

Many popular contemporary D.E.I. approaches meet these criteria. They often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary re-understanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems. . .

But it doesn’t matter whether they work, does it? All that matters is that universities look like they’re doing something—just to show that they’re taking the DEI movement seriously If this training doesn’t work—and an enormous amount of money is being spent implementing it—it will be America’s most expensive form of virtue signaling.  Singal does have a solution: focus on an organization’s specific diversity problems rather than on race itself, including problems with employee retention, employee relationships, treatment of customers, and so on. I’ve heard for a long time that DEI trainings in general aren’t what they are cracked up to be, and it’s appalling to think of the millions of dollars that universities like Yale spend on them (they are a major function of DEI units, and that means permanent hires) The University of Michigan’s DEI programs, for instance, are estimated to cost $18 million this year.

*Will the Elgin Marbles, part of the Parthenon frieze, go to Greece? A NYT article reports that the Greek Prime Minister and the British Museum (who has custody of a large number of them) are discussing their return. They should go back to join their friends in Athens, as they were taken by Lord Elgin under dubious circumstances. And it looks as though they might, though I’ll miss seeing them on the first floor of the British Museum:

Now there are hopeful signals that perhaps a resolution between the British Museum and Greece could be in sight as officials on both sides have acknowledged that secret talks have taken place. But even as those disclosures have flowered into optimism that real progress will soon be made, both sides have made it clear that no deal is yet imminent.

Indeed, they remain far apart on some key questions.

Some suggest that the deal is almost done, but it doesn’t sound like it:

But a deal remains much further away than those reports suggest, according to the two people with knowledge of the negotiations who spoke to The New York Times. And, in fact, in recent days officials from both sides have spoken publicly to pump the brakes on the soaring expectations that any deal was imminent.

For his part, Mitsotakis has asked the British Museum to return all of the frieze in its collection, some 250 feet of carved stone that once wrapped around the Parthenon, the person with knowledge of the Greek position said. Mitsotakis wanted an agreement that those panels would stay in Greece for at least 20 years, the person added. There, they would be reunited with other parts of the frieze already on display in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

. . . The Greek side hoped to negotiate the return of the remaining sculptures at a later date, the person with knowledge of its position added. In return for the frieze, Greek museums would supply the British Museum with a rotating selection of priceless artifacts, some of which had never left Greece, the person added.

There’s no doubt that the marbles should be given back, but I would hope that some of them could be loaned to the British Museum on a rotating basis, as it’s a big draw there, and many people wouldn’t be able to see them if they had to go to Greece.

*At the WaPo, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research for the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, argues persuasively that “The time for incremental in Ukraine is over. Send in the tanks.” Germany is in talks to send tanks to Ukraine, and if they do it, then there’s no excuse for us not to.  O’Hanlon argues that while we’ve helped Ukraine a lot, most of the help has been reactive, while tanks will help Ukraine win the war in a major way:

What one might call the “the Goldilocks policy” will continue to work only if we recognize its risks — most importantly, that it is fundamentally reactive, thus hindering the development of a strategy to end the war. (And by the way, I’m in favor of sending hundreds of Western tanks as soon as possible — for reasons I will explain below.)

. . . Yet the debate over tanks has also revealed the biggest weakness of the incrementalist approach — namely, that it is always reacting to events on the battlefield rather than trying to shape them. Going step by step has helped Ukraine patch up vulnerabilities, to be sure, but it hasn’t furthered the goal of formulating a strategy to end the war or defining the capacity that will be ultimately needed to do so. Tactically, we have been very good, but strategically our planning is somewhat lacking.

As for the tanks, I think it’s time we provide them. That’s not because doing so will necessarily help Ukraine win the war decisively. Rather, Kyiv deserves a fair chance to win back as much territory as possible. Until it has that chance, neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to negotiate with the kind of sober realism needed to end this war on reasonable and sustainable terms. Sending tanks will also show Moscow that American resolve remains firm even with war-skeptical Republicans in charge in the House of Representatives — another factor crucial to productive talks.

Where are the tanks? There ought to be tanks. Well, maybe this year.

*Finally, Greta was lugged away by the Polizei during a protest.

Police in western Germany carried Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and other protesters away Tuesday from the edge of an open coal pit mine where they demonstrated against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for the mine’s expansion, German news agency dpa reported.

Thunberg was among hundreds of people who resumed anti-mining protests at multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia a day after the last two climate activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village of Luetzerath left the site.

The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038. Both argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security that’s squeezed by the cut in supply of Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine.

. . .Thunberg had traveled to western Germany to participate in weekend demonstrations against the expanded mine and also took part in Tuesday’s protest near Luetzerath. Police in nearby Aachen said a group of around 50 protesters got dangerously close to the rim of the mine and did not want to leave despite being asked to do so.

All the people in that group had to be carried away from the edge of the mine and were then temporarily held to determine their identities, police said. Photos from the scene showed Thunberg was one of those whom officers took away.

She looks very satisfied:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hopeful for once:

Hili: I see new prospects.

A: What prospects?

Hili: A return home and a warm bed.

Hili: Widzę nowe perspektywy.

Ja: Jakie?

Hili: Powrotu do domu i ciepłego łóżka.

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

Two from FB:

From Bruce:

And a biology lesson from Bizarre and Wonderful World:

From Frits. Translation (his asterisk): “”Brave little sheep d*g still has to learn the trade a bit, but gets some tips whispered.”

Moedige kleine schaapshond moet 't vak nog 'n beetje leren, maar krijgt wat tips ingefluisterd.❤️ pic.twitter.com/52ap2TMlIq

— Ilja Gort (@iljagort) January 17, 2023

From Barry, a helpful pinniped:

Employee of the Month 🏆 pic.twitter.com/bDqaxTsRo1

— Kelly Canuck🍁 (@KellyCanuckTO) January 16, 2023

From Malcolm: a population-density map of India:

Also had lots of requests for this one: a population density map of India. This was by far the longest render.

Well, except for furry France, which still holds the record. #rayshader adventures, an #rstats tale pic.twitter.com/uMNDfGl417

— terence fosstodon (@researchremora) January 5, 2023

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed upon arrival; he was 1½ years old:

18 January 1943 | A French Jewish boy, Claude Alexandre, was born in Lyon.

In August 1944 he was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. pic.twitter.com/WwJF3Jg5sK

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 18, 2023

Tweets from Matthew.  The backstory for the first one is here.

Mrs. Frederick H. Fleitman of New York, 1930. pic.twitter.com/jwVswQkc6Z

— Incunabula (@incunabula) January 15, 2023

Stoats run free! (Matthew and I love stoats, who eat stoatmeal for breakfast):

Running free 🐾🐾🤗
Watch the stoats I released back to the wild enjoy their new-found freedom on @BBCLookNorth tonight at 6.30pm #bbclooknorth pic.twitter.com/670j4wBNue

— Robert E Fuller (@RobertEFuller) January 17, 2023

Okay, there are a lot of passes here but I can show only a handful:

Benjamin Pavard pic.twitter.com/byqnGpstjE

— Jogo Bonito (@ufcfooty) January 16, 2023

Kaka pic.twitter.com/D7eTDGdaPg

— Jogo Bonito (@ufcfooty) January 16, 2023

Luka Modric pic.twitter.com/WUmCpZxQqv

— Jogo Bonito (@ufcfooty) January 16, 2023

Welcome to Monday, January 16, 2023, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For comestibles, it’s National Hot and Spicy Food Day.

As in every year, I present the heart of Dr. King’s 17-minute “I Have a Dream” speech, presented at the Washington Monument on August 28, 1963. A brilliant piece of rhetoric and a great boost to civil rights. Listen to it again. (This video dissects the rhetoric and source of his words.)

Today’s Google Doodle, showing the Washington, D.C. mall during the speech above, celebrates Martin Luther King Day (click to see where it goes):

It’s also National Fig Newton Day (a favorite cookie of mine), Appreciate a Dragon Day, Book Publishers Day, National Pothole Day, and National Religious Freedom Day, commemorating Jefferson’s  Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, adopted by the Virginia Assembly on January 16, 1786. It was the forerunner of our First Amendment, and was one of three things he wished to be remembered for on his tombstone (his Presidency was not one of them):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 16 Wikipedia page.

Wine of the Day: This high-class Burgundy, well above my psychological price barrier, was able to enter my gullet through the generosity of a kind reader, who sent the bottle as a Coynezaa gift. In fact, the 2011 is no longer available, and i can find the ratings (and price) only back to 2012.

Since I rarely get to sample great Burgundy, much less not-so-great Burgundy, I have not much to compare this to, but one sip tells you that you’re in the presence of greatness. This is a gutsy Burgundy, redolent of red berries and, yes, licorice. (I definitely smelled licorice and was happy to see that a wine expert also detected the flavor.) It was hefty enough to go with my weekly t-bone, and although I can find no ratings or notes on the 2011, here are Robert Parker’s note from the 2019 vintage:

The 2019 Corton Le Rognet et Corton Grand Cru has also turned out very nicely, mingling aromas of cherries, berries and plums with hints of woodsmoke and coniferous forest floor. Medium to full-bodied, deep and sapid, with lively acids, superb depth of fruit and refined tannins, it’s long and penetrating. It was with sadness that I learned of Pierre Guillemot’s passing, at the age of 93, while this report was going to press. Having enjoyed Pierre’s inaugural vintage of Serpentières, the striking 1947, on a number of occasions, it is evident that he hit the ground running as a formidable winemaker, and he was always spoken of with the greatest warmth along the Côte d’Or. Guillemot grandpère must, however, have been satisfied that the domaine he founded is in good hands, ably directed by his grandsons. As I’ve written before, winemaking at this seven-hectare estate is rather classical, the reds fermenting in wooden tanks with temperature control, followed by élevage with modest percentages of new wood. The wines are remarkably consistent, surpassing expectations in challenging years and fully delivering in more propitious vintages. The 2018s, revisited here in bottle, have fulfilled the promise they showed from barrel, and the 2019s are even more vibrant and charming. So, it bears repeating that readers bemoaning the lack of fine, affordable Burgundy from the Côte d’Or should beat a path to the Guillemot family’s door. [JAC: this is “affordable” only if you’re Elon Musk![

There was no sediment to this wine, and no sign of aging. It could improve for another 5 years or more, though this is my last bottle. If you want to drink Burgundy at this level, take a second mortgage on your house or have a friend with a good cellar.  It improved the second day, and I drank the last sip with the greatest regret.

Da Nooz:

*At last the MSM (mainstream media) are starting to realize that affirmative action, because of the conservative Supreme Court, will soon be an ex-parrot. Have a look at the NYT article, “If affirmative action ends, college may be changed forever.” The operant word, however, is not “may” but “will.”

If the court rules as expected, the class admitted for the fall of 2024 will look quite different, education officials said.

“We will see a decline in students of color attending college before we see an increase again,” said Angel B. Pérez, the chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “We will be missing an entire generation.”

That sounds a bit hyperbolic, as there are a gazillion colleges in America besides Harvard. An entire generation of students is 20 years’ worth: five college turnovers. But I’m sure elite colleges will find workarounds, though they may be challenged. There’s more:

The institutions most likely to be dramatically affected are the 200 colleges and universities regarded as “selective” — meaning they admit 50 percent or fewer of their applicants. And for smaller, highly selective liberal arts colleges, like Wesleyan, the impact on college culture could be particularly noticeable, as professors on these tightly knit campuses say their small classes thrive on interactions by a diverse group of students.

There are about 5300 colleges and universities in America: 200 represent only 4% of the total. But the impact is far-reaching:

The court could prevent colleges from purchasing lists of potential applicants that focus on race and ethnicity, a common practice used in recruitment, Dr. Pérez said.

“Fly-ins,” in which certain students are provided expense-paid visits to campuses, could also be on the chopping block. So could scholarship programs designated for students of color, which many rely on to afford tuition.

“Fly-in programs, scholarship programs, partnerships with churches and community-based organizations, where does it end?” Dr. Pérez asked.

My own solution, if you see diversity as an innate good, as the Bakke case did, would be more widespread recruiting. But if it’s targeted at minorities, that may be illegal. The solution would then be to lower the admissions bar for everyone, so that the elite schools would no longer be so elite. And that seems to be what they’re doing, but under the radar:

Colleges are planning behind the scenes for the court ruling, though they are reluctant to release plans, worried about potentially opening themselves up to legal action.

“We don’t want to get ahead of the court, and we don’t want to give the court any ideas,” Dr. Pérez said.

But some have made pre-emptive moves. Standardized tests, for instance, have long been criticized for handicapping poor students and students of color, partly because they may not have access to expensive test preparation classes.

But what do you use without standardized tests? To boost minority enrollment, you still have to use something that’s race-targeted. That’s what Harvard tried to do by lowering the “personality scores” of Asian-American applicants. And it won’t work, at least if the Court rules as we think they will. There’s no doubt how the Supreme Court will rule, and affirmative action will certainly go into the dumper, probably by a vote of 6-3.

*The Wall Street Journal is still predicting a recession this year. I do, too, though I hoped I was wrong. When eggs are $6 a dozen, as I saw in the store an hour ago, things aren’t going well.

Despite signs that inflation has started to recede, economists still expect higher interest rates to push the U.S. economy into a recession in the coming year, according to The Wall Street Journal’s latest quarterly survey.

On average, business and academic economists polled by the Journal put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 61%, little changed from 63% in October’s survey. Both figures are historically high outside actual recessions.

*Columnist David von Drehle of the Washington Post, who despises Trump, is nevertheless glad that Biden was caught with classified documents, even though his case is not all that similar to Trump’s. Nevertheless, it’s similar enough that, argues Drehle, it guarantees that Trump will not be indicted in the strongest criminal case against him, and Drehle thinks that’s good. His reasoning:

But now that case will probably not be brought, no matter how many side-by-side charts are created to distinguish between the known allegations against Trump and the (so far unknown) culpability of Biden. According to the latest Gallup data, 45 percent of Americans identify as Republicans or leaning toward the Republicans; 44 percent are Democrats or lean in that direction. The Justice Department serves them all, and its credibility rests on being perceived to play fair.

To be indicted and hauled into court for history’s most heavily publicized trial would invigorate Trump, and the spectacle would galvanize his dwindling base of support. He’d go from grumbling irrelevance in the gilded prison of his Mar-a-Lago mausoleum to ring master of a circus trial that would dominate every news outlet.

*Two tragedies yesterday. First, a Russian missile destroyed a Ukrainian apartment building in the city of Dnipro, killing at least 30. Russia keeps targeting civilians, which is a war crime, but denying it:

Emergency crews worked through the frigid night and all day at the multi-story residential building, where officials said about 1,700 people lived before Saturday’s strike. The reported death toll made it the deadliest attack in one place since a Sept. 30 strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.

Russia also targeted the capital, Kyiv, and the northeastern city of Kharkiv during a widespread barrage the same day, ending a two-week lull in the airstrikes it has launched against Ukraine’s power infrastructure and urban centers almost weekly since October.

Russia on Sunday acknowledged the missile strikes but did not mention the Dnipro apartment building. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in the war.

And in Nepal, a Yeti Airlines plane crashed while attempting to land at Pokhara (a famous tourist town because it’s the jumping-off point for treks to the Annapurna region). At least 68 of the 72 people aboard were killed.

Hours after dark, scores of onlookers crowded around the crash site near the airport in the resort town of Pokhara as rescue workers combed the wreckage on the edge of the cliff and in the ravine below. Officials suspended the search for the four missing people overnight and planned to resume looking Monday.

Local resident Bishnu Tiwari, who rushed to the crash site near the Seti River to help search for bodies, said the rescue efforts were hampered by thick smoke and a raging fire.

“The flames were so hot that we couldn’t go near the wreckage. I heard a man crying for help, but because of the flames and smoke we couldn’t help him,” Tiwari said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the accident, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said.

A witness said he saw the aircraft spinning violently in the air after it began descending to land, watching from the terrace of his house. Finally, Gaurav Gurung said, the plane fell nose-first towards its left and crashed into the gorge.

I’ve made that short (27-minute) flight the other way, from Pokhara to Katmandu, and it’s not nearly as difficult as landing at Lukla, in the Everest region. I suspect it’s an aircraft malfunction, and my sympathies go out to the Nepalese who died in that crash, and to their families.

*Over at The Free Press, Bari Weiss’s expanding attempt to create a centrist New York Times, Martin Clarke, former editor-in-chief of the Mail Online, dissects the new “royals bio,”, Spare, in a piece called “Prince Harry proves one thing: the tabloids were right“. But how were they right? By being factually correct in their claims:

Ironically, the great revelation at the heart of Spare is that so much of the reporting Harry has objected to over the years turns out to be substantially true.

The press was right about the drug use that started in Harry’s teens. He cheerfully admits to smoking large amounts of cannabis in the years up to and following his escape to California. He even cops to sampling chocolate-covered magic mushrooms from Courteney Cox’s fridge in Montecito.

The press was right about allegations that Meghan bullied Palace staff (though Harry maintains it never happened).

We were especially—and tragically—right about the friction among “The Fab Four.”

In fact, by the time we got around to reporting about the tensions between the Cambridges (William and Kate) and the Sussexes (Harry and Meghan), they had been simmering for some time.

As an editor for 27 years, I can assure Harry that nobody sits around in editorial conferences plotting how they can screw over the Sussexes today. In my experience, senior journalists are much more likely to be plotting how they can screw over each other.

But, above all else, the main gripe Harry has with the press is the way the media—the tabloid media in particular—allegedly hounded, smeared and demeaned his wife. So much so, he says, they ultimately had to flee for North America.

According to Clarke, that just ain’t so:

But I went back and reviewed what the UK papers wrote about the then-Ms. Markle in the days following that report. And while there was plenty of comment about her biracial background, it was almost entirely in the context of how it showed Britain had become a color-blind society (yup, that was still a good thing back then)—even if some of it was clumsily worded.

Most pieces lauded her for her beauty, style and acting career. In fact, several female columnists wondered why on earth she’d want to marry Harry.

But what struck me most was how little coverage there was. Meghan was barely on the front pages and some days didn’t appear in most outlets at all.

. . .But all this goes to the heart of Harry’s delusion. Uncomfortable facts can never be allowed to intrude. He ignores the yards of hysterical, gushing coverage that surrounded his wedding. He fails to mention the UK press’s treatment of him as a hero for fighting the Taliban. He doesn’t mention all the ludicrously dumb articles we wrote lauding the so-called “Fab Four” when they were actually at each other’s throats.

It’s why he won’t subject himself to anything tougher than fawning interviews, which allow him to pile nonsense upon nonsense.

It goes on, but I’m glad to see the press, for once, not fawning all over Harry’s new memoir, as they seem to be doing. Nobody I’ve read has had the guts to call it what it is: a self-serving attempt to settle scores, burnish his reputation, and make a ton of money. Although he wants to reconcile with his family, this book guarantees that it won’t happen. But ten million bucks trumps that.  I’m not sure why the public is so interested in this pair of married narcissists, but here I am writing about it, too! I’m done now.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is going a’ hunting:

Hili: I’m going for a night hunt, I have to sharpen my claws.

A: Maybe it would be better to return home because you can freeze.

Hili: Idę na nocne łowy, muszę naostrzyć pazurki.

Ja: Może lepiej wróć do domu, bo zmarzniesz.

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

From the FB page America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy. How many errors can you find? There are at least three.

And from the same site, which is a gold mine of LOLZ. It looks as if midgets (is that an improper word now?) were picketing the store.

From Jesus of the Day. This must be from either Denmark, Sweden, or Norway:

A Muslim version of Titania McGrath!

There's a muslim version of @TitaniaMcGrath and she's just as hilarious! Follow @AliaAbeed: pic.twitter.com/hH4keb7A3g

— WoogsRenegat (@WoogsRenegat) January 7, 2023

Ricky Gervais on God:

“I see nothing ‘wrong’ in believing in a God. I don’t think there is a God, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me.” – @rickygervais pic.twitter.com/KedJ1g1EZ4

— Daniel (@Clark1995Clark) January 15, 2023

From Luana. This is a newly unveiled sculpture of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King in Boston. But it looks a bit salacious to me!

Sometimes I think it's unfair that white folx don't have "representatives" building amazing sculptures for them like this. https://t.co/KeGLQ6Uvv5

— Climate Warrior🐬 #ClimateJustice🇵🇸#BDS⚧️ 🌈🇺🇦 (@ClimateWarrior7) January 14, 2023

This guy got what he deserved (I assume this wasn’t a setup):

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fan (@imfan00)

From the Auschwitz Memorial, we have two photos today. First, a mother and four-year-old child murdered on arrival:

16 January 1938 | Dutch Jewish boy Salomon Harschel was born in The Hague.

In October 1942 he was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. His mother Engeltje Harschel-Barendse was with him. pic.twitter.com/ZYFe7ZxfbE

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 16, 2023

A woman who survived saved SS photos of the killing process, beginning with head shaving:

16 January 1926 | A Hungarian Jewish woman, Lili Jacob, was born in Bilke.

Deported to #Auschwitz in May 1944 & transferred to Mittelbau-Dora. After liberation she found an album of SS photos of extermination process in Birkenau.

She emigrated to the USA & passed away in 1999. pic.twitter.com/Yzr2IYrXKm

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 16, 2023

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, why aren’t these sharks moving?

“He’s like a shark – he has to keep moving or he will die.” https://t.co/Dho5FUu0aw

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) January 14, 2023

What is this frog doing?

Just mama pig, baby pig, and their flying frog friend pic.twitter.com/QAF3hl58tW

— @Frog (@FrogOnIG) January 13, 2023

Dirt fight!

It's a very scary fight! 😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/lw5U8H37vA

— Figen (@TheFigen_) January 13, 2023

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dia de gepa” in Basque): January 11, 2023. It’s National Hot Toddy Day, celebrating the hot whisky drink, usually with honey, lemon, and spices. According to Wikipedia, the origin of the name is Indian:

The word toddy comes from the toddy drink in India, produced by fermenting the sap of palm trees. Its earliest known use to mean “a beverage made of alcoholic liquor with hot water, sugar, and spices”  is from 1786. It is often referred to as a ‘Hot Toady’ However, a few other sources credit Robert Bentley Todd for his prescription of a hot drink of brandy, canella (white cinnamon), sugar syrup, and water.

It’s also National Milk Day, Girl Hug Boy Day, and National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Reader Enrico is surprised that the NYT didn’t find this piece newsworthy (I haven’t been able to find it there, either), but it certainly is newsworthy, especially since a federal appellate court ruled that Title IX protects people on the basis of biological sex, not gender. That has all kinds of ramifications, most obviously for women’s sports in schools, and note that the next step up if there’s an appeal will be the Supreme Court, which would uphold the appellate decision.  From the Independent Women’s Forum:

A federal court of appeals has held that Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” refers to biological sex, not gender identity. The year-end ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit calls into question the legality of the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rules, which equate “gender identity” with “sex” and would require schools to open up women’s sports and other spaces to males who identify as women.

The case, Adams v. Sch. Bd. of St. Johns Cty., involved a challenge to a Florida school district’s bathroom policy. The Florida school district separates bathrooms based on biological sex while providing sex-neutral bathroom accommodations for students who identify as trans or gender fluid.

The 11th Circuit ruled 7-4 on December 30 that the bathroom policy violates neither Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 nor the U.S. Constitution. The court rejected the claim that the school board’s actions discriminated against trans-identifying students.

. . .But the decision has implications far beyond the bathroom context, as Title IX prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in all aspects of education.

In determining whether the policy at issue violated Title IX, the court of appeals was forced to consider whether the word “sex”, as used in the statute, includes “gender identity.” The court held that it does not, noting that if Congress wants to prohibit discrimination against trans-identifying students, it must say so explicitly.

It seems that Congress would have to make a new law modifying Title IX to get around this decision, and I don’t see how, given that the House is Republican, this would happen in the next two years. And although I don’t think transsexual people should be subject to discrimination in nearly all cases, in a couple of cases, including sports, prisons, and rape counseling, there’s a case to be made for a meaningful difference between sex and gender.

*The NYT published five letters from readers about the Hamline University/Muhammad’s Face controversy. Three are properly critical of Hamline’s hamhanded approach, which involved firing the instructor who showed the two pictures that outraged the fragile, while two other letters are ambiguous in that they say that it’s not a clearcut case. But it is. I’ll give excerpts from those two.

This is part of a letter from one Catherine DeLazzero, described as an “educational researcher”:

During class, Dr. López Prater could have provided a link to the painting, offering options to participate by viewing or listening (as it’s unfair to ask students to leave the class). Before offering such options, educators can seek guidance from experts with different perspectives as well as from students themselves, through one-to-one conversations, written reflections, anonymous surveys or dialogues with student organizations.

Ultimately what matters most is the students’ right to a quality education, which requires taking their needs into account and not forcing them to adopt an educator’s choice of whether or how to perceive an object.

First, did DeLazzero read the NYT article? For it says this:

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did.

In class, she prepped students, telling them that in a few minutes, the painting would be displayed, in case anyone wanted to leave.

It wasn’t that they had to leave the class, for they could have contacted the instructor López Prater in advance, and could thus have received advance warning. Further, a “quality education” doesn’t mean catering to the fragilities of every single student. In my view, those who complained might have been offended, but given the advance warning, they wanted to be offended. What they need is not teachers who cater to them, but therapists to work on their hypersensivity.

Here’s part of a letter from one Michael Rigsby from Connecticut:

There are many disturbing aspects of this sad story, but what concerns me most is the apparent inability to acknowledge that more than one truth can exist simultaneously, even when they are not in complete alignment.

*From reader Ken:

Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN. If ultimately successful, it would gut the Free Press protections established by SCOTUS in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).

You can read the complaint here.

First, this is what the Sullivan decision said:

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s freedom of speech protections limit the ability of American public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with “actual malice”, meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false.

And the AP’s description of the lawsuit, which asks for $475 million (almost half a billion dollars!):

Former President Donald Trump on Monday sued CNN, seeking $475 million in damages, saying the network had defamed him in an effort to short-circuit any future political campaign.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, focuses primarily on the term “The Big Lie” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

CNN said it had no comment on the lawsuit.

Trump repeatedly attacked CNN as president, which resonated with his conservative followers. He has similarly filed lawsuits against big tech companies with little success. His case against Twitter for knocking him off its platform following the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection was thrown out by a California judge earlier this year.

Numerous federal and local election officials in both parties, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the election fraud he alleges.

Trump’s lawsuit claims “The Big Lie,” a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to him more than 7,700 times on CNN since January 2021.

“It is intended to aggravate, scare and trigger people,” he said.

Trump ain’t going to win this one. His claims are not only bogus, but the standard of defamation is simply too high. He’ll have to prove that CNN was trying to keep him from running for political office again. Regardless, the AP notes that Trump intends to fire similar lawsuits against other media companies.

*The Washington Post reports that there is an online science journal edited by kids, and they are very demanding—in a good way. For instance, they send papers back to authors if the writing isn’t understandable to an 11 year old:

. .  Frontiers for Young Minds, which has drawn nearly 30 million online page views in its nine years, offers a different message on its homepage: “Science for kids, edited by kids.”

I think this is a terrific way to get kids interested in science, and if the journal can attract reputable authors, so much the better. Of course, it’s not going to be a place for primary research papers (or so I think), but it could be a good replacement for the rapidly-degenerating Scientific American. 

*This is Unfair Department. Reader Barry reports that a Vermont cat has been deemed unsuitable to run for the post of mayor of Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Spooky Bones’ political dreams came crashing down Friday, after Attleboro election officials deemed the mayoral hopeful ineligible to run.

After all, Spooky isn’t a registered voter and doesn’t meet the 18-year minimum age requirement.

Oh, and he’s also a cat.

In a Facebook post, the mascot for local game store Spooky Games addressed his failed bid to succeed former Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux, who began his new role as Bristol County sheriff last week.

“Dear supporters, it is with great disappointment that I concede the race for Mayor of Attleboro,” Spooky’s post read. “Apparently, you must be be a ‘registered voter.’”

He also vowed to continue fighting for “control of the town’s rat problem, funds for a cat park, and lower tuna prices for all.”

The city responded on Facebook:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, both Hili and Andrzej have become quite pessimistic and cynical.

Hili: Is the New Year a milestone?

A: Yes, on the road to oblivion.

Hili: Czy Nowy Rok to kamień milowy?

Ja: Tak, na drodze do nicości.

. . . and a picture of Szaron:

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

From Facebook:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Facebook:

From Masih, another impending execution of a protestor in Iran:

#EbrahimNaroui was arrested by plainclothes forces in Zahedan during nationwide protests in October. He has been sentenced to death on charges of "Waging War Against God.” This innocent 25 year old citizen will be executed immediately if his sentence is upheld by the court. https://t.co/gjqbbZeSbI

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 10, 2023

From Simon, who agrees with both of these sentiments, as he used to have to wait for long periods behind chatty customers.

I:
1) think this is genuinely lovely, and I hope it helps the people it’s meant to
2) would personally rather chew my arm off https://t.co/4O0ml3wDin

— Daniel Summers, MD (@WFKARS) January 10, 2023

From Ken. Here’s Rudy Giuliana, of all people, teaching us about kangaroo reproduction. The thing is, he’s right!

On his podcast, Rudy explains how a kangaroo gives birth and nurses her babies. pic.twitter.com/axy3wX7irX

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 9, 2023

From Barry, who’s worried that I’ve committed  ton of crimes:

“Isn’t it weird how, the more science you know, the more crimes you do? My nephew Sebastian took one semester of geology and now he runs an exotic bird smuggling ring.” pic.twitter.com/84uabWn5mL

— Take That Darwin (@TakeThatDarwin) January 9, 2023

From Malcolm. I think I’ve posted it before, but it’s adorable, so here it is again:

Cat asks deaf owner for food using sign language pic.twitter.com/8nbvNqNJga

— Weird and Terrifying (@weirdterrifying) January 5, 2023

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a family wiped out:

11 January 1939 | Czech Jewish girl Věra Vohryzková was born (right).

She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt ghetto on 18 December 1943 with her mother Štěpánka and brother Jiří. None of them survived. pic.twitter.com/zU2HIdBU7l

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 11, 2023

Tweets from Matthew. First, a new lecture by Richard Dawkins, and it sounds interesting. Go here to register and watch the event live online, which is this Thursday at 5 pm (Israel time, I guess, which is 9 a.m. Chicago time and 3 p.m. London time. Or, if you’re in Israel, you can register for in-person attendance.

9 בפברואר 2023 | האקדמיה הלאומית הישראלית למדעים מתכבדת להזמינכם להרצאה השנתית על שם צ'ארלס דרווין. פרופ' ריצ'רד דוקינס ירצה על "Darwin's Five Bridges". ההרצאה תועבר בשידור חי באתר האקדמיה. לפרטים ולהרשמה: https://t.co/7zhYeGNA77 pic.twitter.com/93431gs5d3

— The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (@IsraelAcademy) January 3, 2023

Matthew’s word for this is unprintable, and I share his sentiments. Will the new variant going around make us get a new booster?

Moderna is planning to increase price of its Covid-19 vaccine from $15 to over $110 per vial. Moderna received over 1 billion USD from the National Institute of Health during the development stage of the vaccine. A clear case of price gouging and corporate greed. https://t.co/2lCVu7TPoJ

— Kevin Mc Loughlin (@Kevin_Palawan) January 10, 2023

You can casually drop this information about manatees at your next social gathering to become the hit of the party!

I am head-over-heels smitten with this infographic about MANATEES from @NatGeo.

Standing ovation for @fg_baptista, @FossilFracas, @EveConant, @mizfellenz, & Lawson Parker. 👏👏👏https://t.co/rVml6kXshe pic.twitter.com/hrTst7Hig0

— Jason Bittel (@bittelmethis) January 6, 2023

Welcome to the Sabbath for all kristlekh kats: It’s Sunday, January 8, 2023, and National Toffee Day. My favorite used to be the British Callard and Bowser’s Licorice or Butterscotch toffees; I see that these wonderful confections are no longer made and the company has been bought by Yanks. Here was what the best one looke like:

It’s also Typing Day (International observance), National Man Watcher’s Day, Argyle Day (for socks and sweaters), Bubble Bath Day, and Earth’s Rotation Day, explained below:

On January 8, 1851, Foucault performed an experiment in the cellar of his home, in which he swung a five-kilogram weight attached to a two-meter-long pendulum. He put sand underneath it to mark the pendulum’s path, allowing him to see any changes in it. He observed a slight clockwise movement in the plane—the floor, and thus the earth, were slowly rotating; the pendulum kept its position. His experiment showed that the earth rotated on its axis. No longer was it just a hypothesis.

And it’s Alfred Russel Wallace‘s 200thj birthday: he was born on January 8, 1823, and died November 7, 1913. You’ll know him as the man who not only conceived of evolution and natural selection independently of Darwin (thus compelling Darwin to rush publication of The Origin in 1859, but also a man who made huge contributions to biogeography. A photo and announcement of a symposium about him are below (h/t: Matthew):

HAPPY WALLACE YEAR! Join me and fellow Wallaceophiles in celebrating Alfred Russel Wallace's 200th birthday at this one-day WALLACE SYMPOSIUM, @morethanadodo, Monday 9 January 2023! Registration is free for this hybrid symposium: https://t.co/fUozSXbkhd pic.twitter.com/FqKqjRfJ1p

— James T. Costa (@JimCostaHBS) January 7, 2023

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

Da Nooz:

*Yes, Democrats like me are vastly amused by the shenanigans that culminated in Kevin McCarthy’s election as Speaker of the House, but we all know in our hearts that what happened is not a good thing for the U.S. In an op-ed in the WaPo called “To save himself, McCarthy just destroyed the House,” columnist Dana Milkbank lays out what the fracas portends:

This is what happens when a political party, year after year, systematically destroys the norms and institutions of democracy. This is what happens when those expert at tearing things down are put in charge of governing. The dysfunction has been building over years of government shutdowns, debt-default showdowns and other fabricated crises, and now anti-government Republicans used their new majority to bring the House itself to a halt.

This is insurrection by other means: Two years to the day since the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, Republicans are still attacking the functioning of government. McCarthy opened the door to the chaos by excusing Donald Trump’s fomenting of the attack and welcoming a new class of election deniers to his caucus. Now he’s trying to save his own political ambitions by agreeing to institutionalize the chaos — not just for the next two years but for future congresses as well.

. . ..On Thursday, the day McCarthy failed on an 11th consecutive ballot to secure the speakership, he formally surrendered to the 21 GOP extremists denying him the job. He agreed to allow any member of the House to force a vote at will to “vacate” his speakership — essentially agreeing to be in permanent jeopardy of losing his job. He agreed to put rebels on the Rules Committee, giving them sway over what gets a vote on the House floor, and in key committee leadership posts. He agreed to unlimited amendments to spending bills, inviting two years of mayhem. He agreed to other changes that make future government shutdowns and a default on the national debt more likely, if not probable.

Perhaps worst of all, the McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Conservative Leadership Fund, agreed that it would no longer work against far-right extremists in the vast majority of Republican primaries — a move sure to increase the number of bomb throwers in Congress. Essentially, McCarthy placated the crazies in his caucus bygiving up every tool he (or anybody) had to maintain order in the House.

Finally, on the 15th ballot early Saturday morning, McCarthy’s abject surrender secured him the speakership, at least temporarily. But it was the most pyrrhic of victories. To save himself, he sacrificed the Congress itself. The saboteurs won.

*Similar warnings are issued in a Wall Street Journal article called, “Speaker fight could preview months of turmoil in Congress.” (The subtitle is “Kevin McCarthy’s concessions show how GOP fractiousness in a narrowly divided House could threaten some significant bills. ‘You’re going to have a sword of Damocles above any speaker.’”) Here the issues are more specific.

. . .But the struggle to pick a House leader, typically a perfunctory process, previewed what could well be months of turmoil over spending issues in a narrowly divided House.

Hanging in the balance is the ability of the U.S. government to stay open and pay its debts. Many of Mr. McCarthy’s initial foes are adamantly opposed to raising the debt ceiling or cutting spending deals with Democrats, and could move to oust him from his job if he tries to do so.

Also at risk are other high-profile measures that would require agreement between House Republicans and the Democrats who control the Senate and White House: funding the Pentagon and other agencies, sending aid to Ukraine as it battles an invasion and approving food stamps for low-income people as part of the farm bill, which is typically reauthorized every five years.

“I’m more worried than I was before,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, the lead economist at advisory firm Oxford Economics. “Maybe the majority of Republicans in the House don’t want any kind of debt-limit crisis, but there is this small group that we’ve learned in the last week seems to have a fair amount of power.”

. . . “You’re going to have a sword of Damocles above any speaker over any actual or perceived dalliance with bipartisanship,” said Stewart Verdery, a former GOP Senate aide and chief executive of Monument Advocacy, a bipartisan lobbying group. The next speaker “is going to think long and hard: ‘If I put a bill on the floor that has Democratic support, is this the end for me?’ ”

*I don’t get all the interest in the royals, and I suppose I’m just fueling it by writing about it, but somehow it bothers me that “Prince” Harry has published a memoir (co-authored with a ghostwriter) about how badly he and Meghan Markle were treated by the royal family. For sure I’ll take it with a grain of salt, but what bothers me is the endless self-promotion and self-aggrandizing of Harry and Meghan. It lacks, well, dignity. But it will also make them rich. As the NYT notes, Harry + ghostwriter’s book, called Spare in the U.S. and In the Shade in Spain, is selling like hotcakes:

. . . Will readers still be curious enough to buy the book?

So far, it looks like the answer is yes. The media frenzy seems to be driving interest in the memoir, which is due out Tuesday. “Spare” held the No. 1 spot on Amazon in the United States and Britain on Friday, as well as at Barnes & Noble. Booksellers and distributors said that preorders are enormous and growing with the avalanche of press coverage.

. . . Despite the risk that blanket coverage could lead to Harry and Meghan fatigue, many booksellers expect the memoir to be an unmitigated success. Random House has said it is printing 2.5 million hardcover copies for North America alone. Ingram, the book wholesaler, has 90,000 copies in its warehouses to restock stores that run out. ReaderLink, which distributes books to chain stores like Target and Walmart, said it had ordered about 300,000 copies. Barnes & Noble has also ordered hundreds of thousands of copies.

James Daunt, who heads Barnes & Noble and the British bookstore chain Waterstones, said that even the negative leaks have been driving up customer interest in “Spare,” and that he expects to see “the most extraordinary” first-day and first-week sales.

After The Guardian obtained a copy of the book and revealed some of its biggest bombshells, reservations for in-store purchases of the book shot up in Britain, he said.

Assuming Harry + Meghan get $1 per hardcover copy (a very low estimate), they stand to make millions off their professed victimhood. But, also in the NYT, Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter who wrote a tell-all memoir of her dysfunctional family, has a warning for the newly American royals:

*A formal count shows that there are 49 sub-Saharan countries in Africa. Now, as Zambia has just abolished the death penalty, most of them—25—prohibit executions of prisoners.

Fulfilling a pledge made while campaigning for office, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema on December 23, 2022 signed legislation abolishing the nation’s death penalty (pictured). Zambia’s repeal of its colonial-era capital punishment law made it the 25^th sub-Saharan nation in Africa to abolish the death penalty. The new law also removed the offense of criminal defamation of the President from Zambia’s penal code.

In announcing the repeals, President Hichilema tweeted: “Promised to amend laws that inhibit democracy, human rights, good governance & basic freedoms. #PromisesDelivered.”

Hichilema submitted the bill to end capital punishment to parliament on May 25, 2022, in commemoration of Africa Freedom Day. He also commuted the sentences of 30 death-row prisoners that day.

Zambian human rights activist Brebner Changala called the action a “huge milestone in the removal of colonial laws that do not fit in the democratic dispensation of the country.” Amnesty International issued a statement welcoming the repeal. Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa praised Zambia for “a good and progressive move that shows the country’s commitment to protecting the right to life.”

“Zambia’s decision to ban the death penalty should serve as an example to countries in the region that still use the death penalty and compel them to take immediate steps to end this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment,” Chagutah said.

These are usually called “Third World’ countries, and it should be an embarrassment that so many of them have prohibited the barbarity still allowed in the U.S., a so-called “First World” country. (h/t Brian)

*This is the school shooting that’s hard to top: a six-year-old student at an elementary school in Newport News, Virginia, brought a handgun to school and critically wounded his 30-year-old teacher. It wasn’t an accident either, but part of an ongoing conflict that wasn’t described in the AP article:

Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones said the condition of the teacher, a woman in her 30s, is “trending in a positive direction” as she remains hospitalized. Police Chief Steve Drew met with the teacher and her family Saturday morning. “She has improved and is currently listed in stable condition,” police said in a news release.

The boy shot and wounded the teacher with a handgun in a first-grade classroom on Friday at Richneck Elementary School, according to authorities. Drew said the shooting was not accidental and was part of an altercation. No students were injured.

Police on Saturday declined to describe what led to the altercation or any other details about what happened in the classroom, citing the ongoing investigation.

Jones also declined to reveal details of the shooting, or say how the boy got access to the gun or who owns the weapon.

“This is a red flag for the country,” Jones said.

“I do think that after this event, there is going to be a nationwide discussion on how these sorts of things can be prevented.”

Give me a break! The nationwide discussion lasts a few days, there’s no resolution, and then the next school shooting occurs. A good start would be to ban private ownership of handguns; how about THAT for a discussion.

As for the kid, well, he won’t be in much trouble, but I want to know where he got the gun:

Virginia law does not allow 6-year-olds to be tried as adults. In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if found guilty.

A juvenile judge would have authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and place a child under the purview of the Department of Social Services.

Jones would not say where the boy is being held.

“We are ensuring he has all the services that he currently needs right now,” Jones said.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a cat

A: Are you coming in?

Hili: It’s one of the options to consider.

Ja: Wchodzisz?

Hili: To jest jedna z opcji do rozważenia.

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

Can you see the animal in this photo (seen on FB)? Excellent camouflage!

Also from FB:

A groaner from Bruce:

From Ricky Gervais, who finally adopted Pickle. Fostering should always lead to adoption!

Watch @rickygervais fall in love with his foster cat 😂💙 pic.twitter.com/1tuPdgEu7t

— The Dodo (@dodo) January 5, 2023

From Masih. Three more hangings of protestors in Iran this week:

Just before morning prayers, the security guards woke him in his cell and told him to get ready “we want to hang you”. Islamic Republic executed him for the crime of peacefully protesting and demanding freedom.#MohammadMehdiKarami was only 22 Yrs old. His parents were peddlers. pic.twitter.com/RGk0C8wvKf

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 7, 2023

From Simon; the header is an essential part of this tweet. God, I’m sick of hearing about William and Harry and Kate and Meghan. . .

Others had the chicken https://t.co/3aZjWqPWH4

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) January 5, 2023

From Luana: the invasion of “queer theory” into organic chemistry. Is there any area of science that can’t be turned into an ideological statement?

In the medieval academy, scholars were riven by fierce debates concerning how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. This is the modern day equivalent. All areas of study must buttress the faith. https://t.co/SpB5vxw2He

— Michael Wells (@mwellshalophile) January 7, 2023

From the Auschwitz Memorial: a priest who gave his life for another:

8 January 1894 | Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM, was born in Zduńska Wola.

As a prisoner of #Auschwitz at the end of July 1941, he sacrificed his life to save a person selected for starvation death after an escape. On 14 August 1941, he was murdered with a phenol injection. pic.twitter.com/9OMOl7vmJr

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 8, 2023

And a survivor celebrates her birthday today:

8 January 1924 | A Polish woman, Janina Balbina Gardias, was born in Gliniska.

In Auschwitz from 5 February 1943.
No. 34366
In 1944 she was transferred to the Natzweiler camp and liberated there. Today she celebrates her 98th birthday. (Photo: @Hallandsposten) pic.twitter.com/UgxbakyZ84

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 8, 2023

Tweets from Doctor Cobb; this one just because Harper is a handsome cat:

Happy 2023 from Harper pic.twitter.com/NeSSVZGl9z

— Mike Henry (@OnlyVeesAz) January 1, 2023

The geese are clearly enjoying this (sound up to hear their appreciation; watch till the end):

Start 2023 right – with a harmonica concert for geese that is also enjoyable for humans. pic.twitter.com/0BJLCqzTyz

— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) January 1, 2023

This cat is ready for any storm!

Cat in the rain..🐈🐾☔ pic.twitter.com/2NlsRyfQWH

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) December 17, 2022

Welcome to the first Thursday in 2023: it’s January 5, 2023, and National Whipped Cream Day.

I believe Mr. Zappa was saying that the sound of a giraffe full of whipped cream being squeezed was the note he was looking for.

It’s also National Keto Day, National George Washington Carver Day (he died on January 5, 1943), National Bird Day, and the Twelfth day of Christmas and the Twelfth Night of Christmas.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*All hell is breaking loose in the House of Representatives, and I love it. Republicans are set against Republicans, and even pro-Trump Republicans are set against other pro-Trump Republicans! After a half dozen votes, the chamber appears deadlocked, with Republicans unable to decide who should be their Speaker. Kevin McCarthy, the favorite, has now failed to win after SIX successive votes. The longer the delay, the less the Republican House can do anything, for without a speaker no business can be done. From the NYT:

After three defeats on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy and his allies were grasping to win over defectors, but his efforts were falling flat, even after former President Donald J. Trump made a direct appeal for Republican lawmakers to vote for Mr. McCarthy, saying he “will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB.”

Either the hard-right Republicans are going to keep holding out, which is against the interests of their party, or they’re going to have to realize that in the end they’ll look really stupid if they keep delaying things. Of course holdouts like Boebert already look stupid for having  rock-filled craniums, but no other Republican save McCarthy is a viable Speaker.

The Washington Post adds this yesterday evening:

We’re about to find out whether the Republican Party can find someone — anyone — who can get the requisite votes, in a much more tenuous situation. It now has a mere 10-seat majority, and if all members vote, the speaker can shed only four from their party and still squeak by.

. . . All of the readily apparent alternatives have drawbacks that could forfeit five or many more votes.

. . . McCarthy’s hopes appear to be dwindling. Not only did 19 Republicans vote against him on the first and second ballots, but the number grew slightly on the third, with rising star Rep.-elect Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) becoming the 20th vote against McCarthy and making a pragmatic case for trying to find an alternative. Things are trending in the wrong direction for McCarthy. (All elected members of the House keep the “elect” on their title for now, since no one has been sworn in.)

Big fun!  Congress is like a huge clown car.

*Meanwhile, serial liar and wannabee Jew George Santos is sitting with his thumb up his bum, waiting to be sworn in. . . if he is sworn in.

“I only found out that he was my next-door neighbor about 20 minutes ago,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said around 9 a.m. “It’s a surprise and delight.

Santos, 34, was elected in November to represent the third district of New York, which includes the Gold-Coast enclaves on Long Island used by F. Scott Fitzgerald to stage “The Great Gatsby,” whose titular character’s background was mysterious at best, shady at worst. The North Shore Leader, a local newspaper, reported that Santos listed no property on his financial disclosures despite claiming repeatedly to own mansions in Oyster Bay Cove and the Hamptons. The newspaper’s editorial board, keen to support a Republican, instead endorsed Democrat Robert Zimmerman, calling Santos a “bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy” man who “boasts like an insecure child.” Voters elected Santos anyway, flipping a crucial seat for the Republican Party, which barely eked out a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Last month the New York Times delineated apparent fabrications in Santos’s work and educational backgrounds: He apparently did not work at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup; he apparently did not go to Baruch College or New York University. (“It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations,” Santos’s attorney, Joseph Murray, said in a written statement at the time.)

But why is Beyer delighted? Is he being sarcastic? Anyway, the smart money is that Santos, even if he’s seated, will have to resign after the multiple investigations about not just his lying, but his fraudulent behavior.

*Remember the college scandal in which Rick Singer masterminded a scheme in which he and others would be paid big bucks confect fake admissions data for the children of celebrities like Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman(both of whom did short time in jail for complicity)? Well, Singer himself just got a longer sentence in the federal pen:

William “Rick” Singer, the mastermind of the sprawling college admissions scam aptly known as Operation Varsity Blues, is set to be sentenced in a federal courthouse in Boston on Wednesday, nearly four years after the scandal was publicly exposed.

Singer was the central figure in the scam in which wealthy parents, desperate to get their children into elite universities, paid huge sums to cheat on standardized tests, bribe university coaches who had influence over admissions and then lie about it to authorities.

Singer pleaded guilty at the time to racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the US and obstruction of justice, and he agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation.

Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence him to six years in prison and pay over $19 million in fines and asset forfeitures. Singer’s attorneys have asked for probation with home detention and community service.

The sentencing represents the culmination of an extensive criminal case first made public in March 2019, when authorities arrested and charged over 50 people, including coaches, test administrators, prominent CEOs, and the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.

With only a few exceptions, almost all of them pleaded guilty and served prison terms generally measured in weeks or months. For example, Huffman was sentenced to 14 days and Loughlin received two months behind bars. The longest sentence in the case, for former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst, was for 2.5 years in prison.

I was especially exercised by this one because it gets my knickers in knots when people buy their way into college. (Of course, that’s sort of what the children of rich donor alumni do, and I’m opposed to that, too.)

*I’m not sure that the execution of the first transgender inmate in America counts as a “first” worth noting, but since the whole press is noting it, I’ll join in briefly. All it shows is that being transgender doesn’t eliminate all possibility of your being a heinous criminal.

A Missouri inmate was put to death Tuesday for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S.

Amber McLaughlin, 49, was convicted of stalking and killing a former girlfriend, then dumping the body near the Mississippi River in St. Louis. McLaughlin’s fate was sealed earlier Tuesday when Republican Gov. Mike Parson declined a clemency request.

McLaughlin spoke quietly with a spiritual adviser at her side as the fatal dose of pentobarbital was injected. McLaughlin breathed heavily a couple of times, then shut her eyes. She was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

“I am sorry for what I did,” McLaughlin said in a final, written, statement. “I am a loving and caring person.”

A database on the website for the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center shows that 1,558 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-1970s. All but 17 of those put to death were men. The center said there are no known previous cases of an openly transgender inmate being executed. McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago at the state prison in Potosi.

Note the paucity of women murderers? I don’t think the excess of men is due entirely to their being socialized to kill.  But at least they used pentobarbital instead of the gruesome three-drug cocktail.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is going a-hunting:

Hili: I will be back soon.

A: Where are you going?

Hili: I’m going to check whether the mice need anything.

Hili: Zaraz wracam.

Ja: A gdzie idziesz?

Hili: Sprawdzić, czy myszy czegoś nie potrzebują.

And a photo of Szaron:

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

From Facebook. DO NOT LEAVE EDWIN!

From Stash Krod:

From Malcolm: Is this animal altruism?

Titania tweeted for the first time in a month (second tweet):

THINGS THAT ARE RACIST
(part 42)

• Exercise
• Avatar 2
• Groceries
• Christianity pic.twitter.com/lLXnTcPUMf

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) January 1, 2023

From Masih: another protestor killed in Iran.

#Mehdi_Zare_Ashkzari was a student at the University of Bologna in Italy. He fell into a coma after being released from prison due to severe injuries sustained from torture, and died 20 days later. I call on the Italian government to recall its ambassadors from Iran. #MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/vGguXr4mtx

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 3, 2023

From Malcolm, a very large d*g:

The Giant Alaskan Malamute is a selectively bred Malamute that exceeds 70 kg in weight & 70 cm of height, originally bred to pull heavy goods between cities throughout Alaska. They have been recorded to pull loads up to 500 kg
[📹: https://t.co/OXzcC6TEhk]pic.twitter.com/jKJ5lqGasU

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2023

Malcolm wonders what this is, but it appears to be a very poorly looked-after silvery marmoset (Mico argentatus). Poor thing!

Pretty sure it's supposed to look like this. This poor guy has some issues. pic.twitter.com/7JqkQcYsY7

— xz-Jim @ AdLib716 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdLib716) January 1, 2023

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 7 year old girl killed upon arrival:

5 January 1935 | Dutch Jewish girl Rita Krammer was born in Groningen.

In October 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. pic.twitter.com/LmmyMCzf7I

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 5, 2023

Tweets from Professor Cobb:

A picture says 9 words: “Cat goes out, steps in snow, comes back in.”

A short story about decisions. pic.twitter.com/YpuVicH2vn

— jim rose circus (@jimrosecircus1) January 3, 2023

Lists of lists:

https://t.co/7JcupFmHMG

which is a list of lists, so is included inhttps://t.co/vb5aRiLr3D https://t.co/0GLrJagd4x

— Cat Faolain (parodies) (@OneWeirdAngel) January 3, 2023

The cat has to push the lever and then stand on it with its rear foot!

It’s his job to pull the levers. Don’t ask what they do, that’s somebody else’s lookout.pic.twitter.com/NtvwdWCMFp

— cats with jobs (@CatWorkers) January 2, 2023

Welcome to Wednesday, November 23, 2022, a Hump Day, or “Maalinta Hump”, as they say in Somali. It’s also National Espresso Day, in honor of which I’ll post my own machine. Turning it on is the first act I do every day when I arrive at the office. I could not function without it:

It’s also National Cashew Day (AGAIN?), Eat a Cranberry Day (remember, just one), Blackout Wednesday, when many people get hammered the night before Thanksgiving, and Fibonacci Day (the date, 11/23, is also the first four numbers in the Fibonacci sequence).

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) celebrates Myrtle Gonzalez (1891-1918), described in Wikipedia as “an American actress. She starred in at least 78 silent era motion pictures from 1913 to 1917, of which 66 were one and two-reel shorts. She is regarded as Hollywood’s first Latin and Hispanic movie star actress.”  She died at only 27 of the Spanish flu.

Here’s a short bio from Google:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the November 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Sometimes, like yesterday, the Supreme Court surprises me.  They ruled Tuesday that the Treasury Department had to hand over Trump’s tax returns to a House committee investigating him (I don’t think this is the “January 6 committee” but the House Ways and Means Committee). Remember when The Donald promised during the last campaign that he’d turn over his returns tout suite? What a crock! From the NYT:

Trump will surely be ranting on TruthSocial about this, but when I tried to see, I found that you have to joint the platform to see Trump’s emissions there, and I couldn’t be arsed to join.

*Now that Russia has bombed or missiled much of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, the country, not known for its temperate climate, is preparing for a long, cold winter. The AP’s story is called “‘Stock up on blankets’: Ukrainians brace for a horrific winter.”

Ukrainians could face rolling blackouts from now through March amid frigid, snowy weather because Russian airstrikes have caused “colossal” damage to Ukraine’s power grid, officials said. To cope, authorities are urging people to stock up on supplies and evacuate hard-hit areas.

Sergey Kovalenko, the CEO of private energy provider DTEK Yasno, said the company is under instructions from Ukraine’s state grid operator to resume emergency blackouts in the areas it covers, including the capital Kyiv and the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

“Although there are fewer blackouts now, I want everyone to understand: Most likely, Ukrainians will have to live with blackouts until at least the end of March,” Kovalenko warned on Facebook.

“We need to be prepared for different options, even the worst ones. Stock up on warm clothes and blankets. Think about what will help you wait out a long shutdown,” he told Ukrainian residents.

Russia has launched six massive aerial attacks against Ukraine’s power grid and other infrastructure since Oct. 10, as the war approaches its nine-month milestone. That targeted onslaught has caused widespread blackouts and deprived millions of Ukrainians of electricity, heat and water.

. . . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian missile strikes have damaged more than half of the country’s energy facilities.

Temperatures commonly stay below freezing in Ukraine in the winter, and snow has already fallen in many areas, including Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities have started evacuating civilians from recently liberated sections of the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions out of fear that the winter will be too hard to survive.

Now’s the time for NATO to chip in and buy a gazillion warm sleeping bags for Ukraine.

*It’s World Cup time, and though I’m not nearly as excited about it as about previous ones, I was stunned to hear today that Saudi Arabia, which had played only a handful of games in the World Cup in its history, beat Argentina, one of the favored teams, by a score of 2-1.

Many had expected the South American team, ranked third in the world, unbeaten for three years and among the favorites to win the tournament, to sweep aside its opponent, ranked 48 places below it in the world rankings.

All the pre-match talk focused on Messi, one of the greatest players ever who is playing in what is likely to be his last World Cup. The Argentina captain scored an early penalty to put his side in the lead, but two second-half goals from Saleh Al-Shehri and Salem Al Dawsari turned the game on its head.

The thousands of Saudi fans inside the Lusail Stadium couldn’t believe what they were watching as they celebrated their unexpected victory.

Such a comeback hadn’t looked remotely possible for much of the match. Argentina controlled the game after taking the lead but whatever Saudi manger Hervé Renard said at halftime worked. His team came out with a new-found belief and stood toe-to-toe with Argentina’s world-class team.

. . .Both sets of players sunk to their knees, from disbelief and exhaustion. Messi, who so many had come see play, looked distraught as he walked off with Saudi fans cheering his name ironically.

According to sports data group Gracenote, which is a Nielsen company, Tuesday’s result was the biggest upset in the history of the competition.

“The most surprising World Cup win ever according to Gracenote was USA’s victory over England in 1950 with a 9.5% chance of victory for the US team but Saudi Arabia’s chance of victory today was estimated at 8.7% so takes over at number one,” it said in a statement.

Here are five minutes of highlights: note that Argentina scored three DISALLOWED goals, with its only point scored by Messi on a penalty kick. The Saudi Arabia keeper played great, saving the victory for his team. This is surely one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history.

Poor Messi!  The Washington Post has an article listing the biggest upsets in World Cup history

*According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian theocratic regime, after two months of widespread protests that began with a woman beaten to death for a badly-worn hijab, is at the same time brutally putting down the protests but appealing to moderates to use their influence.

As antigovernment protests swept across Iran last month, its top leaders made a secret appeal to two of the Islamic Republic’s founding families, the moderate Rafsanjani and Khomeini clans that hard-liners had pushed out of power, said people familiar with the talks.

Iran’s national-security chief, Ali Shamkhani, asked representatives of the families to speak out publicly to calm the unrest. If that happened, he said, liberalizing measures sought by demonstrators could follow, the people said.

*More World Cup news from Lou Jost, who writes:

Did you see the very first game of the World Cup? Ecuador beat Qatar, the very first time in history that a host country lost the opening match. The Ecuadorian fans held their own little anti-theocracy protest….They all chanted in unison  “We want beer! We want beer”. It was pretty funny. See 0:19 here:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s waiting patiently:

A: What are you doing?

Hili: I’m waiting for the fall of Putin and others.

. . . and a photo of Szaron by the slippers:

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

From Facebook:

From Merilee:

I was sent this as an identified cartoon, but it looks like an xkcd cartoon by Randall Munroe:

God is busy on Mastodon today, so we’ll have two tweets about Iran from Masih:

Ghazal Ranjkesh is a law student from the city of #BandarAbbas. While en route to work from home, she was shot by the Islamist regime’s police and lost one eye. The Islamist regime in Iran is an occupying force. #IranRevolution pic.twitter.com/ctppKgDbJI

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 21, 2022

So powerful. This is Tehran today. Iranian uprising continues into the third month.
The more the Iranian regime jails, hangs and kills, the more the people get determined to end Islamic Republic.
The world must be prepared to see a secular democratic Iran. #MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/5ike1EraFj

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 20, 2022

From Malcolm: four videos in one  showing Kurds protesting the Iranian regime. Click on screenshot to go to tweet:

From Barry. I know I’ve shown this before, but you can’t see “dreaming cat crashes his bike” too often!

He crashed his bike.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/yH8HOWIjVr

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 20, 2022

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy dead at 14

23 November 1928 | A Dutch Jewish boy, David Jacob Gokkes, was born in Amsterdam.

In February 1943 he was deported to #Auschwitz. He did not survive. pic.twitter.com/rRNcmM60bl

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 23, 2022

Tweets from Matthew. I happen to know that this first one is absolutely true! (See below.)

omg at the height of his career, jazz musician charles mingus wrote an entire book about cat toilet training pic.twitter.com/0ZZZJAPyp3

— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwiki) November 22, 2022

See?

Did they train the monkey to snap the beans? And yes, look at its expression during each snap!

The angry little face as the green beans get snapped.

I've been laughing at this for an embarrassingly long time. pic.twitter.com/jnR0P9kdGG

— Daniel Holland🎗🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 ॐ (@DannyDutch) October 16, 2021

Something hard to see in nature: a platypus doing its thing:

Platypuses, their relatives #echidnas, & one species of #dolphin (the Guiana dolphin) are the only #mammals known to detect electricity ⚡️.
This #platypus is using this adaptation to rootle around in the mud to find worms and crayfish.#fieldwork #Tasmania #WildOz #MammalWatching pic.twitter.com/DweT1FyoGI

— Jack Ashby (@JackDAshby) November 14, 2022