Sunday: Hili dialogue

December 2, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Sunday, December 2, 2018, and National Fritters Day. Among American fritters, two types stand out: apple and corn. It’s also World Computer Literacy Day, and I’ll confess now that I cannot write programs, and in fact never produced a single line of code in my life. But I can use a Mac!

On December 2, 1697, St Paul’s Cathedral, Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, was consecrated in London. On this day in 1763, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, was dedicated; it is still used and remains the oldest surviving synagogue in North America. More churchy stuff: on this day in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of the French in Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral.

On this day in 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged in Charlestown, Virginia after his raid on Harper’s Ferry in October.  And on December 2, 1908, Pu Yi became Emperor of China at the age of two. He was the Last Emperor, and ruled only until 1912, holding a variety of positions until he died in 1967, including a stint in prison.  His life is documented in Bertolucci’s film The Last Emperor, which happens to be on YouTube in its entirety.

Here’s a bit about Pu Yi’s life in the Forbidden City:

Puyi never had any privacy and had all his needs attended to at all times, having eunuchs open doors for him, dress him, wash him, and even blow air into his soup to cool it. Puyi delighted in humiliating his eunuchs, at one point saying that as the “Lord of Ten Thousand Years” it was his right to order a eunuch to eat dirt: “‘Eat that for me’ I ordered, and he knelt down and ate it”. At his meals, Puyi was always presented with a huge buffet containing every conceivable dish, the vast majority of which he did not eat, and every day he wore new clothing as Chinese emperors never reused their clothing. The eunuchs had their own reasons for presenting Puyi with buffet meals and new clothing every day, as Puyi’s used clothes made from the finest silk were sold on the black market, while the food he did not eat was either sold or eaten by the eunuchs themselves.

And the three year old emperor:

(From Wikipedia) A three-year-old Puyi (right), standing next to his father (Zaifeng, Prince Chun) and his younger brother Pujie

On this day in 1942, Enrico Fermi’s team at the University of Chicago, about a block from where I sit right now, conducted the first artificial and self-sustaining nuclear reaction in the famous Chicago Pile-1.  Exactly 14 years later, on a yacht named the Granma, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and 80 other revolutionaries surreptitiously landed in Cuba to overthrow the Batista regime. Batista’s soldiers were waiting and nearly destroyed the landing party. A few survived in the hills and jungles, and the rest is history. The yacht is on display in Havana.  On December 2, 1982, Barney Clark became the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart, implanted at the University of Utah. Clark lived for 112 days before dying.

On this day 30 years ago, Benazir Bhutto became the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first woman to lead the government of an Islam-majority state.  Finally, it was on this day in 1993 that drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was shot and killed in Medellín, Colombia.

Here’s the trailer for a documentary of Bhutto (a Harvard grad; her classmates called her “Pinkie“, a childhood nickname given because of her light skin). Bhutto was of course assassinated in 2007 while attempting to regain her position as Prime Minister:

Notables born on this day include Georges Seurat (1859), Maria Callas (1923, died at just 54), Giannia Versace (1946) and Lucy Liu (1968). Those who died on December 2 include Hernán Cortés (1547), Garardus Mercator (1594), Marquis de Sade  (1814), John Brown (1859; see above), Desi Arnaz (1986), Aaron Copland (1990), Pablo Escobar (1993; see above), Charlie Byrd (1925), and Odetta (2008).

Here’s Byrd playing a lovely version of Jobim’s bossa nova song Corcovado:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is surveying her kingdom from the upstairs windowsill:

A: What do you see?
Hili: the horizon.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Horyzont.

Why did the salmon cross the road? The answer’s in a tweet sent by both reader Nilou and Matthew (I hope the fish were okay.)

https://twitter.com/m_yosry2012/status/1068447633247744000

Tweets from Grania. Look at this lovely ammonite in pyrite!

Big cats from the Fluff Society:

https://twitter.com/FluffSociety/status/1068172933988724736

Is this really so erroneous?

A Maru wannabe:

https://twitter.com/StefanodocSM/status/1068077814027563008

This viral clip is actually a dying ribbonworm, and you can read about it at the Earth Touch News Network:

When a similar clip went viral back in 2015, nemertean specialist Dr Sebastian Kvist, who is also an associate curator of invertebrates at Royal Ontario Museum, noted that the animals sometimes fall apart if handled. When this happens, the severed pieces can continue wriggling around like animated copies of a parent worm.

We checked in with Kvist about this more recent encounter, and he confirmed that the ribbon worm in the video was in very bad shape. “My best guess is that the worm is dying and that’s why it’s breaking apart,” he explained.

There isn’t much information about where the sighting was filmed, but we suspect that the worm belongs to the genus Gorgonorhynchus. Out of the 1,000 or more known species of ribbon worms, only a handful possess a branching proboscis like this one.

The fleshy tube is an infolding of the body wall that can evert like the finger of a rubber glove – and if you watch the footage closely, you’ll notice that the worm actually discards it.

“The reason for the expelling of the proboscis is that the worm thinks that it is attacked,” said Kvist. “It’s trying to leave the proboscis behind for the predator so that it can escape – it’s trying everything to stay alive.”

So while this clip is intriguing, it’s also sad:

https://twitter.com/LlFEUNDERWATER/status/1067863945162088448

This cat has learned some rudimentary sign language to ask for food:

https://twitter.com/Christophe77/status/1067857456376762368

Tweets from Matthew. It’s Hanukkah now, and this picture conjures up two attacks thousands of years apart:

Well, this photo doesn’t rule out that insects have six legs, as the beetle is simply a developmental anomaly.

Maybe I don’t get it, but I find this über annoying rather than joyous.

And some footy (Matthew’s a Man City fan):

https://twitter.com/FootbaII_HQ/status/1068279222936973313

 

Evolution denialism from the Left

December 1, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Evolutionary biology gets squeezed from both the Right (many of whose adherents simply deny evolution) and now from the Left as well.  A moiety of the Left, as I’ve written here frequently, has ideological reasons for attacking parts of evolutionary biology, especially those parts that involve genetics and behavior.  So, for example, we see these kinds of views:

1.) Psychological and behavioral differences between men and women are culturally based without evolutionary underpinnings. This view, of course, comes form the mistaken notion that if you admit genetic and evolutionary differences between the sexes, it could buttress sexism. But that needn’t be the case, especially because morality and “rights” shouldn’t rest heavily on biology. The view of equal psychology and behavior in men and women is palpably foolish in view of the physical differences between them that surely reflect evolution in our ancestors. Why would bodies evolve but not brains?

Yet that’s a growing view among the authoritarian Left, some of whom even see all of evolutionary psychology as a worthless enterprise.

2.) There are no meaningful genetic differences between ethnic groups, or “races”, if you will. It’s clear that humanity doesn’t divide neatly into clean-cut groups that can be seen as distinct races into which everyone can be slotted neatly. Still there are meaningful and diagnostic genetic differences between ethnic groups if you analyze a large group of genes together. That in fact is how you can get a good idea of your ancestry from sequencing of a lot of your DNA, as do companies like 23andMe.  While we don’t know whether there are behavioral or psychological differences between ethnic groups that rest on genetic differences, differences that go along with the well known physical differences, it would be both foolish and unscientific to flatly deny that there are differences between groups in psychology and/or behavior.

One would think that Steve Pinker’s book The Blank Slate would have dispelled this kind of blank-slateism, but it hasn’t. In fact, with the rise of the Offense Culture, the Left’s attacks on science have become more intense.  Expect more of them.

3.) In a recent development, there are now common claims that there are not two sexes in humans: that sex is a spectrum, with the implication that it’s continuous. I’ve written quite a bit criticizing this view and the idea that, while everyone admits that there are clearly distinct male and female fruit flies, kangaroos, and robins, humans are the one exception. This is again an ideological viewpoint, not a scientific one, despite the claims of scientific societies and journals that the notions of “male” and “female” are social constructs. The ideological basis for this claim—as misguided as the views that admitting differences between sexes and races will buttress racism and sexism—is the idea that if sex (and gender) were real continuums, this would reduce bigotry against transsexuals and transgender people. Again, we should be fighting for the rights of such people without trying to distort the underlying biology.

The attacks on evolutionary biology on the Left are summarized in the Quillette piece below (click on screenshot) by Colin Wright, identified as having “a PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara [and currently studying] the social behavior of ant, wasp, and spider societies at Penn State.”

I have to say that if you’ve read here regularly, you’ll already know much of what Wright says. But not everyone reads here regularly, or reads all the biology-themed articles, so Wright’s is a good piece to get up to speed, even if the heavy breathing about social justice is a bit gusty. Here are two excerpts, the first emphasizing the religious-like human exceptionalism of biology ideologues:

Given that humans are sexually dimorphic and exhibit many of the typical sex-linked behavioral traits that any objective observer would predict, based on the mammalian trends, the claim that our behavioral differences have arisen purely via socialization is dubious at best. For that to be true, we would have to posit that the selective forces for these traits inexplicably and uniquely vanished in just our lineage, leading to the elimination of these traits without any vestiges of their past, only to have these traits fully recapitulated in the present due to socialization. Of course, the more evidenced and straightforward explanation is that we exhibit these classic sex-linked behavioral traits because we inherited them from our closest primate ancestors.

Counterintuitively, the social justice stance on human evolution closely resembles that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic view of evolution generally accepts biological evolution for all organisms, yet holds that the human soul (however defined) had been specially created and thus has no evolutionary precursor. Similarly, the social justice view has no problem with evolutionary explanations for shaping the bodies and minds of all organisms both between and within a species regarding sex, yet insists that humans are special in that evolution has played no role in shaping observed sex-linked behavioral differences. Why the biological forces that shape all of life should be uniquely suspended for humans is unclear. What is clear is that both the Catholic Church and well-intentioned social justice activists are guilty of gerrymandering evolutionary biology to make humans special, and keep the universal acid at bay.

Wright notes that he and others are afraid to go against the prevailing Leftist Biology Dogma (LBD) for fear of social opprobrium and even career damage. This is when I’m most happy that I’m retired, for I have nothing to fear or lose from saying what I feel. Here’s Wright on the chilling effect of LBD and the vacuous idea of a “sex spectrum”:

Despite there being zero evidence in favor of Blank Slate psychology, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary, this belief has entrenched itself within the walls of many university humanities departments where it is often taught as fact. Now, armed with what they perceive to be an indisputable truth questioned only by sexist bigots, they respond with well-practiced outrage to alternative views. This has resulted in a chilling effect that causes scientists to self-censor, lest these activists accuse them of bigotry and petition their departments for their dismissal. I’ve been privately contacted by close, like-minded colleagues warning me that my public feuds with social justice activists on social media could be occupational suicide, and that I should disengage and delete my comments immediately. My experience is anything but unique, and the problem is intensifying. Having successfully cultivated power over administrations and silenced faculty by inflicting reputational terrorism on their critics and weaponizing their own fragility and outrage, one fears whether there was no belief or claim too dubious that administrations wouldn’t cater to. Recently, this fear has been realized as social justice activists attempt to jump the epistemological shark by claiming that the very notion of biological sex, too, is a social construct.

As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth. I first saw this claim being made this year by anthropology graduate students on Facebook. At first I thought they mistyped and were simply referring to gender. But as I began to pay closer attention, it was clear that they were indeed talking about biological sex. Over the next several months it became apparent that this view was not isolated to this small friend circle, as it began cropping up all over the Internet. In support of this view, recent editorials from Scientific American—an ostensibly trustworthy, scientific, and apolitical online magazine—are often referenced. The titles read, “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum.”

This politicizing of science can lead to no good, but I’m already seeing those who object to unfounded blank-slateism branded as racists and sexists. That’s not a scientific discussion, but truth-shaming, and it bodes ill for evolutionary biology.

h/t: Matt

Everyday Feminism promotes astrology

December 1, 2018 • 10:15 am

Is it mansplaining if I advise feminists to not link their movement to astrology? I don’t think so, as it’s good advice. Of course, the Everyday Feminism site is beyond the pale, and I really should stop looking at it because their extreme form of Authoritarian and Prescriptive Leftism makes me dyspeptic. (Sample articles on view include “6 signs that you might not really respect your transgender loved one,” “7 reasons why white people should not wear black hairstyles,” “Think it’s #NotAllMen? These 4 facts prove you’re just plain wrong”, and the perennial favorite “10 things every intersectional feminist should ask on a first date.”)  The site loves prescriptive listicles, especially those that make you feel bad about yourself for sexism, racism, ableism, and every -ism there is. Then, to cure you, they offer, for a fee, courses like “Healing from Internalized Whiteness“.

Now reader Su, who, being more masochistic than I, actually subscribes to their newsletter, sent me their latest appeal for money/defense of woo. It’s for an “astrology as healing” course (of course all the readers are wounded), and costs just $34. But that’s $34 down the drain, as well as your rationality if you take any advice based solely on your astrology sign. Below is the ad they sent in their newsletter.

It’s quite defensive, but note that it doesn’t address the strong evidence that astrology is bunk (see here, for instance). Rather, they say, “Astrology might not be for everybody”, even while admitting that it’s not a substitute for science-based healthcare. And note the victimology: “You’re not a terrible person for drawing meaning from astrology!” Well, true, but you’re an irrational person!

Here are some of the details from the course site, which clearly assert that you can be healed from astrology—especially if you concentrate on the Moon and Venus. Now I’m not denying that people might find solace in this stuff insofar as it uses psychological helping techniques. But that’s a misguided way to help—like religion. You could do the same thing without convincing people that their birth signs actually mean something.

(Emphases are theirs.)

Everyone takes care of themselves differently. Perhaps you feel secure in a hot tub, secluded and completely unplugged. Maybe singing union songs in a passionate crowd or feeding your friends and family is the thing you need to feel safe and connected to your community.

All of this is reflected in your birth chart. Digging into your natal horoscope (a two-dimensional map of the sky at the moment of your birth) can both affirm what you’ve always known about yourself and reveal aspects of your personality that remain a mystery.

In this workshop, we’ll take our understanding of the language of the stars to the next level while focusing on considering our safety, our joy, and our wellness. Because astrology is absolutely healing work!

The well of astrological study is deep and the ways in are infinite. There’s so much to learn, and it can be a lifelong pursuit.

So, in this course, we’ll be going over the basics while focusing on the moon and Venus — both are introverted and concerned with nurturing our inner selves.

Why is Everyday Feminism charging people for courses based on bunk? See below:

 

Caturday felid trifecta: Cat flaps vs fat cats, cat exhibit at the British Library, 8-cub litter of cheetahs turns one year old—and lagniappe

December 1, 2018 • 9:00 am

I’m off to Costco to buy a gallon of dishwashing soap (that’s the only way they sell it!). While I’m fighting my way through the bargain hunters, please enjoy this selection of Caturday felids, with lagniappe.

I’m not big on fat-shaming cats, but who won’t laugh when they see Cats of Size struggling to get through their catflaps?

***********

If you’re in England and an ailurophile, you’ll certainly want to go to the British Library, which has an exhibit of literary cats, “Cats on the Page” going until March 17 of next year. (How can you miss?—it’s free!). Here’s their short ad:

Theo’s staff has promised to go and give us a report.

Smithsonian.com has a longer article on the exhibit, describing some of its wonders:

Titled Cats on the Page, the new show features relics that span from the 16th century to the modern era. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the works on display originate from children’s literature. There are, for instance, illustrations of Cat in the Hat, Mog (the feline protagonist of a beloved series by Judith Kerr) and a rendering of Beatrix Potter’s Kitty-in-Boots by Quentin Blake, the British artist best known for illustrating the books of Roald Dahl.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is Lewis Carroll’s personal copy of the third edition of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, in which the author scrawled his displeasure at a drawing of Alice holding her pet kitten. “Much over printed,” Carroll fumed. “Very bad.” According to Brown, Carroll was so angered by what he saw as the poor quality of the printing that he demanded his publisher destroy all 940 copies of the edition that it still held. (The publisher, mercifully, did not heed his orders.)

The works of T.S. Eliot also feature prominently in the exhibition—the show is, in fact, timed to overlap with the 80th anniversary of his whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, according to Ailis Brennan of the Evening Standard.

. . . Not all of the items on view, however, are quite so fuzzy in nature. Visitors can see a late 16th century pamphlet describing the alleged misdeeds of four women accused of witchcraft. A woodcut illustration in the pamphlet depicts a black cat purported to be one of the witches’ “familiars”—wicked spirits that took the form of animals and fed on the witches’ blood.

“The range in which [cats] have been used is just astonishing,” Alison Bailey, lead curator of the exhibition, tells Brown. In a statement, Bailey notes that the show was able to feature only some “of the hundreds of paws prowling the pages of [the British Library’s] books and manuscripts.”

Here’s one item displayed on the Smithsonian site. Look at the bad kitty getting its ear pulled!

“Mrs. Tabitha’s Cats Academy” (London, Ernest Nister, 1892 (c) The British Library Board)

And, from a Guardian article on the exhibit:

It is an apparently sweet illustration of Alice holding her black kitten Kitty before going though the mirror but it absolutely infuriated the writer Lewis Carroll. “Much over-printed … very bad,” is his testy, underlined scribble.

Carroll’s Trump-like anger at the printing of his book Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There is revealed in a new exhibition opening at the British Library which explores and celebrates cats in literature.

On display for the first time is a rare book recently acquired by the library: Carroll’s own copy of the third edition, one of only three known to exist

Carroll took delivery of the book on 21 November 1893 and was enraged at what he saw as poor-quality printing. He went though it marking up the pages which angered him most, including the illustration with Dinah’s black kitten.

He also wrote in the copy and later his diary “the pictures [were] so badly printed that the books are not worth anything”. Carroll was so incensed that he instructed his publisher, Macmillan, to destroy all 940 copies of the print run still held.

Public announcements were hurriedly placed in the Times and the Daily News requesting the return of 60 copies which had already been sent out and the writer demanded “no more Wonderlands are to be printed … till I give permission”.

Fortunately, the copies were not destroyed. By December Carroll had calmed down and decided they should be “presented for the use of Mechanics’ Institutes, Reading Rooms, etc”. Only three are known to have survived.

Here’s the rarity, with this picture captioned, “The page that annoyed Lewis Carroll.”

Photograph: The British Library Board

 

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Finally, a year ago—on November 26, 2017—the cheetah Bingwa (Acinonyx jubatus) at the Saint Louis Zoo gave birth to EIGHT cubs (the dad was named Jason). Now that they’re one, and have just begun, the Zoo has put out a video showing their birth and growth.  Eight cubs is a HUGE litter! (The average number is three to five.) Since females can give birth every 17 to 20 months, this shows that the mortality of young cheetahs must be enormous. But these ones are safe, though in captivity.

I get the sense that these fast-running cats really want more space.

Lagniappe: Reader Greg found some nice cat art. He explains:

If reading WEIT on a daily basis has done anything for me, it’s raised my awareness of cats in art. I definitely noticed this cat in the Oklahoma City Museum of Art last week, but I only had my iPhone with me instead of a real camera. The placard states the title of the piece is “Dante and Beatrice II: The Wedding Feast”. The work was designed by Florence Jane Camm (1874-1960) for T. W. Camm & Co. (Smethwick, Birmingham) in 1910. It was part of a three-piece set commissioned for the English House at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin. The piece includes stained, painted, and leaded glass.

See the tabby? Here it is!

h/t: Tom, Michael

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 1, 2018 • 7:30 am

Today we have some photos by reader Joe Dickinson, who says “Here are a few photos from Paceco Pond in Marin County, CA.” His captions are indented:

First, sunrise over the pond.

Tule fog on a field adjacent to the pond also caught nice light from the sunrise.  For those who know the area, I believe that is Mt. Diablo in the background.

The lighting makes identification tricky, but I believe these are coots (Fulica americana).

A mute swan (Cygnus olor, introduced from Europe) seemed to be sleeping with its head tucked under a wing when I spotted, it but proceeded to go through a picturesque sequence of stretching and preening in the nice morning light.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

December 1, 2018 • 6:30 am

The News of the Day: President George H. W. Bush died in Houston yesterday at age 94. He was one of the rare presidents that not only gave birth to another President, but also was not re-elected after one term in office, and the first Vice-President to be elected as President since 1836.  I didn’t know he had Parkinson’s disease, which is probably what did him in, but it seems like just yesterday he was jumping out of airplanes.  Well, he was a better President than his son. Here’s what he did four years ago:

And here’s the letter Bush left in the Oval Office for his successor Bill Clinton:

Back to the regular posting.  It’s December!:  Saturday, December 1, 2018, and the month in which winter begins. Fortunately, I’ll be in Hawaii for several weeks starting at the end of the month. It’s National Fried Pie Day, but you’re likely to find those treats only in the American South. It’s also National Pear Month, National Fruitcake Month, and National Eggnog Month. (Of these, only pears are worth consuming.) It’s also World AIDS Day, devoted to raising awareness of this disease.

On this day in 1824, we had the first case of a President elected while losing the popular vote. In an election involving four candidates, Andrew Jackson won the most votes, but nobody got a majority, ergo the House of Representatives voted to decide who would be President. The winner was John Quincy Adams.  On December 1, 1862, Lincoln gave his State of the Union Address, affirming that slavery must end—something he’d proclaimed ten weeks before in his Emancipation Proclamation.

On December 1, 1913, the Ford Motor Company introduced their moving assembly line. Exactly six years later, Lady Astor became the first woman Member of Parliament to be seated in the House of Commons.

More civil rights: it was on this day in 1955 that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, got arrested for violating segregation laws, and thus inspired the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott: a bellwether of the Civil Rights Movement.  On this day in 1969—and I remember it well—America held its first draft lottery since World War II. We were all sitting around watching it in the dorm, and the third ball they drew from the container read December 30—my birthday. At that moment I knew I’d be drafted and probably sent to Vietnam. But I had a strong record of antiwar work and eventually got my I-O (conscientious objector) status from the Newport News draft board. I worked in a hospital as my “alternative service” for 13 months before, realizing I had been drafted illegally (nobody was drafted into the military that year), I brought suit against the government with the help of the ACLU, won, and was released along with about 2,500 other men.

There were two plane crashes on this day in 1974: TWA Flight 514 crashed near Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., killing all 92 aboard. On the same day, Northwest Airlines Flight 6231 (another Boeing 727) crashed near JFK Airport, killing all aboard, but the plane was empty save three crew members.  Finally, it was on this day in 1990 that the UK and France sections of the Channel tunnel met under the sea. Yay!

Notables born on this day include Marie (Madame) Tussaud (1761), Georgy Zhukov (1896), Lou Rawls (1933), Woody Allen (1935), Richard Pryor (1940), Bette Midler (1945), Pablo Escobar (1949), and the great Sarah Silverman (1970).

Those who died on this day include George Everest (1866), Aleister Crowley and G. H. Hardy (both 1947), geneticist J.B.S. Haldane (1964), David Ben-Gurion (1973), James Baldwin (1987), Alvin Ailey (1989), and Stéphane Grappelli (1997). Here’s a rare live video of Grappelli and his guitar-playing pal Django Reinhardt, the swingingest guitar/violin duo ever, playing with the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Note that Reinhardt, because of a childhood accident, could use only the thumb and two fingers on his fret hand.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a serious question about extraterrestrial life:

Hili: Is it possible that in the whole Universe cats exist only on Earth?
A: It’s likely.
Hili: How can we check it?
A; We have to listen out for meowing coming from afar.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy jest możliwe, że w całym wszechświecie koty są tylko na Ziemi?
Ja: Jest takie prawdopodobieństwo.
Hili: Jak to sprawdzić?
Ja: Musimy nasłuchiwać, czy gdzieś z daleka nie dobiega jakieś miauczenie.

A Happy Owliday tweet from reader Barry, who sent four tweets:

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1068398430035288065

Also from Barry; who knew a plastic spoon could give such pleasure to a bird?

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1068531405553106944

Jerk cat:

https://twitter.com/wawinaApr/status/1067769962956128257

Friendly high-fiving cat:

https://twitter.com/wawinaApr/status/1067732098939674624

Tweets from Matthew. Friendly people help a mole (I love moles and can’t bear to see people kill them):

Yep, the ontology argument is bonkers, but people still think there’s something to it. If you don’t know it, read about it here:

Why isn’t this guy afraid? And why aren’t the fish afraid?

Tweets from Grania. The first one shows the huge pre-Christmas scrum at holiday sales in Britain. I bet it’s even less crowded in Canada!

 

Be sure to look at the link:

Cuddly kitten wants cuddles:

https://twitter.com/ViRaLvIdS1234/status/1065604162593976320

And a tweet from the fake DPRK news feed:

Meows from afar.

Lion attacked by hyenas but saved by pal

November 30, 2018 • 3:00 pm

This segment from Attenborough’s BBC Earth was put up November 26 and already has over two million views. A young male lion is attacked by over twenty hyenas, and has a tough go of it, but in the end is saved by the appearance of his pal Tatu.

Listen to those hyenas laugh! Nasty creatures, they are.