Wednesday: Hili dialogue

August 8, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Hump Day: Wednesday, August 8, 2018, and National Frozen Custard Day. I really should get to Scooter’s in Chicago: I’ve never been there, and it’s supposed to be one of the best ice-cream places in the U.S. Isn’t it sad I haven’t been? On to business:

Political news (h/t: Grania): This is the result of a new Ipsos/Daily Beast poll, and shows clearly that rejection of freedom of speech is not at all unique to the Left:

On August 8, 1908, Wilbur Wright made the brothers’ first public flight at a racecourse in Le Mans, France, and here it is. Note the launching apparatus:

In India on this day in 1942, Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement was launched, ultimately resulting in complete independence five years later.  On August 8, 1963, the Great Train Robbery took place in England:  gang of 15 train robbers stole £2.6 million in bank notes. That’s the equivalent of £50 million today. Most of the money was not recovered, but most of the ringleaders were caught and sentenced to jail.

Two events on August 8, 1969. First, the Manson family committed the Tate murders in California. Also, across the Atlantic, photographer Iain Macmillan took this photo, which of course became the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon took to television to announce his resignation from the American Presidency, which took effect at noon on August 9. I remember how elated we were that the miscreant President had gone for good.  On this day in 1990, Iraq occupied Kuwait and annexed the small country, setting off the Gulf War.

Notables born on August 8 include Emiliano Zapata (1879), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896; do read The Yearling!), Ernest Lawrence (1901, Nobel Laureate), Paul Dirac (1902, another Nobel Laureate in Physics), Dino De Laurentis (1919), Roger Penrose (1931), Mel Tillis (1932), Dustin Hoffman (1937), Keith Carradine (1949), and Roger Federer (1981).  Those who died on this day include the Roman emperor Trajan (117 AD), Johnny Dodds (1940), Cannonball Adderley (1975), Fay Wray (2004), Karen Black (2013), and Glen Campbell (last year). I’ve written before about what a great guitarist Campbell was. Here he is, later in his career, singing “Gentle on My Mind”, and putting out a superb guitar solo. (I’ve posted this before.) Note the other famous country stars:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss one of the big criticisms leveled at atheism, first by Dostoevsky:

Hili: And if there is no Ceiling Cat is everything allowed?
A: Don’t even think about it.
In Polish:
Hili: A jeśli Kota Sufitowego nie ma, to czy wszystko wolno?
Ja: Nawet o tym nie myśl.

Tweets from Heather Hastie. Did you ever see the famous bee “waggle dance“, where honeybees dancing on a vertical comb inform their hivemates about the direction to and distance from a food source? Here’s one with the dance traced out. It’s a spectacular feat of animal behavior.

The waggle dance, however, isn’t limited to bees:

Yes, all losers except for the “Gadsden flag” (“Don’t Tread on Me”), which was flown by the Continental army.

A tweet by physicist Sean Carroll that got a lot of responses, including the one below it.

Tweets from Matthew. Here’s a literary quiz for you. Brush up your Shakespeare!

From July 30:

One embarrassed goalkeeper:

https://twitter.com/footbalIfights/status/1024371115735621632

Mars on July 31:

A striking old book:

Trump administration loosens regulations on products containing the carcinogenic mineral asbestos

August 7, 2018 • 2:30 pm

In the midst of dismantling environmental protections, allowing the shooting of bears in their dens, and calling for forests to be cleared, the Trump administration has also taken one environmental action that’s been under my radar. According to the article below, from The Architects Newspaper (click on screenshot), companies can now create new products containing asbestos, one of the most carcinogenic substances known to humans, without the Environmental Protection Agency being able to evaluate their second-hand effects.

One of the most dangerous construction-related carcinogens is now legally allowed back into U.S. manufacturing under a new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Fast Company recently reported that on June 1, the EPA authorized a “SNUR” (Significant New Use Rule) which allows new products containing asbestos to be created on a case-by-case basis.

According to environmental advocates, this new rule gives chemical companies the upper hand in creating new uses for harmful products in the United States. In May, the EPA released a report detailing its new framework for evaluating the risk of its top prioritized substances. The report states that the agency will no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments.

It’s bad enough that 60 countries absolutely ban the use of asbestos, but the U.S., while restricting its use, still allows it to be used. It is so toxic, I’ve heard, a that a single inhaled fiber can cause the invariably fatal cancer mesothelioma (Steve Gould was one of the rare survivors). When I had my lab renovated after arriving in Chicago in 1986, they found asbestos insulation around the overhead pipes. My lab was promptly declared a hazardous area, and it had to be decontaminated by walling it off with heavy plastic, putting the room under negative pressure, and requiring the workers to wear moon suits. Our building manager at that time, Dennis, was a prince of a man, but he’d worked with asbestos in shipbuilding plants earlier in his life, and, sadly, he got mesothelioma and died on our watch. It was a terrible loss.

Asbestos should simply not be used, as it poses a risk to everyone exposed to it. But what does Trump or his new EPA care?

Here’s a scary sidelight on the asbestos industry from the same article, again involving Trump

As the world’s largest exporter of asbestos, the Russian company Uralasbest operates an enormous open mine nearly half the size of Manhattan in a mountainous town 900 miles northeast of Moscow, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The company has support from the government and President Vladimir Putin, even though their economic success exposes the local residents to major health risks. Once referred to as “the dying city,” Asbest’s residents have reported the carcinogenic dust is often found as a thick film over garden vegetables, laundry lines, and even on the floors of their homes.

Earlier last month, The Washington Post noted that the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the ADAO had discovered a controversial post on Uralasbest’s Facebook page showing photos of company pallets stamped with a seal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s face. Trump has long been vocal about his skepticism on the harmful effects of asbestos, citing in his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, that anti-asbestos efforts were “led by the mob.” In 2012, he tweeted that the World Trade Center might not have burned had the fire-retardant material not been removed from the towers. It’s estimated that 400 tons of asbestos fiber went into the structures before the developers stopped it from being used further in 1971.

Here’s a photo of those pallets. (I cannot vouch for their accuracy, but the Washington Post must have. Perhaps they were Photoshopped by the Russians.) But there’s no denying that Trump is a pro-asbestos guy. After all, it isn’t his life at risk.

 

h/t: Woody

The Mickey Mouse Club song

August 7, 2018 • 12:48 pm

I was just talking to our HR Administrator, a friend, and we began recalling—and singing—the theme songs of cartoons and comedies of our era: The Flintstones, the Jetsons, and the Beverly Hillbillies song. When we got to the Mickey Mouse Club song, our memories diverged. She remembered “M-i-c (See you real soon) K-e-y (because we like you), and I remembered “Mic (See you real soon) k-e-y (WHY? Because we like you).” I insisted that the “Y’ was repeated twice, with the repetition being the word “why”? We made a bet, and of course I won. The Internet is great for settling these disputes.

Now you won’t remember this unless you’re in your dotage, but here it is, complete with Roy and Jimmy. Annette and Darlene, the older and pretty Mouseketeers, were the first love of many men my age, and I was particularly smitten with the dark and sultry Annette. Sadly, she died five years ago of multiple sclerosis. (If you’re a bit older, you’ll remember her in the “Beach Party” movies with Frankie Avalon, which afforded us a chance to see her in a bathing suit.) I haven’t heard this song in what must be at least 50 years.

Here’s the intro to the first episode. Roy gives me the creeps!

The last word on the racism, misandry, and police-hating from Sarah Jeong

August 7, 2018 • 9:30 am

Well, the New York Times is standing by its hiring of Sarah Jeong as its head tech writer. Jeong’s repugnant character was revealed in a bunch of anti-white tweets—tweets ardently defended by Leftists (see also here) who pretended that they weren’t racist because, of course, privileged Asian women, even if they went to Harvard, can’t be racists no matter what bigotry they display. After all, their skin isn’t white.

This is a sad chapter in the history of American Leftism, and I feel that this is some kind of turning point. Either it will create a sea change in the Left by showing how ridiculous they look when holding double standards on racism, or it will become one more piton in mainstream media’s climb to full-blown identity politics. I hope it’s the former, but, given the Control-Leftward movement of progressive mainstream media like the Times, I think it’s the latter.

The defense of Jeong by Mushbrain Leftists has taken two forms: either she was responding in kind to trolls (no evidence for this has yet been presented), or she was merely making jokes and we don’t understand her humor. Both are pathetic excuses. There’s also the excuse proffered by Zack Beauchamp, a senior reporter for Vox, whose conflation of racism with “the expressive way anti-racists and minorities talk about ‘white people'” must be some kind of nadir in the modern history of left-wing doublespeak.

https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1025034038472531969

And none of these excuses hold water in light of the continuing revelations of Jeong’s bigotry and hatred, which now encompass not just white people, but the police, men, and Rolling Stone magazine for retracting its University of Virginia rape story about “Jackie” at the University of Virginia. You may remember that a student, Jackie Coakley, made up a tale that she was raped by fraternity members at a U. Va. party as part of their initiation ritual. The story, written by Sabrina Erdely, got front-page coverage in Rolling Stone, but the magazine could not verify the facts (other journalists and bloggers, particularly the Columbia University Journalism Review, called attention to the story’s problems). It turns out that Coakley made up the story. Rolling Stone issued a retraction, the police dropped the investigation, U. Va. apologized, and Erdely was found guilty in a defamation suit and ordered to cough up $2 million.

But Jeong didn’t like the retraction, and continued to insist that Coakley was raped, managing to get in a few more licks at white people along the way. Here are some of her tweets about that. Note that December 5, 2014, was the day Rolling Stone issued its retraction.

Note that Jeong was hired by the NYT as a journalist, but here she’s denying a journalistic investigation by Columbia and a journalistic retraction by Rolling Stone (as well as the U. Va. admission that the story was wrong) to buttress her own preconceptions, and once again demonize white people.

This cannot be satire, not does it appear to be countertrolling or “the expressive way minorities talk about racism”. This is just plain social justice pig-headedness in the face of the facts, mixed with toxic racism. Did the Times not know this? Isn’t it their responsibility to vet their reporters’ social media profiles before hiring them?

I’m somewhat amused by Matt Galanty’s take on Jeong’s heel-digging:

Here’s Jeong’s take on the police, with one including a gif that showed a cop being attacked by cartoon characters. Note that she says “cops are assholes”, “cops suck”, and shows her joyful hatred by imagining a cop killed by a rock or a molotov cocktail. She also broaches the idea of banning the police. Jokes? I don’t think so.

There are also plenty of sexist tweets against men, but you can find them yourselves by using Google. I’ll pass on to the following article in Areo by Iona Italia (click on screenshot) which is definitely worth a read. While Italia, like I, defends Jeong’s right to tweet what she wants and the Times‘s right to hire whom they want, she examines the reasons why the Left continues to defend Jeong:

I’ll examine two of the most common arguments presented by those who maintain that Jeong’s tweets were not racist. First, that racism towards white people is justified because of the historical and structural inequalities which have benefited white people in America and allowed them to oppress people of color. And, secondly, that this kind of speech cannot be considered racism, because its intent is simply to signal allegiance to the cause of social justice, and that “jokes” about white people are just an intrinsic part of the rhetoric of those who want to help bring about racial equality.

This is a measured but forceful piece. Italia notes that anti-white racism is in fact far less damaging than racism against minorities. But she still decries the former:

So why am I talking about racism against whites? For two reasons.

First, it is the one sticking point when I try to convince people that racism is wrong and that we must treat people as individuals and judge them, not by their skin color, but on a case-by-case basis. When I decry racism towards other groups, fellow leftists and liberals agree with me. If I tell them racism against whites is wrong, they demur. If there were a consensus that sentiments like Sarah Jeong’s are racist, I wouldn’t have written this article. I don’t consider the tweets, in themselves, of much importance. What worries me is how strongly people are defending this flavor of bigotry.

Secondly, the attempts to justify statements like Jeong’s as an exception to the general rule about racism, and to sneakily suggest that it’s OK in this case are damaging, for both strategic and moral reasons. If we want to combat racism, the only way to convince people to join us is to be clear, consistent, and honest. Blatant double standards will only alienate anyone who has a sense of fairness. But it’s OK when we do it simply won’t wash. And, more importantly, we will have abandoned one of our key principles: that every human being is of equal worth, no matter what the color of her skin. If the left’s slogan ever becomes We Hate White People, or It’s OK to be Racist Against Some People most white people will vote against the left or abstain from voting altogether. And so will I.

She goes on to debunk the redefinition of racism as “power plus prejudice.” As for the excuses that Jeong was just signaling membership in the social-justice Left and that statements like “Cancel white people” were just a joke, Italia says this:

A statement that someone sincerely racist would have been just as likely to make in exactly the same tone, manner and context is probably not a joke (jokes rely on comic hyperbole, irony, and incongruity). If you simply make repeated statements like “white people are scum,” you can reasonably expect people to take you at your word, just as you can if you assert that “Jews control the media.” Trying to wriggle out of responsibility afterwards by claiming you were actually joking is disingenuous and unpersuasive. This kind of trolling also muddies the issues, debases political discourse, and makes the left appear untrustworthy.

Excusing racist jokes when their butt is white people is not acceptable for the reasons Italia gives in the paragraph right after the screenshot.

She finally calls for a humanistic anti-racism that calls out all forms of bigotry:

I often hear that people who object to this kind of rhetoric are just “triggered white people” who have had their “feelings hurt.” This is the left-wing mirror image of the right’s tendency to say outrageous things simply to “trigger the libs.” It’s facile attention seeking and it’s a bogus rebuke anyway. People’s feelings are often hurt if you tell them you hate all their kind. That’s normal. Making racist statements in order simply to hurt people’s feelings is not something to be proud of: it’s the act of a bully. This argument is also a gross oversimplification. Many of those spouting anti-white rhetoric are white people themselves and many of those annoyed, frustrated, or offended by it are people of color. Anyone with integrity opposes racism—no matter whom that racism is directed against.

For the record, I am mixed race. [Italia is part white, part Parsi] I don’t fit into a neat white versus non-white dichotomy. I won’t join in with performative racism of any kind. I won’t endorse trolling. I won’t provide cover for bullies or spout racist slogans about any group. I will continue to speak out, loud and clear, in favor of a universal liberal humanist approach, in which a person’s worth is not determined by their skin color. I know I’m not alone in this. Join us.

Finally, in a demonstration of the hypocrisy of both the Left and Facebook, here’s a story (yes, it’s from Breitbart, but let’s not kill the messenger) of how twitter suspended an account of Candace Owens that simply took Jeong’s tweets and substituted the words “Jewish people” for “white people”. (They later restored Owens’s account.) The question remains, why, for Twitter and much of the Left, is it hate speech to demonize Jews but not white people? After all, Jeong’s account was never suspended, and as far as I know her tweets remain. Here’s an example of  Owens’s parody tweets and Twitter’s suspension of her account. Note that in the tweet she announces it’s a parody of Jeong’s tweets!

 

 

h/t: divalent, cesar, grania

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 7, 2018 • 7:30 am

Reader Tom Carrolan has personal experience with golden eagles, and sent these photos a while back. His words are indented:

Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) have been extirpated as a nesting species in the eastern lower 48, but breed in the eastern Canadian provinces, as well as in the western states. I have seen this species gliding low over lime groves in California. But in the east, migration is the best time to observe them.

First we have a few fresh-plumaged juveniles. Here’s one at a banding station in Duluth MN. The guy is a former student of mine, and the young woman is his banding intern. I took him hawk banding when he was fifteen in the early 80s. The bander on Fire Island NY was Carl Safina, since then a MacArthur Genius and author of the recent Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (2015).

This young bird, hatched the previous summer, was captured at sunset in early November, measured and banded, but held overnight and released following this photo op at sunrise. Goldens have golden head-neck feathers, hackles, at all ages. There’s a classic area of white at the base of the flight feathers and all the tail feathers are white at the base. This is Fall 2001, and a scan of a 35mm slide.

This juvenile was snapped in Spring migration along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Again, white at the base of the flight feathers, the tailing wing edge is pale to translucent, and all the tail feathers are white along their basal half. 2009.

Another Spring migrant, with white at the base of the flight feathers, and a juvenile tail type. Golden hackles. 2011.

This bird was very close overhead. Showing the golden hackles. 2008.

This juvenile with an harrassing crow in tow was photographed in the Fall of 2011. While it has a juvenile tail type, there is almost no white at the base of the flight feathers. This first plumage is unusual, but I see a few of these birds in both Spring and Fall every year. Unlike older field guides, this lack or variability of white in the flight feathers has been described in hawk identification guides since the early 90s.

Here’s an adult bird photographed on St. Patrick’s Day 2018. Adult Goldens, like our Buteo species, have a dark trailing edge to the flight feathers. The tail has lost its white base and now the tail feathers are barred. Golden hackles are easy to see.

This is an adult Golden, although maybe only three years old or so. Golden hackles, barred flight feathers with dark banding. But the tail feathers, at least the outer one, still has a white base. This is from Spring 2013, so maybe with that Summer’s molt the outer feather pair darkened.

This young adult still has some tail feathers with white bases, although the central feathers are barred. The white-headed look, caused by the golden hackles, can confuse birders into calling this an adult Bald Eagle… at a distance. Also the second to outermost primaries are unmolted, showing a transparent center.

Aging Golden Eagles presents a problem for all manner of observers. This adult bird presented some questions for me, so I asked raptor guide author Brian Wheeler about it. Golden hackles show well, along with dark trailing edging along the primaries and secondaries. But the white along the center of the tail feathers concerned me. Brian points out the white speck on the base on the right wing. For those with some banding background, or those interested in the new field subject of visible flight molt, here’s his comments:

“At least three years old by new p9 and p10.  Speck of white on right wing.  Tail possibly has remnant white, as you say.  However, some females have broad pale gray band on tail.  P8 is older adult.  New p9 and P 10 are classic three-year-old sequence.  With the speck of white on its right wing, I would say not a full, full adult.  S10, which along with s9, are last of secondaries to molt from juvenile.  This s10 is an older adult-type feather: faded brown.  So, I would say at least a four-year-old as retaining a feather that is typically a new feather as a three-year-old.  Goldens are a lot tougher than balds; but none can be aged past age three by wing molt because sequence becomes irregular.”

This page spread is from Brian’s upcoming two-volume series in stores and online this June. 57G is like my image above from March 2010. Visible field molt is covered for all North American hawks, including the falcons (now classed as parrots).

 

 

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

August 7, 2018 • 6:30 am

I’m feeling a bit better today, though perhaps not so chipper as to guarantee a surfeit of posts. Like Maru, I do my best.

It’s Tuesday, August 7, 2018, and National Raspberries and Cream Day. (All things told, I prefer strawberries and cream.)

News of the day: Trump has finally admitted, after lying about it before, that the meeting of his son with a Russian lawyer in 2016 was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. This may have been a crime. Next tweet: “It was collusion, but it was not illegal.” The tweet after that: “It was a crime, but it was not illegal.”

On this day in 1890, Anna Månsdotter becomes the last woman in Sweden to be executed in Sweden; her crime was the 1889 Yngsjö murder. In 1930, the last confirmed lynching of black people took place in America: the place was Marion, Indiana (Indiana is really a southern state) and the victims Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.  On this day in 1942, the battle of Guadalcanal began in the Pacific, with American troops landing in the Solomon Islands. The first major offensive of the U.S against Japan, the conquest took six months.  On August 7, 1947, Thor Heyerdahl’s raft Kon-Tiki, landed (or rather, broke up) on the reef at Raroia in the Tuamoto Islands after sailing 7,000 km (4,300 miles) from South America. Heyerdahl was trying to prove that ancient peoples colonized Pacific Islands from South America. Sadly, he went in the wrong direction!

Finally, on this day in 1987, the intrepid Lynne Cox became the first person to swim from the U.S. to the Soviet Union. She crossed the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island (Alaska) to Bio Diomede (Soviet Union). It took her a bit over two hours, but the water was only a few degrees above freezing. Here’s a short video of her swim, one among many of her swimming feats.  She wore only a one-piece bathing suit (no wetsuit): what a feat!

A special shoutout to a reader’s birthday cat: Theo Sindoni-Jones, staffed by Gethyn and Laurie, was born on August 7, 2004, thus turning 14 today. Theo is famous on this site for drinking black espresso, as shown in the video below. While other cats come running when they hear the electric can opener, Theo darts to the kitchen when he hears the coffee grinder (note: he gets only a few sips). Laurie’s paean to her moggie, on her own website, is here.

Theo

Notables born on August 7 include Mata Hari (1876), Louis Leakey (1903), Don Larsen (1929; can you name his greatest feat in baseball?), and Garrison Keillor (1942). Those who died on this day include Oliver Hardy (1957), Luis Ángel Firpo (1960), Peter Jennings (2005), and Judith Crist (2012).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being uppity:

Hili: Do you know what kind of worm this is?
A: No.
Hili: We are all ignoramuses.
In Polish:
Hili: Wiesz co to za robak?
Ja: Nie.
Hili: Wszyscy jesteśmy ignorantami.

Some tweets from Grania:

This kind of behavior by army ants is almost unbelievable. They make a catenary chain of bodies to reach a wasp nest!

https://twitter.com/boni_bo/status/1026067216360501248

From Andrew Copson, head of the UK Humanists, who criticizes the Saudi government. Last week, the Canadian government, in a move to be applauded, publicly called for the release of women’s rights activists and atheist writer Raif Badawi, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia (Badawi for “apostasy”). In response, Saudi Arabia froze all new trade with Canada.  So much for their “liberalization”!

As this tweet shows, Saudi Arabian state media darkly threatened Canada for calling for human rights. This is intolerable. You can contact the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. by filling in the message form here.

On a lighter note, a hedgehog takes a shower.

Frosty dunes on Mars:

I don’t understand why cats to this, unless they’re repeatedly testing the law of gravity (video). Readers are welcome to limn their own their, which is theirs:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1026539801237962752

From Heather Hastie: more bizarre cat behavior:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1026132032831873024

This is what some Americans have come to. “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat.” Unbelievable!

You wouldn’t know you were on this beach unless you had a microscope:

We all need this today:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1026096625305841665

 

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 6, 2018 • 9:30 am

Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) is not feeling well today, which accounts for the late Hili dialogue, mostly prepared yesterday. It’s doubtful that I’ll write anything more today, but bear with me until I’m better.

Well, another work week has begun: it’s Monday, August 6, 2018, and National Root Beer Float Day. I have to say that I do enjoy a cold mug of root beer with a scoop of vanilla ice cream afloat, but I haven’t had one in years. In Japan it’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony Day, marking the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 (see below).

On August 6, 1825, Bolivia gained independence from Spain. And on this day in 1890, the murderer William Kemmler became the first person executed by the electric chair. By all accounts, the execution, which took place at Auburn Prison in New York, did not go well, with Kemmler taking several minutes to die.  On August 6, 1914, World War 1 widened as Serbia declared war on Germany and Austria declared war on Russia.  On this day in 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English channel. Here’s a short video of her achievement:

Perhaps the most momentous event of this day is what happened in 1945, when the “Little Boy” atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the US: the first use of a nuclear weapon, and one of only two (Nagasaki was the other). 70,000 people were killed on the spot, and many thousands more died of radiation poisoning. Let us hope that this never happens again, but I do worry as so many nations have nukes. Could a terrorist get one? Here’s a scary BBC reenactment of the bombing:

On August 6, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Finally, on this day in 1996, NASA announced that the  ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, carried evidence of primitive life forms. The bacteria-like inclusions in the meteorite are now thought to be artifacts and not evidence of life at all. Here’s one photo of the stuff that got scientists excited:

Notables born on this day include Johann Bernoulli (1667), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809), Alexander Fleming, and the gangster Dutch Schultz (1901), who was later murdered in 1934 by other gangsters. It took him almost a day to die, and police transcribed his last words. From Wikipedia:

Schultz’s last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble, spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted to calm him and question him for useful information. Although the police were unable to extract anything coherent from Schultz, his rambling was fully transcribed by a police stenographer. This includes the famous:

A boy has never wept…nor dashed a thousand kim.

But the entire text [here] is much more rambling, for example:

You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.
Oh, Oh, dog Biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn’t get snappy.

One of his last utterances was a reference to “French Canadian bean soup” (French Canadian pea soup is a popular dish that is still produced as canned goods by many food companies).

Others born on August 6 include Lucille Ball (1911), Andy Warhol (1928), mountaineer Chris Bonington (1934), M. Night Shyamalan (1970), and Vera Farmiga (1973).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili finds solace in something strange.

Hili: The wind’s changed direction.
Cyrus: So what?
Hili: It’s better than nothing.
In Polish:
Hili: Zmienił się kierunek wiatru.
Cyrus: I co z tego?
Hili: Lepsze to niż nic.
And nearby, in his future home, Leon is pondering:
Where am I supposed to dig around?

A tweet sent by my old friend Ivan:

From reader Helian; the translation is “It is unbelievably hot, so please be sure that your cat doesn’t melt!”

https://twitter.com/adiz0r/status/1026164371767128069

From reader Gethyn, a superb example of pareidolia:

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1025907342859292673

Tweets from Grania:

An article worth reading from an eloquent and diehard Leftist:

News to come:

When pigs fly!

I haven’t read this article, but it may be worth a look:

Tweets from Grania: Tuna pillow!

Have a look at this amazing spaghetti-like tangle of freeways in China (it’s a video)

A ninja cat bests his friend:

https://twitter.com/OregonJOBS2/status/1025903737460510720

And from Matthew, a serendipitous conjunction of names and ancestry: