Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 30, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the sabbath for Christian cats: Sunday, July 30, 2023, and National Cheesecake Day (best either plain or with cherries). I’m still partial to Junior’s Cheesecake in Brooklyn:

Here’s a groaner of a cheesecake joke:

I went to the doctor recently and he said “Don’t eat anything fatty.” So I asked “So you mean like bacon and cheesecake and stuff like that?” And he said “No, fatty, don’t eat anything.”

It’s also Father-in-Law Day, World Day against Trafficking in Persons, Paperback Book Day, World Snorkeling Day, Share a Hug Day, and International Day of Friendship.

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

Da Nooz:

*A new Gallup poll on sex and sports participation shows that Americans are becoming less tolerant towards trans females competing against biological females.

A larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.

Transgender sports participation has also become a major political flashpoint, and elected officials in conservative-leaning states have enacted laws to ban transgender athletes who were born male from competing against female athletes. At least 20 U.S. states now have such laws, and the Republican-led U.S. House recently passed a national ban. The federal ban is unlikely to pass the Senate, and President Joe Biden has promised to veto it. The White House recently released a proposed set of guidelines that would govern decisions surrounding transgender individuals’ participation in gender-segregated sports.

The shift toward greater public opposition to transgender athletes competing on the basis of their current gender identity has occurred at the same time that more U.S. adults say they know a transgender person. Thirty-nine percent of Americans, up from 31% in 2021, say someone they know personally has told them they are transgender.

But both Americans who know and do not know a transgender individual have become less supportive of allowing transgender athletes to play on the team of their choice. Currently, 30% of those who know a transgender person favor allowing athletes to play on teams that match their current gender identity, down from 40% in 2021. Among those who do not know a transgender person, support is now 23%, down from 31%.

It’s aways seemed to me, in light of the data, that it’s palpably unfair to allow trans women who have gone through male puberty, with its attendant strength and physiological advantages, to compete against biological women. So these data are heartening, since less than a third of people who knows a transgender person still feel that transwomen (I’m assuming that trans men are not an object of contention) shouldn’t compete against natal women. Is society coming to its senses about this one issue. (Needless to say, there should be a way—perhaps an “open” category—for transgender people who want to play sports to do so.

*In his latest Weekly Dish, “The Importance of Saying ‘Yes’ to the ‘But’,” Andrew Sullivan takes a quasi-scientific attitude, describing the advantages of questioning your own position.

One of the enduring frustrations of living in a politically polarized country is the evaporation of nuance. As the muscles of liberal democracy atrophy, and as cultural tribalism infects everyone’s consciousness, it becomes more and more difficult to say, “Yes, but …”

. . The epitome, of course, was the Russia stuff. Between “Trump won the election because of Putin” and “The Russia Hoax,” there was precious little space for qualification. But the truth, it seems obvious now, was somewhere in between: yes, Trump loved Putin, and was happy to welcome campaign assistance from anyone, including Moscow — but no, he wasn’t a Russian agent, there was no “conspiracy,” and Clinton lost the election for far more obvious and provable reasons. The Mueller Report landed somewhere in the middle, because facts — which is why no one liked it. Worse, even to concede a smidgen of a point to the other side became anathema.

He also brings up the covid lab-leak theory (I’ve now decided that for the time being I take no position on this).

. . . A couple more. Yes, immigration is the lifeblood of America … but we need to control the integrity of our borders, and keep the pace of migration to a sustainable level that doesn’t hurt American workers and threaten cultural stability. Yes, we need to recognize and better include trans people in society … but we don’t have to abolish the sex binary, sterilize children before puberty, or teach kindergartners they get to pick their sex like a favorite color. Yes, trans women are women … but not in the same way as those who are biologically women, and we need to honor that distinction in a few, relevant instances, like not having biological dudes swinging their junk in the women’s locker room, FFS.

. . . The trouble, of course, is the emotional and tribal inadequacy of these “yes, but”s. You’ll get lambasted by your friends and fellow partisans the second you concede anything to the opposite side.

And a sensible ending, though this isn’t one of Sullivan’s best columns (After all he’s just asking people to be reasonable rather than tribal.):

A liberal democracy is a place where these distinctions can be made, compromises can be forged, and tribal loyalty can be qualified by reality. As it slips away, with the Trump right and the woke left offering us non-negotiable, Manichean views of the world, we can fret and panic and worry.

Or we can start saying “yes, but” more often. And mean it.

*About two months ago I wrote about intriguing reports that physicists had come up with a substance that acted like a superconductor at room temperature instead of near absolute zero. If true, that would be a stupendous finding. But there were doubts about it, and those doubts have no increased. That’s because one of the authors of the superconductor paper was also an author of a paper on another subject that has been retracted in Physical Review Letters. If you screw with your data once, it makes it more likely that that’s not a one-off incident:

A major physics journal is retracting a two-year-old scientific paper that described the transformations of a chemical compound as it was squeezed between two pieces of diamond.

Such an esoteric finding — and retraction — would not typically garner much attention.

But one of the leaders of this research is Ranga P. Dias, a professor in the physics and mechanical engineering departments at the University of Rochester in New York who made a much bigger scientific splash earlier this year, touting the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor.

At the same time, accusations of research misconduct have swirled around Dr. Dias, and his superconductor findings remain largely unconfirmed.

The retracted paper does not involve superconductivity but rather describes how a relatively mundane material, manganese sulfide, shifts its behavior from an insulator to a metal and then back to an insulator under increasing pressure.

A complaint that one of the graphs in the paper looked fishy led the journal, Physical Review Letters, to recruit outside experts to take a closer look.

The inquiry arrived at disquieting conclusions.

“The findings back up the allegations of data fabrication/falsification convincingly,” the journal’s editors wrote in an email to the authors of the paper on July 10.

. . .While Dr. Dias continues to defend the work, to some scientists, there is now clear evidence of misconduct.

“There’s no plausible deniability left,” said N. Peter Armitage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who is among the scientists who have seen the reports. “They submitted falsified data. There’s no ambiguity there at all.”

Over the past few years, Dr. Dias and his colleagues have published a series of spectacular findings in top scientific journals.

For some reason I find myself less inclined to accept the phenomenon of room-temperature superconductivity. . . .

*This is sad because I always wanted to visit Brooks Falls, Alaska, site of the world’s last sockeye salmon run for bears. You can watch the bears standing in the falls and letting the salmon leaping into the gaping maws, getting fatter and fatter for the winter hibernation. And that, of course, leads to the famous Fat Bear Contest, which I document each fall, showing how previously thin bears turn in to huge tubs of lard. Now, however, the salmon run has been delayed by climate change, delaying the arrival of a beloved bear.

Just before 6 p.m. eastern on July 26 — the very same day 480 Otis emerged from hibernation in 2021 — fans spotted the park’s beloved brown bear on a live camera at Brooks Falls in Alaska.

This year, the grizzly bear seen holding a fresh salmon and trudging through the water was late to his usual hunting spot at Katmai National Park. It’s not that Otis hit snooze on his alarm — you can blame climate change.

“The last time he showed up this late, salmon were also late, and the salmon were late this year as well,” said Candice Rusch, a spokesperson with Explore.org, the site that runs the 24/7 live cameras at Katmai National Park. “What we’ve been seeing in Alaska is that the salmon run has been trending later into July, which means for bears like Otis waiting longer to eat that salmon.”

Wild bears like Otis are supposed to return to the salmon run in late June, not July, but rising temperatures and overfishing are in part delaying the arrival of the salmon, Rusch said. This puts the bears in a time crunch, having to eat food in less than the usual six months they’d have to take bulk up before winter time.

. . . . 480 Otis is particularly famous thanks to the increasingly popular Fat Bear Week competition. Created in 2014, Fat Bear Week is March Madness meets Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest, but for bears. At the end of the summer, Katmai National Park staff and Explore.org pit 12 park bears against each other online in a single-elimination bracket tournament.

Gates of the Arctic National Park: Alaska’s wilderness.

The internet is presented with before and after photos of the contenders, showing bears right after they’ve emerged from hibernation, often very lean, then again in the final weeks before they hibernate again, by then much fatter. Fans then vote on which bear has the more impressive weight gain until one bear takes the title of Fattest Bear on Fat Bear Tuesday. Otis is a regular fan favorite of the competition, and has won the crown four times, including in 2021. At roughly 27-years-old, he’s also one of the oldest bears at the park.

“A bear that’s around 30 years of age is approaching what would be the equivalent of a 100-year-old person,” said Mike Fitz, Fat Bear Week creator and Explore.org resident naturalist. “Most bears don’t have the fortune of living that long.”

But Otis showed—and gorged!:

“He showed up this year extraordinarily skinny,” Rusch also noted.

Within thirty minutes of his return to the river, Otis was catching fish. Fitz said that’s part of what fans love about him. “We’ve seen in the past that he is adaptable and he’s a survivor,” Fitz said. “People can really relate to his work ethic and his ability to make a living despite the challenges that he continues to face.”

What a work ethic that bear has!! Go, Otis!

*Want to get even more depressed? Read about a new AP-NORC poll showing that 69% of American believe in angels (yes, real ones), and a substantial number in other bizarre and numinous phenomena.

Compared with the devil, angels carry more credence in America.

Angels even get more credence than, well, hell. More than astrology, reincarnation, and the belief that physical things can have spiritual energies.

In fact, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“People are yearning for something greater than themselves — beyond their own understanding,” said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.

But of course nobody here is deluded enough to believe in unevidenced phenomena just because it makes them feel better, right?  Well, read on for more bad news:

American’s belief in angels (69%) is about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).

And get a load of this:

The large number of U.S. adults who say they believe in angels includes 84% of those with a religious affiliation — 94% of evangelical Protestants, 81% of mainline Protestants and 82% of Catholics — and 33% of those without one. And of those angel-believing religiously unaffiliated, that includes 2% of atheists, 25% of agnostics and 50% of those identified as “nothing in particular.”

2% of atheists who believe in angels is 2% too many. Who are these screwed-up nonbelievers. Why reject God but accept his wingéd minion?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is up to demonizing carrots. Malgorzata’s explanation:

“Hili knows that Andrzej intensely dislikes carrots. She also knows that many people like and value carrots. To help Andrzej in his irrational dislike,  she wants to demonize carrots so they would not enjoy a good reputation any longer. Her words can also be understood more broadly: it’s easy to demonize good things and get people to despise them.”

Hili: I have an idea.
A: What idea?
Hili: How to demonize carrots.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam pomysł.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Na demonizację marchewki.

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From Divy. Someone has blotted out the obvious word:

From the Absurd Sign Project:

From Merilee; anyone with a cat knows that this is true:

From Masih: the story of another brave protestor who lost an eye after being shot by the cops, and then apparently left Iran.

From Malcolm. What a lovely place Cambridge University is, and this picture includes a bonus kitty:

From Luana: “Sex assigned at birth” in a biology textbook. We’ll see a lot more of this in the years to come.

From Barry. This d*g gets the Oscar for “Best Dramatic Canine in a Lead Role”:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Ukrainian who lived only one month in Auschwitz before perishing.

From Matthew: Cats and scholars are natural companions:

Two astronauts in one! The Google translation of this photo is this:

On 07/20/1969, Neil Armstrong photographed Buzz Aldrin during their spacewalk on the surface of the Moon. We can clearly see Armstrong’s reflection in Aldrin’s helmet. This reflection has been reversed to replicate what Aldrin saw when photographed.

It’s the first lunar selfie! Read more about it here.

Lagniappe from Malcolm: This woman has perfected the art of imitating a trumpet with her voice:

 

 

 

Caturday felid trifecta: Couple starts retirement home for senior cats; Thai cat breeds; cat sings opera; and lagniappe

July 29, 2023 • 10:00 am

From the American Association of Retired People (AARP) comes a heartwarming article on a couple who started a “rest home” that takes in only senior cats, giving them a lovely place to live out their “golden years”. Click below to read and see the two videos, which largely reproduce what’s in the AARP article:

Click to read:

An excerpt:

“Most of them have come from hardship situations, and we don’t adopt out. The cats live with us for the duration of their lives,” says Terry, 77. “Our mission is to rescue senior cats that need a home.”

The effort started in part because the pair were looking to adopt a kitten and Terry visited their veterinarian asking about a young cat. Someone there overheard her request and asked her to consider adopting an older cat there to be euthanized. “Of course, I took the cat,” Terry says.

“I found a real purpose in caring for these animals who, in many ways, were a reflection of where I was in life, too,” Terry says.

The backyard is a haven for the cats or a cat “Disneyland,” as Bruce, 77, calls it. The couple repurposed a “Frontierland” play area they had constructed for their children — complete with a hotel, a general store, a saloon and a sheriff’s office. They adapted it for the cats, and now it also includes feline play areas, napping spots, scratching posts and more.

“We had a vision where they could be free the way I think cats would like to be free outside, but protected,” Terry says.

“They feel secure here. The fact that they can go and sleep up on a bridge over a lake — I mean, how good is that?” Bruce says.

Cats come to Cats Cradle through veterinarians’ offices and private homes, particularly where someone might be ill and unable to take care of their pet. The couple have rescued more than 350 cats over the years and plan to continue their efforts.

“We discovered the special quality of older cats. They had qualities in their older years that young cats don’t have,” Terry says. “Maybe that’s true of people as well. You just have to discover it.”

A news story:

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From Asean Now we learn about five unique cat breeds developed in Thailand. I didn’t know about any7of them. Click to read:

Here are a few:

Wichien Maat: The royal cat of Siam [JAC: this is related to but not identical to the “Siamese Cat”]

Sleek bodies, mesmerizing blue almond-shaped eyes, and an air of elegance that would make any cat lover weak at the knees. That’s Wichien Maat for you—the royal cat of Siam. Their cerulean eyes result from a genetic trait specific to the cat breed and are where it gets the name ‘Moon Diamond’ from.

There’s a lot worth learning about the Wichien Maat. These regal kitties are no ordinary house pets. They are highly intelligent and curious and enjoy interacting with their humans, thus earning the moniker “Meezers.”

I’m not a fan of the etiolated long-snouted monster that the Siamese has become, but these Wichien Maat cats are adorable.

Suphalak: Rare yet prized

Commonly known as Thong Daeng (Thai for “copper” or literally “red gold”), this Thai cat breed came to prominence during the Burmese-Siamese war in the 18th century. The sacking of Ayutthaya led to the transfer of many royal treasures to Burma (present-day Myanmar), including the Tamra Maew.

Upon discovering the awe-inspiring nature and energies of Suphalak cats as detailed in the Cat Treatise, the king of Burma commanded his subjects to capture all Suphalaks and bring them back to Burma. This apocryphal story has been used to explain the rarity of this breed and their close resemblance to the Burmese cat.

But Thailand’s love for the Suphalak isn’t just because it’s rare. These creatures are small and short-haired, flaunt golden yellow eyes, and have an evenly pigmented reddish-brown coat. Owing to these attributes, they are compared to the value of gold, implying that they bring prosperity to the pet owner.

Si-Sawat: Shimmering eleganc

Also known as the Korat cat, these silver-coated felines feature prominently pointed ears and bright green eyes. They can pick up the faintest sounds, spot the tiniest movements, and sniff out even the sneakiest treats.

Like many other cats on this list, the Si-Sawat is considered a symbol of good luck and prosperity. This explains why it was never sold but only given as a gift, and it had to be in pairs! These cats were considered a symbol of a blissful and prosperous marriage, a guarantee for a happily ever after.

Even today, the Si-Sawat cats are an integral part of the Hae Nang Maew festival in Northeast Thailand. When the villagers are desperate for rain to quench their fields, they take to the streets with a cat in tow. It’s a lively parade, with the Si-Sawat as the star of the show

Khao Manee: Pure as snow

Literally translating to “white gem,” this Thai cat breed originates from a breeding initiative. Most Khao Manee cats have odd-colored eyes—with one shining like a golden treasure, and the other like a sapphire, which is considered a symbol of good fortune.

The pure white coat is another defining characteristic of the Khao Manee breed. It is soft, smooth, and lustrous, accentuating its elegant and regal demeanor. Moreover, some of these cats are born deaf, necessitating specialized care and attention.

Back in the 19th century, it was strongly believed that owning one of these cats would bring both longevity and prestige to a household. In fact, legend has it that when King Chulalongkorn the Great ruled the land, the penalty for stealing these cats was none other than the ultimate punishment: death itself.

Konja: The black panther

Yet another breed that appeared in the Tamra Maew, the Konja cat often draws comparisons to the legendary Thai lion, Singha. It’s no wonder why their elegant walk exudes a similar majestic aura.

In the treatise, their eyes, teeth, tongue, and claws were described as pitch black. Another distinguishing feature that made them truly stand out was a crisp white stripe running from under their chin all the way down their belly.

Today though, the Konja breed is typically entirely black. Perceptions of this black panther stand in stark contrast to the common belief of black cats being seen as ominous symbols. In ancient times, Thai people believed that feeding the cat would bestow upon them a great deal of good fortune. In fact, the Konja cat continues to be a common fixture in Thai temples to this day.

 

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Here a cat sings classical music, cracking up its staff (from reddit; posted by Posted by u/EvaRaw666).  Sound up: It’s got talent!

girl trained her vocals..
by u/EvaRaw666 in Unexpected

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Lagniappe: From ViralHog we see a cat playing with a mouse but not harming it. It’s not really a fist bump, and I worry about the last sentence in the description below. Well, make of it what you will. . .

“Joey brought this mouse in at 1 am through the cat flap. We saw a mouse running across our living room the next evening, so we decided to check out our cat camera and to our surprise found that Joey had brought this mouse in, and instead of killing it for prey, his playing with the mouse like they are friends! It almost looks like they are fist-bumping! The mouse’s whereabouts are currently unknown!”

h/t: Ginger K., Peter

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 29, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today we have photos of New Zealand by Kiwi reader Keith Cook. Keith’s notes and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

First is a home shot (Auckland) to get started and the rest are from a winter holiday (South. Is) New Zealand.

Sunrise. this is a shot of the sun rising at its most southern point (taken from home) or is that the southern hemisphere’s most northern point by the tilt of Earth? Anyway, this is the height of summer for us.

Misty river. This was taken like the following from the TranzAlpine heading towards Greymouth from Christchurch. A rail trip from the east to the west coast through the Southern Alps and we chose to come back on the same day. Being a lover of railways I enjoyed every moment of it. I took this shot from an open observation carriage. This shot is the north facing side of the carriage, the rail line and Wiamakariki river are flanked by a gorge.

South Island Bush. Taken facing south after dropping down to sea level from Arthur’s Pass I believe the forest here to be, Dept. of Conservation (DOC): “Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, commonly known as kahikatea and white pine, is a coniferous tree endemic to New Zealand. A podocarp, it is New Zealand’s tallest tree, gaining heights of 60 m over a life span of 600 years.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Kauri, Agathis australis were in the shot but I can’t tell for sure.

Hillside Moon, Snow covered hills, Hillside snow cap. These are taken from the highway leading up to the Lindis Pass. A lovely scenic tour through central Otago heading north.

A restored Chinese miners hut. DOC: “In 1866 fewer than 200 Chinese miners lived in Otago, but Census figures for 1874 show that there were 3564 Chinese in Otago, and most were working on the goldfields. Often victims of harassment and discrimination, they lived on the fringes of European settlements in isolated gullies close to their mining claims.”

Arrowtown, Otago a quaint little town and tourist spot.It wasn’t all about the scenery but I wouldn’t have minded either way, the South Island was empty of all international tourist and to some extent, locals. No buses, no campervans, minimal traffic. We were the tourist! It is winter as you can see and we had just come out of 4 weeks of Covid 19 lock down. My wife and I were supposed to be in the UK visiting our daughter but this was a pretty good alternative…

Arotaki Mt Cook. Our highest peak, and it was just a beautiful day and to finally see this mountain up close and ‘live’ was a real treat.

Hillside Moon, Snow covered hills, Hillside snow cap. These are taken from the highway leading up to the Lindis Pass. A lovely scenic tour through central Otago heading north.

JAC: Here are two maps of the South Island; I’ve noted spots mentioned. “Otago” is a region of the South Island, extending from Queenstown to Dunedin:

Otago is the area encompassed by the red dashes:

Saturday: Hili dialogue

July 29, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday July 29, 2023.  We’re almost in August already! It’s National Lasagna Day, too. 

Photo and recipe

It’s also National Lipstick Day, National Chicken Wing Day, Rain Day, International Tiger Day, and in Thailand, National Thai Language Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The documents case against Trump has gotten even more serious as new charges are being leveled, accusing him of ordering camera footage deleted. Three charges, to be precise, and serious ones.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, presenting evidence that he told the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted.

The new accusations were revealed in a superseding indictment that named the property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, as a new defendant in the case. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Miami on Monday.

The original indictment filed last month in the Southern District of Florida accused Mr. Trump of violating the Espionage Act by illegally holding on to 31 classified documents containing national defense information after he left office. It also charged Mr. Trump and Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides, with a conspiracy to obstruct the government’s repeated attempts to reclaim the classified material.

The revised indictment added three serious charges against Mr. Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document that he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

Do you still think the Orange Man will avoid wearing the Orange Suit?

*To punish Russia for its belligerence, as well as to accumulate a reserve that might help the allies pay for the war, a large amount of Russian assets have been frozen in the West. However, as the NYT reports, confiscating that money to pay for the war may not only violate international law, but also pose future dangers.

One solution seemed brilliant in its simplicity: What better way to foot the bill, and to make a moral point, than to make Russia pay?

But that has proved far more difficult than first imagined, and it appears less and less likely. Experts warn that it would likely violate international law and potentially set a dangerous precedent for countries to take the assets of others.

The money once seemed easily within reach — since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, Western nations have frozen more than $330 billion in Russian Central Bank assets held abroad.

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations, the world’s biggest economies, said this month that the frozen assets “will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.” But they recognized “the need for the establishment of an international mechanism for reparation of damages, loss or injury caused by Russian aggression.”

. . . Experts said that seizing Russian state assets outright carried significant legal and financial risks.

Under international law, the assets could be seized through a vote in the United Nations Security Council, a ruling of the International Court of Justice or a postwar deal. None of those options seem very likely.

Russia, a Security Council member, would veto any vote there. No deal can be achieved while the war is still going on. And no case has been brought before the court, and if it were, international law argues against confiscating the Russian Central Bank’s assets, an act that would be a breach of its sovereignty, legal experts said.

. . .In the United States, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress last month that confiscating Russian assets frozen in the United States would probably require a change to American law.

European officials assessed in a confidential report, seen by The New York Times, that there was “no credible legal avenue allowing for the confiscation of frozen or immobilized assets on the sole basis of these assets being under E.U. restrictive measures.”

So the Russians get their money back after the war?

*The Russian/Ukraine war limps on, with the latest developments being a Russian claim that Ukraine is firing missiles and drones at Russian cities:

The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down a Ukrainian missile in the city of Taganrog, about 40 kilometers (about 24 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, and local officials reported 20 people were injured, identifying the epicenter as an art museum.

Debris fell on the city, the ministry added, alleging the missile was part of a “terror attack” by Ukraine.

Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, blamed Russian air defense systems for the explosion.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it downed a second Ukrainian missile near the city of Azov, which like Taganrog is in the Rostov region, and debris fell in an unpopulated location.

Earlier in the day, a Ukrainian drone was shot down outside Moscow, the Defense Ministry said, in the third drone strike or attempt on the capital region this month. The ministry reported no injuries or damage in the latest incident, and it didn’t give an exact location where the drone fell.

. . .Since the war began, Russia has blamed Ukraine for drone, bomb and missile attacks on its territory far from the battlefield’s front line. Ukrainian officials rarely confirm being behind the attacks, which have included drone strikes on the Kremlin that unsettled Russians.

The strikes have hit Russian ammunition and fuel depots, as well as bridges the Russian military uses to supply its forces, and military recruitment stations. The attacks have also included killings of Russian-appointed officials on occupied Ukrainian territory.

So far I’ve seen no signs that Ukraine is deliberately target Russian civilians or civilian infrastructure, a war crime that would cause the country to lose considerable credibility. Meanwhile, Ukraine pushes on, meeting considerable Russian resistance in its “spring offensive.”

*This is pretty remarkable. Scientists used genetic modification of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to enable it to reproduce parthenogenically—without having to mate. They started by using the related species Drosophila mercatorum, a species in which some individuals have the ability to reproduce parthenogenetically. They then looked for genetic differences between individuals in that species who could reproduce asexually and those who could not. The next steps were clear:

To understand the genetic basis for solo baby-making, the researchers turned to another species of fruit fly called Drosophila mercatorum. In this species, the female can reproduce with or without a mate. They sequenced the genomes of both sexual and asexual D. mercatorum individuals and identified three genes that differed between them.

Having identified these candidate genes responsible for virgin birth, the researchers then altered the corresponding genes in the model fruit fly, D. melanogaster.

After examining 220,000 fruit flies over the course of six years, the researchers declared victory: Altering those three genes gave D. melanogaster the ability to reproduce without mating.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Sperling. “We saw the development of the embryos, and they looked pretty sketchy, but eventually they kind of sorted out and developed into adult flies.”

Whenever males were around, females with the ability for virgin birth mated and reproduced the normal way. But when males weren’t available, one to two percent of the second generation of female flies with this ability produced offspring asexually.

I wonder why it took them six years to get to this point. Perhaps it took so many flies before they could change the genes in the right way.  At any rate, if they can keep this strain going, it can be used to answer all sorts of questions. Here’s one I thought of, and it might have already been answered. Does male semen contain a chemical that boosts a female’s offspring production at the cost of shortening her life?

*Nellie Bowles’s weekly Free Press news summary for the week is called “TGIF: The ‘X’ files,” and as usual I’ll steal three of her items.

→ Hunter Biden plea deal falls into chaos: Just as Hunter Biden was on the verge of signing a very nice plea deal to settle up tax and gun charges, Judge Maryellen Noreika mucked it all up. “I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” said Judge Noreika, who is definitely getting audited this year and who should be very careful about going 0.5 miles above the speed limit from now on. She added that she was not “a rubber stamp,” as every law enforcement officer in D.C. began Googling her relatives. Noreika’s worry appears to be that the deal could shield Hunter too broadly and prevent future prosecution related to his business dealings. On cue for other crimes: a big revelation into Hunter’s “paintings” this week. Our favorite burgeoning artist earned $1.3 million from one gallery, with $875,000 coming from a single buyer. That must have been quite a painting! Wow, what a star artist he is. One example of a buyer: Hunter sold a piece to Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a big Dem donor who President Biden appointed to a fancy federal commission. I’m getting all of this from reporter Mattathias Schwartz at BusinessInsider, who deserves a prize for this scoop but will certainly not get one. We give the TGIF Pulitzer to you, Mattathias. Yes, you’ve probably lost all your friends and that knock on the door is for sure the IRS, but I christen you the media winner of the week. Congrats!

→ Shocking new study—the SAT is a progressive tool: There are a lot of good liberals who genuinely believe that the SAT is racist, but that teacher recommendation letters and extracurriculars aren’t. My friends: Please think about a teacher at a small private school versus one at a big public school. Who has more time to get to know a kid? Think about extracurriculars: what happens to the kid who needs to work at a deli and can’t launch a nonprofit in Gambia? The SAT is the least racist thing we have. The SAT is the closest to equity in admissions we can ever hope to achieve. Now we have stats from a new study out of Harvard and Brown showing how the ultra-rich can get a huge boost from everything except. . . the SAT.

I’ve added the Y axis, which Nellie left out:

See where it spikes? That’s where the majority of America’s elite reporters come from, myself included. Prioritizing academics and test scores above teacher ratings would be an existential threat to the average New Yorker writer. Calling the SAT racist is necessary for this group. This is the “joy to have in class” community. Me? Aren’t I implicated? Sure. Except I was not a joy in class and my SAT score was amazing.

Related, there’s a new paper on what happens when a lot of Asian families move to a neighborhood—the white families flee lest their kids have to compete academically. Or: “Parental fears of academic competition may play a role.”

→ . . . Meantime, in the U.S., Democrats in Texas and Louisiana voted this week in favor of age restrictions on hormones and gender surgeries, explicitly breaking with the party. Shawn Thierry, a Democrat in Texas, said: “I have made a decision to place the safety and well-being of all young people over the comfort of political expediency.” Let’s not get ahead out ourselves—in Oregon, doctors can treat gender dysphoric adolescents 15 years or older without parental permission or even notification. But I’m pretty sure we’re seeing a shift here. I agree with Jesse Singal that pediatric transitions will very soon be memory-holed as a thing that Absolutely Never Happened.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fed up with the glib explanations of the situation in Israel by NYT writer like Friedman and Stephens:

Hili: I’m thinking.
A: What about?
Hili: How to avoid primitive explanations of everything offered by media intellectuals.
In Polish:
Hili: Myślę,
Ja: Nad czym?
Hili: jak unikać prymitywnych wyjaśnień wszystkiego serwowanych przez gazetowych intelektualistów.

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

From Facebook:

 

From Jesus of the Day:

From the Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

From Masih: a small but telling act of protest against the Iranian government:

A woman on the University of Pennsylvania swim team shows what they had to go through. The University offered them psychological counseling because they objected to undressing in front of a fully equipped male.

From Colin Wright via reader Barry: a sensible take on things, though some people absolutely need hormones and surgery.

From Simon, who says, “It hurts to watch this.”: Wrong hand, pal:

From Malcolm, an adorable and playful kitten:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: an Italian girl killed at Auschwitz:

Tweets from the ocularly-improved Dr. Cobb. First, don’t pet mooses (meese?):

I could use one of these!

A case of Batesian mimicy: an innocuous moth mimicking a wasp to deter predators (that’s teleological language, of course; to be more accurate: “individuals in the ancestral moth lineage that resembled wasps more closely had a higher chance of leaving their genes.”

Mantis shrimp dismantles clam

July 28, 2023 • 2:00 pm

It’s Friday afternoon, the ducks are fed and watered for the weekend (it’s hot today but will cool down) and I’m soon off to hear about the fate of Botany Pond. This all means that it’s time for ani animal video.

How does it do this?  See the next video, which shows that the shrimp actually packs a double punch, with the second involving boiling water.

The explanation from Wikipedia:

Mantis shrimp are commonly separated into many (most fall into spears and smashers but there are some outliers)[9] distinct groups determined by the type of claws they possess:

  • Smashers possess a much more developed club and a more rudimentary spear (which is nevertheless quite sharp and still used in fights between their own kind); the club is used to bludgeon and smash their meals apart. The inner aspect of the terminal portion of the appendage can also possess a sharp edge, used to cut prey while the mantis shrimp swims.
  • Spearers are armed with spiny appendages – the spines having barbed tips – used to stab and snag prey.

Both types strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their raptorial claws at the prey, and can inflict serious damage on victims significantly greater in size than themselves. In smashers, these two weapons are employed with blinding quickness, with an acceleration of 10,400 g (102,000 m/s2 or 335,000 ft/s2) and speeds of 23 m/s (83 km/h; 51 mph) from a standing start.[10] Because they strike so rapidly, they generate vapor-filled bubbles in the water between the appendage and the striking surface—known as cavitation bubbles.[10] The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produces measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of 1,500 newtons that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface, which means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follow.[11] Even if the initial strike misses the prey, the resulting shock wave can be enough to stun or kill.

Smashers use this ability to attack crabs, snails, rock oysters, and other molluscs, their blunt clubs enabling them to crack the shells of their prey into pieces. Spearers, however, prefer the meat of softer animals, such as fish, which their barbed claws can more easily slice and snag.

Andrew Doyle: The culture war is not fake, but real and dangerous

July 28, 2023 • 9:20 am

Andrew Doyle, the creator of Titania McGrath (who hasn’t posted in ages), has a column in Unherd about the oft-heard claim that the “culture war” is a manufactured conflict that highlights only trivial excesses of wokeness.  Those like me who write about the “wars” are often accused of “whatboutery”, like “why don’t you write about real problems, like climate change or the persistent popularity of Trump?”

I’ve already explained why I don’t do this, the two main reasons being that there are plenty of people calling out the Right and because I see my brief as calling out the excesses of the Left, which could catapult someone like Trump into office. Plus wokeness interests me as a psychological phenomenon: how can people get worked up, for instance, by “Kimono Wednesdays” at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, or pile on a white artist just because she made a painting of Emmett Till?

Doyle supplies part of the answer in this column (click to read):

He first asserts not just the reality of the culture wars, but their importance, and also their danger as an “anti-liberal” force:

. . . these kinds of trivialities are often symptomatic of a much deeper cultural malaise. We may laugh at the university that appended a trigger warning to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, informing students that it contains scenes of “graphic fishing”, but the proliferation of such measures is an authentic concern. It points to an increasingly infantilising tendency in higher education, one that accepts the dubious premise that words can be a form of violence and that adults require protection from ugly ideas. Worse still, it is related to growing demands that certain forms of speech must be curtailed by the state. Only this month, a poll by Newsweek found that 44% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 believe that “misgendering” should result in criminal prosecution.

That last statistic is frightening! 44%!  But the general thesis here is similar to that laid out by Gregg Lukianoff and Jon Haidt in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure.  As I wrote at the time, the new generation has three mantras (the words are from the authors)

1.)  We young people are fragile (“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”)

2.) We are prone to emotional reasoning and confirmation bias (“Always trust your feelings.”)

3.) We are prone to “dichotomous thinking and tribalism” (“Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”)

Put these together and you automatically get a culture war.  Doyle also connects it with postmodern ideas of “different truths”:

Such developments are anything but a distraction. What has become known colloquially as the “woke” movement is rooted in the postmodernist belief that our understanding of reality is entirely constructed through language, and therefore censorship by the state, big tech or mob pressure is fully justified. In addition, this group maintains that society operates according to invisible power structures that perpetuate inequality, and that these can only be redressed through an obsessive focus on group identity and the implementation of present discrimination to resolve past discrimination. This is why the most accurate synonym for woke is “anti-liberal”.

Yes, I could use “anti-liberal” instead of “woke” (readers are always chewing my tuchas for using a word that was once laudatory but is now pejorative), but “anti-liberal” could also mean “politically conservative”—not a good description of wokeness. I sometimes call woke people members of ” The Authoritarian Left,” a more accurate characterization, and one that Doyle notes in his article:

But our present culture war is not so simple. The goals are certainly oppositional, but the terms are vaguely defined and often muddied further through obfuscation. Rather than a reflection of antipathies between Right and Left, today’s culture war is a continuation of the age-old conflict between liberty and authoritarianism. John Stuart Mill opened On Liberty (1859) with an account of the “struggle between Liberty and Authority”; the only difference today is that the authoritarian impulse has been repackaged as “progressive”. This would help explain why a YouGov poll last week found that 24% of Labour voters believe that banks ought to be allowed to remove customers for their political views.

That’s another scary figure! Doyle notes that Mill could also have been accused of “whataboutery,” as there were more pressing issues at the time (e.g., the Franco-Austrian war), but of course it turns out that his short book has become a classic.  Why? Because it makes a fantastic case for free speech, including speech we find odious. And free speech is precisely what is under attack from the Left side of the culture wars.

However, Doyle does admit that we should be addressing some of these issues, but not exclusively:

That is not to suggest that there are not important issues that are being neglected. Matthew Syed has observed the curious lack of interest in the possibility that we are facing self-annihilation due to our rapidly advancing technology. As he points out, in an age when the full sequence of the Spanish flu can be uploaded online and reconstructed in a laboratory, “how long before it is possible for a solitary fanatic to design and release a pathogen capable of killing millions, perhaps billions?” And why, Syed asks, aren’t world leaders devoting time and money to confront these existential threats?

Syed writes persuasively, and I certainly share his concerns. But I part company when it comes to his diagnosis of our culture war as “a form of Freudian displacement”, that “the woke and anti-woke need each other to engage in their piffling spats as a diversion from realities they both find too psychologically threatening to confront”. Syed is right that there are some who specialise in the trivial, but there are many more who are undertaking in earnest the crucial task of halting the ongoing erosion of our freedoms.

. . . The liberal approach to redressing injustices, one now routinely dismissed as “anti-woke”, has a long and illustrious history. We might look to Mary Wollstonecraft, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and many others who understood that freedom of speech and individual liberties were fundamental to human progress. Identity politics in its current form is directly opposed to the ideals of these great civil rights luminaries. While many of today’s culture warriors promote polarising narratives of distinct and incompatible group identities, the proponents of universal liberalism — as embodied in the movements for black emancipation, second-wave feminism and gay rights — have always advanced individual rights in the context of our shared humanity.

It is this authoritarianism that we must combat. It’s the authoritarianism that chills or bans speech, that creates a homogeneity of thought with “wrongthinkers” being ostracized, that has nearly ruined young adult literature by forcing it to conform to a Leftist ideological narrative, that rides herd on “cultural appropriation”, that bowdlerizes books, that makes nearly half of Americans think that misgendering should be a criminal offense, and, as Luana and I pointed out, has infected academic science, trying to turn it into an arm of Social Justice while downplaying merit.

Yes, postmodernism plays a role, but the censoriousness that we see on the Left comes from authoritarianism: a desire for power coupled with a deep-seated assurance that the activists are right. That is why Kimono Wednesdays were ended (only Japanese have the right to wear kimonos) and why a white woman can’t paint a picture of Emmett Till (only black people have a right to depict or analyze their culture). This authoritarianism has bred tribalism (point 3 in Lukianoff and Haidt’s book), a tribalism not seen in people like Douglass or Martin Luther King.

Protestors at the first “Kimono Wednesday” at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts

 

h/t: Luana

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 28, 2023 • 8:15 am

Posting may be light today as it’s a busy day: I have to feed the dorm ducks, giving them extra water because it’s going to be hot (93° F, 34° C), and then we have to meet with Facilities this afternoon to see what the fate of Botany Pond is.  I’m worried as they mentioned “duck deterrents” during the mating season. No baby ducks? Unthinkable!  Besides, since the pond will be full of water there is no way in hell to keep ducks away from it.

Today sees the return of regular Mark Sturtevant, insect and arthropod photographer extraodinaire.  His captions are indented and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures that are mainly from the previous summer. The first two pictures are nymphs of a predatory Hemipteran known as the Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus). As nymphs, they decorate themselves with dirt or sand for concealment. The third picture shows an adult Masked Hunter. Although the nymphs are normally very difficult to find, both the nymph and the adult were found at my porch light at night. Most members of this family (Reduviidae, or assassin bugs) are slow and plodding, but Masked Hunters are surprisingly quick on their feet.

A “fen” is a special kind of wetland that is a bit different from what one might call a bog or a marsh. I have learned that defining these things is a delicate matter, but as I understand it a fen is sustained by water that percolates up from limestone, resulting in an alkaline pH. Fens are characterized by an array of specific and interesting plants (and insects, as we shall see). There is a park about 15 minutes from my house called Seven Lakes State Park, and it has several fens. One of them can only be accessed by a Secret Path through the woods, and I’ve never seen a trace of anyone else there so it is now “Sturtevant’s Fen”.

Once out of the woods, the higher ground surrounding Sturtevant’s Fen is sprinkled with a lovely orchid called the Grass Pink Orchid, Calopogon tuberosus, as shown in the next picture. This orchid is famously described as the “upside down orchid”, but that is all part of a great deception. Orchid flower anatomy is a bit different from other flowers, and I hope I get this right (feel free of course to correct me, someone). In orchids, the sepals and petals tend to look like petals, and male and female reproductive organs are fused into a single structure called the column that can be seen in this orchid as the curved structure at the bottom. But what about those bright yellow thingies on the top-most sepal that look like male anthers? They are the deception part of the story, and also why this is the upside- down orchid. What appears to be a flashy set of anthers that promise a rich pollen reward are actually lures, aimed at tricking bees. When a bee visits this flower, it will likely go after the false anthers, and this causes the sepal they are on to suddenly hinge down and whack the bee against the column. This results in sticky and inaccessible pollen sacs attaching to the back of the bee. The bee flies off, and if it visits another of these orchids it will likely make the same mistake by going after the false anthers (bees are not smart). It will get whacked again, and this results in the pollen sacs being transferred. Darwin would have loved this orchid!

Out on the fen proper, the ground becomes firm sand that is always under about a quarter inch of water. Your shoes will get wet. And among the dense stands of coarse sedge grasses are three different species of carnivorous plants! Most obvious among them are the numerous Pitcher Plants,  Sarracenia purpurea, which are shown in the next two pictures. Early in the season, these have tall flower stalks with weird flowers. A feature of carnivorous plants is that they do not want to eat their pollinators, so they keep their flowers well away from their insect traps. I wonder if the weird shape of the flowers themselves are also designed to keep their pollinators from falling to their doom. Of course, the watery trap in each pitcher plant holds syrupy water with digestive juices and often lots of dissolved insects. Once I found a live maggot living inside one that was evidently there to feed on trapped insects.

Crowding around the bases of the pitcher plants are Sundews, another insect-eating plant shown in the next picture. They of course trap and digest insects with sticky hairs on their leaves. The Sundew here I think is Drosera rotundiflora. They too try to not kill their pollinators with flowers on tall stalks, but I have yet to see those.

How those two carnivorous plants trap prey is pretty obvious and well known. The third carnivorous plant is more subtle about it. Dotting the fen landscape are much scarcer but very distinct flowers, one of which is shown in the next picture. These belong to the horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta). Bladderworts are more aquatic, and they have tiny specialized vessels among their roots that trap and digest small aquatic prey.

But for me, the real attraction of my private fen is a very special little dragonfly. These are Elfin Skimmers (Nannothemis bella), and they are by far the smallest dragonfly in the U.S. The world’s smallest dragonfly is a close relative found in China, and it is not much smaller! Elfin Skimmers abound in Sturtevant’s Fen, which is as it should be. First, here is a female. These are suspected to be wasp mimics. Next is a male.

Although those tiny dragons were perched on grass blades, it may still be hard to convey how incredibly tiny these are for a dragonfly. So just for this post, I made a special trip back to Sturtevant’s fen with a butterfly net and very carefully captured the young female shown in the last picture. Look at your index finger. The body of that little dragon will hardly stretch across the width of your finger!