Caturday felid trifecta: Puma Messi gets a bath; Pudgie-Wudgie the Wonder Cat; and lagniappe

May 6, 2023 • 10:00 am

Here we have Messi the Russian pet cougar getting BAFFTIME! He got himself all muddy, and thus has to go into the shower with one of his staff.  The YouTube notes:

Sasha cleaned the terrace near the pool, and Messi decided that now was the time to crawl on his belly under it and pick up all the dirt! No persuasion could stop him and we had to give the cat a bath. He asked for it, the little hooligan)) #puma #messi #pumames

Messi doesn’t seem to mind too much.  I think that loud thundering noise is Messi purring, but I can’t be sure.  Even his tail gets washed, and he gets dried off with nice clean towels.

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Sadly, I can’t show the film of the famous trick-performing rescue cat Pudgie Wudgie (you can pay to see it) but I can show a bit of video and some of his story from the Pittsburgh Tribune (click on screenshot below to read):

The ashes, in an engraved metal urn, rest on a bed in a home in the East Oakmont neighborhood in Plum.

They are a constant reminder to 84-year-old Frank Furko of his late, loyal companion Pudgie-Wudgie.

Pudgie-Wudgie was a trained house cat, bedecked in countless custom-made costumes. He made numerous television appearances and performed in live shows in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The 23-pound cat and Furko traveled with across the country wowing audiences and bringing smiles to the faces of anyone who met the dynamic duo.

Pudgie-Wudgie was 14 years old when he crossed the rainbow bridge in 2001, but his memory lives on in the documentary “Frank & The Wondercat.” It’s an amusing tale that follows the Pittsburgh native as he reminisces about his beloved cat. The film was created in 2015 by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa and Tony Massil.

For all things about Pudgie, go to pudgiewudgie.com:

Pudgie-Wudgie did tricks. His act went viral and was featured on the Maury Povich and David Letterman shows, as well as on the cover of magazines and newspapers. He entertained children in schools, senior citizens in nursing homes and patients in hospitals. There is a photo of him in a Steelers outfit from an exhibit at the Senator John Heinz History Center in the Strip District. There is a picture of the cat sitting on one of the boats at the former Kennywood Log Jammer amusement ride.

“He did whatever I asked him to do, to please me,” says Furko, who continues to preserve the cat’s bedroom. Yes, Pudgie had his own room to sleep in with everything a human has from a bed to dresser and a mirror. “I saved him, and he knew that. He would ride in a car and even a helicopter. As long as I was with him, he was good.”

Drivers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike can see a mural entitled Frank and the Wondercat at mile marker 49 westbound and those who drive past Furko’s house know which one it is by the World Famous Cat Crossing sign outside.

“When I die, he goes with me,” Furko says. “I will be holding the box of ashes in my hand.”

Here’s a trailer of the film from Vimeo. Note that Pudgie and his staff seem to be Republicans. . .

And some photos from the Trib article about Furko and his tribute to the late departed moggie (captions from paper):

Let’s face it: the guy was obdsessed:

Furko died in 2019, but it’s not clear whether he was buried holding Pudgie Wudgie’s ashes.

Here’s a news report on the 23-pound moggie and his staff:

 

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This NYT story is about cats who wear Go-Pro or other video cameras on their collars. The story gives links to the videos. Here are some excerpts and I’ve embedded some videos

In one video, the athlete pauses, assesses the height and leaps. He tries to free-climb up the side of a building, before jumping back to the ground. In another, he leaps across a roof, his shadow stretching out long in front of him.

This gymnast, though, is a cat. Specifically, he’s Gonzo of @gonzoisacat. He has more than 607,000 followers on TikTok and 178,000 on Instagram.

Gonzo is the star — and the director — of his own shorts. Rather than his owners filming his stunts, Gonzo can capture them himself with the help of a tiny camera that attaches to his collar. The result is an extreme sports cinéma vérité-style documentary from a cat’s perspective. And it’s catching on online.

In Norway, a GoPro-wearing cat roams across snowy meadows or climbs on a roof. One in China also recorded under-the-chin videos. Another catfluencer named Mr. Kitters has 1.5 million followers on TikTok and nearly one million on Instagram, where viewers can watch him meow at a bird or chase a squirrel.

Here’s a ten-minute video of the Norwegian Go-Pro wearing cat, showing a typical day in the life:

. . .The rise of wearable camera technology, though more often used by surfers or snowboarders than pets, has led to another niche style of cat content. Like viewers of extreme sports videos, cat video fans regularly note the thrill they feel when their feline stars leap or scamper.

“A lot of the comments are: ‘I kind of wish I were a cat,’” said Scott Irwin, Mr. Kitters’s human. “It’s a way for them to escape for 15 seconds at a time.”

Mr. Kitters, who lives in Indiana, does more sponsored content, posting videos about a pet-grooming vacuum or the camera itself. He started the account in August, and has gotten some free cat-related products, too.

The vacuum:

The drink:

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Lagniappe: a fridge from the FB page Because it Made Me Laugh and Ponder:

 

h/t: Merilee

Readers’ humor

May 6, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today’s contribution, by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, is a temporary change of theme. For one thing, I’m running out of wildlife photos (send them in, please) and must ration what I have. But I also need a bit of humor today (the doc tells me that my virus-induced cough will probably last another week, and it’s debilitating. But it’s NOT covid!)

But I digress. Athayde’s contribution is indented:

WEIT’s Lonely Heart Section

There isn’t one. But some single readers may be willing to meet a kindred spirit or a soulmate among intelligent, educated, discerning and non-woke comrades. The legendary but sadly defunct London Review of Book’s personal ads section could be an inspiration; The N.Y. Times vouched for them.

The following are real ads, excerpted from They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books (2006) and Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland: More Personal Ads from the London Review of Books (2010), edited by David Rose.

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Shy, ugly man, fond of extended periods of self-pity, middle-aged, flatulent and overweight, seeks the impossible. Box no. 8623.

Eager-to-please woman, 36, seeks domineering man to take advantage of her flagging confidence. Tell me I’m pretty, then watch me cling. Box no. 6453.

Reply to this advert, then together we can face the harsh realities of my second mortgage. M, 38, would like to meet woman to 70 with active credit cards. Box no. 8624.

I smoke, I drink, I talk waaaay too much and think even more than that, I swear like a longshoreman, I’m usually covered in dog hair, I do not order salad as a full meal, I always want to Talk About It, I might be funnier than you, I want to be taken care of but hate feeling weak, I’m completely disorganized, I will keep cuddling until you pry me off you (and so will my dogs), I say “awesome” a lot, I don’t lie even if it’s easier, I tell my girlfriends everything, I expect to come, and I’ve been told repeatedly that I scare the crap out of men. If that sounds like your kind of girl, awesome. Box no. 0364.

They call me Naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46). Box 4023.

This is a terrifying world. I am the only worthy edifice in it. You are probably a tree. You know what I’m saying. Man, 35. Box no. 7213.

Tall, handsome, well-built, articulate, intelligent, sensitive, yet often grossly inaccurate man, 21. Cynics (and some cheap psychiatrists) may say ‘pathological liar’, but I like to use ‘creative with reality’. Join me in my 36-bedroomed mansion on my Gloucestershire estate, set in 400 acres of wild-stag populated woodland. Box no. 0364.

I’m just a girl who can’t say ‘no’ (or ‘anaesthetist’). Lisping Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, female lecturer in politics (37) WLTM, would like to meet man, to age 40, for thome enthanted eveningth. Box no. 5312.

If intense, post-fight sex scares you, I’m not the woman for you (amateur big-boned cage wrestler, 62).

I’ve divorced better men than you. And worn more expensive shoes than these. So don’t think placing this ad is the biggest comedown I’ve ever had to make. Sensitive F, 34. Box no. 6322.

List your ten favourite albums. I don’t want to compare notes, I just want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when we finally break up. Practical, forward-thinking man, 35. Box no. 3221.

Mid-fifties man. Recently discovered guilt. Can’t wait to try it out. Box no. 7297.

I like my women the way I like my kebab. Found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini. Before long I’ll have discarded you on the pavement of life, but until then you’re the perfect complement to a perfect evening. Man, 32. Rarely produces winning metaphors.

Blah, blah, whatever. Indifferent woman. Go ahead and write. Box no. 3253. Like I care.

Your buying me dinner doesn’t mean I’ll have sex with you. I probably will have sex with you though. Box no 7297.

You’ll write. I’ll probably enjoy your message and write back. After corresponding a few times, several phone calls, we’ll arrange to meet. We’ll meet again and become more intimate, eventually dating regularly. We’ll form a relationship, start leaving things at each other’s apartments. We’ll spend weekends together. Sometimes whole weeks. We’ll have lazy Sundays lying naked in bed together, reading the supplements and not leaving the house. Sometimes we’ll disagree. The disagreements will become rows. We’ll see each other less in the week. You’ll come round one evening to ‘collect some things’ – we both know what it means. You’ll go back to your place and cry like you used to do on cold wintry evenings. I’ll drink more … We’ll regret six lost months – possibly a year – wasted on yet another emotional cul de sac. Let’s save us both the pain – just send me a Christmas card and a nice gift (cash preferred, donations of £20 and above) and we’ll call the whole thing quits now. M, 43. Box no. 6453.

Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth. Box no. 5377.

Mature gentleman, 62, aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society … Damn it, I have to pee again.

Bastard. Complete and utter. Whatever you do, don’t reply — you’ll only regret it.

Save it. Anything you’ve got to say can be said to my lawyer. But if you’re not my ex-wife, why not write? I enjoy vodka, canasta, evenings in, and cold, cold revenge.

To some, I am a world of temptation. To others, I’m just another cross-dressing pharmacist. Male, 41.

This ad may not be the best lonely heart in the world, nor its author the best-smelling. That’s all I have to say. Man, 3

7 million is good for me. Most days though I plateau at around 3 million. Any advances? Man with low sperm count (35 — that’s my age) seeks woman in no hurry to see the zygotes divide

My other car is a bike. Eco-friendly bio-diverse M (29). Smells a bit like soil and eats too much soup, but otherwise friendly (you’re not seriously going to put that burger in your mouth, are you?).

Your stars for today: A pretty Cancerian, 35, will cook you a lovely meal, caress your hair softly, then squeeze every damn penny from your adulterous bank account before slashing the tyres of your Beamer. Let that serve as a warning. Now then, risotto?

This advert is about as close as I come to meaningful interaction with other adults. Woman, 51. Not good at parties but tremendous breasts.

The complete list of my sexual conquests: 1994-1995—Anna; 1996—Julia, Alison; 1997—Italian girl at Karl’s party, Claire (Clare?), Jessica (fingered); 1998—Anna again (big mistake), receptionist at my second temp job (possibly called Helena), Becky (I was in love but she went back to her boyfriend); 1999—Jeremy’s girlfriend; 2000-01—Karolina (deported); 2002—woman at nightclub, woman at nightclub, woman at nightclub, woman at Stewart’s barbecue, Stewart (accidental coming together of groins, the three of us were naked and very, very drunk), woman at nightclub; 2003-2006—Evil Satanic Bitch Whore; 2007—the Internet. Don’t pretend your relationships have been any less incongruous and unsatisfying. Write to probably the most normal guy you’ll ever see in a lonely heart advert and maybe we’ll end up friends or lovers or despising each other and wincing every time we remember our awful one-night stand or maybe we’ll get married and have children. Writing’s a good start though. Man, 31. Box no. 1084.

Beneath this hostile museum curator’s exterior lies a hostile museum curator’s interior. F, 38.

If you think I’m going to love you—you’re right. Clingy, over-emotional and socially draining woman, 36. Once you’ve got me, you can never ever leave me. Not ever. Prone to maniacal bursts of crying, usually followed by excitable and uncontrollable laughter. Life is a roller coaster; you’ve just got to ride it, as Ronan Keating once said.

Just as chugging on a bottle of White Lightning on a park bench will make you nauseous and diminish the respect of your peers, yet taking just a glass of cold cider on a barmy summer evening will quench your thirst and take you back to heady days frolicking in West Country apple orchards, so it is with this ad. Man, 37. Refreshing in small sips where the delicate nuances of Somerset burst through full and flavoursome, but anything bigger and you’ll end up puking over your own shoes and smelling of wee.

Woman, 38. WLTM man to 45 who doesn’t name his genitals after German chancellors. You know who you are and, no, I don’t want to meet either Bismarck, Bethmann Hollweg, or Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, however admirable the independence he gave to secretaries of state may have been.

Virtually complete male, 63, seeks woman with spares and shed. Box no. 1075.

My finger on the pulse of culture, my ear to the ground of philosophy, my hip in the medical waste bin of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. 14% plastic and counting — geriatric brainiac and compulsive malingering fool (M, 81), looking for richer, older sex-starved woman on the brink of death to exploit and ruin every replacement operation I’ve had since 1974 (quickly, the clock’s ticking, and so is this pacemaker).

An ancient Czech legend says that any usurper who places the Crown of Saint Wenceslas on his head is doomed to die within a year. During World War II, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi governor of the puppet Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, secretly wore the crown believing himself to be a great king. He was assassinated less than a year later by the Czech resistance. I have many more stories like this one. I will tell you them all and we will make love. Man, 47.

Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside, seeks woman on the outside, who like milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of outpatients. 30-35.

Toilet duties. That’s where you come in – buxom, 22-year-old, blonde stereotype not shy of adjusting the surgical stockings of 73-year-old misanthrope with poor bladder control. Failing that, just send care-home brochures.

Hoxton salad-dodger (42 – my age and my waist; M – my sex not my coat size, that’s strictly XL) WLTM with an interest in red meat and mustardy dressings. Free first Tuesday of every month, Slimmer’s World every Wednesday.

If dreams were eagles, I would fly, but they ain’t, and that’s the reason why. Spend New Year singing into your hairbrush with the Goombay Dance Band and me, bitter publishing marketing exec. (F, 33), too drunk at the office party to keep all my slobber behind my teeth. Golden star that leads to paradise. Like a river’s running to the ocean I’ll come back to you four thousand miles.

When you do that voodoo that you do so well, I invoke 16th-century witchcraft laws and have you burned at the stake. No shenanigans with Quaker M, 39.

Grave disappointment all round would like to meet serious mistake in a nightie. Box no. 6453.

Fig: The Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet and Plymouth Journal, 1828. Wikimedia Commons:

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 6, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s CaturSaturday, May 6, 2023, and shabbos for all Jewish cats. It’s also National Crêpe Suzette Day, a crêpe flavored with Grand Marnier and flamed. I like them, but they’re not substantial enough as a dessert.

Source

It’s also Beer Pong Day, International No Diet Day, Kentucky Derby Day, National Beverage Day, National Homebrew Day, and Pilates Day.

Britain has a new King! King Charles was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury at 6:02 a.m. Chicago time, and here are two screenshots I took at the moment of coronation. The crown didn’t fit all that well, and the Archbishop had to wiggle it around a bit to fit on the King’s dome.

It’s also the birthday of my collaborator Anna Krylov, professor of Chemistry at USC and the driving force behind the big paper “In Defense of Merit in Science” (she also helps staff two cats). Happy birthday, Anna! Here she is with her British shorthair, Mishka (h/t Jay):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the May 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT editorial board has now suggested, in a group op-ed, that California senator Dianne Feinstein resign her seat on the grounds of advanced age and poor health. which apparently has impaired her judgement.

Without Senator Dianne Feinstein, there might never have been an assault weapons ban in 1994. Or the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994. Or the revelatory report on the C.I.A.’s torture program in 2014. She has had a distinguished career in the U.S. Senate, but her infirmities and illness now force her — and Senate leaders like Charles Schumer — to make a painful choice.

At age 89, Ms. Feinstein is now the Senate’s oldest member, and health issues have kept her out of Washington and the Senate chamber for more than two months, at a time when vital legislation and judicial nominations are hanging on a knife’s edge. If she cannot fulfill her obligations to the Senate and to her constituents, she should resign and turn over her responsibilities to an appointed successor. If she is unable to reach that decision on her own, Mr. Schumer, the majority leader, and other Democratic senators should make it clear to her and the public how important it is that she do so.

Senators play many roles in shaping legislation and policy, but they have one primary and inescapable duty: They must show up in person to vote in the chamber. If they cannot do that for extended periods, they are depriving their constituents — and California has 39 million of them — of a voice and of fundamental representation. In six elections, voters have sent Ms. Feinstein to Washington on a Democratic platform, and in the current term of Congress, that agenda consists of confirming judges nominated by the Biden administration and preserving a majority for important legislation in a closely divided Senate. Her absence is a failure that deprives American voters of full representation on legislation and appointments that will affect them for decades to come.

Without Ms. Feinstein’s presence at proceedings of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats have lacked a majority there and struggled at times to advance nominations to the floor.

Feinstein was a good Senator, and deserves our thanks and approbation. But there’s little doubt that it’s in the interest of her own politics—the politics of liberal Democrats—that she steps down. She can no longer do what her position requires, and she’s hurting the advancement of an agenda she surely approves. Now I don’t know that Schumer has the ability to boot her out of the Senate (in fact, I don’t think he does), but surely there is some provision for nonperforming congresspeople to be forced out.  How sad it would be if it came to that. Yes, it’s time for Senator Feinstein to step down. Remember what happened when RBG also hung on, and Ginsburg was at least compos mentis.

*In light of the continuing revelations of financial conflicts of interests (conflicts almost amounting to bribery) involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, will he step down? Are you kidding me? Just remember his behavior during his hearings: the man is angry and recalcitrant, and feels—probably even now—that he’s the victim of a “high tech lynching”, he’s not going to leave unless forced out. (And who can do that?) The latest scandal involves Thomas’s wife Ginni, who, reports the Washington Post, received a ton of money from a judicial activist, but the fact that she was the recipient was hidden.  It’s not only that, but the donor has a palpable connection with Thomas, who himself favors a conservative judiciary. More seriously, the donor’s group has a case pending before the court.

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

. . . In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Thomas’s declaration that he and his wife would keep their finances completely separate is no longer credible.  But I see no way to pry him off the bench.

*In a blow against Russia’s efforts to defeat Ukraine, the Russian paramilitary group “Wagner”, which has contributed quite a bit to Russia’s advance, has now threatened to pull completely out of Ukraine because too many of their soldiers are getting killed.

The leader of Russian paramilitary group Wagner threatened to withdraw his troops from the front line in Ukraine, citing growing losses, in a move that raises fresh tensions between Moscow’s military leaders ahead of an expected offensive by Kyiv’s forces.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would leave their positions in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10 after delivering an expletive-riddled broadside against Moscow’s military leadership, which he accused of withholding ammunition.

“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where is the…ammunition?” he shouted into the camera, referring to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s top military officer, in a video posted on his public Telegram channel.

“If you handed over the ammunition quota, there’d be five times fewer dead,” he added, standing in a field covered in rows of dead soldiers.

Wagner has spearheaded Russia’s offensive on the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Ukrainian forces are clinging on to after months of brutal combat that have taken a heavy toll on both sides. The White House estimated this week that about half the 20,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine since December were from Wagner.

“I withdraw units of the Wagner [private military company] because they are doomed to a senseless death without ammunition,” Mr. Prigozhin said in a later statement.

I don’t want anybody to die, Russian or Ukrainian, but if Russia would get its tuchas  out of Ukraine, the killing would stop (they might think about leaving Crimea as well).

*Hallelujah! A European country (France) just voted not to condemn Israel as an “apartheid state”. Given that it’s certainly not one, this should be “dog bites man” news, but of course you know how the world is these days.

The French National Assembly voted down a resolution stating that Israel instituted an apartheid regime, with 199 opposed and 71 in favor on Thursday.

Dep. Jean-Paul Lecoq of the French Communist Party, which is part of the Democratic and Republican Left parliamentary group, proposed the resolution to “reaffirm the need for a two-state solution and condemn the State of Israel’s institutionalization of an apartheid regime as a result of its colonial policy.”

French Secretary of State for Europe Laurence Boone said in his speech opposing the resolution that “France is a friend of Israel. France is unfailingly committed to Israel’s security.”
“It is also this…deep friendship, based on an attachment to common values, which allows France to maintain a frank dialogue with our Israeli friends and to say things clearly,” Boone said. “To say things clearly is to name them well. In this regard, we can only reject the use of the term apartheid.”

Boone added that France rejects terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and seeks security for Israelis and Palestinians.

. . . Meyer Habib, the representative of French expats in the Mediterranean region, including Israel, spoke in the name of his party, Les Republicains, in opposition to the motion.

Habib called the accusation that Israel is an apartheid state “the biggest fake news of the 21st century” and “the fuel that drives all of the antisemites in the world.”

The legislator accused the Communist Party of being “blinded by hatred.”

“Not one of you condemned recent terrorist attacks in which three sets of Israeli brothers and sisters were murdered, including a six- and an eight-year-old. Children were murdered because they were Jewish, by barbarians,” he said.

“There is apartheid in [the Middle East], but it is in the Palestinian territories. A Jew cannot set foot there without endangering his life. Corruption and oppression rule there. They oppress homosexuals and do not respect women’s rights,” Habib stated.

That’s pretty much the truth, especially the last paragraph. I wonder how an identical motion would fare if it were put before the U.S. Congress. I can tell you now that much of the nine-member House “squad,” including Pressley, AOC, Tlaib, and Omar, would vote for it, because they’re in favor of the BDS movement, whose aim is to erase the state of Israel. And there’s still those 71 votes in favor of the resolution from the French parliament. . .

*Finally, and I’ll be brief, the U.S. Supreme Court actually stopped an execution in Oklahoma scheduled for May 18:

The Supreme Court on Friday blocked Oklahoma from executing death row inmate Richard Glossip for his role in a 1997 murder-for-hire after the state’s attorney general agreed Glossip’s life should be spared.

Glossip had been scheduled to be put to death on May 18 despite statements by new Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond that Glossip did not receive a fair trial.

An Oklahoma appeals court subsequently upheld Glossip’s conviction and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked in a vote to grant him clemency.

The high court put the execution on hold indefinitely while it reviews the case. Justice Neil Gorsuch took no part in the decision, presumably because he dealt with the case earlier as an appeals court judge.

. . .Glossip has been just hours away from being executed three separate times. His last scheduled execution, in September 2015, was halted just moments before he was to be led to the death chamber when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug. That mix-up helped prompt a nearly seven-year moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.

That repeated waiting to be executed (three times) got to do a number on you. I’m sure that people will say he suffered less than did his victims, but I’m not into retributive punishment. If he was guilty and incapable of reformation, life without parole would be sufficient. There’s more:

Glossip’s case attracted international attention after actress Susan Sarandon — who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean in the 1995 movie “Dead Man Walking” — took up his cause in real life. Prejean herself has served as Glossip’s spiritual adviser and frequently visited him in prison. His case also was featured in the 2017 documentary film “Killing Richard Glossip.”

Well, this looks like some unexpected empathy from that conservative court.  In my view, of course, there should be no capital punishment in the U.S.—or anywhere.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess demands to be praised! I have to admit, she looks very regal: more so than King Charles. (Paulina takes good cat photos.)

Hili: Do I look good?
Paulina: Undoubtedly.
(Photo: Paulina)
In Polish:
Hili: Czy wyglądam korzystnie?
Paulina: Niewątpliwie.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina)

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From Jesus of the Day:

From Beth:

From Stash Krod:

From Masih, just to remind you that there’s a lot more than hijab-wearing at stake in Iran:

From Barry; check out this cat’s reaction time to a snake strike. (But why didn’t the videographer stop this?)

From Frits.  The diagonal distance should, of course, be 8.48 feet:

From Malcolm, baby pandas living it up on a slide. I hope they don’t get splinters! (sound up):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed to death upon arrival. She would have been 89 today.

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, I’m glad to see the Brits have their priorities straight!

. . . also their priorities about the coronation:

I’m not sure if this BBC show from yesterday, about the banning of evolution education in India, is still available, but you can try.

Coronation happening now. Ceiling Cat save the King!

May 6, 2023 • 5:59 am

The coronation of King Charles III is happening at this moment. To see it live, click on the screenshot below. The link also gives a list of sites where you can watch it streaming online.  He’s got his orb, his ring (one ring to rule them all), his scepter, and his glove, and very soon he’ll get the Big Crown, full of diamonds and jewels.

He was crowned at about 6:03 a.m. Chicago time. As soon as the Archbishop of Canterbury put the five-pound apparatus on Charles’s head (it took a bit of wiggling), he shouted, “God save the King!”

The moment:

British reaction to the sex binary kerfuffle: The Daily Mail and Steven Knight

May 5, 2023 • 10:15 am

I continue to be amazed at how much dust is stirred up by simply asserting the biological observation that, in animals and vacular plants, there are but two sexes, and those sexes are defined by the reproductive equipment they have. Males are “designed” (I’m speaking teleologically: “evolved” is what I mean) to make small, mobile gametes, and females to make big immobile ones.  For decades this has been uncontroversial: A truth universally acknowledged, to paraphrase Jane Austen.

Now, however, for reasons known best to themselves, a small but vocal group of ideologues is denying the sex binary. In my coauthored paper coming out in late June, we hazard some guesses, but those of you following the controversy probably realize that it involves trying to impose one’s ideological views onto nature.

Here’s the kind of stuff that comes out of the woodwork (tweet found by reader Mike and noted in the comments below). It’s an object lesson about how to smear those who advance a scientific fact that you don’t like. (I’ve archived the tweet with a screenshot, but you can see the original by clicking on it).

This doesn’t work so easily with the sex binary, as even nonscientists can observe it with their own eyes. The result is that deniers of that binary, such as Agustín Fuentes and Laura Helmuth (editor of Scientific American who’s published several pieces denying a sex binary), face considerable pushback from both scientists—who work with male and female organisms—and “regular” people, who have eyes to see and neurons to analyze.

You might look at the comments (or “ratio-ing”) of these tweets by both Fuentes and Helmuthy (click to see original tweets and the thread of comments). You’ll see that the vast majority of comments on both tweets are critical. That’s not because of our own incisive analysis, but because Fuentes’s arguments (and Helmuth’s desperate attempts to defend them and stave off the decline of Scientific American) are so transparently weak—and ideologically motivated).

I enjoy a good dust-up once in a while, and this is one of them. Even the Daily Mail, which wrote an article about the controversy and about Sci Am, is pro-binary, though their article is not written at all well and seems to consist of fragments from interviews. Click below to read it.

They interviewed me, Fuentes, Helmuth, and Carole Hooven, and I won’t summarize the text, which, like the article itself, is a bit disjointed. (The writer was clearly not acquainted with evolutionary biology or the biology of sex.)  Let me just say three things.

First, I did not say THIS:

Dr Jerry Coyne, a biologist at the University of Chicago, told DailyMail.com that the magazine is ‘forcing a progressive lefty agenda’ onto readers just wanting to learn about science. [Dr Fuentes] is imposing his ideology on nature,’ Dr Coyne said.

I would have said “Leftist”, though I stand by my claim that yes, Sci Am does have a political agenda. “Lefty” is a term I reserve for left-handed baseball pitchers.  It’s probably a bad transcription from our recorded interview, and may be due to my voice, which was horse from a bad colt.

Second, there are pro-binary quotes from Carole Hooven and Colin Wright (whose writings were excerpted). Here’s how Carole responded to Fuentes’s (and Helmuth’s) claim that we biologist think that sex-related characters (beyond gametes and their developmental origin) and behaviors are also binary—an position that none of us have taken because we’re not stupid.

Dr Hooven, said Dr Fuentes is misrepresenting sex and the traits an animal has.

‘No serious scientist would argue that traits are binary; it is sex that is binary,’ she explained.

‘Sex differences in hormones, strength, size, etc. are not the same as sex, but are strongly associated with it, just as an interest in construction equipment or dolls are traits associated with, but not the same as being a boy or girl.

‘In mammals, there are two sexes and two only. One can change their sex-related characteristics like hormones, mode of dress, muscle mass, even voice, but one cannot change sex.

‘The point is, biologists and others understand that while male and female are binary sex categories based on gamete size, and bodies and behavior of boys and girls, men and women are extremely diverse, there are some circumstances in which sex matters.’

Fuentes has a lame reply:

Dr Fuentes disagrees with the assessment from the biologists.

‘There are sexes and differences between them matter. That is not in dispute. But the overlaps between sexes also matter and are sufficient that the frame of a “sex binary” is misleading and inhibits better research and analyses,’ he said.

How can he possibly disagree with what Hooven said, which happens to be true?

Third, I found this the most intriguing part of the article, and hilarious in its arrant fibbing in the part I’ve bolded.

‘Scientific American publishes fascinating articles about the latest scientific research, and often this work is relevant to important and timely issues,’ Laura Helmuth, editor-and-chief of the journal, told DailyMail.com in response.

‘We hope the articles we share, many of which are written by leading experts, help readers understand our world. That is my only agenda.’

Seriously? That is her only agenda? That’s simply not true: a major part of the magazine’s effort is devoted to propping up, using scientific articles and op-eds, Helmuth’s progressive authoritarianism (see my collection of posts about this bias here). If she were interested in truth, why would she flatly reject my offer to write an op-ed about the bad effects of ideology on science? (Well, that op-ed has morphed into a long article that will appear in about 6 weeks.)

Finally, to return to a sensible outlook, have a look at this piece by Stephen Knight (also known as “Godless Spellchecker”) at Spiked (click to read):

Just two excerpts here:

A dangerous strain of utopian thinking has taken hold of the ‘progressive’ left. Many now share the delusion that if we pretend certain falsehoods are true, then various forms of oppression and bigotry will magically disappear. Worse still, the proponents of these falsehoods demand their unequivocal affirmation from the rest of us.

Today’s leftists rightly insist on the importance of scientific truth when it comes to questions like climate change, vaccine safety and evolution. But they will discard scientific facts the moment they become inconvenient to their own worldview. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more pronounced than on the issue of gender, where transgender ideology has almost entirely supplanted scientific truth among the left. More alarming still is the fact that many scientists and scientific institutions, which really should know better, are colluding in this deception.

The latest scientific institution to promote gender pseudoscience is the once-venerable Scientific American magazine, which this week published an article headlined ‘Here’s why human sex is not binary’.

Make no mistake, sex in human beings really is binary and immutable. There are few things more emphatically true in our scientific understanding of the world than the human sex binary.

. . .After some silly and irrelevant trivia about the biology of lizards and fish (humans are neither fish nor lizards), the Scientific American article concludes by claiming that anyone who upholds the human sex binary is ‘trying to restrict who counts as a full human in society’. This single claim inadvertently reveals a great deal about what is wrong with the trans movement. Unable to refute the truth of the human sex binary, gender ideologues resort to demonising those who notice it as having ulterior, sinister motives.

This isn’t the first time Scientific American has lent its (now waning) credibility to gender nonsense. Back in 2018, it published an article titled ‘Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is overly simplistic’. To this day, this piece is gleefully shared around by gender activists, emboldened by this apparent vindication of their ideology from a credible, scientific publication. However, the author of the piece has since clarified that reality actually is as simplistic as humans having only ‘two sexes’.

Here’s that clarification by Claire Ainsworth:

And yes, Ainsworth is right, but I add the caveat that for many traits, like height and weight, males and females may lie on a continuous distribution, but the distribution is also bimodal because of sexual dimorphism. Sadly, Alice Dreger, whose book Galileo’s Middle Finger was great, rejects even the concept of sexual dimorphism in humans (see bottom of tweet; nothing is “potentially sensitive” there.

And, to end, Knight quotes the wise and ever-snarky Emma Hilton:

Dr Emma Hilton is a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester and a co-founder of the women’s rights organisation, Sex Matters. When I asked her what compels otherwise sensible people to make anti-scientific claims about human sex, she said: ‘Charitably, if you remove the ability to classify (by arguing classifications are arbitrary, meaningless, etc), you remove the ability to discriminate (or at least stigmatise). So, for some, “sex blindness” is a genuine strategy for social change. But it is a stupid one.’

That last five-word sentence made me laugh out loud. Big fun!

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 5, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos come from UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. By the way, I have less than a week’s worth of photos left, so I may have to stop this feature or make it more sporadic.

UPDATE to below: The Washington Post has a new piece, with photos, of the amazing blooms in California that resulted from this winter’s excessive snowfall and rainfall.

Carrizo Plain

Dramatic wildflower displays in spring 2023 brought national attention to the Carrizo Plain National Monument, a vast (1,215 mi²) semidesert preserve 90 miles east of San Luis Obispo in the southern Inner Coast Range of California.  Carrizo Plain hosts the state’s largest remnant native grassland, which was spared from development by remoteness and lack of water, and is also too arid to be completely overrun by non-native grasses.  It’s a major refuge for threatened and endangered wildlife and has been protected since 1988.

In wet years like this one, the hillsides come alive with scenes like this flower-painted hillside:

Hillside Daisy (Monolopia lanceolata) provides the yellow:

Scorpionweed (Phacelia tanacetifolia and other Phacelias) provides the blues:

San Joaquin Blazing-Star (Mentzelia pectinata) provides the orange:

The plain was formed by the San Andreas Fault, visible as the long narrow escarpment in front of the hills:

Mormon-tea (Ephedra californica), a common shrub, is a “nurse plant” for some wildflowers that grow best in its shade.  The pink rings around these shrubs are Parry’s Mallow (Eremalche parryi) and the blue rings are Nightshade (Solanum umbelliferum); in between shrubs is Goldfields (Lasthenia californica):

Wildflowers nearly burying this shrub include magenta Owl’s Clover (Castilleja exserta), violet Thistle Sage (Salvia carduaceae), cream-colored Woolly Desert-Dandelion (Malacothrix floccifera), and yellow Desert Daisy:

Thistle Sage (Salvia carduaceae), closeup:

Desert Candle (Caulanthus inflatus), the most Dr. Seussian of wildflowers:

Wildlife-wise our most exciting sighting was the San Joaquin Antelope Squirrel (Ammospermophilus nelsoni), a threatened species found only in this region.  It jerks convulsively while giving its alarm calls, as it’s doing in this picture, and also responds to the alarm calls of birds:

Framing birds against wildflower backdrops was my pastime on this trip; here are a few.

Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris):

Ash-Throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens):

Bell’s Sparrow (Artemisiospiza belli), found only in the southern California desert region:

Lark Sparrows (Chondestes grammicus) in love:

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 5, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s Friday, May 5, 2023, and National Enchilada Day. Here’s a tasty photo from Wikipedia (I love all kinds of mole sauce):

(From Wikipedia: Enchiladas with mole, served with refried beans and Spanish rice)

It’s also International Space Day, International Tuba Day, Museum Lover’s Day (not erroneous apostrophe placement), No Pants Day, Oyster Day, National Cartoonists Day, World Portuguese Language Day (International), and, of course, Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the U.S.T

There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating the life of Corky Lee (1947-2021), described by Wikipedia as “a Chinese-American activist, community organizer, photographer, journalist and the unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate.” Click on the screenshot to read more; it’s up because it’s Asian Pacific Heritage Month.

The article adds this about Lee, who died young:

Lee died at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills on January 27, 2021. He was 73, and developed complications of COVID-19 in the time leading up to his death.[6][9][19] It was likely that he had become ill from patrolling with neighborhood watch groups, protecting Chinatown from anti-Asian violence.

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

Da Nooz:

*I can’t help but be happy about this,  as I think it’s justice properly rendered. Four members of the far-right fascistic gang The Proud Boys were convicted yesterday of an unusual crime—sedition (or “seditious conspiracy”—for their role in the January 6 insurrection. “Seditious conspiracy” is simply a conspiracy to damage or destroy the government.

Four members of the Proud Boys, including their former leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted on Thursday of seditious conspiracy for plotting to keep President Donald J. Trump in power after his election defeat by leading a violent mob in attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The fifth defendant in the case, Dominic Pezzola, was found not guilty on the sedition charges, although he was convicted of other serious felonies.

The verdicts, coming after seven days of deliberations in Federal District Court in Washington, were a major blow against one of the country’s most notorious far-right groups and another milestone in the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack.

The trial was the last of three sedition cases that federal prosecutors brought against key figures in the Capitol attack.

The sedition charge, which is rarely used and harks back to the Union’s efforts to protect the federal government against secessionist rebels during the Civil War, was also used in two separate trials against nine members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia. Six of those defendants — including Stewart Rhodes, the organization’s founder and leader — were convicted of sedition; each of the others was found guilty of different serious felonies.

They face a maximum of 50 years in prison for sedition alone, but the NYT notes that they were found guilty of other felonies as well. They’re going to be cooling their heels for a LONG time, although of course 50 years seems far too draconian a punishment, and I doubt they’ll be sentenced to even half that.

*According to the Torygraph, a transwoman won New Mexico’s biggest cycling competition  for women by a long stretch, taking home over $35,000

In what has been described as a “Lia Thomas moment” for cycling, Austin Killips, a 27-year-old transgender rider, has won first prize for women at the Tour of the Gila, the premier road race in New Mexico.

It marked the most significant result yet for Killips, a trans-identifying biological male from Chicago, who also won a medal in women’s cyclo-cross at the US National Championships and who is now tipped to challenge for a place at the Tour de France Femmes and at next summer’s Paris Olympics.

This year’s running of the Tour of the Gila marked the first time in the event’s 36-year history that equal prize money had been offered, with a total purse of $35,350 (£28,145) in both the men’s and women’s races. Killips, who only took up cycling in 2019 before starting hormone replacement therapy, earned almost £8,000 for finishing top of the women’s general classification, plus an £800 bonus as “Queen of the Mountains”.

“Austin is cycling’s equivalent of Lia Thomas,” Inga Thompson, a three-time US Olympian and five-time national road race champion, told Telegraph Sport. Thomas won a US women’s collegiate title in swimming last year, in the 200-yard freestyle, having been ranked 554th in the country in the equivalent male category.

Killips is a candidate to make the US Olympic women’s cycling team in Paris next summer, should the UCI, the global governing body, maintain its policy of allowing transgender riders to compete so long as they suppress their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per litre over a two-year period. The average testosterone level for women is between 0.5 and 2.4 nmol/l, while the British Journal of Sports Medicine has suggested that trans women are stronger and maintain better heart and lung capacity than women, even 14 years after taking hormone therapy.

Spiked adds this:

Killips, who only began cycling in 2019, smashed to victory, finishing 89 seconds clear of second-placed Marcela Prieto. He took home the $35,000 prize money and also won a bonus prize as he was named ‘Queen of the Mountains’. In the field of professional cycling, where the margins are usually incredibly tight, the distance between first and second place was seismic.

Killips was allowed to compete in the Tour of the Gila thanks to the world cycling governing body’s extraordinarily lax rules on trans athletes. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) allows biological males to participate in female races, so long as their testosterone levels have been below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for a 24-month period. Believe it or not, these eligibility criteria were even looser prior to June last year, when a policy change halved the testosterone limit and doubled the observation period.

All I can say is that this is wrong, palpably unfair to women, and the UCI is in big trouble. Those who dismissed the issue of transwomen participating in women’s sports as “not worth talking about because it’s so rare” have another thing coming to them!

*From reader Ken:

The hits just keep coming for Clarence Thomas.

It turns out Thomas’s billionaire benefactor, Harlan Crow, paid the private school tuition of a relative Thomas “raised as a son” — and that, as with his other gifts from Crow, Thomas failed to disclose this on his mandatory federal financial disclosure forms:

SCOTUS needs to fix this situation, but fast. There’s a reason why Alexander Hamilton called the courts “the least dangerous branch” in The Federalist Papers (and why legal scholar Alexander Bickel adopted this phrase as the title for his famous treatise on the Supreme Court). The Court has no power to direct any armed forces or law enforcement agency to enforce its orders. Instead, it depends upon the goodwill and respect of the other two branches and, ultimately, upon the goodwill and respect of the American people — which is fading as fast as the picture of Ben Franklin on a cheap, counterfeit C-Note.
The judicial branch needs an inspector general to investigate malfeasance in its ranks, and congress needs to force a mandatory code of ethics down the throat of the hubris-filled snowflakes wearing the SCOTUS robes (who seem to think that the fault for their falling public public approval numbers lies not with them, but with the American public for failing adequately to appreciate them). Either that, or the Justice Department will have to commence criminal investigations.

*Elizabeth Holmes has temporarily delayed her 11-year prison sentence with a last minute appeal, but she also gave her daughter a name that suggests a lack of remorse for her blood-machine grifting. This is from yahoo! news via the Daily Beast; click to read:

Holmes gave birth to her second child with Evans only three months ago, and according to the Daily Mail, which is claiming to have acquired the child’s birth certificate, the would-be Silicon Valley scion christened the baby girl Invicta, which is a feminized take on the Latin word meaning “unconquered.”

“What’s the opposite of remorse? Yeah that,” Bijan Salehizadeh, an investor at Highland Capital Partners who passed on investing in Theranos in 2006 when Holmes couldn’t answer his questions, tweeted Tuesday. “Naming a kid after a poem that political and war prisoners often cite is precious. The demons of denial are raging. Minimum security prison camp with Jen Shah of RH sadly won’t fix that.”

If the Mail indeed isn’t bullshitting, for Holmes to have named her own daughter after her personal defiance in the face of her now-inevitable imprisonment is about as acute a display of narcissism as one’s ever likely to see.

The context of Invicta’s naming is especially chilling when you consider the fact that in January, prosecutors said they learned that Holmes had purchased a one-way ticket to Mexico, and that “only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled.” Yeah: heavily pregnant, she allegedly tried to flee.

By the way, nobody has explained to me why this purchase of a one-way ticket didn’t make the prosecutors put her in jail as a flight risk, and why she’s still free on appeal.

You probably have heard of the male version of the name, “Invictus“, a famous poem by William Ernest Henley. Here’s the whole thing:

Out of the night that covers me,   
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   
I thank whatever gods may be   
  For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   
Under the bludgeonings of chance   
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   

Beyond this place of wrath and tears   
  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years   
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   

It matters not how strait the gate,   
  How charged with punishments the scroll,   
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul.

*We still don’t know who sent two exploding drones over the Kremlin, but my money is now on Ukraine. Russia, however, thinks that Ukraine is doing this at the U.S.’s bequest:

The Kremlin spokesman on Thursday accused the United States of ordering what Moscow alleges was an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin with two drones that were sent to attack the Russian president’s official residence.

“We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv, but in Washington, and Kyiv does what it is told,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday.

John Kirby, the spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said Peskov “is just lying.”

Kirby said that it was still not clear to Washington what had happened, but he bluntly rebutted Peskov’s claim. “I can assure you that there was no involvement by the United States in this, whatever it was,” he said during an appearance on MSNBC. “We had nothing to do with this. Peskov is just lying there, pure and simple.”

Ukrainian officials have denied any role in the alleged attack. Some suggest Russia staged it to create a pretext for escalating its war.

Peskov called the U.S. and Ukrainiandenials “absolutely ridiculous.”

. . . and a tidbit from the Guardian:

Russian forces in Ukraine are so degraded they cannot mount any significant offensive moves and are focused for now on consolidating control of occupied territory, the US intelligence chief said. Avril Haines said Putin’s strategy is likely to be to prolong the conflict until western support for Kyiv wanes.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is on the hunt, while Paulina’s hunting with her camera:

Paulina: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About the probability that this bird sees poorly, hears poorly and flies poorly.
(Photo: Paulina)
In Polish:
Paulina: Nad czym myślisz?
Hili: Nad prawdopodobieństwem, że ten ptak źle widzi, źle słyszy i źle fruwa.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina)

Paulina’s picture of Szaron:

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

From Facebook. What is this bird guide?

From Nicole:

From David:

From Masih. The well of brave Iranian women never runs dry:

I wish I had Emma’s snarkiness. Here she goes after a notorious signaler of virtue:

A cat mastermind from Malcolm. Notice that the d*gs can’t open the door, and merely parasitize the cat’s ability:

From gravelinspector. See the paper: the woman’s DNA (yes, the wearer was a woman) soaked into this elk-tooth pendant to the extent that they could tell a lot about her:

From Barry. It’s amazing that this woman can keep her cool when a tiger’s playing with her (sound up):

 

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

Tweets from Professor Cobb. First, a copycat (I’ve probably posted this before):

Here’s a swarm of bees (a migrating colony) that’s resting on an airplane wing!

. . . And what happened to the bees (they were okay). There’s more in the thread about the delays endured by the passengers. If you enlarge the second video, you can see the bees leave.