Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 18, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s Tuesday, the Cruelest Day (April 18, 2023)—especially cruel as today’s my last full day in Paris before I head home tomorrow. At least nobody can say that I didn’t eat well! The internet is once again working in my hotel, too. It’s National Animal Cracker Day; I don’t know if they have them outside the U.S., but I loved them (and their string-held box) as a child. Now the box comes with a cardboard handle, and the animals have been freed from their cages!

Photo from NPR

I’ll be back Wednesday afternoon and I expect to begin regular posting by Friday. As of Thursday you are welcome to begin sending in readers’ wildlife photos, which I always need.

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

It’s also Adult Autism Awareness Day, Income Tax Pay Day in the U.S., National Lineman Appreciation Day, Coma Patients’ Day in Poland, Friend’s Day  in Brazil, International Day For Monuments and Sites, and Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel (the UN’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27, the day Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated)

Da Nooz:

*According to the Washington Post, the Discord Leaks, which I guess by now are established as genuine, have just revealed a disturbing development,

Egypt paused a plan to secretly supply rockets to Russia last month following talks with senior U.S. officials and instead decided to produce artillery ammunition for Ukraine, according to five leaked U.S. intelligence documents that have not been previously reported.

The Washington Post last week reported on another document that exposed a covert scheme by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February to provide Russia with up to 40,000 122mm Sakr-45 rockets, which can be used in Russian multiple-launch rocket launchers. Sisi instructed his subordinates to keep the project secret “to avoid problems with the West,” the document said.

But the new documents, which The Post obtained from a trove of material allegedly posted on Discord by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, appear to show Sisi in early March backing away from plans to supply Moscow, a move that would have represented a major rebuke to Cairo’s most generous Western ally, the United States.

In an apparent diplomatic win for the Biden administration, a new leaked document stated that Egypt shelved the Moscow deal and approved selling 152mm and 155mm artillery rounds to the United States for transfer to Ukraine.

Well, Egypt is supposed to be our ally; how could it engage in duplicity like this?

One Western ambassador in Cairosaid the leaks suggest Egypt “underestimated the U.S. response to a possible arms supply to Russia” and wanted to “maximize their benefit from both sides.”

It’s diplomacy, Jake, not ethics. . .

*The NYT has an absorbing op-ed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, “The closing of ‘Phantom,’ the loss of my son, and the future of Broadway.” (“Phantom of the Opera” just closed after a 35-year run.) Curiously, most of his attention is devoted to the last topic, especially the high price of mounting a Broadway musical and the vanishing of the Broadway of yore. My friends who go to NYC and want to see a Broadway musical are invariably facing a menu of pap.

Even a medium-scale musical today can cost $18 million to present. The weekly running costs of “Phantom” prepandemic were about $850,000; the additional requirements of the pandemic era pushed it to almost $1 million, and that’s with minimum royalties going to its creators.

No wonder musicals now feature small casts and minimal sets. No wonder producers turn to jukebox musicals with song catalogs everyone knows. . .

Shows like “The Lion King,” “Hamilton” and “Phantom” are the exception, not the rule.

First, ticket costs. The average is now around $130, unaffordable for too many people. Add to that significant markups from the digital sale platforms with which theater owners enter into contractual arrangements.

. . .But there is, sadly, an all too likely scenario. Broadway, unlike London’s West End, is a worldwide brand name, inextricably linked to New York. So if you want to establish a brand, having a show on Broadway is like renting an expensive loss leader storefront on Fifth Avenue or London’s Oxford Street. OK, your brand will lose money, but it has to be there to ensure a successful worldwide rollout.

Please, no.

*This news is six days old, but I missed it, and since I’ve been following the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos case, I’ll add it anyway.

A US judge said Elizabeth Holmes could not remain free on bail while she appealed her conviction of defrauding investors.

Holmes, who was sentenced in November to 11 years and three months in prison, requested in December to remain free during her appeal. The founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos was found guilty of four fraud-related charges.

Prosecutors said in January that Holmes bought a one-way flight to Mexico, which was set to take off three weeks after she was convicted. They called it an “attempt to flee the country,” according to a filing.

In a court ruling filed Monday, US District Judge Edward Davila said the flight wasn’t an attempt to flee but “ill-advised,” nonetheless. The flight booking led to more scrutiny and speculation into Holmes’ personal affairs and motivations, he added.

. . . In a further reference to the Mexico flight, Davila wrote in the filing: “Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defense victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight.”

I still have no explanation from anyone why Holmes, during the trial, booked a ONE WAY TICKET.  That implies she wasn’t coming back, but nobody’s mentioned that.

Holmes will report to federal prison for her 11-year sentence in ten days. In the meantime, her business partner and erstwhile paramour Sunny Balwani was also denied freedom on bail while he appeals his 13-year sentence.

*Finally, you’ve heard about the riots and strikes in France over the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64, a raise vehemently opposed by the French people, who want to spend their golden years not working, but written into law by the French legislature on April 15.  So far we’ve seen plenty of cops deployed to stop the rioting, but have managed to miss the unrest itself.

Yesterday Macron affirmed the law but threw a verbal bone to his constuents.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that he heard people’s anger over raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, but insisted that it was needed to keep the pension system afloat as the population ages.

In many cities, opponents to the pension law took to the streets to bang pots and pans during Macron’s televised address to the nation, with the rallying cry: “Macron won’t listen to us? We won’t listen to him!”

In Paris, the gatherings quickly turned into spontaneous demonstrations in several neighborhoods, with some people setting fire to trash cans as police attempted to disperse the crowd. Hundreds of people also started marching in the western cities of Rennes and Nantes.

In many other places across France, the protests remained peaceful, with people chanting and dancing in front of city halls to the sound of pots and pans used as drums. Many reject the changes as unfair, arguing the government could have raised taxes on the wealthy or employers instead.

In his speech, Macron said “this changes [sic] were needed to guarantee everyone’s pension,” after he enacted the law on Saturday. “They represent an effort, that’s true.”

But then he added this, which isn’t going to cut the ice with many French:

“Gradually working more means also producing more wealth for our whole country,” he added.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I think Andrzej has the wrong interpretation—”meat lover” is more like it!

Hili: The birds are singing beautifully.
A: A music lover.
In Polish:
Hili: Ptaki tak pięknie śpiewają.Ja: Melomanka.

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

From Only Duck Memes:

From Facebook:

From Barry:

A tweet from Masih below. The Google translation from the Farsi is this:

Received message and video: Hello Jesus Christ.

Our daily work is to walk without obeying the inhumane law of mandatory hijab.

Jesus Christ

We said hello to our tent friends and we don’t have any problems with each other, everyone can have their own cover in free Iran.

#woman_life_of_freedom
*Mehsa_Amini

“Tent friends” is hilarious. But yes, you should be free to have a tent.

A tweet from Simon, who says, “Frankly, neither of these look too attractive.” That change fee has got to be a mistake!

From Amy. Elsevier is gouging scientists again, charging $3,450 just to process your article after it’s accepted for publication. Editors resigned in protest. I’ve long had a policy of not reviewing for this money-grubbing publisher:

From Steve Stewart-Williams (via reader Barry) on the new “social justice therapy”. It’s pretty much what you imagine: patients, no matter what their issues, are urged to view them through the lens of social justice. I urge you to read the article at the link. First, a quote from that article:

The governing council of the American Counseling Association, or ACA, has endorsed “multicultural and social-justice counseling competencies.” According to these competencies: “Multicultural and social-justice competent counselors assist privileged and marginalized clients in unlearning their privilege and oppression, [help] privileged and marginalized clients develop critical consciousness by understanding their situation in context of living in an oppressive society” and “initiate discussions with privileged and marginalized clients regarding how they shape and are shaped by local, state and federal laws and policies.”

The therapists need therapy!

Two tweets for Holocaust Remembrance Day by the Auschwitz Memorial

This woman was gassed upon arrival:

At 74, this man stood no chance of passing the inspection:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, currently enjoying himself in Madrid. In the first tweet, I guess both parties like it!

Duck swimming through cherry blossoms!

Well, they looked at three species of monkeys, only one lacking an opposable thumb. A larger sample of species might have been better. . .

Paris: Day 7, meal 7

April 17, 2023 • 11:30 am

We will temporarily skip the post abut yesterday’s meal—but only for a short time—because that will involve a longer post since I also went to the Musée de l’Homme (and watched a Catholic mass and baptism before lunch) and took some photos that would make this post too time-consuming to write today.  I’ll post about Sunday’s all-you-can-eat lamb leg lunch either tomorrow or Wednesday.

But enjoy an account of our gargantuan lunch from today. We returned to a place where we had a spectacular meal several years ago, and then a not-so-great one last week. We decided to give it one more try, as it might have been having an off day last Wednesday. And I’m glad we did.

We returned in fact to the Restaurant Cartet, having specified in advance that we wanted to try the navarin:  French lamb and turnip stew. Dominique, the owner, cook, manager, and server (he’s the only guy who works there) requested in turn that Winnie wear her spiky, stretchy pants, as (being a gardener) he said they reminded him of anemone flowers moving in the breeze. (Remember, this is France.).

So, Winnie donned her trousers and we met at Le Cartet, worried that the meal would be so-so like the one we had last week. But then, as Dominique unlocked the door to let us in (and then relocked it), we spotted four big bowls of desserts on one table to the right, and three big entrees on the other, and we knew we were in for another belly buster. First, the trousers in question:

What we saw upon entering: the desserts: riz au lait (rice pudding), the cream for Îles flottantes (floating islands), into which you put big globs of stiff meringue at the last moment, a gigantic tureen of crème caramel, and bugnes (small crispy pastries dusted with sugar, not visible in photo below). We did not know that a tureen of fantastic chocolate mousse, the best I’ve ever had, was also lurking in the kitchen. The huge array of desserts and entrées let us know that Cartet was back on form.

These are not ramekins; they are BIG BOWLS and TUREENS.

The entrées: beef muzzle with mustard sauce (not my favorite, but still pretty good), fresh artichokes with fresh pecorino cheese, and my favorite of all Dominiques starters, endives with walnuts, also with mustard sauce. There was a also a plate of beautiful tomatoes, which he displayed because some of them had gone into the navarin.

 Starters: the endives. Yum! This is a world-class entrée.

Beef muzzle (enough for 6 people as a starter)

Fresh artichokes with peas and pecorino cheese:

At this point we were discussing Calvados (a meal at Cartet, if you befriend Dominique, is half eating and have chatting with le chef), and Dominique displayed this bottle of Didier Lemorton Reserve Calvados from Normandy, which he said was made from 70% apple and 30% pear. He brought it out because the wine we were drinking was redolent of pear. (I am now regretting not having a small taste of the Calvados after lunch, as I see it’s highly rated on the Internet.)

The plat (main course) was navarin: spring lamb and turnip stew with tomatoes, peas, carrots, and mushrooms.  We ate almost the whole bowl, sopping up the juices with crusty baguette. I didn’t hold out much hope for lamb and turnip stew, but this is a traditional seasonal dish in France, called navarin printanier when made with fresh Spring veggies. And Ceiling Cat help me if it wasn’t delicious!

We also had the same luscious white wine we had last time

Desserts: The crème caramel, which was about four inches thick with a crispy crust, luscious creamy/gelatinous interior, and a layer of caramel sauce at the bottom. Délicieux! This is a big crock that could feed five, but we ate nearly half of it. (There is no hope of finishing most dishes at Cartet, and the chef knows it.) But Winnie and I are nearly equal to the task, for we are feeders.

Below: rice pudding, some of the finest I’ve ever had, rivaling that of L’Ami Jean before that bistro went steeply downhill due to an influx of diners driven there by Adam Gopnik’s favorable review in The New Yorker. I’ll never forgive Adam for writing about the place! We took a pass on the isle flottante as we didn’t want to waste the meringue and we were getting pretty full.

Again, this is enough for four or five people even as a single dessert. It’s very rich.  Perhaps it’s in my Jewish genes, but I love rice pudding.

On the side we got a bonus plate of bugnes lyonnais craquantes, a crispy accompaniment to wet desserts. They’re basically made of donut ingredients and deep fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.

Just as we could barely eat any more dessert (or a molecule of any food), Dominique appeared at the kitchen door with a big bowl of chocolate mousse, and put a huge spoonful of it on each of our plates. Yes, it was the best chocolate mousse I’ve ever had: cakelike on the top, more moussemo-ish a bit further down, and with small bits of solid chocolate floating throughout. The taste and texture were incomparable.

Dominique doesn’t like to be photographed, but he obliged me by posing with the bowl of mousse over his face.

While we were eating, he was cleaning a bunch of chinaberries (Melia azedarach) to make a necklace and bracelets from the seeds for the children who were coming this evening.

This is a TON of work: you have to boil the berries to loosen the skin, peel it off, scrub the berries with a nylon sponge-thingie so they’re clean, and then let them dry. Chinaberries are popular in some places to make jewelry as the dried seeds are crenulated like a peeled orange and have a natural hole in them, perfect for stringing. They are also used to make rosaries. The fruits and skins are toxic to humans, but are consumed by birds.

One seed. You can’t see the natural hole through it, but, when dried, these can be easily strung on a thread.

Dominique did all this work simply to bring joy to the children dining there tonight. He works because he loves to work, and he doesn’t care about money, which is why he usually serves only one table at lunch and/or dinner.

For more on chinaberry jewelry, go here. I think the trees are easily found in the US.

Here’s our reservation in the book; note that it just says “Winnie” and “2 couverts” (two “covers”, or customers). Again, there were only two of us at lunch, but there would be four for dinner. Although the restaurant opens at noon, Winnie asked to dine at 11:30 so we’d have at least 2.5 hours for lunch (not a long lunch at Cartet)—she had a later engagement. Note that “Navarin” is listed by her name, as we requested it this time.

Finally, Dominique does all the produce shopping for the restaurant, sometimes getting up at 2 a.m. for the hour-long schlep to the Rungis wholesale market, where Les Halles moved when in 1973 it evacuated its centuries-long location in the middle of the city. The market is only open very early in the morning, and only chefs and the like are allowed to shop there. It’s the second largest wholesale food market in the world (second only to Mexico City), and is larger than Monaco!

Winnie took this picture of me after lunch. If you enlarge it, I suspect you’ll see that my tummy is enlarged:

For readers, I still recommend this restaurant highly: two of the three meals we had there were nothing short of spectacular, and will be remembered fondly. It’s an absolutely unique place, and you’ll have to call for reservations.

Again, you might hit it on an off day, but if you order the boeuf ficelle, you can’t go wrong (specify when reserving, or ask what is on offer).  It ain’t cheap: lunch for two was 300 euros, but in my view we got our money’s worth. (There is no menu with prices; you are simply presented with a bill at the end that gives the total price, sometimes separated by food and wine.)

Now I am in my hotel, typing on my laptop but keeping it off of my stomach, which is still painfully distended with lunch

Bon appétit!

Monday: Hili dialogue

April 17, 2023 • 6:45 am

The internet at my hotel has been on the fritz much of the weekend, and let’s hope I get through this post before it goes down again. The Hili dialogue will be short today as I have only half an hour.

I have a full set of food and tourism photos from yesterday, but was unable to post them, and soon must head out for another meal at Cartet.  It was a lovely, sunny day in Paris yesterday, and I went to the exhibits at the Musée de Homme, as two readers suggested.

That aside, good morning on Monday, April 17, 2023. I have but two days left in Paris, and two lunches. It’s national Cheeseball Day, recalling a favorite hostess appetizer of the Fifties.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is clearly in a philosophical model

Hili: History repeats itself.
A: Yes, but every time a bit differently.
In Polish:
Hili: Historia się powtarza.
Ja: Tak, za każdym razem trochę inaczej.

WiFi problems in Paris

April 16, 2023 • 9:51 am

by Greg Mayer

The WIFi at Jerry’s hotel in Paris isn’t working, and won’t be fixed till tomorrow morning (Monday). Therefore, he writes, “there will be no food or travel posts today”. Quel dommâge! It will be an especially long wait for the WiFi to resume, because, as we all know, “One night in Paris is like a year in any other place.”

But despair not! All Jerry’s food and travel adventures in Paris will appear in time.

Readers’ wildlife photos, or “spot the osprey”

April 16, 2023 • 8:30 am

Due to my obliviousness, Sunday’s regular batch of photos from John Avise was posted yesterday. Today we have only one photo. It’s a weird one from Peter Fisher in Cumbria, and could easily have been a “spot the osprey” photo—except you can see the reveal below. Plus I enlarged the photo, and can’t make out the species, though I’m sure Peter knows what it is.

Peter’s notes (click the photo to enlarge it).

Don’t know whether you’ll be interested in this for your Reader’s Wildlife Photos. It’s not the most impressive shot of an osprey (I think you call them fishing eagles in The States) but maybe the world’s only dashcam shot of one?

JAC: The osprey, found throughout the world., is Pandion haliaetus. I quickly trawled the Internet and could NOT find any other osprey photos taken with a dashcam. Perhaps this is unique!

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 16, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Sunday, April 16, 2023. I am writing this at about 1 a.m. Chicago time, but it won’t be posted until the usual time. First, a note: my hotel Internet was down all night and was just fixed—supposedly. If posts stop coming, don’t worry, I am not dead yet; it is the Internet. And since it’s Sunday, perhaps you can participate in National Eggs Benedict Day, but remember that Anthony Bourdain warned us never to odor this dish in a restaurant—or eat brunch out in general. There is a caveat given in the video below: order eggs with hollandaise sauce early in the day.

Da Nooz

I am far away from America, and so get the news only online. Here are a few items of interest.

*The NYT has a video op-ed (8 minutes) featuring a 27 year old woman who found she was eight weeks pregnant—and in Texas, that most draconian of anti-choice states. Have a look at “This is what a post-Roe abortion looks like.” She managed to get the pills by getting a doctor in another state to prescribe them, having them sent to a mailbox in a “legal” state, and then forwarded to Texas. She got them just in time, as the pills are safe up until 12 weeks of pregnancy. The regimen was not innocuous, she said, after taking the second set of pills, “medication abortion is extremely painful.”

What the woman did may well have been illegal, so she didn’t reveal what she did until today, and of course her face is blocked out and her name is not revealed.  Welcome to much of America—and, if the Supreme Court backs the Texas appellate course decision—all of America.

*I was unaware that, since yesterday, serious fighting has broken out in the beleaguered country of Sudan, where rival military factions are battling it out for control of the government:

Fighting raged across the capital of Sudan for a second day on Sunday, as months of rising tensions between factions of the armed forces suddenly spiraled into an all-out battle that threatened to scuttle the last remaining hopes of a transition to civilian rule.

By Sunday morning, it was unclear who was in control of Sudan, with both the Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group each denying that the other group had claimed control of key installations. Residents of the capital hid in their homes through a night of fighting that appeared to intensify as the sun rose on Sunday. At least 56 people were dead and almost 600 injured, mostly in Khartoum.

The chaos was an alarming turn for a nation that only four years ago was an inspiration in Africa and the Arab world. Jubilant protesters, symbolized in part by a young woman in a white robe, toppled their widely detested ruler of three decades, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, ushering in hopes for democracy and an end to the country’s grinding isolation.

The revolution faltered 18 months ago when Sudan’s two most powerful generals, who are now fighting each other, united to seize power in a coup. But pro-democracy protesters refused to back down, continuing to lose their lives in demonstrations.

*The Leaker, aka Jack Teixeira, a low-level member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was charged yesterday on only two counts, and neither of them carries whopping prison time:

Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member suspected of leaking a trove of classified military intelligence, was charged by the federal government Friday with retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents.

The two criminal charges, relayed during an appearance in federal court here Friday morning, carry a maximum of 15 years in prison. Teixeira, 21, did not enter a plea and is detained pending a hearing Wednesday. The government is seeking continued detention.

Teixeira was arrested Thursday afternoon at a family residence in Dighton, Mass., after a fast-moving investigation related to leaks of military intelligence that started with a small online group and eventually led to hundreds of government secrets spilling out to the wider world.

As a result, dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders on subjects including U.S. spying on allies and exposing the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

*The grim prospects for the war? The link above notes documents suggesting that the war will grind on into next year with neither Russia nor Ukraine making significant advances—and no peace talks. (Peace talks can only mean that Russia gets to keep part of Ukraine.)

That conclusion comes from one of the documents leaked by Teixeira, although these documents have not been verified by the U.S. government as authentic. But it’s likely they are, and thus this is depressing:

The analysis concludes that, even if Ukraine recaptures “significant” amounts of territory and inflicts “unsustainable losses on Russian forces,” an outcome U.S. intelligence finds unlikely, the nation’s gains would not lead to peace talks.

“Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios,” says the document, which has not been disclosed previously.

The assessment, based on close U.S. scrutiny of each side’s troop counts, weaponry and equipment, could galvanize the war’s critics who have called on major powers such as the United States and China to push for Kyiv and Moscow to reach a settlement and end a conflict that has displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands dead or wounded.

Asked about the DIA’s assessment, a U.S. official said the decision on when to negotiate is up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, underscoring what has been a hands-off approach to mediation espoused by the administration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The United States will continue to stand with Kyiv and provide it with the equipment and weapons that will bolster its position at the negotiating table, whenever that day comes, the official said.

But “bolstering its position at the negotiating table” is a long way from Ukrainian victory. Zelensky wants unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine (he probably wants Crimea back, too), and Putin will never put up with this. I would not be surprised if the U.S. is already leaning on Zelensky to give up part of eastern Ukraine to end this conflict, while officially saying that we’re applying no pressure.

*Finally, the viral Elon Musk is about to launch his gigantic Starship, designed to carry people to both the Moon and Mars. Its first launch, a test flight that may take place this week, will be unmanned. Liftoff will be from Texas:

It’s the biggest and mightiest rocket ever built, with the lofty goals of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.

Jutting almost 400 feet (120 meters) into the South Texas sky, Starship could blast off as early as Monday, with no one aboard. Musk’s company got the OK from the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday.

It will be the first launch with Starship’s two sections together. Early versions of the sci-fi-looking upper stage rocketed several miles into the stratosphere a few years back, crashing four times before finally landing upright in 2021. The towering first-stage rocket booster, dubbed Super Heavy, will soar for the first time.

For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea.

“I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. “I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50% chance of reaching orbit.”

The damn thing has THIRTY THREE MAIN ENGINES and can carry up to 100 people all the way to Mars. Its first flight will last 90 minutes, and the rocket will be re-usable  Here’s a photo (and caption) from the AP:

This undated photo provided by SpaceX shows the company’s Starship rocket at the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. (SpaceX via AP)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows that she is a (secular) Jewish cat:

Hili: I suspect that nothing is OK.
A: I suspect that you exaggerate.
In Polish:
Hili: Podejrzewam, że nic nie jest dobrze.Ja: Podejrzewam, że możesz przesadzać

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

From reader Thomas:

From Anna:

From Jesus of the Day:

Two tweets from Masih: More brave Iranian women. Would you remove your hijab knowing that you might be arrested by the dreaded morality police and jailed? Or worse?

From Simon, another academic meme from Oded Rehavi. No gratitude!

From Pyers. How could this have happened?

From Barry. I too was much relieved after reading this explanation from Marjorie Taylor Greene:

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. Sound up on the first one!

Trombidium is a genus of mite:

Sound up to hear the purr. A cat is a cat:

Caturday felid trifecta: Three videos with Messi the cougar

April 15, 2023 • 1:00 pm

I almost forgot Caturday! Today I will cobble one together featuring the planet’s most famous cougar (Puma concolor), Messi. He’s a rescue cougar, and his staff has made many videos about him. I’ll show three, and will I’ll let Wikipedia explain Messi’s situation:

Messi (Russian: Месси; born 30 October 2015) is a pet cougar, model and Internet celebrity, owned by Russian couple Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev. The Dmitrievs live with Messi in a two-storey house on a large plot of land in Penza, Russia. Messi was adopted in 2016 from a local petting zoo. In 2017, the Dmitrievs started an Instagram account and a YouTube channel for Messi, which became very popular by 2018 and continues to grow in subscribers.

Here’s Messi cuddling up to his staff in bed, just like a housecat.

Messi was born in a zoo at Saransk, Russia. He was one of three newborn cougars at the zoo to be named after professional football players for current Paris Saint-Germain and former FC Barcelona; Messi was named after Lionel Messi, and the other two were named Suarez and Neymar. The cubs were given these names because Saransk was one of several cities proposed to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Messi was later sold to a petting zoo in Penza when he was three months old.

Messi was significantly smaller than other typical male cougars, and as the species is not native to Russia, he could not be released into the wild. He had numerous other health problems as well, which rendered him unable to live in a zoo or wildlife sanctuary either. Furthermore, workers at the petting zoo originally planned to euthanize him.

In 2016, Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev visited the Penza zoo and met Messi for the first time. The couple experienced “love at first sight,” and noticed Messi’s exceptionally gentle personality. The Dmitrievs already had a sphynx cat named Kira but Aleksandr always wanted a big cat and so they considered bringıng Messi home and offered a high price to the zoo authorities. “So we went to the zoo and started negotiations to buy Messi. We were surprised ourselves when they agreed”, Mariya Dmitriev recalled in an interview with Caters News.

Here’s Messi getting a bit of omelet for a treat:

When they first purchased Messi, Alexandr and Mariya Dmitriev lived in a small studio apartment in Penza. The hallway of the apartment was modified and was designated as Messi’s play area  Messi uses toys such as empty bottles and balls. Messi has a gentle and calm personality, and has never attacked a person or another animal. The Dmitrievs sometimes refer to him as “kitten.”

Messi is regarded by his owners as similar to a domestic dog. He has been trained at a local dog training facility and has learned around ten formal commands. The Dmitrievs walk Messi regularly using a leash, coat, and harness through various environments.

Messi is fed twice a day, and his diet mostly consists of raw turkey, beef, and chicken.  It costs the Dmitrievs about 630 rubles per day to feed him. The couple regularly bathes Messi in a bathtub and sometimes trim his claws.

Messi is house-broken (trained) and prefers to stay inside when there is snow outside.

Here Messi is howling for Alexandr; I guess he’s highly bonded with him: