Category: Hili Dialogue

Friday: Hili dialogue

February 7, 2025 • 6:45 am

Can the week be over already? Indeed it is, at least what they call the “work week”, for it’s Friday, February 7, 2025, and it’s National Fettuccine Alfredo Day, one of my favorite pastas, though I make it with hollow bucatini noodles instead of fettuccine.  I add peas to mine to pump up the vegetable content. It’s good!

Meliciousm, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also “e” Day, since the first two digits of that nunber are 2 and 7, Ballet Day, Rose Day, National Patty Melt Day (it’s just a cheeseburger on rye), and Bubble Gum Day.

Reader Rick submitted a quote of the day:

“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” -Emo Phillips, comedian, actor (b. 7 Feb 1956)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump’s EOs, as predicted, are getting stalled right and left by lawsuits, which is the proper way to oppose them. The latest one is his plan, implemented via Musk, to get rid of federal workers:

A federal judge in Massachusetts barred the government on Thursday from imposing a midnight deadline on federal workers who were offered a deferred resignation plan, freezing the government from implementing the deadline until a hearing on Monday afternoon.

The offer, which had been set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, is part of President Trump’s campaign to drastically cut the size of the federal government.

U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. enjoined the Office of Personnel Management from carrying out the buyout offers that have been emailed to federal workers until a hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The administration has said tens of thousands of workers have already accepted offers to stop working and resign effective in September, but still collect pay until then.

More than 40,000 federal workers have accepted the deferred resignation program, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday. She said the number was expected to increase.

“We encourage federal workers in this city to accept the very generous offer,” she said, adding: “We’ll find highly competent individuals who want to fill these roles.”

What??? I thought the program was meant to reduce the size of the government, not simply to replace people with more competent people (the implication is that those who resign are not so competent).

*As for Trump’s madness on Gaza (he apparently didn’t consult anybody before offering this plan), he now foresees Israel handing the Strip over to the U.S.!

US President Donald Trump on Thursday expanded on his plan to push out Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, pledging that the Strip “would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” and rejecting American boots on the ground as a precondition for the reconstruction of the devastated enclave.

Given that there is currently a ceasefire, his use of the phrase “at the conclusion of the fighting,” appeared to at least leave the door open for the possibility that the war will resume, per the demand of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing flank.

Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump specified: “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”

Gazans “would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region,” he continued, apparently repeating his suggestion that the Strip’s population would be permanently displaced, despite a statement to the contrary by the top US diplomat on Wednesday. “They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe and free.”

“The US, working with great development teams from all over the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth,” Trump continued, adding that “no soldiers by the US would be needed.” Trump’s Mideast envoy was said to have offered similar assurances to Republican lawmakers amid their concerns about foreign entanglements.

. . . Trump reportedly did not hold consultations on his new plan, and his announcement Tuesday was said to have even caught Netanyahu by surprise. The premier later applauded Trump’s “totally different” thinking, and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday ordered the IDF to prepare for Gazans to voluntarily emigrate.

Posing with Senate leaders on Thursday, Netanyahu was asked whether “US troops are needed in Gaza to make Trump’s plan feasible?”

Notice that Netanyahu did not answer. Of course they would need U.S. troops–if anybody is left in Gaza. And the world isn’t buying the idea of resettling Gazans in other countries like Jordan and Egypt (the latter country said that such an attempt would scupper Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel). I wish the UAE could run Gaza, but that ain’t gonna happen, either. The fact is that Trump is a loose cannon and you can’t trust his musings like this one.

*The WaPo lists all the Oscar nominations, and I’ll just give them for the top eight categories (one includes a cat movie!) Sadly, I’ve seen only one of the ten “Best Film” pictures.

The only movie I’ve seen of these was “Anora,” which was very good but not a classic, or even great:

Emilia Pérez gets a 73% critics’ rating and a dismal 17% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t think I’ll see it. . .

I want to see the Dylan movie but–I kid you not–what puts me off is that the star is named Timothée (pronounced “Timothy”), apparently his French birth name since he’s French-American.. UPDATE: I watched half of “A complete unknown yesterday, just to check, and though the plot is good, I simply could not suspend my disbelief that Timothée was Dylan and Monica Barbaro was Joan Baez. Rarely have I had this problem, but I suppose the figures and behaviors of Dylan and Baez are embedded so deeply in my being that nobody could convincingly play them in a movie.  I have to hand it to Chalamet, though: who spent years learning to play guitar and sing like Dylan, starting from nothing.  Here’s an interview of Timothée on the Late Show:

And I’ve put a box around the animated feature I want to win, which I WILL see!


If you want to tout or criticize any of these movies or nominees, or let us know which ones you’ve seen and recommend, please do so in the comments.

*The best actress nominee, the trans-identified man Karla Sofia Gascón, suddenly turned from a heroine to. . . well, not a villain, but almost an apostate, when they uncovered some of his/her tweets, which once again puts progressives in a battle among themselves.

. . . . until last Thursday this year’s front-runner for the awards was “Emilia Pérez,” the operatic tale of a Mexican drug lord who becomes a better person by undergoing “transition” surgery. The Spanish transgender actor Karla Sofía Gascón (born Juan Carlos Gascón), who plays the title role, was nominated for best actress, and the French-made film led all others with 13 nominations. The opportunity to celebrate transgenderism at this cultural moment, with the winners invited to say or imply “Take that, Donald Trump!” from the stage, appeared to be too tempting to pass up.

That was last week. This week, however, all Hollywood can talk about is the shocking past remarks of the nominee—who, far from being embraced as a spokesperson for tolerance, is being denounced as “racist,” “hateful” and even “misogynistic.” The contretemps began when a black Muslim journalist, Sarah Hagi, began to suspect that Ms. Gascón, who before “Emilia Pérez” was little-known in the U.S., had a less than welcoming attitude toward Islam.

A search on X.com (formerly Twitter) turned up such eyebrow-raising comments as this one, from 2020, originally written in Spanish: “I’m sorry, is it just my impression or are there more Muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.” Shortly after the death of George Floyd, Ms. Gascón wrote, “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys Without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.”

Ms. Gascón was even accused of liking Hitler, based on this (seemingly ironic) comment from 2019: “This is the same old story, ‘black slaves and women in the kitchen.’ But it is my opinion and it must be respected. I do not understand so much world war against Hitler, he simply had his opinion of the Jews. Well, that’s how the world goes.”

Perhaps most ill-advisedly, Ms. Gascón made fun of the Oscars ceremony itself, writing of the notoriously dull 2021 broadcast, “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.” (“The 8M” refers to March 8, International Women’s Day.)

Overnight, a walking symbol of Hollywood’s love, tolerance, empathy and inclusivity was rebranded as the opposite of all these things. Hollywood was skipping merrily toward rewarding the wokest movie of the year when it stepped on an antiwoke land mine.

Nellie Bowles reprises some of Gascón’s tweets in today’s TGIF:

→ ¡Oh no, Karla Sofía Gascón! Karla Sofía is the trans actress who starred in the critically acclaimed film Emilia Pérez, and now she’s in trouble for the bad tweets of her past. Like: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M [a Spanish way of referring to International Women’s Day]. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”

Or this one about Covid: “The Chinese vaccine, apart from the mandatory chip, comes with two spring rolls, a cat that moves its hand, 2 plastic flowers, a pop-up lantern, 3 telephone lines and one euro for your first controlled purchase.”

What to do? If we can’t trust the divinity of a trans woman, what can we ever trust? Solution: Ignore the things celebrities say. I don’t want to know if the action star in the movie is homophobic. Or if he hates America. I’m going to just assume one or the other. Don’t ask, don’t tell. If you stumble on a celebrity’s opinion accidentally, try to ignore it. If a celebrity is spouting their political opinions, gently encourage them to stop. Remind them they are there to look pretty and talk nice. Which is all to say: Justice for Karla.

Gascón says that no withdrawal is in the offing, which is okay because it’s free speech, which shouldn’t affect an acting job (though the acting category is debatable).

*Here’s a 12½-minute clip from the Glenn Show in which Loury and McWhorter discuss Ibram Kendi’s move from Boston University (BU) to Howard University. (The discussion starts at 26 seconds in.)  McWhorter wonders, as I do, why Howard hired Kendi to do the same managerial job he did at BU. He guesses that “Howard is trying to assemble a lineup of superstars” (they also have Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones), though none of these people are academics; though why a university wants non-academic superstars baffles him.

Loury guesses that black academic superstars wouldn’t go to Howard, having outside options like Harvard or Princeton. McWhorter takes issue with Kendi’s (and perhaps Howard’s) obsession with racism as opposed to all the other problems that plague this world.  Loury does have some praise for Coates and Hannah-Jones, but not so much for Kendi, but insists that any “center” like Kendi must engage with the rest of a university, “integrated into the larger intellectual life of the institution”. That wasn’t the case for Kendi’s center at BU.

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is engaged in an Internet squabble:

Hili: You’ve answered somebody again.
Andrzej: And again I don’t know whether I did the right thing.
In Polish:
Hili: Znowu komuś odpowiedziałeś.
Ja: Znowu nie wiem, czy zrobiłem słusznie.

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

From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!:

From Cat’s Diary:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

Masih calls for action against iran:

From Luana; Trump gets a victory that really belongs to Democrats:

From Jez, a rescue story involving both horrible perps and wonderful humans:

From Malcolm: a cat who sounds like a d*g (sound up)

Baby goats are the best!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

Gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz, this French Jewish girl was four years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-07T11:11:43.552Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, lovely and very old sculpture:

Around 4,300 years ago, an Egyptian artisan carved a little frog, a grasshopper, and a dragonfly.Lovely details from nature depicted on a wall relief in the Tomb of Kagemni at Saqqara, Egypt. Old Kingdom, Dynasty 6, c. 2345-2323 BC. Photo by me#ReliefWednesday#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T11:24:36.025Z

And a glum-looking bee:

Plus the upper part of the labrum makes it look glum. Mind you, it probably is if it’s been paying any attention.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T21:23:13.150Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

February 6, 2025 • 6:30 am

Oy! It rained last night and then froze to the point that the streets and sidewalks in Hyde Park became like an ice rink.  It’s was nearly impossible to walk on the sidewalks without falling, and I fell four times on the first four blocks’ walk to work.  I thought I wouldn’t make it! I was trapped!  Fortunately, 57th Street was relatively free from slippery ice, so I go to that street made it here. (I have cleats, but didn’t know how slippery it was until I got on the streets.) The point is that I need sympathy, as my shoulders and both hands (which I used to break my falls) are aching.  Oy, give me Tylenol! Oh, and don’t tell me I was stupid–I already know that. Poor Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus)!

The first week in February is rushing to its end: today is Thursday February 6, 2025, and National Frozen Yogurt Day. The stuff is okay if you can’t get ice cream, and of course people eat it because it’s healthier.  Eat Well Guru says your mileage may vary (yogurt has less fat but more sugar and more calories:

Frozen yogurt and ice cream are both dairy products. Frozen yogurt is introduced as an alternative to ice cream. Whether it is a healthier option is the question I get from some of my clients. When you compare the food labels, it is obvious that ice cream has more fat content but less sugar and frozen yogurt has less fat content but more sugar. Average all brand of a cup of frozen yogurt contains 10% fat, 37.3 g of sugar, and 221 calories whereas average all brand of a cup of vanilla ice-cream contains 22% fat, 28 g of sugar, and 273 calories. Toppings or the type of ice cream or frozen yogurt may actually determine the healthier choice. Be cautious though! Sometimes low-fat and low-sugar options may add more calories in. For example, a cup of low-fat frozen yogurt may contain up to 42 g sugar and 340 calories.

It’s also International Day to Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, National Sweater Day (in Canada), Lame Duck Day, and National Chopsticks Day.

There’s also a Google Doodle today; click on the screenshot below to see what it’s celebrating:

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

Da Nooz:

*When a friend told me that Trump said he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza, I responded that this couldn’t possibly be true. Do we really want to get the U.S. involved in this war beyond helping Israel with weapons or intelligence? I don’t think so, not if it involves U.S. boots in the ground in that sliver of land. But yes, my friend’s report was true.

Trump generated global shock waves Tuesday when he said the U.S. should take long-term control of Gaza, suggesting that Palestinians should be relocated while the enclave is rebuilt into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on social media that Trump would “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”

Taking control of the hotly contested territory would put the U.S. at the center of the world’s most complicated diplomatic and national-security conflicts, raising the prospect that Trump is signing the country up for exactly the kind of foreign entanglement he told voters he would avoid. Trump didn’t rule out sending American troops to Gaza to accomplish his goals.

Tuesday’s announcement marked a striking shift for Trump, who described the Middle East as “blood and sand” in his first term, according to a longtime adviser. Trump is now proposing to rebuild Gaza, which his own aides say could take 10 to 15 years.

Trump’s proposal stunned even some of his most ardent and influential supporters in the Jewish community. A longtime pro-Israel Trump fundraiser who has raised money for the president for years called the idea “insane” and questioned how it could be executed, noting this type of policy would likely take well over a year to complete with too many unknown variables for it to be done smoothly.

Netanyahu said during the press conference that one of his key goals was to ensure Gaza wouldn’t host terrorists again. Trump, he continued, took that concept “to a much higher level.”

“It is something that could change history, and it is worthwhile really pursuing this avenue.”

Trump also floated the idea that other countries, notably Egypt and Jordan, could take the Palestinians. That won’t work as no country in the Middle East wants them: they are trouble on stilts,  And imagine the world’s reaction if the U.S. somehow cleared out Gaza to take it over, even to rebuild it.  On the other hand, and I’m not defending the proposal, the Gaza situation seems intractable. Hamas leadership of that country poses an existential threat to Israel, and Israel recognizes that they can’t continue to rule Gaza. Blinken used to suggest that the Palestinian authority take it over, but Gazans would never stand for that, as it would start a bloodbath. Do I have a solution? Nope, except that Israel should eliminate Hamas. That, of course, would mean doing so after the ceasefire expires, or in response to Hamas breaking the ceasefire.  But my only consolation about Trump’s blustering here is that, as in other cases, it may just be bluster. (Remember that he said he’d end the Ukraine/Russia war on Day 1 of his administration?)

*Trump is also coming down hard on Iran. First he signed an executive order (we all know what “EO” means now) putting pressure on Iran, though the details are not clear (it presumably involves the futile attempt to prevent Iran from getting nukes). Then he promised to obliterate Iran if they somehow killed him. Postmortem revenge! (It’s illegal, by the way.):

The issue came up as Mr. Trump, who has said he is willing to revive negotiations with Iran, signed an executive order whose details were not immediately released by the White House. As a result, it is not clear what form the pressure campaign might take. But Mr. Trump professed to be hesitant to sign it.

“So this is one I’m torn about,” he told reporters. “Everyone wants me to sign it. I’ll do that.” But he said he was “unhappy to do it.”

Then the threat to obliterate Iran:

President Trump said on Tuesday that he had “left instructions” for Iran to be “obliterated” if its assassins killed him, on the day that he signed an executive order restoring his “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

Mr. Trump’s comments came in response to a reporter’s question, but the issue was more than hypothetical: Just after Mr. Trump was elected, the Justice Department indicted several men who it said had been heard plotting to kill Mr. Trump in September. One of the plotters said that he was assigned in September to carry out the plan by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s elite military unit, prosecutors said in court papers.

“If they did that, they would be obliterated,’’ Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “That would be the end. I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left.”

He added, “Biden should have said that, but he never did.”

In fact, experts say, a president cannot leave instructions for military action after his death. That decision would have to be made by his successor, who would then be commander in chief.

It has become too late to prevent Iran from getting the bomb: they are too far along and have too much invested, both in terms of money and psychology, to stop their journey to nukes.  I’m glad Trump realizes the danger Iran poses to the entire Middle East, but it’ll take a statesman who is not demented to stop them–if they can be stopped in their drive to use proxies to eliminated their enemies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

I am not concentrating on Trump just because some misguided readers (who really belong at Phryngl) think I need to spend all my time telling people what a maniac he is. It’s just that there’s a lot going on that he started. When he tried via an EO to end birthright citizenship, I thought immediately that this would be overturned by the courts, as it’s a blatant violation of the Constitution. And, sure enough, a federal judge issued a non-time-limited injunction of that order.

A federal judge Tuesday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to curb birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrantsand foreigners with temporary visas, a decision that is likely to mean the executive order will not take effect as planned later this month.\

U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman issued a preliminary injunction after a court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups aiming at stopping Trump’s order on the grounds that it violates the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

The injunction applies nationally and will remain in place as the case is adjudicated. The Maryland lawsuit is one of at least six federal cases brought against Trump’s order by a total of 22 Democratic-led states and more than a half-dozen civil rights groups. A federal judge in Seattle previously issued a 14-day restraining order.

In issuing the injunction, Boardman said the plaintiffs would “very likely” succeed on the merits in their case against Trump’s order, which she said “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment.”

Boardman said Supreme Court precedent protects birthright citizenship.

“No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”

The Trump administration is expected to appeal Broadman’s injunction, according to legal experts.

The Trump administration will not succeed. Even if this one makes wends its way up to the Supreme Court, the justices will overrule Trump. Even that pack of conservatives cannot cancel what is set out so clearly in the Constitution. This is what Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

*Reader Jez sent me an archived link to this NYT article called “‘We have no coherent message.’ Democrats struggle to oppose Trump.” (archived here)

As Democrats face the reality of President Trump’s second term, they share a fundamental belief: This moment calls for an inspirational message from their party.

They just cannot decide what, exactly, that should be.

In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.

And in a first step toward elevating new leaders, an election this weekend for chair of the Democratic National Committee, the party chose a candidate, Ken Martin of Minnesota, who said he planned to conduct a post-election review largely focused on tactics and messaging. Mr. Martin said he had not determined the parameters of the review, other than that he was not interested in discussing whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have sought re-election.

More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party that is struggling to define what it stands for, what issues to prioritize and how to confront a Trump administration that is carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed. Governors, members of the Senate and the House, state attorneys general, grass-roots leaders and D.N.C. members offered a wide range of views about the direction of their party.

. . . . Democrats broadly agree that they need to do more to address the issues that powered Mr. Trump’s campaign, like grocery costs, inflation and immigration. But there is little consensus on how — or even whether — to prioritize the party’s traditional concerns like abortion rights, L.G.B.T.Q. equality and climate change. Some Democrats fear that even as those issues continued to animate the party’s base, they failed to resonate among a broader swath of voters in the last presidential election.

“We have no coherent message,” said Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas. “This guy is psychotic, and there’s so much, but everything that underlines it is white supremacy and hate. There needs to be a message that is clear on at least the underlying thing that comes with all of this.”

I don’t think that last bit is going to work: calling those who voted for Trump advocates of white supremacy and hatred is unlikely to change their minds, just as Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” comment backfired a while back.  Better, I think, to file lawsuits and argue on the issues instead of name-calling.

*According to Nature, the CDC has proposed to regulate the language in papers produced by its researchers.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has mandated that all scientific manuscripts produced by its researchers that are under review at a journal be withdrawn so that certain language relating to gender can be stripped from them.

What Trump’s flurry of executive orders means for science

The directive, sent by the agency’s chief science officer to some staff members on 31 January, is meant to bring the CDC into compliance with an executive order issued that month by US President Donald Trump seeking to restore “biological truth” to the federal government by recognizing only two sexes: male and female. Executive orders can direct agencies inside the federal government but cannot change existing laws.

According to a copy of the e-mail, shared in the newsletter Inside Medicine, manuscripts must not include any mention of terms including ‘gender’, ‘transgender’, ‘pregnant person’, ‘transsexual’ or ‘non-binary’. CDC scientists who co-author papers originating from outside the agency that include these terms are also expected to rescind their authorship.

It’s unclear how many scientific reports will be affected by the mandate, which applies to all manuscripts written or co-authored by CDC researchers and includes papers that are being prepared for submission, in revisions with journal editors or have been accepted for publication but not yet posted online. It is also uncertain whether journals, which have their own rules for discussing gender and sex, will comply with the directive. Fields such as public health, which have embraced gender identity as an aspect of research in topics including health disparities, are likely to be affected the most by the rules.

. . . . The CDC mandate, however, will erase mention of queer, intersex and transgender individuals from future literature and seems to legitimize “scientific sexism”, says James Mungin, a biomedical scientist at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, who identifies as transgender. Under the new rules, CDC researchers would be unable to share basic demographic data, such as gender identity or sexual orientation, about study participants — omissions that could lead to inaccuracies or ethical breaches if scientists are barred from disclosing why certain participants were removed from a study, Mungin says. Furthermore, gender identity and sexual orientation are nearly impossible to exclude when it comes to the study and treatment of conditions such as HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

I don’t think this is a good idea, as it amounts to censorship of language or even research. I don’t like “pregnant people” better than anyone else, but people do have notions of a more spectrum-ish “gender” that could itself be the subject of research, and research on transgender people, whether it be psychological or medical, could also be useful.  Now if language is being used to buttress and ideology and is not germane to the research itself, the editors can propose changes, but a blanket ban doesn’t appeal to me.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is trying to fix the world:

Hili: What are you doing?
A: I’m putting together a broken reality.

In Polish:

Hili: Co ty robisz?
A: Sklejam połamaną rzeczywistość.

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

From Meow:

From Things With Faces:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih; another Iranian woman taking a chance:

From Bryan:

Two cat tweets from Malcolm:

From Luana; a bad decision:

From my feed. Well, he sort of nailed it:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted. It shows the structure built in front of the “Death Gate”—where trains brought people to Auschwitz, most of them killed within hours—with survivors gathering to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.  There’s a video of the construction and of the survivors below the post:

On January 27, 2025, 56 Auschwitz Survivors gathered in front of the Gate of Death at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

— Auschwitz Memorial (@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social) 2025-02-06T08:00:02.060Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. He said this first one would cheer me up and make me “feel good about humanity. . . and birds.”

The YouTube video adds this:

The Northern Royal Albatross chick has been returned to the Signal Station Trig nest site on January 30 after successfully hatching in the incubator. This keeps the chick safe from being infested with fly larvae during the long hatching process. Watch rangers from the New Zealand Department of Conservation arrive with the hatchling. They spray some bird-safe repellent in the nest to help reduce fly activity, and gently place the chick under the male, RLK, for the first time. Now begins a 7.5-month nestling period in new Zealand with RLK, GLG, and their fluffy chick.

ALBATROSS CHICK FLOOFY GOODNESS KLAXON youtu.be/0uZs1z5msug?…

— Lev Parikian (@levparikian.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T16:10:50.976Z

This cannot be possible! If he suceeded, he wouldn’t be here to go back in time!

It was fine while we stayed in the water.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T12:55:54.046Z

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

February 5, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a hump day (“ཧམ་པ་ཉིན་མོ། ” in Tibetan): Wednesday, February 5, 2025, and National Girls and Women in Sports Day (we are referring to biological females here).

It’s also National Fart Day, National Chocolate Fondue Day, and, Disaster Day, World Nutella Day, and National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

There will be no readers’ wildlife today, and posting will be light, for a black canid has come to visit.

Here’s some useful information from the website above, which implies that you should never try to light a fart (read the link),

The methane and hydrogen in farts also make them flammable. This may not sound like that big of a deal, but there are examples of cows farting themselves into flames. That’s right, animals fart too. And the belief that women fart less than men? It just isn’t true. Fart sounds vary and depend on how much gas is released, the force at which it comes out, and the tightness of one’s sphincter muscles. People who have tight anuses have louder farts.

A video of a man using flatulence to light a candle (I saw the cat only later):

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

Da Nooz:

*Breaking Nooz: Determined to offend the whole world, Trump, after meeting with Netanyahu, proposed that the U.S. take over Gaza and the Gazans be transferred to other countries like Egypt or Jordan.  That is going to go over like a lead balloon.

President Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all two million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s campaign against Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Mr. Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative and an economic development opportunity, he effectively reopened a geopolitical Pandora’s box with far-reaching implications for the Middle East. Control over Gaza has been one of the major flash points of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades, and the idea of relocating its Palestinian residents recalls an era when great Western powers redrew the maps of the region and moved around populations without regard to local autonomy.

On the other hand, there has to be some solution whereby Hamas doesn’t rule that area. I heard as well that the U.S. proposed that the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza.  But that won’t work because Hamas hates the PA (they clashed years ago) plus Gazans want to be ruled by Hamas instead of the PA. This is an almost intractable problem.

More encampments on the way!

Help me Ceiling Cat! The Trump appointee who has frightened me the most, RFK Jr., chosen by Trmp to be the Health and Human Services Secretary, has passed a key Senate committee vote and, given the composition of the current Senate, is likely to be confirmed:

The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department advanced Tuesday after a key swing Republican voted for the nominee in the Senate Finance Committee, likely clearing his path to confirmation.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), a medical doctor, voted with all of the committee’s Republicans to support Kennedy’s confirmation.

“With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes,” Cassidy said on social-media site X shortly before the vote.

Cassidy had been seen as a pivotal vote for Kennedy’s confirmation after he expressed deep concerns last week during the nominee’s hearings. He arrived late to the committee vote on Tuesday, walking into the room with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.)

Cassidy had said last week that he had been “struggling” over Kennedy’s past comments about vaccines and the role they have played in making some parents hesitant to vaccinate their children.

The Louisiana Republican had urged Kennedy to make clear that he didn’t believe vaccines caused autism, but Kennedy had sidestepped such an endorsement, saying he would review the data.

. . . .The committee vote signaled that Kennedy’s path to becoming the nation’s top health official was becoming smoother. The final tally was 14 to 13.

In the full Senate vote, Kennedy can afford to lose as many as three Republican votes if all Democrats oppose him. In the event of a tie, Vice President JD Vance can cast the deciding vote.

See? All the data show that vaccines don’t cause autism, but RFK Jr. won’t give his opinion.  The full Senate vote hasn’t yet been scheduled, but it looks as if this loose cannon will be confirmed.  As Country Joe and the Fish sang, “Whoopee! we’re all gonna die!“

*The UN has apparently fired its special advisor on the prevention of genocide simply because she refused to say that there was a genocide going on in Gaza. Now the advisor speaks out in the Free Press:

Last November, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declined to renew the contract of UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who did not label Israel’s war against Hamas a genocide, even while other UN officials have either done so or released reports which make this claim.

On November 26, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal cast Nderitu’s ousting as part of an unofficial UN campaign against the Jewish state and called her “refusal to endorse a lie in service of a political agenda” a “profile in courage.”

But it wasn’t until last week, after attending Monday’s 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland, on the site where more than 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were murdered in the Holocaust, that Nderitu decided to tell the story of her contentious UN tenure.

“This push that I should say that there’s a genocide going on in Gaza? They knew that I’m not a court of law, and it’s only a court of law that can determine whether a genocide has happened,” Nderitu said in an exclusive interview with Air Mail. “But I was hounded, day in, day out. Bullied, hounded, with protection from nobody.”

“It’s instructive that this never happened for any other war. Not for Ukraine, not for Sudan, not for DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], not for Myanmar,” she said. “The focus was always Israel.”

“This was a war,” she said. “Palestinians were killing Israelis, Israelis were killing Palestinians. It needs to be treated like other wars. In other wars, we don’t run and take one side and then keep going on and on about that one side. . . . By taking one side, condemning it every day, you completely lose the essence of what the UN was created for.”

She was hounded by social media, hounded by the UN, and eventually left:

The UN civil servant described Nderitu’s statement as “one-sided,” suggesting that it “might cause reputational risk on the image of the United Nations as an independent neutral impartial body.” For an institution as hierarchical as the UN, this kind of direct written critique of an undersecretary-general by a junior staffer was highly unusual, as was his request that Nderitu review her “statement with the aim to ensure greater balance and harmonize it with similar UN leaders’ statements.”

Little more than a week later, Nderitu received a two-page letter signed by an unnamed group of “concerned UN staff including Palestinians.” While they joined her “in condemning the intentional attacks and abduction of Israeli civilians by Hamas,” they wrote, “we expected that your statement regarding Israel’s attacks on and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians would have been equally clear and unequivocal.”

And the UN has the temerity to say that it’s an “independent neutral impartial body!”  And remember that the UN-run International Court of Justice is adjudicating a charge of genocide against Israel.  Again, I think the UN has served its purpose, and now it should go away. It is not neutral, and in fact is harmful

*In an important case involving free speech and academic freedom, Jonathan Turley reports that a court has ruled against Ohio State in its disciplining of a professor who used the n-word in class in a didactic way. The Professor, Mark Sullivan, was punished by not having his contract renewed. He sued and won; the case ruling is here. From Turley:

We have previously discussed cases (here, here, here, here, and here) of professors being fired or suspended for using offensive terms such as the n-word in discussions or tests. I have generally argued that such usage is protected on free speech and academic freedom grounds. Now, a federal judge has ruled against Ohio State University (OSU) in an important case involving former OSU Professor Mark Sullivan, who used the n-word in a class on dealing with offensive terms. Ironically, the class was called “Crucial Conversations,” but OSU was not particularly interested in what Professor Sullivan had to say.

Sullivan taught the “Crucial Conversations” course to help train students how to communicate productively about difficult topics. Here is how the court described the background facts:

“Crucial Conversations” used a practical, action-based pedagogy. Students begin by critiquing video vignettes of bullying and eventually escalate to simulating difficult conversations themselves in one-on-one and group exercises. Some of these simulations involved mock conflict—complete with intentionally triggering, provocative, disrespectful, or shocking language. Sullivan warned his students in advance that the exercises would involve such language. The theory behind this pedagogy is that a classroom role play provides a low-stakes environment ideal for honing conversational skills.

One role play scenario cast Sullivan as Whitey Bulger (the late Boston­ based organized crime boss) and a student as a law enforcement officer trying to obtain Bulger’s cooperation. The purpose of this simulation was to teach students how to engage with offensive language (Bulger’s words as recited by Sullivan) while keeping the conversation on track to productive purposes (obtaining Bulger’s cooperation). During the actual simulation, quoting a real statement Bulger made to law enforcement, Sullivan said,

I don’t want to be placed in a prison cell with a bunch of [n-word]s. You make sure I’m in a place with my kind and I’ll talk about who was behind that job of killing [X].

Sullivan hoped for a student response such as,

“I understand you have strong feelings about the kind of cell mates you will be assigned to live with. We will want to listen more carefully to what matters to you as we also work with what is acceptable under prison rules and regulations.”

Sullivan performed this simulation all 49 times he taught the course, without incident for the first 48.

Then he lost his contract after a complaint. The word was used pedagogically, not pejoratively, and according to previous court rulings thus constitutes the proper use of both academic freedom and free speech. Turley comments on the decision:

The court noted that Sullivan was “taking a side” in the long-standing debate over the use of such language and “his whole ‘Crucial Conversations’ course was allegedly a monument to the view that hearing charged language in a classroom is pedagogically worth it.”

Judge Watson found that the balancing test of Pickering “favors Sullivan” and that his language falls squarely in “the robust tradition of academic freedom in our nation’s post-secondary schools.”

It is a very strong opinion supporting both free speech and academic freedom. It is also a compelling reason why Ohio State University needs to have its own “Crucial Conversation” on how it treats free speech.

*The Times of London reports that a French gynecologist was suspended temporarily for refusing to treat a trans-identified man (h/t: Ginger K.). He says that he wasn’t qualified to treat a biological male.

A French gynaecologist has been barred from practising for a month because he refused to examine a transgender patient on the grounds that he was only qualified to treat “real women”.

Dr Victor Acharian was accused of transphobia after he turned the patient away in August 2023, and LGBT groups lodged complaints.

In December he appeared before a disciplinary board of the French Medical Council and he has now been suspended for a month from March 1, with an additional five months’ probation.

. . . The row has drawn national media coverage and polarised public opinion, with some gynaecologists taking Acharian’s side and arguing that treating transgender patients required special training. Feminists also backed him, pointing out that the patient had not had gender reassignment surgery and gynaecological care was not appropriate.

LGBT groups, however, said that transgender patients often faced discrimination or difficulties in gaining access to healthcare.

. . . . Weeks after the incident, Acharian apologised for any offence caused and said he had offered to refer the trans patient to a specialist who could provide appropriate medical care.

The patient, however, described his refusal as “hyper-violent”.

“I was in shock,” the patient said. “It was the first time I had suffered this sort of transphobia.”

Acharian said the patient shouted, “you’re transphobic”, and insulted his secretary before leaving the clinic.

“I was only trying to be honest when I said it wasn’t my specialty and I wasn’t competent. I offered to refer her to services that could take better care of her,” he said.

“I have no skills to take care of men, even if they have shaved their beards and they come and tell my secretary that they have become women. My gynaecological examination table is not suitable for examining men,” Acharian wrote.

. . . Marguerite Stern, a prominent women’s rights activist who has repeatedly clashed with transgender groups over the definition of a woman, said Acharian’s suspension was unjustified.

“Gynaecologists are only qualified to treat women … We are living in a world of lunatics,” she said.

*ArsTechnica summarizes a new PNAS article suggesting that bonobos have a theory of mind, and can   (h/t Barry) From ArsTechnica:

A lot of human society requires what’s called a “theory of mind”—the ability to infer the mental state of another person and adjust our actions based on what we expect they know and are thinking. We don’t always get this right—it’s easy to get confused about what someone else might be thinking—but we still rely on it for everything from navigating complicated social situations to avoiding bumping into people on the street.

There’s some mixed evidence that other animals have a limited theory of mind, but there are alternate interpretations for most of it. So two researchers at Johns Hopkins, Luke Townrow and Christopher Krupenye, came up with a way of testing whether some of our closest living relatives, the bonobos, could infer the state of mind of a human they were cooperating with. The work clearly showed that the bonobos could tell when their human partner was ignorant.

The experimental approach is quite simple and involves a setup familiar to street hustlers: a set of three cups, with a treat placed under one of them. Except in this case, there’s no sleight-of-hand in that the chimp can watch as one experimenter places the treat under a cup, and all of the cups remain stationary throughout the experiment.

To get the treat, however, requires the cooperation of a second human experimenter. That person has to identify the right cup, then give the treat under it to the bonobo. In some experiments, this human can watch the treat being hidden through a transparent partition, and so knows exactly where it is. In others, however, the partition is solid, leaving the human with no idea which cup might be hiding the food.

This setup means that the bonobo will always know where the food is and will also know whether the human could potentially have the same knowledge.

The key question, then, was whether the bonobos acted any differently when the experiment was set up behind the solid partition compared to when their human partner could see where the food was hidden.

The answer was yes. When the partition was solid, bonobos were quicker to start pointing to where the food was hidden, and they pointed more often during the 10 seconds between when the partition was removed and the researcher checked the cups for the food. One of the three bonobos tested was impatient and pointed a lot regardless of whether their partner knew which cup held the food, but even then pointed a bit more often when the solid partition was used.

Only three bonobos were tested, but the overall results are significant. I’m not surprised that our closest living relatives can have a theory of mind, for we’ve seen suggestions of it in other animals as well, as in Scrub Jays.  It would of course be a tremendous selective advantage to put yourself in another animal’s brain.

*From Colin Wright in the Wall Street Journal, “Trump can ban transgender birth certificates.” (Subtitle: “Most states allow natives to alter their recorded sex, an affront against science and a danger to women.” (Article archived here.)

The unstoppable force of left-wing science denial has collided with an immovable object: Donald Trump. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order affirms that a person’s sex is immutable and intrinsically tied to the type of “reproductive cell”—sperm or egg—he or she can or would produce. It also rejects the unscientific notion that subjective “gender identity” can replace biological sex.

We welcome this return to science-based definitions of male and female. It’s essential, however, to highlight some pitfalls to avoid and draw attention to an area where further executive action is needed to protect women’s rights.

. . .Activists will claim that simple definitions of male and female rooted in biology are incomplete. They will argue that definitions must include sex-related traits such as chromosomal makeup, hormonal profiles and intersex conditions. They hope to complicate the matter so much that any attempt at sex classification will seem inherently flawed, convincing people that it should be abandoned entirely. This is the trap we must avoid by refusing to “expand” on the order’s definitions.

Consider so-called intersex conditions. True intersex conditions, which result in genitalia that appear ambiguous or mixed, affect less than 0.02% of the population. But activists deploy a rhetorical sleight of hand, referencing these developmental conditions to make them seem far more common than they are. Although there are prominent instances of male athletes with such conditions unfairly competing in women’s sports, they are extremely rare and not the most pressing issue. While policies must reasonably address edge cases, we must not treat them as the norm.

More important, the intersex tactic distracts from the central issue: The purpose of Mr. Trump’s order isn’t to protect women’s sports, prisons, rape shelters and bathrooms from people with a rare condition resulting in ambiguous genitalia. Its purpose is to keep men who merely “identify” as female out of women’s spaces. This is what the public demands answers on, and it’s what the order provides.

Crafting policy to this effect is easy: Any rule designed to protect women’s spaces from men should rely on the sex recorded on a person’s birth certificate. No further expansion of the terms included in Mr. Trump’s order is needed for this. “Trans women” are unambiguously male as a matter of biology, and therefore the likelihood that a doctor records their sex incorrectly at birth is effectively zero.

That sounds good to me.  But it leaves open the question of what intersex people, rare though they may be, should have on their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and so on. My own solution is to give them a choice of using “M,” “F,” or “I” for intersex. I suspect most will use either male or female if they think “I” is stigmatizing.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being bossy:

Hili: Open the door, please.
Andrzej: Wait a moment, I have to take off my jacket.
Hili: You do not have to.
InPolish:
Hili: Proszę otworzyć drzwi!
A: Poczekaj muszę zdjąć kurtkę.
Hili: Nie musisz.

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

 

From Meanwhile in Canada:

From We Love Animals:

From Now That’s Wild:

Masih is quiet these days. Here’s another person demonized by many (but not me): JKR. But I wonder what her husband’s tee shirts have to do with this issue (watch the commercial embedded in it):

Ricky Gervais posts about his beloved cat Pickle:

From Malcolm, a cat makes its own bed:

From my feed:

I had a sad week last week (nothing dire or cat-related, just stupid bs that wears you down), but then today my friend Adelle was casually like “oh, I have something for you” and pulls out AN ENVELOPE OF VINTAGE CAT PHOTOS. It was the right thing at the right time to make everything better. 💕

— Cats of Yore (@catsofyore.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T23:41:20.346Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted

A seven-year-old Dutch girl and her younger sister were killed with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T11:09:16.109Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a smart cat:

Chicken has learned how to open/shut her food box, now promptly protects it from alpaca

— Nature's masterpiece 🍀 (@nature-view.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T07:12:32.216Z

These insects are about 100 million years old:

Strepsiptera in Burmese amber.#Fossil #Macro #Amber#Burmese #Burmite#Cretaceous#Paleoentomology#Invertebrate

— Oiotoshi Mike (@oiomik.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T20:26:17.070Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

February 4, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, February 4, 2025, and National Homemade Soup Day. It is not much of a food day, and I don’t know if any readers will make soup. If you do, weigh in below.

It’s also National Stuffed Mushroom Day, National Hemp Day, World Cancer Day, International Eggplant Day, Liberace Day (he died of AIDS-related pneumonia on this day in 1987), Rosa Parks Day (she was born on this day in 1913) and National Quacker Day. Though the latter celebrates a woman’s clothing line, I prefer to think of it as celebrating ducks. Below you can see my beloved Honey with her brood of 17 in the year that she ducknapped the brood of another hen in Botany Pond. And she brought them all up to fledging. Given the state of the pond this year, I don’t think we’ll have any ducks, and it breaks my heart.

My beloved hen and her purloined brood (well, half were her own ducklings):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*BREAKING NOOZ:  The U.S. tariff with China went into effect, and China retaliated.

China struck back against U.S. tariffs with levies on certain American goods, an antitrust probe into Google and restrictions on Chinese exports of key minerals. The moves escalated a new trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Just after American tariffs of 10% on China went into effect early Tuesday morning, Beijing said it would retaliate. Its measures will go into effect on Feb. 10. The Trump administration struck deals Monday to delay imposing new tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

President Trump said the tariffs on China were just “an opening salvo.” He added: “If we can’t make a deal with China, then the tariffs would be very, very substantial.”

*I thought for sure that a multi-country trade war was already happening, but now Trump’s threats may have not only stopped the war, but led to improved cooperation on some issues.  The WSJ reports:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. President Trump said that they have agreed to put U.S. tariffs on Mexico on hold for a month after a telephone conversation in which both leaders agreed to take joint measures to fight fentanyl trafficking across the U.S. border.

“They are pausing tariffs for one month from now,” Sheinbaum wrote on X on Monday.

President Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his conversation with the Mexican president was a “very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States.”

Trump added that his 25% tariffs on Mexico would be paused for a month, “during which we will have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and high-level Representatives of Mexico. I look forward to participating in those negotiations, with President Sheinbaum, as we attempt to achieve a ‘deal’ between our two Countries.”

Sheinbaum said that Mexico agreed to immediately reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border with 10,000 members of the National Guard “to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the U.S., particularly fentanyl.”

The U.S. agreed to work to prevent the trafficking of high-caliber weapons to Mexico, she said.

The WaPo reports something that Sheinbaum agreed to:

President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X that in a “good conversation” with President Donald Trump, Mexico committed to rushing 10,000 national guard troops to its border to try to block the flow of drugs into the United States — especially fentanyl.

I’m hoping that the tariffs with China and Canada will also be suspended. The WSJ also notes that Trump is going to speak with PM Justin Trudeau:

President Trump wrote on social media that he spoke to Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, this morning and plans to talk to him again at 3 p.m.

“Canada doesn’t even allow U.S. Banks to open or do business there,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “What’s that all about? Many such things, but it’s also a DRUG WAR, and hundreds of thousands of people have died in the U.S. from drugs pouring through the Borders of Mexico and Canada.”

Trade wars are not good for anybody, much less for the American consumer, who would become more anti-Trump if faced with higher gas and food prices. I don’t know if Trump planned this as a mere threat, but fingers crossed that there are no tariffs and more positive cooperation between the U.S. on one hand and Mexico and China on the other (I think we already have a pretty good relationship with Canada, and I don’t want that spoiled).

Here’s Sheinbaum—who is Jewish, by the way, and America has had neither a woman nor a Jewish leader, much less both—announcing the pause and taking questions from reporters.

*A Palestinian terrorist who killed 16 is living freely in Jordan as a citizen. However, Jordan just informed Hamas that it will give that group one day to find a new home for this terrorist (a woman) or they’ll extradite her to America.

Jordan has reportedly informed the Hamas terror group that it plans to deport a woman convicted of planning a 2001 suicide bombing that killed 16 people at a Jerusalem pizza parlor, in a move that could bring a long-delayed measure of justice to families of victims.

Ahlam Tamimi was convicted in an Israeli court of orchestrating the grisly August 9, 2001, attack that killed 16 people in a crowded Sbarro’s eatery in central Jerusalem, but was released in the 2011 deal for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit and quickly found safe harbor in Jordan.

In 2017, the US Justice Department announced it was seeking her extradition, a step that had been urged by the family of Israeli-American victim Malki Roth but which was rebuffed by Amman.

This is what happens when there’s a prisoner exchange. Murderers like Tamimi go scot-free, enabling them, if they wish, to continue more terrorism. I dougt that Tamimi has done any, but there’s a fundamental injustice in a murderer running around free after only 6 years in prison.

According to Qatari news outlet Al-Araby al-Jadeed, Jordanian intelligence authorities informed Hamas on Sunday that Tamimi would be extradited to the United States unless a third country willing to take her in could be found.

There was no confirmation of the report from any official source.

The report emerged just as the White House announced it would host Jordan’s King Abdullah II for talks with US President Donald Trump on February 11. Amman is thought to be seeking ways to remain in good standing with Trump despite, like Egypt, declining to fall in with his proposal to relocate Gazans there.

Tamimi, a Hamas activist who chose the target for the bombing and guided the bomber there, was sentenced in Israel in 2003 to 16 life sentences for the attack, which also injured 130 people.

Among the dead were Roth, an Australia-born 15-year-old who also held US citizenship, and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, an American tourist who was expecting her first child.

I hope that she’ll be extradited, though I also think it likely that Hamas will find a place for her outside of Jordan or Palestine. I also think that the upcoming meeting with Trump, who would probably demand extradition on pain of punishment, might have spurred Jordan to take this move.  Now remember that she was one of 1,027 Hamas and Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in return for a single Israeli soldier, and you’ll get an idea of the lengths to which Israel will go to get back a hostage.

*The NYT reports on a paper in Current Biology (pdf here) suggesting that members of Australopithecus afarensis, of which “Lucy” was a specimen, could not only walk erect, but run, though not very fast:

More than three million years after her death, the early human ancestor known as Lucy is still divulging her secrets.

In 2016, an autopsy indicated that the female Australopithecus afarensis, whose partial remains were found in Ethiopia in 1974 and is considered the most complete hominin fossil found to date, died from a fall out of a tree. Seven years later, a virtual reconstruction of her leg and pelvic muscles — which are not preserved in fossils — revealed that she stood about three and a half feet tall, weighed between 29 and 93 pounds, and was capable of standing and walking upright, similar to modern humans.

A new study published in the journal Current Biology proposes that Lucy was capable of running, too. But she would not have been much of a marathoner and might have struggled to keep up with a contemporary couch potato in a 100-yard dash. “She was not a natural runner,” said Karl Bates, an evolutionary biomechanics researcher at the University of Liverpool and lead author of the paper. “In all probability, she could run only through short bursts of energy rather than long-distance chases.”

The fossil, which dates to 3.2 million years ago and represents 40 percent of Lucy’s skeleton, is often described as having a mix of human and ape features. “Her overall body size was much smaller than ours and her upper body larger, with longer arms and shorter legs,” Dr. Bates said. “Even after correction for differences in body size, she would have been much slower than people.” His team’s conclusions bolster the hypothesis that the ability of humans to run long distances is an adaptation that gave them an advantage in acquiring prey.

. . . The estimate for Lucy’s top running speed — with humanlike muscle configurations — was a relatively modest 11 m.p.h. That is roughly what a domestic pig could achieve over a quarter-mile, but far slower than modern humans, whose sprinting speeds often exceed 18 m.p.h. and peak at more than 27 m.p.h. in elite athletes. Dr. Bates speculated that in a 100-meter race, Usain Bolt, the world-record holder at that distance, would have beaten Lucy by somewhere between 50 and 80 meters.

Well, Lucy was just a tad erect from being a knuckle-walker, and knuckle-walkers don’t run very fast. The musculature and body conformation producing greater running speed would require the evolution of a posture more erect than Lucy had:

Here’s a video from Tik Tok:

@newscientist

How fast could this ancient human ancestor run? 🦴🏃🏾‍♂️ Karl Bates at the University of Liverpool in the UK and his colleagues have, for the first time, attempted to determine how fast Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, could run by creating a 3D digital robot of the ancient hominin. It turns out she would have been no match for modern humans in a running race… Tap the link in bio to learn more #humanevolution #ancienthumans #hominin #lucyhominin #ancienthumansrunning #3drobot

♬ original sound – New Scientist

*I went through the Panama Canal on a cruise ship a while back (actually, we just cruised to the lake and back out, but I was delighted to do that as I always wanted to see how it worked. Our ship barely made the width, but of course there are now two canals. At any rate, I remember the captain telling us it cost a lot of money to go through the 50-mile journal. Now a NYT piece dealing with Trump’s unhinged efforts to take back the canal, tells us how much it costs, and also some political stuff.

The cost of using the Panama Canal has risen in recent years — excessively so, President Trump has asserted. The canal operator says droughts, investments in upgrades and sheer demand are among the reasons.

But if Mr. Trump wrests lower canal fees out of Panama, American consumers may not feel much difference, because canal costs make up only a small part of the retail cost of most goods. One analysis concludes that going through the canal adds 10 cents to the cost of a coffee maker.

Panama Canal shipping fees were not a big issue until Mr. Trump raised the matter last year.

As well as highlighting the costs of using the canal, American politicians have security concerns. They point out that China has made big investments in Panama’s infrastructure and that a Hong Kong company operates ports at both the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the canal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a visit to Panama on Sunday, appeared to escalate those security concerns with Panama’s leader.

Two things here. First, other countries operate ports as well. As far as I know, China is completely incapable of impeding shipping through the canal. Second, the reason ships use the canal is to save time and money from having to go around Cape Horn. Second, if going through the Canal saves money, how can it add ten cents to the cost of a coffee maker? Compared to what: going around South America. This is bad reporting.   But onto the cost:

The canal authority did not respond to requests for a list of historical tolls and fees or other comment. But it annually discloses how much it collects from ships using the canal. That has surged in recent years by far more than the number of journeys through the waterway.

In the 12 months through September 2023, the latest figures available, tolls and service fees totaled $4.8 billion, 62 percent higher than five years earlier. Over that period, passages through the canal rose only 2 percent, to 14,080 from 13,795 in 2018.

As a result, in 2023, the canal on average collected $341,000 a vessel, compared with $215,000 in 2018 — a 59 percent jump.

$341,000 is a lot of dough. If a cruise ship has 241 passengers on it, each of them is costing the ship $1000 to go through (I was lecturing and didn’t pay for the trip.) But it must cost even more to go around Cape Horn. Or, if it doesn’t, there is the huge expenditure of time doing the South American route, and, for a ship, time is money.

*Finally, I’d love to write for the AP “Oddities” section, as there are plenty of oddities in this world but not that much turnover in the section. The latest is a deer-calling contest that takes place annually in Dortmund, Germany. Contestants have to do three different kinds of calls (see the bit I’ve bolded below):

 German hunters tried to convince the jury at a national stag calling championship that they can imitate a bellowing red deer most realistically.

The unique tradition goes back hundreds of years and was initially aimed at feigning a stag’s rival during the rutting season so the deer comes out. The trick gave hunters a chance to better assess the stag before deciding whether to shoot it.

The competition took place Friday at the Jagd & Hund, or hunting and dog, trade fair in the western city of Dortmund. There were no animals, only bellowing men wearing traditional hunters’ garb including green hats with a tuft of chamois hair.

The hunters used specially made ox horns, triton snail shells, glass cylinders, the hollow stems of the giant hogweed, and a number of artificially produced instruments to amplify the sound and resonance.

A stag’s vocalizations are not only very diverse, but also vary according to age, state of mind and duration of the rut, during which they become increasingly hoarse, as well as the mood of the herd, according to the organizers.

In Dortmund, the hunters were asked to compete in three disciplines: the call of the old, searching stag, the call of the dominant male in a pack of does, and the calling duel between two equally strong stags at the height of the rut. The members of the jury listened with closed eyes to make sure nothing would distract them from the sound.

“The stag calling for me, it’s the fascinating thing to play with the stags,” said Fabian Wenzel, who won the championship. “And maybe shoot an old stag after calling him — that’s the biggest thing for every hunter.”

Wenzel, a hunter from the small village of Nüdlingen in Bavaria, won the title for the fifth time in a row and will participate in the European Stag Calling Championships, which will take place in Lithuania in October.

Here’s a Tik Tok video:

@metrouk

Welcome to the ‘Stag Calling’ Championships… Where German hunters compete against each other to see, you guessed it, who can make the best ‘stag call’. #news #stagcall #deer #fyp #metro #metrouk

♬ original sound – Metro – Metro

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is paranoid!

Hili: It’s not time to get out of the wardrobe.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: There are plenty of enemies everywhere.
In Polish:

Hili: To nie jest czas na wychodzenie z szafy.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Wszędzie pełno wrogów.

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

From Things With Faces, a scary door:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Cat Memes:

From Luana; the Brits are quashing free speech again:

From cesar: Democrats taking equity to its absurd limit:

From Simon, an accurate portrayal of tariffs:

Oh Canada!Cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T16:40:53.122Z

From Malcolm. Is this cat sulking or was it given a time out?

From my feed; a good-tempered kitty on a plane. I’d also pay more to set next to it!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted. Look up Mann on Wikipedia.

This story is most likely true, though there are some questions about it and Mann. Look her up on Wikipedia. At any rate, the Germans killed her.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T11:17:55.022Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, nice insect photos (check the link):

Taking a break from doomscrolling by looking at these beautiful photos http://www.royensoc.co.uk/photography-…

— Gwen Pearson (@bug-gwen.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T21:36:46.427Z

Did you know that some corals can walk?

It’s not just sponges that move!

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T15:09:50.175Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

February 3, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first day of the “work” week: Monday, Februay 3, 2025 and National Carrot Cake Day, the only dessert made with vegetables that is tolerable. In fact, when made well (with cream-cheese frosting), it can be excellent. Here’s a large piece I had at a restaurant in Chicago on June 10 of last year (note the candied carrot curls on top):

It’s also American Painters Day, International Golden Retriever Day, Four Chaplains Memorial Day (read about them here), and The Day the Music Died, honoring the day in day in 1959 when Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died in a plane crash.  Here’s a newspaper clipping of the tragedy:

Distributed by Associated Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

. . .and the four chaplains, who went down with their torpedoed ship on this day in 1943 (they were all of different faiths, but stayed together, having given up their life jackets). Goode was a rabbi, Fox a Methodist minister, Poling from the Reformed Church of America, and Washington a Catholic priest.

From Wikipedia:

During the early morning hours of February 3, the vessel [the S. S. Dorchster] was torpedoed by the German submarine U-223 off Newfoundland in the North Atlantic.  The chaplains helped the other soldiers board lifeboats and gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out. The chaplains joined arms, said prayers, and sang hymns as they went down with the ship.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT has a transcript of an Ezra Klein podcast called “Don’t believe him,” and the “him” is Trump.  He says Trump is instantiating a policy articulated earlier by Steve Bannon:

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …

All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to —

Michael Kirk: What was the word?

Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

And what Klein says:

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

. . . There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

. . . . This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

We’ll just have to see how this all shakes out when the lawsuits are settled, and that will take a long time.  Right now I’m suspending judgment on many of the EOs, but am glad that we can at least discuss their substance without being silenced.

*A survey by the Torygraph reveals that nearly half the world’s people are anti-Semitic. Surprise! (h/t Ginger K.)

Nearly half of people worldwide hold anti-Semitic views, with hatred of Jews doubling in a decade, a major survey has revealed.

Research by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that 46 per cent of adults globally – and 12 per cent in the UK – have entrenched anti-Semitic beliefs.

This means an estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide, including 6.7 million adults in Britain, hold anti-Semitic views – twice the 1.09 billion identified in 2014.

The record level of anti-Semitism uncovered by the ADL’s second Global 100 Index Score survey has led its directors to warn of a “global emergency” and call on governments to act.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the ADL, said: “Anti-Semitism is nothing short of a global emergency, especially in a post-October 7 world.

“We are seeing these trends play out from the Middle East to Asia, from Europe to North and South America”.

The ADL, founded in 1913, is the world’s leading anti-hate organisation. Its latest poll of 58,000 adults across 103 countries measured belief in anti-Semitic tropes, identifying those who agreed with six or more of 11 negative stereotypes about Jews.

An average of 76 per cent in the Middle East and North Africa endorsed most tropes, including “Jews have too much power in business,” “Jews’ loyalty is only to Israel,” and “Jews have a lot of irritating faults”.

This dropped to around half in Asia, Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, while in Western Europe one in five adults still held significant anti-Semitic views.

“Jews have a lot of irritating faults”?  Where did that come from?  The only explanation for a doubling of anti-Semitism in a decade is Israel defending itself by going after Hamas in Gaza. Had Israel done nothing and just let Hamas kill Jews, anti-Semitism would not have increased. The lesson is that Jews are not allowed to defend themselves when attacked: Israel is the only nation on Earth that is not allowed to win a war—or even fight back when attacked. But of course what we’re seeing is underground anti-Semitism just coming to the surface.

*Over at the Free Press, you can see the bad bargain that Israel made with Hamas in an essay by Gideo Black: “The terrorist who murdered my cousin now walks free.”

Ashraf Zughayer, the Hamas leader who arranged for the killing of my cousin and attempted to have me killed, got out of prison January 25 as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. He had served 22 years of what were supposed to be six life sentences—one for each person whose murder he orchestrated.

Yoni Jesner, my cousin and closest friend, was 19 years old when a Hamas suicide bomber whom Zughayer dispatched murdered him and five others on a bus in Tel Aviv in 2002. More than two decades later, emotional scarring from that bombing—which I survived by the slightest margin—is still etched into my soul. So are physical scars on my torso.

Time, it turns out, does not heal all wounds. Perhaps it might when those wounds are given an uninterrupted chance to heal. But that is impossible in Israel, where the war against us never ends and where the freeing of the man responsible for that attack cuts at the scar tissue and forces me and every other Israeli into an impossible corner. We are being asked to weigh our profound grief and our concerns about terrorists reoffending against our bond with the hostages whom we want back home with every fiber of our being. This is an unsolvable conundrum, especially for those who have lost loved ones to terror.

Zughayer masterminded the attack that killed Yoni, but he is now home, having been welcomed back to his East Jerusalem neighborhood as a hero, draped in Hamas flags atop a white Toyota pickup truck just like the ones his Hamas comrades rode as they stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

It isn’t simply releasing our enemies that vexes us. Israeli society—and Jews around the world—find ourselves in an impossible ethical quagmire. We cannot leave our hostages in Gaza. We are morally and mystically connected to their well-being and dare not return to normal daily existence until they are free. We need to use every lever at our disposal—financial, diplomatic, military, and spiritual—to bring them home.

At the same time, releasing terrorists has been proven to lead to more terror. Radicalized Palestinian youth have been reared on a curriculum of Jew-hatred. Their time in Israeli jail does not heal them of it. They know they are lionized in the streets of Nablus, Jenin, and Khan Yunis, and they are only too eager to burnish their legacies further. A deal Israel struck in 2011 saw a single captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, freed in return for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, of whom a staggering 280 were serving life sentences for terrorism. Many have reoffended—most prominently, Yahya Sinwar, who immediately upon his release took charge of the Gaza Strip’s terror network and subsequently masterminded the October 7 attack.

Strategically, releasing terrorists is a reckless, shortsighted move. It is likely to lead to the death of more Jews in the future than if those same terrorists were kept imprisoned. And yet the trade for the definite safety of Jews who are currently in captivity and whose lives are presently in mortal danger takes precedence. We must move mountains to bring them home, even as we fear that those very mountains may bury our loved ones in the future. The moral dilemma is excruciating.

. . . . . There is no simple answer. We dare not leave the hostages in Gaza. We dare not free the terrorists, and endanger our people for years to come; truly, a deal with the devil. We should not be having to make this decision in the first place: given the sea of enemies that surrounds Israel, its security apparatus simply cannot afford to have any blind spots.

This unspoken national pact—that we will not leave anyone behind despite the extraordinary risks—raises the threshold of physical danger in the name of collective healing. There is a sacred irony to this, but it’s the price of a homeland in a hostile world, and our commitment to this ideal gives our nation its spine. It is precisely the intimate kinship we feel with all Jews no matter their background or ideology—and our willingness to act on it—that will allow Israel to emerge from this terror and stand strong once again.

Well, maybe the answer is not as hard as Black thinks. If releasing a gazillion terrorists will, in the end, result in killing more Jews than not trying to swap prisoners for hostages (meaning of course that the hostages will either die or might be released in an unconditional surrender), then what is the point of trading one hostage for fifty terrorists? After all, it was Yahya Sinwar who, serving a life sentence for terrorism in an Israeli prison, was part of the thousand-plus terrorists exchanges for a single Israeli soldier. One IDF life was saved. Sinwar then masterminded the October 7 massacre, which killed more than a thousand people, mostly Israeli Jews.

*The WSJ enumerates some items that, in view of the upcoming trade wars, you might want to buy now.  I’ll concentrate on food and drink:

Yes, prices of automobiles or Canadian lumber are likely to go up. But you also might pay more for these more-surprising things:

Cherry tomatoes: Canada is a big supplier of these to the U.S. Canadian producers grow them in giant greenhouses near the U.S. border. Mexico supplies them, too. The U.S. grows a huge volume of produce and may be able to step up tomato production, but economists warn that domestic producers will be tempted to increase their prices to match prices on imports.

Maple syrup: Canada and the U.S. are the only two countries that produce this at commercial scale, according to Canada’s agriculture department. More than 60% of Canada’s production is exported to the U.S.

Tequila: The U.S. is the largest market for Mexican tequila, which has soared in popularity with American drinkers over the past decade. Shots and sugary margaritas have given way more recently to higher-end tequilas intended to be sipped or imbibed with soda. Celebrities from George Clooney to Kendall Jenner have piled into the category with their own made-in-Mexico brands.

Avocados: That guacamole you are looking to make for the Super Bowl could cost a bit more this year, thanks to tariffs. More than 80% of U.S. avocados come from Mexico, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Mexico provides about half of U.S. fresh produce imports and is a particularly important supplier in the winter, according to Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. trade representative now working at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Smartphones: The U.S. imposed import tariffs on a slew of industrial goods from China during President Trump’s first term—and again during the Biden administration—to protest what it has long called China’s unfair trade practices. But most consumer goods, including smartphones, were spared to avoid the wrath of American consumers. An across-the-board 10% tariff on goods made in China will hit smartphones for the first time and possibly cause price increases.

There are also sledgehammers, but we’ll ignore those. But yes, we’ll be hit in the pocketbook by these tariffs, and Americans may lose their jobs when other countries retaliate. Tariffs are a bad idea, even if the threat of them did make Colombia accept 110 immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally.

*I had thought that there was good reason to believe that the D.C. airplane/helicopter crash that killed 67 was caused by the Army Black Hawk flying higher than its mandated limit of 200 feet. But now the AP says it’s not at all clear.

Preliminary data from the deadliest U.S. aviation accident in nearly 25 years showed conflicting readings about the altitudes of an airliner and Army helicopter when they collided near Reagan National Airport in Washington, killing everyone aboard both aircraft, investigators said Saturday.

Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the jet’s flight recorder showed a change in its pitch. But they did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash.

Data from the jet’s flight recorder showed its altitude as 325 feet (99 meters), plus or minus 25 feet (7.6 meters), when the crash happened Wednesday night, National Transportation Safety Board officials told reporters. Data in the control tower, though, showed the Black Hawk helicopter at 200 feet (61 meters) at the time.

Investigators hope to reconcile the altitude differences with data from the helicopter’s black box, which is taking more time to retrieve because it became waterlogged after it plunged into the Potomac River. They also said they plan to refine the tower data, which can be less reliable. [They have the black boxes; what they mean is that the DATA are hard to retrieve.]

“That’s what our job is, to figure that out,” said NTSB member Todd Inman, who grew increasingly agitated with reporters’ questions seeking more information and clarity about the readings during a Saturday evening news conference.

He acknowledged that there was dissension within the investigative team about whether to release the information or wait until they had more data.

Officials say the helicopter’s maximum allowed altitude at the time was 200 feet (61 meters).

We will know pretty soon, as families are demanding early answers. And The Black Box will tell all.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sick to death of winter:

Hili: Let’s start negotiations.
Andrzej: What about?
Hili: I demand  the immediate return of Summer.

In Polish:

Hili: Zaczynamy negocjacje.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: Żądam natychmiastowego przywrócenia lata.

And going west to Berlin, Stupsi the Cat is enjoying the weather, saying ““Ich liebe die Sonne.” [“I love the sun.”]

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

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Things with Faces:

From Cat Memes:

From Masih; this time the woman protester has stripped completely as an objection to Iranian modesty laws. And she climbed on a cop car! I hope they don’t kill her. Brave woman!

From Luana. The Newsweek piece is here; you decide whether it’s a puff piece. An excerpt:

The vast majority of inmates in Oregon State Penitentiary are men, but Lee said she is able to wear makeup, eye shadow, foundation, eyeliner and even lipstick on occasion. She also cherishes her jewelry, including rings and necklaces, as well as bras, panties and what she called a “slightly feminized” uniform. That had eliminated her thoughts of suicide. She’s now seeking breast augmentation and hair replacement therapy since male pattern baldness drastically enhances her gender dysphoria.

Lee said that she had initially been diagnosed at the age of 16 with the condition – a feeling of distress that can happen when a person’s gender identity differs from the sex they are born with. But Lee said she wasn’t told of the diagnosis at the time and that “intolerance” simmered inside her for decades.

“I hurt, so I hurt others,” she said.

SHE said. . .

From Jez: More funny school tweets:

From Malcolm, a Darth Vader cat:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

This little sailor boy was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. He was eight years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T11:24:36.694Z

Two posts from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb. First, flatulence apparently made illegal!

it's the 14 year anniversary to the time Malawi tried to ban farting

— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T20:33:21.654Z

Bats! Be sure to enlarge the left photo.

We saw these adorable Long-nosed bats in the rainforest in Ecuador. Because there are no caves for them to sleep in these have adapted to hanging on tree trunks. You had to look hard to notice them. #wildlifephotography

— Carol Pope Gordon (@carolpopegordon.bsky.social) 2025-01-24T14:44:09.049Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

February 1, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first day of February: CaturSaturday, February 1, 2025. We made it through January!!!!  Sadly, I am ill today with a tummy ache, and was up all night in gastric pain. It’s much better now, but posting will still be light today. Bear with me; I do my best.

Here is February depicted in the manuscript of Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. It’s beautiful but looks very FRIGID. 

By Limbourg brothers – R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojéda, Public Domain. 

It’s also Car Insurance Day, International Pisco Sour Day (an excellent drink when made properly), Change Your Password Day, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (I prefer pie), National Baked Alaska Day, National Serpent Day, National Dark Chocolate Day, International Furmint Day, and National Freedom Day, which has this excuse:

National Freedom Day, which celebrates the freedom that Americans share, takes place on the anniversary of the date in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln signed a joint House and Senate resolution that proposed the 13th Amendment, which would go on to outlaw slavery after being ratified by the states. Not only does the holiday celebrate freedom, but it honors the signing of the resolution. Lincoln did not live to see the resolution ratified, as he died the following spring, but it was ratified on December 6, 1865, and the amendment was adopted on December 18, 1865.

There’s also a Google Doodle today, celebrating house music. Not my favorite, but if you click below, you’ll go to a YouTube video celebrating the music:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Apparently the jam-packed airspace around Washington, D.C. has led people to worry for years about what actually happened on Wednesday. It looks as if the helicopter was flying too high, but it’s not yet certain. Believe me, though, something will be done. It also appears that the airport control tower was understaffed.

More than 700 planes had already taken off and landed at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday when American Airlines flight 5342 approached it through one of the nation’s most congested air corridors.

Shortly before 9 p.m., the passenger jet collided in a fireball with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training mission, leaving no survivors.

As officials scramble to determine the cause of the crash, the catastrophe is drawing new attention to longstanding safety warnings about the increasingly busy airspace above the nation’s capital.

Reagan sits on just 733 acres of land along the Potomac River, across from downtown Washington and the military’s Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. Space is so tight that federal regulators dole out takeoff and landing rights.

The airport’s convenience and close proximity to the Capitol have made it irresistible to Washington’s politicians. Over the years, lawmakers have lobbied to open access and add more flights, often to make quick jaunts to their home states easier. Last year, after a fierce debate over whether the airport could absorb more flights, Congress authorized more, which were awarded to five airlines proposing to fly to San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Adding to the crowded airspace are helicopters that crisscross the Potomac every day, many of them military flights from the Pentagon and other government agencies ferrying officials or other passengers and cargo around Washington.

Officials and commercial and military pilots have warned that the airspace leaves little margin for error.

“We’re dealing with an extraordinarily complex airspace system that has been complicated even worse by the addition of flights to National Airport,” said Keith Meurlin, a retired Air Force major general and head of the Washington Airports Task Force. “At what point is enough enough?”

Pilots have been complaining for decades about the presence of military and other aircraft around Reagan.

*One of the few good things that happened during the first Trump Administration was Betsy DeVos’s changes in Title IX rules for adjudicating claims of sexual harassment or assault in colleges, giving reasonable rights to the accused—similar to the rights they’d have in a court of law. Biden rescinded those changes, but now they are back again, and this is a change for the better—for fairness.

Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during President Donald Trump’s first term, with requirements for live hearings and more protections for accused students, according to new guidance issued Friday by the Education Department.

In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.

Colleges already have been returning to DeVos’ 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision effectively ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.

A statement from the Education Department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls.”

“Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges and universities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.

The Biden administration sought to overhaul the rules and expand Title IX to protect LGBTQ+ students. It expanded the type of behavior that’s considered sexual harassment — a reversal of the DeVos policy, which used a narrower definition.

But a federal judge in Kentucky overturned Biden’s rule on Jan. 9, saying it was a presidential overstep and violated constitutional free speech rights by telling schools to honor students’ preferred pronouns. The judge, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, said there was nothing in Title IX suggesting it should cover anything more than it did when Congress created it.

Even before the decision, Biden’s rule had been halted in half the states amid legal challenges from Republicans.

It looks as if the administration will also stop the Biden-era declaration that trans-identified men can compete against women in women’s sports all the way through high school. Maybe that’s okay up to sixth grade (age 11) or so, but past that, no way.

*The Wall Street Journal explains why Israel delayed releasing the (many) Palestinian prisoners it agreed to hand over in return for the handful of hostages Hamas is letting go:

Hamas wants to send the world the message that it is still in charge in the Gaza Strip. Its method: turning the release of hostages into a spectacle that Israel is powerless to stop.

The pattern began about two weeks ago, when the first Israeli hostages were released under a cease-fire agreement that includes the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Crowds of jeering men crowded around the Hamas trucks carrying the Israeli hostages. When the women got out, they ran to Red Cross officials waiting in nearby vehicles to take them home.

On Thursday, the militants upped the ante. They released two civilian hostages—a 29-year-old woman and an 80-year-old man—in front of the rubble of the home of Yahya Sinwar, the now-dead mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

This time, the hostages struggled to exit Hamas vehicles as crowds again turned out to greet them, cellphones out aiming for shots of the captives. The Red Cross vehicles weren’t nearby this time, forcing the hostages to wade through throngs of people seemingly on the cusp of attacking them. The hostages’ only protection was their armed captors, members of a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Hamas is making each round of hostage releases in Gaza an increasingly elaborate event, showcasing its strength and humiliating its enemy—but also threatening to derail the fragile cease-fire in the strip, regional analysts said.

“Hamas is trying to make the release of the hostages look like a show,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for Israel’s military intelligence, adding that the move would backfire on Hamas. “Everyone is looking at the disrespectful way they treat the hostages.”

Israel reacted furiously to the display. It said it wouldn’t release the 110 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be set free as part of the deal. Mediators, including the U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, scrambled to hold the deal together. Israel eventually released the prisoners.

This really could scupper the cease-fire, and is bad optics for Hamas. They really do need to cool it and make the handover of hostages more low key and dignified.  What’s more, things could get worse when they start handing over the dead hostages in boxes, who will be last. They would not dare to make a spectacle of that, for Israel wouldn’t put up with it.

*It’s just 11 days after the inauguration, but Democrats are already seeing a comeback, as in Doug Sosnik’s overly optimistic NYT op-ed, “Trump is already failing. That’s the key to a big Democratic rebound” (archived here). Okay, I’ll bite:

The Democratic Party is now in worse shape than at any time since 1980. Joe Biden’s policy mistakes — making inflation worse and making the border less secure — and the lack of trust in Democrats who circled the wagons around him in 2024 have done damage that the party does not yet seem to fully grasp. The party is paying the price for failing to develop and allow generational change in leadership; the Clintons and the Obama-Biden administrations have dominated for more than 30 years. At the same time, Democrats have too often been focused on whom they are against rather than what they are for. Especially for the past 10 years, the Democrats’ primary mission was defeating Donald Trump rather than articulating a coherent and appealing vision for the future.

. . . . With that in mind, Democrats need to start making a compelling argument that President Trump and Republicans are failing at governing. Democrats need to do this in a way that reflects the mood of the country and cannot repeat the mistakes of Kamala Harris’s campaign, like focusing on joy during a time when anger and economic frustration dominated voter sentiment. With Republicans now in full control of the federal government, Democrats are well positioned to be the party of change, a narrative that finally broke the Reagan-Bush 12-year hold on the presidency in 1992.

Then as now, the strongest message for Democrats is centered on economic security and opportunity. With Mr. Trump and Republicans focused on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, it should be easy to make contrasts with his agenda on a regular basis. His blundered attempt to freeze federal money in ways that might affect popular programs, like Medicaid and Head Start, is an example of a prime opportunity to brand the G.O.P. as failing dangerously at governing.

. . . The 2026 congressional midterm elections can play a key role in better positioning the eventual nominee for the 2028 election. The party in power generally suffers losses in the midterms. While it is unlikely that Democrats will be able to take control of the Senate, they are well positioned to take back the House. There are also 38 governor’s races in the next two years, which gives Democrats a tremendous opportunity to reset the party going into the next presidential election.

. . .Mr. Trump starts his presidency with only 47 percent of the country giving him a positive rating. Current polling shows that a majority of Americans do not support some of his most radical proposals. He is misreading how big a mandate the voters gave him in the election and is widely overreaching with his executive orders and policy proposals. And Republicans start out not only with a historically narrow margin of control in Congress but also with a track record of demonstrating during the last Congress that they were incapable of governing.

In this environment, Mr. Trump and the Republicans have set a high bar for themselves on how they are going to improve the economy. At the same time they also claim that they will cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget. Under Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. has become a working-class party, and its base is full of people who will be hardest hit by cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which now constitute almost half of all federal spending.

All of this points to a favorable opportunity for Democrats to regain power if they can learn the lessons that followed the 1980 election. Jimmy Carter was president for only four years, but because of Republican tactics, he defined what it meant to be a Democrat for 16 years. It was only when Mr. Clinton was elected president that the party was able to move past the Carter years.

To me this reads that Democrats need to do some of what what Republicans did, in addition to arguing that since Republicans in control, Democrats can now say they’re the “party of change.” In other words, this column gives no useful advice, and since Democrats are now doubling down on wokeness, they don’t seem to be recalibrating for the midterms or 2028.  I bit, but I didn’t like the taste.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s snarky and engaging weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: War room correspondent.”

→ Ireland’s president continues to troll about: Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, who really does look like a leprechaun, spoke at an event commemorating the Holocaust, and there on that day of memory he. . . criticized Israel, calling their response to October 7 “unimaginable.” He was met with silence. He continued:

“When wars and conflicts become accepted or presented as seemingly unending, humanity is the loser. War is not the natural condition of humanity. Cooperation is.” He then told the audience that embracing diversity, duh, is the answer.

When a pregnant Jewish woman stood and turned away from him in silent protest, she was dragged out of the event by security.

And when Good Morning Britain paused to remember the Holocaust, an anchor explained it like this: “Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the Second World War, as well as millions of others because they were Polish, disabled, gay, or belonged to another ethnic group.” Six million people, no need to get too specific there, but also disabled gays were targeted, victimized, and othered. Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the gays who valiantly gimp their way to the club.

→ Wait, how many transwomen are there in jail? Trump banned transgender women (biological males) from federal women’s prisons. Which I’ve always thought is an interesting but still blessedly fringe issue. How wrong I was. In the federal system, per the NYT: “15 percent of women in prison are transgender.” That’s a lot! So, if Biden’s policy of letting folks pick their prison continued—and tell me with a straight face you wouldn’t choose the girl one—then 15 percent of women’s federal prison inmates would be biological males.

I am willing to believe that there are transwomen inmates who’ve had vaginoplasty and have taken hormones for decades and who would be harmless to biological female inmates. But the movement said that was too limited. The movement said identifying as a woman should be enough to go live in the women’s prison. Having a penis and a beard doesn’t mean anything! It’s all gender expression and it’s all valid. And that’s how “15 percent of women in federal prison are transgender.”

→ The UK yearns to be conquered: Oxford and Cambridge plan to move away from traditional exams in favor of “inclusive assessments” in an effort to boost the grades of minority and low-income students. Funny timing, I’m moving away from traditional stoplights to more “intuition-based driving.” Oxford said it would “use a more diverse and inclusive range of assessments” to “improve the likelihood” that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds would perform well. I’m no Oxford graduate (I was offered a full ride there, of course), but Oxbridge is literally saying “we’ll lower the standards so everyone will do better.” That’s the educational equivalent of saying we’ll print more money so everyone’s richer. Guys, do I have to call Javier Milei?

Speaking of the UK, more than half of Gen Zers there believe the country—kingdom? Technically it’s a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy—should be a dictatorship. That stat isn’t the most startling—a people who gather to crown their monarch in an ancient ritual obviously have a natural inclination toward despotism. They’re hardwired for domination. But some other statistics in the same study are just plain fun: 33 percent of Gen Z think the UK would be better off if the army was in charge, which, fact-check: true. With ranks like “bombardier” and “sapper,” I’d trust the British army more than someone with the oddly fascistic-sounding name Keir Starmer. And most importantly, around half of Gen Z men agreed—correctly, I might add—that “when it comes to giving women equal rights, things have gone far enough.”

Quite the flurry in the British Isles: DEI-poisoned Oxbridge and red-pilled young men. Maybe they do need a dictator to sort all this out. Maybe they need Greater America.

I’ve always said that Ireland is the most anti-Semitic country in Western Europe, though I really don’t understand it. They didn’t fight in WWII, either. But the reasons for both can’t really be connected, can they?  I had Jewish relatives in Galway a few hundred years ago!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (with one eye open) makes a joke, though it may be inadvertent. She is not a woke cat!

A: It’s probably time for a little something.
Hili: I’m already woke.
In Polish:
Ja: Chyba czas na małe conieco.
Hili: Już jestem przebudzona.

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

From I Love Cats:

From Cat Memes:

From Things with Faces:

Nothing from Masih today. But Titania tweeted. An excerpt from the linked article:

Those colonial islands all have such offensive names anyway. There’s the Isle of Man (patriarchal), the Isle of Wight (racist), Ascension Island (phallic), the British Virgin Islands (slut-shaming), South Sandwich Islands (fat-shaming) and Orkney (not even a proper word).

From my feed, though this is a bit mean:

From Ricky Gervais; his cat Pickle:

Pickle in Blankets

— Ricky Gervais (@mrrickygervais.bsky.social) 2025-01-12T18:00:34.788Z

From Malcolm; a lovely cat painter. I like how the stripes are done first.

From Luana; I might have put this up before, but can’t be arsed to go back and check. Besides, it’s funny (or sad):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

Murdered by cyanide gas upon arrival at Auschwitz, this Italian girl was only six.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T10:48:23.396Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Crick about to get the Big Prize that I will never get!

An unusually nervous Crick at the 1962 Nobel ceremony, with Odile and his daughters, Jacqueline and Gabrielle, looking on.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T11:25:44.275Z

And a beautiful bird from SE Asia and Indonesia.

Black-bellied Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus diardi)#BirdsSeenIn2025 #Perak #Malaysia #birds #nature #wildlife@birdsoftheworld.bsky.social @ebrrh.bsky.social

— Amar (@amarhss.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T04:38:08.695Z

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

January 31, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the tail end of the week AND the tail end of the month: it’s Friday, January 31, 2025. It’s also National Hot Chocolate Day, and perhaps I’ll have some, but the best versions are in Spain or Mexico, served with freshly fried churros that must of course be dunked into the thick, rich chocolate.

User: Dominik, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also the worst food day of the year: Eat Brussels Sprouts Day, Scotch Tape Day (first marketed on January 31, 1930), and Brandy Alexander Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*It looks as if everyone died when an American airlines flight collided with a helicopter Wednesday evening, plunging everyone into the Potomic River. 67 people were killed; 64 on the small plane and three in the Blackhawk helicopter.

Recovery divers were set to plunge back into the frigid Potomac River on Friday as investigators sought to piece together the final moments before a passenger jet collided with an Army helicopter outside Washington, in the deadliest U.S. air crash in 20 years.

Among the questions facing investigators was whether the helicopter had flown outside its designated path as it approached the airport just outside the nation’s capital on Wednesday evening. Four people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak about it publicly said that the helicopter appeared to have been flying higher than air traffic control had approved.

The inquiry was also expected to look at staffing at the air traffic control tower, which was “not normal” at the time of the crash, according to a preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration. The internal F.A.A. report, which was reviewed by The New York Times, said the controller was handling both helicopters and planes in the area, jobs typically assigned to two people. A supervisor combined those duties sometime before 9:30 p.m. and allowed one controller to leave, according to a person briefed on the staffing, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

A recovery operation was launched for the bodies of the 67 people who were killed. The Washington fire department said its divers on Friday would be looking for aircraft parts to help the investigators, and would work on salvaging the wreckage.

Here’s what else to know:

  • The plane’s path: Shortly before the crash, the jet’s pilots were asked to pivot their landing route from one runway to another, according to a person briefed on the event and audio recordings of conversations between an air traffic controller and the pilots.
  • The investigation: The National Transportation Safety Board recovered the cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder from the plane and will have them analyzed. President Trump promised on Thursday that a thorough investigation would be conducted, while also engaging in political attacks on his predecessors.
  • The victims: In addition to the many figure skaters aboard the flight, several friends returning to the East Coast from a duck hunt in Kansas were on the plane. A full list of those who died has not yet been released.
  • The pilots: The two American Airlines pilots had been flying for years. Robert Isom, the airline’s chief executive, stressed their experience but provided no additional details. Two Army officials confirmed that the pilots of the helicopter — one woman, one man — and a male staff sergeant were killed in the collision.

The Guardian has a video of the moment of collision seen from the air traffic controllers’ base, as well as their reaction; click below if you want to see go to the page with the video. You can hear more extensive audio, including instructions to other planes to avoid the airport, at the AP. 

A schematic of the crash from The Independent:

, . . and the information given by Wichita officials to the press on the morning after the crash (23 minutes long).

*According to the Wall Street Journal, the helicopter either didn’t here or ignored air-traffic control’s instructions to go behind the jet.

Just after 8:47 p.m. on Wednesday, an air-traffic controller at Reagan National Airport relayed a seemingly ordinary inquiry and instruction:

“PAT25, do you have the CRJ in sight?” he asked a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, requesting it keep a lookout for an American Airlines Bombardier jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members from Wichita, Kan. The helicopter was on a training mission, officials would later say.

“PAT25, pass behind the CRJ,” the controller then said as American Airlines flight 5342 descended over the Potomac River just moments before landing. “CRJ” is aviation shorthand for Canadair Regional Jet.

Within 19 seconds, the horror of the two colliding aircraft became clear. “Oh my…!” someone yelled, a scream briefly picked up in the background of radio transmissions as air-traffic control worked to redirect planes to nearby airports.

Audio transmissions and flight-tracking data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal offer an early look into the moments before and after the midair crash that roiled the nation’s capital as emergency crews worked to rescue potential survivors in freezing Potomac waters. The cause of the collision remains under investigation.

. . . . It couldn’t be determined if the Black Hawk heard or acknowledged the request to keep an eye out for the Bombardier. A former federal aviation official told the Journal that air-traffic controllers gave the helicopter clear instructions to pass behind it.

You can hear these instructions at the website, and yes, they are clear and explicit.

Both aircraft were somewhere between 200 and 400 feet over the Potomac around the moment they collided, according to records reviewed by the Journal. The passenger jet was seconds away from finishing its roughly three-hour flight from Kansas.

After the officials realized a tragic collision had occurred, they scrambled to divert other flights away from National Airport. Some were asked to go to Washington Dulles International. Others were redirected to Baltimore-Washington International in Maryland.

Finally, some of the dead have been identified, but not officially:

Among those killed in the Wednesday night crash near Reagan National Airport was Spencer Lane, 16, and his mother, Christine Conrad Lane, the boy’s grandparents said in a phone interview with The Washington Post. The two were aboard American Eagle Flight 5342, preparing to catch a connecting flight at the Washington airport on their way home to Rhode Island.

. . . . The dead include competitive figure skaters and their companions, including retired champions, athletic coaches and family members. The crash happened three days after the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships — the most prestigious annual event on the American figure skating calendar — concluded in Wichita.

Two renowned Russian former figure skaters, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were among the passengers, the Kremlin said. The Skating Club of Boston, where Shishkova and Naumov coached, confirmed their deaths, as well as those of Spencer and his mother, and of junior skater Jinna Han, 15, and her mother, Jin.

Whenever I read about such crashes, I hope that those who died did so instantly rather than being plunged into a freezing river and drowning, or living the last moments of their lives in terror.

Jinna Han in a short program:

*And while bodies were still being recovered, Trump, with his usual desire to blame rather than console, made the idiotic decision to pubicly blame the crash on DEI:

And then there was President Trump. In the wake of this week’s midair collision near Washington, Mr. Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together. After declaring it to be an “hour of anguish for our nation,” Mr. Trump just five minutes later let anguish give way to aggression as he blamed diversity policies promoted by Mr. Obama and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the crash, which killed 67 people.

Mr. Trump has never been like other presidents. He does not follow many of the rituals and traditions of his office. He practices the politics of division rather than unity. Where past presidents have sought to project a comforting, paternal presence for a stricken nation in moments of crisis, Mr. Trump’s instinct is to move quickly from grief to grievance. He has long demonstrated that he is more comfortable as the blamer in chief than consoler in chief.

His decision to use the bully pulpit of the White House on Thursday to assign responsibility for the crash to his political rivals by name without offering a shred of evidence was, even for Mr. Trump, a striking performance. And it was no off-the-cuff comment. He followed up by signing an order directing a review of “problematic and likely illegal decisions” by Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden.

*Eight hostages were returned to Israel by Hamas yesterday: three Israelis and five Thai. (In return, Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners.) The Israeli/Thai swap was so chaotic (see below) that Israel refused to release the many Palestinian “exchange” prisoners until Hamas promised that this kind of chaos would not recur:

Eight hostages abducted during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel were released by Palestinian terror groups on Thursday under an ongoing ceasefire deal with Hamas, returning to Israel after 482 days in captivity in Gaza. Seven of them were freed in a long, chaotic process in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that prompted fury in Israel.

The three Israelis are IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80. The Thai nationals are Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakham, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak.

Yehoud, Mozes and the five Thais were released in an uncontrolled and dangerous handover early Thursday afternoon, outside the destroyed home of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, surrounded by hundreds of masked gunmen and large, seething crowds.

Eight hostages abducted during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel were released by Palestinian terror groups on Thursday under an ongoing ceasefire deal with Hamas, returning to Israel after 482 days in captivity in Gaza. Seven of them were freed in a long, chaotic process in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that prompted fury in Israel.

The three Israelis are IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80. The Thai nationals are Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakham, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak.

Yehoud, Mozes and the five Thais were released in an uncontrolled and dangerous handover early Thursday afternoon, outside the destroyed home of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, surrounded by hundreds of masked gunmen and large, seething crowds.

The two Israeli civilians were forced to walk through the crowds, with gunmen at their side, from the vehicles that delivered them and, later, to the Red Cross vehicles, in protracted, chaotic scenes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the chaotic handover was unacceptable, in a statement immediately after the release. “I view with great severity the shocking scenes during the release of our hostages,” said Netanyahu. “This is further proof of the unimaginable cruelty of the Hamas terrorist organization.”

Israel delayed the slated release of Palestinian prisoners in protest of the chaotic handover, with Netanyahu’s office saying it would not proceed “until the safe passage of our hostages can be guaranteed in the next releases.”

Berger and the Thai hostages were held by the Hamas terror group, while Yehoud and Mozes were held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Here’s a video of Israeli hostage Arbel Yehoud, and what a nightmare it was. Hamas did not have to transfer hostages this way, but wanted to make a spectacle of it: letting the public deride the hostages and terrifying the hostages at the same time. It’s also supposed to be a “show of force” by Hamas, I guess:

*Two of our law professors and free-speech advocates, Anthony Casey and Tom Ginsburg, urge corporations to adopt institutional neutrality in a NYT op-ed called “Corporate leaders need to keep their mouths shut” (archived here; h/t Greg).

After more than a year of exhausting controversies over free expression at colleges and universities, America’s business leaders would do well to take a simple lesson from embattled leaders in higher education:

Keep your mouth shut.

The lesson has become even more important with the recent gravitation of some corporate leaders toward President Trump. Such public fawning, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, demonstrates how unprincipled and fickle corporate political positions have always been.

Increasingly, universities have adopted neutrality policies to recommit to their core mission. So can corporations. The key is committing to institutional neutrality, which requires leaders to stay silent on social and political issues that do not directly affect their operations. This means reining in corporate political statements — progressive and conservative — as well as the political activity of chief executives like Elon Musk and political flip-flops by companies like Meta. Our own university, the University of Chicago, committed to this ideal in 1899 and restated that commitment in the seminal Kalven Report of 1967. This has freed individuals in our community to express their own opinions and ideas in lively debate.

For decades, few other universities have made this commitment. But its value for them — and for business corporations — has become clearer over the past year. The Gaza war created a no-win situation for university leaders accustomed to speaking out on political issues. On the one hand, bland institutional statements on current events have no impact, satisfy no one and relegate the institution to a role as a second-rate political actor. On the other, statements with real substance threaten to alienate and silence those who disagree. As a result, more than two dozen schools, including Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania — whose presidents resigned, in part, after stumbling at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism — have now adopted neutrality policies akin to Chicago’s. More are in the works.

Corporate leaders in the private sector can benefit from these hard lessons.

The authors note that there may be compelling business reasons for companies to speak out (they use the woke Ben & Jerry’s as their example), and companies, like universities, should be free to speak out on matters affecting “the company’s ability to operate.”

Kalven is a good policy for nearly any organization: shut up except on issues that affect your organization’s mission or ability to operate. Besides the University of Chicago, only 29 other American colleges have adopted a Kalven-like policy.

*Finally, a stink flower has grown in Brooklyn, and it bloomed (I’ve added a link):

One by one, visitors to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden pulled out their phones snap pictures of the rare blooming plant before leaning in to brave a whiff of its infamously putrid scent, which resembles that of rotting flesh.

“It smells like feet, cheese and rotten meat. It just smelled like the worst possible combination of smells,” Elijah Blades said. “That was disgusting.”

The rare Amorphophallus gigas — a relative of the Amorphophallus titanum, commonly known as the corpse flower — has bloomed for the first time since arriving in Brooklyn in 2018. Native to Sumatra, the plant is known for its height and carrion scent, which it uses to attract pollinators.

It has hundreds of flowers, both male and female, inside the bloom, and it can take years between blooming events, said gardener Chris Sprindis, who first noticed the inflorescence, or cluster of flowers, around New Year’s Eve. The bloom will last only a few days before it collapses.

“So this is the first time it’s happened here,” Sprindis said. “It’s not going to happen next year. It’s going to be several years before it happens again.”

Look at this thing!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is becoming a Senior Cat:

Hili: With age everything seems more complicated.
Andrzej: I know something about that.
In Polish:
Hili: Z wiekiem wszystko wydaje się bardziej skomplikowane.
Ja: Coś o tym wiem.

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

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy (my Dutch friend also says they’re going to reclaim New Amsterdam):

From I Love Cats:

From Things With Faces:

From Masih; this Iraqui fled his country for freedom and then burned a Qur’an in Stockholm. But that didn’t give him immunity; he was just murdered in Sweden, and I’m pretty damn sure it was by Muslim extremists.

Salwan Momika burned the Quran, arguing that Islam is a violent religion. In a grim twist of irony, he was murdered by those who sought to prove him wrong.

From Bryan, but you heard it here first (last December!). They are summarizing an article by Matthew Cobb published on the Asimov Press website. You need to know what the Central Dogmas was, and how Crick construed it (correctly, by the way).

Form Luana. SJP should be considered for suspension at many places, including here, as I wrote in the student newspaper. It’s not what they say, as you’ll see if you read my piece, but their repeated violations of campus regulations.

A lovely deer (I think), probably leucistic rather than albino:

From Simon; a big cat acting like. . .  well, a cat:

Cats will be cats, no matter the size..🐆😍

— amazingnature ☘️ (@amazingnature.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T00:12:20.520Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Gassed upon arrival, this Dutch boy was 12 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T11:19:39.280Z

Two posts by Matthew. who tells me that Kindra is Francis Crick’s granddaughter. His legacy is both intellectual and genetic!

‘Entwined I’A print with details in graphite that contain the first written description of DNA replication. #sciart #JanuArty #curve #printmaking #monoprint

— Kindra Crick 🧩 (@kindracrick.com) 2025-01-29T16:56:35.860Z

Speaking of Crick, Matthew is editing his postscript, and says “ergh”. . .

Oh dear. I seem to have gone a bit mad last night editing the brief Epilogue to CRICK. And it wasn’t even drunk editing. Not sure I can make head or tail of this. #ripitupandstartagain

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-01-30T08:24:40.700Z