Welcome to Thursday, January 23, 2025 and National Pie Day, a most excellent day. What should it be: cherry, pecan, lemon meringue, or an old favorite of mine that I haven’t had for years: sour cream/raisin pie? It so happens that I am receiving a shoofly pie, sent from an Amish bakery in Pennsylvania, and it should arrive today. This is what it will look like. If you haven’t had this molasses based pie, you haven’t lived (good with coffee for breakfast!)

It’s also International Sticky Toffee Pudding Day (perhaps Britain’s best dessert), National Rhubarb Pie Day (the world’s WORST dessert), and National Handwriting Day (mine gets worse as I age). 

There’s a Google Doodle today; if you want to play a Moon game, click on the screenshot below:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Throughout the U.S., state and city officials are planning to either thwart or refuse to enforce Trump’s proposed plans to deport immigrants who came here illegally. I can even see this in my neighborhood email group.  Anticipating this, Trump is now planning to investigate any official who does this:

The interim leadership of the Justice Department has ordered U.S. attorneys around the country to investigate and prosecute law enforcement officials in states and cities if they refuse to enforce the Trump administration’s new immigration policies, according to an internal department memo.

The three-page memo, intended as guidance to all department employees for carrying out President Trump’s executive orders seeking to limit immigration and foreign gangs, asserts that state and local officials are bound to cooperate with the department under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and could face criminal prosecution or civil penalties if they fail to comply.

The memo came as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to make targeted raids in cities, including Chicago and San Diego, with high numbers of undocumented immigrants — setting up a possible confrontation with local officials. The document underscored the central role the Justice Department will play in enforcing Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands,” wrote Emil Bove III, the department’s interim deputy attorney general and a former member of the president’s criminal defense team.

U.S. attorneys’ offices and officials from various branches of the department’s Washington headquarters “shall investigate instances involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution,” Mr. Bove wrote, pointing to the same federal obstruction law used in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump that accused him of inciting the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Bove also warned localities against taking action to contradict the new federal policies and instructed the department’s civil lawyers to “identify state and local laws, policies, and activities” that flout Mr. Trump’s executive orders and “where appropriate, to take legal action to challenge such laws.”

I am still dubious whether the loudly announced raids will take place, but believe me, they have scared the bejeezus out of people in my town.  And I suppose the law is the law, and Trump has the right to do this. We’ll see about the optics of these deportations soon—if Trump does indeed carry out his “promises.”

*As Chicago baseball announcer Harry Carey used to say, “HOLY COW!” Yes, the Wall Street Journal editorial board has denounced Trump—for pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists. And rightly so!  An excerpt:

Republicans are busy denouncing President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for his family and political allies, and deservedly so. But then it’s a shame you don’t hear many, if any, ruing President Trump’s proclamation to pardon unconditionally nearly all of the people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This includes those convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying, and electroshocking police to try to keep Mr. Trump in power. Now he’s springing them from prison.

This is a rotten message from a President about political violence done on his behalf, and it’s a bait and switch. Asked about Jan. 6 pardons in late November, Mr. Trump projected caution. “I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished,” he said. “We’re going to look at each individual case.”

Taking cues from the boss, last week Vice President JD Vance drew a clear line: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

So much for that. The President’s clemency proclamation commutes prison sentences to time served for 14 named people, including prominent leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were organized and ready for violence. Then Mr. Trump tries to wipe Jan. 6 clean, with “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals.” The conceit is that there are hundreds of polite Trump supporters who ended up in the wrong place that day and have since rotted in jail.

Out of roughly 1,600 cases filed by the feds, more than a third included accusations of “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement.” The U.S. Attorney’s office said it declined “hundreds” of prosecutions against people whose only offense was entering restricted grounds near the Capitol. Of the 1,100 sentences handed down by this year, more than a third didn’t involve prison time. The rioters who did get jail often were charged with brutal violence  [they then give examples].

. . . There are more like this, which everyone understood on Jan. 6 and shortly afterward. “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill,” one GOP official tweeted. “This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.” That was Marco Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State. He was right. What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.

Them’s rough words for Trump from the WSJ!

*I don’t much care for Prince Harry or Meghan Markle, as I see them as self-aggrandizing publicity hounds, but they’re presumably a lot richer now that Harry has won a lawsuit against the Sun newspaper group for “unlawful intrusion into his private life.”

*Here’s a deceptive article in the NYT, (archived here) called “Even religious people don’t trust religious institutions.” It starts with the story of a Catholic who, for good reasons, no longer goes to church, but then segues into—you got it—the God-shaped hole that supposedly runs through humanity:

Often, church or temple leaders learn about accusations, and instead of dealing with them, they try to make the problem disappear by moving the perpetrator to another location. Upholding the public image of the institution is more important than protecting the vulnerable or seeking justice for them.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning.

It’s bad enough when secular institutions do this. But religious institutions are supposed to provide a moral example, even when it’s not easy. When spiritual authorities ignore their values and their responsibility to the parents and children who trusted them, it’s crushing.

As a secular, mildly observant Jew, I don’t feel strongly about whether other Americans attend religious services or believe in God. But I do care about the pervasive — and honestly, warranted — cynicism that young people have about religious institutions, because I think it is contributing to a more disconnected, careless and cruel society.

In October 2023, Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project published a report about youth mental health problems that found that “nearly three in five young adults (58 percent) reported that they lacked ‘meaning or purpose’ in their lives in the previous month. Half of young adults reported that their mental health was negatively influenced by ‘not knowing what to do with my life.’” However, they found that young adults who belonged to any religion were more likely to report having meaning and purpose.

Religious institutions are certainly not the only potential avenue for meaning, purpose and value in society. But we can’t underestimate the power of their reach, even in an increasingly secular world. When they have epic moral failures, it affects all of us, because it makes everyone more suspicious of potentially welcoming communities. Religious organizations are one of the few kinds of groups left in America that are free to join and have few barriers to entry. Faith groups are among vanishingly few organizations that are meant for people of all ages, where the entire family can ideally feel welcome. I wish there were more secular communities that offered the same kind of support across life spans that religious groups provide, but at least for now, there are few nonreligious alternatives.

As Steven Tipton, a professor emeritus at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, points out in his new book, “In and Out of Church: The Moral Arc of Spiritual Change in America,” millions of Americans who say they have no religion in particular are actually “liminal” in that they may leave religious communities “only for a season.” It would help bring these liminals back if religious communities pursued “a truer, wider path toward the common good.”

Note the statement that we have to bring these people back to religion. But why can’t they join humanistic communities rather than ones that share belief in fictitious supernatural beings? And what accounts for all the recent palaver about this god-shaped hole mishigass?

*Medals from the Paris Olympics are decaying, especially the bronze ones. And it’s not even a year since they were handed out

For any Paris Olympic swimmers who are considering celebrating their bronze medals around a pool, they might want to think twice.

Reports are already rolling in from Paris from athletes claiming their bronze medals have visibly deteriorated before the Olympics have even concluded. American skateboarder Nyjah Huston was the first to publicly criticize the quality of the bronze medals just a week after winning his hardware in the men’s street event, posting a photo on his Instagram story that showed serious discoloration.

“They’re apparently not as high quality as you’d think,” Huston said. “It’s looking rough. I don’t know, Olympic medals, we gotta step up the quality a little bid. The medal looking like it went to war and back.”

British diver Yasmin Harper echoed the sentiment after capturing bronze in the women’s 3m synchronized springboard last week.

“There has been some small bits of tarnishing I will admit, yes,” Harper said. “I don’t know, I think it’s like water or anything that gets on the metal, it’s making it go a little bit discolored.”

The good news is that Paris 2024 Olympic organizers responded to the social media firestorm on Friday, assuring athletes that damaged medals will be “systematically replaced.”

“Paris 2024 is aware of a social media report from an athlete whose medal is showing damage a few days after it was awarded,” a spokesperson told The Daily Mail. “Paris 2024 is working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution tasked with the production and quality control of the medals, and together with the National Olympic Committee of the athlete concerned, in order to appraise the medal to understand the circumstances and cause of the damage. The medals are the most coveted objected of the Games and the most precious for the athletes.”

Bronze medals are not actually made of bronze, but rather “red brass.” Both brass and bronze are copper alloys, but red brass is made of more zinc than bronze is. Bronze is generally harder and more durable than brass, but brass is more malleable and easier to shape.

Each Paris Olympic medal features a small piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower, collected over the last century during renovations. The medals were designed by the Chaumet House of Jewellery, a luxury jewelry and watch brand headquartered in Paris. The backs of both the Olympic and Paralympic designs are the same, including the hexagon-shaped piece of iron.

Here’s Huston’s medal, and it’s in bad shape:

 

Meanwhile, a gold medal from the St. Louis Olympics in 1904 has just been auctioned off for over $545,000.  And back then they were really gold:

This was the first Olympics where gold medals were awarded and the Americans took advantage, winning 78 of 96 events. Unlike Olympic medals these days which are mostly made of silver with gold plating, these were smaller and made entirely of gold.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili contemplates Andrzej’s first book, written in the 1970s, about Polish politics and economics.

Hili: What book is this?

A: A very old book about times very long ago.

Hili: Co to za książka?

Ja: Bardzo stara książka o bardzo dawnych czasach.

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

From Merilee:

From Rawan Osman:

And from Cat Memes:

From Andrzej’s Facebook page: he noticed that many of the very people who go after Musk for supposedly making a Hitler salute admire groups that REALLY make Hitler salutes:

Speaking of which, here’s a group of cowards at Columbia doing their usual cowardly protest (h/t Luana), and FIRE calls them out.  This is at Columbia University, of course, which I suspect will soon have to settle a large lawsuit for promoting an antisemitic atmosphere:

Speaking out is important, but shouldn’t involve disrupting a class on Israel or anything else. @Columbia is right to discourage disruptive behavior but should better educate students on what protests are protected. FIRE is ready to help. https://t.co/p8nbYZUpAy

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) January 22, 2025

Bill Maher has a rather disgusting example of social progress:

We need to celebrate progress! #TrueStory pic.twitter.com/mHpm0uB8pv

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) January 22, 2025

From Malcolm: a cat missing its two front legs. But it’s doing fine!

Cat doesn’t have front 2 legs 🥺 pic.twitter.com/BGp36G8HVx

— Cats That Make You Go Awww (@CuteAdorableCat) January 14, 2025

From JKR, pointing out a failure of the American left:

A noisy part of the left still refuses to step outside their sex-is-a-social-construct bubble and acknowledge that their embrace of gender identity ideology has been a calamity. They were warned the right was capitalising on their betrayal of women and girls. They didn’t listen. https://t.co/aoprjiO8nz

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 20, 2025

Two tweets from Jez’s “lovely pets” thread:

19. Happy tail syndrome pic.twitter.com/w3MmyngBF8

— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) January 17, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was seven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T11:42:16.769Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Did you know that male narwhal tusks are directionally asymmetrical (it’s the left one that’s big), but also there’s a vestigial one? (Only males have the long tusk, which is an enlarged incisor tooth.)

We all know male narwhals have one long tusk. In this cool display, the skull in the middle has been dissected to show that the right tusk is also there, but it's tiny, and embedded within the upper jaw.BTW female #narwhals are almost never displayed in #museums (the other skulls here are belugas)

— Jack Ashby (@jackdashby.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T14:25:11.466Z

Trees that produce baby trees, with the seeds growing before they’ve fallen from the tree. There’s a link:

Animals lay eggs or birth babies. Trees make seeds…except for the ones that have live babies, like we do?! I wrote for @biographic.bsky.social about the genetics of baby-having mangrove trees, and why they might have evolved this way: http://www.biographic.com/how-some-tre… 🧪

— Elizabeth Preston (@inkfish.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T13:58:39.833Z

Welcome to Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the Cruelest Day and Trump’s first full day as President. What lies in store for us? It’s also National Squirrel Appreciation Day, and please feed these lovely and fluffy rodents, especially when it’s cold (it’s -6°F or  -21°C as I write this, and my face froze on my walk to work).  Here: do what I am doing, for the animals are cold today!

It’s also International Sweatpants Day. National New England Clam Chowder Day (the ONLY edible form of chowder), National Granola Bar Day (they’re morphing into candy bars), and National Hugging Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A good friend called me up at 12:43 and said, “Well, we can be happy that there are 43 fewer minutes left in Trump’s presidency.” I told him that yes, he can’t be gone too soon but if we count it out in pieces that small, we’ll go nuts, and I don’t plan to spend all my time fretting about the Orange Man, or writing about his missteps on this site. (Of course I’ll single out the dumber ones, but there are plenty of places, and you know them, where you can read ALL BAD TRUMP 24/7.  At any rate, he’s now the President for four years. and the braggadocio has already started:

“The golden age of America begins right now,” Mr. Trump declared as he began a 29-minute Inaugural Address, shortly after he and Vice President JD Vance took their oaths in the Capitol Rotunda. He added: “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all these many betrayals that have taken place and give people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”

*Three female hostages have been returned to Israel, all in pretty good condition save one young woman who appears to have lost two fingers (no information about that is available). From CNN:

Emily Damari, one of the three hostages released by Hamas on Sunday, is the “happiest girl in the world” now that she is out of Gaza, according to her mother.

“Yesterday, I was finally able to give Emily the hug that I have been dreaming of,” Mandy Damari said in a statement on Monday.

“I am relieved to report that after her release, Emily is doing much better than any of us could ever have anticipated. I am also happy that during her release, the world was given a glimpse of her feisty and charismatic personality,” she added.

Emily Damari, a 28-year-old British-Israeli national, was released by Hamas alongside hostages Romi Gonen, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, on Sunday, in the first phase of the ceasefire-hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Israel also returned 90 Palestinian prisoners – including 69 women and nine children.

Damari’s mother said that, while this is an “incredibly happy moment for our family, we must also remember that 94 other hostages still remain (in Gaza).

“The ceasefire must continue and every last hostage must be returned to their families,” she said.

A photo:

The swap for Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted terrorists, was grossly uneven:

As the Gaza cease-fire took hold, one aspect of the agreement was strikingly lopsided: Hamas released three Israeli women held in Gaza on Sunday, while Israel was expected to release 90 Palestinian women and minors held in its prisons later in the day.

Further exchanges will likely follow a similar formula, with tens of Palestinians freed from prisons in Israel for each hostage held in the Gaza Strip by militants. Over the six-week first phase of the truce, Hamas is expected to release 33 captives and Israel is slated to free about 1,900 Palestinians.

You will hear no claims of “disproportionality” for such an uneven and wrongheaded swap. But if that’s what Israel wants, that’s what it will get. Remember, though, that in a similar but even more uneven swap for an Israeli soldier, one of the Palestinian terrorists released was Yayha Sinwar, who, as the military head of Hamas, planned the October 7 massacre.  1,026 of Sinwar’s mates were also released to get a single Israeli soldier back. Then Sinwar planned a massacre that killed over 1200 people, mostly Israelis.

Finally, as expected, many Israelis had mixe emotions at the prisoner release, which turned into a spectacle (there are some reports that Gazans spat on the three women), with Hamas turning out in full regalia with bandanas, facemasks, and of course AK47s:

Israelis said they felt conflicted emotions seeing the hostages handed over by Hamas militants, who posted their own choreographed video of the release. The video showed the three women posed with printed certificates declaring their release from captivity. In bags sporting the Hamas military wing’s logo, the group gave the women a map Hamas labeled Palestine, a certificate for learning to read Arabic and pictures of their time in captivity, an Israeli military official said.

The volatility of Sunday’s exchange reinforces doubts about whether the parties can reach additional agreements that would release all the hostages and end the war, and even whether the current phase of the deal will hold for the full six weeks to set the first 33 hostages free.

*Among the executive orders that Trump plans is a change in how sex and gender are treated in America by Emily Yoffe (h/t Luana). This was reported yesterday, before Trump took office, so I don’t know if it was  issued (it appears to have been signed; see a later post):

Here is what the order sets out:

• The Executive Order establishes Government-wide the biological reality of two sexes and clearly defines male and female.
  • All radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms are removed.
  • Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination.
  • “Woman” means an “adult human female.”
  • The Executive Order directs that Government identification like passports and personnel records will reflect biological reality and not self-assessed gender identity.
• The Executive Order ends the practice of housing men in women’s prisons and taxpayer funded “transition” for male prisoners.
• The Executive Order ends the forced recitation of “preferred pronouns” and protects Americans’ First Amendment and statutory rights to recognize the biological and binary nature of sex.
  • This includes protection in the workplace and in federal funded entities like schools.]

. . . . . Asked why Trump is making sex-based policy a day one priority of his administration, an incoming senior administration official said, “This really was a defining issue of the campaign. The president is going to be fulfilling the promises he made on the trail.” The executive order puts it more bluntly: “Radical gender ideology has devastated biological truth and women’s safety and opportunity.”

It is becoming something of a presidential tradition to begin a term with sweeping directives regarding “gender identity.” President Biden, on his first day in office, demanded the federal government “review all existing orders, regulations, guidance documents, policies, programs, or other agency actions” that could impinge on transgender rights. Language and rules about transgender identities became embedded in the vast federal bureaucracy.

Now, Trump has ordered a reversal of all this. In an exclusive briefing with The Free Press, two senior officials provided a summary of the executive order. “Women deserve protections, they deserve dignity, they deserve fairness, they deserve safety,” said a senior policy adviser explaining why the order explicitly embraces the necessity of special treatment for women. “And so this is going to help establish that in federal policy and in federal laws.”

But this will not go gentle, because there will be challenges.

In reading the order, it’s clear that lawsuits challenging the new directives will start stacking up quickly. The order, for example, asserts that “All radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms are removed.” This is far from mere symbolism. United States passports—which since 2022 have allowed citizens to choose “X” as their gender—will revert to offering exclusively male and female options, with the proviso that what people select must “reflect biological reality and not self-assessed gender identity.”

. . . and there’s one thing missing, though this is the subject of an ongoing Supreme Court case

The executive order does not address one of the most contentious areas of transgender activism: “gender-affirming care” for minors, meaning putting gender-distressed young people on a swift course to transition and lifetime medication. The Biden administration ardently supported such treatments, even as other Western nations began to restrict them, and dozens of U.S. states began to ban them.\

In general I think the tone of these changes is positive—no surprise to the readers who know my views—but I want to see how the laws are written. And I don’t really like the government decreeing that there are two sexes, for that is a biological observation. They can “recognize” them, but the government is not in the business of establishing biological fact, as the courts tried to do when saying that the FDA’s approval of day-after pills was faulty.

*Pollster, statistician, and Democrat Nate Silver has a new take in his “Silver Bulletin” newsletter, “Why Biden Failed.”

I have hardly any recollection of January 20, 2021, the day that Joe Biden took the Oath of Office. That may be because his speech wasn’t very memorable. In staccato bursts and simple sentences, delivered to a sparse, socially-distanced crowd, it didn’t contain much soaring rhetoric or policy substance. But it did offer a lot of promises, promises that Biden was never going to be able to keep.

The speech echoed a framing Biden had used in his acceptance speech that summer at the Democratic convention: that of a polycrisis. At the DNC, Biden had spoken of “four historic crises, all at the same time, a perfect storm”:

The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.

In his Inaugural Address, Biden again pledged to “resolve the cascading crises of our era.” In fact, he upped the ante. The speech wasn’t humble: Biden compared himself to Abraham Lincoln after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, promising a solution to “systemic racism.” “The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” he said. And with the inauguration conducted in the shadow of January 6, there was a new addition, a fifth critical threat: an “attack on democracy and on truth” and a “rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”

Silver’s view is that Biden wanted to be a hero, but faced a “polycrisis” of the pandemic, rising inflation, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, immigration, and a rise in crime.

In high-risk, high-stakes times like these, where you’re well outside the parameters of the usual playbook, it can be tempting to be a hero. And if you listen to his inaugural address, that’s clearly how Biden saw himself. Or perhaps even as a savior: the speech contains quite a bit of religious rhetoric. “The Bible says weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning,” Biden said. He asked Americans to place their faith in him: “Take a measure of me and my heart.”

But trying to be a savior — ending the pandemic, saving democracy, and, on top of that, delivering justice from systematic racism! — is precisely what you don’t want to do during extraordinary circumstances or under exceptional stress. I explore this theme at length in my book, which includes interviews with dozens of risk-takers, both quant types and people like former astronauts and fighter pilots. “Don’t be a hero” is advice I heard consistently. Instead, stick to basic blocking-and-tackling. Identify the most critical problem and laser-focus on it until it’s solved. Probably not two problems at a time, but sometimes that can’t be avoided. Certainly not five simultaneous crises, though. Especially if you have no plan other than “unity,” which Biden described as the “elusive” ingredient to “overcome these challenges.”

Silver concludes that even by 2020 voters perceived that Biden had lost enough of his mental capacity to govern effectively, and in fact he didn’t.  Remember, this is Silver’s view, not mine. I was never a huge fan of Biden, as he turned out weaker and also woker than I perceived, nor did I like him, in the latter part of his term, trying to tell Israel how to run the war. But how much happier I’d be now if Gretchen Whitmer (or even Mayor Pete) had won the Democratic voters’ esteem in stead of inheriting the nomination like Harris did!

*I just learned that Biden issued a passel of pardons in his very last minutes in office (article archived here):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, an atheist cat, want her noms:

Hili: If God does not exist we have to eat something anyway.

A: Not by bread alone…

Hili: And who is asking for bread?

Hili: Jeśli Boga nie ma to i tak trzeba coś zjeść.

Ja: Nie samym chlebem.

Hili: A kto prosi o chleb?

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From David Jorling, and especially for Diana:

From Cat Memes:

From Titania, tweeted last Christmas Eve:

Can you see it yet? 👀 pic.twitter.com/nu8lJPf6l1

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 12, 2024

From the wonderful Sarah Haider, spotted by Luana:

Some of the most celebrated atheist scientists stand up for the reality of biological sex, and Atheist/Humanist organizations pretend they are being attacked by “religious extremists” espousing bigotry.

Astonishing. Shameful. Openly anti-science. https://t.co/YSdl9yanCS

— Sarah Haider 👾 (@SarahTheHaider) January 19, 2025

Two more heartwarming pet tweets in a thread found by Jez (sound up on first one):

11. Such a wholesome memory pic.twitter.com/XzPJQMgtcj

— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) January 17, 2025

From Malcolm. I have mixed feelings about this one as the guy is apparently trying to kill the mouse. Sound up.

bro lied on his resume 😂 pic.twitter.com/s84IebYRXj

— Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) December 31, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A young French man who died soon after arriving at Auschwitz. He was deported the day before his 20th birthday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T11:23:24.629Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb, who may teach one more course. First, a lovely spider egg sac:

This is the mystery spider egg sac covered with a veil of pink silk that was determined to be woven by a Poltys based on several rounds of discussion on iNaturalist and Twitter. Thanks to @arachnonaut.bsky.social for the lead!

— Nicky Bay (@nickybay.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T14:21:01.165Z

Matthew says that Dent is a famous lexicographer:

 

Welcome to a holiday Monday, January 20, 2025.  It’s Martin Luther King Day, and I always put up a clip of his “I have a dream” speech of August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial at Washington, D.C.  250,000 people were there to hear him.  It is the best piece of rhetoric of our era, and no doubt contributed to the civil rights laws of the ensuing years. Please listen to it (the sound is a bit out of synch with the visuals).

Oh, it’s also Inauguration Day; Trump becomes President. Ceiling Cat help us, every one. The Inauguration, scheduled to take place indoors because of the cold, will be at noon. Ceiling Cat give us the strength to stand the madness of the next four years, and to get the Democratic house in order.

It’s also National Coffee Bean Day, National Buttercrunch Day, and Penguin Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 20 Wikipedia page.

Oh, and there’s a Google Doodle today honoring Martin Luther King Day (click on picture to see what it links to:

Finally, it’s Bill Maher’s 69th birthday, and reader Rick sent one of his quotes:

Maybe every other American movie shouldn’t be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.

-Bill Maher, comedian, actor, and writer (b. 20 Jan 1956)

Da Nooz:

*The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel began today, with three Israeli hostages released in return for 90 Palestinians, many of them convicted terrorists. To me, this is the beginning of the end of a war that Israel lost.  I am of course delighted that the families got their relatives and loved ones back (though many families will just get bodies), but the disproportionality of the exchange, the demand that Israel flood their enemies with humanitarian aid (Hamas will get the lion’s share), and the fact that Hamas remains in control of Gaza are dispiriting.  From the NYT: (archived here):

Three hostages were released from Gaza on Sunday and reunited with family members in Israel, the Israeli military said, as a long-awaited cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas went into effect. The truce prompted celebrations in Gaza, relief for families of Israeli captives and hope for an end to a devastating 15-month war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office identified the freed hostages as Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher. They were captured during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in Israel that set off the war. Israel was expected to release 90 Palestinian prisoners, all women or minors, later on Sunday in exchange for the hostages.

As the truce took effect on Sunday morning, joyful Palestinians honked car horns and blasted music in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah, where celebratory gunfire rang out and children ran around in the streets.

And as Israeli officers said their forces had begun to withdraw from parts of Gaza, including two towns north of Gaza City, Hamas sought to signal that it was still standing and moving to reassert control, with masked gunmen parading through cities. The Hamas-run police force in Gaza, whose uniformed officers had all but disappeared from the streets to avoid Israeli attacks, said that it was deploying personnel across the territory to “preserve security and order,” according to the government media office.

Achieving the agreement on a delicate, multistage cease-fire required months of talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. The start of an initial, six-week phase on Sunday was delayed by almost three hours, with Israel saying it had not formally received the names of the first three hostages to be released.

See this video with Einat Wilf, who should be Israel’s Prime Minister (thanks to a reader who posted this earliers but I can’t find it).  I am not sure the war is really over, and hope that if it is, Hamas won’t be in charge of Gaza, but those two aims seem incompatible.  I will just watch and wait, and hope that there are not a lot of dead hostages.

Here’s a video report on the hostage release, as well as a show of force by Hamas. One hostage appears to have lost two fingers, but the hugs and reunions make me tear up.

*Tik Tok was pretty much silenced in the U.S. yesterday, as the government didn’t want a Chinese company collecting information on American users, but Trump has decided to walk back that decision.

President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order on Monday to reinstate TikTok in the U.S. and that he wants the country to have an ownership position in the app.

Trump’s comments on Truth Social come after TikTok went dark in the U.S., erasing the popular app for its American users in an unprecedented move.

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote Sunday. He said the order would extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that the administration can make a deal to protect our national security.

Trump said the order would “also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.” TikTok was seeking such an assurance from the Biden administration.

The president-elect said he wants the U.S. to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture, although he didn’t provide further details about how such a joint venture would be structured. “By doing this, we save TikTok,” he wrote.

The app started halting service Saturday night for 170 million users in its most important market shortly before a law took effect requiring it to shed its Chinese ownership or close in the U.S. It marked the first time the U.S. government has compelled the closure of such a widely used app, and disrupted millions of American businesses and social-media entrepreneurs who use TikTok to connect with customers and fans.

I can see the point of not allowing a quasi-enemy country collect information on Americans, so I wasn’t opposed to the darkening of Tik Tok. But if a foreign company owns, say 49% or 50% of the company, are they not allowed to get any information on users?

*All of us in Chicago have been warned multiple times about impending deportations of local immigrants as mandated by Trump. While I think he would enact all these deportations if he had the power, I have been skeptical about them for two reasons: Trump has made multiple promises (i.e., threats) before, as in the 2016 election, that he never followed through on. Second, to enact the kind of immigration changes he wants he would surely need Congressional approval, and that is not coming from the Senate, which, though controlled narrowly by the GOP, does not have enough Republicans to stop a filibuster. And indeed, the Chicago threats seem to have been dialed back:

President-elect Donald Trump’s handpicked “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview Saturday that the incoming administration is reconsidering whether to launch immigration raids in Chicago next week after preliminary details leaked out in news reports.

Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Washington Post that the new administration “hasn’t made a decision yet.”

“We’re looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak,” Homan said. “It’s unfortunate because anyone leaking law enforcement operations puts officers at greater risk.”

ICE has been planning a large operation in the Chicago area for next week that would start after Inauguration Day and would bring in additional officers to ramp up arrests, according to two current federal officials and a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal law enforcement planning.

Homan said he did not know why Chicago “became a focus of attention” and said the incoming administration’s enforcement goals are much broader than one city.

“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.”

“This is nationwide thing,” he added. “We’re not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan.”

I don’t believe that the “day one” arrests will occur, either.  But one thing is for sure: if the Democrats want to get some governmental power back and start winning elections, they have to jettison their appearance of supporting an “open border” policy and start trying to get some bipartisan immigration reform. That, after all, was one of the two major concerns that got the Democrats defeated last November.

*I didn’t realize that black activist and nationalist Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) had been convicted of a federal crime, but sure enough, he was convicted for selling shares in a ship he didn’t own (it was a “back to Africa” ship for his proposed “Black Star Line”). He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment but served two, with his sentence commuted by Calvin Coolidge on condition that Garvey be deported. Garvey moved to Jamaica, where he was born, and then moved to London in 1935, where he died five years later. Why I bring this up is that Garvey’s pan-Africanism has always fascinated me, and mainly because Biden has just given him a posthumous pardon:

President Joe Biden on Sunday posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Also receiving pardons were a top Virginia lawmaker and advocates for immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and gun violence prevention.

Congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride. After Garvey was convicted, he was deported to Jamaica, where he was born. He died in 1940.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said of Garvey: “He was the first man, on a mass scale and level” to give millions of Black people “a sense of dignity and destiny.”

It’s not clear whether Biden, who leaves office Monday, will pardon people who have been criticized or threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.

Issuing preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined offenses by Trump’s critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the powers of the presidency in untested ways.

Biden has set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. He announced on Friday that he was commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He also gave a broad pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for gun and tax crimes.

The president has announced he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just as Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. In his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented number of executions, 13, in a protracted timeline during the coronavirus pandemic.

A pardon relieves a person of guilt and punishment. A commutation reduces or eliminates the punishment but doesn’t exonerate the wrongdoing.

Among those pardoned on Sunday were:

— Don Scott, who is the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in a chamber narrowly controlled by Democrats. He was convicted of a drug offense in 1994 and served eight years in prison. He was elected to the Virginia legislature in 2019, and later became the first Black speaker.

“I am deeply humbled to share that I have received a Presidential Pardon from President Joe Biden for a mistake I made in 1994 — one that changed the course of my life and taught me the true power of redemption,” Scott said in a statement.

—Immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who was convicted of a nonviolent offence in 2001 and was sentenced to two years in prison and was facing deportation to Trinidad and Tobago.

—Kemba Smith Pradia, who was convicted of a drug offense in 1994 and sentenced to 24 years behind bars. She has since become a prison reform activist. President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence in 2000.

—Darryl Chambers of Wilmington, Delaware, a gun violence prevention advocate who was convicted of a drug offense and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He studies and writes about gun violence prevention.

I don’t know of most of these people, and thus have no opinions of their pardons, but I certainly have no beef with the pardon of Marcus Garvey, though it does him little good now.  Although his view of black separatism and movement back to Africa conflicts with the Civil Rights Movement of the Fifties and Sixties, he was certainly one of the first leaders to galvanize black people into the mindset that they were a group that had been treated unfairly and needed redress.

Here’s a very good six-minute short of Garvey’s life:

*What is the best film of the 21st Century. The BBC nominates David Lynch’s 2001 film “Mulholland Drive“:

Beginning life during the development of Lynch’s cult TV show Twin Peaks, the director eventually pitched an idea for Mulholland Drive as a series in 1998. He was given a green light by US cable network ABC, which hoped to replicate the success of the director’s small-town mystery serial.

ABC was unimpressed with the first episode, which they considered slowly paced and drawn out – 37 minutes too long to fit into a conventional TV timeslot. They also objected to several things captured in the shoot, including an extreme close-up of dog excrement. In early 2000 Lynch managed to rescue the project by agreeing to turn Mulholland Drive into a feature film, equipped with a budget twice the original size.

Infusing Mulholland Drive with pointed, perhaps pessimistic commentary about market forces in Hollywood, but also cramming it full of beguiling images, Lynch created a very appealing package for critics. They could get lost in the dream-like ambience of it while being engaged in an intellectual exercise deeply critical of the commercial realities of filmmaking: a sort of backhanded valentine to Tinsel Town.

As Wikipedia notes:

Mulholland Drive earned Lynch the Best Director award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn’t There. Lynch also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the film. The film boosted Watts’ Hollywood profile considerably, and was the last feature film to star veteran Hollywood actress Ann Miller.

Mulholland Drive is often regarded as one of Lynch’s finest works and as one of the greatest films of all time. It was ranked eighth in the 2022 Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the best films ever made and topped a 2016 BBC poll of the best films since 2000.

HOWEVER, this film is only #11 on the Guardian’s list of the best 100 films of the 21st century, with the top five, from top to lower, being “There Will Be Blood,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Boyhood,” “Under the Skin”, and “In the Mood for Love.”  I’ve seen #1, #2, and #5, and it’s been years since I’ve seen “Mulholland Drive,” which is certainly a great film.  I’d have to see it again to compare it to the Guardian’s list, especially “There Will Be Blood,” but let me put a nod in for the Japanese animation “Spirited Away,” which is surely the best animation I’ve seen in the 21st century.

The trailer from Mulholland Drive (whatever happened to Laura Harring?):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej moved to give Hili his chair! This is a rare event!

Hili: Finally a modicum of empathy.

A: We will talk later.

Hili: Nareszcie odrobina empatii.

Ja: Porozmawiamy później.

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

From I Love Cats:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy (I used the Brittanica when I was a kid):

From Things with Faces:

 

Masih responds to a misguided tweet:

Oh, sure, the Islamic Republic of Iran is totally harmless. I mean, a regime that chants ‘Death to America’ like it’s their national anthem, funds terrorists like Hezbollah, Hamas and The Houthis
as if it’s a charity drive, and sends hitmen with AK-47s to kill women like me on… https://t.co/wi7ZepprjQ

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 17, 2025

From Luana. I was a big fan of the ERA and lobbied for it. But it didn’t go through, and Biden can’t short-circuit democracy now to push it through.

People laugh at this misfire from Biden in ‘declaring’ the Equal Rights Amendment as US law. But the tactic of pushing through law changes without the democratic consent of the people is a common strategy used by Democrats, and it can succeed.

For example, right now they do not… pic.twitter.com/xKfX9wFwF6

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) January 19, 2025

From Simon; I thought the only joke you could make on this would be “an in-bread gull”. But wait! There are more!

"What happened?""I’m stuck. It's so embarrassing."“I guess things went… a-rye?”“Please do shut up.”"You should get out of the sun.""Why?""Otherwise, you'll be toast.""You're an asshole, Charlie."“You’re right, you deserve butter.”

— Uncle Duke (@uncleduke1969.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T18:18:21.169Z

Two more from Jez’s find of a thread showing “creepily intelligent” things that pets have done:

4. Woman discovers her neighbor’s corgi was sneaking onto her property at night to ride her pony.pic.twitter.com/mJHxnyZz8E

— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) January 17, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

A 45-year-old Polish man, murdered with gas upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T12:09:00.970Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  Is this sexual or natural selection? You’d need to know what the female looks like.

Giraffe Weevil is only found in forests in Madagascar. #madagascar #nature #insect #weevil #giraffeweevil

— (@blomers.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T09:24:46.380Z

And a cat, safely behind a door, watches a fox:

Watching from the safety of indoors . Your #FoxOfTheDay shared by @brian-f-l.bsky.social on BlueSky

— Chris Packham (@chrisgpackham.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T08:00:10.044Z

Well, it’s CaturSaturday again, this time on January 18, 2025. I just remembered that in two days we will have a new President, and I’m trying to accept this with equanimity, since I can’t change it.  It’s also National Peking Duck Day, an arrant cultural appropriation, but a great dish.  The best one I had was in fact in Beijing, when a few geneticists and I went to the restaurant known as “sick duck” because it’s across the street from a hospital. Here’s what it’s like to eat in a high-class duck restaurant:

It’s also Thesaurus Day, National Gourmet Coffee Day (for me that is every day), and Winnie the Pooh Day, occurring on the birthday of author A. A. Milne in 1882. Here is the original Winnie-the-Pooh set of animals owned by Christopher Robin (Milne’s son), labeled  “Christopher Robin’s original Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed toys, on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library (clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear (“Winnie-the-Pooh”), Eeyore, and Piglet) Roo was also one of the original toys, but was lost during the 1930s.”

Da Nooz:

*It looks as if the war between Gaza and Hamas is over, at least for the time being, and it also looks as if Israel has lost. I say this because the “deal” approved by both Biden and Trump appears to leave Hamas in power, and has a grossly disproportionate exchange of hostages for Palestinian terrorists:

According to a leaked copy of the agreement, over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed in return for 33 Israeli hostages in the first phase of the deal: 700 terrorists, 250-300 of whom are serving life terms; 1,000 Gazans captured since October 8 in fighting in the Strip; and 47 rearrested prisoners from the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal

You don’t see the world press talking about this disproportionality. Given the agreement, many of those terrorist will just join Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad and aim to kill more Israelis.

It’s a bad deal for Israel; in my view, if Hamas stays in power, they’ll have not only lost the war, but the terrorism will continue, supplemented with thousands of new Palestinian terrorists released from jail.  In net, I think that more Israeli civilian lives will be lost with this deal than if the IDF just fought on. The details from the NYT (archived here):

The full Israeli cabinet began meeting Friday night to vote on an agreement for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in Gaza, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to publicly discuss it. The deal is seen as the best chance to end the devastating 15-month war in the enclave.

The meeting comes after Israel’s security cabinet — a small forum of senior ministers — approved the cease-fire agreement earlier in the day, overcoming a key hurdle after Israeli and Hamas negotiators resolved remaining disputes.

Here’s Einat Wilf, a whip-smart politician who’s starting her own party in the Knesset.  She proposes the only peace plan that I think is reasonable, but she was blindsided by Trump’s agreement with the present deal:

How President Trump Can Fix the Middle East | Dr. @EinatWilf pic.twitter.com/y5QfjwckiM

— Israeli Citizen Spox (@IsrCitizenSpox) January 15, 2025

And Jonathan Conricus, who used to be the IDF’s spokesperson as well as a career IDF member.  He doesn’t like the deal, either.

‘As the deal is now, I struggle to understand why Israel agreed to it’

The hostage-ceasefire deal may well have additional aspects that would become apparent only with the passage of time, but what we know of it today is not good, @jconricus tells @benitalevin pic.twitter.com/15GonbigMk

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) January 16, 2025

The fact is that Israel has lost this war, and even if there is some big secret upside to having made this deal (promises by Trump or the like), Hamas is still in power and thousands of Palestinian terrorists will be set free in Gaza. Like Conricus, I have no idea why Israel agreed to this ceasefire.

*Unless Tik Tok gets new non-Chinese owners, it is doomed by this weekend. It will become an ex-app, pining for the fjords and singing with the Choir Invisible. (Article archived here.)

*As usual, I’m going to steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Hard pivot.”

→ Karen Bass promised to stay in her lame small town, Los Angeles: The embattled mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, made a funny promise before taking office. She promised that, as mayor of Los Angeles, she wouldn’t travel to Africa at all. She even made that promise on the record.

“I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time,” she told The New York Times in 2021. “The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t think I want to do that.’ ” But she decided: “Not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally—the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco, and New York, in relation to L.A.” Not only would she live there? Thank you for promising to fulfill the literal bare minimum requirement of your position, Karen.

Los Angeles is a city of 3.8 million people and a budget of $13 billion, and the mayor is talking about living there like it’s a major sacrifice. She’s talking about living in Los Angeles as the mayor in a fabulous house like I talk about visiting Pittsburgh to see my in-laws. Yes, I promise: Not only will I hang out with my in-laws, but I will eat the pizza everyone says is so special and I will say that it’s the best even though it is so cold and chewy. Mayor Bass is talking about living in Los Angeles like Pete Buttigieg probably talked about moving to wherever he had to move to get the nickname “Mayor Pete” (South Bend, Indiana—for eight years, my god, Peter). And Karen Bass couldn’t even stick the landing! When the fire alerts blared and the wind whipped, Karen Bass literally got on a plane to Ghana for a party. I’m not saying that the mayor needs to be perfect, but the bar can be higher than stays in town. It really can be. I’m a homebody, guys. I never leave. I’ll take the Hancock Park house. Yes, Los Angeles, I’ll be your mayor. I will drink your local green juices and say it’s delicious.

→ Chicago, on the other hand: Tens of thousands of devices (laptops, iPads, cellphone hot spots) purchased by Chicago Public Schools just within the 2023–2024 school year have been lost or stolen, with thousands of them ending up overseas. Last year alone, the district lost $23 million worth of devices, according to the CPS Office of the Inspector General (pro tip: when your school district is so top-heavy that it has an Office of the Inspector General, it’s too top-heavy). They also didn’t use the device-tracking tool: “Although CPS had been paying a vendor for geo-tracking services, the OIG found that it barely used this service but should be doing so.”

To lose that many devices and to ignore the device tracking service you also paid for—well, to me it indicates that basically someone within the system is selling these things off and pocketing the cash. A theft ring. A grimy, depressing little theft ring, but at more than $20 million in revenue, we’re talking a pretty nice one (call me guys, I’m in).

Meanwhile, the city’s credit rating dropped from a BBB+ to a paltry BBB, meaning the credit agency believes the city is more likely to default. I can’t pretend to know what this means (debt and credit are things I choose not to engage with; when you’re a debutante, everywhere you go has valet), but it doesn’t sound good.

And the kicker:

→ Biden’s money for Jewish institutions went to pro-Hamas groups: The Biden administration’s fund to protect institutions that are at risk of terrorist attacks—and which Biden touted as one of his big Jewish safety measures—has actually been funding mosques that preach pro-terrorist attacks. Mosques receiving the funding have leaders who call October 7 “a miracle” and such (you can imagine). Curious how that cash got rerouted specifically to the most antisemitic mosques I’ve ever read about.

*The conservative and religious press seems to be delighted at the fact that Richard Dawkins, Steve Pinker, and I have left the FFRF because of a kerfuffle about sex. The theme that most of these venues draw from this is that the atheist community is fragmenting (partly true), that atheists are themselves religious (partly true in the case of the non-supernatural quasi-religiosity of the FFRF), but also that atheism of all stripes are simply filling the “go0d-shape hole” that runs through all humanity.

See this from The American Thinker, a conservative venue, Click to read this piece by Dr. Mack Random, a Christian:

An excerpt:

Coyne expressed his concern that the FFRF was drifting outside its original mission, such that an organization that ostensibly exists to promote freedom from religion has begun to embrace a religion-like ideology, complete with its own dogma, heretics, and excommunication process.  Rather than accept being silenced within his community, Coyne rightly resigned and aired his dissatisfaction with the issues infiltrating the FFRF.

Irony in the Mission

The irony here is profound.  Coyne’s and FFRF’s shared mission, to “educate the public about non-theism and keep religion out of government and social policies,” suffers from the same issues Coyne criticizes.  But here the problem isn’t mission drift.  The problem is the original mission.  Their ideal world would remove religious contexts, doctrines, and moral arguments from schools and government, which also favors the establishment of atheism (or non-theism) as a de facto state religion.  Although FFRF-supporters may not view atheism as a religion, I and many others do.  I imagine that Kat Grant does not identify her transsexual ideology as a religion, but Coyne is making that analogy, if not that actual argument.

Coyne’s critique of Grant’s “transsexual ideology” as a religion-like framework is apt.  However, he fails to see the parallel between this critique and the broader implications of FFRF’s mission.  The term “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution.  The establishment clause of the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  By seeking to exclude religious voices from public service, FFRF violates the principles it claims to uphold.

The Fallout

Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins — all prominent voices in the atheist community — resigned from FFRF’s Honorary Board in protest of this censorship.  Their departure underscores a deeper issue: the suppression of free thought within a community that ostensibly champions it.  I pray  they will also appreciate the irony that their mission results in the silencing of religious individuals in their own communities, just as the FFRF silenced Coyne in his.

It appears as if Dr. Ransom thinks that atheism is a religion, which is bonkers. Atheism is the absence of any religious belief, and, in the U.S., that means the absence of any belief in supernatural beings who take an interest in our lives.  By arguing that the First Amendment doesn’t really separate church from state, and that it “excludes religious voices from public service” (it’s not clear what that means), Ransom goes against everything the founders said they intended when the wrote the Constitution. And of course people can tout their faith in Congress, and in the Presidency, but no religion can be the basis of government policy.  As for the atheist “suppression of free thought,” what do atheists do but consider the counterarguments for faith in their writings (think of the Four Horsemen’s books!). I wrote a whole book on science versus religion that continuously quotes religious people, so they are not at all silenced.  Although they don’t come off well, that is not my fault!

A much better article is in the Deseret News, which, though owned by the Mormon Church, isn’t all goddy in its news. Here’s a piece I mentioned before by Valerie Hudson, a distinguished professor at Texas A&M University.

An excerpt:

Some celebrated the departure of the three board members, with one atheist noting, “The trash has taken itself out.” Other atheists took the opposite tack: “It amazes me that a group that understands the vital importance of falsifiability to the scientific method is now so keen to agree to gender ideology. If you think something ‘is’ because a person says it is, you are not respecting science, logic or truth itself. You’re doing what the religious nuts do, by saying it’s ‘their truth’, like material reality is open to interpretation. The FFRF should be embarrassed by the nonsense they’ve bowed down to.”

There have been a number of interesting analyses that identify religious elements in gender ideology, such as sacred castes, holy days, intolerance of dissent, belief in that which cannot be falsified on the basis of empirical evidence, ceremonial religious processions, belief in reincarnation and transubstantiation, moral prescriptions and proscriptions, revered texts, shunning and excommunication. Maybe Freedom From Religion Foundation apostates like Dawkins, Pinker and Coyne are right in sensing that a new religion is seeping into the atheist community.

The organization’s website describes the group’s purpose in these terms: “The Foundation works as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church.” Perhaps, like charity, that principle of separation begins at home.

The first quote, calling us “trash” is by The Hateful Atheist, who deserves no attention. The second is a comment by reader Luisa on the post about Richard Dawkin’s resignation from the FFRF.

*Andrew Sullivan’s new column is called “Regime change of another shit-show?” He’s betting on the latter when Trump takes office. An excerpt:

My feelings will be, well, complex. There is a wave of relief that the decrepit Biden has finally gone, that the muggy political air has been cleared for a bit, and that the insistent Kulturkampf of the woke left may finally relent a little. We may even move out of our post-neocon paralysis in foreign policy.

At the same time, of course, I have what can only be called intermittent waves of nausea and panic triggered by the memory of the last, long four years of being tethered to a mercurial, malevolent bully who wouldn’t ever shut up or leave us alone.

But attached to that nausea is something else: boredom. He just doesn’t get to me the way he used to. When I read about his provocations toward Canada and the Panama Canal, for example, I merely found my eyes rolling gently backward. Good one, Donnie. But you’re not gonna trigger my amygdala this time. You busted it already.

Same with the Bobby Kennedy nonsense and the Elon Musk madness — a man whose political judgment seems as finely honed as an autistic 14-year-old who just discovered TikTok. Musk is an American genius in some things. No question about that. But so, so fragile and immature, as Sam Harris gently dissects here.

. . .What would I hope for in Trump 2.0? I’d say a coherent evolution of the GOP into a classically conservative party: leery of big government and foreign interventionism, culturally conservative and pro-family, champion of Medicare and Social Security, restrictive of immigration, defender of color-blindness and merit. I would be thrilled if they really got rid of DEI throughout the federal government and made federal college funding conditional on ending DEI initiatives in higher education. Vance gets it, I think, and he remains the best hope for a serious new right. But if Trump were the necessary reagent to bring this about, he’s also an obstacle to it. He doesn’t have the message discipline, legislative skills, and strategic cunning to pull it off.

What do I fear? Among the possible horribles: some kind of dumb-ass Trump overreach on immigration, prompting far-left street protests/riots, followed by some leap into the draconian dark with the US military on the streets, its reputation in the toilet; a spike in inflation caused by tariffs and an economic downturn as cheap immigrant labor disappears; a crisis over Taiwan that we bungle. Or yet another criminal move by Trump precipitating another crisis in the rule of law.

What do I expect? Not much. Trump has two years with a razor-thin margin in the Congress before he becomes a lame duck. His team currently has no agreed-upon legislative strategy — one big bill via reconciliation? two bills with immigration control first? tariffs before tax cuts? — and this never bodes well. The Speaker himself hangs by a thread. When I think of Reagan and Thatcher, I recall shrewd legislative outreach, a plan for economic pain and then relief, and a strategy designed not to get too far over the skis (Thatcher took her own sweet time to take on union power, as Andrew Neil remembers in the Dishcast this week; Reagan was always aware of going too far). No such foresight is currently visible to me in Trump world.

I don’t expect much, either, and never thought that Trump was going to do even a quarter of the stuff he promised (threatened) to do.  And no, I don’t hope that Trump 2.0 will produce a coherent evolution of the GOP.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has insomnia:

From Stacy: radium suppositories! Perfectly harmless!

From Jesus of the Day:

From somewhere on Facebook:

From Masih, a video showing how global Iranian youth really are, even though the regime prevents them from learning about other countries.

From BTS to Billie Eilish; Iranian youth know global icons, but have no idea who Khamenei is. This is the real Iran the West never shows.

Hey @khamenei_ir, you and your outdated clerics may think you control the narrative, but these young rebels are proving you can’t even… pic.twitter.com/1daaSJ0KQD

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 16, 2025

From Simon; can you answer this question?

Since everyone is talking about LSAT questions, here’s one of the “170 breaker questions.” There are ~12 on each test and they are meant to be the hardest questions on the LSAT. Getting them right tends to predict scoring very highly (above 170) pic.twitter.com/tGpUeOU9de

— Aleph (@woke8yearold) January 16, 2025

From Bryan; I think the definition is pretty good.

Wokeness is a hyper-vigilance toward any real or imagined transgressions against identity-based human dignity, resulting in exaggerated perceptions of harm, rigid systems of thinking, a need for purification, and a desire to disengage from and punish transgressors. https://t.co/wvERhRzysj

— i/o (@eyeslasho) January 16, 2025

From Jez: A cat rescue story with a happy ending (you’ll never see any other kind on this site):

“So I’m driving down the road this morning and the cars in front of me are driving over a black thing in the road. It’s going between their tires so I’m guessing it’s a box. It’s a kitten just sitting upright shaking like a leaf. And some asshole had spread glue on its paws and… pic.twitter.com/b4bJXkHSbY

— 𝕏 Dogs (@_XDogs) January 14, 2025

From Malcolm.  This has to have been filmed on the Falklands:

Baby penguins chasing a cat.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/iexwCRsS3e

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) January 1, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

Gassed to death with her brother upon arrival. She was eight years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T12:17:11.241Z

One fr0m my BlueSky feed:

Apparently we adopted a Swiffer.

— Taylor (Not Swift) (@lawyerrabbit.bsky.social) 2025-01-17T16:14:37.549Z

One post from Dr. Cobb, who says, “Poor Ash”:

It's at least once per week that I think about the time Ash called me into the bathroom because there was a large spider in his litterbox, and that he wouldn't use the litterbox without company for a week after.

— Lisa Buckley (@lisavipes.bsky.social) 2025-01-17T14:35:44.531Z

 

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is pondering a complex question:

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: I wonder whether in a sleepless night it’s better to count virtual sheep or virtual mice.

Ja: Nad czym myślisz?
Hili: Zastanawiam się, czy w bezsenną noc lepiej liczyć wirtualne owce, czy wirtualne myszy?
Best