Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
As I’m traveling tomorrow until the 16th, this may be the last full Hili dialogue until the 17th, and posting will be light. Bear with me; I do my best. Matthew will of course post the discourse between Andrzej and Hili (and other cats) in my absence.
I’m going to be on the Piers Morgan show today; stay tuned for when it will be posted.
Welcome to a cold Hump Day (“Гомб куню” in Crimean Cyrillic); it’s Wednesday, January 8, 2025, and National English Toffee Day, a day of cultural appropriation (we stole land from the Brits during the Revolutionary War.) The most familiar form appropriated by Americans is the delicious Heath Bar:
The fact that the earth rotates on its axis is common knowledge today, but until the mid-nineteenth century, it was merely conjecture. French physicist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault, commonly known as Léon Foucault or Jean Foucault, is known for proving through his experiments that the earth rotates on its axis.
On January 8, 1851, Foucault performed an experiment in the cellar of his home, in which he swung a five-kilogram weight attached to a two-meter-long pendulum. He put sand underneath it to mark the pendulum’s path, allowing him to see any changes in it. He observed a slight clockwise movement in the plane—the floor, and thus the earth, were slowly rotating; the pendulum kept its position. His experiment showed that the earth rotated on its axis. No longer was it just a hypothesis.
A relevant video:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz (truncated today because of my impending absence)
Peter Yarrow, a vocalist with the US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died aged 86. The cause was bladder cancer, which Yarrow had been diagnosed with four years ago.
Yarrow took lead vocals on Puff, the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandella and Day Is Done, songs he either wrote or co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey. Stookey is the last surviving member of the group, as Mary Travers died in 2009.
Stookey told the New York Times that Yarrow was his “creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother” whom he “grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother. Perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had and I shall deeply miss both of him.”
In their 60s heyday, the group had six US Top 10 singles and one No 1, a cover of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, as well as five Top 10 albums.
They were also politically significant. In August 1963, the progressive trio joined the March on Washington and sang a cover of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which cemented the song’s legacy as an anthem of the civil rights movement.
You may not remember that it was this group, and not the writer Bob Dylan, who made that song a hit. Here it is, and it’s infinitely better than the cloying “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The fact that Dylan could produce such masterpieces defies me; he often seemed almost incoherent.
*Los Angeles is on fire; or rather, three big wildfires are raging in the area, threatening to burn right down to the sea. They’re fueled by winds up to 100 mph. (Article is archived here.)
Ferocious wildfires have worsened in the Los Angeles area, tearing through homes and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate.
Officials warned of devastating losses as the main blaze raced through the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The fast-moving fire spread across nearly 3,000 acres and was still 0% contained early Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Powerful Santa Ana winds were expected to continue for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Wednesday and into Thursday, with gusts up to 70 miles an hour in some areas.
“Conditions today look extremely bad, possibly even worse than yesterday,” Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said.
“We expect very strong sustained winds to continue at least into Thursday, which of course with the very dry conditions means things will remain extremely dangerous. It’s not until later in the week when the winds will slacken and efforts to fight these fires will get a bit easier,” he said.
More than 40,000 people were under evacuation orders further north in the San Fernando Valley as a second fire picked up speed and spread to nearly 500 acres, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement early Wednesday.
Newsom, who declared a state of emergency Tuesday, said many structures had been destroyed, while footage showed thick smoke billowing over Santa Monica, just south of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
California has secured federal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Newsom said.
“Firefighters are working through the night to save lives & battle these aggressive fires,” he added.
I’ll be in L.A. tomorrow, and expect to see the smoke. Because of the fires, Luana has been stuck in Las Vegas on her way to L.A. two days early. Well, there are slots in the airport. . . .
President-elect Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he would not rule out the use of military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of the canal America built more than a century ago and to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.
In a rambling, hourlong news conference, Mr. Trump also reiterated his threat that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times.
“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.”
Mr. Trump did not elaborate during the news conference, where he delivered a hodgepodge of grievances, complaints and false claims, from the Afghanistan withdrawal of 2021 to offshore drilling to the criminal cases against him and the size of his electoral victory.
He refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was given back to Panama by treaty in the late 1990s, and Greenland, which Mr. Trump said was necessary for the national security of the United States.
“It might be that you’ll have to do something,” he said.
Trump’s desire to expand the U.S. footprint is entirely in keeping with his mind-set of making whatever he controls as big as possible, going back to his series of acquisitions in the late 1980s. In recent days, Mr. Trump has talked repeatedly about buying Greenland and taking over the Panama Canal.
It was not clear how serious the president-elect was about some of his comments during the news conference. At one point, he suggested that his administration will rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
This will of course not stand: Panama owns the canal since the U.S. gave it away by treaty, and Denmark is not going to sell Greenland at any price, nor do we need it. As for “all hell breaking out in the Middle East,” I don’t know what he means. I am hoping (and expecting) that this is just bluster, the same kind of bluster he’s emitted many times before. Imagine getting into a war with Denmark or Panama!
Mark Zuckerberg built up Facebook’s content-policing efforts in the wake of Donald Trump’s first presidential election. Now the Meta Platforms CEO is reversing course as he embraces a second Trump presidency.
Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said in a video Tuesday, a move he described as an attempt to restore free expression on its platforms.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in the video. He said Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers and, starting in the U.S., replacing them with a so-called Community Notes system similar to that on Elon Musk’s X platform in which users flag posts they think need more context.
While Meta will continue to target illegal behavior, Zuckerberg wrote in a separate post on Threads, it will stop enforcing content rules about immigration and gender that are “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Zuckerberg’s plan is likely to reshape the experience of billions of people who use Meta’s platforms. It steers sharply away from efforts started years ago in response to complaints from users, advertisers and politicians that abusive and deceptive content had run amok on Meta’s suite of apps. The effort to rein in such speech sparked its own backlash from people—especially on the political right—who said it often strayed into censorship.
The pivot comes as Zuckerberg has looked to align himself and his company with the incoming Trump administration. The Meta CEO has had a sometimes strained relationship with Trump in the past, which descended into open acrimony after Meta suspended Trump’s accounts in the wake of Jan. 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
This past summer, Trump suggested Zuckerberg might be imprisoned if he perceived Meta to be disrupting the U.S. election.
Why didn’t I think of the attempt to appease trump? On the other hand, I’m a hard-line free-speecher, with bad speech supposed to be countered with better speech. And, truth be told, I’m not aware of what Facebook has published that has raised such a ruckus. Meta of course can remove what it wants, but my view has always been that restrictions on speech permitted by the First Amendment should be as few as possible.
*Speaking of Trump (and we’ll do a lot of that in the next four years), a NY judge has rejected his attempt to be exculpated for his felony convictions in the “hush money case,” involving him falsifying business records when he paid off porn star Stormy Daniels with “hush money.” He can appeal, but that doesn’t look possible, and he will be our first President who is a felon (does that mean he can’t vote?):
A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump ‘s latest bid to delay this week’s sentencing in his hush money case.
In a one-sentence ruling following an emergency hearing, Judge Ellen Gesmer denied Trump’s request for an immediate order that would spare him from being sentenced while he appeals Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision last week to uphold the historic verdict.
It was the second time in two days that Trump was denied.
Trump went to the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court a day after Merchan rebuffed his initial bid to indefinitely postpone sentencing.
Trump’s sentencing remains on schedule for Friday, though he can still ask other courts to intervene.
At an emergency hearing, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Trump can’t be sentenced because, as president-elect, he enjoys the same immunity from criminal proceedings as a president.
Merchan had rejected that idea in his ruling last week and Steven Wu, arguing for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said it flew in the face of the long-held concept of one president at a time.
It’s impossible that they will sentence Trump to jail time; he will most likely be found “guilty” but allowed to walk. Our first Felon President!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes self-aggrandizing plans:
Hili: Pet me, cuddle me and then we will eat something.
A: Good idea.
In Polish:
Hili: Pogłaszcz mnie, przytul mnie, a potem coś zjemy.
This was retweeted by Masih, and here’s the Google translation:
The story goes that a Japanese man who lived in Tehran at the beginning of the Islamic takeover went to a restaurant with his wife one day. His wife was asked to wear a hijab and given a headscarf. The Japanese man then asked for a headscarf to be brought to him so that he could wear it himself. When the restaurant staff explained that only women had to wear a hijab, he replied: “If my wife has to do something against her will, I see it as my duty to support her.” I wonder why the French Foreign Minister @jnbarrot did not show solidarity with Ms. @ABaerbock and refused to shake hands with Al-
Ahmed Al-Sharaa is the head of the new Syrian government, (At least she didn’t have to wear a hijab.)
Man erzählt, dass ein Japaner, der zu Beginn der islamischen Machtergreifung in Teheran lebte, eines Tages mit seiner Frau ein Restaurant besuchte. Dort wurde seine Frau aufgefordert, einen Hijab zu tragen, und man gab ihr ein Kopftuch. Der Japaner bat daraufhin, ihm ebenfalls… pic.twitter.com/GdCPCWIcs2
From Luana: FIRE appears to support the Meta decision.
Meta’s announcement today shows the marketplace of ideas in action. Its users want a social media platform that doesn’t suppress political content or use top-down fact-checkers.
The company concedes that its past moderation practices have introduced bias and haven’t worked,… pic.twitter.com/fZc5NJe9IV
When a partial meltdown of Ontario's Chalk River Nuclear Power Plant occurred in 1952, one of the 150 Americans brought in to help dismantle the parts of the reactor was Jimmy Carter.He was lowered into the reactor in 90 second shifts, which was enough time to remove one bolt.
NOTE: I will be out of town for a meeting from Thursday of this week through much of next week, so posting will be very light. See the announcement under the Nooz.
Welcome to Tuesday, the Cruelest Day. It is January 7, 2025, and National Tempura Day. Does anybody not like the stuff? I would even eat my vegetables if they were prepared that way! According to Wikipedia, tempura is actually a case of multiple cultural appropriation:
Earlier Japanese deep-fried food was either simply fried without breading or batter or fried with rice flour.However, toward the end of the 16th century, the technique of fritter-cooking with a batter of flour and eggs was acquired in Nagasaki by Portuguese missionaries. Peixinhos da horta was a dish often eaten during Lent or Ember days, to fulfill the fasting and abstinence rules for Catholics. The word “tempura” originates from the Latin word tempora, a term referring to these fasting times (Spanish: Témporas). In those days, the ingredients were covered in thick batter containing flour, sugar and sake, and then fried in lard. As the batter already contained seasoning, it was eaten without dipping sauce.
This looks toothsome, and is captioned A tower-shaped kakiage bowl (Temdon), a specialty of Oarai Town, Japan (I added the link, as kakiage is a subspecies of tempura):
And my tipple: a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, served to my friend Andrew in London today. He’s torturing me with photos of my favorite English beer!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 7 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
I will be out of town from Thursday through the 16th of January at a conference at USC in California. Matthew has kindly agreed to post the Hili dialogues, which of course cannot be missed, and I will post as often as time permits.
*Thank goodness the Democrats don’t behave like Republicans when certifying an election they lost. Kamala Harris, as President of the Senate, certified the election of Donald Trump yesterday. She did it with grace, and there was no fracas in the Capitol. (Article is archived here.)
A joint session of Congress on Monday certified President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, peacefully performing a basic ritual of democracy that was brutally disrupted four years ago by a violent pro-Trump mob inflamed by his lie about a stolen election.
There was no hint of a similar scene this time, although security had been stepped up at the Capitol. Unlike Mr. Trump back then, Vice President Kamala Harris did not dispute her loss in November, and unlike Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020 balloting, Democrats made no objections during the counting of the Electoral College votes.
Instead, Ms. Harris stoically presided over the certification of her own loss without interruption. The presentation of the results unfolded quickly without drama, as House and Senate lawmakers who had been designated in advance read out the number of electoral votes from each state in alphabetical order, and who won them.
One by one, the lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, rose to declare each state’s electoral votes “regular in form and authentic,” and nobody rose to challenge any. The only sign of partisanship in the House chamber was in the applause: Only Republicans applauded after the counting of each state that Mr. Trump won, and rose at the end for a standing ovation when it was announced that he had secured a majority, while only Democrats clapped for the states that Ms. Harris won and rose to applaud when her total electoral votes were announced.
Here’s a video of the official announcement, with each side clapping for their candidate:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced on Monday that he would step down as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, a decision that will install new leadership in Canada by late March, after his party picks a new head.
“Every bone in my body has always told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians,” Mr. Trudeau said as he announced his decision in Ottawa, the capital. His resignation sets off a succession battle to replace him after he spent roughly a decade at the helm of both the party and the country.
The upheaval comes as the country is grappling with how best to deal with President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pledge to impose crippling tariffs on all imports from Canada on his first day in office. Canada and the United States are each other’s biggest trading partners.
Mr. Trudeau visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, in late November, and his government had been in talks to address the president-elect’s concerns about border security in hopes that he would reconsider his tariff threat.
Mr. Trudeau has faced weeks of mounting pressure from inside his party’s ranks. In December, Mr. Trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, abruptly stepped down in a stinging rebuke of his leadership and stewardship of the country.
Her resignation incited a growing chorus of voices from Liberal parliamentarians asking him to step aside for the sake of the party, and let someone else lead the Liberal Party against the Conservatives in the next general election, which must be held by October.
, , , , Mr. Trudeau has been in power since 2015, having resuscitated the Liberals, who had crashed electorally before he took over in 2013. But he has become deeply unpopular: According to a poll released last month by Ipsos, 73 percent of Canadians — including 43 percent of Liberal voters — believed he should step down as party leader.
If it’s good enough for Canadians, it’s good enough for me. He became too woke for me, but I worry about the possibility of a Conservative Party PM after the next election. Canadian readers are invited to weigh in with their opinions about their political future.
The two flight attendants who survived the Boeing 737-800 crash were seated in the very back of the plane, which was the only recognizable part of the aircraft left intact.
“There are a lot of reasons someone may survive in what appears to be a totally unsurvivable situation,” said Barbara Dunn, president of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. “Depending on how the aircraft lands and where a passenger is seated has an impact. If you have your seat belt tightened, it limits the amount of flailing the body goes through. It also depends on whether a passenger is able to assume a brace position.”
Days before the Jeju Air accident, as many as 29 people survived the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight that killed 38 people in western Kazakhstan. The preliminary conclusions of an Azerbaijani probe said the plane had been hit by Russian air-defense missiles. The crew battled for more than an hour to maintain constant speed and altitude before it crashed, The Wall Street Journal reported.
All surviving passengers were seated in the rear of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
. . . . . The relative safety of where occupants are seated during a crash varies, and one of the biggest factors is how the aircraft touches down. Passengers up front in a nose-first crash bear the brunt of the impact, but other factors also come into play.
. . . . .“A lot of people think it’s safer in the back than in the front,” Dunn said. “Not necessarily. How quick the fire takes over and how quick you can get to an exit, all those things matter as well.”
Yes, but we’re talking about averages across multiple crashes here. On average, if there are survivors, where are they sitting? Well, Travel and Leisure has an answer:
At long last, we finally have an answer. “There actually is a safer place to sit on a plane, and that is in the rear of the aircraft,” says Dan Bubb, Ph. D., an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
According to a 2015 analysis by Time magazine of 35 years of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data, seats in the back third of the aircraft had a fatality rate of 32 percent, whereas those in the middle third had a fatality rate of 39 percent and the ones in the front third had a fatality rate of 38 percent. Even more specifically, the middle seats in the back of the aircraft are statistically the safest, with just a 28 percent fatality rate. By comparison, aisle seats in the middle of the cabin had a fatality rate of 44 percent.
But remember, these are just overall odds based on previous plane accidents — and there have been outliers. For example, when United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, most of the 184 survivors were sitting in the middle third of the plane. In the 1977 Tenerife disaster — aviation’s deadliest accident, which killed 583 people — the 61 survivors sat mainly in the front of the Pan Am aircraft that was involved in the collision, while all aboard the KLM plane perished.
There you go. Of course, if you sit in the rear you deplane last, and, depending on whether you have a connecting flight or want overhead bin space, you may want to weigh those factors versus the chance of your demise.
It’s been over a year since three Ivy League presidents lost their jobs for refusing to respond appropriately to the explosion of antisemitism on their campuses.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik didn’t get grilled by Elise Stefanik. She resigned suddenly in August. But her school is arguably the worst of all.
Last year, in addition to the infamous takeover of Hamilton Hall during which 109 people were arrested, Jewish students reported being chased out of dorms, spat on, and pinned against walls. One was told to “go back to Poland.” (Read about all of that and more in this 90-page report.)
But if you thought this year was calmer, think again.
Take a recent exhibit at Columbia, named “Hind’s House” after a 5-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rajab, who was killed in Israel’s war with Hamas. At the two-day event in November, hosted by a campus-affiliated, pro-Palestianian group called Alpha Delta Phi (ADP), Columbia students showed off the tools and plans behind their occupation of Hamilton Hall.
Wrenches, hammers, ropes, and wire cutters were treated like a museum exhibit, next to the message: “DO NOT GET YOUR FINGERPRINTS ON THESE!!”
One wall was covered with artworks calling for Ceasefire Now, with some pieces merging Jewish imagery with violence, including a blood-spattered Jewish star.
Uncredited Free Press photo
On November 14, four days after the Hind’s House event, two Jewish students at Columbia filed a Title VI complaint, which The Free Press is reporting today for the first time. In it, Shoshana Aufzien and Alon Levin describe the “terrorist propaganda and antisemitic tropes” displayed “in such a blatant manner” that it made them “feel targeted and unsafe.”
Find out what else they saw at the exhibit, along with video of a speaker calling for a “Zionist-free NYC,” by reading Maya Sulkin’s exclusive report:“Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’.”
Jews will not be applying in droves to Columbia in the future, that’s for sure.
*The WaPo has an op-ed taking a dim view of Biden’s presidency—a piece by columnist Matt Bai called “Biden’s legacy: a bridge to nowhere.” (Piece is archived here.)
In the long run, we tend to remember one-term presidents more for their principled stands than for their ultimate failures. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon has become, over the years, a story of self-sacrifice. Jimmy Carter has been lauded by a bevy of recent historians for having challenged Americans to better themselves. George H.W. Bush is fondly recalled (by Democrats, at least) for raising taxes, consequences be damned.
That won’t be Joe Biden’s legacy. After a lifetime of noble service, he will be chiefly remembered — like so many in his generation — as a man who didn’t know when to leave.
It’s not that Biden didn’t achieve anything grand or lasting. He had, arguably, the most successful two-year legislative cycle of any president in memory, investing trillions of dollars in clean energy and high-tech industries. He led a rejuvenated NATO and managed to navigate the narrow gantlet between turning back Russian aggression, on one hand, and blundering into a nuclear war on the other. He deserves his due.
But none of that gets to the principal reason that most Americans took a chance on Biden in 2020, when he was making his third run at the presidency in his 78th year. Voters didn’t think they were buying into some New Deal sequel (no matter what the left might have read into the election results). They certainly didn’t elect Biden to guide the country through a second cold war.
What the voters thought they were getting, amida paralyzing pandemic and a teetering economy, is exactly what Biden held himself out to be: a transitional leader who would restore a sense of calm and normalcy. Biden never actually promised to serve a single term, but the implication was clear, even to some of his closest aides. His job, as he himself put it, was to act as a “bridge” — from the political ruins of his generation to whatever the next one might erect in its place.
Why did Biden’s bridge collapse so spectacularly? There’s no single answer. After a half-century of ascending unsteadily to the apex of power, Biden seemed reluctant to yield it so easily. Jetting around the world, juggling mental and physical demands that would have crushed a lot of us who were substantially younger, he must have felt that the transition could wait a few more years.
Other answers proffered by Bai include his anointing Kamala Harris as his stand-in as candidate, without a primary (as Bai says, “modern Democrats are terrified of any process they can’t orchestrate”), and his failure to step down when it was bloody obvious that he should. I was a big booster for Biden four years ago, but he turned out too woke for me, and possibly showing signs of mental deterioration.
By the time Biden took the stage for his debate with Trump in June, it was clear that history had been hijacked by a dangerous delusion — one shared and fostered by his senior aides and even the reporters who covered him most closely. It was one thing for the octogenarian president to read his State of the Union address off a teleprompter with a few ad-libs thrown in, the elated reaction to which would have made you think he had just articulated a new string theory for the universe while doing backflips. It was quite another to see him shuffle onstage and choke on his syntax while Trump grinned like Nurse Ratched.
Even now, during the waning hours of Biden’s term, it’s impossible to look at him and think: here’s a guy who should have been running for president again. Twenty years on, it will rank among the most self-evidently foolish acts of denial in which any incumbent party has ever engaged.
Bai does devote a paragraph to Biden’s accomplishments, which seem to amount to “boosting electric cars and supporting Ukraine”, but the former isn’t taking off that quickly and the latter may be a failure. And I fault Biden for his overly lame support of Israel. Still, you have to say that he was infinitely better than Trump. Let’s reassess that in four years.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili parodies Judith Butler. When I asked for details, Malgorzata said, “Well, Judish Butler probably never said anything like that. Hili is inventing a string of incomprehensible (or newly minted) words, just to show how stupid they sound.”
Hili: I have to deconstruct the myth about the unity of intersectional and holistic thinking.
Andrzej: Please, stop it.
In Polish:
Hili: Muszę zdekonstruować mit o jedności myślenia intersekcjonalnego i holistycznego.
Ja: Proszę, przestań.
*******************
From Donna (artist unknown):
From David (this is a possibility, but very, very remote):
From my Twitter feed. This is why when I went to Everest (twice) I avoided Base Camp and climbed nearby Kala Patthar (18,519 feet). It’s MUCH lovelier than all this garbage, and you get a stupendous view of Everest’s west face.
Welcome to the first Monday of 2025, January 6, 2025. For many it is Back to Work Day, but it’s also National Shortbread Day, a great treat (is it counted as a “biscuit” in the UK), and good for dipping in tea or coffee? I have seen them in rectangles (“fingers”) but here is another shape: “petticoat tails”. They also have holes in them for some reason I can’t fathom.
It’s also National Bean Day, National King Cake Day (a Louisiana tradition; a plastic baby is hidden in one place, and if you get it, you have to buy the next cake. Some prize!), and Epiphany.
Also, in case you forgot, Congress will certify Trump’s election as President today, so it’s the fourth anniversary of the Great Insurrection.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 6 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I remind you all about the upcoming conference at USC: “Censorship in the sciences: Interdisciplinary perspectives” that starts this Friday and runs for three days. The full schedule is here (I’m on a panel on the last day), and though registration for the live event is closed, it will be broadcast in real time on Zoom (go here to sign in). There will be YouTube videos some time after the conference. Three days of talks and discussions for free–you can’t beat that with a stick!
Congestion pricing has finally arrived in New York City after decades of delays and challenges, including a failed, last-ditch effort by the State of New Jersey to end a program that will charge most drivers $9 to cross into the heart of Manhattan.
E-ZPass readers and cameras set up along the new tolling zone from 60th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan — some of the most traffic-saturated roads in the world — are intended to persuade more motorists to take mass transit instead. Officials say the tolls will also raise billions of dollars to finance crucial repairs and improvements to New York City’s aging subway system, buses, and two commuter rail lines.
The toll program, long in the works, was halted by Gov. Kathy Hochul in June before an abrupt reversal cleared the way for it to start just after midnight on Sunday, a time the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it had chosen to allow it to work out any kinks. The first real test will come Monday, with the start of the workweek.
There were no reports of any major problems as the program got underway, but Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the transportation authority, cautioned at a midday news conference that the toll system was complicated, and only a few hours old.
Where will drivers be charged?
Drivers of most cars entering the designated tolling zone, from 60th Street to the lower tip of Manhattan, will pay a fee. That area includes some of the city’s most famous destinations and neighborhoods, including the theater district, Times Square, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and SoHo.
How much will the tolls cost?
The tolls vary by time of day, with the highest tolls during the peak period from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Outside those hours, the tolls are 75 percent cheaper, to encourage more travel when the traffic is lighter.
Drivers of most passenger cars will be charged $9 once per day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours, and $2.25 at other times. Motorcyclists will pay $4.50 during peak hours and $1.05 off-peak.
Trump, of course, says that he’s going to kill the program, Most of the important bridges and tunnels into the city are below 60th street, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the 59th Street Bridge.
An Israel Defense Forces soldier who survived Hamas’s attack at the Nova music festival on October 7 last year hurriedly ended his vacation in Brazil on Sunday morning after the country’s Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation on him, according to Brazilian media.
Hours before he left the South American country, the unnamed soldier’s family told the Kan public broadcaster that he had not been arrested and that he was getting the help he needed to leave.
The Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had ordered the ministry’s Consular Section and the embassy in Brazil to contact the man and his family, who “accompanied him throughout the event until his swift and safe departure from Brazil.”
“The Foreign Ministry draws the attention of Israelis to posts on social media about their military service, and to the fact that anti-Israeli elements may exploit these posts to initiate futile legal proceedings against them,” the Foreign Ministry added.
The soldier’s father told Channel 12 news on Sunday that a friend who was traveling with his son had received a message from an Israeli diplomatic office telling him an arrest warrant had been issued for him.
“I asked them to escape immediately and not stay even a moment longer,” the father said, adding that he received a message from his son at 5 a.m. on Sunday saying they had crossed the border but that they hadn’t had cell reception since.
“I believe they’ll find their way home safely, but we need to make sure they know the truth about the soldier. He’s not a suspect; he’s a soldier who’s been through hell,” the father said.
The unnamed soldier was a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova festival last year, part of the terror organization’s massive onslaught on the south in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war in Gaza.
. . .The soldier survived the attack by running for many kilometers until he reached safety, narrowly dodging Hamas gunfire multiple times on the way.
He is now being investigated in Brazil under suspicion that he was involved “in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza Strip while using explosives outside of combat” in November, the Brazilian Metrópoles news outlet reported.
This is reprehensible. Neither the ICC, the ICJ, or the UN (which runs those two organizations) have pronounced IDF soldiers war criminals. And how on earth would Brazil know that the soldier used “explosives outside of combat? I worry that this is the precursor of a worldwide trend to brand all IDF soldiers (or those who fought in Gaza) as war criminals, so that they could never leave Israel.
Over the past 10 years, I have watched in horror as academe set itself up for the existential crisis that has now arrived. Starting around 2014, many disciplines — including my own, English — changed their mission. Professors began to see the traditional values and methods of their fields — such as the careful weighing of evidence and the commitment to shared standards of reasoned argument — as complicit in histories of oppression. As a result, many professors and fields began to reframe their work as a kind of political activism.
In reading articles and book manuscripts for peer review, or in reviewing files when conducting faculty job searches, I found that nearly every scholar now justifies their work in political terms. This interpretation of a novel or poem, that historical intervention, is valuable because it will contribute to the achievement of progressive political goals. Nor was this change limited to the humanities. Venerable scientific journals — such as Nature — now explicitly endorse political candidates; computer-science and math departments present their work as advancing social justice. Claims in academic arguments are routinely judged in terms of their likely political effects.
The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus. Public opinion of higher education is at an all-time low. The incoming Trump administration plans to use the accreditation process to end the politicization of higher education — and to tax and fine institutions up to “100 percent” of their endowment. I believe these threats are serious because of a simple political calculation of my own: If Trump announced that he was taxing wealthy endowments down to zero, the majority of Americans would stand up and cheer.
How did it happen? Here are two reasons and a conclusion:
The first is that, while academics have real expertise in their disciplines, we have no special expertise when it comes to political judgment. I am an English professor. I know about the history of literature, the practice of close reading, and the dynamics of literary judgment. No one should treat my opinion on any political matter as more authoritative than that of any other person. The spectacle of English professors pontificating to their captive classroom audiences on the evils of capitalism, the correct way to deal with climate change, or the fascist tendencies of their political opponents is simply an abuse of power.
The second problem with thinking of a professor’s work in explicitly political terms is that professors are terrible at politics. This is especially true of professors at elite colleges. Professors who — like myself — work in institutions that pride themselves on rejecting 70 to 95 percent of their applicants, and whose students overwhelmingly come from the upper reaches of the income spectrum, are simply not in the best position to serve as spokespeople for left-wing egalitarian values.
Far from representing a powerful avant-garde leading the way to political change, the politicized class of professors is a serious political liability to any party that it supports. The hierarchical structure of academe, and the role it plays in class stratification, clings to every professor’s political pronouncement like a revolting odor. My guess is that the successful Democrats of the future will seek to distance themselves as far as possible from the bespoke jargon and pedantic tone that has constituted the professoriate’s signal contribution to Democratic politics. Nothing would so efficiently invalidate conservative views with working-class Americans than if every elite college professor was replaced by a double who conceived of their work in terms of activism for right-wing ideas. Professors are bad at politics, and politicized professors are bad for their own politics.
The author, Michael Clune (an English professor at Case Western Reserve University), suggests professors sticking to their expertise, sometimes teaching students to evaluate evidence. And administrators, with their love of DEI, are also to blame, by articulating values that aren’t shared by the faculty. This mandates that as far as a university can espouse “values,” the faculty must be on board with the administration. And those values should be limited to the classical purpose of a university: to further research, teaching, discourse, and thinking.
*Every Sunday, Douglas Murray has a column called “Things worth remembering” in the Free Press, usually riffing on quotes from the past. This week’s contribution is especially good; it’s called “Things worth remembering: ‘He died standing up.” (h/t Bat). It’s about the Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris in 2015 and the magazine’s editor, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. An excerpt about Charb:
Many people said many powerful things in those days—things Americans need to hear, and not only because of what happened in New Orleans. But to my mind, the last word should go to a woman who stood out for her exceptional dignity and courage, as well as the resonance of her sentiments: Charb’s partner, Jeannette Bougrab. A few years earlier, she had been a secretary of state under Nicolas Sarkozy, and the chair of French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission. We had met a couple of times in France, and in the hours and days after the murder of her partner, I watched with awe as she spoke for the man who could no longer speak for himself. When she heard about the attack, she went running to the scene—and in describing, the very next day, what she found, she spoke for France—and for a set of values which we lose at our peril.
I was in awe of her 10 years ago, and am as much in awe today:
When I got there, there were the cordons, and we weren’t allowed to get in. But I learned there that he was dead. . .I didn’t want to leave his body. The bodies were just on the ground. . .I stayed for three or four hours outside. And then afterwards, I was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu [hospital] because I was in such a situation of shock.
Then came Jeannette’s tribute to the man who said he would never live on his knees, who she rightly believed had taken up his place among the heroes of history who had defended the French Republic:
He died standing. He defended secularism. He defended Voltaire’s spirit. He, in fact, was really the fruit of this ideal, the Republic that we’ve almost forgotten. He was—he died standing up. He was executed with his comrades, as he would say. Not companions. Comrades. And we can be very proud of him. All these cartoonists deserve a ceremony just as Malraux organized for Jean Moulin. Because they fought for principles and for freedoms that we’ve forgotten to defend.
So they’re resistance. Yes, they are resistance. And if I were the president of the Republic, that’s what I would do. I would give them this medal of honor, the Panthéon. Often—they died defending freedom of expression, secularism, and they have died so that we can stay free in this country. In France. In France in 2015.
Do remember that when PEN America decided to give Charlie Hebdo their “freedom of expression courage award,” six writers withdrew from the ceremony. apparently objecting to the “offense” that the magazine produced in Muslims and those of other faiths. (Charlie Hebdo was an equal-opportunity offender,) Salman Rushie couldn’t abide that, and tweeted this:
.@JohnTheLeftist @NickCohen4 The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.
*President Biden has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America’s highest civilian honor—to 19 people. They’re named below, and see if you agree with the choices (article is archived here):
President Biden named 19 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Saturday, awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor to political luminaries such as former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the late civil-rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer.
Also on the list were actors, athletes and fashion leaders such as editor Anna Wintour and designer Ralph Lauren.
. . . Former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy—the father of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Donald Trumphas nominated to be his secretary of Health and Human Services—was posthumously awarded the medal. Philanthropist and Democratic donor George Soros also was among the recipients, as was world-renowned scientist and conservationist Jane Goodall.
Biden also chose U2 frontman Bono, actors Michael J. Fox and Denzel Washington, along with William Nye, better known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Soccer superstar Lionel Messi and retired basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson also made the list, as did Spanish chef José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen travels to conflict zones and areas hit by natural disasters to feed local communities.
Other recipients include former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, as well as George W. Romney, the former Michigan governor and father of recently retired Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. Both were awarded the medal posthumously, along with Hamer, a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer, who died in 1977, helped lay the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Tim Gill, an entrepreneur and LGBTQ activist; David Rubenstein, the co-founder and co-chairman of Carlyle Group; and George Stevens Jr., founder of the American Film Institute and co-creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, were also awarded the medal.
There’s one of these awards I object to, though many will disagree. Can you guess which one?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is playing Ivy League Professor in Congress:
Hili: I categorically protest.
A: What about?
Hili: It depends on the context.
In Polish:
Hili: Stanowczo protestuję.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: To zależy od kontekstu.
*******************
From Merilee:
From Cat Memes:
From Stacy:
From Masih; more Iranians defying the regime’s ban on singing, dancing, and music. These are brave women! And their went without hijab, breaking another law.
This video of Iranian schoolgirls dancing in the street shows why Khamenei fears Generation Z. The regime has poisoned their schools and tried to crush their spirit, but their courage remains unstoppable.
I don’t know who Nicole is but I like her pinned tweet (I can’t embed it):
From Malcolm; why cats have staff, not owners:
My cat, who is currently unemployed and pays no rent is unhappy with his fancy new cat food and I, a walking, talking, miracle, Apex predator made of 14 billion year-old Stardust.. am on my way back to the store to rectify the matter for some reason. #RelatableCatFactspic.twitter.com/yT1NytynuJ
— The Feline Philosopher=^..^=🇨🇦🐾💕 (@ThePhilosopurr) December 22, 2024
From my feed. I couldn’t resist a heartwarming cartoon with two d*gs!
Welcome to Sunday, January 5, 2025, and National Whipped Cream Day, a product with many uses, including being part of a pie-in-the-face stunt. Here’s Bill Gates getting one in 1998 (it is an odious act):
This past fall, the Seaside School District became one of the first in Oregon to ban cell phones for both middle and high schoolers, forcing kids to lock their devices in pouches near the school entrance until the end of the day. Seaside has joined thousands of schools nationwide in recently banning smartphones, as a growing body of evidence shows they’re linked to falling test scores and rising rates of teen mental illness. This January, just over two million students will return to phone-free schools as statewide bans go into effect in Virginia and South Carolina. The following month, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation, will join them.
. . . So why is this movement finally getting results now? I spoke to a dozen people—educators and activists and parents—and they all offered the same answer: Jonathan Haidt.
In March, the New York University social psychologist, who has studied the negative effects of phones on kids for years, published a book called The Anxious Generation, which immediately became a No. 1 New York Timesbestseller. It has remained on the list ever since, thanks to a range of influential boosters on both sides of the political aisle. It’s impossible to think of another book that’s been equally celebrated by both Democrats and Republicans: Barack Obama recently named Haidt’s book one of his favorites of the year, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the GOP governor of Arkansas, posted an Instagram video of herself with Haidt, promoting his message to her 885,000 followers. Even Bill Gates, who helped wire America by co-founding Microsoft, has listedThe Anxious Generation as one of his top four reads of 2024.
Cookbook author Jessica Seinfeld, who has three children with her husband, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, was one of Haidt’s earliest and most vocal online advocates. She told me Haidt’s book “came along at just the right time”—when the negative effects of the Covid-era reliance on screen learning were being widely reported. Even The New York Times, which encouraged social restrictions during the pandemic, is now finally acknowledging that school closures damaged an entire generation.
“We have the first generation of kids who are native to phones and social media,” Seinfeld said, and “the addiction got really real” during Covid. “I can’t tell you how many moms have come up to me and said, ‘My kids hate me because I won’t let them get a phone, and I’m the only one.’ ”
Part of the book’s power is its simplicity. Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. Haidt has consistently repeated these talking points at talks around the country and on his Instagram page, where he has 341,000 followers.
Even so, Haidt told me he is “astounded” by how quickly the movement has spread throughout America, even rippling across the pond to the UK. “The only other example of social change I’ve seen that has moved this quickly is the fall of the Iron Curtain,” he told me. When I asked him why it took so long, he called it a “collective action problem,” in which the general public resents the status quo, but individuals are too scared to challenge it.
The man should get a damn medal for what he did! Imagine the changes (or rather reversion to the “good old days”) that will happen when phones are widely banned from schools. People will talk to each other!
*The NYT answers the nagging question, “Could monkeys really type all of Shakespeare?” (archived here). You might already have guessed that the answer is “no” unless time is infinite. But time is not infinite.
A new paper by Stephen Woodcock, a mathematician at the University of Technology Sydney, suggests that those efforts may have been for naught: It concludes that there is simply not enough time until the universe expires for a defined number of hypothetical primates to produce a faithful reproduction of “Curious George,” let alone “King Lear.” Don’t worry, scientists believe that we still have googol years — 10¹⁰⁰, or 1 followed by 100 zeros — until the lights go out. But when the end does come, the typing monkeys will have made no more progress than their counterparts at the Paignton Zoo, according to Dr. Woodcock.
“It’s not happening,” Dr. Woodcock said in an interview. The odds of a monkey typing out the first word of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy on a 30-key keyboard was 1 in 900, he said. Not bad, one could argue — but every new letter offers 29 fresh opportunities for error. The chances of a monkey spelling out “banana” are “approximately 1 in 22 billion,” Dr. Woodcock said.
The idea for the paper came to Dr. Woodcock during a lunchtime discussion with Jay Falletta, a water-usage researcher at the University of Technology Sydney. The two were working on a project about washing machines, which strain Australia’s extremely limited water resources. They were “a little bit bored” by the task, Dr. Woodcock acknowledged. (Mr. Falletta is a co-author on the new paper.)
If resources for washing clothes are limited, why shouldn’t typing monkeys be similarly constrained? By neglecting to impose a time or monkey limit on the experiment, the infinite monkey theorem essentially contains its own cheat code. Dr. Woodcock, on the other hand, opted for a semblance of reality — or as much reality as a scenario featuring monkeys trying to write in iambic pentameter would allow — in order to say something about the interplay of order and chaos in the real world.
Even if the life span of the universe were extended billions of times, the monkeys would still not accomplish the task, the researchers concluded. Their paper calls the infinite monkey theorem “misleading” in its fundamental assumptions. It is a fitting conclusion, perhaps, for a moment when human ingenuity seems to be crashing hard against natural constraints.
The Biden administration notified Congress of an $8 billion weapons package for Israel, including thousands of bombs, missiles and artillery shells, in one of the largest new arms sales since the war in Gaza began in 2023.
The weapons package, which congressional officials received notification of late on Friday afternoon, also includes the planned sale of thousands of bombs, air-to-air missiles and precision munitions, according to U.S. officials familiar with the sale.
The new weapons package includes some items that could draw objections from Democrats who have opposed the transfer of large bombs to Israel amid concerns over the civilian toll of the war in Gaza. The proposed sale includes a set of guidance kits designed to be fitted to large MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, as well as BLU-109 bunker buster bombs, one of the officials said. Also included are AMRAAM and Hellfire missiles and 155mm artillery rounds.
The planned weapons sale, which comes just weeks before President Biden hands over power to President-elect Donald Trump, is the largest the U.S. government has authorized for Israel since the massive $20 billion weapons package the administration approved inAugust. Israel was also informed of the move, said an Israeli official, who said that the country expected the weapons to begin arriving in 2025.
“We will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense,” said an administration official familiar with the deal, which still requires congressional approval to move forward. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment. The new weapons package was reported earlier by Axios.
Arms sales to Israel have been a troublesome issue for the Biden administration, which organized an airlift of bombs and other munitions to Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and militants seized some 250 hostages.
Given that Israel is at war with seven countries or territories (Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and likely Syria, not to mention militia in Iraq), and that Israel has the $8 billion (its economy is doing well), this is a well-timed benefit for Israel, and Yahweh knows they need it.
President Joe Biden will moveMonday to block all future oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of federal waters — equivalent to nearly a quarter of the total land area of the United States, according to two people briefed on the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.
The action underscores how Biden is racing to cement his legacy on climate change and conservation in his last weeks in office. President-elect Donald Trump, who has describedhis energy policy as “drill, baby, drill,” is likely to work with congressional Republicans to challenge the decision.
Biden will issue two memorandums that prohibit future federal oil and gas leasing across large swaths of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the two people said. The oil and gas industry has long prized the eastern Gulf of Mexico in particular, viewing the area as a key part of its offshore production plans.
Some details of the expected decision werefirst reported by Bloomberg News. The total acreage and the inclusion of the Northern Bering Sea have not previously been reported.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team, said in an email: “This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
Environmentalists praised Biden’s plans, saying they would prevent future oil spills that threaten coastal communities and marine wildlife.
“No one wants an oil spill off their coast, and our hope is that this can be a bipartisan historic moment where areas are set aside for future generations,” Joseph Gordon, climate and energy campaign director for the conservation group Oceana, said in a phone interview.
Biden plans to invoke the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president broad powers to withdraw federal waters from future leasing. A federal judge ruled in 2019 that such withdrawals cannot be undone without an act of Congress.
The question is whether the new Republican Congress can undo this order. If that takes overriding a Senate filibuster, Biden’s ruling may stand.
*Although Jimmy Carter was a “man of faith”, which I don’t consider a compliment, he was also a great human being and a superb ex-President, despite his coolness towards Israel. At the AP, Paul Newberry wrote an engaging piece about what it was like to go to Carter’s Sunday school classes, which he taught for years. I would have gone!
Before the former president entered the sanctuary, with a bomb-sniffing dog outside and Secret Service agents scattered around, a strict set of rules would be laid out by Ms. Jan — Jan Williams, a longtime church member and friend of the Carters. She would have made quite a drill sergeant.
It felt like a good-cop, bad-cop routine. Ms. Jan barking out rules you knew had come straight from Mr. Jimmy, who studied nuclear physics and approached all things with an engineer’s orderly mind.
Most important for those wanting a photo with the Carters — and nearly everyone did — you had to stay for the main 11 a.m. church service. Picture-taking began around noon.
If you left the church grounds before that, there was no coming back. If you stayed, you followed rules. No autographs. No handshakes. No attempts at conversation beyond a brief “good morning” or “thank you.”
Carter, consistently in sports jacket, slacks and bolo tie, would start his lesson by moving around the sanctuary, asking with a straight face if there were any visitors — that always got a laugh — and where they were from. In my many trips to Maranatha, I’m sure I heard all 50 states, not to mention an array of far-flung countries.
If anyone answered Washington, D.C., the answer was predictable. “I used to live there,” the one-term president would say, breaking into that toothy grin.
Carter’s Bible lessons focused on central themes: God gives life, loves unconditionally and provides the freedom to live a completely successful life. But the lesson usually began with an anecdote about what he’d been up to or his perspective on world affairs.
Carter could talk about building homes with Habitat for Humanity or bemoan U.S. conflicts since World War II. He could talk about his work with The Elders, a group of former world leaders, or a trip out West to go trout fishing with Ted Turner. He could talk about The Carter Center’s successes in eliminating the guinea worm, or his long friendships with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan.
“Willie Nelson is an old friend. He used to come visit me in the White House,” Carter related once, touching ever so gently on Nelson’s affection for weed.
“I don’t know what Willie and my children did after I went to bed. I’ve heard rumors,” the former president said, with a sly grin and a wink that suggested he believed every word.
There a fair bit more, and it’s worth reading. Carter’s official funeral begins this week as his cortege heads towards Atlanta where he’ll lie in state before heading to D.C., where he’ll also lie in state in the Capitol. His body will then be returned to Plains, Georgia, where he’ll be buried next to his beloved Rosalynn.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is angling for noms.
Hili: If I remember correctly I didn’t have my breakfast.
A: Certainly you had.
Hili: A modest one.
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli dobrze pamiętam, to chyba nie jadłam śniadania.
From Malcolm; an early restored photo. It was, of course, of a CAT:
French photographer Mathieu Stern discovered an old negative film from 120 years ago and after printing it, it turned out to be a cat pic.twitter.com/6Oqe90PTuR
This is true, but I’m gonna try to avoid this route:
A gentle reminder that new year resolutions don’t have to be about positive changes. You can commit to be more petty, seek revenge, and disrespect your enemies.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, January 4, 2025, and National Spaghetti Day. Here’s how they grow it in Switzerland:
Yes, of course it’s a hoax—by the BBC. The YouTube notes say this:
The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools’ Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.”
Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday won re-election to the top post in the House, salvaging his job in a dramatic last-minute turnabout by putting down a revolt from conservatives who initially voted to block his ascent.
Mr. Johnson barely mustered the majority he needed to win re-election on the first ballot, with help from President-elect Donald J. Trump, who interrupted a golf game to lobby holdouts by phone. That allowed the speaker to avoid the humiliation of a multiday slog of failed votes like the one his predecessor Kevin McCarthy suffered through before ultraconservatives relented and elected him two years ago.
Mr. Johnson won with just enough votes to clinch the gavel, 218 to 215.
But the chaotic scene that played out on the House floor — with three Republicans initially opposing Mr. Johnson and six more abstaining until it appeared he would lose before voting for him — reflected the same divisions within G.O.P. ranks that had plagued Mr. McCarthy.
It was a grim portent for Mr. Johnson at the start of the new all-Republican Congress, and for Mr. Trump as he embarks upon his second term with an ambitious and crowded agenda that will require his party to stay almost entirely unified.
It is theoretically possible that a Democrat could be Speaker in a Republican-majority House, and indeed, the Democrats nominated Hakeem Jeffries, but that didn’t work. If two Republicans hadn’t changed their vote at the last minute, the House would be in a mess and might even not have been able to certify Trump’s election on January 6.
*And of course Trump isn’t going to jail, but even if he wasn’t President he probably would not have received jail time for his felony conviction:
President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records ahead of his swearing-in Jan. 20 but is not expected to face jail time, a judge ruled Friday.
The decision touphold Trump’s conviction and schedule the sentencing for Jan. 10 almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail. He said heplans to order an “unconditional discharge,” a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.
The U.S. surgeon general said alcoholic beverages should carry cancer warnings to increase awareness that the drinks are a leading cause of preventable cancers.
An act of Congress would be required to change the existing warning labels on bottles of beer, wine and liquor. Today, federal rules require only a warning against drunken driving and drinking while pregnant, as well as a general warning that alcohol “may cause health problems.”
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said in his advisory issued Friday. “Yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.”
Alcohol industry groups didn’t immediately comment Friday.
Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., after tobacco and obesity. The link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk has been established for at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colorectum, esophagus, liver, mouth, throat and voice box, Murthy said.
“I’m not sure if we truly know the answer to that question,” said Dr. Jamie Koprivnikar, an oncologist at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, who often advises patients to cut back on their alcohol consumption. “There is data that links even one drink per day to increased risks of cancer.”
For nearly three decades, federal dietary guidelines have said it is safe for men to have two or fewer drinks a day, and for women to have one. That could change this year when the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments update recommendations that are part of federal dietary guidelines.
Well, that’s just peachy! Now I have something else to worry about. But I swear, I will not give up my glass or two of wine with dinner. I don’t smoke cigars any more, so what gustatory pleasure is left for me? Eggs, I suppose (see below), but eggs are no substitute for a glass of good Rioja or a gutsy Rhone. Live isn’t worth living. HOWEVER, a new review by the National Academies of Science gives an opposite result; moderate drinking is good for you:
A report that is intended to shape the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has broken sharply with an emerging scientific consensus that alcohol has no health benefits.
The evidence review, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December, revived a once-dominant hypothesis that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.
The Pecksniff Scientists are up in arms, however, as they don’t want anybody to enjoy themselves. I’m going with the National Academies.
→ Trump is the CCP’s cheapest date: Trump is scrambling to save TikTok. He’s filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking them to treat him like he’s already president and to stop this terrible ban of his favorite piece of Chinese spyware. As The Wall Street Journal editorial board puts it: “The brief is extraordinary in several ways, none of them good.”
As background, Trump was against TikTok until. . . TikTok investor Jeff Yass and his wife Janine dropped about $100 million into Republicans in recent years. And then, what do you know, he’s all in for TikTok! Trump asked the Supreme Court not to act all sus on TikTok’s rizz.
Shadow president Elon Musk has deep business entanglements with China, so it’s a given he’s going to be compromised on this. But Trumpo—Mr. CHYNA—made nationalism his whole thing. And all it took was one Republican donor with cash, but not even that much for China, to continue the colonization of teenage American minds through the infectious disease known as TikTok. Democrats at least genuinely believe in the CCP. Like, they prefer it on an intellectual level. Republicans don’t; they’re just for sale, and cheap.
→ Release all the corruption pictures, quick: This week, the National Archives released a ton more pictures of Joe Biden hanging out with Hunter and Hunter’s business associates. The business is obvious: Hunter was clearly paid to give foreign business interests access to Joe. Joe Biden has, for years, denied it quite strongly. “They’re lies,” he has said. (Here’s a helpful list of all the times he totally denied these meetings ever took place.) Nevermind that Hunter himself wrote that his father was involved in the business, that Hunter would text “sitting here with my father” and then get multimillion-dollar wire transfers. I’m sure that was just because of his very fine work.
Now here we have a bunch of pictures showing Joe Biden meeting Hunter’s business associates:
It’s so kind of the National Archives to release these pictures from 2013 now that the election is over. I guess they were hiding under a cabinet or something!
→ Eggs are now healthy: America received a wild revelation last week. Not that Santa isn’t real (he is), but that the FDA thinks that eggs are healthy again. Talk about whiplash. Just yesterday, if my kids had asked for eggs for breakfast, I’d slowly wag my finger at them and say, “FDA says nay.” But the cholesterol in eggs does not pose the risk our health overlords once thought it did. So, eggs galore! The President of the American Egg Board (I love that this exists—more Egg Presidents, less Reality Czars in 2025, please) couldn’t be happier:
Whether you’re scrambling them for breakfast, grabbing them hardboiled for a quick lunch on the go, or enjoying some egg-and-veggie fried rice at dinner, Americans now know for certain that eggs are one of the healthiest foods for your family.
Amen, Egg President. Beef is back in vogue too, apparently. Expect cigarettes to be next; gin martinis too. I’m waiting for the Chair of the Office of Amphetamines to declare victory. The year 2025 just dropped, and it’s time for our diets to get with the times.
I’m not scared of eggs! And if they weren’t so damn expensive I’d eat a lot more of them!
*The AP reports that the Bidens, but especially Jill, got tons of expensive gifts from foreign leaders this year. They still have to pay taxes on them, though:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and his family were given tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from foreign leaders in 2023, according to an annual accounting published by the State Department on Thursday, with first lady Jill Biden receiving the single most expensive present: a $20,000 diamond from India’s leader.
The 7.5-carat diamond from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was easily the most costly gift presented to any member of the first family in 2023, although she also received a brooch valued at $14,063 from the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States and a bracelet, brooch and photograph album worth $4,510 from the president and first lady of Egypt.
The U.S. president himself received a number of expensive presents, including a commemorative photo album valued at $7,100 from South Korea’s recently impeached President Suk Yeol Yoon, a $3,495 statue of Mongolian warriors from the Mongolian prime minister, a $3,300 silver bowl from the sultan of Brunei, a $3,160 sterling silver tray from the president of Israel, and a collage worth $2,400 from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Federal law requires executive branch officials to declare gifts they receive from foreign leaders and counterparts that have an estimated value of more than $480. Many of the gifts that meet that threshold are relatively modest, and the more expensive ones are typically — but not always — transferred to the National Archives or put on official displays.
What’s your guess: will that diamond and the brooch wind up in the National Archives or Smithsonian?
Apple has agreed to pay $95m in cash to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant Siri violated users’ privacy, listening to them without their consent.
iPhone owners complained that Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers. A preliminary settlement was filed on Tuesday night in the Oakland, California, federal court, and requires approval by US district judge Jeffrey White.
Voice assistants typically react when people use “hot words” such as “Hey, Siri”. Two plaintiffs said their mentions of Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants triggered ads for those products. Another said he was served ads for a brand name surgical treatment after discussing it, he thought privately, with his doctor. The plaintiffs alleged Apple did not receive consent before recording their conversations and in fact could not receive consent from one of the plaintiffs because they were a minor without an Apple account at the time of the recording.
The lawsuit alleged the violations ran from 17 September 2014 to 31 December 2024. It began when Siri incorporated the “Hey, Siri” feature that allegedly led to the unauthorized recordings. Class members, estimated in the tens of millions, may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches.
Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. The company has persistently emphasized the importance it places on privacy. In 2018, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, accused other tech companies of surveillance and said “[t]he desire to put profits over privacy is nothing new.” The company furthered contended in a letter to Congress in 2018 that Apple’s iPhone devices do not “listen” to users except to detect the audio trigger “Hey Siri.”
A whistleblower turned in the company for this nefarious behavior, which is nothing more than violation of privacy in the interests of profit. But get this: “The $95m is about nine hours of profit for Apple, whose net income was $93.74bn in its latest fiscal year.” Nine hours of profit!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili still hates Kulka, who is sitting on the outside windowsill. I don’t understand this animosity since Hili loves Szaron. Cats are unfathomable:
From Masih; Iranians sing and dance in the streets to music (all three forbidden) to usher in the New Year. Can we hope for the regime to disappear this year?
Iranians dance in the streets to welcome 2025
This video was sent to me by a citizen in Tehran. Dancing and joy are everyday occurrences in most parts of the world, but in my beloved homeland, Iran, they serve as a manifesto against the backwardness and hollow authority of the… pic.twitter.com/iWrihP54yf
A phenol injection in the heart was used to kill people in addition to the gas chambers. Phenol is a rough way to go, and here's a family murdered both ways.
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a beautiful seed, but you’d need a microscope to see its beauty.
Today my colleague shared with me the most EXQUISITE image of a seed the size of a dust particle, collected from a rare plant called Xylanche in Nepal, and photographed using scanning electron microscopy. Wow.
