Category: Hili Dialogue

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 31, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last day of July: Monday, July 31, 2023, and National Cotton Candy Day, a day to eat unadulterated spun sucrose.  You can buy the stuff from vending machines in Japan. This one seems to cost about 100 yen, which is 71¢ in U.S. currency:

It’s also National Avocado Day, National Raspberry Cake Day, Shredded Wheat Day, National Jump for Jelly Beans Day, and National Mutt Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*Ukraine seems to be making slow but steady progress in reclaiming territory and attacking Russian targets.

Ukraine brought the war far from the front line into the heart of Russia again Sunday in drone penetrations that Russian authorities said damaged two office buildings a few miles (kilometers) from the Kremlin and a pig breeding complex on the countries’ border.

The attacks, which Ukraine didn’t acknowledge in keeping with its security policy, reflected a pattern of more frequent and deeper cross-border strikes the Kyiv government has launched since starting a counteroffensive against Russian forces in June. A precursor and the most dramatic of the strikes happenned in May on the Kremlin itself, the seat of power in the capital, Moscow.

Sunday’s was the fourth such strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, showing Moscow’s vulnerability as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.

The Russian Defense Ministry said three drones targeted the city in an “attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime.” Air defenses shot down one drone in Odintsovo in the surrounding Moscow region, while two others were jammed and crashed into the Moscow City business district.

. . .Ukrainian officials didn’t acknowledge the attacks but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia — to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”

A Ukrainian air force spokesman also didn’t claim responsibility but said the Russian people were seeing the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“All of the people who think the war ‘doesn’t concern them’ — it’s already touching them,” spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told journalists Sunday.

Pig breeding farms? And are they going after civilian targets? That again is a war crime, and if Ukraine is actually doing this, they’ll lose international support.

You can see a dramatic video of a drone attack on a Moscow building on CNN.

*Both the NYT and the Washington Post have pieces about a neglected aspect of the movie “Oppenheimer,” and about the Trinity test in particular: the spate of diseases that afflicted people near the test explostion in 1945. From the Post:

What happened here in the aftermath, surviving “downwinders” and their relatives say, is a legacy of serious health consequences that have gone unacknowledged for 78 years. Their struggles continue to be pushed aside; the new blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” which spotlights the scientist most credited for the bomb, ignores completely the people who lived in the shadow of his test site.

Yet for all their ambivalence about the movie’s fanfare — the northern New Mexico city of Los Alamos, where J. Robert Oppenheimer located the Manhattan Project, just threw a 10-day festival to celebrate its place in history — locals also have hope that the Hollywood glow may elevate their long quest to be added to a federal program that compensates people sickened by presumed exposure to radiation from aboveground nuclear tests.

. . . The Trinity site, about 60 miles northwest of tiny Tularosa, was chosen in part for its supposed isolation. Nearly half a million people lived within a 150-mile radius, though. Manhattan Project leaders knew a nuclear test would put them at risk, but with the nation at war, secrecy was the priority. Evacuation plans were never acted upon. The military concocted a cover story: The boom was an explosion of an ammunitions magazine.

. . . TheJuly 16, 1945,blast was more massive than Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists expected, equivalent to nearly 25,000 tons of TNT, according to recent estimates. Witnesses said the plutonium ash fell for days, on areas where people grew their own food, drank rainwater collected in cisterns and cooled off in irrigation canals that made the arid region fertile.

According to a new study, the fallout floated to 46 states, Mexico and Canada within 10 days. In 28 of 33 New Mexico counties, it estimates the accumulation of radioactive material was higher than required under the federal compensation program.

And the injuries?

. . . Proving that radiation caused the cancers that have afflicted New Mexico’s downwinders is extremely difficult. A major study published in 2020 by the National Cancer Institute concluded that Trinity fallout may contribute to as many as 1,000 cancers by 2034, most in people who lived very near the test. There is “no evidence to suggest” cases among subsequent generations were related, the study noted.

But RECA does not require claimants to establish causation, only to show that they or a relative had a qualifying disease after working or living in certain locations during specific time frames.

They could have tested elsewhere, like an island, and they couldn’t have warned local inhabitants in New Mexico, as that would be revealing a big secret. The only fair thing to do is compensate those who were injured according to the rule limned above

*Talk about Rip van Winkle! Scientists report the resurrection of nematode worms frozen in the permafrost for 46,000 years.  (h/t: Ron)

At a time when the mighty woolly mammoth roamed the Earth, some 46,000 years ago, a minuscule pair of roundworms became encased in the Siberian permafrost.

Millennia later, the worms, thawed out of the ice, would wriggle again, and demonstrate to scientists that life could be paused — almost indefinitely.

The discovery, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Genetics, offers new insight into how the worms, also known as nematodes, can survive in extreme conditions for extraordinarily long periods of time, in this case tens of thousands of years.

In 2018, Anastasia Shatilovich, a scientist from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia, thawed two female worms from a fossilized burrow dug by gophers in the Arctic.

The worms, which were buried approximately 130 feet in the permafrost, were revived simply by putting them in water, according to a news release from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany.

Called Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, after the Kolyma River in Russia, where they were found, the worms were sent to Germany for further study. The creatures, which have a life span measured in days, died after reproducing several generations in the lab, researchers said.

Using radiocarbon dating, researchers determined the specimens were frozen between 45,839 and 47,769 years ago, during the late Pleistocene.

The roughly millimeter-long worms were able to resist extreme low temperatures by entering a dormant state called cryptobiosis, a process researchers at the institute have been trying to understand.

The females were triploid and parthenogenic, and so produced offspring asexually. This means that one can’t test them or their descendants against living species to see if they’re still cross-fertile, implying that 46,000 years of time (temporal isolation) would be sufficient to produce reproductive barriers. But in theory, were this species cross-fertile with others, one could do this kind of test. But they at least know, from DNA analysis of the descendants, that these worms are more closely related to some nematodes than to others.

This also raises a philosophical problem: were those worms dead or alive while they were frozen? Clearly no metabolic processes could have been going on during cryptobiosis: the systems shut down and then restarted. Dead or alive?

*Time to pay attention to the Women’s World Cup, where, in a stunning upset, Colombia beat Germany 2-1.  Here are the results from today (the tournament is in New Zealand), which include the host team being eliminated (click to read at the NYT):

The most remarkable game of the World Cup was won and then it wasn’t, until it was won again in the last minute. It was a game so good that what may have been the goal of the tournament was not even the most important goal of the night. It was a result so stunning that one needs to go back almost three decades to find another one like it.

The simple summary is this: Colombia defeated Germany, 2-1, in Sydney to take a surprising but fully deserved lead in Group H. The fuller, richer version contains so much more flavor than that.

There’s the opening goal, a stunning bit of control and footwork by the Colombian teenager Linda Caicedo that is already being called the goal of the tournament.

See that goal at 1:19 in the video below.

How stunning was it all? The defeat was the first time Germany had lost a game in the group stage of a World Cup since 1995. To put that loss, a 3-2 defeat to host Sweden in Helsingborg, in perspective, consider that Pia Sundhage, the 63-year-old coach of Brazil in this World Cup, scored in the match.

Sundhage may not remember that day. But the Germans probably do, and they will definitely remember Sunday, a night, and a win, the Colombians will never forget.

Yesterday’s results:

Here are the highlights from the Germany-Colombia match. Germany got one point on a penalty kick, but the two Colombia goals were great, especially the first at 1:21 (the second was  a header).

And the luckless kiwis:

New Zealand never scores much, and it never scored again at the World Cup, eliminated quietly on Sunday in Dunedin after a 0-0 tie with Switzerland that was the home team’s ninth goalless outing in 12 games this year.

The U.S, takes on Portugal tomorrow.

*Heterodox news of the week: An American woman is suing her company for discriminating against white men.  (h/t Luana)

A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.

. . . Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.

. . .Ms. Rogers was hired in August 2021 and given the job title of “Recruiter, Internal Mobility Team.”

Her responsibilities included the processing of internal promotions, which encompassed posting job listings, reviewing applications, conducting interviews, writing and sending offer letters, carrying out background checks, ordering drug tests, initiating and reviewing onboarding, and ensuring that personnel updates were reflected in the system.

Compass created a program it called “Operation Equity” in March 2022, a purported diversity program that offered qualified employees special training and mentorship and the promise of a promotion upon graduation, according to the legal complaint that was filed in Rogers v. Compass Group USA Inc.

The lawsuit was filed on July 24 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California under the auspices of the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm headquartered in Chicago that organized the legal action.

But participation in the program was restricted to “women and people of color.” White men were not allowed to participate and receive the associated benefits of training, mentorship, and guaranteed promotion.

By calling it “Operation Equity,” the company “used a euphemistic and false title to hide the program’s true nature.” The program would more accurately be called the “White-Men-Need-Not-Apply” program because it is an example of “‘outright racial balancing,’ which is patently unlawful,” and is the kind of program “promoted by people … who harbor racial animus against white men,” according to the legal complaint.

Ms. Rogers claims she informed management that high-level employees said of the program, “This is the direction the world is going, jump on the train or get run over,” and “We are not here to appease the old white man.”

Ms. Rogers claims she also informed management that the program was illegal and requested that she be allowed an accommodation because the program “violated her ethical beliefs.” Management assured her she would be exempted from participating in it and that she would not be retaliated against for sharing her concerns with management.

Then they fired her. “Operation Equity” was clearly illegal, violating nondiscrimination acts, and I hope Rogers gets a big pot of money from the company. I predict a hushed-up settlement

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a rare admission of error:

Hili: I was wrong.
A: A human thing.
Hili: Feline as well.
In Polish:
Hili: Myliłam się.
Ja: Ludzka sprawa.
Hili: Kocia też.

. . . and a picture of Baby Kulka:

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

From Lorenzo the Cat, “Barbie, the sequel”:

From somewhere on Facebook:

. . .and from Merilee:

From Masih, another small but telling act of rebellion against the Iranian government by activists.

Ricky Gervais is well stocked:

From Malcolm: a cat fracas in an open car:

From Barry, who calls this “The greatest thread in the history of Twitter” (I think he means “in the history of X”).

From the Auschwitz Memorial: it’s the birthday of a survivor:

I suspect the fly’s offspring is parasitic on the bee’s offspring, but I haven’t been

Matthew says, “Watch the vid – look at all the birds chilling while one of their (vast) number is eaten… ”

A chimp sees marvels in a camera viewer (and knows how to scroll). It’s very intent!

Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 30, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the sabbath for Christian cats: Sunday, July 30, 2023, and National Cheesecake Day (best either plain or with cherries). I’m still partial to Junior’s Cheesecake in Brooklyn:

Here’s a groaner of a cheesecake joke:

I went to the doctor recently and he said “Don’t eat anything fatty.” So I asked “So you mean like bacon and cheesecake and stuff like that?” And he said “No, fatty, don’t eat anything.”

It’s also Father-in-Law Day, World Day against Trafficking in Persons, Paperback Book Day, World Snorkeling Day, Share a Hug Day, and International Day of Friendship.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A new Gallup poll on sex and sports participation shows that Americans are becoming less tolerant towards trans females competing against biological females.

A larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.

Transgender sports participation has also become a major political flashpoint, and elected officials in conservative-leaning states have enacted laws to ban transgender athletes who were born male from competing against female athletes. At least 20 U.S. states now have such laws, and the Republican-led U.S. House recently passed a national ban. The federal ban is unlikely to pass the Senate, and President Joe Biden has promised to veto it. The White House recently released a proposed set of guidelines that would govern decisions surrounding transgender individuals’ participation in gender-segregated sports.

The shift toward greater public opposition to transgender athletes competing on the basis of their current gender identity has occurred at the same time that more U.S. adults say they know a transgender person. Thirty-nine percent of Americans, up from 31% in 2021, say someone they know personally has told them they are transgender.

But both Americans who know and do not know a transgender individual have become less supportive of allowing transgender athletes to play on the team of their choice. Currently, 30% of those who know a transgender person favor allowing athletes to play on teams that match their current gender identity, down from 40% in 2021. Among those who do not know a transgender person, support is now 23%, down from 31%.

It’s aways seemed to me, in light of the data, that it’s palpably unfair to allow trans women who have gone through male puberty, with its attendant strength and physiological advantages, to compete against biological women. So these data are heartening, since less than a third of people who knows a transgender person still feel that transwomen (I’m assuming that trans men are not an object of contention) shouldn’t compete against natal women. Is society coming to its senses about this one issue. (Needless to say, there should be a way—perhaps an “open” category—for transgender people who want to play sports to do so.

*In his latest Weekly Dish, “The Importance of Saying ‘Yes’ to the ‘But’,” Andrew Sullivan takes a quasi-scientific attitude, describing the advantages of questioning your own position.

One of the enduring frustrations of living in a politically polarized country is the evaporation of nuance. As the muscles of liberal democracy atrophy, and as cultural tribalism infects everyone’s consciousness, it becomes more and more difficult to say, “Yes, but …”

. . The epitome, of course, was the Russia stuff. Between “Trump won the election because of Putin” and “The Russia Hoax,” there was precious little space for qualification. But the truth, it seems obvious now, was somewhere in between: yes, Trump loved Putin, and was happy to welcome campaign assistance from anyone, including Moscow — but no, he wasn’t a Russian agent, there was no “conspiracy,” and Clinton lost the election for far more obvious and provable reasons. The Mueller Report landed somewhere in the middle, because facts — which is why no one liked it. Worse, even to concede a smidgen of a point to the other side became anathema.

He also brings up the covid lab-leak theory (I’ve now decided that for the time being I take no position on this).

. . . A couple more. Yes, immigration is the lifeblood of America … but we need to control the integrity of our borders, and keep the pace of migration to a sustainable level that doesn’t hurt American workers and threaten cultural stability. Yes, we need to recognize and better include trans people in society … but we don’t have to abolish the sex binary, sterilize children before puberty, or teach kindergartners they get to pick their sex like a favorite color. Yes, trans women are women … but not in the same way as those who are biologically women, and we need to honor that distinction in a few, relevant instances, like not having biological dudes swinging their junk in the women’s locker room, FFS.

. . . The trouble, of course, is the emotional and tribal inadequacy of these “yes, but”s. You’ll get lambasted by your friends and fellow partisans the second you concede anything to the opposite side.

And a sensible ending, though this isn’t one of Sullivan’s best columns (After all he’s just asking people to be reasonable rather than tribal.):

A liberal democracy is a place where these distinctions can be made, compromises can be forged, and tribal loyalty can be qualified by reality. As it slips away, with the Trump right and the woke left offering us non-negotiable, Manichean views of the world, we can fret and panic and worry.

Or we can start saying “yes, but” more often. And mean it.

*About two months ago I wrote about intriguing reports that physicists had come up with a substance that acted like a superconductor at room temperature instead of near absolute zero. If true, that would be a stupendous finding. But there were doubts about it, and those doubts have no increased. That’s because one of the authors of the superconductor paper was also an author of a paper on another subject that has been retracted in Physical Review Letters. If you screw with your data once, it makes it more likely that that’s not a one-off incident:

A major physics journal is retracting a two-year-old scientific paper that described the transformations of a chemical compound as it was squeezed between two pieces of diamond.

Such an esoteric finding — and retraction — would not typically garner much attention.

But one of the leaders of this research is Ranga P. Dias, a professor in the physics and mechanical engineering departments at the University of Rochester in New York who made a much bigger scientific splash earlier this year, touting the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor.

At the same time, accusations of research misconduct have swirled around Dr. Dias, and his superconductor findings remain largely unconfirmed.

The retracted paper does not involve superconductivity but rather describes how a relatively mundane material, manganese sulfide, shifts its behavior from an insulator to a metal and then back to an insulator under increasing pressure.

A complaint that one of the graphs in the paper looked fishy led the journal, Physical Review Letters, to recruit outside experts to take a closer look.

The inquiry arrived at disquieting conclusions.

“The findings back up the allegations of data fabrication/falsification convincingly,” the journal’s editors wrote in an email to the authors of the paper on July 10.

. . .While Dr. Dias continues to defend the work, to some scientists, there is now clear evidence of misconduct.

“There’s no plausible deniability left,” said N. Peter Armitage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who is among the scientists who have seen the reports. “They submitted falsified data. There’s no ambiguity there at all.”

Over the past few years, Dr. Dias and his colleagues have published a series of spectacular findings in top scientific journals.

For some reason I find myself less inclined to accept the phenomenon of room-temperature superconductivity. . . .

*This is sad because I always wanted to visit Brooks Falls, Alaska, site of the world’s last sockeye salmon run for bears. You can watch the bears standing in the falls and letting the salmon leaping into the gaping maws, getting fatter and fatter for the winter hibernation. And that, of course, leads to the famous Fat Bear Contest, which I document each fall, showing how previously thin bears turn in to huge tubs of lard. Now, however, the salmon run has been delayed by climate change, delaying the arrival of a beloved bear.

Just before 6 p.m. eastern on July 26 — the very same day 480 Otis emerged from hibernation in 2021 — fans spotted the park’s beloved brown bear on a live camera at Brooks Falls in Alaska.

This year, the grizzly bear seen holding a fresh salmon and trudging through the water was late to his usual hunting spot at Katmai National Park. It’s not that Otis hit snooze on his alarm — you can blame climate change.

“The last time he showed up this late, salmon were also late, and the salmon were late this year as well,” said Candice Rusch, a spokesperson with Explore.org, the site that runs the 24/7 live cameras at Katmai National Park. “What we’ve been seeing in Alaska is that the salmon run has been trending later into July, which means for bears like Otis waiting longer to eat that salmon.”

Wild bears like Otis are supposed to return to the salmon run in late June, not July, but rising temperatures and overfishing are in part delaying the arrival of the salmon, Rusch said. This puts the bears in a time crunch, having to eat food in less than the usual six months they’d have to take bulk up before winter time.

. . . . 480 Otis is particularly famous thanks to the increasingly popular Fat Bear Week competition. Created in 2014, Fat Bear Week is March Madness meets Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest, but for bears. At the end of the summer, Katmai National Park staff and Explore.org pit 12 park bears against each other online in a single-elimination bracket tournament.

Gates of the Arctic National Park: Alaska’s wilderness.

The internet is presented with before and after photos of the contenders, showing bears right after they’ve emerged from hibernation, often very lean, then again in the final weeks before they hibernate again, by then much fatter. Fans then vote on which bear has the more impressive weight gain until one bear takes the title of Fattest Bear on Fat Bear Tuesday. Otis is a regular fan favorite of the competition, and has won the crown four times, including in 2021. At roughly 27-years-old, he’s also one of the oldest bears at the park.

“A bear that’s around 30 years of age is approaching what would be the equivalent of a 100-year-old person,” said Mike Fitz, Fat Bear Week creator and Explore.org resident naturalist. “Most bears don’t have the fortune of living that long.”

But Otis showed—and gorged!:

“He showed up this year extraordinarily skinny,” Rusch also noted.

Within thirty minutes of his return to the river, Otis was catching fish. Fitz said that’s part of what fans love about him. “We’ve seen in the past that he is adaptable and he’s a survivor,” Fitz said. “People can really relate to his work ethic and his ability to make a living despite the challenges that he continues to face.”

What a work ethic that bear has!! Go, Otis!

*Want to get even more depressed? Read about a new AP-NORC poll showing that 69% of American believe in angels (yes, real ones), and a substantial number in other bizarre and numinous phenomena.

Compared with the devil, angels carry more credence in America.

Angels even get more credence than, well, hell. More than astrology, reincarnation, and the belief that physical things can have spiritual energies.

In fact, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“People are yearning for something greater than themselves — beyond their own understanding,” said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.

But of course nobody here is deluded enough to believe in unevidenced phenomena just because it makes them feel better, right?  Well, read on for more bad news:

American’s belief in angels (69%) is about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).

And get a load of this:

The large number of U.S. adults who say they believe in angels includes 84% of those with a religious affiliation — 94% of evangelical Protestants, 81% of mainline Protestants and 82% of Catholics — and 33% of those without one. And of those angel-believing religiously unaffiliated, that includes 2% of atheists, 25% of agnostics and 50% of those identified as “nothing in particular.”

2% of atheists who believe in angels is 2% too many. Who are these screwed-up nonbelievers. Why reject God but accept his wingéd minion?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is up to demonizing carrots. Malgorzata’s explanation:

“Hili knows that Andrzej intensely dislikes carrots. She also knows that many people like and value carrots. To help Andrzej in his irrational dislike,  she wants to demonize carrots so they would not enjoy a good reputation any longer. Her words can also be understood more broadly: it’s easy to demonize good things and get people to despise them.”

Hili: I have an idea.
A: What idea?
Hili: How to demonize carrots.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam pomysł.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Na demonizację marchewki.

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

From Divy. Someone has blotted out the obvious word:

From the Absurd Sign Project:

From Merilee; anyone with a cat knows that this is true:

From Masih: the story of another brave protestor who lost an eye after being shot by the cops, and then apparently left Iran.

From Malcolm. What a lovely place Cambridge University is, and this picture includes a bonus kitty:

From Luana: “Sex assigned at birth” in a biology textbook. We’ll see a lot more of this in the years to come.

From Barry. This d*g gets the Oscar for “Best Dramatic Canine in a Lead Role”:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Ukrainian who lived only one month in Auschwitz before perishing.

From Matthew: Cats and scholars are natural companions:

Two astronauts in one! The Google translation of this photo is this:

On 07/20/1969, Neil Armstrong photographed Buzz Aldrin during their spacewalk on the surface of the Moon. We can clearly see Armstrong’s reflection in Aldrin’s helmet. This reflection has been reversed to replicate what Aldrin saw when photographed.

It’s the first lunar selfie! Read more about it here.

Lagniappe from Malcolm: This woman has perfected the art of imitating a trumpet with her voice:

 

 

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

July 29, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday July 29, 2023.  We’re almost in August already! It’s National Lasagna Day, too. 

Photo and recipe

It’s also National Lipstick Day, National Chicken Wing Day, Rain Day, International Tiger Day, and in Thailand, National Thai Language Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The documents case against Trump has gotten even more serious as new charges are being leveled, accusing him of ordering camera footage deleted. Three charges, to be precise, and serious ones.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, presenting evidence that he told the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted.

The new accusations were revealed in a superseding indictment that named the property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, as a new defendant in the case. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Miami on Monday.

The original indictment filed last month in the Southern District of Florida accused Mr. Trump of violating the Espionage Act by illegally holding on to 31 classified documents containing national defense information after he left office. It also charged Mr. Trump and Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides, with a conspiracy to obstruct the government’s repeated attempts to reclaim the classified material.

The revised indictment added three serious charges against Mr. Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document that he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

Do you still think the Orange Man will avoid wearing the Orange Suit?

*To punish Russia for its belligerence, as well as to accumulate a reserve that might help the allies pay for the war, a large amount of Russian assets have been frozen in the West. However, as the NYT reports, confiscating that money to pay for the war may not only violate international law, but also pose future dangers.

One solution seemed brilliant in its simplicity: What better way to foot the bill, and to make a moral point, than to make Russia pay?

But that has proved far more difficult than first imagined, and it appears less and less likely. Experts warn that it would likely violate international law and potentially set a dangerous precedent for countries to take the assets of others.

The money once seemed easily within reach — since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, Western nations have frozen more than $330 billion in Russian Central Bank assets held abroad.

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations, the world’s biggest economies, said this month that the frozen assets “will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.” But they recognized “the need for the establishment of an international mechanism for reparation of damages, loss or injury caused by Russian aggression.”

. . . Experts said that seizing Russian state assets outright carried significant legal and financial risks.

Under international law, the assets could be seized through a vote in the United Nations Security Council, a ruling of the International Court of Justice or a postwar deal. None of those options seem very likely.

Russia, a Security Council member, would veto any vote there. No deal can be achieved while the war is still going on. And no case has been brought before the court, and if it were, international law argues against confiscating the Russian Central Bank’s assets, an act that would be a breach of its sovereignty, legal experts said.

. . .In the United States, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress last month that confiscating Russian assets frozen in the United States would probably require a change to American law.

European officials assessed in a confidential report, seen by The New York Times, that there was “no credible legal avenue allowing for the confiscation of frozen or immobilized assets on the sole basis of these assets being under E.U. restrictive measures.”

So the Russians get their money back after the war?

*The Russian/Ukraine war limps on, with the latest developments being a Russian claim that Ukraine is firing missiles and drones at Russian cities:

The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down a Ukrainian missile in the city of Taganrog, about 40 kilometers (about 24 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, and local officials reported 20 people were injured, identifying the epicenter as an art museum.

Debris fell on the city, the ministry added, alleging the missile was part of a “terror attack” by Ukraine.

Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, blamed Russian air defense systems for the explosion.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it downed a second Ukrainian missile near the city of Azov, which like Taganrog is in the Rostov region, and debris fell in an unpopulated location.

Earlier in the day, a Ukrainian drone was shot down outside Moscow, the Defense Ministry said, in the third drone strike or attempt on the capital region this month. The ministry reported no injuries or damage in the latest incident, and it didn’t give an exact location where the drone fell.

. . .Since the war began, Russia has blamed Ukraine for drone, bomb and missile attacks on its territory far from the battlefield’s front line. Ukrainian officials rarely confirm being behind the attacks, which have included drone strikes on the Kremlin that unsettled Russians.

The strikes have hit Russian ammunition and fuel depots, as well as bridges the Russian military uses to supply its forces, and military recruitment stations. The attacks have also included killings of Russian-appointed officials on occupied Ukrainian territory.

So far I’ve seen no signs that Ukraine is deliberately target Russian civilians or civilian infrastructure, a war crime that would cause the country to lose considerable credibility. Meanwhile, Ukraine pushes on, meeting considerable Russian resistance in its “spring offensive.”

*This is pretty remarkable. Scientists used genetic modification of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to enable it to reproduce parthenogenically—without having to mate. They started by using the related species Drosophila mercatorum, a species in which some individuals have the ability to reproduce parthenogenetically. They then looked for genetic differences between individuals in that species who could reproduce asexually and those who could not. The next steps were clear:

To understand the genetic basis for solo baby-making, the researchers turned to another species of fruit fly called Drosophila mercatorum. In this species, the female can reproduce with or without a mate. They sequenced the genomes of both sexual and asexual D. mercatorum individuals and identified three genes that differed between them.

Having identified these candidate genes responsible for virgin birth, the researchers then altered the corresponding genes in the model fruit fly, D. melanogaster.

After examining 220,000 fruit flies over the course of six years, the researchers declared victory: Altering those three genes gave D. melanogaster the ability to reproduce without mating.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Sperling. “We saw the development of the embryos, and they looked pretty sketchy, but eventually they kind of sorted out and developed into adult flies.”

Whenever males were around, females with the ability for virgin birth mated and reproduced the normal way. But when males weren’t available, one to two percent of the second generation of female flies with this ability produced offspring asexually.

I wonder why it took them six years to get to this point. Perhaps it took so many flies before they could change the genes in the right way.  At any rate, if they can keep this strain going, it can be used to answer all sorts of questions. Here’s one I thought of, and it might have already been answered. Does male semen contain a chemical that boosts a female’s offspring production at the cost of shortening her life?

*Nellie Bowles’s weekly Free Press news summary for the week is called “TGIF: The ‘X’ files,” and as usual I’ll steal three of her items.

→ Hunter Biden plea deal falls into chaos: Just as Hunter Biden was on the verge of signing a very nice plea deal to settle up tax and gun charges, Judge Maryellen Noreika mucked it all up. “I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” said Judge Noreika, who is definitely getting audited this year and who should be very careful about going 0.5 miles above the speed limit from now on. She added that she was not “a rubber stamp,” as every law enforcement officer in D.C. began Googling her relatives. Noreika’s worry appears to be that the deal could shield Hunter too broadly and prevent future prosecution related to his business dealings. On cue for other crimes: a big revelation into Hunter’s “paintings” this week. Our favorite burgeoning artist earned $1.3 million from one gallery, with $875,000 coming from a single buyer. That must have been quite a painting! Wow, what a star artist he is. One example of a buyer: Hunter sold a piece to Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a big Dem donor who President Biden appointed to a fancy federal commission. I’m getting all of this from reporter Mattathias Schwartz at BusinessInsider, who deserves a prize for this scoop but will certainly not get one. We give the TGIF Pulitzer to you, Mattathias. Yes, you’ve probably lost all your friends and that knock on the door is for sure the IRS, but I christen you the media winner of the week. Congrats!

→ Shocking new study—the SAT is a progressive tool: There are a lot of good liberals who genuinely believe that the SAT is racist, but that teacher recommendation letters and extracurriculars aren’t. My friends: Please think about a teacher at a small private school versus one at a big public school. Who has more time to get to know a kid? Think about extracurriculars: what happens to the kid who needs to work at a deli and can’t launch a nonprofit in Gambia? The SAT is the least racist thing we have. The SAT is the closest to equity in admissions we can ever hope to achieve. Now we have stats from a new study out of Harvard and Brown showing how the ultra-rich can get a huge boost from everything except. . . the SAT.

I’ve added the Y axis, which Nellie left out:

See where it spikes? That’s where the majority of America’s elite reporters come from, myself included. Prioritizing academics and test scores above teacher ratings would be an existential threat to the average New Yorker writer. Calling the SAT racist is necessary for this group. This is the “joy to have in class” community. Me? Aren’t I implicated? Sure. Except I was not a joy in class and my SAT score was amazing.

Related, there’s a new paper on what happens when a lot of Asian families move to a neighborhood—the white families flee lest their kids have to compete academically. Or: “Parental fears of academic competition may play a role.”

→ . . . Meantime, in the U.S., Democrats in Texas and Louisiana voted this week in favor of age restrictions on hormones and gender surgeries, explicitly breaking with the party. Shawn Thierry, a Democrat in Texas, said: “I have made a decision to place the safety and well-being of all young people over the comfort of political expediency.” Let’s not get ahead out ourselves—in Oregon, doctors can treat gender dysphoric adolescents 15 years or older without parental permission or even notification. But I’m pretty sure we’re seeing a shift here. I agree with Jesse Singal that pediatric transitions will very soon be memory-holed as a thing that Absolutely Never Happened.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fed up with the glib explanations of the situation in Israel by NYT writer like Friedman and Stephens:

Hili: I’m thinking.
A: What about?
Hili: How to avoid primitive explanations of everything offered by media intellectuals.
In Polish:
Hili: Myślę,
Ja: Nad czym?
Hili: jak unikać prymitywnych wyjaśnień wszystkiego serwowanych przez gazetowych intelektualistów.

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From Facebook:

 

From Jesus of the Day:

From the Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

From Masih: a small but telling act of protest against the Iranian government:

A woman on the University of Pennsylvania swim team shows what they had to go through. The University offered them psychological counseling because they objected to undressing in front of a fully equipped male.

From Colin Wright via reader Barry: a sensible take on things, though some people absolutely need hormones and surgery.

From Simon, who says, “It hurts to watch this.”: Wrong hand, pal:

From Malcolm, an adorable and playful kitten:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: an Italian girl killed at Auschwitz:

Tweets from the ocularly-improved Dr. Cobb. First, don’t pet mooses (meese?):

I could use one of these!

A case of Batesian mimicy: an innocuous moth mimicking a wasp to deter predators (that’s teleological language, of course; to be more accurate: “individuals in the ancestral moth lineage that resembled wasps more closely had a higher chance of leaving their genes.”

Friday: Hili dialogue

July 28, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end of the work week: Friday, July 28, 2023. Today we meet with Facilities and see if they’ll meet their promise of having Botany Pond up and running by October.  It’s National Milk Chocolate Day, celebrating a relatively recent invention:

The first use of the term “milk chocolate” was for a beverage brought to London from Jamaica in 1687, but it was not until the Swiss inventor Daniel Peter successfully combined cocoa and condensed milk in 1875 that the milk chocolate bar was invented.

In the EU, anything labeled “milk chocolate” must have at least 35% dry cocoa solids.  In the U.S., it must have at least 10% by weight of chocolate liquor (not boozy!)

It’s also National Soccer Day, World Hepatitis Day, World Nature Conservation Day, National Hamburger Day, and Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval, commemorating the explulsion of the Acadians from Canada. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*What’s going on with the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not very clear, but it seems as if a big advance isn’t happening.

 Fierce fighting raged Thursday in southeastern Ukraine, where a Western official said Kyiv has launched a major push and Russian President Vladimir Putin said “hostilities have intensified significantly.”

Battles in recent weeks have taken place on multiple points along the over 1,000-kilometer (over 600-mile) front line as Ukraine wages a counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons and Western-trained troops against Russian forces who invaded 17 months ago.

Putin praised the “heroism” with which Russian soldiers were repelling attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region of the southeast, claiming Moscow’s troops not only destroyed Ukraine’s military equipment but also inflicted heavy losses to Kyiv’s forces.

. . .Ukrainian troops have made only incremental gains since launching a counteroffensive in early June, and Putin has repeatedly claimed Ukraine has suffered heavy losses, without offering evidence.

Ukraine has committed thousands of troops in the region in recent days, according to a Western official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.

It was unclear how the current effort differs from previous ones by the Ukrainian military to break through deeply entrenched Russian defenses. The Russian army has set up vast minefields to stymie Ukrainian advances and used combat aircraft and loitering munitions to strike Ukrainian armor and artillery.

Ukrainian authorities have kept operational details of the counteroffensive under wraps, and they have released scant information about its progress.

That is all ye know on earth, but less than we need to know. So many lives for so little land taken back by Ukraine: it reminds me of World War I.

*Trump’s lawyers met yesterday with the special counsel in charge of investigating the insurrection and Trump’s apparent attempts to overturn the election.

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump met on Thursday with officials in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, as federal prosecutors edged closer toward bringing an indictment against Mr. Trump in connection with his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to three people familiar with the matter.

It was not immediately clear what subjects were discussed at the meeting or if Mr. Smith took part. But similar gatherings are often used by defense lawyers as a last-ditch effort to argue against charges being filed or to convey their version of the facts and the law.

On Thursday, the prosecutors were said to have listened courteously — without signaling their intentions beyond what they had conveyed in an earlier letter to the former president — as Mr. Trump’s lawyers made their arguments.

In a post following the meeting on his social media site, Mr. Trump said that his lawyers had “a productive meeting” with the prosecutors. He said they had explained to Mr. Smith’s team that “I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an indictment of me would only further destroy our country.”

As if that’s going to convince the prosecutors! But wait! There’s more!

The former president’s legal team — including Todd Blanche and a newly hired lawyer, John Lauro — has been on high alert since last week, when prosecutors working for the special counsel sent Mr. Trump a so-called target letter in the election interference case. It was the clearest signal that charges could be coming.

The letter described three potential counts that Mr. Trump could face: conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding and a Reconstruction-era civil rights charge that makes it a crime to threaten or intimidate anyone in the “free exercise or enjoyment” of any right or privilege provided by the Constitution or by federal law.

And don’t forget that concurrent with this is an indictment already handed down by the Justice Department charging Trump with holding onto 31 classified documents after he left office. Still, most readers here seem to think that Trump will never see jail time. Has anyone changed their mind?

*In a press conference Wednesday, Mitch McConnell froze, speechless, for 19 seconds. (Video below.) The Guardian reports that he’s had other episodes that suggest he’s not in a good way.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, suffered an initially unreported fall earlier this month, before a very public health scare this week revived questions about his age and fitness.

On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters at the US Capitol, the 81-year-old appeared to freeze for nearly 20 seconds. Another Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, a doctor, then escorted his leader away from the cameras.

Only four months ago, McConnell, who suffered from polio as a child, affecting his gait, fell and sustained a concussion, leading to a prolonged absence from Capitol Hill.

Here’s the video: 19 seconds of silence. Clearly something’s going on and one Twitterite thinks McConnell’s having a seizure.

More:

On Wednesday, he returned to work and told reporters he was “fine” shortly after his incident. An aide told reporters McConnell “felt lightheaded and stepped away for a moment. He came back to handle Q and A.”

But NBC News then reported that McConnell also tripped and fell earlier this month, suffering a “face plant” while disembarking a plane at Reagan airport, according to an anonymous witness.

Another source told NBC McConnell now uses a wheelchair as a precaution in crowded airports. McConnell did not comment on the NBC report.

I don’t wish illness on anyone, including the tortoisian and conservative McConnell, but he really should retire.

*In an article that’s largely unreadable because of the surfeit of Māori words, the New Zealand Herald (the country’s main newspaper) announces a new initiative to legally protect Māori ‘treasures’ as well as well as mātauranga Māori (Māori “ways of knowing”)

Kaikohe’s Kohewhata Marae buzzed at the weekend as a decades-old challenge to the Crown marked an exciting step forward.

Political leaders, kaitiaki (guardians) and revered kaumātua of te ao Māori (the Māori world) gathered for the launch of Tiaki Taonga, a movement to foster understanding and engagement with the kaupapa of taonga (treasures) and protection of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge).

“I think today represents the beginning of the beginning,” said Te Rarawa’s Haami Piripi on Saturday.

“What today is doing is reinvigorating people’s interest [in Wai 262], regenerating their involvement and reactivating their inspiration.”

The movement, which was launched by Wai 262 – known as the flora, fauna and intellectual property rights claim – will also become the legislative framework which was sought through the claim made to Waitangi Tribunal in 1991.

. . .Waitai said Tiaki Taonga was about “constitutional change to fully recognise kaitiakitanga of taonga and mātauranga by Māori, for Māori”.

“Tikanga will be recognised by ture [law] so, in the future, when the use of taonga and mātauranga Māori are being considered, te iwi Māori will have exclusive authority over their use as guaranteed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and New Zealand law.”

The movement brings to life the Kanohi Ora engagements, which form an important stage in the Wai 262 constitutional development.

As the Kanohi Ora engagements take place throughout Aotearoa, input by iwi Māori will be sought through a serious of wānanga (seminars) for whānau, hapū and iwi to inform the protection framework.

“By listening to whānau, and understanding their shared experiences and opinions, we will help to build a framework informed by those who need this legislation to protect their taonga,” said Waitai, who’s also executive director of the Ngāti Kuri Iwi Trust Board.

Got that? (Remember, this is NZ’s most widely read newspaper. But what bothers me most is the claim that the Māori “way of knowing” was all-encompassing:

Alongside wānanga, technicians and practitioners are working simultaneously to build the world-first legislation on indigenous IP (intellectual property) protection.

Piripi, who is a Wai 262 Taumata Whakapūmau member, emphasised the presence of Māori knowledge, rights and interest prior to the arrival of Europeans.

“We had, at that time, an answer to everything, every problem. Every solution was in our paradigm, our Māori worldview.”

“I think Māori New Zealanders, and certainly non-Māori New Zealanders today, are failing to recognise that.”

“They’re failing to recognise the integrity of our rock of culture, and our expanse of knowledge.”

Piripi said the Government had a duty – for the country’s benefit – to protect the monumental knowledge held.

“The fact that we had our own explanation of the universe is a big deal,” he said.

I’m not sure what indigenous intellectual property involves, nor do they explain, but the claim that [the Māori] “had, at that time, an answer to everything, every problem. Every solution was in our paradigm, our Māori worldview” is a bogus claim. They didn’t know what matter was made of, the laws of physics, or anything about antibiotics or modern medicine. It may be a big deal that the Māori “had our own explanation of the universe”, but it wasn’t a thoroughly correct explanation of the Universe. (It had a lot of religion and superstition.) You are entitled to your own opinions, as someone said, but not your own facts.

I’m allowed to criticize this kind of pilpul because I’m both retired and not a Kiwi; otherwise I’d be in danger of losing my job.

*Conservative Christopher Rufo is much despised because of his work against DEI programs and the teaching of CRT in Florida, but he has a few sensible things to say in a NYT op-ed, “Diversity programs miss the point of a liberal college education.”

This appears to be a binary left-right conflict. The right sees the abolition of D.E.I. as a step toward meritocracy, while the left sees it as an attack on minority rights. But moving beyond reflexive partisanship, there is a strong argument for abolishing D.E.I. programs on liberal grounds.

. . .The most significant question looming over this debate is one that, unfortunately, has rarely been posed by either critics or supporters of D.E.I. programs: What is the purpose of a university? For most of the classical liberal tradition, the purpose of the university was to produce scholarship in pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful. The university was conceived as a home for a community of scholars who pursued a variety of disciplines, but were united in a shared commitment to inquiry, research and debate, all directed toward the pursuit of the highest good, rather than the immediate interests of partisan politics.

Today, many universities have consciously or unconsciously abandoned that mission and replaced it with the pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion. Many D.E.I. programs seem to be predicated on a view radically different from the liberal tradition: namely, that the university is not merely a home for the discovery of knowledge, but also a vehicle for activism, liberation and social change.

Note that DEI programs usually embody specific ideologies that are not to be questioned, and, in my view, violate the First Amendment if not academic freedom. Rufo goes through a lot of what he found in Florida, but I want to highlight his shoutout to the Kalven Report, the University of Chicago’s almost unique policy of institutional neutrality:

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases, there is more need than ever for clear policies. The application of the Kalven principles, in particular, will help depolarize academic institutions and relieve university administrators of the constant pressure to respond to every political controversy. Taken together, these policies will ultimately help public universities restore their reputation as stewards of scholarship, rather than political partisans.

These two proposals would honor the principles of liberal education, encourage a culture of open debate and cultivate a “community of scholars” with a wide diversity of opinions and a shared commitment to truth — something that both liberals and conservatives can and should support.

The U.S. team tied Netherlands 1-1 in the Women’s World Cup. Here are the hightlights, and the U.S. is still at the top of group E. If the U.S. loses against Portugal next week, they’re out of contention, though.  The tournament is in New Zealand

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cats are having a chinwag:

Szaron: What do you see there?
Hili: Deeper shade.
In Polish:
Szaron: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Głębszy cień.

And here is Baby Kulka:

And it’s a special day in Dobrzyn, for it’s the tenth anniversary of Listy z Naszego Sadu (Andrzej and Malgorzata’s website, “Letters from our orchard.” Malgorzata said this:

There is an article with a picture of you and Hili. It’s Andrzej’s article about 10 years of Listy. He decided that your picture with our Editor-in-Chief is the best illustration of the story.
The article is here, and here’s a partial English translation. I’m a proud boy! (Note that I’m wearing my Hili shirt.)

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From Merilee:

From Nicole:

From The Absurd Sign Project:

From Masih, not a hijab in sight! In Tehran!

 

From Simon. Brian Cox retains a healthy skepticism towards the “UFOs” investigated by the government:

From Barry, who calls this “Marilyn Monrowl”:

From Malcolm. Hey, you guys get a room!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a three-year-old gassed upon arrival:

From Dr. Cobb, now out of cataract surgery and delighted with the results.  The first tweet is about the possibility that Gregor Mendel “cooked” his genetic data (“pea-hacking,” as one wag said). See the thread for further discussion:

Beautiful chicks. Sound up, please:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

July 27, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday,  July 27, 2023, and National Scotch Day. Make mine a:

It’s also National Chicken Fingers Day (??), National Chili Dog Day, National Refreshment Day, National Crème Brûlée Day, and José Celso Barbosa Day in Puerto Rico.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In an ironic act of recursion, the Israeli Supreme Court will hear arguments about the new law that curbs their own authority.

Israel’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that it would begin in September to review a contentious new law that diminishes the court’s own role, setting the stage for a constitutional crisis and renewed social turmoil if the judges then overturn the legislation.

The decision sets up a looming clash between the executive branch of government and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court must now decide whether to reassert its dominance over Prime Minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s government — or it must accept the move to reduce its own power.

Either conclusion is likely to provoke widespread anger, since the issue has become a proxy for a much broader battle over Israel’s character.

The court’s announcement came in response to the decision on Monday, by Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, to pass a deeply divisive bill that stops the court from overruling government decisions with the legal standard of “reasonableness.” The government said the term, never defined in a statute, was too subjective and gave unelected judges too much leeway to overrule elected lawmakers.

. . .on Wednesday afternoon, the court announced on its website that it would hear two of the petitions in September. An exact date has yet to be set, and the court did not announce which of its 15 judges would hear the petitions or how long the process would last. The court often takes weeks if not months to reach a decision.

The court has not issued an injunction barring the law from coming into effect, as some opponents had hoped. The hearing’s date will be set in the coming days, a Supreme Court spokesman said.

If the court strikes down the law, Mr. Netanyahu’s government will be forced to decide whether to respect the decision of an institution that it is trying to restrain. And should the government reject the court’s ruling, Israel’s other key institutions — its military, police, civil service and lower courts — will in turn need to decide whether to obey the country’s executive or judicial branch.

I’m wondering why more people don’t object to the Court using the term “reasonableness”, which needn’t be explained, to overturn laws and ministerial appointments. It’s as if the Supreme Court of the U.S., without a suit being brought, could strike down any law it wanted because it was “unreasonable”—without giving a written explanation. I’m wondering if this fracas (and the discussion has been going on for three decades) wouldn’t be taking place if the Prime Minister wasn’t perceived as right wing.

But get a load of this: as Adam Shinar says in a NYT op-ed:

As the bill cleared Parliament 64-0 — all 56 opposition members walked out to boycott the vote — petitions challenging the legislation were quickly submitted to the Supreme Court in the hope that it would strike down the new law. That hope, however, may be dashed.

All the proposed components of the overhaul — a concerted effort to entrench the government’s hold on power — are amendments to the Basic Laws, the body of legislation that serves as Israel’s de facto constitution. The Supreme Court striking down an amendment to a Basic Law is tantamount to accepting the idea of an “unconstitutional constitutional amendment”: theoretically possible, but incredibly unlikely. It’s true the court has declared it has the power to invalidate amendments to the Basic Laws, but only on very narrow grounds, such as denial of the identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Well, what do I know? I’m not even sure, after making inquiries, whether that last contention about the unlikelihood of the court overruling the new laws is even accurate.

*Hunter Biden’s plea deal with the government, in which he’d plea guilty to tax charges and the government would drop gun charges, is now in jeopardy.

A federal judge on Wednesday delayed accepting a plea deal for President Biden’s son Hunter, saying the terms as written by prosecutors and defense lawyers may not be constitutional, but also signaling the agreement could be approved in the future.

The deal that had been struck in June began to unravel near the start of the three-hour hearing. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked a series of questions that revealed a disagreement between federal prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers over whether the agreement — in which he would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and likely avoid jail time — would protect him from the possibility of additional criminal charges.

While the judge pressed the prosecutors and defense attorneys to resolve the immunity issues, she also expressed concern that they had crafted a two-step plea deal in which some key features may not be reviewable by the court.

The sides had proposed that Biden would plead guilty to the tax charges in a fairly standard agreement that requires the judge’s approval. Separately, they crafted a “diversion agreement” with Biden’s attorneys in which the president’s son would admit to wrongdoing in the gun case and agree to certain conditions, including not purchasing a firearm and not using drugs, to avoid actually being charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

The rub is that this second agreement is highly aberrant and may be unconstitutional:

A provision of the gun diversion agreement said that if Biden failed to remain drug free and meet other conditions for the next two years, the judge would determine whether he had broken the terms of the deal and tell prosecutors they could revive the gun charge against him.

But Noreika questioned whether she could lawfully do that, given that she is not a party to the diversion agreement and judges generally are not responsible for pursuing criminal charges.

It’s still possible, however, that this could still be fixed without the President’s son going to jail.

*A whistleblower has testified before Congress that the government has acquired several specimens of unidentified flying objects and has been “reverse engineering them.” These aren’t necessarily alien spacecraft; they could be enemy vehicles from Earth.

The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.

Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.

At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”

I do wonder (haven’t you?) whether there is an excessive amount of secrecy attending these sightings. Perhaps, if they’re analyzing our enemies’ secret airplanes, they want to keep it to themselves.

*CNN summarizes recent doings in the Ukraine-Russia war; apparently Ukraine has made some gains, but we keep hearing that, and the gains are always small. Here are a few items:

  • Heavy fighting continues in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, especially around the village of Robotyne, where Ukrainian forces have been trying to break through heavily mined Russian defensive lines, according to Ukrainian and Russian accounts.

    “We came close to Robotyne. Have not yet entered the settlement itself. Fighting continues in trench positions in front of Robotyne,” Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which is involved in the offensive, told CNN.

    Ukrainian forces are also “gradually advancing” in the Melitopol and Berdiansk directions, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said. Farther east, Ukraine is “making progress” and consolidating its positions in the area of Staromaiorske, she added.

    Ukrainian forces have made only modest territorial advances in the south since the counteroffensive began at the end of May.

  • The Ukrainian Air Force has issued a warning that powerful Russian Kinzhal missiles have been fired toward the Khmelnytskyi and Kirovohrad regions in western Ukraine, as well as at the capital of Kyiv.

    Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said the latest volley involved a variety of types of missiles launched from different areas and changing direction.

    Explosions have been reported in the western Khmelnytskyi region in Ukraine, hours after the Ukrainian Air Force had warned that Russian strategic bombers were airborne.

  • More than 40 Ukrainian companies have contracts to develop drones for use in the war against Russia, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

    Shmyhal appeared at a forum marking the first anniversary of the “Army of Drones” project that brought together Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers. The prime minister said the production of UAVs has since increased tenfold.

    Both surveillance and attack drones have played a critical role for both sides in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, assisting with targeting enemy weapons, tracking the movement of units and taking out armor.

    Shmyhal said the Ukrainian government has allocated about $1 billion this year for investing in Ukrainian UAV manufacturers.

And more:

  • SBU says it carried out October attack on Crimea bridge: The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has acknowledged its involvement in the attack on the Crimean bridge in October last year. “SBU officers have been destroying the enemy in the hottest spots and doing everything to liberate our land as soon as possible. The destruction of the Crimean bridge is one of our achievements,” said SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk.\

 

  • Kyiv denies losses in northeast: The Ukrainian military has denied the loss of three settlements in the northeastern part of the country, near Kupyansk. The denial came after Russian officials and Ukrainian sources reported Moscow’s troops had forced Kyiv’s forces to retreat several kilometers, abandoning three small settlements in the process.

*Singapore has just hanged a man for drug trafficking, and is about to hang a woman for the same offense. You probably know that the country has draconian rules for trafficking, with as little as a pound of marijuana bringing you a mandatory death sentence. Look at this!

More adventurous Singaporeans might think that the laws under the MDA only apply within Singapore, and that they can get away scot-free by consuming drugs overseas. This cannot be further from the truth.

Under section 8A of the MDA, a Singapore citizen or permanent resident who consumes drugs abroad will be dealt with as if that offence had been committed within Singapore and punished accordingly.

From the CNN report:

Singapore executed a man Wednesday for drug trafficking and is set to hang a woman Friday — the first in 19 years — prompting renewed calls for a halt to capital punishment.

Mohammed Aziz Hussain, 56, was hanged at Singapore’s Changi Prison and has been buried, said activist Kirsten Han of Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. A citizen of the city-state, he was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking around 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of heroin, Han said.

Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean woman, is due to be hanged Friday after she was convicted and sentenced in 2018 for trafficking around 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of heroin, the group and other human rights organizations said. Han said the last woman known to have been hanged in Singapore was 36-year-old hairdresser Yen May Woen, also for drug trafficking, in 2004.

. . .If Djamani’s is executed as planned, Singapore will have executed 15 people for drug offences since it resumed hangings in March 2022, an average of one execution every month, Transformative Justice Collective, Amnesty International and seven other groups said in a joint statement.

Anyone — citizens and foreigners alike — convicted of trafficking more than 500 grams (17.64 ounces) of cannabis and 15 grams (0.53 ounces) of heroin faces the mandatory death penalty.

Singapore justifies this capital punishment because it’s near the “Golden Triangle,” an area of drug trafficking.  But they haven’t shown that the death penalty is a deterrent. In fact,  they’ve had about one execution per month for drug crimes since March of last year.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is jesting:

A: Where are you running to?
Hili: To the computer.
A: What for?
Hili: I have to ask AI where the source of the truth is.
In Polish:
Ja: Dokąd biegniesz?
Hili: Do komputera.
Ja: Po co?
Hili: Muszę zapytać A.I. gdzie jest źródło prawdy.

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

From Divy:

A B. Kliban cartoon from Stash Krod:

From Thomas:

From Masih; another Iranian protestor loses an eye:

I found this one, and the peacock looks as if it’s breathing fire:

From Malcolm, three examples of superb veiled sculpture:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 7-year-old girl gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, getting new eye lenses (cataract operation). His comment on this one: “One of the most bizarre pretexts for a study I have ever seen. The real question of course is HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK YOUR EARS WEIGH?”  I don’t think he meant “ears.”

A FORTY POUND CAT!

Wigged-out animals:

 

 

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 24, 2023 • 6:45 am

Posting may be  light for a while as my insomnia has returned big time and I’m barely sentient.  It’s persistent, but I do have help, so readers need not bother suggesting cures.

Welcome to the top o’ the work week: Monday, July 24, 2023, and National Tequila Day, celebrating a fine tipple.  This bottle costs $2500!

It’s also Amelia Earhart Day (she was born on this day in 1897), National Drive-Thru Day (I have never been to one–never!), National Tell an Old Joke Day, Pioneer Day in (Utah), and Simón Bolívar Day in (Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia); Bolivar was born on this day in 1783.

Her are several old Jewish jokes told by Steve Talmud. The first one is one of my very favorite (trigger warning: NSFW for several of these jokes!). That first one resonates with me because it exemplifies the character of Jews—the hallmark of the true Jewish joke.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Israel is tearing itself apart over a proposed revision of the judicial system by the Netanyahu government. Since the country doesn’t have a constitution, the judiciary now has the power to overturn any legislative action that it considers “unreasonable.”

When tens of thousands of Israelis marched up to Jerusalem this weekend to protest the far-right government’s plan to limit judicial power, many were driven by an urgent fear that the government is trying to steal the country that their parents and grandparents fought to build against the odds.

“It’s really a feeling of looting, as if the country is their spoils and everything is theirs for the taking,” said Mira Lapidot, 52, a museum curator from Tel Aviv. This desperate march, in the middle of a heat wave, over the 2,400-foot mountains that lead to Jerusalem, was “a last chance to stop it.”

The government’s supporters — many from more nationalist and religious backgrounds — largely believe the opposite: that the country is being stolen by a political opposition that has refused to accept its losses, not only in a series of democratic elections but also through sweeping demographic and cultural changes that have challenged its once-dominant vision of the country.

The issue:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is set to pass a law on Monday that will limit the ways in which the Supreme Court can overrule the government. Its plan has become a proxy for a broader emotional and even existential battle about the nature of the Israeli state, who controls it and who shapes its future.

. . .The law that comes up for a final vote on Monday is significant in and of itself: It would bar the court from using the contentious legal standard of “reasonableness” to block government decisions, giving ministers greater leeway to act without judicial oversight.

The government says the change would enhance democracy by making elected lawmakers freer to enact what voters chose them to do. The opposition insists it would damage democracy by removing a key check on government overreach, paving the way for the governing coalition — the most conservative and nationalist in Israel’s history — to create a more authoritarian and less pluralist society.

But the fly in the ointment is the standard of “reasonableness”, which seems arbitrary, especially in light of the fact that there’s no constitution. I have no dog in this fight, and we’ll see what happens today.

In the meantime, Netanyahu was taken to the hospital on Sunday to have a pacemaker implanted.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was rushed to the hospital early Sunday for surgery to implant a pacemaker, casting new uncertainty over his government’s deeply contentious plan to pass a law on Monday to limit judicial power.

Doctors at the Sheba Medical Center, east of Tel Aviv, said on Sunday morning that the unexpected procedure had been successful and that “the prime minister is doing very well.” But Mr. Netanyahu was expected to remain hospitalized until at least Monday, a spokesman for the hospital said.

*Things aren’t going that well for Ukraine in the war. First of all, the Russians are pounding the Black Sea port of Odessa with missiles after canceling its grain-shipping deal with Ukraine.

Russia struck the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa on Sunday, keeping up a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week. At least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in the early morning attack, officials said.

. . . . Russia has been launching repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal on Monday amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories.

. . .UNESCO strongly condemned the attack on the cathedral and other heritage sites and said it will send a mission in coming days to assess damage. Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year, and the agency said the Russian attacks contradict Moscow’s pledge to take precautious to spare World Heritage sites in Ukraine.

“This outrageous destruction marks an escalation of violence against the cultural heritage of Ukraine. I strongly condemn this attack against culture, and I urge the Russian Federation to take meaningful action to comply with its obligations under international law,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.

Regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said that six residential buildings were destroyed by the strikes.

And the WSJ reports that Ukraine’s “spring offensive” has been hampered by lack of weaponry and trained soldiers.

When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.

They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum.

As the likelihood of any large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians this year dims, it raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war—one that would require a huge new infusion of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.

As the United States becomes more cautious, particularly with a Presidential election approaching Europe, in contrast, is more gung-ho, but largely powerless:

The American hesitation contrasts with shifting views in Europe, where more leaders over recent months have come to believe that Ukraine must prevail in the conflict—and Russia must lose—to ensure the continent’s security.

But European militaries lack sufficient resources to supply Ukraine with all it needs to eject Moscow’s armies from the roughly 20% of the country that they control. European leaders are also unlikely to significantly increase support to Kyiv if they sense U.S. reluctance, Western diplomats say.

*I reached my limit not long ago when I bought a $2 baguette at a bakery and was asked, when paying with my card, whether I’d like to leave a tip. And this is from a business that boasts about how well it pays its employees. Yes, all Americans have noticed the increased and inappropriate importuning for tips, a behavior highlighted in the WSJ’s article, “Why businesses can’t stop asking for tips.”

American businesses have gotten hooked on tipping.

Tip requests have spread far beyond the restaurants and bars that have long relied on them to supplement employee wages. Juice shops, appliance-repair firms and even plant stores are among the service businesses now asking customers to hand over some extra money to their workers.

“The U.S. economy is more tip-reliant than it’s ever been,” said Scheherezade Rehman, an economist and professor of international finance at George Washington University. “But there’s a growing sense that these requests are getting out of control and that corporate America is dumping the responsibility for employee pay onto the customer.”

Consumers seeing tip prompts at every turn say they are overwhelmed—and that worker wages should be business owners’ responsibility, not theirs.

I’ll tip at restaurants, take-out meals from restaurants, but I won’t be guilt-tripped into tipping when I buy bread or groceries. You can believe that a 50% increase in the price of bread at a bakery (the Medici, by the way) doesn’t translate into a 50% increase in pay for the workers. .

*The WaPo has a fascinating article about an ancient winery, “Roman ruins reveal how emperors used winemaking in an ancient power play.“

 Fights involving exotic cats, chariot races, gladiatorial battles: At the banquets of ancient Rome, there was no skimping on dinnertime entertainment. And, according to a recent study, sport for elite guests included something rarer, too: winemaking as a form of theater.

The findings, published in the journal Antiquity, describe how the Villa of the Quintilii used alcohol production for show in what is now believed to be the among the most lavish wineries in the ancient world. This makes the 2nd-century villa only the second known to have used wine in this way, said lead study author Emlyn Dodd, a lecturer in classical studies at the University of London.

. . .On the basis of these clues, archaeologists think the Quintilii served as a kind of “imperial toy,” said Alice Poletto, a Rome fellow at the British School at Rome who was not involved in the research.

The experts think enslaved people would have pounded grapes in the winery’s treading area, most likely slipping about on the luxurious red marble while doing so, to the gruesome delight of sloshed guests. Attendees from the era’s highest social circles would look on as the roughage of crushed grapes, or must, made its way down to mechanical presses, which would send juice gushing through fountains set in the courtyard wall and pouring from open channels into dolia, or ceramic storage jars, in the ground to collect the spoils.

By Poletto’s estimations, the dining complex could seat 25 to 27 guests, with the winemaking spectacle taking place perhaps twice a year as “a unique opportunity and an absolutely high honor that served not only as a reward to the invitees, but also, in my opinion, a way for the emperor to highlight [and] reinforce his power.”

What I’d like to know is what the wine tasted like!

*The NYT has a bird-song quiz: “Can you understand bird? Test your recognition of calls and songs.” You’re given five identified birds, and one call from each. Your job is to interpret what that call is saying.  Then you’re given two other questions asking you to distinguish a bird call from either a frog or a car alarm.

The intro:

Ornithologists have made progress in understanding the rich variety of ways in which birds converse, thanks in part to large and growing databases of bird calls such as one from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which includes millions of recordings captured by citizen scientists.

This summer the New York Times birding project is encouraging readers to try birding by ear. So here’s a quick tour of the avian soundscape.

Here’s one example:

I got five of them, but that’s pure dumb luck.  Try your hand; it’ll take only two minutes. And post your results below.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, guests from Warsaw visited Dobrzyn yesterday. Szaron and Hili have messed up the bed!

A: Guests are coming, the bed must be made.
Hili: Close the door and they will not see it.
In Polish:
Ja: Goście przychodzą, trzeba łóżko posłać.
Hili: Przymknij drzwi to nie będą widzieli.

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

From Nicole:

From Jenny:

From Facebook:

From Maish. Ceiling Cat bless the brave women of Iran:

From Malcolm, a real heartwarmer (sound up):

From Barry (sound up):

I found this one. Separation of church and state throughout the world:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 12-year-old girl gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Matthew. Look at this nice man!

Here’s a fly that’s eager to mate!

I could use these for my itchy back:

x

 

 

 

Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 23, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sabbath for Christian cats: Sunday, July 23, 2023, and a bland day, too, since it’s National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, celebrating a food that is, like pancakes, best topped with other stuff:

It’s also National Pecan Sandies Day (an okay but not great cookie), SAT Math Day (a vanishing test), National Pink Day (just in time for the Barbie movie), Pink Flamingo Day (ditto), United Nations Public Service Day, and National Hydration Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*Over at the NYT, columnist Michelle Goldberg discusses the UK “disaster that nobody wants to talk about.” Can you guess what it is?

There’s a growing understanding in Britain that the country’s vote to quit the European Union, a decisive moment in the international rise of reactionary populism, was a grave error.

Just as critics predicted, Brexit has led to inflation, labor shortages, business closures and travel snafus. It has created supply chain problems that put the future of British car manufacturing in danger. Brexit has, in many cases, turned travel between Europe and the U.K. into a punishing ordeal, as I learned recently, spending hours in a chaotic passport control line when taking the train from Paris to London. British musicians are finding it hard to tour in Europe because of the costs and red tape associated with moving both people and equipment across borders, which Elton John called “crucifying.”

According to the U.K.’s Office for Budget and Responsibility, leaving the E.U. has shaved 4 percent off Britain’s gross domestic product. The damage to Britain’s economy, the O.B.R.’s chairman has said, is of the same “magnitude” as that from the Covid pandemic.

All this pain and hassle has created an anti-Brexit majority in Britain. According to a YouGov poll released this week, 57 percent of Britons say the country was wrong to vote to leave the E.U., and a slight majority wants to rejoin it. Even Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party sometimes known as “Mr. Brexit,” told the BBC in May, “Brexit has failed.”

Still, he argues that without facing the harm that Brexit has caused, the country can’t move forward: “Unless you can diagnose what the problem is, how can there be a prognosis?” Britain is not, at least in the near term, going to rejoin the E.U. But both Khan and Ellwood argue that it can still forge closer trade and immigration ties than it has now, and perhaps eventually return to the European single market, the trade agreement encompassing the E.U. countries, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

One silver lining to Brexit is that it offers a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe. After Britain voted to leave the E.U. in 2016, there’s been fear, among some who care about the European project, that France or Italy could be next. But as The Guardian reported, as of January, support for leaving the E.U. has declined in every member state for which data is available.

I’m afraid that the UK screwed up badly, and now it’s too late to fix it. Every one of my British friends saw this happening, but, as Beethoven said when they delivered to him a case of Rhine wine on his deathbed, “Pity, pity. . . too late.”

*You might have heard that, at the orders of Governor Greg Abbott, Texas built a floating barrier made of buoys in the middle of the Rio Grande River, a barrier designed to prevent immigrants from Mexico crossing the river. Here’s what it looks like:

A close-up:

Now the Justice Department plans to sue Texas over the barrier.

The Justice Department told Texas Thursday that it intends to file legal action against the placement of floating barriers in the Rio Grande as part of the state’s operation along the Texas-Mexico border, according to sources familiar and a letter obtained by CNN.

The Justice Department sent the letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Thursday, according to the letter, though there is time for the state to respond.

“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” the letter stated, citing a clause in the law that “prohibits the creation of any obstruction to the navigable capacity of waters of the United States, and further prohibits building any structure in such waters without authorization from the United States Army Corps of Engineers (“Corps”).”

This is separate from the ongoing assessment of mistreatment of migrants, which the Justice Department described as “troubling reports.”

“Texas has the sovereign authority to defend our border, under the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution,” Abbott said on Twitter. “We have sent the Biden Administration numerous letters detailing our authority, including the one I hand-delivered to President Biden earlier this year.”

. . .The news comes as more than 80 Democratic US lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden Friday urging him to investigate Abbott’s “dangerous and cruel actions” on the southern border after a Texas state trooper blew the whistle regarding alleged inhumane treatment of migrants and Mexico’s top diplomat complained to Washington about Texas breaking two international treaties.

“We write to express our profound alarm over border policies instituted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott that are putting asylum-seekers at serious risk of injury and death, interfering with federal immigration enforcement, infringing on private property rights, and violating U.S. treaty commitments with Mexico,” the letter states.

I too oppose this unilateral move by Texas, but have to add that people seeking legal asylum shouldn’t be trying to cross the Rio Grade. It’s dangerous, too: I once swam the Rio Grande to Mexico when visiting Big Bend National Park, just to say I’d swum to Mexico (there were huge cliffs on the Mexican side that prevented surreptitious immigration, but the current was so swift that I had a lot of trouble swimming back and feared I’d drown.

*From the WaPo, which raises a very serious issue: “Ukraine is now the world’s most mined country. It will take decades to make it safe.”

In a year and a half of conflict, land mines — along with unexploded bombs, artillery shells and other deadly byproducts of war — have contaminated a swath of Ukraine roughly the size of Florida or Uruguay. It has become the world’s most mined country.

The transformation of Ukraine’s heartland into patches of wasteland riddled with danger is a long-term calamity on a scale that ordnance experts say has rarely been seen, and that could take hundreds of years and billions of dollars to undo.

Efforts to clear the hazards, known as unexploded ordnance, along with those to measure the full extent of the problem, can only proceed so far given that the conflict is still underway. But data collected by Ukraine’s government and independent humanitarian mine clearance groups tells a stark story.

“The sheer quantity of ordnance in Ukraine is just unprecedented in the last 30 years. There’s nothing like it,” said Greg Crowther, the director of programs for the Mines Advisory Group, a British charity that works to clear mines and unexploded ordnance internationally.

And that’s all ye need to know. If the war ever is settled, we’ll hear sporadically about Ukrainian civilians getting blown up by walking on unexploded mines. (Remember that live mines was Princess Diana’s big issue.)

*More depressing news from the WSJ: “Biden goes all in on Bidenomics. Voters aren’t buying it.”

President Biden stood at the lectern of a shipyard here with a familiar pitch as he seeks a second White House term: The economy remains strong.

“It’s not an accident, it’s my economic plan in action,” Biden told a crowd of mostly union workers Thursday at the latest stop on his nationwide record-burnishing tour. “Together, we’re transforming the country.”

But many voters aren’t buying it. They say they haven’t felt the impact of legislation that’s the centerpiece of Biden’s campaign, and they cite what may be his main albatross—inflation. High prices have turned economic issues that could’ve been a tailwind for his re-election into a headwind.

. . .That hesitation about Biden’s age and record explains why the incumbent is essentially tied in most polls with Trump, who remains unpopular and faces multiple criminal indictments, and why some Democrats worry a third-party ticket could attract enough swing votes to tip the election to the GOP.

Recent polls also show a disconnect between a buoyant labor market, which added 1.67 million jobs this year through June, and how voters feel about the economy. Robust consumer spending, inflation declining from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3% a year later and a stabilizing housing market have done little to move public perception on an issue that often ranks as a top priority for Americans at the ballot box.

Polls show that Biden get low ratings for his handling of economic issues, which matches his ever-slipping ratings overall. Here’s the WSJ’s chart of his approval ratings since he took office. OY! Make no mistake about it: if he’s the candidate I’ll vote for him, but I won’t be elated the way I was voting for Obama. Yes, Buden’s done a good job, but he’s losing it, and visibly so.

*The Screen Actors’ Guild and the Writer’s Guild of America are on strike, so nothing’s getting done insofar as new television shows or movies being made. One of the big issues at stake is AI. What’s going on with that? The AP tells you “what you need to know”.

As the technology to create without creators emerges, star actors fear they will lose control of their lucrative likenesses. Unknown actors fear they’ll be replaced altogether. Writers fear they’ll have to share credit or lose credit to machines.

The proposed contracts that led to both strikes last only three years. Even at the seeming breakneck pace at which AI is moving, it’s very unlikely there would be any widespread displacement of writers or actors in that time. But unions and employers know that ground given on an issue in one contract can be hard to reclaim in the next.

Emerging versions of the tech have already filtered into nearly every part of filmmaking, used to de-age actors like Harrison Ford in the latest “Indiana Jones” film or Mark Hamill in “The Mandalorian,” to generate the abstracted animated images of Samuel L. Jackson and a swirl of several aliens in the intro to “Secret Invasion” on Disney+, and to give recommendations on Netflix.

All sides in the strikes acknowledge that use of the technology even more broadly is inevitable. That’s why all are looking now to establish legal and creative control.

The thing is that the technology moves so fast we have NO idea how it will be used in movies and television in three years, and it’s hard to negotiate about issues that you can’t even envision.

Related lagniappe:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili once again feels neglected (she’s sitting on the outside windowsill and wants to be carried in; yes, you can’t just open the window, but have to go out and GET HER and carry her inside!

Hili: I’m looking at you and I can’t understand.
A: Understand what?
Hili: How long can you ignore me?
In Polish:
Hili: Patrzę na ciebie i nie mogę zrozumieć.
Ja: Czego?
Hili: Jak długo możesz mnie ignorować?

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

From Anna: a “make way for ducklings” sign she saw in the Netherlands. A rough translation is “Attention! Duck crossing”:

From Pbil:

A groaner from Nicole:

A tweet from Masih. The Farsi translation is this:

Mersedeh, a young woman who lost one of her eyes when shot by the oppressors’ shotguns, says, She does not regret going to the street even for a moment because she had a purpose for going. She now considers her lost eye a “badge of honor” for  herself. #Freedom_Life_Woman

From Ricky Gervais, who’s right:

From Simon, with an explanation below:

Simon Says:

It seems like they estimated the number of Purple Hearts that would be needed for an invasion of Japan in 1945, and went ahead and made a half million or so in preparation (estimate of deaths and injuries, since that’s what you get the medal for). Since Japan never got invaded they’ve been using up that stockpile and have given out 370k in the wars since and still have 120k on hand.

Really it’s a comment on whether Oppenheimer saved or destroyed lives.
You can see a summary here.  However, the numbers are slightly off as the total for Vietnam and Korea was around 370,000 and there have subsequently been about 40k more awarded (mostly Iraq and Afghanistan).

People are such sheep! These ones are letting themselves be DE-LINTED!

A retweet from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a groaner:

And then an octopus mimicking a dangerous animal. But what animal? Matthew answers:

Deano also answers the question in song:

Caturday: Hili dialogue

July 22, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, July 22, 2023, shabb0s for all cats of the Jewish persuasion and National Penuche Day, celebrating a fudge made without chocolate (it has brown sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla flavoring). It’s better than no fudge, but substitute maple syrup for the brown sugar:

Photo and recipe

It’s also Hammock Day, National Mango Day, National Day of the American Cowboy, Pi Approximation Day,(see also March 14), noting that today is 22/7, which approximates π, and, once again, Ratcatcher’s Day. also celebrated on June 26.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first. Tony Bennett, the last of the great popular singers of my parents’ era, died yesterday at 96.

Tony Bennett, a singer whose melodic clarity, jazz-influenced phrasing, audience-embracing persona and warm, deceptively simple interpretations of musical standards helped spread the American songbook around the world and won him generations of fans, died on Friday at his home of many decades in Manhattan. He was 96.

His publicist, Sylvia Weiner, announced his death.

Mr. Bennett learned he had Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, his wife, Susan Benedetto, told AARP The Magazine in February 2021. But he continued to perform and record despite his illness; his last public performance was in August 2021, when he appeared with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in a show titled “One Last Time.”

Mr. Bennett’s career of more than 70 years was remarkable not only for its longevity, but also for its consistency. In hundreds of concerts and club dates and more than 150 recordings, he devoted himself to preserving the classic American popular song, as written by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others.

From his initial success as a jazzy crooner who wowed audiences at the Paramount in Times Square in the early 1950s, through his late-in-life duets with younger singers gleaned from a range of genres and generations — most notably Lady Gaga, with whom he recorded albums in 2014 and 2021 and toured in 2015 — he was an active promoter of both songwriting and entertaining as timeless, noble pursuits.

RIP Tony. Here’s my second favorite Bennett song, “The Good Life” (1963). It was originally a French song:

. . . (originally “La Belle Vie” in French) a song by Sacha Distel with French lyrics by Jean Broussolle, published in 1962. It was featured in the movie The Seven Deadly Sins.

You can hear Distel’s French original here.

*Judge Aileen Cannon (a Trump appointee) didn’t do her mentor any favors when she set the date for his trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents set a trial date on Friday for May 2024, taking a middle position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Mr. Trump’s desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.

In her order, Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the trial was to be held in her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., a coastal city two-and-a-half hours north of Miami that will draw its jury pool from several counties that Mr. Trump won handily in his two previous presidential campaigns.

. . .The timing of the proceeding is more important in this case than in most criminal matters because Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and his legal obligations to be in court will intersect with his campaign schedule.

The date Judge Cannon chose to start the trial — May 20, 2024 — falls after the bulk of the primary contests. But it is less than two months before the start of the Republican National Convention in July and the formal start of the general election season.

. . . By scheduling the trial for the middle of the presidential campaign, Judge Cannon implicitly rejected another argument that Mr. Trump’s legal team had raised in court on Tuesday: that the former president could never get a fair jury during an election cycle because of what one of his lawyers, Christopher Kise, called “the extraordinary and unrelenting press coverage.”

Moving the trial after the election is what Trump really wanted, as if he happens to win (Ceiling Cat help us), it would almost render the trials moot. That’s the other argument: he couldn’t get a fair trial AFTER the election cycle!

*An atheist won a lawsuit against a West Virginia prison (h/t Tim):

A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled that the state corrections agency can’t force an incarcerated atheist and secular humanist to participate in religiously-affiliated programming to be eligible for parole.

In a sweeping 60-page decision issued Tuesday, Charleston-based US District Court Judge Joseph Goodwin said Saint Marys Correctional Center inmate Andrew Miller “easily meets his threshold burden of showing an impingement on his rights.’’

The state’s “unmitigated actions force Mr. Miller to choose between two distinct but equally irreparable injuries,’’ the judge wrote. “He can either submit to government coercion and engage in religious exercise at odds with his own beliefs, or remain incarcerated until at least April 2025.’’

Goodwin issued a preliminary injunction requiring West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials to remove completion of a state-run and federally funded residential substance abuse program from Miller’s parole eligibility requirements. The agency did not return a request for comment Thursday.

Miller filed suit in a federal district court in April, alleging the state is forcing Christianity on incarcerated people and has failed to accommodate repeated requests to honor his lack of belief in God.

This would seem to be a no-brainer: an arrant violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  Since this is a federal case, it could be appealed up to the Supreme Court, but it won’t. And seriously, how could they force religion on an atheist, regardless of how Catholic or conservative they are?

*Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish discusses Marty Peretz’s new memoir, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center. You may recall that Peretz was editor and publisher of The New Republic from 1974-2008, the period when most of my writing in the magazine appeared.  Sullivan’s connection with him is because Sully was the head editor from 1991-1996, a period when he published many of the articles that helped advance gay rights.

It’s an interesting read and a particularly good piece of writing (and a favorable review of the book) by Sullivan, who calls it “a candid snapshot of American political and cultural history: lively, literate and easy to read.:But two bits related to Judaism stuck out to me (Peretz was a big booster of Israel). Here, for example, is good writing:

I didn’t know what to expect with “Marty” either, and was still a bit baffled by him not being known at least as Mr Peretz. And when he showed up, he looked like someone I’d only ever seen in a Woody Allen movie: a huge rabbinical beard, a blousy shirt unbuttoned to near his navel, a Star of David necklace buried in chest hair, a gravelly voice and a mischievous grin. When he told me he was defending Israel at Oxford, I told him he was fucked, but not to worry. He’d lose the vote, but he should go down blazing anyway. Go for it, I advised. Fuck ‘em. (And in the end, in fact, his side won.)

. . . and this, which saddened me:

Although the far left regards [Peretz] now as some kind of reactionary, his liberal credentials, as you’re reminded here, are hard to impeach: working with Bayard Rustin preparing for the 1963 March of Washington, and then, with his second wife’s large fortune, financing and organizing the anti-Vietnam movement, pioneering the Eugene McCarthy campaign that caused LBJ to drop out of the race after New Hampshire, and trying to forge a synthesis of the civil rights and the anti-war movements by organizing the ill-fated National Conference for New Politics in 1968.

That year, of course, was the critical moment when the old Jewish-black Democratic coalition fell apart, and Marty’s world shifted. Planning for the conference was held at Marty’s rented place in Wellfleet:

One night, after most people had gone back to their motels, I came downstairs to find blacks and whites together on my porch singing anti-Semitic songs about Jewish landlords overcharging and evicting black tenants in Harlem. Most of the whites singing were Jews, and I could see they were enjoying a kind of vicarious thrill, a subversive titillation, that went through them as they sang. I threw them off the porch.

The whole incident is a kind of metaphor: what happens when a left-liberal alliance degenerates into left-illiberalism. It’s where we are again today, with the totalisms of critical race, gender and queer theory displacing the much more limited and humane principles of gradualism, reform and liberalism.

*Nellis Bowles is back doing the weekly news summary at The Free Press; this week’s column is “TGIF: Swifties save the economy.” As always, I steal three items.

→ Now that’s what I call racism: The word is now used to describe any white girl who wears a sombrero, so we forget what racism actually is sometimes. Well, it’s definitely this: the administrators in the town of Newbern, Alabama, are doing just about all they can to block the first black mayor from succeeding. Read this enraging story by Alabama-based writer Lee Hedgepeth, who exposed it, and this additional reporting from Capital B, a nonprofit newsroom focused on black issues.

→ Excuse me, what? In Florida, the state Board of Education passed a new standards package. Lest we think only the left can go mad, this is an example of what educators are expected to add to history courses now: “Slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” So teachers have to talk about, yes, slavery’s good bits.

→ Only one state needs to go: The Middle East is a picture of harmony. Religious minorities live in peace with each other. The only bad place happens to be the tiny Jewish state. The latest episode in this classic new left antisemitism is from Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who this week said: “As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state,” she said.

All of this was in the lead-up to Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress, which The Squad boycotted, naturally. Jayapal couldn’t make it because of a “scheduling conflict.”

Jayapal is an odious anti-Semite, though some of my friends in Boston like her “progressivism” LOL.

Oh hell, Nellie put up a song I like so I’ll add this:

→ And for your listening: May I recommend Luke Combs’ beautiful new cover of “Fast Car,” which is topping the country charts? The song, of course, is originally by the iconic Tracy Chapman. There’s a culture war around this cover (five guesses why people are mad!). Anyway, TChap loves it. Bar told me I make too many lesbian jokes, so I won’t make one here, which is easy because there’s nothing funny about My National Anthem.

I haven’t heard that song in years, and forgot how good it was.

*Philomena (Diane Morgan) got an honorary degree! From the Manchester Evening News (h/t Phil):

Actor and comedian Diane Morgan has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the university in her home town of Bolton. And the Cunk and Motherland star had the audience in stitches as she delivered a heart-warming and hilarious graduation speech.

Morgan, who was raised in Farnworth, also took the opportunity to have a little dig at Rishi Sunak’s plans to make everyone study maths until they’re 18, revealing she got a G in the subject, before adding: “Everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to make it as an actress.

“That it was an impossible dream. That you need maths! You don’t need maths. You don’t need maths for anything – take that Rishi Sunak.”

The Bafta-nominated actor, 47, also discussed some of the jobs she’d had, including working in a chippy and ‘packing worming tablets’, as she tried to break into acting. And she revealed she’d been sacked from the tea rooms at the Last Drop Village hotel in Bolton ‘for not knowing what a cream tea is’.

She said: “I should not be here today – I shouldn’t. There’s been a dreadful mistake.

No mistake: she’s DR. Cunk now! Here’s video proof.

@diane.cunk

“Take that, Rishi Sunak!” Diane even manages to make accepting an honorary doctorate funny. Congrats, its well deserved xx. #dianemorgan #dianemorganedit #dianemorganisunderated #cunkonearth #philomenacunk #bbcmandy #bbcmotherland #thecockfields #afterlife #universityofbolton #capcut #foryou #fyp

♬ original sound – mia

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, spoiled Hili’s being fussy:

A: I bought cream.
Hili: Put it into the refrigerator so it will be cold.
In Polish:
Ja: Kupiłem śmietankę.
Hili: Wstaw do lodowki, żeby się schłodziła.

A picture of Szaron:

. . . and a picture of Jango, the cat staffed by reader Divy:

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

From Nicole:

From The Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

From The Cat House on the Kings:

From Masih: apparently the disbanding of the Iranian Morality Police was “fake news.” The report is in English but the Farsih can be translated this way:

The removal of the Irshad patrol was a fake news that the Islamic Republic sent to the western media, the Irshad patrol never went anywhere but suppressed the different tactics of women without the hijab, “No to the hijab” has become the symbol of “No to the Islamic Republic”, so the answer is prison, flogging and murder. Interview with ABC

From Luana. I would have thought that the d*g could detect the right cup by the stronger smell of tweets:

From Barry, a summary of theology:

From Malcolm; this can be nothing other than cat love!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, mother and child gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Matthew. First from his colleague Emma Hilton. Here’s the poll as of noon yesterday. As was made clear in the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen,” the best way to button any shirt is from the bottom up, for that way you never mis-button. If you start from the top, as do Emma and Matthew, you have a serious chance of getting the buttons misaligned with the holes.

Remember Jonathan, the world’s oldest living animal, born in 1832? Here’s some contemporaries:

For speed readers:

Lagniappe. This is the Furnace Creek Visitors Center in Death Valley, where I spent many hours sorting flies in the “changing room” behind the auditorium.

Friday: Hili dialogue

July 21, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, July 21, 2023, and National Crème Brûlée Day, a dessert (invented in 1691) that is tasty but always proffered in meager amounts. Portions should be at least a quart in volume.

It’s also National Lamington Day, celebrating Australian “butter or sponge cakes that are coated with or dipped in chocolate and then covered with fine desiccated coconut. Other coatings or toppings can also be used, like salted caramel, peanut butter, or strawberry”. Those are infinitely better than crème brûlée. Further, it’s Legal Drinking Age Day, National Tug-of-War Tournament Day, National Junk Food Day, Belgian National Day (in Belgiumm, of course), and, in Singapore,Racial Harmony Day.

Here’s a bisected Lamington from Wikipedia. Sometimes they’re filled, and some Aussies call them “Lammos.”

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

Da Nooz:

*The NYT points out that Trump’s mounting legal troubles are going to clash with his campaign calendar next year, as criminal defendants must be present in the courtroom during their trial. And he’s got a LOT of trials coming up.

As former President Donald J. Trump campaigns for the White House while multiple criminal prosecutions against him play out, at least one thing is clear: Under the laws of physics, he cannot be in two places at once.

Generally, criminal defendants must be present in the courtroom during their trials. Not only will that force Mr. Trump to step away from the campaign trail, possibly for weeks at a time, but the judges overseeing his trials must also jostle for position in sequencing dates. The collision course is raising extraordinary — and unprecedented — questions about the logistical, legal and political challenges of various trials unfolding against the backdrop of a presidential campaign.

“The courts will have to decide how to balance the public interest in having expeditious trials against Trump’s interest and the public interest in his being able to campaign so that the democratic process works,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham University professor and former prosecutor. “That’s a type of complexity that courts have never had to deal with before.”

More broadly, the complications make plain another reality: Mr. Trump’s troubles are entangling the campaign with the courts to a degree the nation has never experienced before and raising tensions around the ideal of keeping the justice system separate from politics.

Mr. Trump and his allies have signaled that they intend to try to turn his overlapping legal woes into a referendum on the criminal justice system, by seeking to cast it as a politically weaponized tool of Democrats.

Well, there goes the criminal justice system! It’s rigged towards Democrats! Actually, Trump has three civil trials coming up and needn’t be present for those, but he’s got one criminal trial coming up in New York, one in Florida (the documents case), and probably one in Washington (insurrection). And if he or another Republican wins the election, they could order the government to drop federal cases. Oy, my kishkes!

*Pamela Paul, a worthy addition to the NYT op-ed staff, has a deeply depressing piece on the upcoming Presidential election, “Hoping for a miracle, hurtling towards disaster.” If you don’t get depressed, whether you be a Democrat or Republican, there’s something wrong with you.

Instead, most Democrats seem to view what looks like an inexorable rematch between Biden and Donald Trump with a sense of impending doom. My personal metaphor comes from Lars von Trier’s film “Melancholia,” in which a rogue planet makes its way through space toward an inevitable collision with Earth. In that film, the looming disaster symbolized the all-encompassing nature of depression; here, the feel is more dispiritedness and terror, as if we’re barreling toward either certain catastrophe or possibly-not-a-catastrophe. Or it’s barreling toward us.

A Biden-Trump rematch would mean a choice between two candidates who, for very different reasons, don’t seem 100 percent there or necessarily likely to be there — physically, mentally and/or not in prison — for the duration of another four-year term.

To take, momentarily, a slightly more optimistic view, here is the best case for Biden: His presidency has thus far meant a re-establishment of norms, a return to government function and the restoration of long-held international alliances. He has presided over a slow-churning economy that has turned roughly in his favor. He’s been decent.

But really, wasn’t the bar for all these things set abysmally low during the Trump administration (if we can even use that word given its relentless mismanagement)? We continue to have a deeply divided Congress and electorate, a good chunk of which is still maniacally in Trump’s corner. American faith in institutions continues to erode, not helped by Biden’s mutter about the Supreme Court’s most recent term, “This is not a normal court.” The 2020 protests led to few meaningfully changed policies favoring the poor or disempowered.

A Biden-Trump rematch feels like a concession, as if we couldn’t do any better or have given up trying. It wasn’t as though there was huge passion for Biden the first time around. The 2020 election should have been much more of a blowout victory for Democrats. Yet compared with his election in 2016, Trump in 2020 made inroads with nearly every major demographic group, including Blacks, Latinos and women, except for white men. The sentiment most Democrats seemed to muster in Biden’s favor while he was running was that he was inoffensive. The animating sentiment once he scraped by into office was relief.

There’s a lot more to read, and a lot more to get you depressed. Is this the best that we as a nation can do?  Can you really be as enthused about Biden as the Democratic candidate (ignore Trump for the moment) as you were about Obama?

*Will This Story Pan Out Department? The EU has threatened to stop funding the Palestinian Authority if it doesn’t remove hatred of Jews and anti-Semitic tropes from its textbooks. (If you read here regularly, you’ll see that these tropes are staples of all Palestinian school books, stoking hatred and genocidal wishes towards Jews. You won’t find the counterparts in Israeli textbooks.)

The European Union official who oversees aid to the Palestinian Authority has voiced support for conditioning the release of funds on the removal of incitement and antisemitism from P.A. textbooks.

The remarks follow two European Parliament resolutions last week demanding the “deletion of all antisemitic references, and removal of examples that incite hatred and violence” in Palestinian textbooks, and calls for a funding freeze.

“Incitement to hatred and violence and glorification of terror violate E.U. core values,” tweeted Olivér Várhelyi, the European commissioner for neighborhood and enlargement. “It is a poison for our society, in particular in classrooms and textbooks. There can be no justification to turn a blind eye, neither in Europe nor beyond.”

In the tweet, the E.U. official said that the “commission duly notes this request from the budgetary authority.”

In May, Várhelyi said that the European Union “will make sure it’s not funding Palestinian textbooks that incite against Israel.” He had previously announced that the European Union would conduct a second study of the P.A.’s textbooks.

Unlike previous resolutions, which mentioned incitement to violence without directly calling for the removal of antisemitism, the wording of the resolutions last week explicitly links E.U.-funded textbooks to “rising involvement of teenagers in terrorist attacks.”

The European Parliament resolutions stated that the European Union should freeze its funding to the P.A. until its curriculum is aligned with UNESCO standards.

Now what do you think the chances are that this will actually happen? I’d say about . . . . . zero.

*The WSJ has a fascinating article about meteorite hunters: those intrepid souls who jet all over when a meteororite breaks up over Earth. For pieces of meteorites can go for thousands of dollars. An excerpt:

When Roberto Vargas got an alert that a meteorite had exploded above Junction City, Ga., he knew he had to move fast.

He immediately booked a flight from Connecticut and was airborne within hours. He found a piece of the meteorite within minutes of parking his rental car in the area where fragments had landed. Some of what he found sold for $100 a gram.

Vargas, 38 years old, said he is one of roughly 15 people in the U.S. pursuing an unusual vocation: professional or semiprofessional meteorite hunter. “As soon as somebody sees something or hears about something, they post on Facebook, and that basically prompts me to get into gear,” he said.

After quitting his job as a mental-health therapist to pursue the passion full time about two years ago, Vargas said, he has been “super, super blessed.” His earnings from hunting, collecting and selling meteorites just helped him buy a house.

Hunters like Vargas chase down space rocks that have been spotted as they streak through the atmosphere—what are known as “falls.” Sometimes only a single stone hits Earth, and at other times, hundreds of fragments. Recovering these falls, scientists say, helps expand our knowledge of the solar system, and even perhaps how life on Earth began.

. . . Vargas said meteorites can range in value from about 50 cents to $5,000 a gram, depending, in part, on the circumstances of the fall, composition and how much of any given specimen exists. Often he sells just slices of what he finds, mostly to people who want to own a piece of space without going there.

*Not long ago I put up the Washington Post‘s guesses about what would be on Barack Obama’s famous summer reading list. They didn’t do too well, but at least they put the King book on it, one I intend to read.  Here’s the ex-Prez’s actual summer reading list that the paper published yesterday. (Do you even wonder whether Obama reads some schlock, too, but doesn’t publicize it?)

Here are all the titles on this summer’s list (and you can check out which four books we guessed correctly):

‘Poverty, by America’ by Matthew Desmond

‘Small Mercies’ by Dennis Lehane

‘King: A Life’ by Jonathan Eig

‘Hello Beautiful’ by Ann Napolitano

‘All the Sinners Bleed’ by S.A. Cosby

‘Birnam Wood’ by Eleanor Catton

‘What Napoleon Could Not Do’ by DK Nnuro

‘The Wager’ by David Grann

‘Blue Hour’ by Tiffany Clarke Harrison

*If you’re a baseball maven, take this NYT quiz, “How well do you know your Baseball Hall of Famers?” For me, apparently not very well; I got two out of ten (about what’s expected from random guessing, and I did guess randomly. A baseball-loving friend got only three. This is hard!  Here’s one question (I won’t give the answer).

OY!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron have taken over the chairs in which Malgorzata and Andrzej sit on the veranda:

Szaron: I think that they want to sit here.
Hili: And who cares?
In Polish:
Szaron: Zdaje się, że oni chcą tu usiąść.
Hili: A kto się tym przejmuje?

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

From Unique Birds and Animals:

From Ducks in Public (this is me):

From Seth Andrews:

From Masih.  First, her discussion with the BBC about the return of the morality police:

And a tweet from Faisal with an article describing how Iran is adopted Chinese surveillance technology to identify those miscreant women who just won’t cover their heads.

From Barry. This cat gives a good stink-eye!

Good for Lady Gaga!

And good old Ricky Gervais:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a family gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from the fit Dr. Cobb:

Okay, I had to find out more about this. Read here (there’s also miracle gnocchi). This is ripe for some careful investigation. . .

A very tolerant moggy:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

July 20, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, July 20, 2023, and National Lollipop Day (Americans usually call them “suckers”.) The name? Wikipedia says this about “the invention of the modern lollipop”:

According to the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World, they were invented by George Smith of New Haven, Connecticut, who started making large hard candies mounted on sticks in 1908. He named them after a racehorse of the time, Lolly Pop – and trademarked the lollipop name in 1931

To wit (with the horse):

But there are other explanations:

Alternatively, it may be a word of Romany origin, being related to the Roma tradition of selling candy apples on a stick. Red apple in the Romany language is loli phaba

It’s also National Fortune Cookie Day, Moon Day (marking the day that humans first walked on the Moon in 1969), Nap Day, Space Exploration Day, and International Chess Day  Here’s a good fortune:

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

And the Google Doodle today celebrates the FIFA Women’s World Cup (click on Doodle below). Here’s how to watch it.

Da Nooz:

*As time goes on, and Trump accumulates more and more indictments, fewer and fewer readers think he’ll go to jail. Here’s the results of yesterday’s unscientific poll.  I guess most people think that the Orange Man will be above the law.

*So if, as seems likely, Trump is indicted in Washington for his attempt to reject the election results and for formenting insurrection, what will be the charges be? The NYT suggests three.

Now, Mr. Trump appears almost certain to face criminal charges for some of his efforts to remain in office. On Tuesday, he disclosed on social media that federal prosecutors had sent him a so-called target letter, suggesting that he could soon be indicted in the investigation into the events that culminated in the riot.

Mr. Trump did not say what criminal charges, if any, the special counsel, Jack Smith, had specified in issuing the letter.

But since the Capitol attack — in part because of revelations by a House committee investigation and news reports — many legal specialists and commentators have converged on several charges that are particularly likely, especially obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the government.

A person briefed on the matter said the target letter cited three statutes that could be applied in a prosecution of Mr. Trump by the special counsel, Jack Smith, including a potential charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

. . . These are some of the charges Mr. Trump could face in the Jan. 6 case.

Corruptly Obstructing an Official Proceeding

Both the House committee that scrutinized Jan. 6 and a federal judge in California who intervened in its inquiry have said that there is evidence that Mr. Trump tried to corruptly obstruct Congress’s session to certify Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory. Under Section 1512(c) of Title 18 of the United States Code, such a crime would be punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Conspiring to defraud the government and to make false statements

Both the federal judge in California and the Jan. 6 committee also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump violated Section 371 of Title 18, which makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conspire with another person to defraud the government.

Wire and Mail Fraud

A constellation of other potential crimes has also surrounded the Jan. 6 investigation. One is wire fraud. Section 1343 of Title 18 makes it a crime, punishable by 20 years in prison, to cause money to be transferred by wire across state lines as part of a scheme to obtain money by means of false or fraudulent representations. A similar fraud statute, Section 1341, covers schemes that use the Postal Service.

That’s a lot of crimes and a lot of years. And you’re telling me he won’t do jail time?

*Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne has just stepped down—under a cloud.

Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Wednesdayhe will resign after an investigative report found he had failed to correct mistakes in years-old scientific papers and overseen labs that had an “unusual frequency” of manipulations of data.

The dramatic fall from the top of one of the world’s most respected research institutions followed a months-long inquiry prompted by allegations of research misconduct reported by a Stanford campus newspaper late last year.

A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before publication of data.

But the review provides a portrait of a scientist who co-authored papers with “serious flaws” and failed on multiple occasions to “decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” when concerns were raised.Tessier-Lavigne said Wednesday that he would ask for three papers to be retracted and two corrected. A panel of prominent scientists, engaged by a special committee of the private university’s board of trustees, examined a dozen of the more than 200 papers published during his career.

The “flawed paper” issue is, to me, less serious than the failure to correct mistakes. Tessier-Lavigne probably did what big famous scientist do: slap his name on the paper without reading it carefully (it’s reprehensible, but that’s the way science is these days). But failure to correct mistakes when pointed out? Unforgivable!

In a statement Wednesday, Tessier-Lavigne said, “the Panel did not find that I engaged in research misconduct regarding the twelve papers reviewed, nor did it find I had knowledge of or was reckless regarding research misconduct in my lab.”

“Although the report clearly refutes the allegations of fraud and misconduct that were made against me,” he wrote, “for the good of the University, I have made the decision to step down as President effective August 31.”

. . . In his statement Wednesday, Tessier-Lavigne acknowledged some missteps: In some instances, he wrote, “I should have been more diligent when seeking corrections. The Panel’s review also identified instances of manipulation of research data by others in my lab. Although I was unaware of these issues, I want to be clear that I take responsibility for the work of my lab members.”

Curiously, the Prez was brought down by reporting of Stanford’s student newspaper, the Stanfor Daily.  A search for a new President will soon be underway, in the meantime the acting Prez is Richard Saller, a professor of European studies and a former provost at the University of Chicago.

*A federal judge upheld the $5 million that Trump was ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll in her civil suit for sexual abuse and defamation.

A federal judge on Wednesday upheld a $5 million jury verdict against Donald Trump, rejecting the former president’s claims that the award was excessive and that the jury vindicated him by failing to conclude he raped a columnist in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the jury’s May award of compensatory and punitive damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation in the civil case was reasonable.

Trump’s lawyers had asked Kaplan to reduce the jury award to less than $1 million or order a new trial on damages. In their arguments, the lawyers said the jury’s $2 million in compensatory damages granted for Carroll’s sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that Trump had not raped Carroll at Bergdorf Goodman’s Manhattan store in the spring of 1996.

. . .Kaplan wrote that the jury’s unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”

The judge said the section requires vaginal penetration by a penis while forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled “sexual abuse” rather than “rape.”

He said the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.

The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed … the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Although Carroll claimed that Trump had sexually penetrated her with both his fingers and his penis, the jury apparently found that the preponderance of the evidence suggested some form of sexual abuse but not penile penitration, which I think is that the judge is referring to in the last paragraph.

*Iran, which appears to have abolished the “morality police” to arrest or stop those who didn’t wear hijabs or engaged in prohibited activities like singing, now seems to have reinstated those police again.

It’s been more than six months since state officials removed Iran’s Guidance Patrol (nicknamed “morality police”) from active duty on the streets of Iran. On Sunday, the force returned to patrolling to enforce the country’s modesty laws.

Shariah in the country states that women must wear hijabs and loose-fitting clothing to maintain modesty, in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Since 2006, the Gasht-e Ershad, or Guidance Patrol, has enforced the law by monitoring that women cover their hair with a hijab. Men have also been targeted but not nearly as frequently, as reported by The New York Times. Punishments in the past have ranged from verbal warnings and fines to arrests and beatings.

On Sunday, police spokesperson Saeed Montazerolmahdi announced that the Guidance Patrol would once again be on the streets to “deal with those who, unfortunately, ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms,” per BBC.

“If they disobey the orders of the police force, legal action will be taken, and they will be referred to the judicial system,” he said.

Some speculation exists as to whether the patrol will be able to impose the country’s dress code like they did before, as BBC reported, because as one college student told Reuters, “the number of people who do not obey is too high now.”

You can go to jail or even get killed for not wearing “the proper hijab”. No wonder Iranian women are protesting en masse!

*The kākāpō (Strigops habroptila) of New Zealand is the world’s only flightless parrot, and also the world’s heaviest parrot (weight: 1.5-2 kg.).. It’s also rare: as of this year, there were only 248 of them. 40 years ago they were all moved to an island off New Zealand to remove them from predators. Now, for the first time in four decades, they’ve been released on the mainland—the large North Island of New Zealand. Please excuse the Department of Conservation’s announcment, which uses a large number of Māori words that most Kiwis (and no non-Kiwis) can understand:

The Department of Conservation in partnership with Ngāi Tahu is moving four male kākāpō from Whenua Hou/Codfish Island near Rakiura Stewart Island to Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, Waikato today.

DOC Operations Manager for Kākāpō Deidre Vercoe says returning the critically endangered nocturnal ground-dwelling parrot to the mainland is significant for all New Zealand, and a shared success story for all partners involved.

“Kākāpō are one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most iconic and rare species, recovering from a population low of 51 birds in 1995. Until now, kākāpō have been contained to a few predator-free offshore islands, so to have them now returning to the mainland is a major achievement for all involved.”

The translocation comes after decades of hard work by DOC and Ngāi Tahu through the Kākāpō Recovery Programme, utilising both science and matauranga Māori to bring the species back from the brink of extinction. Since 2016 the population doubled to reach a high of 252 birds in 2022, and their island homes are almost at capacity.

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Deputy Kaiwhakahaere Matapura Ellison says a key aspect of the translocation is the iwi ki te iwi (iwi to iwi) transfer of the four manu from Ngāi Tahu to Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Raukawa, Ngāti Hauā, and Waikato.

“This is a milestone translocation, and we are thankful for our iwi partners who will keep our taonga (treasured) kākāpō safe at their new habitat on Maungatautari. The whanaungatanga between our iwi is strengthened further through the shared kaitiakitanga of these precious manu.”

This give me a chance to show one of the best wildlife videos ever, Sirocco, the “ambassador kakapo”, shagging Mark Carwardine’s head while Stephen Fry looks on. This is from the BBC show, “Last chance to see”:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s plaint is explained by Malgorzata, “Andrzej is now used to having Hili on his desk and just continues working, but Hili interprets it as that he started to ignore her.”

Hili: Do not think I don’t see it.
A: See what?
That you more often do not even notice when I’m disturbing you.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie sądź, że tego nie widzę.
Ja: Czego?
Hili: Coraz częściej nawet nie zauważasz, że ci przeszkadzam.

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

From Stash Krod:

From The Cat House on the Kings:

From The Absurd Sign Project 2.0):

A tweet from Masih (see Nooz above). The Iranian morality please have are BACK!

Lauren Boebert discarded a pin rememberine one of the victims of the school massacre (19 victims) in Uvalde, Texas last year. She could at least have waited until she was in the privacy of her office.

Boebert is a co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, which is made up of members of Congress who support Second Amendment rights. Boebert’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gina Gennari made the pins after members of Congress wore AR-15 pins on the House floor to symbolize their commitment to upholding the Second Amendment.

 

Now Marjorie Taylor Greene is in campaign ads for Biden! Funny caption, too.

From Malcolm: a trick about how to crack an egg without getting bits of shell in it. I’m trying it tonight!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 7 year old boy gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from the diligent Dr. Cobb. First, a high-fiving cat:

Here’s the first kakapo release on mainland New Zealand in forty years (see above):

A photo from yore, tweeted by Matthew: