Sunday: Hili dialogue
Welcome to Sunday, January 19, 2025, one day before T-Day. It’s National Popcorn Day, and the world’s best is the caramel and cheese corn mix at Garrett’s Popcorn Shop in Chicago. You want the “Chicago Mix”, with cheese corn mixed with caramel corn. It sounds dire, but it’s fantastic! Look!: It’s also Tin Can Day, … Continue reading Sunday: Hili dialogue
Welcome to Sunday, January 19, 2025, one day before T-Day. It’s National Popcorn Day, and the world’s best is the caramel and cheese corn mix at Garrett’s Popcorn Shop in Chicago. You want the “Chicago Mix”, with cheese corn mixed with caramel corn. It sounds dire, but it’s fantastic! Look!:
It’s also Tin Can Day, World Quark Day (a German foodstuff), New Friends Day, World Snow Day (we have a tad) and World Religion Day, celebrating the fiction that creates a huge hole in humanity).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The cease-fire between Hamas and Israel begins today, and although I’m delighted that the hostages will be released (in tiny dribs and drabs), it’s not clear how many of them will be bodies and not living humans. They will of course let the living ones go first, but Hamas refuses to provide a list of the dead versus living hostages. On top of that, for every Israeli (and other country’s) hostage released, about thirty Palestinians who were either arrested or convicted terrorists will be released. Altogether up to 3,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them terrorists, will be released in exchange for an unknownb but much smaller number of hostages. It’s a terrible deal and I fail to understand it, though surely Trump is behind it and I don’t know what happened. Looking from afar, I have to agree with Alan Dershowitz’s article in the World Israel News, “It wasn’t a deal, it was a crime.”
The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a “deal.” It was an extortion.
Would you call it a deal if somebody kidnapped your child and you “agreed” to pay ransom to get her back? Of course not. The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.
So the proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the United States, capitulated to the unlawful and extortionate demands of Hamas as the only way of saving the lives of kidnapped babies, mothers and other innocent, mostly civilian, hostages.
This was not the result of a negotiation between equals. If an armed robber puts a gun to your head and says, “your money or your life,” your decision to give him your money would not be described as a deal.
Nor should the extorted arrangement agreed to by Israel be considered a deal. So let’s stop using that term.
When a terrorist group “negotiates” with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. They can murder at will, rape at will, torture at will and threaten to do worse.
The democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families.
The result of this exertion was bad for Israel’s security, but good for the hostages who remain alive and their families.
The heart rules the brain, as it often does in moral democracies that value the immediate saving of the lives of known people over the future deaths of hypothetical people whose identities we do not know. This tradeoff is understandable as compassionate, even if not compelling as policy.
If every democratic nation adopted a policy of never negotiating with terrorists, it might discourage terrorism. But every nation submits to the demands of kidnappers and extortionists, so terrorism and hostage-taking have become a primary tactic of the worst people in the world. And the rest of us are complicit.
Especially complicit, with blood on their hands, are supporters of Hamas on university campuses who chant for intifada and revolution. Also complicit are international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, that treat Israel and Hamas as equals.
Dershowitz winds up worrying what bothers me: that this “deal,” in the long run, will lead to a net increase in deaths:
Let us welcome the news that perhaps 33 of the 98 hostages may be released, some of them alive, with the realization that what Hamas extorted from Israel in return for these releases may well endanger Israel’s security in the future and cost still more innocent lives.
*The WaPo claims that it has uncovered a key failure in LA’s firefighting strategy that may explain the devastation happening there. And apparently this failure has been known for years. (Article archived here.) Here’s the accusation, and I have no idea about its veracity:
In a memo that has not been previously reported, she told city fire commissioners that L.A. relied almost entirely on overburdened “hand crews” from other jurisdictions to bring such muscle to its brush fire emergencies. Hand crews, the most elite of which are sometimes called “hotshots,” fight wildfires with chain saws, axes and shovels, setting containment lines and then sticking around to meticulously monitor smoldering fires, feeling by hand for heat and digging out live spots to make sure fires don’t relight.
The city staffed its own team — made up of unpaid, mostly teenage volunteers — only on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Crowley warned the commission that there would inevitably come a day when L.A. would need the important grunt work of a “hand crew” and one would not be available, which could “mean the difference in containment or out of control spread.”
Yet as fire swept down from the Santa Monica mountains last week, L.A. still had no professional unit ready to aid in the initial attack, according to a Washington Post review of dozens of city and county records, hours of radio transmissions and L.A. fire commission transcripts, as well as interviews with more than a dozen firefighters and city officials. More than three years after the fire department’s first request, the city had only recently advertised openings for at least two dozen openings on a team whose launch was delayed because of bureaucracy and competing budget priorities.
This gap in L.A.’s firefighting arsenal provides a new window into how the metropolis failed to reckon with the threat posed by wildfires intensified by climate change. It is unclear whether those additional units would have altered the course of the conflagrations, or have better put out a small blaze now under investigation for possibly reigniting and sparking the Palisades Fire. But had the proposed plans come to fruition, the city would have had two full-time hand crews with more than 50 additional firefighters trained to battle wildfires by now.
*The Wall Street Journal outlines Trump’s plans, to be implemented by Musk and Ramaswamay, to cut back on government after Monday. Trump now says he’ll get rid of ten existing regulations for every new one (article archived here):
President Biden’s executive orders and most recent policy changes figure as some of its most vulnerable initiatives as Trump assumes power. Republicans have decried Biden’s last-minute push to complete loans to renewable-energy projects.
Trump is expected to use a legislative tool known as the Congressional Review Act that allows the president, with the help of Congress, to undo rules enacted in the final months of the previous administration. He was the first president to use it widely, in his first administration.
“We are scrubbing right now to determine what is eligible,” for reconsideration under the act, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said Tuesday at an American Petroleum Institute meeting in Washington.
Republicans are also looking to pass the Reins Act, short for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny, which the House approved in 2023, to curb Biden-era rules.
“I’m a huge fan of the Reins Act,” Thune said.
Trump has prepared a series of executive orders aimed at boosting American fossil fuels and undoing policies that favor electric vehicles.
Congress is expected to help Trump target Biden-era waivers for California to enact stricter limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles than the federal government’s. California aims to ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Rescinding the waiver would curb California’s influence over the car industry and set back efforts to boost EV sales.
Trump’s transition team has considered eliminating bank watchdogs such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That would require an act of Congress, including unlikely support from Democrats in the Senate.
There are only 52 Republicans in the Senate, 8 short of being able to stop a filibuster. What does that mean for passing legislation to undo existing legislation. The House but not the Senate has the power to initiate spending bills, but spending bills still have to be approved by the Senate. As for immigration, I think that Trump’s promises will be sunk by the Senate.
*The NYT recommends a book that, at least for reader Stefano Montali, went a long way to quell his anxieties. I was interested, and perhaps you will be, too (article archived here). Montali had a special form of OCD: excessive dwelling on one bad possibility, or perseverating.
My O.C.D. is not like the one you see in movies. I don’t check doors or wash my hands eight times before leaving the house. For many people with O.C.D., including me, it’s more internal: Irrational thoughts enter the mind and remain there, festering.
The circular thought I experienced in front of that mural was absurd: that I would never live the life I wanted because I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything except, well, worrying.
But in that old Victorian house, I met Nate, and we quickly morphed from roommates into friends. We played guitar in the living room, prepared homemade dessert hummus and dissected our ongoing exoduses from the Judeo-Christian faiths in which we’d grown up. Not only that, Nate was a meditation teacher and he gradually became mine.
Early on, he introduced me to “” a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, the late Vietnamese Zen master who popularized Buddhist meditation and mindfulness in the West. The classic, his second of more than 100 titles, celebrates its 50th year in circulation.
In it, Thay (the Vietnamese word for “teacher” and what Thich Nhat Hanh is often called) offers simple steps to internal harmony amid uncertainty and discord. His teachings are rooted in mindful appreciation of the present moment, no matter its circumstances. In “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” he wrote: “Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.” When I first read that line, every day seemed like one endless attempt at evasion.I was trying to temper my intrusive thoughts — that I’d swerve into oncoming traffic; or that if I didn’t pray before a meal, I was morally at fault — by using logic, facts and statistics. But doing that only perpetuated the worrying.
. . .Eight years have passed since Nate first introduced me to “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” and my practice — combined with a consistent schedule of therapy and medication — has changed how I experience the world each day. My mindfulness meditation never ends and neither, most likely, will O.C.D., but the former has dramatically eased the latter.
This resembles Sam Harris’s meditation course on mindfulness. But this has always seemed to me to be too much like work, and I tried mindfulness and it didn’t work. Perhaps it will for you, but you can’t just read a book: you need to practice incessantly. If you think you can, you can find the book here on Amazon for just $9.36.
*And a soothing video and article from the “Oddities” section of the Associated Press. You can watch the albatross couple now!
It’s a reality show about a loving couple waiting to welcome their new arrival, watched by thousands of ardent fans. But the stars of Royal Cam, now in its 10th season, aren’t socialites or hopefuls in love but northern royal albatrosses — majestic New Zealand seabirds with 10-foot (3-meter) wingspans.
The 24-hour livestream of the birds’ breeding season at Taiaroa Head — a rugged headland on New Zealand’s South Island — was established to raise awareness of the vulnerable species, numbers of which have grown slowly over decades of painstaking conservation measures.
Millions have watched the stream since it began in 2016.
. . . The show’s premise is simple: Each season, conservation rangers select an albatross couple as that year’s stars. A camera on the remote headland follows the chosen birds as they lay and incubate an egg, before their chick hatches around February, grows to adult size, and finally takes flight.
Unlike human reality shows, drama is rare: Royal albatrosses usually mate for life. Rangers selecting the birds to follow each “season” avoid anything controversial: no first-time parents and no aggressive or grumpy personalities.
This year’s stars are RLK, a 12-year-old male, and GLG, a 14-year-old female, who have raised two chicks before. Their names are derived from the colors on bands that rangers attach to their legs.
“They’re a youngish pair, but not so young that they don’t know what they’re doing,” Broni said.
Action unfolds slowly, which for many fans is the joy of it. Clouds drift by, ships pass in the distance and the sun sets in glowing pinks and peaches. During January, incubation season, an albatross sits on an egg.
But regular watchers anticipate certain moments: About once every 10 days, the second bird in the pair returns from feeding at sea to relieve the parent looking after the nest. Other fan highlights include albatross crash landings, mating dances and the appearances of rangers or the feathered stars of previous seasons.
Here’s the video. The birds are endlessly patient, and I wonder if they get bored sitting there for ten days at a time (incubation time is about 80 days).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili doesn’t have an optimal sleeping spot:
Szaron: It’s hard for you there.Hili: None of your business.
Szaron: Tam jest ci twardo.Hili: Nie twój interes.
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From Stacy: Watch out for raisins mimicking chocolate chips!
From Cat Memes:
From Jesus of the Day. Hey, it’s a tough job!
Masih doesn’t mourn two Iranian judges who were murdered. It was, according to CNN, a “planned assassination,” and the killer then took his own life.
For the first time, justice was served in Iran’s Judicial System!
As someone who knew Judge Mohammad Moghiseh personally, I cannot remain silent about his true legacy. This man was no ordinary judge; he was a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s brutality, using the judicial system… pic.twitter.com/l48Zn3L2Uf
— Masih Alinejad Read More
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