Welcome to Thursday, November 21, 2024. It’s one week until I fly off to Poland to give two talks at the Silesian Science Festival and, of course, to visit my surrogate parents, Andrzej and Malgorzata, in Dobrzyn. (There will also be three cats to pet: Hili, Szaron, and Kulka.) It’s National Gingerbread Cookie Day, though I prefer the cake. Here are some fancy gingerbread cookies from Wikipedia, glazed with royal icing.
It’s also Alascattalo Day (look it up), National Cranberry Day, National Stuffing Day, World Television Day, Beaujolais Nouveau Day (give it a pass; it’s wine Kool-Aid), and World Philosophy Day. Here’s a photo of a philosopher; can you identify him?
Today’s Google Doodle (click on link) celebrates the final rise of the half moon in November, and you can play a Moon-ey card game there:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Biden has exacerbated the U.S. standoff with Russia by helping Ukraine with more weapons, this time by supplying them with anti-personnel mines. (Article is archived here.)
The Biden administration has approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines to bolster defenses against Russian attacks as Ukrainian front lines in the country’s east have buckled, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.
The decision is the latest in a series of moves by Russia and the United States related to the war in Ukraine that have escalated tensions between the two.
The White House recently granted permission to Ukraine to fire longer-range American missiles at targets in Russia, which the Ukrainians did for the first time on Tuesday. Moscow in response formalized a new doctrinelowering the thresholdfor when it would use nuclear weapons.
Mr. Austin said the U.S. decision was prompted by Russia’s increasing reliance on foot soldiers to lead their assaults, instead of armored vehicles. Mr. Austin, speaking to reporters while traveling in Laos, said the shift in policy follows changing tactics by the Russians. Because of that, Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians,” Mr. Austin said.
“They’ve asked for these, and so I think it’s a good idea,” Mr. Austin said.
The move is also noteworthy because it is part of a series of late actions taken in the waning weeks of the Biden presidency to bolster Ukraine. President Biden in the past has sought to calibrate American help for Ukraine against his own concern about crossing Russian “red lines” that could lead to direct conflict between Washington and Moscow.
Mines in general have been devastatingly effective in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has made extensive use of them. The mines are planted by hand but can also be scattered remotely with rockets or drones behind opponents’ lines, to catch soldiers as they move to and from positions, a tactic that can assist an offensive.
Land mines, however, have been most effective in defense. A broad belt of dense minefields in southern Ukraine stymied a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 and gravely wounded a large but undisclosed number of Ukrainian soldiers.
Most anti-personnel mines are small explosives about the size of a hockey puck that are triggered by the pressure of a footstep.
The Biden administration’s decision came despite widespread condemnation of mines by rights groups that cite their toll on civilians, which can stretch for years or decades after conflicts end as the locations of minefields are left unmarked or forgotten. Ukraine is already the most heavily mined country in the world, according to the United Nations.
I’m not so keen on land mines, mainly because they hang around forever if unexploded and can damage civilians. I’m undecided about Biden’s move, but pretty sure that Trump will pressure Ukraine to give up land and end the conflict when he takes office. The missiles may not be flowing from the U.S. any more, but the mines will still be there.
*Several sources, including the Torygraph, the Times of Israel, and the NY Post, report that, in Berlin, there are “no go” areas for Jews and gays, and those are areas where Arabs live.
From the Torygraph(archived here):
Jews and gay people should hide their identity in partsof Berlinwith large Arab populations, the German capital’s police chief has warned.
“There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people whowear a kippahor are openly gay to be more careful,” said Barbara Slowik.
See AlsoDoes being woke do any good?France resists US challenge to its valuesAPPG and the National Right to Life Committee Join ForcesSunburn — The morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics — 11.14.24“There are certain neighbourhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups,” she said, adding that they were often “openly hostile towards Jews”.
She told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that “violent crimes againstJewish peopleare few and far between, but every act is one too many”.
A fortnight ago, a youth football team from Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish sports club,reported being “hunted down” by youthscarrying sticks and knives after a match in an Arab neighbourhood of the city. The victims, aged 13 to 15, said they were spat at and insulted throughout the match.
The incident took place on the same night that migrant gangs filmedattacks on fans of the Israeli club Maccabi Tel Avivafter a European football match against Ajax in Amsterdam.
Germany has seen a surgein anti-Semitismsince the beginning of the war in Gaza, with reported incidents doubling in 2023 compared with previous years.
Since Oct 7 last year, Berlin’s police have opened more than 6,000 investigations connected to anti-Semitism, according to Ms Slowik. Most of these concern online hate speechor graffiti.
Other incidents in Berlin include a football fan being attacked for wearing a scarf with a Star of David on it, a petrol bomb attack on a synagogue shortly after the Oct 7 massacres in southern Israel, and a couple being attacked in a fast-food outlet for speaking Hebrew.
On the dayof the Hamas massacres, men handed out sweets in celebration in the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukolln, an incident that shocked Germany and led to deep anxiety over whether the recent waves of migration had made Jewish life less safe.
I wrote to a friend in Berlin about this, and she verified that the “no go” areas are real, though if you don’t let people know you’re gay or Jewish, you can pretty much avoid “incidents”. But what kind of city in the West (especially Berlin, with its WWII history of Nazi leadership) would be unsafe both Jewsand for gays. This shows that it’s not just antisemitism at work, but homophobia: in other words, Islamism. And this is why extremist Islam is dangerous not just to Jews, but to the entire democratic West.
*Over at Bluesky, there seems to be some censorship afoot, at least according to Colin Wright:
He adds a second tweet, but since I can’t access Bluesky, readers who can should send me a screenshot of the post.
You have to click a button to reveal what my post says.
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) November 19, 2024
I asked Matthew, who is on Bluesky, to send me the whole tweet, so here it is:
Well, yes, that seems unacceptable to me, because the site is hiding biological reality. But not having lived at that site (I’m pondering it), I don’t know if the site is as censorious at Twitter was, though I know that Bluesky is seen as a left wing alternative to Twitter. Matthew certainly likes it. WCBM discusses the censorship issues, saying that Bluesky is inundated with censorship requests.
The left-wing alternative to Elon Musk’s X platform is already running into difficulties with its promise to censor “harmful content.”
Bluesky, which has received millions of sign-ups from angry leftists boycotting Elon Musk’s X platform, has admitted that it cannot keep up with the number of moderation and censorship requests from its progressive user base.
In a post from “Bluesky Safety,” the company announced that it was receiving over 3,000 censorship demands per hour, leading to a backlog in its response times.
They explained:
Bluesky has grown by over 3M people in the last week — welcome! With every wave of growth naturally comes an increase in moderation reports. Here’s a status report on how the Trust & Safety team is handling it:
In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports. We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM is removed quickly.
With this significant influx of users, we’ve also seen increased spam, scam, and trolling activity — you may have seen some of this yourself. Our team is reviewing these accounts, and you can help us by reporting them by clicking the three-dot menu on each post/account.
We appreciate your patience as we dial our moderation team up to max capacity and bring on new team members to support this load. Your safety is our highest priority, and we’re glad to welcome you to Bluesky!
Bluesky has grown by over 3M people in the last week — welcome!
With every wave of growth naturally comes an increase in moderation reports. Here’s a status report on how the Trust & Safety team is handling it:
— Bluesky Safety (@safety.bsky.app)16 November 2024 at 00:10
Bluesky was originally established in 2019 by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. However, he has since stepped down from its board and encouraged users to stay active on X.
The platform claims to offer users more control over their online experience, though its real appeal for its users lies in its promise to censor content at breakneck speed.
That is nearly one request for censorship per second! I hadn’t thought, when pondering joining Bluesky, that because it’s populated with disaffected leftists who left X after Trump was elected with the help of Twitter (“X”) owner Elon Musk, it might be subject to pervasive censorship, the purview of “progressives”. And I still don’t know if that’s the case, so I’m still thinking about joining. For one thing, you can embed Bluesky posts directly into this site from the URLs, while you have to go through a more complicated process for “X” tweets. Readers from Bluesky are welcome to give their opinions and advice.
*Reihan Salan, the son on Bangladeshi immigrant, gives recommendations for the incoming Trump administration at the Free Press. His piece is called, “Immigration is a mess. Here’s how to fix it.” First Salan lays out the problem, which you know well, and then gives ten suggestions about how to fix it. He wrote a book on the issue; as he says, “In 2018, I published Melting Pot or Civil War?, a short book on immigration. Despite its provocative title, the book offered a cautious, careful, almost hilariously mild case for immigration restriction.
An excerpt from the article (archived here):
Within 100 days of his inauguration, President Joe Biden took 94 executive actions on immigration, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Taken together, these actions represented a repudiation not only of Trump’s approach, but of long-standing immigration limits that had been embraced by the Clinton and Obama administrations. Spurred on by the activist left, the Biden White House tamped down interior enforcement, rolled back travel and visa restrictions, greatly expanded humanitarian protections, and suspended the highly successful Remain in Mexico program.
By April 2021, it was already clear that something was going badly wrong at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the same time administration officials were loudly insisting that unauthorized border crossers would be expelled, a large majority of border-crossing families were allowed in, which meant that smugglers could still make a compelling pitch to potential migrants—not to mention enormous profits.
Predictably, irregular migration surged. Once the word got out that even the weakest asylum claim would allow you to live in the U.S. for years before you’d get a hearing in immigration court, migrants from around the world decided to try their luck.
I’ll give three of his ten recommendations, but read the archived version to see them all. They seem sensible and not at all Trump-ian:
1.On deportations, take steps that build credibility and support, like expelling criminals and recent immigration-law violators. Those protesting such moves reveal their own extremism, rather than rallying the public to their side. Conversely, deporting people who’ve been living in the U.S. peacefully and productively for over a decade is guaranteed to spark damaging headlines, especially if they have citizen spouses or children, as many of them do. Remember, this isn’t about being sentimental—it’s about maintaining the support the administration will need to bring the border back under control.
2.Under current law, those who seek asylum and can show a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countrycannot be summarily deported. To deter weak or fraudulent asylum claims, move quickly to detain all individuals who cross the border illegally and ensure everyone is vetted and passes a credible fear interview before they are released. Work with Mexico and the Department of Defense under a national emergency declaration to build detention capacity. And if these efforts don’t succeed in curbing irregular migration, the administration should work with Congress to further tighten asylum rules.
5.For legal immigration, enact an improved version of the first Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, which bars the immigration of those unable to support themselves. This will help ensure that new legal immigrants can support themselves and their families, which in turn will help restore faith in our immigration system. Immigration agents need more guidance than the previous rule provided; the improved version should require consideration of earnings, education, and age, and explicitly define the weight assigned to each factor.
The last suggestion involves explaining to Americans how immigration, handled properly, can be a good thing. All in all, this seems like a sensible set of suggestions.
*Finally, from the AP’s “oddities” section: “Snack judgment: Spanish court slaps supermarket that fired a worker for eating a croquette.” That’s a clicker if ever there was one!
A Spanish court has upheld a ruling that a supermarket worker was unlawfully fired for having eaten a croquette that was going to be thrown away after not having been sold from the store’s deli section.
The worker was fired in July 2023 after he had snarfed down the fried snack, which was destined for the trash after the store had closed for the day.
In a verdict that The Associated Press saw on Wednesday, the Superior Court of Castilla-La Mancha recently rejected an appeal by the supermarket chain Mercadona of a decision by a lower court in May 2024 in favor of the worker.
The company’s policy is that workers are prohibited from consuming any product found in the store without having paid for it previously.
But the superior court found that it was common practice for workers to snack on “ready to eat” food products that were going to be thrown away after closing hours. In its ruling, it also insisted in “the important detail that the worker didn’t eat an entire package of croquettes, but instead one single croquette” that was “not going to be put back on sale the following day.”
The lower court ruling in May determined that the worker be reinstated to his job and that the supermarket chain pay him 39,700 euros ($41,800) in lost wages. The higher court has now added that Mercadona also must pay the worker 600 euros ($633) for his legal fees.
Mercadona did not immediately respond to an email from the AP asking for comment on the case.
The court documents didn’t indicate the flavor of the croquette, which in Spain is a popular food typically made from ham, chicken or cod.
What’s right is right, and the supermarket was simply WRONG. How dare they prohibit a worker from eating something that was going to be thrown out, and on his own time. If he gets sick from eating bad food, it’s on him, but otherwise the worker did nothing wrong.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is really anxious about the onset of winter, when she has to stay inside. She goes through this every year.
Hili: Do you really think that there will be a spring again one day?
A: It’s a sure thing.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy naprawdę sądzisz, że kiedyś znowu będzie wiosna?
Ja: Z całą pewnością.
And a photo of Baby Kulka:
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Three cat memes today. From Facebook, a wonderful child’s poem:
From Stacy. Poor fellow!
And from Meow:
From Masih. This woman (identified by Masih) doesn’t say anything, for she is under government investigation—for not wearing her headscarf.
Her name is Roshank Molaei—a woman who dared to defend herself against sexual assault in public. But guess what? In the twisted logic of this regime, it’s not the assault that’s the crime; it’s the fact that her hair was showing while she did it.
So now, instead of punishing the… https://t.co/W8jGIL0uIV pic.twitter.com/hyxeDOvBtX
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 12, 2024
From Simon, who says that “Larry agrees that he had it coming!”:
Didn't think I'd ever feel sorry for Donald Trump but here we are.
— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2024-11-18T09:44:24.785Z
An octopus takes a shark, but the shark goes free; the second tweet shows the awesome camouflage of these animals.
Octopus
shows us
how effectively it can change color to match
its surroundings….. pic.twitter.com/vuRlCBvESj— 𝘚𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘩 🦋 ثناء شاہ (@meSana220) November 17, 2024
From my feed. Poor kitty!
The shortest walk ever pic.twitter.com/wCTTawn22Y
— Irena Buzarewicz (@IrenaBuzarewicz) November 18, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a tweet that I reposted:
A Polish girl gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was thirteen. 90% of the Jews in that transport were murdered along with her. https://t.co/AM1O9yHGZz
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 21, 2024
Two posts by Professor Cobb. First, a beautiful vignette of foxes playing at Oxford:
I ripped this video from Eleonora Svanberg on X (she’s not on 🦋)She wrote: “I'm a PhD student at @UniofOxford and I think I'm living in a fairytale :-)Foxes playing around in the snow at Magdalen College this morning — absolutely magical!”
— Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T08:55:23.563Z
A new cat to me: the Chinese mountain cat. More on Caturday!
Have you ever heard of the Chinese mountain cat?I hadn't until I read Ruth Kamnitzer's piece on this small cat that was only photographed for the first time in the wild in 2007.news.mongabay.com/2024/11/easy…
— Rhett Ayers Butler (@rhettayersbutler.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T04:48:24.473Z
