Saturday: Hili dialogue

Save for John Avise’s collection of dragonfly photos for tomorrow, we’re out of readers’ wildlife. This is sad, as the feature has been going since this site started in 2009 (I can’t believe it’s been that long!). If you have wildlife photos and don’t want the feature to disappear, please send ’em in. There will … Continue reading Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 17, 2025 - 15:30

Save for John Avise’s collection of dragonfly photos for tomorrow, we’re out of readers’ wildlife. This is sad, as the feature has been going since this site started in 2009 (I can’t believe it’s been that long!). If you have wildlife photos and don’t want the feature to disappear, please send ’em in. There will be no photos today.

Welcome to Jewish cat shabbos: ~~Catur~~Saturday, May 17, 2025, and National Walnut Day. Here’s a short video about how commercial walnuts are harvested: They shake ’em off the trees!

It’s also Armed Force Day, World Whisky Day, National Mushroom Hunting Day, National Cherry Cobbler Day, National Pinot Grigio Day, and they’re running the second race of the Triple Crown today: the Preakness.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*To become an American citizen, applicants have to answer questions about America’s history and laws, which is okay (I hear that most native Americans can’t answer them). But now, in this Age of Trump, they’re thinking of turning this vetting into, yes, a reality television show. It’s not a done deal yet, but it’s tacky, and of course the pressure of being on t.v. could throw some people:

The Department of Homeland Security is considering taking part in a television program that would have immigrants go through a series of challenges to get American citizenship, officials said on Friday.
The challenges would be based on various American traditions and customs, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the agency. She said the department was still reviewing the idea, which she spoke about several weeks ago with a producer named Rob Worsoff.

“The pitch generally was a celebration of being an American and what a privilege it is to be able to be a citizen of the United States of America,” she said. “It’s important to revive civic duty.”
She said the agency was happy to review “out-of-the-box pitches,” particularly those that celebrate “what it means to be an American.”
The project was reported earlier by The Daily Mail.
Mr. Worsoff told The Wall Street Journal that the show was not intended to be punitive.
“This isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants,” Mr. Worsoff said, adding, “This is not, ‘Hey, if you lose, we are shipping you out on a boat out of the country.’”
Ms. McLaughlin said the pitch had not yet reached the level of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. She said on social media on Thursday that the department “receives hundreds of television show pitches a year,” including for documentaries about border operations and white-collar investigations. “Each proposal undergoes a thorough vetting process prior to denial or approval,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “This pitch has not received approval or denial by staff.”
The department has worked with filmmakers in the past on programming.
In 2017, during the first Trump administration, the agency allowed documentary filmmakers extensive access to operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for a program called “Immigration Nation.”

I cannot imagine the American public being intensely interested in such a show. Granted, they would learn some history and law, but people would find it boring. I find it embarrassing and schlocky, and imagine answering those questions on t.v. I am betting they won’t go through with it. “I’ll take Canceled Amendments for $200.”

*Israel previously announced that it would launch a large offensive against Hamas after Trump finished his trip to the Middle East. But the IDF couldn’t wait, and a big offensive has just begun. (h/t Malgorzata)

Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday killed at least 74 people, Hamas-run authorities said, as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a Middle East visit that skipped Israel and offered little prospect for a ceasefire and hostage deal.
Vowing to take care of Gaza, Trump said “a lot of people are starving in Gaza… There’s a lot of bad things going on.”
Strikes overnight into Friday morning hit the outskirts of Deir al-Balah and the city of Khan Younis, and sent people fleeing from the Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya.
The death toll figure, which is not independently verified, does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
The Saudi Al-Hadath news channel reported that Israeli tanks advanced in the area of Beit Lahiya.
The IDF said Friday afternoon that it had carried out airstrikes on over 150 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip over the past day.
The targets included anti-tank missile launch posts, cells of operatives, and buildings used by terror groups to carry out attacks on forces, the army said.

The WaPo adds this:

The strikes in Gaza on Friday were preparatory actions leading to a larger operation and were meant to send a message to Hamas that the campaign will begin soon if there is not an agreement to release hostages, the Associated Press reported, citing an unnamed Israeli official.

The problem with the food, which I do worry about, it that yes, Gaza has enough food for all its people for some time, but Hamas is guarding it in warehouses. True, no food is coming in, but Israel has offered to distribute food to people so it could ensure that the food goes to civilians, not to Hamas, but the UN won’t let Israel do that for reasons that are completely unclear to me. But, at any rate, it’s not true that Israel refuses to distribute food, and remember that there is no obligation to distribute food to an enemy country (we didn’t in WWII), so Israel is going beyond the call of duty by offering to do so.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/dozens-said-killed-in-heavy-israeli-strikes-across-gaza-trump-people-are-starving/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2025-05-16&utm_medium=email

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly and snarky news column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The emir of America.”

→ Biden and Kamala continue their bickering: A top adviser to Kamala’s presidential run told authors of a forthcoming book that Biden screwed the campaign over, and that if he had only dropped out earlier, Kamala would have soared. Which makes no sense, because she became slightly less popular as she campaigned. It seems like if Biden would’ve quit just a couple months earlier, Doug Emhoff might have been in the East Wing today switching out the drapes and getting ready for SoulCycle in Georgetown. The new book details Biden’s aging, and the lengths people went to cover it up includes that his team planned for Biden to be in a wheelchair soon after the election. I need everyone involved in this to step away from public life. But they refuse. Last week, Joe and Dr. Jill Biden went on The View. The ladies asked him about the criticisms of his age, and he went on for a few minutes until Dr. Jill, our villain, swooped in to say how very hard he worked.
The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day. I mean, he’d get up, he put in a full day, and then at night he would, I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff. I mean, it was nonstop.

He put in a full day like a grown-up, she says, as Joe stares ahead, confused. Why is Joe all dressed up there at The View table anyway? Dr. Jill, just let him rest, good Lord.
→ The new Statue of Liberty: Donald Trump is being gifted a jumbo jet by the Qataris. The administration says it’s being given to the Defense Department and then will go to Trump’s “presidential library foundation,” which I’m sure will be very real and very full of big books. Facing criticism, Trump reposted someone on Truth Social saying the plane is a gift from a foreign government, like the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. Just like that. But does the Statue of Liberty have a minibar full of Diet Coke?
My favorite exchange on this whole thing was on Fox News, between Brian Kilmeade and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Kilmeade: “Do you worry that if [the Qataris] give us something like this, they want something in return?”
Leavitt: “Absolutely not, because they know President Trump, and they know he only works with the interests of the American public in mind.”

To be clear, I only work with the interests of TGIF in mind. So if someone wants to gift a briefcase of diamonds or a big private plane, TGIF might be interested in promoting your concrete company. Incentives: aligned! You’re welcome, TG readers.
Attesting to the legality of the gift from Qatar was United States attorney general and top blonde Pam Bondi, whose former job was working as a lobbyist for Qatar.
→ UC Berkeley votes against Hindu Heritage Month: The UC Berkeley student senate voted against Hindu Heritage Month, citing “Hindu nationalism,” despite the university’s observing several other heritage months. Hindus are not allowed heritage time! Stop asking for heritage awareness, Hindus. You must sit in shame next to the Irish Pride group and the campus Israel club (it is an awkward combo in there, I gotta warn you). Certain heritages’ self-awareness needs to be suppressed, and UC Berkeley is adding Hindu to that list. The failed resolution had recognized contributions to the Berkeley community by people of Hindu heritage, and called on students to “support their Hindu peers on campus.” No. Stop asking. As your debutante arbiter of who is white, and what to do with edge cases, I’ll be clear: Greeks and Italians are ethnic and may celebrate, though not for a whole month, just a heritage week. Basically a food festival and that’s it. But Hindus are white. I can’t explain why but it’s true.

*A new paper in Science once again shows the value of genetic differences between human populations in reconstructing the history of human migration. Who says population differences are of no biological significance?. Click below to read it, or find the pdf here (h/t Matthew):

The upshot is really summarized in the abstract, and the four lineages giving rise to modern South American populations is shown in the figure below. The size of the circle in each area is an index of the inhabitants’ genetic diversity, which itself is an index of population size (bigger circles = more people in the past).

Here’s the summary:

From our origins in Africa, humans have migrated and settled across the world. Perhaps none of these migrations has been the subject of as much debate as the expansion into and throughout the Americas. Gusareva et al. used 1537 whole-genome sequenced samples from 139 populations in South America and Northeast Eurasia to shed light on the population history of Native Americans. Collected as a part of the GenomeAsia 100K consortium, analysis of these data showed that there are four main ancestral lineages that contributed to modern South Americans. These lineages diverged from each other between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago, and this analysis reveals more details of the population history dynamics in these groups.

Note how, in general, the South American circles are smaller, reflecting the fact that only a limited number of individuals went on each southward foray, reducing the genetic diversity. Note that they used over 1500 whole genome sequences to get these data, and that the lineages diverged over 10,000 years ago. What I always find amazing is that humans crossed the Bering land bridge about 17,000 years ago, and only a few thousand years later they’d already crossed North America, Central America, and made it to South America. That’s some fast traveling, and one wonders why. (I presume competition, but we don’t know.)

They also were unable to find the part of NE Asia where the immigrants originated, but they surely had to pass through Siberia.

Click picture to enlarge:

(From paper): Genetic ancestry and nucleotide diversity. Colors represent genetic ancestries estimated by whole-genome sequencing data of contemporary human populations. Countries having no data remained empty. Circle size indicates the average nucleotide diversity of each population.

*The man who tried to stab Salman Rushdie to death has been sentenced, and although it was the maximum sentence under the charges, it seems light to me:

The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced Friday to serve 25 years in prison.
A jury found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault in February.
Rushdie did not return to court to the western New York courtroom for his assailant’s sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement. During the trial, the 77-year-old author was the key witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety.
Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made a statement about freedom of speech in which he called Rushdie a hypocrite.
“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” said Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”

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Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie and seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with him. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said.

Rushdie, stabbed 15 times, lost one of his eyes and the use of one hand, and if you want to read his ruminations about the attack, I highly recommend Rushdie’s account Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which I’ve mentioned before. Since Rushdie never met the guy who stabbed him, it’s not just his thoughts about the murder, which are quite eloquent, but the gruesome details of his long healing. At the end he confects a dialogue between himself and Matar in an attempt to suss out Matar’s motivations. It’s all because Rusdie wrote a book that offended some Muslims; I bet Matar didn’t even read it.

Here’s an 8.5-minute BBC video giving details of the trial; it includes a short interview with Rushdie:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s looking for books in all the wrong places.