Pete Hegseth accidentally texts U.S. war plans to Atlantic editor, says new report
‘On March 15, the U.S. bombed Houthi rebels in Yemen — but Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg knew specific details about its “secret” war plans hours beforehand, thanks to an extremely careless text he received by controversial Trump-pick Pete Hegseth.
“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming,” Goldberg explained today.
“The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing,” he said.
And it wasn’t just the incompetence of Hegseth — a former Fox News host before Donald Trump thought him worthy enough to become U.S. Secretary of Defense — that led to the security breach. It was more of a group effort, that started with Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.…’
‘Assuming that the judge — Judge Boasberg or any other judge for that matter — eventually concludes that the government deliberately violated a court order, what are the judge’s options?
I can tell you that every former judge I know has been asked this question by somebody in the media, including me. I think the only real option is civil contempt.
The reason why it cannot be criminal contempt is generally that would be referred to the Justice Department to prosecute. So you might have a lawyer, a witness that you direct to answer [a question], they refuse, and/or they lie. If you want to charge them with criminal contempt, you have to get the U.S. Attorney’s office or Main Justice to prosecute, and clearly the Tr*mp Justice Department, or the Bondi Justice Department, is not going to prosecute.
Then you get that question, which was raised in the Eric Adams case, could you appoint a special prosecutor? That’s tricky because of separation of powers, so I think criminal contempt is off the table.
I think civil contempt, however, is something that could be done if the facts are fairly straightforward. The remedy in civil contempt, believe it or not, can include incarceration.
Usually it’s fines. If it was a lawyer, you might file a grievance against the lawyer. That could be done if these lawyers either lie to the court or personally violate the order — you might want to bring a grievance before the grievance committee of the local bar where they’re admitted, something like that.
So it could be fines, could be a grievance, but in theory, it could also be jailing somebody. I did that only once in my time on the bench. In a civil contempt case, I actually put somebody in jail because he was so defiant, and then … he did what he was told to do.
You could also sanction the person, and that’s always interesting, because you could have fines that double every day, so it can get serious fast. I don’t know how good at math you are, but a $1,000 fine doubling every day can quickly add up to real money — not for the United States government, but for an individual. If somebody was individually sanctioned, that adds up.
How would incarceration work in civil contempt? Wouldn’t you still need the involvement of the executive branch?
Well, you need the person taken away by the U.S. Marshal. That’s the problem, right?
When I held someone in civil contempt, I had to say, “Marshal, take this person across the street to the jail.”
That is part of the executive branch — just the U.S. Marshal escorting the person over to the federal facility. So it still has that problem, but you don’t need a prosecutor.…’
(Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, interviewing former federal judge Shira Scheindlin via POLITICO)
New data suggests the unknown, unobservable force responsible for the universe’s expansion may be weakening.
A visualization of a 3D map of the universe, with Earth at the center and every dot representing a galaxy.
‘Observable matter–everything from the coffee cup on your desk, to distant planets, to the largest and most ancient galaxies—makes up just 5% of the cosmos, meaning that dark energy is responsible for a whopping 68% of everything we think exists in the universe.
The notion of dark energy as a constant—which is to say, it manifested the same way 10 billion years ago as it does today, and as it will 10 billion years from now—is “baked into” the predominant model of the universe, Lambda-CDM, according to Rossana Ruggeri, a physicist at the University of Queensland who was involved in the DESI analysis.
“Results from the first batch of data gave a hint that dark energy might not behave like a simple cosmological constant—but it wasn’t strong enough to draw firm conclusions,” Ruggeri said in The Conversation. “Now, the second batch of data has made this evidence stronger.”
Though the data does not yet meet the statistical threshold physicists require to firmly declare a bona fide new discovery, the data strengthen physicists’ resolve that something is going on that will mean the model needs to be revised. “If dark energy is changing over time, it could have profound implications for the ultimate fate of the universe,” Ruggeri wrote.…’
— they probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Tr*mp but are still wildly important
‘I wrote this for people who, like me, have spent much of the past few weeks hoping that somebody else would do something bolder in this political movement. We are downtrodden because we’re full of rage and heartbreak, but the polls tell us that our neighbors don’t share those feelings. We realize we’re seeing something that so many aren’t, but we’re not sure how to bridge the gap. We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.
I don’t pretend that all it takes for a social movement to succeed is a bunch of individuals throwing the activist equivalent of spaghetti at so many isolated walls. Nothing I offer here will be enough. And yet, so many of us are waiting for something we can join, which presents a true opportunity to be the first person in your circle welcoming fellow travelers into halting, shaky, earnest action.…’
‘From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America’s victory at Iwo Jima.
Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
The Defense department’s URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following Tr*mp’s executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….’
‘New research this month shows that the experimental antiviral obeldesivir prevented up to 100% of deaths in monkeys infected with the deadliest species of Ebola.…’
Leader of the Youngbloods, and then an enduring prolific solo singer-songwriter career
‘Jesse Colin Young, whose sincere tenor vocals for the Youngbloods graced one of the most loving anthems of the hippie era, “Get Together,” a Top Five hit in 1969, before he went on to pursue a solo career that lasted more than five decades, died on Sunday at his home in Aiken, S.C. He was 83.
His death was announced by his publicist, Michael Jensen, who did not specify a cause.…’
‘Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?…’
‘…[I]t’s worth noting for context that there is another prominent international figure who routinely references an “artificial” line between his country and his neighbor: Vladimir Putin has used the same rhetoric in recent years when describing the border between Russia and Ukraine.…’
Write negative coverage about Dictator Tr*mp, and you’re breaking the law.
‘At least that’s what the highly sensitive MAGA man said when speaking to reporters today.
“I believe that CNN and MSDNC [sic], who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party,” Trump said, seeming to forget the name of MSNBC. “And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal.” (See video here, posted by Aaron Rupar.)
“And it has to stop,” he added, via The Hill, after comparing television news outlets to political operatives. “It has to be illegal. It’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other.”…’
‘Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum looks at the phenomenon of seeing a shadowy man wearing a wide brim hat appearing during terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis. This so called “Hat Man” is so prevalent that restless sleepers have seen this or other frightening images just before they fall asleep. Zarka also examines the physiology behind these frightening episodes…’
‘Elon M*sk is many things—the richest man in the world, an internet-addled conspiracy theorist, the controller of six companies, perhaps even the shadow president of the United States—but most importantly, he is an idea. The value of M*sk may be tied more to his image than his actual performance. He’s a human meme stock….’ (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)
‘Known more formally as osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP), the surgery has been performed successfully in a handful of countries over the last five decades…
Developed in Italy in the 1960s, tooth-in-eye surgery is a multi-step process that starts with extracting one of a patient’s canine teeth. Surgeons then shape the tooth into a rectangle, drill a hole into it and glue a plastic optical lens inside the hole. They then surgically embed the tooth into the patient’s cheek so that a layer of tissue can grow around it. During the same procedure, they also cut a flap of skin from inside the patient’s cheek and surgically attach the skin to the front of the patient’s eyeball.
Then, they wait. Three months later, if all goes to plan, they embark on the second phase of the operation. They pull back the flap of skin from the eye, then remove any previously damaged tissue, like the lens and the iris. Next, they remove the tooth from the patient’s cheek and surgically embed it into the eyeball. They then lay the flap of skin back over the eyeball and cut a small hole for the patient to see out of.
When the multi-step procedure is complete, patients have a pink tissue with a black dot in the middle where their eye used to be. “It won’t look like a normal eye… The eye will look pink with a small dark circle in the middle.”
The patient’s vision usually comes back within a month of the second phase of the surgery…. Afterward, patients can’t see perfectly—they have a narrower field of vision, similar to peering through a porthole—but they can usually resume some of the activities they had to stop when they went blind. One woman in Australia started skiing again, reports CBC Radio’s Sheena Goodyear.
Surgeons use teeth because of their strength and durability. Teeth are made of dentin, which is one of the hardest substances in the body. And, since they are part of the patient’s own body to begin with, teeth are not typically rejected after the surgery.
“We are trying to really just replace a clear window on the front of the eye… The tooth is the perfect structure to hold a focusing piece of plastic or a telescope for the patient to see through…’ (Sarah Kuta *via Smithsonian *)
‘The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Tr*mp and carried out by billionaire Elon M*sk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste….’ (via AP News)
The contest for the worst opening sentence in literature is being shut down. Fortunately, access to their archive will be preserved. (via Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest)
‘Firefly’s first mission to the Moon touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday at 3:34 a.m. ET. The Texas-based company released a clip of Blue Ghost’s descent toward the Moon followed by a smooth landing. The footage is a masterclass in lunar landings, capturing striking views of the lander emerging from a cloud of dust, its shadow stretching across the Moon’s surface in a superhero-like stance….’ (via Gizmodo)
‘A review of Steve Benen, “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past” (Harper Collins, 2024) and Jason Stanley, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future” (Simon & Schuster, 2024)….’ (Abby Smith Rumsey via Lawfare)
‘What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy. It was driven with a frenetic focus by Mr. M*sk, who channeled his libertarian impulses and resentment of regulatory oversight of his vast business holdings into a singular position of influence….’ (via The New York Times)
In a way, M*sk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter was practice, or an opening gambit in a meticulously planned coup.
‘Never mind, we can’t get our act together. Sorry that Trump is ruining the country but we’ll be back next year in time for the midterms…’ (Susan B. Glasser via The New Yorker)
‘…[P]icture the most intense, bleeding-heart liberal you know, the type who has five signs in their front yard, rage-watches the news, and has spent the past ten years worried that Donald Trump will march us straight into fascism. Now imagine all that discontent freed from the burden of uninspiring Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Where does that energy go?…’ (Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker)
‘Though the two outbreaks are in the same region (the Équateur Province), it’s not certain yet whether they are truly connected. People in both outbreaks have experienced similar symptoms, which include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain, and headache. Some people have also experienced hemorrhaging (potentially life-threatening blood loss), but tests for Ebola and Marburg virus—well-known causes of hemorrhagic fever—have come up negative in both outbreaks….’ (via Gizmodo)
‘Users online documented how a dictation tool input ‘Tr*mp’ in place of ‘racist’; other words such as ‘rampant’ also trigger what Apple called a ‘bug’…’ (Aaron Tilley via WSJ)
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)
‘Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Tr*mp-M*sk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future….’ (Hamilton Nolan via How Things Work, with a nod to kottke)
‘Donald Tr*mp intends to rule as an autocrat. On this, his statements and past conduct are clear... [H]e will have considerable leeway to follow through on this aim.
If he and his allies approach the task astutely (admittedly a tall order in their case), they can transform the executive branch into an instrument of his will. They can then use key federal agencies, along with deputized state and local law enforcement and thuggish extremists like the Proud Boys, to try and sideline his opponents.
Any laws they break in the process are of little concern. Chief Justice John Roberts and his band of enablers saw to that last summer in Tr*mp v. United States, when they effectively anointed (Republican) presidents elected kings.
Tr*mp’s freedom of action is not absolute, however. His bid to become a dictator will run up against some serious obstacles, including federalism, a vibrant civil society, his own unpopularity, and others we will cover today. These obstacles serve as loci of potential resistance. If democratic Americans, including but not limited to the Democratic Party, exploit them to their full effect, they can thwart the coming lurch toward authoritarianism.
To help identify these various points of leverage, we will draw on the experiences of other countries where aspiring autocrats put democracy at risk. In places like Belarus, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, elected strongmen overpowered their opponents and forged authoritarian regimes. In others, like Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, oppositions were able to frustrate such efforts, allowing democracy to survive….’ (Neil A. Abrams via The Detox)
‘Inspired by photographs in old reports and on social media, an expedition of botanists trekked into the remote Meliau Range in Sabah in Borneo and confirmed a new and amazing species of pitcher plant. Then, they immediately realised it’s already endangered.
The newly described Nepenthes pongoides has a remarkably large pitcher, the jug-like leaf that evolved to trap and digest insects for nutrients that are limited in the soil. The largest pitcher they found was 45cm tall and could hold at least two litres of liquid!…’
‘There’s no need to overreact to the fact that the president of these United States casually tweeted out on a Saturday morning the statement, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
No — it’s sobering enough that the Chief Magistrate of our Republic would favorably repeat the words of Napoleon Bonaparte (the quote is perhaps apocryphal) on this subject and his excuses for the reality that he deformed his own republic into an empire, with himself as its monarch….’ (Mark Antonio Wright viaNational Review)
‘”Humpback whales can’t swallow a human. Here’s why,” says National Geographic’s title. And here’s the article in a nutshell:
Though a humpback could easily fit a human inside its huge mouth—which can reach around 10 feet—it’s scientifically impossible for the whale to swallow a human once inside, according to Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K. nonprofit.
A humpback’s throat is roughly the size of a human fist, and can only stretch to about 15 inches in diameter to accommodate a bigger meal.
…it’s scientifically impossible for all but one whale species—the sperm whale—to swallow something as large as a person.
Perhaps the humpback clutched the man in its mouth before releasing him, or perhaps it just dragged him under water before the man popped back up. Either way, it was a terrifying experience on its own, and made for some awesome video, even if we didn’t get to see the inside of a whale’s throat….’
‘A Russian drone strike has damaged the massive protective shield covering Chernobyl’s infamous nuclear reactor, the BBC reports.
The overnight attack caused a fire at the facility that houses the remains of the 1986 nuclear disaster, though radiation levels remain stable both inside and outside the complex….’
‘Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Tr*mp administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”:
Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
This diagram is available as a PDF and the information is also contained in this categorized table. Links and commentary from Pagel can be found on Bluesky as well.
Also very helpful is this list of authoritarian actions that the Tr*mp administration has taken, each with a link to the relevant news story. I will be referring back to this list often in the coming weeks…’
‘If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails…’
‘Staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs, companies culling fleet models, and fan-forum owners selling their cars—Elon Musk’s alt-right antics are seriously impacting his electric car business….’
‘Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change….’
‘The legal clashes over President Trump’s blizzard of executive actions are intensifying, with new lawsuits and fresh rulings emerging day and night.
As of Feb. 12, 18 of those rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the president’s initiatives. Already, the administration has asked higher courts to intervene. Some of these cases could reach the Supreme Court in the weeks and months to come.
Jump to a section:
The dozens of lawsuits fall into these categories. Cases with the most recent actions are listed first….’
‘The former prime minister was quizzed on Donald Tr*mp’s plans for the Middle East, at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Wednesday (12 February). The former Conservative leader said his recent work trip to Mar-a-Lago made him realise what a great place it was. He said: “It’s an absolutely fantastic place if you want to resettle millions of people there.” His comments come after Tr*mp said he would “own” the Gaza Strip, declaring it would be a “real estate development for the future” in an interview with Fox News….’
‘On Wednesday, a team of researchers announced that they got extremely lucky. The team is building a detector on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea that can identify those rare occasions when a neutrino happens to interact with the seawater nearby. And while the detector was only 10 percent of the size it will be on completion, it managed to pick up the most energetic neutrino ever detected….’
‘On Tuesday morning, Google searches for the Gulf of Mexico returned an official “Gulf of America” knowledge panel at the top, complete with a tile showing the updated name on Google Maps. Soon after, Apple Maps and Bing had echoed that change….’
‘Lawrence O’Donnell Flames Tr*mp’s ‘Subservience’ to Elon Musk in Oval Office…’ (via MSN)
Musk brought his 4-year-old to the Oval Office. It wasn’t just a photo op.
‘Throughout Musk’s stop by the Oval Office, X knelt by the Resolute Desk, picked his nose and whispered to the president. In other words, he acted very much like a 4-year old child.
But X’s presence also underscored the outsized presence that the unelected Musk is playing in American politics. The preschooler’s appearance in the Oval Office nods to the double standard faced by women in politics and reinforces the gender roles inherent in Musk’s beliefs about family.
Musk, a father of 12, is an avowed pronatalist, or someone who believes declining population rates are a major concern and has committed to work to remedy this by having as many children as possible. He sees part of his life’s work as repopulating the planet with as many children — and exceptional children at that — as possible….’
‘Mr. Byrd missed out on a brush with history when his original poster for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, featuring a neoclassical image of a nude woman with an urn, was replaced for various logistical reasons by Arnold Skolnick’s — the now famous image of a white bird perched on a guitar neck. Mr. Byrd took it in stride.
“I didn’t think of it as any kind of ‘branding’ for the event,” he said of his poster. “I thought of it as a souvenir of the event.”
Mr. Byrd was impressed by — and to a degree, aligned with — the work of the so-called Big Five psychedelic poster artists of San Francisco: Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson, who were known for using kaleidoscopic patterns, explosions of color and fonts that seemed to bend and ooze like Salvador Dalí clocks.
But, based 3,000 miles from the Haight-Ashbury scene, Mr. Byrd was also influenced by Broadway and advertising, employing standard typefaces and drawing on the Art Nouveau movement of 1890s Europe. His work is “kind of like Art Nouveau on acid,” said Thomas La Padula, an adjunct professor of illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where Mr. Byrd taught in the 1970s..’ (Alex Williams via The New York Times)
‘The newer variant of avian influenza that recently infected dairy cattle in Nevada has a genetic change that’s thought to help the virus copy itself in mammals — including humans — more easily, according to a new technical brief from the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
It’s unclear whether these viruses pose a bigger threat to people, however. The CDC says the risk of H5N1 to the public is still low, although people who work on farms or who have backyard flocks are at higher risk….’ (via CNN)
‘In 2022, I was named the national student poet of the West, one of the nation’s highest honors for youth poets. During my year of service, I performed my work across the country, including at the White House. Yet I couldn’t tell the difference between T.S. Eliot and ChatGPT.
Apparently, I’m not alone in this lapse of discernment. According to a study published in Nature in November, Americans are more likely to appreciate AI-generated poems than poetry from humanity’s most celebrated authors: Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and, of course, Eliot.
In fact, not only did the participants prefer ChatGPT’s poetry, but they also found it “more human than human.” AI-written poetry was 17 percentage points more likely to be judged as having been written by a human than the actual human-authored poetry. It was also rated more favorably in terms of “rhythm and beauty.”…’ (Diane Sun, a sophomore at Harvard University studying philosophy and linguistics, via The Washington Post)
‘According to an OECD study conducted a few years ago, Japanese sleep the shortest among all 33 member countries. And Japan’s own internal statistics showed that roughly 40% of their population gets less than six hours of sleep. This alarming data triggered the government in 2023 to publish guidelines for recommended amounts of sleep, but that clearly wasn’t enough. The government has now announced that it has developed the ZZZN SLEEP APPAREL SYSTEM, a wearable product designed to improve sleep environments and sleep itself.
Working with digital transformation firm NTT DX Partners and creative design agency Konel, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced their innovative sleepwear that allows users to “carry sleep” wherever they go.
The new system, which walks a line between healthcare and fashion, incorporates the concept of ”polyphasic sleep,” or segmented sleep in which the day’s sleep is divided into multiple sessions rather than taken all at once. The system provides an optimal sleep environment even outdoors by measuring autonomic nerves and stress levels based on heart rate and heart rate variability obtained by the wearable device….’ (via Spoon & Tamago)
‘The Tr*mp spike in racism, sexism, and hate — it’s the emotional foundation for the entire Make America Great Again movement, that nostalgia for when life in America was simpler and paler. But as soon as we began addressing it — boom! extinction burst…
Extinction burst is actually really simple. It’s when you have a behavior and a reward, and you withdraw the reward in order to change the behavior. When you do that, usually to change an undesirable behavior, the behavior itself increases in frequency and intensity for a short period of time until ultimately the subject changes the behavior and then that behavior goes extinct…
Now, extinction burst at the national level is much slower, but in this case we actually know very clearly what triggered it: it was Obama’s election in 2008. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Movement, the birther movement, and ultimately MAGA. It is a 10-year tsunami of rage in the face of inevitable extinction.
This is why Republicans are still so angry. They know they know Tr*mp winning can’t stop it, and they know Tr*mp in office can’t stop it — they can feel the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.
At this point, the only thing that’ll stop it is if we let up. If you stop interfering with that undesirable behavior, it will go back to normal. So no, you’re not crazy; yes, you are doing the right thing; and yes, if you persevere, the extinction burst will end…
[T]he extinction burst concept explains why the reaction seems to be getting more extreme, from QAnon to an increased number of book bans to anti-trans laws to anti-abortion laws to Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes in public to openly expressed racism by many Republican politicians to January 6th to the 2025 Coup. We are seeing behavior that 15-20 years ago would have been almost unthinkable — now it’s daily….’ (Jason Kottke via Kottke)
‘To me, a constitutional crisis will arrive when the third branch — the judiciary — steps in to constrain the president’s powers, and the president openly ignores the court order. That’s the makings of a democratic breakdown.
In fact, it’s one of the more common ways for a democracy to fail: it’s pretty risky, when you think about it, to all be playing a game where the umpire has no inherent power and everything is just premised on the players trusting that the other players will do what the umpire says….’ (Gabe Fleisher via Wake Up to Politics)
‘Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them….’ (ACLU)
Select from different scenarios including law enforcement questions, arrival of police or ICE at your home, being detained near the border, challenging a deportation order, etc.
‘The World War II-era “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership….’ (Jason Koebler via 404media)
‘A fresh-voiced singer and Mick Jagger’s muse in the 1960s, she went on to experience more than her share of hard times before emerging triumphant….’ (via New York Times)
‘…[S]tep by step, all the things that made writing at the Times worthwhile for me were taken away. The Times eliminated the blog at the end of 2017. Here’s my last substantive blog post, which gives a good idea of the kind of thing I was no longer able to do once it was eliminated.
For a while I tried to make up for the loss of the blog with threads on Twitter. But even before Elon Musk Nazified the site, tweet threads were an awkward, inferior substitute for blog posts. So in 2021 I opened a Substack account, as a place to put technical material I couldn’t publish in the Times. Times management became very upset. When I explained to them that I really, really needed an outlet where I could publish more analytical writing with charts etc., they agreed to allow me to have a Times newsletter (twice a week), where I could publish the kind of work I had previously posted on my blog.
In September 2024 my newsletter was suddenly suspended by the Times. The only reason I was given was “a problem of cadence”: according to the Times, I was writing too often. I don’t know why this was considered a problem, since my newsletter was never intended to be published as part of the regular paper. Moreover, it had proved to be popular with a number of readers.
Also in 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive. I went from one level of editing to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence of my original argument. But as I told Charles Kaiser, I began to feel that I was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless.
One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject….’ (– via Contrarian)
‘Google Maps, the most popular mapping software in the world, said on Monday evening that it will begin using new names for two prominent geographical features in North America, the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali. As soon as “they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said on the social media site X, it would change the names of these features to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley.
The announcement comes a little less than a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to, in his words, “promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes.” This included renaming the Gulf and the highest mountain in North America….’ (via Ars Technica)
‘For the past 48 hours, thousands of TikTok users have been posting and sharing videos ostensibly about “cute winter boots.”
“I see a lot of people on this app right now making plans to buy cute winter boots,” one TikToker posted on Thursday, “…but there’s a lot of things that you guys are missing.”
“Here’s some safety tips for going out in your cute winter boots,” another user posted, “you’re going to memorize your first amendment rights, because those are the rights you’re exercising when you’re out in your cute winter boots.”
The phrase “cute winter boots” is not about footwear. It’s a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to Trump and how to fight back against the draconian immigration policies his administration is enacting. Users talking about “cute winter boots” keeping people safe from “ice,” are referencing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Cute winter boots” is just the latest example of algospeak, coded phrases and words aimed at subverting algorithmic filters.
As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over speech online, TikTok users are adopting more coded language specifically aimed at criticizing the government and alerting others to government surveillance of online spaces. For instance, the phrase “Senator, I’m Singaporean,” a quote uttered by TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew in response to Sen. Tom Cotton’s racist line of questioning implying that Chew was a Chinese government agent, is now frequently posted in the comments of videos by users seeking to warn others about the content they’re posting. The phrase “Senator, I’m Singaporean,” has come to mean that a video is not something that the government wants, or that they’re going to show this type of video to congress, a creator explained.
The videos discussing “cute winter boots” leverage the TikTok algorithm’s preference for product-focused content to amplify their reach. “What the algorithm likes is products,” said Diana, the admin of @/citiesbydiana, a TikTok account about urban planning. “It’s a way to talk about resisting the federal government in a way that will actually reach people.”
Many “cute winter boots” videos also include links to TikTok shop, but instead of selling boots they’re selling things like Night by Elie Wiesel, a book about the Holocaust, or items that may be useful to have in a protest, like protective gear. Some are promoting the date January 29th as a day of protest….’ (via TikTok)
‘TOKYO (AP) — A solitary sunfish at an aquarium in southwestern Japan lost its appetite, began banging into the side of the fish tank and appeared unwell days after the facility closed last month for renovations. As a last-ditch measure to save the popular fish, its keepers hung their uniforms and set up human cutouts outside the tank.
‘Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered….’ (Timothy W. Ryback via The Atlantic)
Please note: For awhile now, my typographic convention has been to spell the Orange Menace’s name in all lower case, reflecting the extent to which I feel he does not warrant the respect indicated when we capitalize proper names. Henceforth, I am shifting to referring to him as “Tr*mp”, because he is quite simply an obscenity. (Thanks to Tananarive Due)
‘In light of Tr*mp II’s predictably cruel and bonkers beginning, many people are asking: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations.
1. Protect the decent and hardworking members of your communities who are undocumented or whose parents are undocumented This is an urgent moral call to action. As Donald Tr*mp’s Ice begins roundups and deportations, many good people are endangered and understandably frightened.
One of Tr*mp’s new executive orders allows Ice to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, healthcare sites, shelters and relief centers – thereby deterring them from sending their kids to school or getting help they need.
If you trust your mayor or city manager, check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep Ice away from schools, hospitals and shelters.
Organize and mobilize your community to support it as a sanctuary city, and to support your state as a sanctuary state. Tr*mp’s justice department is already launching investigations of cities and states that go against federal immigration orders, laying the groundwork for legal challenges to local laws and forcing compliance with the executive branch. Your voice and organizing could be helpful in fighting back.
I recommend you order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.
2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community Tr*mp may make life far more difficult for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and of other expansive identities through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws or changes in how such laws are enforced.
His election and his rhetoric might also unleash hatefulness by bigoted people in your community.
I urge you to work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.
3. Help protect officials in your community or state whom Tr*mp and his administration are targeting for vengeance Some may be low-level officials, such as election workers. If they do not have the means to legally defend themselves, you might help them or consider a GoFundMe campaign. If you hear of anyone who seeks to harm them, immediately alert law-enforcement officials.
4. Participate or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Tr*mp regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock.
5. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Tr*mp Much of the action over the next months and years will be in the federal courts. The groups initiating legislation that I know and trust include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund and Common Cause.
6. Spread the truth
Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Tr*mp propaganda, including local media, contradict them with facts and their sources.
7. Urge friends, relatives and acquaintances to avoid Tr*mp propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, X and, increasingly, Facebook and Instagram They are increasingly filled with hateful bigotry and toxic and dangerous lies. For some people, these propaganda sources can also be addictive; help the people you know wean themselves off them.
8. Push for progressive measures in your community and state Local and state governments have significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level. Lobby, instigate, organize and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders.
9. Encourage worker action Most labor unions are on the right side – seeking to build worker power and resist repression. You can support them by joining picket lines and boycotts, and encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize.
10. Keep the faith. Do not give up on America Remember, Tr*mp won the popular vote by only one and a half points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker. In the House, the Republicans’ five-seat lead is the smallest since the Great Depression. In the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive Senate races, including in four states Tr*mp won.
America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it – or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity and the rule of law. The forces of Tr*mpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. But we cannot allow them to.
We will never give up….’ (Robert Reich via The Guardian)
‘We’ve talked about viruses as being an outlier that strains the definition of life. Viruses do not have the ability to reproduce on their own, but must harness a host cell of another species to replicate. But now there’s a new type of life form that is even more primitive than viruses called obelisks. Obelisks consist of a viroid-like disc of RNA, but they do not have the protein shell that viruses have. Their genetic information is completely distinct from any known species, putting them into a unique phylogenic group. They reproduce by infecting another cell, like viruses do. They haven’t yet been classified into the Tree of Life because scientists aren’t really sure where they belong. But obelisks have been found in the microbiome of humans, in the digestive tract. One type of obelisks studied infects the bacteria Streptococcus sanguinis, found in human mouths. The impact of obelisks in the human biome has not been determined, but they’ve been there all this time and just haven’t been found until recently….’ (via Neatorama)
Master instrumentalist and last surviving member of The Band
’A rustic figure with an expansive forehead and sprawling beard, Hudson was a classically trained performer and self-educated Greek chorus who spoke through piano, synthesizers, horns and his favored Lowrey organ. No matter the song, Hudson summoned just the right feeling or shading, whether the tipsy clavinet and wah-wah pedal on “Up on Cripple Creek,” the galloping piano on “Rag Mama Rag” or the melancholy saxophone on “It Makes No Difference.”…’ (via Boston Globe obituary)
‘Many in Europe avoid describing Russia’s sabotage campaign outside Ukraine as war because they’d rather not have to do anything in response….’ ( Phillips Payson O’Brien via The Atlantic)
‘The US military debates possible deployment on US soil under trump. trump has said he wants to use active duty U.S. troops to quell protests and round up immigrants. Will the military comply? (via POLITICO)
‘2024 was the year in which benchmark after benchmark for AI capabilities became as saturated as thePacific Ocean. We used to test AIs against a physics, biology, and chemistry benchmark called GPQA that was so difficult that even PhD students in the corresponding fields would generally score less than 70 percent. But the AIs now perform better than humans with relevant PhDs, so it’s not a good way to measure further progress.
On the Math Olympiad qualifier, too, the models now perform among top humans. A benchmark called the MMLU was meant to measure language understanding with questions across many different domains. The best models have saturated that one, too. A benchmark called ARC-AGI was meant to be really, really difficult and measure general humanlike intelligence — but o3 (when tuned for the task) achieves a bombshell 88 percent on it.
We can always create more benchmarks. (We are doing so — ARC-AGI-2 will be announced soon, and is supposed to be much harder.) But at the rate AIs are progressing, each new benchmark only lasts a few years, at best. And perhaps more importantly for those of us who aren’t machine learning researchers, benchmarks increasingly have to measure AI performance on tasks that humans couldn’t do themselves in order to describe what they are and aren’t capable of.
Yes, AIs still make stupid and annoying mistakes. But if it’s been six months since you were paying attention, or if you’ve mostly only playing around with the free versions of language models available online, which are well behind the frontier, you are overestimating how many stupid and annoying mistakes they make, and underestimating how capable they are on hard, intellectually demanding tasks…'(Kelsey Piper via Vox)
‘Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are ditching third-party fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes program inspired by X, according to an announcement penned by Meta’s new Trump-friendly policy chief Joel Kaplan. Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas…
…Zuckerberg said he was inspired by X, where Musk has championed this approach since taking over….’ (Jess Weatherbed via The Verge)
I don’t think this actually has a whole lot to do with Zuckerberg’s or Meta’s commitment to free speech. What Zuckerberg and Meta have realized is the value, demonstrated by Trump, Musk, and MAGA antagonists, of saying that you’re “protecting free speech” and using it as cover for almost anything you want to do. For Meta, that means increasing engagement, decreasing government oversight and interference, and lowering their labor costs (through cutting their workforce and strengthening their bargaining position vs labor) — all things that will make their stock price go up and increase the wealth of their shareholders.
‘Pine needle tea is made from white pine needles chopped, added to boiling water, steeped, and strained. The drink can be enjoyed hot, iced, or blended with other herbal teas, notes registered dietitian nutritionist Kate Spurgin.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reports that the tea is rich in antioxidants, vitamin A, and vitamin C, which can boost immunity and soothe colds.
WebMD also notes that certain molecules in pine needles can bind to a specific receptor in the body that plays an important role in regulating metabolism….’ (Meredith Kile via Vice)
‘Greenland is not small. We would never disrespect Greenland by calling it small. But it’s not as big as it looks, flattened out, on the Mercator projection. It is not roughly the same size as Africa. It is my belief, however, that trump does not know this and believes that it is the size of Africa, which makes him fixated on it enough to threaten war—trade war or shooting war—with a NATO ally over its control.
The same applies to Canada, which trump also says he wants, and which also appears enormous on the Mercator projection….’ (Jim Newelll via Slate)
‘First, to keep in full view what I wrote earlier in “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” – that trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again) and (2) shielded him from standing trial before the election for trying to overturn the 2020 results or for hoarding classified documents (which would have kept his criminality in full view of the electorate, and possibly rendered his candidacy a non-starter due to a jail sentence or loss of support). In any other country, we would understand that as part of an autocratic takeover, not a democratic victory.
Second, as this post will show, the results are best understood as a vote of no confidence in Democrats, not an embrace of trump or MAGA….’ (Michael Podhorzer via Weekend Reading)
‘Shame is what keeps us in check, or at least it should. It certainly used to. Trump, devoid of shame, has gone to great lengths to eviscerate that societal check….’ (Rex Huppke via USAToday Opinion)
‘Justice Juan Merchan, in an 18-page opinion and order, rejected a number of trump’s arguments against his sentencing, including that a president-elect is entitled to the same immunity as a president. He also rejected a motion to dismiss trump’s case in the interest of justice. Among the factors the court found weighing against dismissal was trump’s character: “Defendant’s disdain for the Third Branch of government, whether state or federal, in New York or elsewhere, is a matter of public record. Indeed, Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole.” In a related scathing footnote, Merchan accused trump’s lawyers of engaging in “dangerous rhetoric” in attacking the integrity of the court.
The footnote might also signal something about the peculiar timing of the ruling, so close to trump’s reascent to the presidency and with no time left for any sentence to be carried out. In it, Merchan all but accuses trump’s attorneys, led by trump’s nominee for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, of attempting to intimidate the judge in their recent pleadings. The implication could be that Merchan is laying down a marker that he will go ahead with the sentencing at this late date to demonstrate that the judiciary will not be intimidated by the incoming president.
Merchan notes specifically that trump’s filings “accuse … this Court of engaging in ‘unlawful’ and ‘unconstitutional’ conduct,” adding that such terms are synonymous with “criminally punishable.” Merchan then cited Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent paean to the sanctity of judicial independence. “Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.”…’ (Richard Hasen and Jeremy Stahl via Slate)
‘The business of measuring big waves is a tricky one. There’s multiple entities with their own calculation methods, there’s debate about where waves bottom out and where they peak, and there’s the endless stream of keyboard warriors speculating, arguing, and offering armchair analyses.
Unlike other, more objective world records, computing wave size is a byzantine science.
Nevertheless, there’s a new contender for the Guinness World Record of “Largest Wave Surfed,” as tossed into the ring by Alessandro “Alo” Slebir with his monster ride at Maverick’s from December 23rd, 2024. It’s speculated, potentially, that Alo’s wave measured 108 feet. And that would smash the current record held by Sebastian Steudtner and his 86-footer at Nazaré, Portugal in 2020….’ (via surfer.com.)
‘donald trump’s admirers are losing what remains of their minds because the President-elect said something that wasn’t cruel or insulting. On Sunday, trump posted an uncharacteristically presidential-sounding tribute to the late Jimmy Carter — one so well-written and lacking in ALL CAPS that it clearly came from someone else’s keyboard. The giveaways? Complete sentences, zero exclamation points, and not a single “WITCH HUNT!!!”…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘…[A] conviction still matters, even if a politician erases it. It’s a reality that says a lot about the meaning of a pardoned Jan. 6 conviction, not so much in the law books as in Washington’s public memory.
And it also explains why the ongoing Jan. 6 prosecutions aren’t the fool’s errand that some may think….’ (Michael Schaeffer via POLITICO)
This is my annual New Year’s post, a longstanding tradition here at FmH. Please let me know if you come across any broken links.
A while ago, I came across a Boston Globe article from January 1st that compiled various folkloric beliefs about what to do, eat, and avoid on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year ahead. I’ve regretted not clipping and saving it ever since—though I tend to think about it around this time every year (grin). As a parent now, I’m especially interested in traditions that go beyond the typical New Year’s activities like binge drinking, watching bowl games, and making resolutions.
A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It focuses on food-related traditions, which is interesting because, unlike most major holidays, New Year’s Day in 21st-century America doesn’t seem to revolve much around special foods (except, perhaps, the inevitable New Year’s resolution to lose weight). But…
Traditional New Year’s Foods
In many parts of the world, certain foods are considered good luck for the coming year. Many cultures believe that anything shaped like a ring is auspicious because it symbolizes the completion of a cycle. For example, in the Netherlands, eating donuts on New Year’s Day is thought to bring good fortune.
Black-Eyed Peas and Other Good Luck Foods
In the United States, a traditional New Year’s meal often includes black-eyed peas, sometimes served with hog jowls or ham. These peas are believed to bring prosperity, and the hog symbolizes abundance because of its forward-moving nature. Cabbage, another lucky food, is consumed on New Year’s Day in many cultures, symbolizing paper currency. Some regions also consider rice a lucky food for the new year.
In Scotland, New Year’s celebrations (Hogmanay) focus heavily on warmth, hospitality, and making a fresh start. Special foods enjoyed during Hogmanay include shortbread, oatcakes, ginger cordial, currant loaf, and scones. Another tradition involves “First Footing,” where the first person to cross your threshold at midnight should be a tall, dark-haired man, ideally bearing gifts like coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity for the coming year.
Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.
New Year’s Traditions Around the World
Georgia (USA): Eating black-eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day symbolizes prosperity and wealth. The Southern dish Hoppin’ John, made with black-eyed peas, bacon, and rice, is also a popular New Year’s tradition.
Greece: On New Year’s Day, a sweetbread called Vasilopita is traditionally served with a silver coin baked inside. The person who receives the slice with the coin is thought to be blessed with good fortune.
Italy: Lentils, oranges, and olives are commonly served. Lentils represent wealth (because they resemble coins), oranges symbolize love, and olives are associated with prosperity.
Norway: In Norway, a traditional New Year’s meal might include lutefisk (dried cod), while in Pennsylvania, sauerkraut is said to bring good fortune.
Spain: At midnight, Spaniards eat twelve grapes—one for each stroke of the clock, each grape bringing luck for a specific month of the year.
Denmark: Jumping off a chair at midnight symbolizes leaping into the new year.
Brazil: People in Rio celebrate by receiving blessings from the “Mother-saints” of the Macumba and Candomblé religions. Afterward, they dive into the ocean, jumping over seven waves to ensure good luck for the year ahead.
Unlucky Foods and Rituals
There are also foods to avoid on New Year’s Day. Lobster, chicken, and cows are considered unlucky because of how they move—lobsters crawl backward, chickens scratch the ground, and cows move slowly, symbolizing setbacks. Read on for more foods superstitious people try to avoid on the holiday. (Mental Floss)
The crescent-shaped Copacabana beach… is the scene of an unusual New Year’s Eve ritual: mass public blessings by the mother-saints of the Macumba and Candomble sects. More than 1 million people gather to watch colorful fireworks displays before plunging into the ocean at midnight after receiving the blessing from the mother-saints, who set up mini-temples on the beach.
When taking the plunge, revelers are supposed to jump over seven waves, one for each day of the week.
This is all meant to honor Lamanjá, known as the “Mother of Waters” or “Goddess of the Sea.” Lamanjá protects fishermen and survivors of shipwrecks. Believers also like to throw rice, jewelry and other gifts into the water, or float them out into the sea in intimately crafted miniature boats, to please Lamanjá in the new year.
Ecuadorian families make scarecrows stuffed with newspaper and firecrackers and place them outside their homes. The dummies represent misfortunes of the prior year, which are then burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight to forget the old year. Bolivian families make beautiful little wood or straw dolls to hang outside their homes on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.
China: People clean their homes to appease the Kitchen God and scare away evil spirits. Red paper cuttings are displayed in windows for good luck, and during the Dragon Dance, families open their doors to welcome in fortune.
India (Diwali): The festival of lights is celebrated with thousands of small clay lamps (dipa), attracting good fortune for the year.
Thailand: On New Year’s Day, people pour fragrant water over the hands of their elders as a mark of respect.
France: Eating a stack of pancakes is a New Year’s breakfast tradition.
Denmark: banging on friends’ doors to “smash in” the New Year, where it is also a good sign to find your doorstep heaped with broken dishes on New Year’s morning. Old dishes are saved all years to throw at your friends’ homes on New Year’s Eve. The more broken pieces you have, the greater the number of new friends you will have in the forthcoming twelve months.
Japan: In Japan, people cleanse their souls by listening to a gong toll 108 times—one for each sin.
Puerto Rico: At midnight, people throw water out of their windows to rid the house of evil spirits.In China, homes are cleaned spotless to appease the Kitchen God, and papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. Large papier mache dragon heads with long fabric bodies are maneuvered through the streets during the Dragon Dance festival, and families open their front doors to let the dragon bring good luck into their homes.
going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland.
making sure the First Footer, the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland, is a tall dark haired visitor.
water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits.
cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin
it is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.
Belgian farmers wish their animals a Happy New Year for blessings.
In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death. This is also a practice in parts of Finland, apparently.
El Salvadoreans crack an egg in a glass at midnight and leave it on the windowsill overnight; whatever figure it has made in the morning is indicative of one’s fortune for the year.
Some Italians like to take part in throwing pots, pans, and old furniture from their windows when the clock strikes midnight. This is done as a way for residents to rid of the old and welcome in the new. It also allows them to let go of negativity. This custom is also practiced in parts of South Africa, the Houston Press adds.
In Colombia, walk around with an empty suitcase on New Year’s Day for a year full of travel.
In the Philippines, all the lights in the house are turned on at midnight, and previously opened windows, doors and cabinets throughout the house are suddenly slammed shut, to ward off evil spirits for the new year.
In Russia a wish is written down on a piece of paper. It is burned and the ash dissolved in a glass of champagne, which should be downed before 12:01 am if the wish is to come true.
Romanians celebrate the new year by wearing bear costumes and dancing around to ward off evil
In Turkey, pomegranates are thrown down from the balconies at midnight for good luck.
is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace.” (Watch on Youtube, 11 min.)
The early Christian Church was initially opposed to New Year’s celebrations, viewing them as pagan rituals. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the tradition of celebrating January 1st as the start of the new year became more widely accepted. Documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (”Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (”head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.
The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)
The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest with the previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.
Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (and then there is George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796. Its lyrics, asking whether old friends should be forgotten, have become synonymous with New Year’s celebrations. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)
Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
Chinese: Chu Shen Tan Xin Nian Kuai Le (thanks, Jeff)
Czechoslavakia: Scastny Novy Rok
Dutch: Gullukkig Niuw Jaar
Finnish: Onnellista Uutta Vuotta
French: Bonne Annee
German: Prosit Neujahr
Greek: Eftecheezmaenos o Kaenooryos hronos
Hebrew: L’Shannah Tovah Tikatevu
Hindi: Niya Saa Moobaarak
Irish (Gaelic): Bliain nua fe mhaise dhuit
Italian: Buon Capodanno
Khmer: Sua Sdei tfnam tmei
Laotian: Sabai dee pee mai
Polish: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
Portuguese: Feliz Ano Novo
Russian: S Novim Godom
Serbo-Croatian: Scecna nova godina
Spanish: Feliz Ano Nuevo
Swedish: Ha ett gott nytt år
Turkish: Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Vietnamese: Cung-Chuc Tan-Xuan
If you speak any other languages, feel free to share a New Year’s greeting in the comments!
Which of these customs appeal to you? Are they done in your family, or will you try to adopt any of them? However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty!
[thanks to Bruce Umbaugh (here or here) for original assistance]
‘Congratulations to our nation’s most prestigious media outlets, who are currently locked in a thrilling race to see who can normalize trump’s fascism with the most cowardly headlines!…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘On the clear, cold morning of December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, three U.S. soldiers tried to wrench a valuable Winchester away from a young Lakota man. He refused to give up his hunting weapon. It was the only thing standing between his family and starvation, and he had no faith it would be returned to him as the officer promised: he had watched as soldiers had marked other confiscated valuable weapons for themselves.
As the men struggled, the gun fired into the sky.
Before the echoes died, troops fired a volley that brought down half of the Lakota men and boys the soldiers had captured the night before, as well as a number of soldiers surrounding the Lakotas. The uninjured Lakota men attacked the soldiers with knives, guns they snatched from wounded soldiers, and their fists.
As the men fought hand to hand, the Lakota women who had been hitching their horses to wagons for the day’s travel tried to flee along the nearby road or up a dry ravine behind the camp. Stationed on a slight rise above the camp, soldiers turned rapid-fire mountain guns on them. Then, over the next two hours, troops on horseback hunted down and slaughtered all the Lakotas they could find: about 250 men, women, and children.
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, and what I learned still keeps me up at night. But it is not December 29 that haunts me.
‘Unsolvable problems, many-dimensional wheels and new prime numbers are among new mathematical discoveries this year…’ (Clara Moskowitz via Scientific American)
‘With President-elect donald trump once again making noise about seizing Greenland from Denmark, MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown decided to examine the origins of trump’s years-long fixation on buying the large ice-covered territory.
After reviewing past reports on trump national security officials’ interactions with him during his first term about Greenland, Hayes finds that trump seems to simply covet Greenland because it’s a large piece of land.
In fact, trump is directly quoted by reporters Susan Glasser and Peter Baker as saying of Greenland, “I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”
Taking stock of this, Hayes comes away unimpressed with trump’s geopolitical acumen. “As tends to be the case with trump, the real donald trump answer is both entirely on-brand and deeply weird,” writes Brown. “Even if trump really did come up with the idea of buying Greenland himself as he claimed, the motivation of ‘it’s massive’ doesn’t speak highly of his strategic vision for the United States — or his own business sense as a developer.”
Hayes then adds that, were trump to get serious about taking Greenland for the United States, it would likely not end well for him.
“It’s especially fitting that a real estate developer whose properties have declared bankruptcy multiple times is besotted with this particular landmass,” he writes. “Greenland is one of the oldest bait-and-switch real estate cons in the book, named to encourage settlement on what is a mostly barren expanse of ice. And, as any cartography fan would tell you, the way Greenland looks on most common maps is extremely misleading thanks to the distortion needed to make a globe flat. Instead, the island — while still huge — isn’t quite as massive as trump seems to think.”…’ (Brad Reed via Raw Story)
‘Five years ago, the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow published a short story whose plot might seem eerily similar to followers of the past few weeks’ news.
In Radicalized, one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment. Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting – and executing – murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare….’ ( Cecilia Nowell via The Guardian)
‘Dec. 21 marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s the shortest day of the year, and it’s rooted in astronomical and religious significance.
Many early cultures celebrated this as the day the sun “came back,” commencing a period of longer days. Here are five things to know about the winter solstice….’ (Kathryn Whitbourne via HowStuffWorks)
The Shortest Day
So the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow‐white world
‘Democrats may be in the minority, but they are not yet an opposition.
What’s the difference?
An opposition would use every opportunity it had to demonstrate its resolute stance against the incoming administration. It would do everything in its power to try to seize the public’s attention and make hay of the president-elect’s efforts to put lawlessness at the center of American government….’ (Janelle Bouie via New York Times)
‘The startling photo [above] was reportedly taken between Cornfields and Greasewood, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. After generating a buzz in the cryptozoology community, an individual named Lottie came forward to report that her aunt snapped the photo two years ago….’ (via (Boing Boing)
Reporter finds GOP-led states are hiding abortion ban death toll
‘Some Republican-led states that passed near-total abortion bans have mysteriously stopped collecting statistics on maternal mortality over the last couple of years — and some observers suspect it’s not a coincidence, wrote Susan Rinkunas for MSNBC.
This comes as reports begin to trickle in of cases of women who have died after being denied abortion care in dangerous pregnancies, despite every state with an abortion ban ostensibly having exceptions for the life of the mother — women of color being the bulk of these cases….’ (via Raw Story)
‘Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum looks at the phenomenon of seeing a shadowy man wearing a wide brim hat appearing during terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis. This so called “Hat Man” is so prevalent that restless sleepers have seen this or other frightening images just before they fall asleep. Zarka also examines the physiology behind these frightening episodes…’
‘The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Tr*mp and carried out by billionaire Elon M*sk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste….’ (via 
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via 
‘A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic leaders accountable…’ (Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg via 
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