Infidel rogue states (U.S. and Israel) were recently successful in killing many of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. If Allah is omnipotent and benevolent, how was it possible for infidels to achieve this apparent military victory over a nation that follows the Koran and Hadiths?
Is the answer that those recently killed were martyrs to a larger cause and that their successors will build Iran into a stronger and more dominant nation?
Iran’s interpretation of Islamic law is shaped by centuries of Shīʿī jurisprudence and legal reasoning (fiqh), not just direct literal verses from the Qurʾān or ḥadīth.
Islamic theology emphasizes that God’s wisdom (Hikmah) transcends human understanding. What may seem unjust or inexplicable from a human standpoint may be understood only in a larger spiritual context — especially one that includes the afterlife and final judgment, which humans do not see.
Part of the confusion in America about Iran’s social revolution involves Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. More even than any third‐world leader, he has been depicted in a manner calculated to frighten.
The news media have defamed him in many ways, associating him with efforts to turn the clock back 1,300 years, with virulent anti‐Semitism, and with a new political disorder, “theocratic fascism,” about to be set loose on the world.
… there are hopeful signs, including the character and role of Ayatollah Khomeini.
To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. His political style is to express his real views defiantly and without apology, regardless of consequences. He has little incentive suddenly to become devious for the sake of American public opinion. Thus, the depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.
In looking to the future, Ayatollah Khomeini has spoken of his hopes to show the world what a genuine Islamic government can do on behalf of its people. … Despite the turbulence, many nonreligious Iranians talk of this period as “Islam’s finest hour.” … Iran may yet provide us with a desperately‐needed model of humane governance for a third‐world country.
Never say that the elite Democrats of our former Boston suburb fail to do anything concrete or significant to advance the causes that they advocate, e.g., slow down climate change, which they post signs about, by moving to a 2BR apartment after the kids are grown up rather than staying and heating a 6,000-square-foot house with obsolete insulation.
Here’s a mailing list message from January 25, 2026, a day after Alex Pretti was tragically gunned down by DHS thugs before he could draw and use the 9mm pistol and 52 rounds of ammunition that he was carrying (see The genius of Johnny Cash and the death of a progressive in Minneapolis):
Following our recent vigil in front of town offices, Lincoln Witness would like to continue to light a path forward. We invite everyone who wishes to honor Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and others who have died at the hands of ICE, to set two candles in their windows. These candles symbolize sparks of hope, cries of lament, and messages of solidarity for the people in Minneapolis who are out in sub-zero temperatures trying to shine a light for a brighter future. We encourage you to join us.
(The message may be inaccurate in that Alex Pretti was reportedly killed by Border Patrol agents, not ICE.)
If it is calm in Minneapolis today we can only presume that either decision-makers in DC or the ICE/CBP thugs in Minneapolis somehow drove through Lincoln, Massachusetts and saw the two candles in every window. #DoingTheWork
Here’s the web site for the group, based in a town where migrants who can afford a 2-acre lot ($1+ million) to meet the zoning minimum are welcome:
The righteous blame “politicians” rather than “Deplorables”:
Politicians have used immigration as a wedge issue that divides Americans.
If not for being misled by politicians, the working class would see that open borders keep their wages high and their apartment rents low.
In Conversation with Chuck Collins about Burned by Billionaires Sunday, February 22 2:00—4:00 PM Goodwin Forum Main Library 129 Main Street, Concord, MA, 01742 Join us In Conversation with Chuck Collins about how billionaires are burning up the planet and undermining democracy & how this informs our fight to stop the proposed private jet expansion at Hanscom or Anywhere (Hanscom is mentioned on pages 68-70). Interview by Diane Proctor, President of League of Women Voters Concord-Carlisle. Q&A to follow the interview.
(The typical recipient of this message, as noted above, is heating a massive suburban house all through the Maskachusetts winter, usually 2,000+ square feet per person, and driving a pavement-melting SUV for every errand (since the town isn’t walkable and the weather is seldom conducive to biking, which is also unsafe due to narrow roads and no bike lanes).)
The Communist Party of Hungary, led by Béla Kun was a newly formed party aligned with the Bolsheviks of Soviet Russia. The Social Democrats were split in their relation to them, but on 21 March [1919], the radical faction won out, and the two parties officially merged. They declared the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In terms of domestic policy, the communist government nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all large landholdings. Land was collectivized, which alienated most of the peasantry who still demanded redistribution. The Communists also introduced prohibition of alcohol, which was very unpopular.
Eventually a right-wing government takes over and unifies Hungarian under the ideas of (1) regaining territory lost after a post-WWI Treaty of Trianon, (2) restricting the influence of Jewish Hungarians (about 5 percent of the population), e.g., with race-based university admissions programs. Hungary ended up as an ally of Germany in WWII primarily because it wanted to regain territories lost in WWI. The majority of the population supported various anti-Jewish laws, but not necessarily the killing of all their Jewish neighbors. A minority of Hungarians did work with the Germans to kill Jews while the majority, including the police and the army, much more powerful than the militias, stood by watching (in most other European countries, the Jews were first moved out of public sight and killed in more private settings).
Zionists, with the assistance of foreign diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg, worked to create papers that would ultimately protect about half of Budapest’s Jews, many of whom ultimately made it to the British mandatory Palestine and fought against the invading Arab armies in 1948 to establish the modern State of Israel that is currently in the news for her role in attacking entirely peaceful Iranians who enjoy building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles while chanting “Death to America”. (The New York Times says that Trump and Netanyahu had no reason to attack because it would be “it would be a decade before Iran could get past the technological and production hurdles to produce a significant arsenal [of nuclear bombs mounted on ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S.]” (maybe a good reason to move from NYC to West Palm Beach, Florida? If they have only a dozen nuclear bombs to deploy, the Iranians might not bother targeting Florida!).)
The tenacity of the Germans and Hungarians was impressive. They knew that they couldn’t hold out against a Russian siege, but fought almost to the last man (killing about 80,000 Russians in the process, but the Russians weren’t discouraged by casualties). Unfortunately for the Jews, the Hungarians, notably members of the Arrow Cross, were equally tenacious when it came to killing Jews. Even as they knew that their city and country were falling to the Red Army, Hungarians spent a lot of time, energy, and ammunition killing their Jewish neighbors. Perhaps there is a modern analogy. Europe is currently experiencing economic stagnation and irrelevance to the modern world economy (ChatGPT: “EU imports would generally be easier to replace than Taiwan imports … Taiwan imports are strategically critical; Substitution is slow and difficult; Some products currently have no near-term substitute”). Legacy Europeans are being replaced by new and improved migrants. What do a lot of legacy Europeans do with their time and energy? Protest against whatever the State of Israel is doing.
An email from New Yorker just now says that there is no upside, but only risk, in attacking Iran. I don’t subscribe so I can’t read their paywalled content, but presumably the Iranians who were previously chanting “Death to America” could start chanting “Double Secret Death to America”.
Let’s close with my favorite headline about the attack on Iran, from the Wall Street Journal. Breaking new ground in the Department of Projecting Strength, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military is relaxing in Palm Beach rather than nervously drinking coffee in an underground war room in D.C.:
(The Israeli and U.S. militaries also projected strength by sleeping late and attacking Iran at 10 a.m. local time. The bombing of Tehran was scheduled for the same time of day as a student pilot lesson.)
What if a man could look at all of the tasks required by the roles of husband and father and, like Bartleby, the Scrivener, simply say “I prefer not to”? That’s the story in Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden. Her husband “James” is pseudonym for Henry Patterson Davis (nytimes 1999 wedding announcement) who was completely unashamed of abandoning the wife and kids to the point that he gave the author explicit permission to publish her tale in the New York Times and as a book, knowing that anyone with access to Google could trivially discover his real name and that they Daily Mail would run headlines like this:
For most of the no-fault divorce era in the U.S. (1970s onward), men have been kept in their place by a family court system that will ruin them emotionally (give the kids to the mom) and financially if they attempt to throw over the traces. Our laws are nominally gender-neutral, however, and women who have a higher income than their husbands have been vulnerable in recent decades to losing divorce lawsuits and writing monthly checks to enable their former spouse to enjoy sex with younger women (see “More and More Women Are Paying Alimony to Failure-to-Launch Ex-Husbands. And They’re Really, Really Not Happy About It.” (Washingtonian 2021)). Bell Burden’s book is about a wife who is moderately rich via inheritance/trusts but who quit her career and thus earns much less than her husband. His financial exposure in a divorce was limited by a prenuptial agreement keeping most of their finances separate (this can be the default in Germany by checking a box on the marriage license application). The family court system in Northeastern states is premised on the assumption that fathers don’t care about their children, are incapable of caring for children, and that their only valid role is financial support of the mother of the children (who can decide to spend some of the money that she receives on the kids, if she so chooses). Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage answers the question, “What happens if a white man with money acts in accordance with court system expectations?”
While married, “James” stays in harness, laboring like a Latinx landscaper:
In 2008, Susan bought us an eight-acre plot of land adjacent to our house. We wanted to secure our privacy and have space for the kids to build houses as adults. The new plot was all forest—oak trees, pine trees, brush. James was entranced with it. He created winding paths, pruned trees with a long pole saw, and sprayed every weekend for poison ivy, wearing a Roundup backpack with a nozzle. He said it would take him many years to make the paths perfect for the girls’ weddings. He imagined walking them through the woods to a small beach on the lake, steps from the osprey pole. He named the beach for Finn, and carved Evie’s initials in a fallen tree trunk beside the boardwalk. He found boulders in the woods and named them for each kid, the biggest for Carrie. He taught them how to find their rocks using his carefully tended paths.
He kept investing in our Vineyard imprint, year after year. In 2018, he designed a large addition to the garage to house his extensive collection of motorcycles and forestry equipment. He included a garden on top of the addition for me, raised beds we filled with herbs and tomatoes and flowers. In 2019, he planted blueberry and raspberry bushes on the edge of the property, plants that take several years to bear fruit.
As of 2019, in other words, he was investing time in a house that belonged to the wife (purchased with her family trust funds) whom he was soon to sue. The Covidcrats felt free to reevaluate all assumptions that Americans had about life, e.g., whether children had the right to attend school and adults had the right to congregate in churches or at work. Perhaps this gave “James” a mental nudge to question long-held assumptions. Regarding continued sex with a 50-year-old mom and continued hands-on responsibility for housing, feeding, and talking to adolescent children, “James” never said that there was anything wrong with married life, but only “I prefer not to continue with this life.” After the wife learns about her 35-year-old competitor:
He said, “I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t.” He said, “I feel like a switch has flipped. I’m done.” He said, “You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.”
The author, her friends, and various mental health professionals were all shocked by this Bartleby-like behavior.
My stepmother, Susan, called me several times a day. We were very close, bonded from the moment she entered my life in 1972. She wept with me, both of us quiet as we cried. She was the only person who tried to reach James. She emailed him in the second week, writing that in her forty-five years of practice as a family therapist, she had never seen someone leave a marriage so cruelly. She begged him to speak to me, to do therapy with me, to try to end the marriage kindly, honorably.
[an elite neighbor on the Vineyard] leaned forward and raised both his hands, his palms facing me. He said, “I want you to understand that what James is doing is wrong. The way he left you without explanation is wrong. Walking out on his family during a global pandemic is wrong. The way he is treating you now is wrong. If he tells you it isn’t, if anyone tells you it isn’t, don’t believe them.”
[a psychiatrist] was blunt and, like the husband from overseas, she offered clear opinions. It was wrong to leave a marriage with no warning and no explanation. It was highly unusual not to want custody of kids who were as young as twelve. It wasn’t normal to search the basement for a prenup after telling children about a divorce.
A year later, the husband/plaintiff doesn’t have a more detailed explanation than “I prefer not to”:
I wrote, “You never told me what I did wrong in our marriage, why you stopped loving me. It is such an awful thing, after twenty-one years, not to know.” I had hoped something had changed, that he would give me the answer, the lost frames of the movie, something to help me understand what had happened. He wrote back, “I wish I could answer your question, something broke in me, it was me and not you, you did nothing wrong.”
Any life lessons from this book? The Martha’s Vineyard tennis club is jammed with women who have fancy degrees, but choose to not work. I.e., instead of marrying 30-year-olds with professional degrees, the men could have married 20-year-old yoga instructors and ended up with the same household income and many more kids.
The women were universally well-educated, but most, like me, had left the workforce. This felt good; in New York, I felt conflicted, and embarrassed, about having paused my legal career. I didn’t feel this way on the Vineyard, surrounded by smart women who had made the same choice.
One important lesson from the book is that people shouldn’t take money out of trusts to spend on real estate. A big point of leverage that “James” had over Belle was that she’d actually paid for their apartment in Manhattan and their house on the Vineyard with her trust funds. The prenup, however, technically gave the plaintiff the right to take half of the value out of both properties. Ultimately, there was a settlement, but perhaps the wife would have done better if her trust had owned both properties rather than her holding them in her own name or them being jointly titled. If you want to protect your kids from future family court predators, therefore, set up their trust so that the trust can buy and own property and the kids have the right to use it.
Friends in Manhattan now deny that they were ever locked down, that their kids’ schools were ever closed, that they were ever forced to wear masks, and that they ever had their vaccine papers checked.
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (wife) is nominally about her husband “James” (a pseudonym for Henry Patterson Davis (nytimes 1999 wedding announcement)) deciding to avail himself of New York’s no-fault no-shame unilateral divorce system in which “I’d rather have sex with a 35-year-old than a 50-year-old” is a sufficient reason for breaking up the homes of two sets of children. The book, however, also provides some insight into how elite youngish healthy-weight New Yorkers’ processed the threat of SARS-CoV-2, a virus that was killing obese 80-year-olds.
The couple starts by fleeing the filthy virus-ridden city for their Martha’s Vineyard house and, while there, the wife learns that the husband is having sex with a mom who “was thirty-five but looked twenty“.
In the days that followed, I continued to try to hide the truth from the girls. A therapist I spoke with said I should wait to tell them until the pandemic was less scary. It was still March, the second week of lockdown. We thought it would be over soon. Or at least that the worst of it—the deaths, the shutdown, the unknowns—would end. But instead of easing, the pandemic had become more frightening. And so had I, appearing at dinner with swollen eyes and unwashed hair.
Zoom isn’t only for 18 months of pretend school:
He said he thought it would be better if I told them alone. Initially, I agreed with him. I was afraid that he would expose us to COVID. He was not in quarantine; he was having an affair in the middle of New York City. We decided we would do a family Zoom call to break the news.
May, during a brief visit back to the plagued city:
As he welcomed the girls, with the same blue mask and excited energy we’d seen in April,
September 2020, also in the city. Schools would be closed for another year, but adults were free to mingle in restaurants, meet each other on Tinder (Grindr for New Yorkers?), etc.:
We still had to wear masks, pulling them down to talk, back up when the waitress approached to take our orders.
Late November 2020, at an expensive house in the Hamptons:
Thanksgiving that year, at Susan’s house in Sagaponack, was strange and chaotic—twenty people, including my brother’s family and my cousins, all of us cooking in masks.
Diversity is our strength, but when a virus becomes more diverse it is time for renewed panic:
I debated doing something different, going somewhere new, but it wasn’t possible. COVID was still raging. The first variant had arrived in the United States in November.
The author is defending a divorce lawsuit in which her spending power is to be cut by 90 percent (a prenup kept their property and earnings separate, for the most part, and the husband/plaintiff had become a hedge fund hero), yet still has time for a full year of personal coropanic:
In early 2021, the pandemic continued to keep New Yorkers home. We were still masked, still avoiding gatherings, still scared.
While kids in NYC housing projects are consigned to watching a bored government worker on a small screen via Zoom, elite children can enjoy the company of other humans 24/7 at a boarding school:
I visited Evie at her boarding school in Delaware as often as I could, as often as the school would allow me. They had very strict rules during the pandemic. Parents could not enter buildings. The students could not leave the gates. It was like they were in prison. I brought Evie and her friends Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle. We sat outside on the lawn, in the cold, pulling down our paper masks to eat.
After years staying at home(s) and in the Vineyard tennis club, the mom/defendant goes back to work as an attorney. Her first project is trying to make sure that there isn’t any reduction in the supply of labor for landscaping at her Martha’s Vineyard house:
My law partner and I took on another immigration case. We were representing our first male client, a fourteen-year-old boy. His mother had died when he was two. He had been physically and emotionally abused by his father. He had been forced to miss school to work in their fields. He had been harassed, chased, and beaten by local gangs. At thirteen, he traveled by bus and train toward the United States, eventually crossing the border by foot. He was detained by border agents and released with a USCIS hearing date. He took a bus to New York, where he was welcomed by his maternal aunt. Neither my partner nor I speak Spanish, so we engaged a friend of hers, another former corporate lawyer, to translate. We conducted interviews, all slower with translation, and prepared his documents. We appeared at our client’s USCIS hearing and filed his paperwork in family court.
Autism diagnoses have indeed risen dramatically in recent decades. However, diagnostic criteria can change even when the underlying health phenomenon remains unchanged. The most recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on autism, published last April, revealed a five-fold increase in the prevalence of autism between 2000 and 2022, from 67 to 322 cases per 10,000 children. But a large-scale study published in December, drawing on CDC data from 24,669 8-year-olds across the country, found that this dramatic rise may be entirely driven by children with mild or no significant functional impairment.
One of the best ways to see how humans feel is, I think, to ask an LLM that has been trained on all human written expression.
The prompt
I have a friend who is a very skilled aircraft mechanic. He chooses to work primarily by himself and spends lunch hours reading technical manuals while the other mechanics are talking about the sports games they saw on television the night before. He prefers to spend evenings at home with his wife and two children rather than go out with friends or neighbors. He doesn’t speak unnecessary words. He shows up to work at exactly the same time every day. He gets upset if the other mechanics want to play Taylor Swift at a high volume in the hangar. Could he have a psychological disorder and, if so, what would it be?
Grok
Based on the behaviors you described—such as a strong preference for solitary work and focused activities (e.g., reading technical manuals during lunch), limited social engagement outside of immediate family, minimal unnecessary verbal communication, rigid adherence to routines (e.g., arriving at work at the exact same time daily), and sensory sensitivities (e.g., distress from loud music)—these traits could potentially align with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), particularly at a milder level on the spectrum.
ASD is characterized by challenges with social communication and interaction, alongside restricted or repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. For instance:
Intense focus on specific topics (like aviation mechanics) is common.
Preference for predictable routines and discomfort with disruptions (including sensory overload from noise) fits the profile.
Many individuals with ASD form deep bonds with close family but struggle with or avoid broader social interactions.
Gemini
… Some of the specific details you mentioned—the sensitivity to loud music, the strict adherence to routine, the deep focus on technical manuals, and the preference for literal communication—are common traits of people on the autism spectrum.
Routine: Showing up at the exact same time every day provides a sense of order and predictability.
Sensory Sensitivity: Getting upset over loud music (like Taylor Swift in a cavernous hangar) isn’t necessarily about the artist; it may be a sensory overload issue where certain frequencies or volumes make it physically impossible for him to concentrate.
Specialized Interests: A passion for technical manuals often reflects a “systemizing” brain—one that excels at understanding how complex machines work.
…
[Gemini didn’t immediately go to “autism” as Grok did, but threw it out as a possibility]
Wrap-up
Grok gets a prize for being surprised that someone who gets paid to work at Job X focuses on Job X (“Intense focus on specific topics (like aviation mechanics) is common.”). Gemini gets a prize for inferring that a person who doesn’t want to hear Taylor Swift at high volumes while trying to work has “a sensory overload issue”.
Next Steps
Maybe it would be worth investigating what kinds of prompts will cause these LLMs to suggest gender affirming surgery, e.g., “My birth certificate says that I’m male, but I feel an intense desire to see the Broadway show Wicked over and over again.”
A friend moved to Florida in the middle of 2025. He went back in February 2026 to deal with issues around selling his old house in the Boston suburbs. Some of his messages to a group chat:
After Florida this is indeed f***ing torture
I spent the entire morning doing useless shit that is neither fun nor contributes to my future well being. Shoveling snow, salting.
Even though I pay hundreds of dollars a month to an entitled lazy idiot gardener who doesn’t do anything unless you tell him repeatedly.
The house was empty yet my heat bill was $1500.
In Florida that will be the electric bill for a 20k sq ft house with another 15k sq ft of usable outdoor living space
I forgot a snow brush
Now I will have to scrape snow off my car after a [gym workout], all sweaty and freezing
Took me an hour to get to my house from the airport on Friday [about 20 highway miles]
But it is good because I can spend this time listening to NPR
He included a photo:
A little later in the chat group, from a participant who lives in a South Shore suburb of Boston:
How can anyone commute to work? It’s an hour and 20 minutes going to Cambridge now [27-mile trip, mostly highway]. I guess people don’t work from home anymore?
[me] They stopped taking the T. So even though fewer are working the traffic is as bad or worse. ChatGPT: [the MBTA has] about ~64% of pre-pandemic ridership
Speaking of NPR, we had a dealer loaner while our Honda Odyssey was being serviced (some more battery trauma, this time with a 4-month-old Duracell AGM; I paid $308 for a Honda OEM part instead of trying to get another short-lived Duracell under warranty). I didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting Apple CarPlay organized so instead of my usual Audible book I listened to Treasure Coast NPR. When I tuned in they were talking about the real victims of the Gazans’ October 7, 2023 attack into Israel: American Muslims. Islamophobia in the U.S. reached crisis proportions after October 7 and then became an emergency crisis emergency when Donald Trump was elected by the haters. This piece was followed by a story about Black-white interracial marriage 60-150 years ago in the U.S. In a country that has been transformed by Latinx and Asian immigration, thus enabling the entire economy to do without Black workers (see Replacement of Black workers by migrants in Cambridge, Massachusetts), NPR remains stuck on the idea that Black-white relations are the defining issue of our time.
The Olympics are over. How did the American athletes who made the news for hating Donald Trump do in terms of medals? If we assume a just God who hates a malevolent dictator, the virtuous #Resistance should have dominated the games. Did the Trump-haters in fact do better than expected?
Vonn, who was preparing to qualify for the 2018 Games in PyeongChang at the time, was approached by CNN to see if she would go if asked. Her response was as icy as the snowy mountains she conquers. “Absolutely not,” Vonn said. “I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president. …I want to represent our country well. I don’t think that there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.”
Fox News recently approached Vonn about the possibility she might get a second invite to the Trump White House. “First of all, I just want to say that every Olympic athlete from Team USA is normally invited… it has nothing to do with if you win a medal or not,” she began. “I’m not going to answer that question because — I’m just not going to answer it. I want to keep my passport.” It was a more diplomatic answer than the one she gave eight years earlier, but her meaning was clear. Donald Trump has a history of meltdowns when faced with dissent, and he tends to lash out at those who dare to oppose him. He disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles from a White House visit in 2018 because they wouldn’t promise all players would salute the flag. Who’s to say the president wouldn’t find a way to keep a star skier from getting to a major competition if she said something that wounded his pride?
Amber Glenn was apparently a trailblazer in combining unusual sexual desires (behaviors?) with ice skating (unlike 100 percent conventional NBC host Johnny Weir):
Glenn, who is the first openly queer woman to represent the U.S. in Olympic figure skating, was asked directly about President Trump, his treatment of the LGBTQ community and how it affects her at a press conference on Feb. 4 for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan. The athlete, 26, told reporters that while it’s been “a hard time” for the community, she hoped to use her platform and her voice “to try and encourage people to stay strong.”
This sculpture in Austin’s UMLAUF Sculpture Garden reminds me that Taylor Swift was at the Games and sagely pointed out that “skaters gonna skate”:
(My personal favorite skaters this year: Isabeau Levito, France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, and, of course, Alysa Liu.)
“It’s always an honour and a privilege to represent Team USA and to represent your country,” she told a news conference when asked by a reporter how it felt to be representing the United States “given what’s happening there”.
The query chimed with more pointed questions faced by other U.S. athletes at the Games over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance, drew a smattering of boos at Friday’s opening ceremony in Milan. The host city has also seen protests against Trump’s policies.
Shiffrin said that for her “as this relates to the Olympics, I’m really hoping to show up and represent my values. Values of inclusivity, values of diversity and kindness and sharing.”
I don’t think we have to look too far to find a hater who does not value inclusivity and diversity! Where does the diversity-loving Shiffrin live? In a mansion in Edwards, Colorado, right near the Beaver Creek ski resort and not far from Vail. Her address is supposedly 43 Hollis Lane Edwards, CO 81632. Zillow says it is worth $5.2 million. Here’s a nearby 2BR apartment that a diverse person could purchase for $2.8 million:
Then there’s Hunter Hess, the freestyle skier who says that he wants to #resist ICE, but somehow ended up in Italy rather than in Minneapolis. NBC:
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It’s a little hard,” he said. “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of and I think a lot of people aren’t.”
He continued: “I think for me, it’s more I’m representing my, like, friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe are good about the U.S. I just think if it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it.”
“Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.,” he said.
I hope that we can all agree on whose moral values are deficient/bankrupt and also that “a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of” means ICE detaining migrants and not Minnesota paper day care centers siphoning out all U.S. taxpayer cash.
They won Gold for virtue and Trump-hatred, but how did the above athletes actually do in competition?
He/she/ze/they is not exactly an athlete, but Justin Trudeau did taunt Donald Trump with a “you can’t take our game” message before the Canada v. USA hockey match.
The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 guarantees 100 percent pay for federal workers who either (1) show up to work during a “shutdown”, (2) relax at home during a “shutdown” as blessed non-essentials, or (3) vacation in Europe during a “shutdown” without using any vacation days (again, limited to those who can get classified as non-essential).
Lawmakers left town this week without a deal to fund the department over a disagreement about reining in the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration enforcement tactics. Most of the hardships faced by employees — who are working without pay — will go unnoticed by the public with a few possible exceptions, including the people who check IDs, scan baggage and complete other security tasks at U.S. airports.
Officers are frustrated that they have to pay the price for a political fight that has nothing to do with them. It’s even worse this time, because they have to work without pay while immigration officers will continue to be paid through a separate fund.
Nowhere do the journalists mention that TSA employees are guaranteed to receive 100-percent pay so long as the U.S. government is able to print money.
The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official.
The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be.
That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks, capped on Thursday by its killing of the “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat to human health.
“The U.S. no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo T. Oge, who served as the E.P.A.’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups.
With no emissions standards, then, it would be legal for Toyota, GM, and Ford to stop including catalytic converters ($300-$1,500?) with their new vehicles? Here’s part of what ChatGPT said regarding the greenhouse gas limits that are potentially gone and the “no emission standards of any meaning” world described in the New York Times…
——————-
If greenhouse-gas (GHG) limits on cars were removed in the U.S., a substantial set of non-GHG emissions regulations would still remain. These target pollutants that directly harm human health and local air quality rather than global climate.
Below is a structured breakdown of what would still be regulated.
1) Criteria Air Pollutants (Clean Air Act “criteria pollutants”)
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates tailpipe emissions that contribute to smog, soot, and toxic exposure.
I recently wrote up our Celebrity Ascent cruise experience and also wrote about St. Kitts. This is about the other four ports that we visited. Most of our ground activities were planned by ChatGPT.
Barbados
Despite the fact that the U.S. had just kidnapped the democratically elected leader of Venezuela, about 500 miles south, the port was relaxed.
We did the 20-minute walk to downtown Bridgetown, past the Harvard Club of Barbados (the Palestinian flag):
We ducked into the Church of the Holy Trinity (1830; rebuilt 1999):
Downtown is quiet and geared toward locals.
The National Heroes Square honors Rihanna
The synagogue (1654; rebuilt in 1833 after a hurricane) operates services on Shabbat with 30-40 people attending, mostly vacationing Jews. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and a museum the rest of the time. Robert Kraft probably wouldn’t want to feature the historic Jews of Barbados in a Super Bowl ad. Like other Europeans, they showed up to make money in sugar cultivation, didn’t object to slavery, and moved elsewhere when the industry was destroyed by the 19th century sugar beet revolution. Intolerance isn’t always bad (see below; Jews prevented from owning enough slaves to work a plantation):
The synagogue was restored in 1987 and the Barbadians remain proud of it:
We got some ideas for repainting the Honda Odyssey from the taxi stand and headed over to the Atlantis Submarine dock:
Make sure to pay extra for the front seats!
As in the U.S., people are leaving the coronapanic signs up. Atlantis used to pack about 50 people into a small tube and the virus prevention strategy was a 5-cent mask:
A short walk away is the modest house where Rihanna grew up:
Back to the port:
Summary: a pleasant slow-paced island.
Tortola
Arrival:
We walked by the Supreme Court:
And Avis rental car?
To get to the Botanic Gardens where Donald Trump’s National Park pricing system prevails (foreigners pay 3X):
Science reminds us that “uncontrolled transport of plans and soil” is harmful to natives (uncontrolled transport of humans, on the other hand, always benefits natives):
Tortola is where a lot of people pick up their Moorings rental catamarans. They run a market where everything necessary for a good week on the water is available:
ChatGPT told us to go to Cane Garden Bay, which is more crowded than any beach in Florida (fewer people than on some parts of Miami Beach, but the sand is not nearly as wide):
We had a nice lunch at Rhythm+Sands. The obligatory Caribbean spiny lobster:
The port includes a #Science lesson:
Here are are parked next to our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters on Norwegian Epic, which seems to follow an almost identical itinerary:
Sailing away, we see some of the same sights as those enjoyed by the Moorings bareboat renters, but from a higher perch and with about 10 restaurants to choose from within an easy walk from our berths:
St. Lucia
We did a morning snorkel trip on a catamaran that included views of the famous Pitons.
Marigot Bay, where I was able to tell fellow snorkelers, “That’s just like the yacht that our family had when I was growing up”:
It turns out that St. Lucia was the birthplace of two Noble laureates:
Celebrity warned us about robberies when ashore, but we never felt unsafe walking around Castries. (We weren’t warned about crime in any of the other ports.)
St. John’s, Antigua
The port is a bit unnerving, with locals aggressively hawking their services. We were reminded to stay safe by wearing a mask:
We visited the downtown museum, inside an old courthouse. We learned that people who lived in Antigua for 3,000 years were wiped out by immigrant Arawaks from South America. After they killed all of the natives, the Arawaks lived in harmony with nature by slash-and-burn agriculture.
Just up the hill, the Catholic cathedral (1845):
Then it was time for a water taxi to Dickenson Bay, a ChatGPT suggestion that we didn’t love. Most of the facilities are controlled by Sandals, an all-inclusive resort.
Sailing away:
Conclusion
Given our own beach-adjacent status here in Florida, I don’t think I would have wanted to spend a lot of time at any of the above islands. It is more or less the same idea as what we have here in Jupiter, but with much less convenience (can’t just drive 10 minutes to the Apple Store at the Gardens after the iPhone fails; can’t get 50,000 different SKUs at a Publix supermarket 7 minutes away). Coral reef snorkeling would be an exception, but there are denser coral reefs in other parts of the world.
Coming from the miserable Northeast or Midwest, though, probably a cruise around the smaller islands in a Moorings catamaran would be great or even just a hotel stay in Barbados.
