AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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It’s bunny week! Starting with small bunny Liam Conejo Ramos. (It’s not just the hat. In Spanish “conejo” means “rabbit.”) He’s home again but not out of danger.
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Immigration attorney Danielle Molliver of Nwokocha & Operana Law Offices says the Department of Homeland Security filed a motion on Wednesday to speed up deportation proceedings in the family’s case.
A hearing is scheduled for today.
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— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) February 6, 2026 at 6:43 AM
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Then there’s the bigger bunny — Bad Bunny — the Puerto Rican star who did not plan to leave his home either, but changed his mind this week for the Grammy awards and the halftime show at the Super Bowl. (He had planned to avoid concerts in the continental US because of the danger that ICE poses to his fans.)
Bad Bunny, whose name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, was named as the halftime performer for Super Bowl LX in September. That led to criticism from the likes of President Trump, who called the choice “absolutely ridiculous” in an interview with conservative news network Newsmax.
However, the NFL stood firm with its decision, with Commissioner Roger Goodell saying during his annual Super Bowl press conference on Monday that Bad Bunny is “one of the greatest artists in the world.” That came a day after Bad Bunny won three Grammy awards, including Album of the Year. (Huffpost)
Protests against ICE have been going in Santa Clara near the Levi Stadium all day. Coverage of the game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks starts at 6:30 ET on NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, and Universo. The halftime show begins around 8:00 ET, just after tonight’s Evening Shade drops. Are you’re still here? Go there.
Folks who object to Spanish-speaking brown people and to foreigners (also who, like the president, aren’t clear that Puerto Rico is part of the US and Puerto Ricans are Americans) have an alternative halftime show to watch. They can hop over to the X or Youtube channels of Turning Point (Charlie Kirk’s organization), for “Kid” Rock in
an “All-American Halftime Show" as an "opportunity for all Americans to enjoy a halftime show with no agenda other than to celebrate faith, family and freedom." (USA Today)
Too bad if they do. They’ll be missing out.
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Sunday long read: In Nixon’s time, the “deep state” wasn’t who we thought it was. This secret story of a Navy yeoman who served as a mole the Nixon administration has been hidden until now. It highlights some parallels between the Nixon and the Trump administration and reads like a good spy novel.
On July 1, 1975, under gray skies, two Watergate prosecutors arrived in the office of the White House counsel. Also present was the deputy national security adviser, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft. They were gathered for a burial.
The intended object was a 297-page transcript created the previous week, when eight members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, joined by a stenographer and two members of a federal grand jury, among others, had interrogated Richard Nixon under oath near his home in San Clemente, Calif. Over two days, the ex-president’s grand jury testimony consumed 11 hours. Then came an interview by the prosecutors, undisclosed until now, that lasted another two. (NYT shared article)
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Just another (yawn) Democratic special election landslide.
Democrat Chastity Verret Martinez has won the special election for Louisiana House District 60, defeating Republican challenger Brad Daigle by a wide margin in a district that supported President Donald Trump in 2024.
Martinez received about 62 percent of the vote to Daigle’s 38 percent, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State website.
Trump carried the district by a 56‑43 margin in 2024 against former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to calculations by The Downballot. (Newsweek)
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A two minute economic lesson on how to fix income inequality.
Trump objects to unions, at least when they get in his or DOGE’s way.
In addition to massive layoffs in federal agencies by the Trump administration, a pair of recent executive orders issued by President Donald Trump have stripped away union rights for almost 500,000 federal workers over the past five months. To date, over 28 agencies have been ordered to comply with the removal of protections for their workers that had been negotiated through collective bargaining agreements. This includes having protections from their union for speaking out about issues within their department. (Findlaw, published last September)
He’s going the wrong way.
Joe Biden has pledged repeatedly to go further than any of his predecessors with his support for U.S. labor rights.
“I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden said at a White House meeting in September 2021 (The Conversation)
Just a photo of a real president, in case you forgot what one looks like.
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The federal government is limiting investigation into the killing of Renee Good. Prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office have quit in protest.
Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force.
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly…
Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over. Mr. Thompson and five others left the office in protest, setting off a broader wave of resignations that has left Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office severely understaffed and in crisis. (NYT — paywall)
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Trump’s ego is thwarted again.
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Another Epstein update.
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Ten countries have launched investigations related to the released Epstein files.
Norway, UK, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Australia, North Macedinia, Turkey, Poland.
Conspicuously absent is the United States, the epicenter of this scandal.
We know why.
…
— Just Jack (@just-jack-1.bsky.social) February 6, 2026 at 12:22 PM
This is interesting but not entirely true. The Clintons are being investigated even though Bill Clinton’s name does not appear in the Epstein files more often than Harry Potter appears in the novels. Hillary Clinton does not appear in the Epstein files at all.
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ProPublica reports on a pharmaceutical problem and then steps in to help solve it.
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ProPublica had to file public records requests and sue the FDA to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for concerns.
Now, a new Senate bill aims to add transparency.
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— ProPublica (@propublica.org) February 8, 2026 at 8:00 AM
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#ICYMI: Our Rx Inspector tool allows you to use information from your prescription label to locate the factory where a generic drug was made and see if the plant has a history of inspection violations.
Explore the tool:
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— ProPublica (@propublica.org) February 6, 2026 at 6:00 AM
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Sunday Science
A brief reminder that the UK deals with many of the same issues that the US does.
Hundreds of early career researchers have warned the UK will lose a generation of scientists after the announcement of significant cuts to physics projects and research facilities. (The Guardian)
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Bonobos can play pretend.
Imagine a pretend tea party scene, in which your host tips an empty teapot over two empty teacups and then accidentally knocks one of the cups upside down. Which cup still contains pretend tea? Humans keep track of the secondary representations that are essential to understanding such shared pretense contexts (
1–
7): that imaginary tea remains in the “unspilled” cup. By 2 years of age, children can answer questions about novel shared pretense scenarios, for example, by pointing to indicate the “full” cup after one of two cups filled with imaginary juice is “spilled” by an experimenter…
We first presented Kanzi with an 18-trial session involving choices between two transparent squirt bottles, one empty and one containing juice. If Kanzi pointed at the bottle containing juice, he received a serving of juice from that bottle. Kanzi selected the correct bottle in 100% of trials. We then initiated a series of 18-trial test sessions that contained a combination of training trials (as above) and probe trials at a ratio of 3:1. In probe trials, an experimenter placed two empty transparent cups on the table, pretended to pour from an empty pitcher into each cup in turn, “poured” the imaginary contents of one of the cups back into the pitcher, and asked, “Where’s the juice?”
Kanzi could point at either cup but was never reinforced for a choice in probe trials. If Kanzi could only track reality (that both cups were empty), he should have chosen at chance between the two options, whereas if his choices were guided by stimulus enhancement he should have selected the incorrect cup that had been “emptied” above chance, as this was the cup that had most recently and most extensively been handled by the experimenter. By contrast, if Kanzi could represent the pretend juice, he should have chosen above chance the cup containing the “imaginary” juice, the empty cup that had not been “poured” back into the pitcher. This is exactly what Kanzi did. (www.science.org)
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This slightly tongue-in-cheek article addresses concerns that monogamy is fading from our culture and looks at how monogamous we are now compared to various animal species and to early humans.
A survey in May last year of 1,000 Britons found that nearly a third (31%) believed monogamy was no longer a “realistic” ideal; among 18- to 24-year-olds, that rose to 42%. A larger poll in 2023 by YouGov found respondents were nearly exactly split on whether humans were “naturally monogamous” or not (with nearly a third not being sure).
For conservatives, of course, all this is deeply troubling, and evidence of the erosion of good Christian values and the traditional family unit. But what if this uneasy reckoning with monogamy is not society acting out against the natural order, but moving us closer in line with it?
You have to read it all to get the fun details, like
Humans ranked below African wild dogs, moustached tamarins and Eurasian beavers, and with a “monogamy rate” just above that of white-handed gibbons and meerkats. Placed bottom of the species studied was the Scottish Soay sheep, reflecting each ewe’s mating with several rams; at the top was the California deermouse, which, once mated, stays paired for life. (The Guardian)
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Today is the birthday of…
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) - Prominent General for the Union Army
Chester Carlson (1906-1968) - Physicist who invented the Xerography (dry copying process).
Bill Finger (1914-1974) - Author and co-creator of the Batman character.
Milton "Bill" Finger (February 8, 1914[1] – c. January 18, 1974)[2][3] was an American comic book writer who is credited with co-creating the DC Comics character Batman with Bob Kane. Despite making major (sometimes, signature) contributions as an innovative writer, visionary mythos/world builder and illustration architect, Finger (like other creators of his era) was often given "ghostwriter" status on comics he created or co-created, including those featuring Batman and the original Green Lantern. In recent years, Finger's lost legacy has been restored. (Wikipedia)
Lana Turner (1921-1995) - Considered a cultural icon during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
James Dean (1931-1955) - Actor who is considered one of the most influential figures in Hollywood.
Nick Nolte (1941-Still Living) - Acclaimed actor known for his roles in The Prince of Tides, Another 48 Hours, and A Walk In the Woods.
John Grisham (1955-Still Living) - Award-winning author.
Vince Neil (1961-Still Living) - Lead singer for Mötley Crüe.
Bethany Hamilton (1990-Still Living) - Surfer who survived a shark attack.
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On this day in...
1855 - The Smithsonian Institution Building opened to the public in Washington, D.C.
1865 - Martin Robison Delany became the first Black major in U.S. Army.
1887 - The Dawes Act, which authorized President to divide Native American tribal land into individual allotments, was enacted.
1898 - John Ames Sherman received the patent for the first envelope folding & gumming machine.
1918 - The Stars & Stripes armed forces newspaper was published for the first time.
1924 - The first state execution by gas chamber took place in NV.
1942 - Congress advised President Roosevelt that Japanese Americans should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the war effort.
1971 - The NASDAQ stock market index opened.
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It’s National Iowa Day. It’s also National Kite Flying Day!
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It’s Autism Sunday.
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It’s National Boy Scout Day, because on this day in 1910 William D. Boyce created The Boy Scouts of America.
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It’s World Marriage Day. In honor of that, one of the biggest tear jerker scenes ever.
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It’s National Molasses Bar Day.
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It’s Super Chicken Wing Day and National Pork Rind Day, all on Super Bowl Sunday!
Tomorrow is National Football Hangover Day. You didn’t really want to celebrate that, did you? But it’s also National Pizza Day!
