• ICE and Border Patrol attempted a “show of force” yesterday in Los Angeles, rolling up to Macarthur Park with a tank and mounted troops and military weaponry mounted on trucks like they were getting ready to patrol Fallujah in 2006. The community heard about the planned raid ahead of time and made sure their at-risk neighbors were elsewhere when the federal good squad arrived, so the federales sort of sadly marched through the park and then left after having been yelled at and flipped off by thousands of the good people of LA.
Some of those troops went back to their hotel in Pasadena and, because good red-blooded Americans knew they were staying there, struggled to get any sleep last night as dozens of people blew trumpets, airhorns, and sirens outside.
A community that rallies to protect its neigbors is proud of itself the next day. The masked, badgeless, over-armed and over-armored ghouls and slave-catchers cannot be. So.
• Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg looks at women and witchcraft in the Bible and in the rabbinic literature: “Do You Believe in Magic?”
This is a really interesting dive into superstitions and rituals and weirdly off-handed references and hostile interpretations of traditional practices that those condemning them may not have understood. All fascinating and much more thoroughly researched than my own brief foray into scanning some of the rabbinic discussion of Exodus 22:18 (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live“).
But I still admire Rabbi Hanina’s response to a would-be sorceror:
The Gemara relates: There was a certain woman who was attempting to take dust from under the feet of Rabbi Ḥanina in order to perform sorcery on him and harm him. Rabbi Ḥanina said to her: If you succeed, go and do it. I am not concerned about it, as it is written: “There is none else besides Him.”
• Here’s the story of something I would very much love to see in person but also maybe don’t quite want to see in person: “Batnado at Bracken Cave is an incredible natural phenomenon with 20 million players.”
When newly hired meteorologists get to San Antonio, the first thing they have to learn is that the heavy showers they see forming on radar northeast of the city every summer evening have nothing to do with rain.
That’s because radar isn’t picking up rainfall. It’s picking up bats taking flight. Bat Conservation International’s Fran Hutchins said there are so many, if you’re close by, you can even hear them.
“We call it a batnado. It’s so intense,” he said.
• “Malekin of Dagworth Hall.” A lot of the Forteana Undine collects at the wonderful Strange Company blog comes from old newspapers. That stuff is fun, but it usually has a whiff of people desperately trying to sell newspapers.
Ralph of Coggeshall. the English monk who kept a chronicle for a Cistercian Abbey from 1187 to 1224 was not trying to sell newspapers, and there’s a matter-of-factness to his account of a haunting that just makes it creepier.
• Last Monday, ProPublica published an article revealing that “Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations,” skimming about $80,000 from campaign donations that she kept for herself.
How did the former South Dakota governor and current “Homeland” Security Secretary respond to these allegations? By telling weird stories about how ICE is deporting cannibals who eat themselves.
The problem is not just that Noem is a thief and a liar, but that’s she’s also not very good at either of those things.
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