Welcome to the Sabbath for non-Jewish cats: It’s Sunday, February 15, 2026, and National Hippo Day. As you see from Wikipedia, there are two species:
The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius; ; pl.: hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (pl.: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis). Its name comes from the Ancient Greek for “river horse” (ἱπποπόταμος).
Pygmy hippos are rare forest animals, hard to study and threatened by habitat loss. Here’s a short video:
Here’s a baby pygmy hippo from Thailand. It’s adorable!
It’s also National Clementine Day, National Gumdrop Day, National I Want Butterscotch Day, and Susan B. Anthony Day, celebrating the famous women’s rights activist born on this day in 1820.
Today’s Google Doodle features alpine skiing. Click on the screenshot to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Well, we have a partial government shutdown, as the Homeland Security funding bill didn’t pass, and the lazy gits in Congress are on vacation for a week. Ironically, ICE is fully funded for a long time to come (via the “Big Beautiful Bill”), so the shutdown won’t affect it.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed early Saturday morning, beginning a shutdown that was not expected to bring most of the department’s work to a halt yet could disrupt travelers, immigration enforcement and disaster relief if it is prolonged.
Department officials have said that its essential missions and functions would continue. During last fall’s government shutdown, more than 90 percent of the department’s employees were required to keep working.
But department officials have warned that many employees would be working without pay, posing a financial strain as their bills come due. During previous shutdowns, for instance, the Transportation Security Administration saw a spike in resignations because they were required to report to work without being paid. Work force shortages caused some screening delays at airports in Houston during last fall’s record-long shutdown.
The shutdown is the result of a partisan divide in Congress over new guardrails on federal immigration enforcement. Democrats have pushed for a range of new restrictions on immigration agents, such as mandating that officers remove masks during enforcement operations and that they obtain warrants from judges to make arrests in homes. Many of their demands have met resistance from Republicans.
The shutdown will not affect the administration’s deportation campaign. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told lawmakers on Thursday that immigration enforcement would mostly be unaffected, in large part because of the billions in funding Congress approved for the agency last summer as part of its major tax bill. Still, Mr. Lyons said that a shutdown would affect personnel issues, such as pay and retention.
. . .It is unclear how long the shutdown could last. Members of Congress left Washington for a weeklong recess on Thursday. Republican leaders in Congress have said that negotiations would continue, and that members should be ready to return to Washington if an agreement is reached.
The Department of Homeland Security is vast and includes many agencies, such as the T.S.A., Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection.
Remember, though, that this conflict is not so much about eliminating ICE as making them behave better. The Democrats want them to wear bodycams (good), masks (controversial), clear identification (good), as well as tightening the rules for getting warrants (good), and ending roving patrols (not so good). Much of that I agree with, but Republicans won’t budge an inch—nor will the Democrats. The result is that ICE will keep on doing what it’s doing, and the Democrats will be blamed for shutting down important parts of the government. The other departments like TSA and FEMA will function for a while, but sickouts and retirements may hurt them if the shutdown lasts too long. I predict it wil lbe settled within ten days after Congress reconvenes.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: MAGA-Coded“:
→ Quote of the year: “And I said, ‘I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.’ ” —Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking to podcaster Theo Von (of course).
If a better one comes along, I’ll eat my hat. But I’m calling it now. Quote of the year, and I love him for it.
→ No need to find evidence: The war between Hamas and Israel was brutal. But Hamas and its supporters have been obsessed with arguing that it was not a war at all, but a genocide. Is there evidence? Well, it doesn’t matter. Al Jazeera has published a new story to explain why there might not be physical evidence: “Israel Used Weapons in Gaza That Made Thousands of Palestinians Evaporate.” Ah. Of course. Those Jewish space lasers that evaporate anyone they’re aimed at! Naturally.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle Sivia Weiniger, a journalist for The Times UK who focuses on the Middle East, apologized Monday night for posting an AI-generated image that showed Israel’s President Isaac Herzog posing for a picture with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others. What a find, right? Oh, it was fake. “I mistakenly posted a photo of president Herzog, without checking the source and I am sorry for that,” she wrote. Journalists are officially falling for the dumbest AI slop, so long as it helps the narrative.
Here’s that fake photo. OY!!!
(From Jerusalem Post) An AI-generated picture faking President Isaac Herzog posing with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and others, posted by a journalist for The Times on X/Twitter, February 9, 2026. (photo credit: SCREENSHOT/X/VIA SECTION 27A OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT)
→ Why are the yoga ladies so angry?!: Yoga moms held a protest at the Minneapolis studio they patronize over the fact that it took down an anti-ICE sign from the window (which they heard about via gossip). The video of the protest is incredible: “Give us answers, let’s go. . . let’s hear it—why are you being silent?” one woman says from behind the camera, as a crowd gathers around two young staffers. The crowd is lean, sinewy, with perfect yoga posture and expensive compression leggings. I can tell it’s a great studio. They are holding their rolled-up yoga mats, and they know how to use them. They don’t screw around in there; they are pulsing in five, six, seven, eight, and then they are making weeknight sheet pan dinners for their families afterward. Look at those back muscles. I would do whatever this crowd says.
I love this. I love all of these ladies and their righteous indignation as they scream at some woman who probably gets paid minimum wage to check them in and spray their mats with disinfectant. Is the yoga studio the biggest political enemy I would choose? No. But is this a nice activity for them? Absolutely yes. (Read our great story about this.)
Here’s a video:
→ Please pretend to be sorry: A Kentucky judge reduced the sentence of a 24-year-old man convicted of robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault on account of America, in general, being racist. The best part, though, is that before cutting his prison time in half from what the jury recommended, she tried to prompt the guy into showing how sorry he is for what he did.
The judge: “If you come in here and you show the court—”
The convict: “I don’t have sympathy for you, the victim, the victim’s family.” Hmm.
She tries to coax him: “If you were to come in here, and instead of being hurt and angry, which is what this court hears, right? As a 20-year-old African American male that has been, you know, experienced this society, etc., and you would show that, yes, okay, this is the situation. This is who I am. I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to be in jail forever.”
The convict wasn’t having it: “That’s what y’all trying to make me say.”
Looks like someone forgot how to “yes, and.” I’m surprised his prison sentence wasn’t a three-week beginner course at Upright Citizens Brigade Improv. Make your scene partner look good! Don’t deny their reality!
No matter; his jail time was cut in half. Certainly he has learned from his mistakes.
*Russian dissident and human rights activist Alexei Navalny, you may recall, was poisoned in 2020, and fell deathly ill on a flight within Russia. Recovering in Germany after a long while, he vountarily decided to return to Russia to continue his work, whereupon he was arrested and sentenced to 2½ years in a labor camp. Soon thereafter, his sentence was extended to 19 years. He fell ill and died in 2024, and his body was returned to his mother. Now, according to a recent toxological report, it was determined that Navalny was killed by toxin from a poison frog. Poisoned twice!
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was almost certainly killed by a poison derived from a rare frog toxin in an Arctic prison colony two years ago, several European governments said Saturday.
A joint toxicological investigation concluded that Navalny, who died while serving a sentence on what his supporters and Western governments said were trumped-up charges, was most likely poisoned with epibatidine—a highly potent toxin derived from South American poison dart frogs. The substance doesn’t occur naturally in Russia.
“Navalny died in prison, meaning the Russian state had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison,” the governments of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said in a joint statement.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Navalny, the most prominent domestic critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, appeared in good health and high spirits in video footage recorded days before his death at the notoriously harsh penal colony known as “Polar Wolf.” Officials said the symptoms he reportedly experienced—paralysis, acute pain and respiratory failure—are consistent with epibatidine poisoning.
Biological samples from his body were obtained by Navalny’s family and associates and shared with authorities in the participating countries for independent analysis.
“Vladimir Putin is a murderer,” Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, wrote on X. “He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
Navalny had been held in solitary confinement after a trial widely condemned by Western governments and human rights groups as politically motivated. For more than a decade, he exposed alleged corruption and embezzlement among senior Russian officials.
He survived a previous poisoning attempt in 2020, when he was airlifted to Germany and treated in Berlin with the assistance of the German government. German authorities and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons later confirmed that he had been poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era military nerve agent.
Putin has to go. Say what you will about America, we don’t—nor would we be so dumb as to poison anti-government prisoners. Nor do people go to jail for simply criticizing the government. Poisoning Navalny TWICE is simply too much. Will we increase sanctions on Russia? Probably not this time.
*In his Weekly Dish column called “The President of the 0.000001 percent,” (subtitled “Time to end the new Gilded Age, the way we did the last one” , Andrew Sullivan ponders the possibility of eating the “Epstein class” of the rich and entitled. He’s not optimistic.
What’s going on now in Washington is on a wholly new scale — an open, shameless exercise by those in power to benefit personally and massively from the leverage that comes with public office. In the words of Ann Coulter: “This is the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history. I mean, it is so blatant it’s right in front of our eyes.”
Worse than the “Biden Crime Family?” Yes. Andy McCarthy notes that the total amount of dirty money accrued by the Bidens over the years was claimed to be around $27 million. And the GOP nearly launched an impeachment over it! But the Trump family? Start with $2.5 billion in bribes from the United Arab Emirates — funneled into a company called World Liberty Financial. Add a $400 million 747 airplane from Qatar, and we’re talking real money.
How did the Trumps pull this off? The incomprehensible bullshit called crypto currency (i.e. WLF) induces a coma in most voters; and the ethical conflicts are “resolved” by having the failsons of Trump, Howard Lutnick, and Steve Witkoff “run” the businesses while their dads direct government policy. Here’s nepo-baby Zach Witkoff at a crypto conference in Dubai last year announcing the deal with WLF, sitting next to the heir-spare Eric Trump:
We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book. They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.
Ah yes, those famous Trump family values: money, power, rape. And once the money landed in the Trump crypto accounts, of course, government policy changed. Trump gave the UAE rare and advanced AI chips, brought the UAE into the US Stargate AI project — along with an ownership slice of TikTok — and pardoned the sleazy billionaire felon, Changpeng Zhao, who had helped seal the deal with WLF. Not just corruption, but possibly at the expense of our national security, if those UAE chips make it to the CCP.
This is the real Epstein class: utterly amoral networkers and nepotists with no loyalties to anything but their absurd bank balances and party invitations. And this is their administration. From the dime-store Versailles that Trump is constructing on the rubble of the East Wing, to the Gaza wasteland where Jared Kushner is now preparing to cash in after the slaughter, this is a kleptocracy notable for its callousness as well as its insatiable money-lust.
. . . . This is a moment for a sane, non-fake populist on either the right or left to seize. You don’t need a gimmick like a 5 percent billionaire tax. But you can reverse Trump’s tax cuts for the rich to fund childcare and Obamacare subsidies; and you can lower prices instantly if you commit to repealing the tariffs. These seemingly “left” moves are actually conservative in a way, since they are designed to rescue capitalism from this statist, crony version, and to provide ballast for the middle class — the essential component for a liberal democracy to thrive.
And if the Dems win in November, we can also have hearings. Bring in the corrupt nepo-babies for a grilling; expose their privilege and ill-gotten gains; and make the case for an economy built on markets not access, excellence not parentage, and an economy built on middle-class values for middle-class protection.
We don’t have to resign ourselves to this level of corruption and inequality. We really don’t. If this new Gilded Age has any silver lining, it may be that it becomes a prompt for the very kind of reforms the old one did.
Well, it looks as if Sullivan has become a Democrat, at least in name. But he’s right about all this, and when Ann Coulter criticizes a sitting Republican President, you know they’ve lost America. As for me, well, I’ve never understood crypto currency either, but it sure seems that the UAE has tried to bribe Trump, and succeeded, at least in terms of making him richer.
*Palmerston, the the Chief Mouser of the Foreign Office (and a nemesis of Larry the #10 Cat), has died in Bermuda. (h/t Pyers and Matthew).
Palmerston, a rescue cat who became the chief mouser of the Foreign Office, has died in Bermuda.
The cat, adopted from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, retired in 2020 after four years of service in Whitehall.
In February 2025, a post on a popular social media account in Palmerston’s name said he had come out of retirement in order to start work “as feline relations consultant (semi-retired) to the new governor of Bermuda”.
Announcing his death, a post on Palmerston’s X account read: “Palmerston, Diplocat extraordinaire, passed away peacefully on 12 February. “Palmy” was a special member of the government house team in Bermuda, and a much-loved family member, it added.
On his retirement in 2020, a letter to Sir Simon McDonald, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, read that the cat would like to spend more time “away from the limelight” after enjoying “working from home” during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I have found life away from the frontline relaxed, quieter, and easier,” the letter signed in Palmerston’s name read. “My 105,000 Twitter followers show that even those with four legs and fur have an important part to play in the UK’s global effort,” Palmerston’s letter said.
Poor Palmerston! He was only 11 or 12 years old—in the prime of cat life. But I doubt that Larry will miss him, as they didn’t really like each other:
Larry the Downing Street cat spots the Foreign & Commonwealth Office pet Palmerston and doesn’t look like he’s in a welcoming mood outside Number 10 😾 pic.twitter.com/DHkAgBf0Ys
— ITV News (@itvnews) May 7, 2019
But on Larry’s website (there were animated balloons yesterday for his 15th anniversary at Downing Street), the #10 cat has a generous tribute to Palmerston:
Farewell old friend x https://t.co/zolLYYd6xl
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) February 13, 2026
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili have a chinwag and a selfie:
Hili: I need to write a report on the condition of the world.
Andrzej: Many have had ambitions like that.
Hili: I would rather follow in the footsteps of Herodotus.
In Polish:
Hili: Muszę napisać raport o stanie świata.
Ja Wielu miało takie ambicje.
Hili: Raczej pójdę śladami Herodota.
*******************
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From CinEmma:
From Cat Memes:
From Masih: Here is the English translation:
“This is Borujerd, and this is the moment when the security forces, after shooting a citizen with a pellet gun and causing him to fall to the ground, surrounded him like a pack of hyenas and brutally beat his wounded body.”
The person who sent the video says: “After the savage beating, they took this injured young man away with them, and I have no information about what happened to him afterward.”
These are documents of crime that the world must see and understand: with a regime like ISIS, there can be no negotiation — they must be eliminated.
They are absolutely brutal, kicking and beating a defenseless protestor.
ویدیوی دریافتی تلخ از بروجرد:
«اینجا بروجرد است و این لحظهایست که ماموران پس از اینکه با اسلحه ساچمهای به یک شهروند شلیک کرده بودن و او به زمین افتاده بود، اینچنین مثل گله کفتار دورهاش کردند و بدن مجروحش را مورد ضرب و جرج قرار دادند.»
فرستنده ویدیو میگوید: «این جوان مجروح… pic.twitter.com/2qayRU044U
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 14, 2026
Colin corrects a misconception:
What’s funny is how activists like Carr pretend not to understand that conservatives argue SEX is a scientific fact—because it is—and largely dismiss the concept of “gender” because it’s regularly used, as Carr is doing here, to obfuscate basic biological realities.
Nobody is… https://t.co/sm1u22QEtq
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) February 8, 2026
From Williams Garcia. But see the one below that, from 2000:
It’s especially stark when you compare it with 1949-50. But even if you compare it to the undergraduate course offerings in Fall 2000, it’s a huge difference. That was just a quarter-century ago. Here is every course offered by the Harvard History Department in Fall 2000.…
— Jonathan Barth (@Professor_Barth) February 13, 2026
From Malcolm; yawning or surprised?
— Cats with Aura 😺 (@catwithaura) January 26, 2026
One from my feed. I love it! Notice the elephants trumpeting when they stop the trucks (sound up). It’s a toll, Jake!
Wild elephants in Thailand set up roadblocks to steal sugarcane from passing trucks. One notorious male nicknamed “Fatty” walks into traffic and forces drivers to stop. He reaches his trunk into the trailers, grabs handfuls of sugarcane, then lets them pass. This highway robbery… pic.twitter.com/sYZE9Rjnub
— Dr. Lemma (@DoctorLemma) February 14, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Polish Jewish girl, age 11, arrived with her mother at Auschwitz; both were gassed within hours of arrival.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-02-15T11:05:50.689Z
Two from Professor Cobb. First, Valentine’s Day for water snakes:
Celebrates Valentine’s Day with snakes mating? Why not? Snakes are awesome This was a pretty incredible thing to come across on a spring walk#herps 🌿 🧪
— Get To Know Nature (@gettoknownature.bsky.social) 2026-02-14T16:33:41.726Z
This is really interesting: most common dreams by country. Funny: I’ve never dreamed of teeth falling out.
