The New Neo

On appetite

Posted on July 5, 2025 by neoJuly 5, 2025

This article was linked at Althouse, and that’s how I came across it. It contains a curious narrative about what happened to one woman when she took weight loss drugs. The woman apparently lost not just weight but also her appetite for food, and stopped cooking for her family – which included adult children who got upset about her retiring from cooking the family meals.

Much of the commentary there focused on her family dynamics. But although somewhat interesting, that’s not what drew my attention. Her lose of appetite did:

It’s very hard to cook for people when you have absolutely no appetite. Every time I look in the fridge, I can’t see a single thing I want to eat. I go to the supermarket, the shops and the farmers’ market, and whereas in the past I was so inspired — buying forest mushrooms and fruit just picked from the trees — I now can’t think of a single thing I want to buy.

I’ll pick up delicious ripe apples and think, hmm … all those lovely fresh fish waiting to be grilled with lemon and butter and salt and pepper? Not one bit of me wants to eat it. I know we need to have food in the fridge but even red pepper hummus, a former favourite, leaves me feeling slightly queasy.

Then, given that I have no appetite, I don’t find cooking interesting any more. Food has become completely dull and I have begun to wonder why I’d liked it in the first place.

I don’t think this happens to everyone who takes these drugs. But for whatever numbers are affected in this way, it doesn’t sound as though it can possibly be a good thing. Oh, I understand that for those who are morbidly obese and whose lives are in danger because they do almost nothing but eat and are completely dominated by food craving, loss of appetite might come as a great good. But for those interested in more moderate weight loss – and from the photos at the article, this woman was not especially heavy before taking the drug – it seems like a nightmare to me.

I’m one of those people always trying to lose ten or fifteen pounds. But I also enjoy food, and I enjoy enjoying food. I’ve lost my appetite during a few highly stressful times in my life, and it was awful. I would stare at a plate of good food, wondering how I could muster the will to force a few bites down my gullet, and it was difficult and profoundly depressing. I wouldn’t want to lose one of the greatest pleasures in life: the desire to eat and the access to all the wonderful food we can get in this time and place. We are so fortunate to have so much abundance.

I don’t believe we should wage war on natural appetites. Yes, moderation can be difficult, but appetites contribute in no small measure to the energy that gives us pleasure and makes life worth living.

NOTE: More about weight loss drugs can be found here:

They work by mimicking the hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) in slowing down stomach emptying, suppressing hunger and leaving you feeling full so that any urge to overeat is curbed. As calorie intake nosedives, so surplus pounds melt away with unprecedented speed. …

A team of US and UK researchers revealed in the Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism journal that up to one third of weight lost on GLP-1-based drugs is not body fat but other tissue, including muscle and bone. In addition a study of obese people in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that an average of 15 lb of lean tissue as well as 23 lb of fat were lost during a 68-week trial.

That seems alarming, as well.

The Jews of New York didn’t vote for Mamdani

Posted on July 5, 2025 by neoJuly 5, 2025

One of the observations I often see from commenters on the right – not so much here, but on other blogs and articles – goes something like this: “I’ll care about anti-Semitism when the Jews stop voting for Democrats.” And while it’s true that until now the majority of Jewish voters have indeed voted for Democrats ever since FDR, it’s by no means as monolithic as many people seem to think.

I’ve tackled that topic before – please see this post as well as this one. Both have quite a few statistics, but the gist of it is that very religious Jews overwhelmingly vote Republican, and other Jews mostly live in blue cities and vote as most other residents of those cities vote, about a third Republican to two-thirds Democrat, and trending more to the Democrat side as time goes on.

And the Jews of Israel have been voting for governments on the right for quite some time now.

In Brooklyn over half of Jews are Orthodox; I’ve gleaned from previous surveys (some cited in my previous posts on the subject) that the vast majority of those people vote for Republicans, and many of the rest vote for more moderate Democrats. The Republicans would not be affecting the Mamdani vote because they ordinarily wouldn’t be voting in a Democratic primary.

Commenter “Jimmy” offered some statistics on the Jewish vote in the NYC primary, among Jewish Democrats who participated:

In fact, the heavily Jewish parts of Brooklyn voted overwhelmingly for Cuomo. From the NYT breakdown:

Midwood 72-20
East Flatbush 62-25
Borough Park 80-11

The vote totals in those areas were not large, perhaps because, as neo says, many are not Democrats, but there was a big push among religious and pro-Israel Jews to register as Democrats to vote in the primary. Cuomo even carried the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

There’s also this from the Jerusalem Post:

Saban is a District Leader in New York State’s 45th Assembly District. “This was a massive wake-up call for the Jewish community. Your vote counts, and you can’t sit this out,” Saban told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, in the morning hours after the election, emphasizing the need for Jewish New Yorkers to become more politically engaged. He pointed out the relatively low voter turnout among Jews, with only a small percentage of the community casting ballots in the election. “There are 1.2 or 1.3 million Jews in New York, and probably half of them, if not less, voted in this election. That’s a huge issue.”

Other Jewish New Yorkers believe that many voters did not understand the “ranking” voting system used in the election.

Saban believes Mamdani’s success is rooted in what he perceives as a political miscalculation within the Jewish community. “The Jewish community entrusted Andrew Cuomo with defeating an anti-Semite, and we got screwed,” he stated. “This is what happens when you hide candidates from the voters instead of actively campaigning and fighting for every vote.”

It sounds as though the polls showing Cuomo in the lead – right up until very shortly before the election – lulled Jewish New Yorkers into a false sense of security. Perhaps they will be galvanized into being much more active in the general election.

I’ve seen quite a few statements that indicate that “many” Jews voted for Mamdani. No doubt “many” did – after all, estimates of the Jewish population (including numerous ethnic Jews who are not religious) of NYC range from about one million to about 1.3 million. “Many” can be found in such a large group who would vote for just about anything. But even the majority of New York’s Jewish Democrats did not vote for Mamdani, as the statistics quoted by “Jimmy” from the Times indicate – not even close.

I’ve seen zero evidence that Jews voted for Mamdani in any but small percentages. The estimate I’ve seen is that he got 20% of the vote of Jewish Democrats (see this, for example, but I’ve seen the same figure in many places). So NY Jews rejected him, even Democrats. And yet it seems the perception that Jews voted for him in droves persists.

Trump’s “mass amnesty” for illegal aliens: what is it?

Posted on July 5, 2025 by neoJuly 5, 2025

I have never thought that Trump and ICE would round up all the illegal aliens in the US and send them packing. My sense has been that they would concentrate on those who have violated other laws as well, and perhaps after that it would be those who came in more recently during the latter years of the Biden administration. The optics of deporting abuelas who’ve been here for twenty years just didn’t seem wise or even possible in the practical sense.

So this is quite okay with me, although many of you may be angry about it:

President Trump wants to deport illegal immigrants, but, paradoxically, he doesn’t want certain industries to lose illegal immigrant labor. As a result, DHS recently decided it would not conduct worksite investigations or operations on the agriculture, restaurant, and hotel industries.

The new policy is a form of “administrative amnesty” for illegal workers in those industries. As with any amnesty, the recipients are allowed to remain in the U.S. for now.

The author estimates this would cover about two million people. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the totals. Plus, note the words “for now.” In addition, it applies to workplace raids; these people are not protected in other contexts. Also, it is not a “path to citizenship”; it’s just relief from ICE raids at the businesses.

The author of the linked article thinks it’s a terrible idea, and that as a result people will stop self-deporting. I don’t agree, although no doubt some number will. But I think it will affect only those who want to work in these industries, and that even those people (in addition to others) know that the writing is on the wall in terms of benefits (such as Medicaid) under this administration. It’s not an illegal-alien-friendly federal government anymore. The policy also would take away some of the sting and fear-mongering of the Democrats’ rhetoric about the cruelty of the Trump policies. And it’s clear that it’s not a permanent amnesty, either.

Trump is – among other things – a practical person. I see this as a practical move. Your mileage may differ.

Deadly Texas floods

Posted on July 5, 2025 by neoJuly 5, 2025

Terrible news from Texas:

• Desperate search: Authorities say more than 25 girls are still unaccounted for at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas, where the Guadalupe River rose more than 20 feet in less than two hours during torrential rains that triggered flash flooding in parts of the state yesterday.

• Death toll rises: At least 27 people, including nine children, have died in the flooding, according to local officials. A 9-year-old camper is among the victims, her mother told CNN.

• Massive effort: Rescue and recovery operations continue today after first responders worked through the night, with authorities saying more than 850 people have been brought to safety. The Trump administration is sending resources to help.

• One-in-100-years intensity: Parts of central Texas saw a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours, prompting multiple flash flood emergencies. Hunt, a town near Kerrville, received about 6.5 inches in just three hours early Friday, which is considered a one-in-100-years rainfall event for the area.

The death toll will undoubtedly rise, and some of the dead will be children – perhaps many of the dead. If the girls at the camp remain unaccounted for at this point, it is sadly probable that many of the missing are dead. The force of a flash flood can be tremendous, and some of the deaths come from being hit by debris in the water. This is a very tragic event.

RIP.

Open thread 7/5/2025

Posted on July 5, 2025 by neoJuly 5, 2025

If you’re the sort of person who wants to know how it’s done, here are the secrets:

Equality, Coolidge, and Mamdani

Posted on July 4, 2025 by neoJuly 4, 2025

I found this quote from Calvin Coolidge at Instapundit. It’s an excerpt from Coolidge’s speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

So someone like Mamdani is a reactionary.

Furthermore, all men – meaning “mankind” or human beings – are created equal, which does not mean that their lives, achievements, income, or luck will be equal. Nor is it the task of the federal government – or local government – to make those things equal. That’s one of the main problems with leftists such as Mamdani, whose vision of equality of outcome (rather than equality of opportunity) quickly turns into a nightmare.

And in pursuit of that equality of outcome we get preferential treatment for historically downtrodden groups such as black Americans, which led Mamdani – who is not black and was not American at the time – to have claimed “black or African-American” status in an effort to get preferential treatment in a college application:

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing an uproar in the wake of the revelation that he claimed he was “black or African American” and “Asian” on an application to Columbia University, according to a NY Times report. He did not get in, but putting that in the application would likely have upped his chances of getting in. He told The NY Times on Thursday he did not consider himself “black or African American” but an “American born in Africa.” He claimed he didn’t do it to increase his chances but to reflect the fullness of his background. However, the question on the application is about race, not about his place of birth.

Mamdani, whose parents are Indian, was born in Uganda but came to New York City when he was a child. He is not black and was not a U.S. citizen at the time of the application.

Can you imagine if Elon Musk claimed to be “black or African-American”? Mamdani will get away with it with his supporters, but that’s not only because he’s a leftist but because he’s “brown” (of Indian ethnicity). I don’t know whether being Indian gets an applicant much these days; perhaps it’s lumped in with “Asian,” which is most definitely not an advantage.

When I first heard this story, I wondered at the fact that the Times mentioned it. But I quickly realized that even the Times is probably aware that Mamdani as mayor would be bad for the city. What is also of interest is how flat-footed and lethargic Cuomo’s campaign must have been, to not have unearthed some of these tidbits that could conceivably hurt Mamdani.

For Independence Day: on liberty

Posted on July 4, 2025 by neoJuly 4, 2025

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post from many many years ago. It was written in the springtime during a visit to New York City. Reading it now, I find myself more hopeful about the state of the country than I have been in many years. I realize that liberty remains very tenuous, and yet it felt a great deal more tenuous just a year ago.]

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is the city.

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced in time than gardens where I live, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees whose names I don’t know.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in the Sixties, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early Seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on subsequent visits. So what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me – I used to see it frequently when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

NOTE: I was going to add a photo of the Statue of Liberty here. But instead I was very taken with a video about how the statue was constructed. I’d never previously thought about the challenges involved and how they were surmounted, but I learned about them here:

Open thread 7/4/2025

Posted on July 4, 2025 by neoJuly 4, 2025

Happy Fourth!

Okay, explain this one

Posted on July 3, 2025 by neoJuly 3, 2025

In 2017 I got a wonderful new refrigerator. I fell in love with it instantly, and my love for it has only deepened as it ages. But about a year ago its light went out.

I was going to replace it. I meant to replace it. I had every intention of replacing it. But as time went on I realized I did just fine without the light. The light in my kitchen illuminated the inside of the refrigerator quite adequately. So I put the task off and put it off, because changing the light in this particular model is actually a bit labor intensive.

As I said, a year passed. I had almost forgotten that refrigerators have lights, because I really didn’t miss mine.

And then suddenly, about three days ago – what do you think happened? The light went on when I opened the fridge. And it’s been working just fine ever since.

So my question is: what happened? It’s a complete mystery to me. I did nothing differently. Nothing at all happened of which I’m aware that might have affected my refrigerator. And yet it’s been working perfectly.

Go figure.

Congress passes the BBB – and before the Fourth, as well

Posted on July 3, 2025 by neoJuly 3, 2025

From the NY Post:

The GOP-led House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a 218-214 vote Thursday following hours of relentless arm-twisting and deliberation that included the longest floor speech and longest procedural vote in the body’s 236-year history.

In the end, just two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against the measure after Trump held 11th-hour White House meetings Wednesday with more than a dozen holdouts — before deploying his Truth Social account in the final stretch.

“Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy. What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!” Trump, 79, erupted just after midnight.

I wrote about the bill at some length this past Tuesday. It’s not perfect – fancy that. It has things to like and things to not like, and to top it all off it’s so long that it will take a while to get clear on what’s actually in it and what isn’t. The Democrats, of course, mischaracterize it as awful, but what else is new? The proof will be in the results.

Trump is right, though, that doing nothing was going to lose votes for members of Congress. People are fed up, and the tax cuts were due to expire. I don’t think anyone should underestimate how difficult it was to herd the GOP cats into passing this when the majorities are razor-thin. It’s quite an accomplishment for Johnson and Thune, and I doubt it would have happened if McCarthy and especially McConnell had still been in there.

The final vote was further delayed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reading letters from constituents who expressed concern about their Medicaid benefits being stripped.

The House Democratic leader would end up using his “magic minute” of debate against the bill to stall its passage for almost nine hours, shattering the record previously held by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in 2021 during his opposition to the Build Back Better Act.

“It’s an utter waste of everyone’s time, but you know, that’s part of the system here,” Johnson groused to reporters about Jeffries’ stall tactics.

“It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth,” the speaker later clapped back during a floor speech just before voting on the actual bill took place.

Trump will sign it, of course.

Russiagate revisited: new CIA review

Posted on July 3, 2025 by neoJuly 3, 2025

This is being treated as news, but didn’t we already know it?:

A bombshell new CIA review of the Obama administration’s spy agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump was deliberately corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who were “excessively involved” in its drafting, and rushed its completion in a “chaotic,” “atypical” and “markedly unconventional” process that raised questions of a “potential political motive.”

Further, Brennan’s decision to include the discredited Steele dossier, over the objections of the CIA’s most senior Russia experts, “undermined the credibility” of the assessment.

The “Tradecraft Review of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA] on Russian Election Interference” was conducted by career professionals at the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis and was commissioned by CIA Director John Ratcliffe in May.

The “lessons-learned review” found that, on December 6, 2016, six weeks before his presidency ended, Barack Obama ordered the assessment, which concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump win the election.

The review identified “multiple procedural anomalies” that undermined the credibility of the ICA, including “a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive involvement of agency heads.”

Open thread 7/3/2025

Posted on July 3, 2025 by neoJuly 3, 2025