Number 4. Breitbart. PETA thanks Trump for phasing out animal testing.
It was William Shakespeare who first introduced the phrase “strange bedfellows,” when two of his characters in The Tempest — sworn enemies — hid together under one blanket during a storm.
More recently, it is a metaphor illustrating unexpected alliances between political rivals. Particular circumstances make them friends for a time.
When Donald Trump’s Health & Human Services Department, directed now by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that laboratory testing on animals would be eliminated, there was great jubilation on the left side of the political aisle. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issued a fairly incredible endorsement on X:
PETA thanks the Trump administration for modernizing the FDA and helping spare tens of thousands of animals each year from being killed in expensive and archaic laboratory tests.
The thanks is well-deserved, even though it is a shock to hear praise for Trump from PETA.
Photos emerging a year or two ago of beagle and labrador puppies subjected to medical experimentation that would lead to their deaths — in the name of science — outraged most of us.
I will not re-publish such photos here. Granted, they were probably staged by PETA to engender maximum emotion, but still… The animal testing was brutal and, as it turns out, largely unnecessary.
I know… I know… Animal testing is sometimes required to provide direction for human medical advances. But FDA Commissioner Martin Makary announced this week that much of the data gained from recent animal testing is redundant. Non-invasive tests on human subjects have already delivered actionable data. Tests on animals, Makary asserts, have gone “for too long.”
HHS is reducing animal testing this year, with complete elimination planned by 2035.
Interestingly, Trump initiated this reduction in his first administration in 2016… but something changed after he left office in 2021… and the federal government was suddenly friendly to animal testing again.
Perhaps we could use some legislation this time. If nothing else, it would be rich to see PETA demonstrating in public for a Republican-backed initiative.
The headline for today’s blog, by the way, “Heck Freezes Over,” (and you know what I mean) is known as an adynaton: A figure of speech by which an impossible or highly unlikely situation is used for emphasis.
“Heck freezes over.”
“When pigs fly.”
“It’s raining cats and dogs.”
“Adynaton.” Try to use that word in a sentence this week.
I love this one. It just shows how much pain and suffering someone will go through to make their voice heard for something they passionately believe.
Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) pointed out on Fox Business last week that many federal employees are deeply frustrated that, in order to retain their jobs, they must resume working at a federal office building rather than from home.
No more all-day jammies and fuzzy slippers.
Now they will have to get the car out, pay for the gas, make arrangements for child care, wear something presentable and burn the time it takes for the daily commute.
To effectively protest this outrage, workers decided it was time to take direct action. Some demonstrated their disgust in a unique, and perhaps not well thought-out, presentation.
“We actually had workers that showed up at the office to protest having to come back to work at the office,” Ernst told interviewer Maria Bartiromo.
Imagine that. What was the career aim of thousands — that permanent government position with a lucrative salary — made so much more attractive when COVID declared they should all stay home and do their email remotely — suddenly evaporated before their very eyes.
“All necessary steps,” said the official government memorandum, must be taken “to terminate remote work and require employees to return to work in-person, at their duty station, on a full-time basis.”
Heartless! How dare they!
Number 2. The Guardian. Nvidia will invest $500 bn in AI infrastructure because of chip tariff.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the Mar-a-Lago dining room last month when CEO Jensen Huang of chip-maker Nvidia dined with President Trump. One wonders if their conversation touched on Trump’s not-yet-announced tariff plan, and whether Mr. Huang concluded over dessert that he would have to make a serious investment in order to retain the U.S. market.
Mr. Trump’s single-handed efforts to destroy international trade and plunge the U.S. into unrecoverable financial distress — so roundly panned by media and pundits — seems to have hit a snag. Instead of pointlessly burning up profits in a no-win global trade war, it seems that most of the world has concluded that cooperating with the U.S. is good for business.
Nvidia is so taken with the idea that Mr. Huang announced a half-trillion-dollar investment in new U.S. factories.
Nvidia designs state-of-the-art computer chips and currently outsources physical production to TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC has already opened a plant in Arizona to avoid Trump’s promised tariffs. Nvidia has followed suit, now committing to huge factories — employing U.S. workers — in Houston and Dallas.
These facilities are scheduled to come on-line in 2026. Huang further promised that Nvidia’s supercomputers will be built completely within the United States. The spending will happen over the next 4 years.
AI is fueling enormous growth in the tech sector. From my humble and largely uneducated perspective, I expect that every related business — which is about every business imaginable — will see growth in the next decade because of AI advances.
In an interesting confluence of administration initiatives, it also seems clear that neither Nvidia nor TSMC will be able to employ unauthorized foreign labor in their new American factories. All those migrants illegally in the U.S. seem to be moving south across the border in great numbers, or finding a way to remain here legally.
Is it remotely possible that all the bru-hah-hah over tariffs was intended for exactly this sort of development?
Number 1. CBS News. Ancient altar apparently used for sacrifices, especially of children.
This is a pretty straightforward story about archaeological discoveries among ruins in Central America, but the item I found remarkable is the footnote at the end. A modern, enlightened, sophisticated 21st-Century perspective on human nature never fails to disappoint.
There are two cities described in the article. While we should probably believe that the CBS reporter is smarter than I am, I had to read the article half a dozen times to understand which city was which, and learn what was found where.
I suppose that proves he (or she) really is smarter. (On the other hand, something called Agence France-Presse is given credit for contributing to the story, so maybe that explains it.)
Teotihuacan is a famous Mayan site near Mexico City, famed for pyramids that had to do with the sun and moon. It’s a well-known location.
Tikal is much further south, in the jungles of present-day Guatemala. It also features large pyramids 150 feet high. These were all probably built, like the Egyptian pyramids, to honor various rulers or kings.
Teotihuacan and Tikal are both from the Mayan era, roughly 100 BC to 750 AD, or about the time of the Roman empire. (The Aztecs, for those history nerds among you, were ascendant a thousand years later; around 1500 AD. The Aztecs were the ones who confronted Spanish invaders after the time of Columbus.)
The latest discovery is this: In Tikal, some 700 miles south of Teotihuacan, was unearthed a residence that is distinctly Teotihuacan. The evidence is the layout of the floorplan, an idol (the Storm Goddess), what the article calls “anthropomorphic figures with red tassels,” and an altar in the center of the dwelling. The stone altar measured 3 feet wide, 4 feet long, 3 feet tall.
These are the evidences that someone from Teotihuacan lived among the Tikals, or at least built his dwelling and altar there. 700 miles away, inside a jungle. It beggars belief, and proves undeniable ties between the cities.
(And no, I have no idea what the writer means by “anthropomorphic figures with red tassels.” It is likely the writer doesn’t either, but no doubt his source listed it and he thought it would make good copy. And it did, until someone called him out on it.)
And as a small detail, unworthy of too much contemplation, were found the skeletons of 3 children, probably less than 4 years old. The skeletons were placed each on a side of the altar. Although the article does not describe this further, there is apparently evidence that they were killed.
One researcher is fairly optimistic that the discovery of this altar with the Storm Goddess presiding (and the tassled anthropomorphs witnessing) is evidence of “cultural convergence,” and shows the importance of Tikal as a cosmopolitan center.
Another points to the discovery showing the “interconnection between the cultures,” and offers insight into “their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies.”
This one goes on: "We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it's not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.”
I am so glad the 4-year-old boys and girls could be so instrumental in helping the grownups connect with the celestials. Not violent… heavens no! A simple club over the head, or a quick slice of the throat, will do. No need to get all physical about it.
I know some 4-year-olds, and you probably do, too.
It is so comforting to know that we are civilized enough to be able to dismiss ritualistic child murder as a mere cultural oddity in a cosmopolitan center of a thriving population.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, April 18, 2025. Easter Sunday is here. Dress up and go to church; maybe go all-in and find a sunrise service; they usually serve a hot breakfast afterward and surely won’t turn away a stranger who joins them.
And while you’re at it, contemplate the difference between dismembering a living child in a futile attempt to appease a Storm Goddess made of stone, and the willing sacrifice of the perfect “One and Only” Lamb of God to satisfy forever the demanding justice of the Creator of the universe.
“He is Risen!”
“He is Risen, indeed!”
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