Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dina Punuk” in Javanese), Wednesday, September 2, 2026, and National V-J Day, celebrating the surrender of Japan in WWII, ending the war for good. When I was in Hawaii in 2018, I visited the ship U.S.S. Missouri where the surrender document was signed. Here’s a photo of the spot where the war ended, along with the ship itself (you can walk around the living quarters on your own) and a photo from the ship of the surrender:

Here’s a short video of the surrender, showing the ceremony at the end:

It’s also National Blueberry Popsicle Day, National Grits for Breakfast Day (do not eschew the tasty grit), and World Coconut Day, which we’ll celebrate with a very short clip:

. . . and it’s going to be a hot one in Chicago, with a predicted high of 93°F or 34°C. It was hot and humid yesterday, too, and the ducks don’t like it. They had little appetite and were resting in the shade (remember, they’re wearing permanent down jackets). The squirrel were prostrate, too. Here’s one of my sciurid friends flattened under a banch:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*By a vote of 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal justices on the losing side, the Supreme Court decided that Trump can continue demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build his ridiculous ballroom (archived article here).

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed construction to continue on President Trump’s luxury White House ballroom, which has been steadily rising to replace the East Wing the president tore down last fall.

In a 5-to-4 vote, the court said the preservationists who challenged the construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom did not have legal grounds known as standing to bring their lawsuit because they were not directly harmed by the project, estimated to cost $400 million.

The majority emphasized that its order was not addressing the legality of the project and instead the question of who could sue to try to block it. But in practical terms, the order was a significant setback to the most serious legal challenge to the project, meaning the president seems likely to be able to complete construction. Halting the project now would probably require a fresh lawsuit from an individual or group with standing, such as Congress, which would be a nonstarter while Republicans control the House and Senate.

In an unusual lineup, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying the construction was “likely unlawful.”

The White House is “an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” the chief justice wrote in a lengthy dissent that quoted from Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. “All the more reason to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

Monday’s order reversed lower-court rulings that would have halted aboveground construction because the judges found that the administration had exceeded its authority by moving ahead with major changes to the White House campus without congressional approval.

It’s effectively all over; by the time this gets adjuciated with the plaintiffs having genuine “standing,” the ballroom will be built. And don’t all Americans have standing, as the White House is owned by the government: us? Aren’t we harmed by our representatives not having a say in this demolition and reconstruction project?

*The jurors in the Lindsay Clancy case have been unable to reach a verdict.

The jury in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial did not reach a verdict Tuesday and was instructed by the judge to return to court Wednesday for a fifth day of deliberations.

The jury requested to be excused for the day hours after telling Judge William Sullivan that it was deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous decision. Sullivan had told the jury to continue deliberating.

After returning to the courtroom briefly just after 3:30 p.m. ET, Sullivan excused the jury.

Clancy, wearing a green top, looked at the jurors as Sullivan thanked them for their work in the case.

Under Massachusetts law, Sullivan can encourage the jury to go back to the jury room, but not more than twice unless the jury consents to it. If the jury still cannot reach a unanimous verdict, the judge can declare a mistrial.

. . .The jury is weighing whether to convict Clancy of first-degree murder after she was accused of using exercise bands to strangle her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — in the basement of their Duxbury home in January 2023. Her then-husband, who was running errands at the time, found her outside underneath a second-story window following a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

. . . The jury also has the option to convict her of lesser charges, including second-degree murder and manslaughter, or absolve her of the crime or deem her not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. If the jury finds her not criminally responsible, that means that jurors believe she could not control her actions because she was in psychosis.

If there is a mistrial, the state then has to decide whether to give up or ask for another trial, which will be as long and laborious as the first one.

*The WSJ announced that two oil tankers were hit by rockets as they tried to transit the Omani-controlled waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

Two tankers carrying Saudi oil were hit by rockets and other munitions within minutes of each other while trying to make a midnight crossing of the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security firms said.

Vanguard said a Liberian-flagged tanker was hit by three rockets off the coast of Oman. Eight minutes earlier, a Saudi-flagged vessel also took multiple hits, Marisks said.

Both were traveling through the southern reaches of the strait along a corridor the U.S. has set up to break Iran’s chokehold of the waterway. Iran began attacking ships in the corridor just weeks after signing a preliminary deal with the U.S. in mid-June to reopen the strait.

“The near-simultaneous incidents represent a further escalation in the threat environment within the Omani corridor,” Marisks said. “The incidents also further undermine any assumption that the Omani corridor represents a reliably protected or lower-risk passage.”

The targeted vessels, Liberian-flagged Senegal Prosperity and Saudi-flagged Sidr, both loaded 2 million barrels of crude from the Saudi port of Juaymah near Ras Tanura a few days ago, according to commodities-data provider Kpler.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Iran has been firing regularly at ships to assert its hold on the waterway, a crucial conduit for energy exports, which Tehran has crimped since the beginning of the war.

. . .The U.S. says it is shepherding several ships a day through the strait to help ease pressure on global oil supplies. The ships typically cross at night with their transponders off to make them hard to track.

Iran is continuing to strike ships nonetheless. It hit a Kuwaiti tanker last week, among more than a dozen fired at during August.

The Liberia-flagged Senegal Prosperity is managed by a unit of Sinokor Maritime of South Korea, according to its safety-certification provider, Bureau Veritas. The Saudi-flagged Sidr is owned and operated by the national shipping carrier of Saudi Arabia, Bahri, according to the company’s website.

I’m not sure why Saudi Arabia, which owns one of the tankers, isn’t really ticked off, and why Oman, whose territorial waters were being traversed, isn’t equally angry. These would seem to be war crimes, and for sure they’re Iran’s proclamation that they think they control the Strait of Hormuz. We really should bomb Kharg Island now, as this dribbling out of attacks serves no clear purpose.

*The Washington Post gives a list of 15 college and universities that charge undergraduates over $100,000 per year for tuition, housing, books and fees (article is archived here). The University of Chicago is #3, and several schools charge between $99,000 and $100,000 (they’re apparently like stores that give sticker prices like “$4.99”).

With remarkable speed, more colleges and universities are crossing a new threshold: charging undergraduates over $100,000 for tuition, housing, books and fees. Fifteen schools cost six figures now, whereas a year ago there were only two, according to the Princeton Review.

At least nine other colleges are on the cusp of joining the $100K club, and higher education experts say the trend will only continue.

But how much does that matter? And what does it say about the state of college affordability?

The prevalence of six-figure institutions seems to give credence to the sentiment that higher education has become unaffordable, but college pricing is far more nuanced than the numbers suggest. In fact, research shows that while the cost of attendance is going up, the actual amount students pay has stagnated or even ticked down a bit for most families.

Sticker prices — the total cost of attendance — are published and widely circulated, but they are not the best indicator of what many families will pay because colleges offer scholarships and grants based on financial need or academic merit that reduce the cost.

One of the best ways for families to figure out whether they can afford a college is to check out the net price — what students pay after grant aid is applied. Net price calculators create estimates based on family income and other financial details.

Some of the most expensive schools provide some of the most generous financial aid to students from low- and middle-income households.

Take the University of Chicago, where the sticker price is $103,821 for the 2026-2027 academic year, but the average need-based scholarship for undergrads is $78,651. The university also covers tuition for families earning less than $250,000 a year — a growing trend among prestigious (and expensive) schools. A Washington Post analysis found nearly 1,000 colleges and universities that offer free tuition (see the list here).

Here’s the chart below; note that all colleges reduce that fee substantially based on need, but, as far as I know, foreign students have to pay the full fare. For others, the highest out-of-pocket price apepars to be at Fordham University, at a bit more than sixty thousand dollars per year. That’s still nearly a quarter of a million dollars over four years.

Elizabeth Weiss, writing at Skeptic Magazine, argues that “Repatriation and reburial of sht needs to be stopped.” Yes, she means actual human feces (why the asterisk?), and gives another example of ridiculous sacralization of Native American “relics” (h/t Luana).

Through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),¹ the U.S. Department of the Interior’ National Park Service at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado plans to repatriate bags of human feces to tribes for reburial.

NAGPRA was passed in 1990 to assist federally recognized modern tribes in claiming affiliated human remains, funerary objects, sacred entities, and materials of cultural patrimony from federally funded institutes, such as museums, national parks, and universities. Human remains and these specific types of artifacts insufficiently linked to a modern tribe through a preponderance of evidence, which included historic documents, biological evidence like DNA, archaeological data, geographic links, and oral histories, were to remain at the institutes for further research and exhibition.

Artifacts and other materials found at sites that were not funerary objects, sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony, regardless of the links to modern tribes, were to remain in institutions for research and exhibition. The definitions for these categories are clear. Funerary objects are “objects that, as a part of the death rite or ceremony of a culture, are reasonably believed to have been placed with individual human remains either at the time of death or later.”² Thus, for an item to be a funerary object, the object had to be placed in the grave intentionally, for an individual deceased person.

Prior to 2024, these decisions were made by archaeologists based on the archaeological record, historic documentation, and ethnographic data. Then, tribes were consulted about repatriation of the materials determined to fit into these categories.

The consultation first system has led to a list of absurdities. The latest of which include a notice of inventory completion from Colorado that identifies “bags of human feces” as “funerary objects” and, thus, subject to repatriation.⁴ From Mesa Verde National Park, Montezuma County, Colorado:

At site 5MV640 (Spruce Tree House) “[t]he 148 associated funerary objects are 91 human-chewed fiber quids, one bag of human feces, and 56 animal bones.”
At site 5MV650 (Square Tower House) “one bag of human feces” was listed as a funerary object.
At site 5MV1200 (Long House) “46 lots of human feces” were listed as funerary objects.
At site 5MV1452 (Badger House) “one bag human feces” was listed as a funerary object.

. . . One may wonder whether Native Americans really did intentionally bury their ancestors with feces. Are feces funerary objects? No archaeological evidence of this practice exists in the Americas. There are many articles on coprolites, paleofeces, and feces in the archaeological literature, but none of them point to evidence that feces were funerary objects in the Americas.

. . .Regardless of the reason for the increase in repatriation of feces, there’s clear evidence that feces–whether human or other species–are not funerary objects. By accepting the repatriation and reburial of feces, archaeologists are opening the door to even more absurd repatriations. The field will be lost to activists–if it has not already been lost. Narratives about America’s past will be controlled by those with no interest in the truth.

When all the collections–from human remains to feces–are reburied, our ability to truly understand the past–and, therefore, our shared humanity–will be buried too.

You can read about all this mishigas, in which the sacralization of Native Americans keeps objects out of the realm of scientific and historical study, in Weiss’s book Reburying the Past: The Effects of Repatriation and Reburial on Scientific Inquiry. Needless to say, she’s been drummed out of her job because of her stand. 

*Clickbait for me: ducks and insomnia together! Here’s a book that just came out, and though the author is E. B. White (1899-1995), it’s a children’s book based on a poem that White wrote. Click on the cover to go to the publisher’s page:

The publisher’s notes (their bolding):

Even the most restless reader will find peace and quiet in this breathtakingly illustrated book about the magic of nature, nighttime, and a duck who can’t sleep, based on a poem by the renowned E.B. White which was published in The New Yorker in 1928 and now appears for the first time in book form.

How surprised I was to see

A duck as wide awake as me.

Long past bedtime, two creatures sleeplessly wander around and around the reservoir in New York’s Central Park. What woes and wonders keep them awake so late?

Based on a poem originally published in The New Yorker by the legendary author E.B. White, and marvelously illustrated by two-time Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet, the book you hold is a love letter to nature in unlikely places, a testament to the power of imagination, and a balm to restless readers everywhere.

The poem was called Natura in Urbe (“Nature in the City”) can be found at this site, but only if you have a New Yorker subscription.  I’d love to see it!

From an archived article in the Portland Press Herald:

White’s latest book, published some 40 years after his death, is called “The Duck Can’t Sleep.” The text is a poem he wrote for The New Yorker magazine in 1928 called “Natura in Urbe,” with new art by Portland author and illustrator Melissa Sweet. It’s full of whimsical wonderings about a sleep-deprived duck and what might be keeping him awake. It goes on sale Sept. 1.

Martha White, who lives in the Midcoast, rediscovered the poem and thought it would make a good children’s book, with its fun rhymes and vivid images. The duck swims around New York’s Central Park reservoir long after dark, while the rest of the natural world is in slumber, his “head a-wobble” and his “tail a-bobble.” In the poem, White seems worried about the duck and what was weighing so heavy on his mind.

“I wondered if he’d left his kind / Because of something on his mind / A midnight sail to clear his vision / And help him reach some duck decision.”

The duck is a male, of course; nobody has any respect for hens.  Remember that White wrote both Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.

. . . “The Duck Can’t Sleep” includes a two-page foreword by Martha White, tracing her grandfather’s love of waterfowl back to childhood trips to Belgrade Lakes, where his family rented a camp on Great Pond. He raised squabs at the family home in Mount Vernon, New York, and later, after buying his farm in Brooklin, Maine, in the 1930s, he raised “gray geese for the table and Muscovy ducks for fun.”

She explains that her grandfather was a young bachelor living not far from The New Yorker offices and the Central Park reservoir when he published the poem in 1928. In his own journal, he had written about having trouble sleeping, and walking around the reservoir to figure things out. On one walk he debated whether to quit his job. The New Yorker is now well known for its writing and wit, but at that time it was just three years old.

“Like the small duck in this poem, White was a man who worked out his word tangles or life’s conundrums by perambulating, and he was never a sound sleeper,” Martha White wrote. “He’d once had a mattress delivered from the Algonquin Hotel (in Manhattan) to his place in Maine because he had enjoyed an unusually good night’s sleep while there for work.”

Sweet decided to write her book about White after illustrating several picture book biographies. She was fascinated with how White wrote three children’s books that, in her mind, were masterpieces: “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little” and “The Trumpet of the Swan.” As a children’s book writer herself, and a fellow Mainer, she wanted to know how he did it.

This book would make a great Christmas (or Hanukah or Coynezaa) present for a duck lover.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have a cuddle:

Hili: You finally tore yourself away from the computer.
Andrzej: Yes, because I have to do the dishes.
Hili: But you picked me up.
Me: Because it puts off a less pleasant task.

In Polish:

Hili: Nareszcie oderwałeś się od komputera.
Ja: Tak, bo muszę pozmywać naczynia.
Hili: Ale wziąłeś mnie na ręce.
Ja: Bo to oddala mniej przyjemne zajęcie.

*******************

From CinEmma:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Grouop:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Masih: Another death sentence from Iran for nothing serious, only closing a curtain shop and going to a protest.

Death sentence for joining making this video.

Look at this video. What could possibly be more peaceful than this?

Ali-Asghar Peyghambari simply closed his curtain shop and joined a bazaar strike protesting Iran’s devastating economic conditions. He filmed this peaceful act of… pic.twitter.com/MMwSaZ9oBi

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 1, 2026

From Luana; another day, another made-up story from Jason Arday:

NEWS: Jason Arday Lied About Having a Masters From Birkbeck University

I filed a freedom of information request to Birkbeck University to check the claim Jason Arday made in the video below in 2022 that he had a masters in psychodynamic practice from the university.

Birkbeck… https://t.co/0UTAFMx4Cq

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) September 1, 2026

From Loretta, a captcha:

I will fail this CAPTCHA 100000% of the time. pic.twitter.com/MHkDe1zonI

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) August 28, 2026

From Anna; Canada is poaching the wrong academics, and hiring for equity rather than excellence is costing Canada a lot of money.

Canada just spent half a billion dollars poaching 64 academics, three-quarters of them from the U.S., and then CTV put the most revealing quote on TV

Talia Bettcher (trans philosophy / gender studies) is leaving Cal State LA for a taxpayer-funded chair at Waterloo because, in… pic.twitter.com/CqN1PjoPU5

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) August 30, 2026

Two from my feed. First, cygnets!

This is so beautiful pic.twitter.com/YJwqzfUzo8

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) August 31, 2026

And then, religiously based immorality:

This girl is only 11, but the foul old man who owns her has gotten her pregnant anyway. This is a child, and if by some miracle she survives the birth, she’ll be pregnant again before she turns 13.

And what do liberal “feminists” do? They put on hijab when they speak to Muslim…

— Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ (@sappholives83) September 1, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This man, Paul Kremer, was a German doctor who was a war criminal. Tried at the Auschwitz Trials, he was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1958. Nearly all the people arriving at this transport were gassed to death, as Kremer… https://t.co/HUctKwRV7F

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 2, 2026

One from Doctor Cobb; the Nepal deluge:

The sheer force and scale of the Nepal landslide is far beyond anything I've seen before. New footage from @ pilulaespacial on IG.

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter.bsky.social) 2026-08-30T18:54:53.563Z

Welcome to Tuesday, the Cruelest Day and also September first. Yep, we’re into another month, starting with National Acne Positivity Day. Given the demographics of our readers, I doubt that acne is a pervasive problem, but if you have it, embrace the face you have.

Here’s the depiction of September from the 15th-century manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, along with the beautiful illustration. In the foreground is the grape harvest and in the background is the Château de Saumur, which still stands in altered form. As Wikipedia notes:

The page for September in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry depicts the Château as it looked in 1410. It states that René of Anjou lived there until his death in 1480. The castle changed hands several times until 1589 when the Protestant King Henry IV (of France and Navarre) gave the castle to Duplessis-Mornay.

The Chateau originally had 4 wings that enclosed the courtyard; one of the wings fell apart in the 1600s. The courtyard also has a source of groundwater for its inhabitants during the Chateau’s occupancy period.

In the Très Riches Heures, note the peasant showing his butt:

And the Château today; you can see that the towers in the illustration are pretty accurate:

It’s also American Chess Day, Emma M. Nutt Day, Ginger Cat Appreciation Day, National Cherry Popover Day, National Tofu Day, and National Gyro Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The on-again-off-again war between Iran and the U.S. is on again, with the U.S. attacking Iranian missile launchers aimed at re-mining the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. forces attacked two Iranian rocket launchers attempting to disperse sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, U.S. Central Command said on Sunday.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said early Monday, local time, that it had fired missiles at American fighter jets at air bases in Jordan in response to a U.S. attack on Iran. Several thousand U.S. military personnel are stationed at bases in Jordan.

The Jordanian military said it had intercepted eight missiles that violated the country’s airspace at dawn on Monday. It did not report any injuries or damage. A person familiar with the Iranian attack, who was not authorized to discuss it publicly, said that all of the Iranian missiles fired toward Jordan had been intercepted.

The U.S. attack was the first by the United States against Iran in a month and appeared to be limited rather than a resumption of large-scale American bombing. But the back-and-forth raises the risk of a new round military strikes by both sides.

Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps forces had been observed preparing to launch rockets armed with mines from Larak Island into the waters of the surrounding strait, a vital shipping waterway for oil and gas.

As of last week, U.S. forces had cleared the mines that Iran had planted in the strait, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command.

. . . The Trump administration has urged commercial vessels to make the passage, with the U.S. Navy guiding them through the southern part of the strait in Omani waters.

Iran has promised retaliation, of course. The Strait of Hormuz still has nowhere near the traffic it had before the war, with about five ships going through per day compared to roughly 100-150 before the war.  Trump hasn’t accomplished that aim, either.

*According to Amit Segal at It’s Noon in Israel, “The [Iranian] Regime is running out of gas,” both literally and figuratively.

. . . . according to a senior intelligence source, amid economic upheaval senior Iranian officials are eyeing their escape from a rapidly deteriorating Islamic Republic.

While my sources report major unrest, expect a resumption of protests in the near future, and note that several officials are considering escape, you don’t need intelligence connections to see the strain on the Islamic Republic.

Mojtaba Khamenei recently issued a statement warning officials against “disappointing speech” and artificial binaries such as “war or negotiation” and “compromise or warmongering.” That is an interesting directive. It appears that, despite the pressure, rather than returning to war or the negotiating table, they see stabilizing the neither-war-nor-peace status quo as the best path for regime survival.

Meanwhile, on the ground, gas stations across Iran are facing miles-long queues, with people waiting for hours only to find the pumps closed after stations run dry. Motorists report engine trouble after refueling and suspect that authorities are cutting supplies with water and excessive methanol to stretch what little fuel remains. The shortages are one symptom of a broader reckoning: the Iranian rial now trades at over 2 million to the dollar, point-to-point inflation runs near 88 percent, and even regime-friendly media concede that most families can no longer afford basic goods. Most frightening to the regime, they can no longer afford the gas subsidy and allotments. They remember how the 2019 gasoline price hike and rationing triggered what was then an unprecedented nationwide uprising, when security forces killed roughly 1,500 unarmed protesters under a total internet blackout. Both the economic distress and the regime’s brutality have grown far more severe since.

Mojtaba’s statement was directed at the regime’s own officials who are increasingly revealing their rapidly deteriorating hand. Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani claimed authorities cannot publish some poverty statistics because of “security considerations,” while Ghalibaf warned that the Islamic Republic “will not last” if public hardship persists. Police Chief Ahmad-Reza Radan cautioned that economic decline could fuel renewed unrest. Leaked audio has captured security forces discussing preparations for fuel-related protests, and units are already being deployed preemptively across major cities—with the security services quietly prioritizing their own access to fuel even as ordinary Iranians go without.

. . . Protests are inevitable, and the Islamic Republic is cracking down preemptively to restrict their scale.

. . . People will come out into the streets, and when they do, they will meet implacable resistance from a regime intent above all on its own survival—one with a recent track record of massacre. That resistance has to be met by an equally earnest will from the Americans: material support, air cover, and ensuring the internet stays on. It may be eight months late, but Trump still has the opportunity to make good on his promise to “have the back” of the protesters.

The last round of protests saw over 30,000 people killed, and I don’t think that’s going to happen on such a scale (Iranians aren’t suicidal). Also, Segal always seems very optimistic about the downfall of Iran. This kind of stuff has not been reported in the legacy media, and I’m wondering if Segal has better sources than, say, the New York Times. At any rate, we should know, from Masih and others, whether people really do “come out into the streets.” Perhaps Segal harbors an unwarranted optimism.

*The jury is still deliberating (since August 27) the verdict in the case of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman who killed her three young children and then jumped out a window, apparently trying to kill herself (she’s paralyzed from the waist down now). She is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity (“postpartum psychosis”). Over at the Free Press, Jed Rubenfeld argues that, by a quirk of Massachusetts law, “The law is inadequate to judge Lindsay Clancy.” (The subtitle is “What makes the case impossible for a jury is that Massachusetts law only allows for bad options when ruling on an insanity defense. The one sensible solution, voluntary manslaughter, is off the table.”)

But if you’re wondering what the law actually says about Clancy’s case, well, let me cut to the punch line: Because the case is being tried in Massachusetts state court, the law offers surprisingly little help in arriving at a just response to what Clancy did.

In fact, due to peculiarities of Massachusetts law, the Clancy jury is almost certain to come out the wrong way—no matter what the jurors decide.

The initial problem—and it’s a big one—is that Massachusetts law is weird when it comes to cases in which the defendant pleads insanity. In most of the country—and in federal prosecutions as well—when criminal defendants plead insanity, it’s up to them to prove it. But in Massachusetts, the state has to prove that Clancy was not insane, and it must do so beyond a reasonable doubt.

Think about that: If there’s any reasonable doubt about her sanity, Clancy must be acquitted. And how could there not be reasonable doubt about Clancy’s sanity? The psychiatric “experts” who are testifying sharply disagree about it. All across the country, Americans sharply disagree about it.

What’s more, Massachusetts’ definition of insanity is barely comprehensible. Under the law, Clancy must be considered insane if, due to a mental disease or defect, she could not distinguish right from wrong or lacked a substantial capacity to conform her conduct to the law when she killed her children. The meaning of every significant term in that definition can be (and has been) prolifically argued about. I’m a law professor who has taught criminal law for decades, and I have my doubts about how to apply that definition to a case like Clancy’s.

As a result, a complete acquittal is quite possible, simply on the ground that the jurors have doubts about her sanity. Which would be a travesty.

. . .So when is insanity a proper defense to a criminal charge?

The insanity defense is appropriate when a defendant’s psychotic delusions prevent him from understanding what he’s doing. If a person actually believes his neighbors are space aliens who are plotting against humankind, he’s not guilty of murder if, in his derangement, he kills them. Murder is the intentional killing of another human being, and he doesn’t know that he is killing a human being.

Similarly, some mentally ill people uncontrollably attack anyone who comes near them; that’s why they’re put in straitjackets. Those people too—the “stark, raving mad”—should be acquitted when they injure or kill, because they have no control over their actions.

But Clancy’s case is not like either of those. It seems indisputable that she knew she was killing her children, and she demonstrated very considerable control over her situation, including by persuading her husband to get takeout food from a restaurant far enough away that she would have time to do the terrible deed.

No matter how horrifically depressed and troubled Clancy was, she deliberately took the most innocent of lives—with at least one of her three children having to watch as she killed the first one. There must be criminal consequences for that.

And here’s the rub:

There is a crime that fits this dreadful bill. It’s not murder. It’s called voluntary manslaughter. As Massachusetts courts themselves have put it, voluntary manslaughter is an “unlawful homicide arising not from malice, but ‘from the frailty of human nature.’ ” No phrase in criminal law better captures a case like Clancy’s. If convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Clancy could serve up to 20 years.

But under Massachusetts law, the jury doesn’t have the option of convicting Clancy of this crime.

But what is “the frailty of human nature”, for crying out loud? Even for a determinist like me, this is a tough one.  Clearly she had no “choice” here, but given that she was physically responsible for the deed, what is the proper treatment? Incarceration seems to be what Rubenfeld wants, as he sees confinement in a mental institution as “care, not punishment,” and he appears to want “punishment” for reasons he doesn’t specify. The three reasons for incarceration that I see as valid inslude deterrence of others, sequestration of a bad person from society, or rehabilitation. Which of these does Clancy need? The first two don’t seem appropriate.

*This editorial-board op-ed in the Washington Post, which tells us something we should already know, is really an excuse to show the video below. The.op-ed is called “Trump’s tariffs aren’t reducing the trade deficit” (article archived here):

The trade deficit doesn’t matter, but even if it did, tariffs aren’t an effective way to reduce it.

In July, the monthly trade deficit in goods hit its highest level since March 2025, the Commerce Department revealed on Thursday. That was the month before President Donald Trump’s announcement last year of massive tariffs on products from nearly every country in the world.

The Supreme Court’s February ruling against Trump struck down only tariffs he imposed under one law. He has imposed import duties under other laws before and after that ruling. They remain in effect. The average tariff rate is currently about 11 percent, which is more than four times higher than it was when Trump started his second term.

A key argument the administration made to the justices was that the trade deficit is a national emergency, and tariffs are necessary to reduce it.

Intuition suggests tariffs could bring down the trade deficit. Tariffs are a tax on imported goods, and taxing something more means people will buy less of it. Fewer imports with the same amount of exports would therefore lower the trade deficit.

Absurdly, the Trump administration simultaneously claims that tariffs aren’t taxes and don’t raise prices.

The problem for the Trump team is that imports and exports often move together. In other words, reducing imports also reduces exports, so the difference between them — the trade deficit — hardly changes.

. . .Another reason that a fall in imports did not cause a significant reduction in the trade deficit is that Americans were stocking up before the tariffs came into effect, so imports fell to their normal level when they did.

A figure from the article:

If tariffs worked as the administration would have had the Supreme Court believe, imports should have fallen well below their 2023 to 2024 levels as Americans switched from buying foreign goods to domestic ones.

Instead, there was more total trade but roughly the same deficit. In the past few months, exports have fallen while imports have remained high, leading to the higher deficit in July.

Tariffs are never good, and the consumer always suffers. What Trump has done is madness.

Here’s a cute video about the U.S./Canada “trade war,” which began when Trump recently imposed 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods. The beaver Mounties are awesome:

*An exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum highlighting John Galliano, a renowned fashion designer,  has been called off by the designer himself after a public outcry called attention to his racist and antisemitic comments (article archived here). In 2011 he had been convicted of a hate crime in France for those remarks.

Facing an intense backlash, the influential fashion designer John Galliano has taken the unprecedented step of withdrawing from a planned exhibition in his honor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“After much reflection and discussion with all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time,” Galliano wrote in a statement posted to his Instagram page.

He also expressed “profound and enduring” gratitude to the museum’s leadership, and acknowledged the pain his past words had caused.

“I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute,” he wrote. “I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honoring my work would be painful for some.”

In a statement on Monday, Max Hollein, the director of the Met, said, “Following thoughtful discussions with John Galliano, we have together decided not to proceed with the exhibition.”

The offensive act:

In 2011, a French tribunal ruled that Galliano had made hateful remarks about Jews and Asians in two incidents at a bar near his home in Paris. At roughly the same time, a video circulated showing Galliano saying “I love Hitler” and telling appalled patrons that “your mothers, your forefathers” would all be “gassed.”

He was fired from his job as the creative director of Dior, a post he had held for 15 years, when the video surfaced. In 2014, after Galliano had gone through a stint in rehab and discussed Judaism and its history with rabbis and the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, he became the creative director of Maison Margiela and was re-embraced by the fashion world.

Galliano does not have free speech here, as the Met is a private and not a government organization, and has the right to call off an exhibition. Fortunately, Galliano pulled the exhibit himself, which must have been a big relief for the Met. However, if the exhibit had been at the Smithsonian or similar government venue, they could not have canceled it as it would violate Galliano’s rights. His speech was odious, and illegal in France, but would not have been illegal in the U.S.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is back on board with science. And look at her lovely photo!

Andrzej: According to experts, cat hair in food is unhealthy.
Hili: That’s an argument from authority, you need to test it.

In Polish:

Ja: Zdaniem ekspertów kocia sierść w jedzeniu jest niezdrowa.
Hili: To argument z autorytetu, musisz to przetestować.

*******************

A Thing With Faces from Peggy, who found this face-like rock in Canada and said, “A winking face – we found it this way, we did not add the moss:”

This was posted on FB by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

From Cole & Marmalade:

From Masih; a man defends a woman who is kept out of the bazaar by the black-clad Morality Police because her hair isn’t covered.  Yay for both of them!

Breaking: The same morality police whose enforcement of compulsory hijab led to the killing Mahsa Amini in 2022 are back on the streets of Iran.

This video was filmed at one of the entrances to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. Hijab enforcers are blocking a woman from entering simply… pic.twitter.com/TWyjcR6vvL

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 31, 2026

From Simon; Trump caught using AI (and that tray looks way too full, and note that the pecan pie is in the same compartment as the shrimp):

Who knew you can grow extra fingers when eating this good? 🙄 pic.twitter.com/5rOS04fwP5

— Nurses Against Dick Pics. 🪷🇺🇦 (@ClaudetteGGibs1) August 31, 2026

From Luana. This is a long tweet but worth reading; it shows an English university trying to chill the speech of a faculty member who is discussing assisted dying online.

🚨BREAKING: CAF has instructed a leading employment law firm to act for an Emeritus Professor after his University warned him to “reflect carefully” on his lawful online interventions on assisted dying — leaving him fearing that further public comment on an issue directly related… pic.twitter.com/31BeonVGRP

— Committee for Academic Freedom (@ComAcFreedom) August 29, 2026

From Malcolm; cats be breaking everything:

A normal day in a cat household 😂 pic.twitter.com/GePDgMe2kf

— smooth (@Smoothfund) August 11, 2026

One from my feed; and the story appears to be true:

In 1939, a graduate student named George Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class at UC Berkeley. Two problems were already written on the blackboard when he walked in.

Assuming they were the night’s homework, he copied them down and went home to work through them. It took… pic.twitter.com/rCMkn5bJcF

— The Fourth Musketeer (@IV_Musketeer) August 31, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish woman was gassed to death, together with her infant daughter, as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. The woman was 19 years old. https://t.co/BKqpPBY5Tx

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 1, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, Lola came home!

And one that Matthew tweeted. “Michael” was Linus Pauling’s son, away at boarding school. “Rosalind” is Franklin, of course, and “Sydney” is Sydney Brenner.

Crick’s diary Nov 19541 – Tea at home (Rosalind rang)3 – Rosalind (early) stayed to supper4 – Pauling (Nobel Prize) Party. Up late7 – Rearranged books in new bookcase20 – Visited Michael. Climbed tree. Back same day23 – Sydney arrived24 – With Sydney25 – Talked with Sydney28 – Sydney left

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-08-31T16:56:21.197Z

Welcome to the tail end o’ the month: it’s August 31, 2026 and We Love Memoirs Day. Well, I love biographies more, as they’re not distorted by the self-image issue of a memoir, and yesterday I posted a short list of my favorite biographies, inviting readers to name their choices.

It’s also Eat Outside Day, National Diatomaceous Earth Day, National Trail Mix Day, and National Matchmaker Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz: Lots about the Middle East toeday.

*The NYT has an article about  Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (D) called “Most Democrats don’t want to talk about transgender athletes. He’s leaning in” (article archived here).

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts might be the only high-profile Democrat in America eagerly campaigning as a supporter of transgender rights.

Even as many other top Democrats have grown cagey on the issue, Mr. Markey is offering a passionate defense of transgender athletes as he runs in a primary contest on Tuesday against Representative Seth Moulton, a more moderate challenger.

Mr. Markey has argued in particular that Mr. Moulton “threw trans kids under the bus” when, shortly after the 2024 election, the congressman attributed Democrats’ defeat in part to their position on transgender issues. Mr. Moulton long defended his remarks but expressed some contrition for them this month.

“Trans athletes should be able to play,” Mr. Markey said in an interview this past week. “That reflects Massachusetts and who we are. And Seth Moulton does not.”

Mr. Markey, 80, has staked out his ardent pro-trans rights position at a moment when the rest of his party is grappling with the issue, which President Trump and other Republicans have used as a cultural wedge. Ambitious younger Democrats who are likely to run for president — including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary — have edged away from defending the participation of transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports.

Other prominent Democrats have sought to defuse the issue by not talking about it or punting responsibility while trying to pivot to more favorable issues like the economy.

Mr. Markey has leaned in. He is, according to Charlotte Clymer, a liberal activist and strategist who is transgender and supports the senator, “the only one who is really talking about this front and center.”

Markey, while presumably expressing his moral conviction, is not only out of step with most Americans on transgender “right” in sports (see below), but I think is also pushing a policy that is palpably unfair to biological women in sports.  While most Americans, like me, favor banning discrimination against trans people in jobs, housing, and other public accommodations (56%, to be precise), most Americans don’t favor transgender athletes competing on sports teams that don’t match their natal sex.

From  a 2025 Pew Survey:

• 73% of Americans were uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that do not match their sex at birth.
• 66% of adults favored a law or policy that would require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.

*After more Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank Saturday, PM Netanyahu finally condemned it (article archived here).

Dozens of Israeli settlers burst into a Palestinian man’s house in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, trapping and attacking people inside, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said. It was the latest in a series of assaults by Israeli extremists that have drawn international condemnation.

The attack took place near the Palestinian town of Qusra in the northern West Bank, where groups of Israeli settlers recently besieged the homes of several other Palestinians, including an American citizen. Violence has snowballed in the Israeli-occupied territory over the past several months, with Palestinians saying the Israeli authorities frequently look the other way.

But the intensity of Saturday’s assault drew a rare condemnation from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who has largely played down the attacks as the actions of a small minority.

The Israeli military said soldiers were sent to both Qusra and nearby Jalud after reports of violent clashes and Israeli rioters hurling stones toward Palestinians. Dozens of rioters had “barricaded themselves” inside a Palestinian house, the military said, leading Israeli forces to remove the attackers and confiscate their vehicles. It was not clear whether any Israelis were arrested.

The house’s owner, Luay Beyrouti, 29, said that around noon on Saturday, a handful of settlers had approached the structure, throwing stones. Mr. Beyrouti’s family does not live in the house at the moment; he had gone there along with several other Palestinians to renovate it.

. . . A separate attack unfolded about four miles away in the Palestinian town of Jalud. A group of masked Israeli settlers attacked and injured reporters with NBC News who were interviewing a Palestinian woman driven out of her home, the outlet said. Settlers in a car approached the group as they were walking down a hill, hitting them with sticks and throwing rocks, according to NBC, which said three of its staff and the woman were hurt.

Members of Israel’s right-wing, pro-settler government have frequently argued that concerns about settler violence are overblown, and officials have sometimes signaled their support for Israelis accused of attacks.

But on Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu said the attackers were not only “breaking the law” but also harming Israel’s reputation abroad, causing “immense harm to the law-abiding settler community” and damaging “Israel’s standing in the world.”

“I expect law enforcement authorities to arrest the rioters and bring them to justice as soon as possible,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Netantyahu is of course right here: nobody should be inflicting violence on somebody else or intimidating them, and those who do should be punished. (He seems more fixated on Israel’s reputation than on the attacked Palestinians.) However, I think it’s debatable whether Israelis who settle in area C of the West Bank should be called “settlers”, as there’s a credible case to be made that their presence in this area is not illegal (many think that “settling” is illegal under international law).

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal has a piece called, “‘Not as Naive as you think’: America’s Gaza Gamble.” The statement refers to the U.S. who, according to Segal, is giving away the store in Gaza.

t’s Sunday, August 30, and over the past year the Americans have talked with almost every lowlife in the Middle East. The Iranians are like the don of the crime family. Hamas is his debt collector, way down at the end of the chain, on some street in New Jersey.

While everyone fixates on the dons, the Americans are once again talking to the debt collectors. On the face of it, Hamas got a big prize: Jared Kushner met with senior figures of the murderous terror organization that murdered and kidnapped dozens of Americans on October 7. The Americans have an answer: last year we met with them to extract 56 hostages; now—the kidnapped Gaza Strip itself.

We’re not as naive as you think, they keep repeating. Time and again we said Hamas will have no weapons and no control over the Strip. The means matter less to us than the end. People forget the meetings with senior Hamas figures, they say. And in the same breath they note that a very, very senior figure in the defense establishment spoke directly, by phone, with the heads of the Nazi organization during the negotiations to free hostages. Why is it permitted for you and not for us, they say.

In Israel people are appalled at the thought of Qatar and Turkey being involved in the Strip. Contrary to what the opposition says, the two hostile states won’t send soldiers into the Strip. But their very presence on the oversight council—the body meant to determine whether Israel is meeting the agreement or not—is untenable, practically and morally.

Most of Israel’s concerns were laid to rest after some back-and-forth with the Americans. What remains is the fear that the international body, instead of demilitarizing Hamas, will separate the IDF from Hamas and effectively constrain Israel’s movements in the Strip.

At the White House they’re angry with Benjamin Netanyahu, but they’ve fallen in line with most of his demands. Trump himself has, for months now, pointedly refrained from declaring support for him in the election. But his people are preparing a victory image for Likud: a handover of weapons in the Strip, into American hands, before the elections. The payment, in the form of a partial withdrawal, will be on credit—after the ballot boxes close.

Agreed: first Hamas must completely disarm, and then the IDF will withdraw. Why? Because Hamas has proven itself untrustworthy, because they are sworn to destroy Israel and its Jews, and because if Israel agrees to withdraw if Hamas scrupulously meet the conditions of the agreement, then Israel will indeed withdraw.

*The Jerusalem Post reports that Finland has discontinued funding to UNRWA , making it one of only three countries (including the U.S. and Sweden) to stop funding an organization that is not only ridden with Hamas terrorists, but also promotes terrorism in its schools.

Finland has chosen not to renew its multi-year funding agreement with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after it expires this year, Finnish Foreign Trade Minister Ville Tavio announced on Thursday.

The multi-year agreement, which was signed in March 2023, included Finland contributing a total of 20 million euros to UNRWA. It followed a previous 2019-2022 agreement, throughout which Finland provided 5 million euros to the agency each year.

In a post on X/Twitter, Tavio clarified that his country will not reduce its funding for humanitarian efforts in Palestinian territories and will instead contribute to organizations like the World Food Programme.

Tavio previously ordered Finland to suspend its contributions to the agency in 2024 over allegations that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre against Israel.

In a January 2024 press release, Tavio asserted that his country “must make sure that not a single euro of Finland’s money goes to Hamas or other terrorists” and urged that the allegations be seriously investigated.

. . . Since the 2024 allegations, UNRWA has been plagued by additional accusations and investigations, with multiple employees being found to have participated in the October 7 massacre and maintained ties to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Grok adds this via UN Watch:

In late January 2024, roughly 16–18 countries plus the EU temporarily paused or delayed new funding pending investigations. These included Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, and others. Almost all of those that paused later resumed contributions in 2024 after UNRWA fired accused staff, launched probes, and pledged reforms. The Netherlands briefly planned a phase-out but restored full annual funding (€19 million) in 2026.

Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the country erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.

Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.

Trump’s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order.

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great” that dates back more than 400 years.

. . . In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump’s desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to “reflect name changes in official government sources”. Trump’s order affects the US’s federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), “which sets the standard for official US maps”, the tech company said.

. . .Meanwhile, on Saturday, the US president raised the volume again by resorting to the kind of AI-generated imagery for which he has shown a penchant.

He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America. He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has implemented into his public appearances for years.

Across the US’s northern border, Ontario premier Doug Ford replied with a two-stories high billboard declaring “Lake Ontario. Now and Always,” near Grimsby, Ontario. Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves”, and he argued the name would outlast the president.

“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.

You go, Canada! Here’s a video of Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, unveiling the sign.

And a short spoof video of the name change with an original song. I quite like this one:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili objects to one part of science:

Hili: What is science?
Andrzej: A method of systematically seeking the truth, combined with the ability to admit when one is wrong.
Hili: Not for me.

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest nauka?
Ja: Metoda systematycznego dociekania prawdy, połączona ze zdolnością przyznania się do błędu.
Hili: To nie dla mnie.

*******************

Talking about things with faces, reader Colin sent me a photo he took of a “rather sad banana, who had just heard about Dolly Parton’s death.”:

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

From Masih: a condemned protestor in Iran tells his family, in a last message, not to believe anything the regime says about him:

Before the Islamic Republic of Iran hanged Majid Adineh, they gave him one last chance to speak to his family and his final message to his mother, he exposed the“confession” broadcast by the regime.

Majid was arrested during Iran’s January uprising and accused of killing… pic.twitter.com/pgZMNDB6UO

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 29, 2026

From Luana. Do you notice anything bizarre about this ad?

assumed this was slide thread bs, but no… it is real, it’s live right now you can go check (archive refusing to archive) pic.twitter.com/7rNIPtOXgg

— KEQUE🫘🆙 (@KequeMage) August 29, 2026

From Simon; clearly AI but funny:

Canadian will now be known as Donald Ducks! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Fnd6IojTza

— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) August 29, 2026

From J. K. Rowling, whose daughter will be signing her mom’s autographs:

My signature and my youngest daughter’s first attempt at forging my signature. I’ve seen enough bogus ‘signed’ Potters to know she’s a real criminal talent. Very proud. pic.twitter.com/EPkxbLNICb

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 29, 2026

Two from my feed; first, a hungry donkey:

The donkey clearly asked nicely. Before he came in hot pic.twitter.com/nPud2I6Pvd

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 30, 2026

Birds of Paradise have awesome courtship. Here’s a male of one species:

Courtship dance of the the rare King Bird of Paradise pic.twitter.com/XP770Ux0fQ

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) August 30, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She would be 88 today had she lived. https://t.co/gNBtXlOXW0

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 31, 2026

From Matthew, who loves sprites. Translation from the Russian:

“Red sprites near Sayre, Oklahoma, on August 15. I specifically planned my trip from Arizona to catch this show!”

🔭 «Красные спрайты возле города Сэйр, Оклахома, 15 августа. Cпециально спланировал свою поездку из Аризоны так, чтобы попасть на это шоу!» – делится Джим Тан

— Старый Ворон/Old Raven (@oldvalravn.bsky.social) 2026-08-30T09:18:43.412Z