Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, Tuesday, July 29, 2025, and it’s going to be a hot two days in Chicago given the humidity, though things cool down on Wednesday. It’s also National Chicken Wing Day, and here’s one of my favorite actors, Jennifer Lawrence, sampling wings that get hotter and hotter. She winds up crying from the heat.

I have to go to the dentist at noon, so the Hili dialogues may be extra short tomorrow (I do most of them the afternoon before). Bear with me; I do my best.

t’s also International Tiger Day and National Lasagne Day, a day of arrant cultural appropriation.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I’ve been dubious about the ubiquitous headlines (see the NYT, for example) that Gazans are starving or “on the brink of starvation”, something I’ve heard for over a year despite the fact that food trucks are parked in Gaza waiting for the UN (which refuses)to distribute the aid). Also, all the information you hear about starvation comes from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas and has a history of gross distortion. The Free Press has two pieces with independent views of the issue, and I’ve given long quotes from each. The upshot is that yes, impending widespread hunger might be a real phenomenon in Gaza, and Israel needs to prevent it, both to hasten the end of the war and to avoid world opprobrium of the Jewish state.

One is Matti Friedman’s “Is Gaza starving? Searching for truth in an information war.” Quotes:

Around the same time [a few weeks after October 7], we started reading that Israel’s response to the October 7 terror attack—a war that Palestinians started, and which had barely begun at the time—was actually a “genocide,” an ideological slur thrown at Israel by Soviet propagandists, Arab dictators, and the Western left beginning in the 1970s. In the following months, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were killed fighting house-to-house in areas where Palestinian civilians—and combatants—were warned that troops were coming so they could leave.

Reports of impending hunger engineered by Israel in Gaza have been commonplace not just since the beginning of this war but for at least a decade and a half, since Hamas seized the territory and Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade that supposedly turned Gaza into an “open-air prison.” The famine never materialized. Now we hear claims that this same period of supposedly extreme deprivation was actually a Gazan idyll that Israel has cruelly destroyed in this war.

In an attempt to understand the truth of the reports, I called several trusted colleagues, veteran Israeli journalists intimately involved in covering events here and concerned both with the health of our society and that of innocent Palestinians. It was clear in speaking to them that our plight as journalists is only marginally better than that of the average citizen.

The consensus was that there were nearly no trustworthy sources regarding reality in Gaza—certainly not the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which answers to Hamas; or Palestinian reporters intimidated by Hamas; or the international organizations, like the UN refugee agency UNRWA, embroiled in various forms of collaboration with Hamas. All of the above are engaged in a successful information campaign that uses Palestinian suffering, real and imagined, to catalyze international anger and tie Israel’s hands.

The international press isn’t the answer. During my years as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw coverage altered by Hamas threats to our staff, while this fact was concealed from readers. I know firsthand that nearly no information coming from Gaza can be taken at face value.

But neither can we Israelis trust our own government, which has regularly misled the public about the war’s progress (Netanyahu assured Israelis over a year ago that we were “a step away” from victory); about the shifting goals of the campaign; about the success of various operations, which have seen soldiers repeatedly return to areas that have already been cleared at great cost; and about the priority assigned to the release of hostages, many of whom were released in prisoner swaps only because of American pressure and 50 of whom remain, alive and dead, in Hamas hands.

. . .The hunger in Gaza managed to belatedly penetrate the consciousness of the Israeli mainstream last week, in large part thanks to individual journalists who command public trust and who speak regularly to Palestinians they know. One such journalist is Ohad Hemo, the Palestinian affairs reporter for Channel 12 News, the country’s most widely watched news program, whose report last Wednesday was shared widely. Food warehouses serving Hamas fighters are still full, he reported, and the crisis wasn’t only Israel’s fault. However, he continued, “I don’t know if people are dying directly from hunger, as is being claimed in Gaza, but there is hunger in Gaza, and we need to state this loud and clear.” Even when aid makes it in, he explained, it’s only fit young men who have any shot at fighting for the sacks and crates beside the trucks and food centers. The aid isn’t reaching many who need it. He’s spoken to people, he said, who hadn’t eaten in days.

You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true.

The same reality was described by sources with whom I spoke late last week. One told me that hospitals had cut meals from three a day to one. Even a senior figure in the Israeli military told one of my colleagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass starvation as claimed by pro-Hamas propaganda, Gaza really is on the brink this time.

. . .Israel says Hamas bears the responsibility, as the group has diverted aid both to hoard for its fighters and to sell to finance the war—and then cynically uses Palestinian suffering as a propaganda tool. But internationally, nearly all the blame has been directed at Israel, with the implicit or explicit explanation being malevolence or genocidal intent. Israel has periodically tried to exert pressure on Hamas by blocking aid, and earlier this year began trying to conclusively break Hamas’s control of food by providing it through a new organization, American-run and Israeli-affiliated, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Because the GHF is an acute threat to its power, Hamas has been doing what it can to foment unrest around its distribution sites, kill its workers, and intimidate people accepting its food. The Americans running the sites have reported the distribution of more than 90 million meals directly to Gazans.

But on the ground, the word directly—according to friends of mine serving with reserve army units close to GHF operations—has often meant chaotic scenes of thousands of men descending on the distribution sites and picking them clean, coming into dangerous and sometimes fatal contact with Israeli soldiers who are understandably scared of disguised Hamas fighters and unprepared for the kind of mass chaos they’re expected to control.

. . . An experienced Israeli civilian involved in the aid efforts, from an organization that works both with international aid groups and the Israeli military, said on Friday that mass starvation is not yet the reality but could be in the near future. There are already “pockets” of malnutrition and real hunger, he told me. The only way to avert a deterioration, he said, is for Israel to abandon the mistaken idea that withholding aid weakens Hamas, and to urgently flood Gaza with food. It’s the right move morally, he said, but also strategically, because the humanitarian crisis is devastating what’s left of Israel’s international support.

. . . One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop.

*The other FP story, by Amit Segal, is “The price of flour shows the hunger crisis in Gaza.”

Yesterday, Yannay Spitzer, an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shared his findings on food prices in Gaza before and during the war. Well aware of the propaganda that Hamas and its international allies have been pumping out of the strip since October 7, 2023, Spitzer noted that “the situation [in Gaza] is radically different from everything up to now.”

He goes one step further, suggesting that “without immediate change, a state of mass starvation seems inevitable.”

What makes him think that? Spitzer tracked the price of flour, which, as he notes, is “the most essential consumer good.”

In September 2023, flour, which is sold in 25 kilogram sacks, cost around 47.5 shekels (14 U.S. dollars) in the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, which until recently was untouched by the Israel Defense Forces and therefore less affected by the war.

Since October 7, 2023, according to Spitzer, flour’s price, per 25 kilogram sack, changed as follows:

January 2024: Over 300 shekels.

January 2025, before the most recent ceasefire: 500 shekels.

During the ceasefire: It dropped back down to 50 shekels—almost its pre-war price.

Why the volatile prices? That’s war—and while a tenfold increase in the cost of flour likely indicates a significant drop in supply, it doesn’t necessarily prove widespread hunger, let alone famine.

But here’s why Spitzer is worried. After the last ceasefire ended in March, the cost of flour shot back up to 500 shekels by the end of April. It then hit 875 shekels by the second week of May, and 1,750 by the end of the month.

Here’s the worst part. “According to reports from the past few days,” Spitzer wrote, “if the price of a kilogram of flour has indeed reached 150 shekels—meaning 3,750 shekels per sack—we are looking at an 80-fold price increase.”

In other words, Spitzer is arguing that whatever flour shortage there was in Gaza up until now doesn’t even come close to what the strip is currently experiencing. In summary, he writes, “very few households can sustain themselves under such shortages for more than a few days.”

The key question: Is he right? While I can’t force you to believe his report, it should certainly be taken with more seriousness than the propaganda spouting out of the United Nations and Al Jazeera.

. . .Of course, the political and military echelon is well tuned into this—and concern over hunger in the strip is one of the key reasons Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a ceasefire. As he has repeated throughout this war, preventing a famine in Gaza—which would see Israel lose even its most strident supporters—is the one essential condition to continuing the war and defeating Hamas.

Speaking of Hamas, what does it make of all this? For one, Hamas took its war against humanitarian aid to new heights last night, firing a rocket at the aid distribution center near the Morag Corridor. Thankfully, it landed around 250 meters (273 yards) short of its target.The sentiment, however, is nothing new. The closer Gazans are to real hunger, the better it is for Hamas, and the less likely the group is to cave in ceasefire negotiations. After all, its logic is simple: If our people are actually starving, Israel will be forced to end the war anyway—and without us having to agree to a deal we don’t particularly like.

Hence Hamas’s gleeful hoarding of food in its warehouses, keeping it far away from Gazan civilians and driving up the prices of basic goods—without which the strip would not be facing the current food shortage.

For both Israelis and the ordinary Gazans caught in the crossfire, the result is brutal: When starvation becomes a strategy, peace moves further out of reach.

It’s odd but absolutely understandable that Israel’s enemy actually wants its people to starve, but Israel should take that as a sign that distribution of food, however unusual, must be done.  And it is being done. What I can’t figure out from the news is whether the reports of starvation (or “imminent starvation”) are real. Regardless, feed the Gazans until they’re plump. Then destroy Hamas.

*President Trump has evinced a new urgency to ending the war between Ukraine and Russia, but he’s applying the pressure on Putin:

President Trump said he would give Russian President Vladimir Putin 10 or 12 days to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine or face more economic pressure from the U.S., as he seeks to bring the Russian leader to the negotiating table.

Trump earlier this month said Putin had 50 days to agree to a cease-fire in Ukraine or the U.S. would unleash a tariff package on Russia’s trading partners. On Monday, he shortened that time frame. “We just don’t see any progress being made,” Trump said in Scotland on Monday as he met with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

*Analyzing the dangerous shortage of air traffic controllers in the U.S., the Washington Post attributes some of it to faulty training that leads prospective controllers to either quit or be washed out:

Higgins’s experience was far from unusual, according to a Washington Post examination of data and interviews with trainees who pursued a career in the federal system but ultimately washed out. The FAA’s high trainee dropout rate is a leading cause of the nation’s dangerous shortage of air traffic controllers. In some cases, recruits failed their training and were dismissed. In others, they left of their own accord rather than endure what they described as haphazard instruction, organizational dysfunction and abusive conditions.

The agency employs about 11,500 certified controllers, about 3,000 short of its goal, a shortfall that affects almost every airport in the country. Chronic shortages put safety at risk and force flight delays when towers are understaffed, according to independent reviews of the system, while also requiring controllers to work grueling overtime schedules that contribute to fatigue and burnout.

Overall, about 20 percent of trainees fail to certify as a controller at the first assigned facility, according to FAA data. Some get a second chance, but almost 1,400 recruits hired since 2010 never became a controller. And those national figures don’t reveal the full scope of the problem. At many individual air traffic hubs the washout rates are far worse than the FAA average, reflecting what critics call a lack of standardization and poor FAA oversight.

At the Oakland control center where Higgins worked, 45 percent of trainees fail to earn full certification, according to data compiled by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union. At a key New York facility that is one of the busiest in the country, the failure rate was 69 percent.

New controllers are almost entirely trained by the FAA at taxpayer expense. Candidates must pass a screening test and a background check before attending the agency’s Oklahoma City academy. Those who successfully finish the three-to-four-month academy are assigned to one of the FAA’s hundreds of facilities for their apprenticeship — the longest phase of their training, typically lasting between 18 months and four years before they become fully certified.

The FAA has for decades been unable to resolve its controller shortage. Under the Trump administration, it has vowed to improve the academy in a bid to increase readiness and retention of recruits. When trainees graduate from the academy and reach control towers, they are often insufficiently prepared to manage flights in busy, high-stress conditions, trainees and experienced controllers said.

Note that the article blames the high washout rate on “haphazard instruction, organizational dysfunction and abusive conditions”.  But note that being an air traffic controller is a high stress job that requires close attention and skill, and did the Post consider that most people simply aren’t qualified for the job?

*Finally, in yet another judicial rebuke of Trump’s executive orders, a federal judge has blocked his attempt to defund Planned Parenthood:

A federal judge on Monday ruled Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the nation’s largest abortion provider fights President Donald Trump’s administration over efforts to defund the organization in his signature tax legislation.

The new order replaces a previous edict handed down by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston last week. Talwani initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood members that didn’t provide abortion care or didn’t meet a threshold of at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order. “In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”

A provision in Trump’s tax bill instructed the federal government to end Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, even to those like Planned Parenthood that also offer medical services like contraception, pregnancy tests and STD testing.

Although Planned Parenthood is not specifically named in the statute, which went into effect July 4, the organization’s leaders say it was meant to affect their nearly 600 centers in 48 states. However, a major medical provider in Maine and likely others have also been hit.

In her Monday order, Talwani said that the court was “not enjoining the federal government from regulating abortion and is not directing the federal government to fund elective abortions or any healthcare service not otherwise eligible for Medicaid coverage.” Instead, Talwani said that her decision would block the federal government from excluding groups like Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursements when they have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success in their legal challenge.

Note how Talwani got around the accusation that she was punishing the government for preventing abortion.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has taken to explaining Andrzej’s activities in detail, but in the end she assures us that Hili dialogues will continue.

Hili: The Administrator was handling important matters today. At the bank, they told him he needs to settle inheritance issues first. So – a notary. Well, perfect – Małgorzata has been pushing for a new will and a different executor for two years. Elżbieta is too ill. He ordered better hearing aids because he can no longer rely on Małgorzata. He’ll get them on Friday. He bought four photo frames. He still needs fifteen more – mostly for pictures of Marta and Elżbieta from the old days. The hallway has turned into a gallery. The Administrator bought two pipes and some tobacco. He’s very pleased. He said he prefers electric trains to electronic cigarettes. The police stopped him – turns out he missed his MOT deadline. After an hour and a half, they asked him to just go, lest their superiors give them trouble. At the Vehicle Inspection Station, he spoke about the encounter with the police (there was no need to mention Małgorzata’s death – after all, everyone in Dobrzyń knows), and the owner nodded and took the car key from him. He left the car in for MOT and continued on foot. Tomorrow – insurance.

When asked whether there will be dialogues with me, Paulina said: “We’ll manage.” When she says that, the matter is settled. There will be dialogues.

In Polish:

Hili: Administrator załatwiał dziś ważne sprawy. W banku powiedzieli, że musi najpierw uregulować sprawy spadkowe. Czyli notariusz. No i świetnie — Małgorzata od dwóch lat naciskała na nowy testament i innego wykonawcę. Elżbieta jest zbyt chora. Zamówił lepsze aparaty słuchowe, bo już nie może wyręczać się Małgorzatą. Dostanie je w piątek. Kupił cztery ramki do zdjęć. Potrzebuje jeszcze piętnaście — głównie na Martę i Elżbietę z dawnych czasów. Korytarz zmienił się w galerię. Administrator kupił dwie fajki i tytoń. Jest bardzo zadowolony. Powiedział, że woli elektryczne pociągi od elektronicznych fajek. Zatrzymała go policja — okazało się, że przegapił termin przeglądu. Po półtorej godziny poprosili, żeby już sobie pojechał, bo im przełożeni krzywdę zrobią. Na Stacji Kontroli Pojazdów opowiedział o spotkaniu z policją (o śmierci Małgorzaty nie musiał mówić, bo przecież tu, w Dobrzyniu, wszyscy wiedzą), właściciel kiwnął głową i wziął od niego klucz do samochodu. Oddał samochód do przeglądu i dalej poszedł pieszo. Jutro ubezpieczenie.

Na pytanie, czy będą dialogi ze mną, Paulina powiedziała: „Damy radę”. Jak ona tak mówi, to sprawa jest jasna. Dialogi będą.

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

From Cat Memes:

From The Language Nerds:

From Jesus of the Day, and yes, the story is true.

Jesse Singal posts about a 13-year-old girl who was given blockers and a double mastectomy. Kaiser stopped such actions for those below 19, but people object to that.

The journalists who claim that these stories are somehow fake or extremely rare just haven’t done any reporting on this, or aren’t being honest about the reporting they have done. I’m not saying it *always* happens *everywhere*, but it isn’t some crazy outlying thing. https://t.co/ofxSQRSVlv

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 26, 2025

And related mishigass from Emma Hilton (h/t Luana):

Nonsense from Miller here. 🙄

As cells and tissues age, they can shed chromosomes. The most obvious time point is during division, and the older you are, the more cells you’ve divided, the higher the chances some of them have lost a chromosome or two.

This happens to both… pic.twitter.com/dGJVHkOXcM

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 26, 2025

From Barry. I hoped somebody helped that squirrel!

“A little help here, Danny?”

— Uncle Duke (@uncleduke1969.bsky.social) 2025-07-21T18:56:49.843Z

A lesson: do not romance your keeper. From Malcolm:

“Not now Linda, I’m working” 😅 pic.twitter.com/weLpIbdmwi

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 23, 2025

From my feed: Trump’s caddy CHEATS! Are you surprised?

What do you notice?
pic.twitter.com/RnKPsY7syt

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 27, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

She survived several years in the camp, no doubt because she played in the camp orchestra. And she survived the war, dying at 103.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T10:20:31.658Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, some old rocks:

See this rock?It's something called komatiite, and it's the oldest rock I've ever seen. It's about 3.3 *billion* years old. That's three quarters the age of Earth itself.Or 25% the age of the observable universe.

— Paul Byrne (@theplanetaryguy.bsky.social) 2025-07-26T13:33:57.471Z

Matthew calls this “14 legs,” and it’s a great example of “aggressive mimicry”:

I finally saw it! A turtle ant mimicking crab spider actually attacking a turtle ant. This had been in presentations of mine for 7+ years now and I finally saw it!Waita Lodge, Ecuador

— Nancy 🪲SciBugs🪲 Miorelli (@scibugs.bsky.social) 2025-07-14T15:42:24.902Z