Thursday: Hili dialogue

August 21, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, August 21, 2025, and National Senior Citizens Day.  This means that today we celebrate ME!  Here I am in grad school, ca. 1974, to show you how the years have taken their toll (the photo was taken in color but converted to B&W by a friend (or the other way around; I can’t remember):

A Junior Citizen

It’s also National Brazilian Blowout Day (a way of straightening your hair), National Sweet Tea Day (the Table Wine of the South and a perfect drink for BBQ), and National Spumoni Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*We’d better take seriously this analysis from the NYT: “The Democratic Party faces a voter registration crisis.” And this during Trump’s second term!

The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.

Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.

That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

Here’s the figure, but note that only 30 of the 50 states report party registration (click to enlarge): I see NO blue arrows that go up!

The stampede away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, the bluest states and the reddest states, too, according to a new analysis of voter registration data by The New York Times. The analysis used voter registration data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm.

Few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it — whether they register on a clipboard in a supermarket parking lot, at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in the comfort of their own home.

And fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.

In fact, for the first time since 2018, more new voters nationwide chose to be Republicans than Democrats last year.

All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.

There are still more Democrats registered nationwide than Republicans, partly because of big blue states like California allow people to register by party, while red states like Texas do not. But the trajectory is troublesome for Democrats, and there are growing tensions over what to do about it.

It would help if we had a leader, and one who was not “progressive”.  I was pretty sure things would improve during the midterms, but now I’m not so certain.

*The WSJ reports that Bill Ackman (the gazillionaire who helped bring down Claudine Gay and disinvested from Harvard) is starting a new school that embraces AI but eschews DEI.  There are three branches of the Alpha School: in Texas, Florida, and California:

Billionaire Bill Ackman has a new fascination: a fast-growing private school that eschews lessons on diversity, equity and inclusion and uses artificial intelligence to speed-teach children in two hours.

Alpha School is launching a New York City location in September, and the investor and social-media commentator has been acting as something of an ambassador for the institution, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Friday, Ackman is set to appear with Alpha’s co-founder, its principal and others on a panel discussion at his Hamptons home. The panel on K-12 education will be moderated by former financier Michael Milken as part of the Milken Institute’s Hamptons Dialogues.

Alpha School, which calls its teachers “guides,” says it uses AI-enabled software to help students complete core subjects in just two hours daily. It claims students learn twice as much as those in traditional schools despite the condensed days.

The schedule allows students to do hands-on activities in the afternoon, which the school says help them build life skills. These include 5-mile bike rides “without stopping” for kindergartners, and exploring personal hobbies through AI-generated plans.

The school also strives to keep the hot-button social issues that have divided grade schools and colleges across the country out of its classrooms entirely, co-founder MacKenzie Price said in an interview.

“We do not let anything—political, social issues—come in the way,” Price said. “We stay very much out of that.”

Alpha’s guides come from a variety of backgrounds and don’t typically have teaching degrees, Price said.

. . . Alpha has existing locations in Texas, Florida and California. It is opening a school for grades kindergarten through eight in downtown Manhattan and launching schools in Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia and California this year. Next year it plans to open schools in other locations, including Puerto Rico.

I am somewhat doubtful about what AI can do insofar as teaching.  It depends, I suppose on what they measure as “success”. This may work for learning facts in secondary school, but what about learning to write, to argue, or to think for oneself? I may be a curmudgeon here, but I think it takes another human being to at least complete that process. But if AI can teach kids as well as teachers—even in our colleges—we can kiss teaching goodbye, and professors will remain only in college, and to do research.

*An article on an advance in origami appeared in yesterday’s NYT, featuring, among others, reader and contributor Robert Lang, co-author of a Proc. Roy. Soc. paper on this new way of folding paper and its implications.

The art of origami goes back centuries — enough time to explore every possible crease that can be made in a sheet of paper, one might think.

And yet, researchers have now found a new class of origami that they call bloom patterns. Resembling idealized flowers, many bloom patterns are rotationally symmetric around the center.

The bloom patterns, with their set of attractive properties, appear promising for future engineering uses, especially for large structures that are sent to outer space. They fold up flat and compactly, they can be constructed out of one flat sheet, and they can be extended to ever larger shapes.

The discoveries originated from the paper-folding explorations of Zhongyuan Wang, a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Utah.

“I love to do origami, but if I can use origami to make practical applications that benefit the world, that will be a dream come true,” Mr. Wang, who goes by Kelvin as his American name, said in a video produced by B.Y.U.

Mr. Wang, along with Larry Howell, a professor of mechanical engineering at B.Y.U., and Robert Lang, an origami artist and theorist who lives in Pasadena, Calif., reported the findings in a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

You can see the paper by clicking below, and I’ve given a few pictures of “bloom patterns” from the paper:

As you’ll see from the paper, these are very hard to design (I think they get help from computers). Remember, each of these are from a single piece of paper.

Figure 1. Examples of bloom patterns in different folded states.

As Robert said when I emailed him with congratulations, “this work was primarily Kelvin’s. When we met last December at BYU, he pulled out example after example of incredibly beautiful and intricate versions of bloom patterns that he’d folded as part of his explorations. Whether a bloom pattern-based solar array or telescope component ever makes it to space is a topic for the future, but the significance of his work is that he has outlined a general method for designing these types of patterns, so anyone with a bit of study and practice can now design and fold them—and ascertain whether the resulting properties fits their goals, whether artistic or technological.”

*The Washington Post reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has weakened the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division by requiring HUNDREDS of agents to protect him.  HUNDREDS!:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency tasked with protecting him as it pulls agents from criminal investigations to safeguard family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., according to numerous officials familiar with the operation.

The sprawling, multimillion-dollar initiative has forced the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, the agency that fields security for top Defense Department officials, to staff weeks-long assignments in each location and at times monitor residences belonging to the Hegseths’ former spouses, the officials said.

One CID official, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity citing a fear of reprisal, characterized Hegseth’s personal protective arrangement as unlike any other in the agency’s recent history.

“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy,” the official said. “Nobody has.”

Now you’re asking yourself, “How many agents does Hegseth and his family need? Well, have a gander:

CID’s chief mission is to investigate serious crimes within the Army. That includes contracting fraud, which the Trump administration has decried as wasteful government spending, sexual assault and other violent crimes such as the recent mass shooting of U.S. soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

The agency’s other mandate is to provide security for the defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army secretary, and other current and former top defense officials. CID agents serve as advance teams, coordinating security ahead of public appearances. They also staff motorcades and provide security during travel at home and abroad.

Historically about 150 of the agency’s approximately 1,500 agents serve on VIP security details, according to people familiar with the matter, who said that when Hegseth took office a call went out for many more. Now there are hundreds assigned to personal protective duty, these people said. One person characterized the figure as “400 and going up.” Another said it’s “over 500.”

Crikey! 400 to over 500!  Is he so endangered that he needs a staff that large? I doubt it.  It’s likely a manifestation of his hubris.  But aren’t we used to hubris in this Administration?

*Finally, the AP reports the introduction of a high-speed ferry that can swim, act as a hydrofoil, and even fly. It has 12 propellers:

The winged passenger ferry gliding over the surface of Narragansett Bay could be a new method of coastal transportation or a new kind of warship.

Its maker, Regent Craft, is betting on both.

Twelve quietly buzzing propellers line the 65-foot (20-meter) wingspan of Paladin, a sleek ship with an airplane’s nose. It looks nothing like the sailboats and fishing trawlers it speeds past through New England’s largest estuary.

“We had this vision five years ago for a seaglider — something that is as fast as an aircraft and as easy to drive as a boat,” said CEO Billy Thalheimer, jubilant after an hours-long test run of the new vessel.

On a cloudy August morning, Thalheimer sat in the Paladin’s cockpit and, for the first time, took control of his company’s prototype craft to test its hydrofoils. The electric-powered watercraft has three modes — float, foil and fly.

From the dock, it sets off like any motorized boat. Farther away from land, it rises up on hydrofoils — the same kind used by sailing ships that compete in America’s Cup. The foils enable it to travel more than 50 miles per hour — and about a person’s height — above the bay.

What makes this vessel so unusual is that it’s designed to soar about 30 feet (10 meters) above the water at up to 180 miles per hour — a feat that hasn’t quite happened yet, with the first trial flights off Rhode Island’s seacoast planned for the end of summer or early fall.

If successful, the Paladin will coast on a cushion of air over Rhode Island Sound, lifting with the same “ground effect” that pelicans, cormorants and other birds use to conserve energy as they swiftly glide over the sea. It could zoom to New York City — which takes at least three hours by train and longer on traffic-clogged freeways — in just an hour.

One thing’s for sure: a ride on this puppy won’t be cheap.  Here’s a video of a test run:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the conversation between man and cat is hard to figure out:

Hili: Why are you so stuck on the Sisyphus myth?
Andrzej: Because I’m trying once more to reconcile with the absurdity of continuance.

In Polish:

Hili: Czemu się uczepiłeś tego mitu Syzyfa?
Ja: Bo próbuję raz jeszcze polubić absurdalność trwania.

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

CinEmma posted the real god, Ceiling Cat!

From FuFu’s Cat House: I would like a nice batch of cookies like this!

From Things With Faces, A man’s Adam’s apple that looks like a face:

Masih shows that the Iranian morality police are still quite active (sound up):

From Luana; I didn’t know there was a pro-Palestinian encampment at Microsoft:

From Stephen: FOOTBURGERS! (I’d eat one.)

From Keith, a thread that counters the MSM narrative about the IDF shooting Gazans on purpose at food distribution centers:

From Malcolm, a copper after my own heart:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T11:18:06.131Z

Two posts from Dr. Professor Cobb: First, a remarkably well preserved Roman mosaic, underwater! The fish proves it:

For #MosaicMonday this fantastic photo of a mosaic (and a lovely fish 🐟) that was discovered in the submerged ruins of #Roman Baiae.Photo: Parco Archeologico Campi Flegrei

— Nina Willburger (@drnwillburger.bsky.social) 2025-08-18T07:44:50.882Z

. . . and two lovely jellyfish, the second one very weird:

Two very different types of #jellyfish. First, an extremely limey neon green specimen – unsure, but likely #Cunina sp., and then a wacky #Zancleopsis grandis, recognizable by its “two long, two short” layout of its tentacles. #medusae #nematocysts #blackwater #chrisgug #gugunderwater #gug

— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2025-07-25T11:59:11.076Z

39 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December’s tsunami [2004], when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the ‘dumb’ animals made for the hills. -B.R. Myers, author (b. 21 Aug 1963)

    1. I find it astonishing that people stayed to gawk at the receding ocean in the moments prior to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. I personally study math and mathematical physics, so I try (not always succeed) to cultivate physical intuition about real world phenomena. But I would have thought that layman level of physics intuition would be enough to tell people that if the water goes away,it will come back, and you don’t want to be there when it does.

      1. I cannot remember the reference, but I recall a report about a ten year old girl who realised the implication of the receding water and shouted at people to get away. She probably saved several lives.

        1. I saw that report too. I’m sure it said that she had recently learned about tsunamis at school so she knew what wars going to happen and managed to warn people to run.

        2. IIRC this was two NZ school girls holidaying in Samoa. They recognised the signs and alerted the locals.

          1. I have found the reference. The girl was Tilly Smith from the UK. She has her own Wikipedia page.

      2. The basic human tendency to stand and gawk at such things has fascinated me for decades. A focus of my military training was to move each officer’s time orientation as far to the left of the event as possible, left being before the event.

        It has happened to me several times. Not a Tsunami, but similar circumstances. I remember one time being woken up by the noise of a disaster. I had just gone to sleep after being up working hard for three days solid. I vividly remember standing there looking at the unfolding disaster for several minutes, trying to decide if it was real or a dream.

        Even without fatigue being a factor, I think it is normal for people to take some time to recognize rare but dangerous circumstances for what they are, assess the magnitude of the danger, then come to the realization that yes, this is really happening.

  2. I don’t know how many agents the Secretary of Defense needs. I get the impression that Hegseth is a lot more mobile than his recent predecessors, which may mean that he needs more advance men. Certainly, given the political climate, he must be operating in an environment with more numerous threats. The Wapo is taking heat, though, for supposedly exposing supposedly classified and critical details of his protection plan, and that probably won’t help.

  3. I love spumoni, but it has almost entirely disappeared from menus, in my experience, as has veal (and chicken) cacciatore.

  4. Awesome “blooms” – captivating! I imagine these are potentially DIY… or, rather, TIY 😁

  5. “That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”

    “4.5 million voters” has a familiar ring to it. Greg Palast published an article (below) claiming that 4.7 million black and young voters – who trend strongly to vote Democratic – were wrongly purged from voting rolls in Republican-led states, or had mail-in ballots wrongly rejected, more than enough to have led to a Harris Electoral College and popular vote win in 2024.

    The Democrats should have been having Congressional hearings galore about this yesterday.

    Article – https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

    Movie – https://www.watchvigilantesinc.com/

    1. I changed my registration from D to independent so I can vouch for at least one of the 4.5 million. The contempt for the Democratic party is real and to focus on blaming the declining numbers on R trickery instead of fixing the D platform will only lead to the hemorrhaging of more voters.

      1. Who is focusing solely on one?
        We need to know how much of these voter roll losses are skullduggery, and how much are due to policy stances.

        If Palast is right – and it is hard to say right now whether he is, because he doesn’t have enough information yet, and doesn’t present enough data in the article – then the Dems are sunk regardless of any changes they make in policy/messaging.

  7. Another problem for Democrats is that some of the blue states are shrinking in population while red states are growing. This is described as being due in part to the cost of living and to conservatives being tired of wokery. This can shift the balance in electoral college votes.

  8. Bloom patterns: Very interesting! I wonder if one can fold a sheet of paper such that it models the skyline of a city. What are the limits of origami, if any?

    On a more local note, our Puget Sound Ferries use to be a great pride in the region. Now, they are old, broken down, and late. (Riding them is still great fun, if your ride isn’t spontaneously cancelled, which happens.) The decline of the ferry system was one reason we moved back to the mainland from our amazing place on Orcas Island. I’d love to see the incredible ferries described above arrive out here!

  9. Boy, you were hairy! But young women liked that look in the 70s. In fact, I was so ‘imprinted’ on men with long hair that I remember being really disappointed when short hair came back into fashion.

  10. PCC(E) is almost indistinguishable from Cat Stevens in the 70s. Dead ringer. Of course, that’s great UP TO A POINT… that point being the “Yusef Islam” era.
    Peacetrain man calling for Rushdie’s execution on TV. Ahem.
    Anyway… PCC(E) was quite the slick blade back then!

    Ackerman’s school idea is interesting….. but if I had kids I’d be more exited by Niall Ferguson and Barry Weiss’ new uni in Texas (which looks excellent – they youtube some of their events and a few classes).

  11. I was mistaken for Cat Stevens twice when I was in Greece before college (he’s Greek and was a hero there). I have a picture of myself and one of Cat Stevens that look nearly identical.

    1. But did you get anything for it? I once got a gratis beer in Slovenia for resemblance to Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top).

      1. Cat S. was (WAS) great – a fantastic musician. (sigh).

        For the times – mid 70s – and your face the beard looks good, but I’m relieved you no longer have it!

        Funny, I’d never pictured Mr. Hempenstein as a ZZ Top bearded sage. 🙂

        D.A.
        NYC

      2. I saw Frank Beard driving down the street today. He has a grey Porsche with a red convertible top.

  12. Regent Seaglider®: yet another attempt at Wing In Ground effect (WIG) craft. Its design seems aimed at solving one big problem: how to leave water surface with engines that don’t require reserve power that is 4 or 5 times cruise power.

    As far as I remember, for planing boats the thrust to weight ratio is 1/4 to 1/3 at 40 km/h. For hydrofoils it is 1/10 to 1/12 at 80 km/h, and for a WIG it is about 1/25 at 120 km/h (I am quoting from a book that I last read 40 years ago.) So a hydrofoil is definitely the way to go if you want easy transition to flight, and indeed it seems they can do it without much effort.

    The second problem is still unsolved, and likely will never be solved. There is a wave height at which a given WIG craft cannot leave water surface. So if it touches down far from shore where the waves are higher than it can tolerate, it’s stuck. And by the time they get towed, passengers are seasick.

    But that is an issue for seaplanes too.

    So it is a good machine for specific use cases in sheltered waters, such lakes and harbours. Unfortunately, it’s perpetually fettered by the “It’s a new concept, I don’t know about it, let’s get a real airplane” line of thought. All previous attempts ended on a prototype.

    BTW what the video shows is a model. The full sized craft was seen in hydrofoil mode, but so far I don’t believe they tried to fly it.

    1. Another problem seems to me to be running into the occasional driftwood trunk or other substantial junk.

      But otherwise, the whole thing looks like a modern version of a mini-China Clipper.

    2. Another issue with WIG is an inherent instability that causes the nose of the craft to tend to pitch down. All designs, from the earliest to the present, have tried various ideas to mitigate or avoid this instability. I can’t remember the details, but it has to do with how the tail of the WIG interacts with the ground effect. A common tactic in earlier designs was to move the tail as far back as feasible. The downside to that was substantial additional mass.

      1. My I-14 sailboat has foiling capability, and maintains stability by the mechanical action of a little skimmer wing on a control rod.
        The rod is able to mechanically adjust the foil, seeking the ideal elevation above the water.

        A good overview of the system is here-
        https://fernhurstbooks.com/knowledge_centre/62/how_foils_work_on_foiling_dinghies

        I am sure these problems are solved in much more sophisticated ways on the aircraft, especially since they are designed to lift completely away from the water.

        When I say my boat has foiling capability, I do not want to imply that I have in any way mastered the process. My coming up on the foils is usually by accident, and is often followed quickly by capsizing.

  14. I understand that people are pissed with the Dems. But to become a Republican…? We do need a third party, but I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime.

  15. Regarding the Hegseth security detail: I know neither the facts nor what would be appropriate. But if I were a reporter, I might ask how much of this security detail was tied up with Hegseth’s large family (four biological children, three stepchildren, and two mothers of those children). I believe all his children are minors; I assume there is a custody-sharing arrangement. I would then compare this to others who served in the role. Given that those who serve as Secretary of Defense are usually much older than Hegseth, I suspect that there was formerly little, if any, need to protect minor children. I would then assess the current security situation, particularly after two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, and evaluate whether security needs for senior officials are now, overall, higher than in the past.

    But, of course, the Washington Post doesn’t hire too many reporters these days. Perhaps they fancy themselves as entertainment coordinators, suggesting that Hegseth book private suites for ballpark visits. Imagine their fake outrage if he had.

  16. I think using AI to teach children is a big risk. Google’s AI often gets things wrong, even in what you think are simple things like spelling, or identifying a song on the soundtrack of a film. I don’t trust it. AI that crawls the internet indiscriminately for ‘facts’ is sure to be corrupted. Extremists at both ends of a spectrum are more likely to be pushing odd views on topics online, much more than people who deal in facts and read textbooks and dictionaries.

    I’m sure it has its use in the classroom, but not without an adult present.

    When asked what you should do if a man exposes his penis to your child in a public park, one AI product told the questioner to ignore it and ‘look the other way’ as it is ‘none of your business’. It seems like AI is being coached to support Queer Theory.

    I would never have guessed that photo was you 😁

    Gorgeous jellyfish.

    1. Good point Joolz.
      But..given what we’ve learned about what they’re teaching children in schools since Covid (genderwang nonsense, Palestine, evil slavery USA etc.)… I’d prefer the AI to many of the teachers: at least we know what the AI is teaching, it is all recorded.

      Of course, having no children this is an abstraction to me so I don’t really have a dog in the fight but those Pal protesters, the boys in dresses, didn’t learn that at home I’m guessing.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. I thought about that as I was typing as there are some badly woke and politicised teachers. I agree the wrong teacher may be worse than AI, but we are more able to monitor people than AI. Parents could get a bad teacher removed, but would struggle to change a school’s policy of using AI.

        Even childless people like us have a ‘dog in the game’ of child education. Those children will be our future politicians, carers, doctors and lawyers. We all need to ensure children get a decent education, both for their benefit and for ours.

  17. Re the pro-Palestinian encampment at Microsoft; seriously, I will contribute to a fund to fly any who wish it over to Gaza. I very much doubt any of them will accept that freebie. On the plus side, at least their chants have good scansion.

    1. When it comes down to it these people don’t have the courage of their convictions. During the ebola crisis one idiot insisted that vitamin C would cure them. I told her that I would happily pay her flight over so she could cure them and asked when she wanted to go. I got kicked out of that Facebook group 😂

  18. Re former financial fraudster Michael Milken, has his philanthropy using tainted money managed to buy him actual respectability so soon? I hope he isn’t also appointed by the Alpha school to teach ethics.

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