Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 28, 2025 • 7:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, September 28, 2025, and the Sabbath that is made for goyische cats.  It’s National Drink Beer Day, and should you be so lucky as to be in the UK, this is the beer I recommend you seek and quaff (it’s a session beer):

It’s also National Strawberry Cream Pie Day, World Rivers Day, Daughter’s Day (but which daughter?; note the apostrophe), and World Rabies Day.

There’s a Google Doodle featuring an old logo; click on it to find out how Google got its name and its logo (note that “Google” was a misspelling):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz: This will be truncated today as I want to have time for other activities in Cambridge. 

*The government is set to shut down on Wednesday, and Congress and Trump have but two days to work things out lest thousands of workers get furloughed and lose their salaries, and many government servies, like the dispensing of food stamps or the National Parks, could be curtailed.  Talks will resume tomorrow, but time is short.

President Trump has agreed to meet in the Oval Office with the four top congressional leaders, setting up dramatic last-minute talks just as Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a government shutdown within days.

The meeting is scheduled for Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, ahead of an expected redo of a Senate vote that will determine whether Congress will keep the government funded beyond Tuesday. House Republicans narrowly passed a bill this month that would fund the government into late November and add millions for security for lawmakers and other officials, but Democrats blocked that measure in the Senate and sought bipartisan negotiations on healthcare funding.

The meeting will include House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) along with their Democratic counterparts, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.).

“President Trump has once again agreed to a meeting in the Oval Office,” Schumer and Jeffries said in a statement, a reference to a canceled sit-down last week. “As we have repeatedly said, Democrats will meet anywhere, at any time and with anyone to negotiate,” they said.

The government will shut down Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. if Congress can’t pass a short-term spending patch. The Senate was set to vote again as soon as Monday on the same seven-week funding extension that Democrats had previously rejected. Republicans have a 53-47 majority, but they need 60 votes to pass most legislation.

Democrats have demanded Republicans make concessions, with a particular focus on extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire this year. Around 20 million Americans could see higher insurance bills unless Congress acts, and both Schumer and Thune have said that a resolution to the standoff would likely involve some sort of negotiation over the ACA credits. Democrats also want to restore Medicaid funding that was cut, and unfreeze federal spending approved by Congress but withheld by Trump administration officials.

Republicans have said Democrats should agree to a stopgap bill now and leave any negotiations for later this fall. Trump has cast Democrats as “crazy” and said blame for a shutdown would fall on them.

If the government “has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down, but they’re the ones that are shutting down,” Trump said on Friday.

As usual, each party will blame the other. The usual solution is the stopgap funding bill, but given the position of the Democrats, that may be unlikely. I still think that the stopgap will pass before Tuesday.

*Over at the New York Times, Nikole Hannah-Jones, of the paper’s 1619 Project, is beefing about the public sorrow over the murder of Charlie Kirk. And indeed, I agree with her that Kirk’s views were reprehensible (I can’t find one I agree with), and that much of the public mourning for him was prompted by those who agreed with him.  But she seems to miss the fact that some of us were mourning the death of free speech and of civil argumentation instead of murdering one’s opponents. Hannah-Jones:

In some parts of polite society, it now holds that if many of Kirk’s views were repugnant, his willingness to calmly argue about them and his insistence that people hash out their disagreements through discourse at a time of such division made him a free-speech advocate, and an exemplar of how we should engage politically across difference. But for those who were directly targeted by Kirk’s rhetoric, this thinking seems to place the civility of Kirk’s style of argument over the incivility of what he argued. Through gossamer tributes, Kirk’s cruel condemnation of transgender people and his racist throwback views about Black Americans were no longer anathema but instead are being treated as just another political view to be respectfully debated — like a position on tax rates or health care policy.

. . . As the Trump administration wages the broadest attack on civil rights in a century, and the shared societal values of multiculturalism and tolerance recede, using Kirk’s knack for vigorous argument to excuse the re-emergence of unabashed bigotry in mainstream politics feels both frightening and perilous. Kirk certainly produced viral moments by showing up on college campuses and inviting students a decade his junior to “prove” him wrong about a range of controversial topics such as Black crime rates and the pitfalls of feminism. But his rise to fame was predicated on the organization for which he served as executive director, Turning Point USA, and its Professor Watchlist. The website invited college students not to engage in robust discussions with others with different ideologies, but to report professors who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

Yes, I object to the “professor’s watchlist,” too, as it almost places a target on the back of Left-wing faculty, though students could also use it as a guide of what to expect from their professors. But the rest of her argument sounds almost like claiming that some positions are simply worth arguing because they are not only inherently correct, but whose denial constitutes “hate speech” that offends and hurts people.  Neither of those claims are true.  All morality ultimately rests on subjective preferences; there is no object “right” or “wrong”. (Those preferences usually rest on what kind of society one considers a good one.) And although it would be hard to argue for the utility of a “preference” for segregation, for example, it is still worthwhile arguing about obviously “right” positions for two reasons: arguments “outs” their exponents, letting us know where people stand, and argument also sharpens the views of those who argue, for example, those people, like me, who favor civil rights for all.  These two arguments for “offensive” speech come from John Stuart Mill, and remind us that we should always question our views, if for no other reason than to remind us why we hold our views.

Further, some of Kirk’s views are not settled or have clear answers in the public mind. These include, for example, whether there is a “right” to abortion or whether people should have rights to own guns with not much vetting.  I happen to be pro-choice and anti-gun, but it’s still worth debating these issues.

I mourn Charlie Kirk’s death simply because any human being with family and loved ones should be mourned when they’re murdered like Kirk was.  But I also mourn his death as a symbol of the waning of free speech in America. I was no fan of the man, but I’m a fan of free speech, and I would never have him silenced, via either the Diktats of Hannah-Jones et al. or by a bullet.

*It’s been revealed that the Trump administration now has a 21-point plan for ending the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

The Trump administration’s proposal for ending the Gaza war would begin with the immediate cessation of all military operations, “battle lines” frozen in place and the release within 48 hours of all 20 living hostages and the remains of more than two dozen believed dead.

According to the 21-point plan, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post and verified by officials from two governments that have been briefed on it by the administration, all of Hamas’s offensive weaponry would be destroyed. Those militants who “commit to peaceful co-existence” would be offered amnesty. Safe passage to other countries would be facilitated forHamas members who choose to leave.

Neither Israel nor Hamas has agreed to the just over three-page page plan, which U.S. officials shared with regional and allied governments at high-level meetings at the United Nations over the past week. President Donald Trump is expected to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it when they meet Monday at the White House.

A senior Israeli official told journalists in a briefing Friday that his country’sleadership still needed to review the plan ahead of the Monday meeting.

. . . The proposal says that “upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip … including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, [and] entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.” But the plan makes no mention of who would perform this work or pay for it.

But here’s the part that makes it a non-starter:

The plan also outlines a “temporary transitional governance” of “qualified Palestinians and international experts” to run “day to day” public services in Gaza. That governing body would be “supported and supervised” by a “new international body” established by the United States in consultation with others, while the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority undertakes internal reforms until it is deemed capable of taking over Gaza at some future point.

The United States also “will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force to immediately deploy and oversee the security in Gaza” while a Palestinian force is being trained. Israel Defense Forces will “progressively hand over the Gaza territory they occupy,” the document says. Eventually, the Israelis will completely withdraw, except for an undefined “perimeter presence.”

So members of Hamas could stay in Gaza, although of course they would get weapons and continue their terrorism. And where would the “qualified Palestinians” come from (Hamas would of course kill them)?  Further, it’s insanity to think that the Palestinian Authority, which is hated by Hamas and Gazans, could govern Gaza peacefully.

This plan would not result in a two-state solution, despite the claim that the “International Stabilization Force” is “temporary.”  Now I don’t have my own solution to The Day After question. This one comes fairly close, but I’d rather see that Force govern both the West Bank and Gaza until a non-terrorist-supporting Palestinian government can be assembled, a government not dedicated to wiping out Israel and the Jews.

*Ghost, the Giant Pacific Octopus who’s starving to death in a California aquarium as she tends her infertile eggs, is still alive.  But the Aquarium of the Pacific, which has taken Ghost off view, reports that the cephalopod “continues to rest comfortably behind the scenes.”  Apparently they don’t want the public to witness senescence, which is a natural behavior resulting in death. Would that traumatize people?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, things are all askew :

Hili: Who was here yesterday?
Andrzej: No one came by.
Hili: I must have imagined it.

In Polish:

Hili: Kto wczoraj u nas był?
Ja: Nikogo nie było.
Hili: Musiało mi się zdawać.

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

From Cat Memes:

From I Love Ducks:

From Give Me a Sign:

Masih responding to Iranian television’s blurring the legs of the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland when they wore skirts (see second tweet):

I believe this paper (there are 15 tweets in the thread) was mentioned in Carole Hooven’s Tablet paper. You won’t be able to get it easily, but perhaps a judicious inquiry would suffice:

From Luana: One I retweeted from the Chicago Teacher’s Union celebrating a cop-killer who just died in Cuba. I fail to understand the “honor” she deserves. Look up Assata Shakur here.

Convicted of first-degree murder, Shakur deserves no honor. She escaped from prison and spent the rest of her life (she died two days ago) in Cuba). The Chicago Teachers Union is insane. https://t.co/psmomQG1Bc

Also from Luana:

From Malcolm: a lovely time-lapse video of nesting bluebirds:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Norwegian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-28T11:34:13.352Z

Two posts from the eminent Dr. Cobb. For this one he quotes Mister Natural: “‘Twas ever thus.”:

Some things never change!4,000 year-old ancient Egyptian writing board with a student’s many spelling mistakes corrected in red ink by the teacher! 😂📷 The Met http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti…#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-09-27T09:10:07.096Z

And a new species of marsupial! There are already quite a few species of marsupial in South America, for that’s where their ancestor evolved. They got to Australia when the continents were connected, crossing from what is now Antarctica (see Why Evolution is True for details).

32 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring. -Evelyn Beatrice Hall, biographer (28 Sep 1868-1956)

  2. … I agree with her that Kirk’s views were reprehensible (I can’t find one I agree with), …

    Jerry, I suspect there is a long list of things you and he would have agreed on, such as that trans-IDing males should not play in women’s sport, and academic hiring should be on merit not on identity.

    And while there’s plenty I would have disagreed with him on, I don’t think his views were “reprehensible”, just mainstream, right-wing Christian views that I disagree with.

    1. I listened to quite a few talks by Kirk and did not consider him to be as radical as he is being portrayed by much of the media.

      1. Jerry wrote:

        I mourn Charlie Kirk’s death simply because any human being with family and loved ones should be mourned when they’re murdered like Kirk was.

        So if Kirk had been an orphan and few people would have cared about him, would it then have been okay to murder him? I don’t think so and suspect Jerry does not think so either. I agree though that him having a wife and 2 young kids and having had many fans, these are aggravating circumstances of his murder. But it grates me a bit to read passages like the one from Jerry that I just cited because they seem to suggest that Kirk simply enjoying being alive does not matter.

        As to the Professor Watch List, this is a tactic that is also used by other sides in politics. For instance, the Transgender Map or think of the Southern Poverty Law Center keeping a list of designated hate groups (including the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, SEGM).

        1. Of course I meant because a human who enjoys their life should NOT be eliminated, and the sorrow is intensified because he had a wife and two young kids who will grow up without a dad.

          If you knew what I meant, and you did, then there is no need to tell me that what I said grates you.

      2. (Reply to Peter of the Yellow Icon. )Agreed. I watched many of his debate videos, I considered him moderate.

    2. I’m with you on this, Coel. Jerry keeps saying he can’t find anything he would agree with Kirk on, yet the free speech issue alone is front and center as a point of agreement. As are many of the culture war issues discussed here: men in women’s sports, child “transitioning,” etc. And I don’t get the reprehensible label, either, when applied in the broad-brush fashion of “Kirk’s views were reprehensible.”

      Then again, you have the views that Charlie Kirk held, and you have the views imputed to him by much of the media. One set might indeed be reprehensible.

      1. The free speech issue was not one on which Mr. Coyne and Mr. Kirk genuinely agreed. Mr. Coyne supports freedom of speech as a principle. Kirk, by contrast, wore the sheep’s clothing of “free speech” advocacy when on campus interacting with students, but elsewhere has openly advocated an Orbán-like use of state power to suppress opposing viewpoints—including defunding entire academic disciplines, purging universities of ideological opponents, banning classroom speech he disagrees with, and weaponizing government to remake institutions like the FBI, DOJ, and the courts along explicitly partisan lines. Kirk’s version of “free speech” is precisely the sort of tactical exploitation of liberal freedoms that Karl Popper warned against in The Open Society and Its Enemies.

    3. Kirk was one of the most prominent election deniers in 2020 and beyond – aggressively promoting claims of election fraud and that the election was stolen. Repeatedly promoted the Jan 6 Stop the Steal rally – and said that they (TPUSA) was sending 80+ buses of ‘patriots’ to fight for the president. He has repeatedly said that Babbitt was murdered and then there was a cover-up. He ignored the investigative findings on that case (of course). He repeatedly claimed that those who committed criminal and violent acts on Jan 6 were political prisoners. And far from being a freedom of speech advocate, he repeatedly advocated for the shutting down/purging those views/organizations he disagreed with. I didn’t disagree with Kirk on everything, but so what? I supported his right to say what he said, but at the same time understand that his views on the whole were terrible.

  3. Oh the irony. Iranian men claim to be strong and brave, but they quake at the sight of a woman’s leg. I would suggest that makes them weak, rather than strong, yet they are blaming women for their own flaws. Strong men can control themselves and don’t blame others for their own feebleness.

    Masih is right about the men who perform on stage. They are weak too. They should refuse to perform unless women are allowed to attend. They are publicly supporting the oppression of women. I remember musicians refusing to play in front of segregated audiences in apartheid South Africa, but presumably, Iranian men care more about money than women.

    Iranian men are so short sighted. They don’t seem to care that by excluding half of the population from becoming doctors, there are also risking the future health of themselves and their sons. That clearly shows how much they hate and fear women.

    1. Islam is all about projection. Women have nine times the sex drive of men. Jews seek to rule the world – through sex according to a top Iranian cleric. Women who get raped are the criminals and must be stoned to death, etc.

  4. The new Gaza peace plan also says nothing about accepting Israel as is and giving up the “right of return.”

    1. This plan may be an improvement over the usual Underpants Gnomes / headless chickens -style plans, but seriously, what part of “holy war” don’t they understand? I infer that the whole thing is mostly performative. (What won’t iDJT do to snare a Nobel Peace Prize?)

  5. The marsupial post sent me down a rabbit hole – or perhaps a wombat hole. I emerged having learned (I hope correctly) that the group of American species that are properly called opossums (commonly known as possums) are only distantly related to the similar Australian marsupials properly (and colloquially) known as possums.

    Happy Sunday

    1. Maybe sufficiently unrelated that their similarity is a case of convergent evolution? I don’t know.

      1. You’re the evolutionary biologist and the depth of my knowledge here is essentially wikipedia and whatever I can vaguely remember but, sure all marsupials are closer to each other than to placental mammals (and the two groups are closer than either is to monotrenes). However, if I read the cladogram right the Australian marsupials are more closely related to each other, all having a common ancestor that migrated across Antarctica/Gondwana, than they are to the south (and more recently north) American group. So I’d have thought that would be consistent with convergent evolution of the possum/oppossum phenotypes.

        1. The opossums that inhabited my former back yard in California looked very different from the Australian possums I occasionally see here in Oz, and the former are more carnivorous with sharp pointy teeth (they sometimes killed chickens) whereas the latter mainly eat leaves.

        2. No, convergent evolution is when a trait, or group of traits, evolve in two groups independently and was not present in their common ancestor. The characteristics of marsupials were present in their common ancestor and then were distributed in several continents (they used to be in Antarctica, too). Thus there is no convergence in stuff like pouched young, BUT you are correct if you say that some species of Australian marsupials, like the marsupial mole, evolved morphologies and habits that were convergent to placental species (in this case, the placental mole).

  6. Charlie Kirk is to me a not a free speech martyr, but perhaps a confessor. He got killed when visiting a campus debating college students, and more freedom of speech is surely needed at universities. I can also sympathise with him as a family man.

    At the time time, I surely disagree with a Trump devotee and Christian fundamentalist who did not so much argue with his student critics as overwhelm them with prepared text snippets and rhetorical tricks like syllogisms. He did not seem willing to listen to them in order to engage them in a fruitful debate. He was there to own the libs.

    My sentiment for Charlie Kirk is also admittedly tribal. I fear that those who cannot accept him being mourned would happily come after others like me, since I suspect them of being intolerant and hostile to free speech.

    1. He listens to this young man:

      https://youtu.be/vl5jwcsVWN4?si=5PA2CZQW_cLa-FXK

      I think that’s a fair exchange of ideas.

      “I fear that those who cannot accept him being mourned would happily come after others like me, since I suspect them of being intolerant and hostile to free speech.”

      I agree. But while few would go so far as murder, many would unthinkingly misrepresent your views and paint you as a monster.

      1. So much I disagree with Charlie about (from the clips I’ve seen over the years), but if the rest of the Jesus people had such balls and “classic liberal” strength to go into woke spaces and talk.. we’d be better off. And if the woke side would listen , THAT would be cool.

        For this reason – as well as the dynamics of assassination – I’m now a big fan.
        (And hey – the guy was a hundred percent on Israel. That’s not nothing.)

        As a centrist I’m less concerned about the details about where I think he was wrong and where he’d think I was wrong. His contribution was to the equilibrium.

        Without equilibrium – the secret sauce of democracies – we’re totally eff’d.

        D.A.
        NYC

        1. “As a centrist I’m less concerned about the details about where I think he was wrong and where he’d think I was wrong.”

          That’s pretty much my disposition. If I sense the boat listing too far starboard, I move port. If port is the danger, then I’m starboard bound.

          Our problem is twofold: 1) those who can never envision or sense something gone too far, and 2) those who prefer to sink with their friends.

  7. On the recommendation here, a few days ago I bought a bottle of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. (Where I live in Scotland I rarely manage to visit pubs, and around here is pretty much a desert for good draught beer anyway.) I thought it was good, but a bit strongly flavoured for my taste. I prefer a lighter beer.

  9. Many lies have been spread about Charlie Kirk and his supposed opinions. For example, we’re told he thought black people couldn’t be pilots!

    In an interview, he explained:

    The essence of that clip that was missed by almost everybody — Jordan Peterson, to his credit, really picked up on it — which was I was trying to be, you know, very vulnerable with the audience is that DEI invites unwholesome thinking. … I was saying in the clip, “That’s not who I am, that’s not what I believe.” But what it does is it makes us worse versions of ourselves, Megyn. That’s the whole point of what I was saying is that I now look at everything through a hyper-racialized diversity-quota lens because of their massive insistence to try to hit these ridiculous racial hiring quotas. Of course I believe anybody of any skin color can become a qualified pilot.

    He hated gay people! (Some even claim he thought gay people should be stoned). Watch this brief clip and see if you can find the hate:
    https://youtu.be/FJmcqjP8mhk?feature=shared

    Of course, he was a conservative Christian, yada yada. But he was far more humane than people give him credit for being. Here’s another brief clip; in this one he’s talking with a young woman who identifies as a man:

    https://youtu.be/FhzqKQzueKU?si=-PQbHbiGm1XYKpPR

    1. Regarding Charlie Kirk, this from conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens:

      Our Vanishing Culture of Argument. New York Times, Sept 16, 2025
      https://archive.ph/v4e9d

      Kirk, to my way of thinking, was not a real conservative, at least in the American sense. The point of our conservatism is to conserve a liberal political order — open, tolerant, limited and law-abiding. It’s not about creating a God-drenched regime centered on a cult of personality leader waging zero-sum political battles against other Americans viewed as immoral enemies.

      As for Kirk’s style of argument, owning inarticulate liberal kids in mass audience settings for the sake of producing viral videos isn’t real engagement, much less education. Did Kirk ever lose an argument, at least in his own mind?

      Still, Kirk was out there, making arguments, inviting discussion and taking brave risks. Like few others in his generation, he offered a sharp and defiant voice against the tut-tutting illiberalism of today’s campus progressives. Young men thrilled to his message, in part because they were tired of being told that their masculinity was toxic or that their race was guilty or that their civilization was evil. Without the excesses of the left, Kirk would never have become the phenomenon he was.

      It’s too bad that Kirk, raised in a Chicago suburb, didn’t attend the University of Chicago. It wouldn’t have hurt getting thrashed in a political debate by smarter peers. Or learning to appreciate the power and moral weight of views he didn’t share. Or recognizing that the true Western tradition lies more in its skepticism than in its certitude.

      But the larger tragedy by far is that it’s America itself that’s losing sight of all that. In the vacuum that follows, the gunshots ring out.

      1. Thx Peter – I missed that one since I threw the New Woke Times in the trash a few years ago.

        Stephens is always excellent and his points right on the Money.

        D.A.
        NYC

  10. Nikole-Hannah Jones’ piece creates conditions for the friend/enemy distinction.

    The friend/enemy distinction is a major piece of Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (1932). Gnostic wizards of Dialectic are known to employ this distinction to advance totalitarian régimes.

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