Friday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the first Friday of 2026: January 2, 2026 and National Buffet Day. I love buffets because I love food: as A. J. Liebling wrote (I believe), “If you like food, you like a lot of it.” In Chicago we have the only Polish buffet I know of, the Red Apple, and oy, is it good! It’s open for the buffet on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and is a reasonable $33. It’s real Polish home cooking: stuffed cabbage, potato pancakes, borscht, pierogi, the whole schmear. Have a look, and if you’re in town on the weekend, go!

If you watch the video and don’t want to go, there’s something wrong with you. . .

It’s also 55 MPH Speed Limit Day (Nixon imposed it on this day in 1974), Swiss Cheese Day, World Introvert Day, National Science Fiction Day, and Happy Mew Year for Cats Day.  Here’s a bot picture I created to celebrate the day:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 2 Wikipedia page.

There was a Google Doodle for the New Year yesterday. Click below to see where it goes:

Here are the readers’ answers to the MCAT test-preparation question that follows:

Which of the following statements is NOT an accurate description of gender?

A. Gender is a biological distinction.
B. Gender ideals and expectations vary by culture.
C. Some societies recognize more than two genders.
D. Gender is a performative aspect of individual identity.

Da Nooz:*The oil tanker Bella 1, being chased by in the Atlantic Ocean by the Coast Guard (legally), painted a Russian flag on its side and (surprise!) it’s now flying a Russian flag and is registered as a Russian ship. That won’t necessarily save it though.

The oil tanker fleeing American forces in the Atlantic Ocean has been formally renamed and added to an official Russian database of vessels registered in that country, potentially complicating U.S. efforts to board the runaway ship.

According to the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, the vessel, previously known as the Bella 1, is now registered as the Marinera. The database lists the vessel as flying the Russian flag, with a home port of Sochi.

Under international law, ships flying a country’s flag are under that nation’s protection. But the vessel’s efforts to stay out of U.S. jurisdiction might still be a long shot, because American officials said it was not flying a valid national flag when it was initially approached by the Coast Guard more than a week ago.

The slow-moving tanker has been evading the Coast Guard after being stopped on its way to pick up oil at a Venezuelan port. It may now be trying to invoke the aid of Russia, a longtime ally of Venezuela’s. An officer on the ship recently made radio contact with the Coast Guard to declare that it was a Russian-flagged vessel, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing operation. Crew members have also painted a crude Russian flag on the side of the vessel.

The register is a state-controlled enterprise acting as an official arm of the Kremlin’s maritime authority.

The Russian government’s stance on the ship is not clear. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The White House, the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security also did not respond to requests.

. . . American officials have suggested that they still intend to seize the ship. But boarding a moving vessel with a potentially hostile crew could prove dangerous, and the Coast Guard has so far only tracked the Bella 1.

The vessel was not flying a flag, nor registered with Russia, when it was encountered, but had been registered in three different countries. But the last line tells us why the Coast Guard apparently hasn’t seized the vessel. It would be a useless ship, and the Big Chase is probably going on to deter other ships.

*The NYT reports what Masih’s been tweeting about: “Most of Iran shuts down as government grapples with protests and economy.” (Article is archived here.) Iran is in huge turmoil, and the people are rebelling against the theocratic and misogynistic government, and upset by a huge rate of inflation. An excerpt followed by two tweets:

Businesses, universities and government offices stayed closed on Wednesday across most of Iran under a government-ordered shutdown, as the president struggled to address public frustration that has fueled mounting protests over the faltering economy and the government.

The one-day shutdown in 21 of Iran’s 31 provinces, including Tehran, the capital, came as President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday appointed a new central bank chief, the former economy minister Abdolnaser Hemmati. The president acknowledged that it was an “extremely difficult and complex” role that would subject the new bank head to intense pressure and criticism, according to state news media.

Iran’s inflation rate has spiked, driving frustrated merchants to the streets in Tehran and other cities, and prompting the abrupt resignation of the former central bank head, Mohammad Reza Farzin, on Monday.

The disruptions caused by the days of protests came as footage circulating on social media on Wednesday and verified by The New York Times showed demonstrators throwing objects at the gates of a government building complex in Fasa, in south-central Iran, and then shaking them until they opened.

The protests have spread and drawn in demonstrators from across sectors and society, with the demonstrators increasingly also expressing frustration and anger at the regime over not only the economy but severe water shortages and more. “Death to the dictator,” protesters shouted at a demonstration in Hamedan in west-central Iran, according to a video posted by BBC Persian.

. . . Iran’s economy has long been hobbled by Western sanctions and mismanagement, and the 12-day bombing campaign in June by Israel, which the United States joined, has exacerbated its troubles.

President Trump, while meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Florida on Monday, threatened to strike Iran again if it tried to reconstitute its nuclear program. Mr. Pezeshkain responded on Tuesday with his own threat of retaliatory strikes.

I have no doubt that Iran is still trying to build a nuclear weapon (various intelligence reports say that), and that means that there will be another U.S. + Israel strike on the country.  That, I think, will put an end to its nuclear program for good, as it can’t afford to resume it. Now what we have to hope for is regime change. Sadly, although the NYT reports this, various NGOs, as well as “progressive” liberals, could give a fig about Iran. One of them, as tweeted by Hillel Neuer (heaed of UN Watch) below, is Amnesty International:

.@antonioguterres You haven’t even mentioned the word Iran since June 2025. https://t.co/LrOvG2dVlm

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 1, 2026

About the one below, do check for yourself here. Amnesty International, like Doctors Without Borders, has been captured:

*Here’s a heartening New Year post from NPR: “Meet five new species discovered in 2025.” Here they are (not all are living: one is a new fossil species):

“An ancient sea cow in the Persian Gulf”: 

Cows often get a bad rap for contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, but a newly discovered species of their ocean counterparts suggests that sea cows have been key contributors to a natural climate change solution for the past 21 million years.

This long-extinct sea cow’s fossil remains were discovered in Al Maszhabiya, Qatar, which is now known to be the richest fossil sea cow deposit in the world. Like today’s manatees and dugongs, it mainly grazed on seagrass and was considered an “ecosystem engineer” in the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf, where it primarily lived.

“A mini marsupial in the Andes mountains”:

A beady-eyed mouse opossum living high up in the Peruvian Andes wasn’t what Silvia Pavan initially set out to find during her expedition in Río Abiseo National Park, but the new species gives yet another reason why this special region is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Pavan, an assistant professor at Cal Poly Humboldt, was on the hunt for a specific squirrel species when she and her colleagues came across an animal they eventually named Marmosa chachapoya to honor the Chachapoya people who formerly occupied the area.

The tiny marsupial (which, despite its scientific name, is not a marmoset) was the first small mammal that the researchers collected on their trip. While the animal looked a lot like a mouse opossum, its long and delicate snout and home high in the mountains set it apart from other marmosa species. But once Pavan brought the samples back, DNA analysis — coupled with a close examination of its skull — proved that this was indeed a new species.

“An undercover spider in Northern California”

Marshal Hedin was walking along the river near where he grew up in Northern California when he came across a spider he hadn’t seen before. Fifteen years later, the professor of biology at San Diego State University finally got to identify it as a new species of an entirely new genus, which he named after his home of Siskiyou County.

Brown spider species like Siskiyu armilla are very difficult to tell apart using only their physical characteristics. Many species look similar because they live in the same kind of habitat: under rocks or in other dark, humid places.

To make sure the spider Hedin found was genetically different from existing species, he and his colleagues decided to perform a DNA analysis. So he returned to the river to search for a new specimen of the rare spider (and brought his son along with him too).

“Live-birthing toads in Tanzania” [they have eggs, but retain them and give birth to live young]

. . . . Christoph Liedtke, an academic researcher from the Spanish National Research Council who has spent the last decade studying these toads, wondered whether there was more biodiversity in the highlands of the Eastern Arc mountains of Tanzania than previously thought. So he and his colleagues tried to see if there was more than one species in the Nectophrynoides genus.

This was no easy task because many of the specimens they needed to examine and compare to modern-day samples were collected before the time of DNA sequencing. Coauthor John Lyakurwa, an assistant lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, says that the process was like a “big puzzle that we had to solve.”

So they teamed up with researchers from Denmark and Belgium to extract DNA from over 200 museum specimens. From there, they used next-generation sequencing to identify three new species in the genus, which was more than previously thought.

“A smiley snailfish from the deep sea”

Nearly 11,000 feet into the deep sea, scientists discovered a new species that caught the attention — and affection — of viewers from around the world. The bumpy snailfish was captured on video by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute during their expedition off the shores of Central California — and with its big eyes, feathery fins and a mouth bearing the suggestion of a smile, it was an instant hit.

To help determine if the floppy pink sea creature was new or one of the 400 existing species of snailfish, they assembled a team of scientists, including Mackenzie Gerringer, an associate professor of biology at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

And here’s a video of the cute bumpy snailfish:

*The NYT is all JOY with the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani at midnight last night. There are several articles, including one saying that he’s ushering in a “new era for NYC” (what era is that? He hasn’t DONE anything yet) what an experienced team he has, an op-ed called “Welcome to the Mamdani Era, New York,” and even one reporting that a noted author has written a poem (“Proof”) to be read at Mamdanis’s inauguration. Since Hizzoner hasn’t done much yet, let’s look at the op-ed by author and NYC expert Kim Phillips-Fein.  Some excerpts:

As Zohran Mamdani takes office, there is rightly a great emphasis on the many ways in which his mayoralty is a first for New York City. He is the first Muslim mayor of the city, the first born in Africa, the first of South Asian descent, the first to make being a democratic socialist central to his politics.

On the campaign trail, his opponents repeatedly depicted him as a radical, a foreigner, an outsider to the city and its politics.

But they are all wrong. Mr. Mamdani is an entirely familiar type of New York politician. The central issues of his campaign — holding down the costs of housing and transit so that all New Yorkers can enjoy the city’s glories — are the same ones that have animated working-class politics in the city going back to the 1886 mayoral campaign of Henry George, the 1917 campaign of the Socialist Morris Hillquit and the 1933 campaign of Fiorello La Guardia (who won, unlike the other two).

Mr. Mamdani is part of a long tradition in New York City that has framed itself as seeking to reclaim the democratic community of the city from wealth, power and greed.

. . . Our day is profoundly different from the 1930s, not least in that La Guardia enjoyed the support and friendship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the federal funds uncorked in the New Deal. But there are important parallels. Just as La Guardia’s triumph marked the end of an era in New York politics defined by greed, graft and the passivity of the city government in the face of shocking inequality and economic need, Mr. Mamdani’s rise points to the deep ambivalence in New York toward the role of Wall Street in the contemporary city.

. . .Mr. Mamdani came to power by criticizing the ways this extreme economic division has changed New York as a place to live and work, building a coalition of tenants, immigrants, union members and downwardly mobile college-educated young people who are eager to make their lives in the city. He also won the support of a broad swath of the city’s professional middle class (doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, social workers), which is similarly excluded from the provinces of extreme wealth.

. . . Mr. Mamdani’s election is also a testament to the vision of democracy that is inherent in city life: the insight that our society — like our city, our New York — is something we must all create, enjoy and govern together.

Mamdani has made a lot of promises for his first term, including free childcare for all, free public transportation, rent-controlled apartments for all, and city grocery stores. While I hope he’s able to do this stuff, I’m not the only one who worries if he can.

As a side note, I hope “Proof” is better than Amanda Gorman’s poem read at Biden’s inauguration in 2021, “The Hill We Climb“.  That was a stinker, just a notch above William McGonagall, but nobody had the courage to say that (I am able to now since four years have gone by). Gorman is simply a dreadful poet. (Want more evidence? Go here.)

*Predictably, the defenders of those who perpetrated the Minnesota welfare fraud scheme have come out of the woodwork, presumably because most of the perps are Somali and must be defended.  I still have a wait-and-see attitude but recent reports (below) suggest that the video by Nick Shirley was not a gross exaggeration. Now CBS News has a useful summary called “Everything we know about Minnesota’s massive fraud scheme.”

Walz, meanwhile, has faced intense scrutiny from both inside and outside Minnesota over his administration’s handling of the crisis. The governor has acknowledged in recent weeks that the fraud problem could stretch into the billions, but disputed the $9 billion figure cited by prosecutors.

While Shirley’s video focused on allegations of fraud in daycares in Minneapolis, federal investigators told CBS News child care is only “vaguely” a priority for prosecutors, and attention and resources are instead focused on more than a dozen other social services programs in Minnesota, including nutrition, housing and behavioral health.

The areas where there is fraud. Bolded headers are mine, the rest are quotes;

• Feeding Our Future This COVID-era $250 million scheme — which now includes upwards of 75 defendants — revolved around a nonprofit group called Feeding Our Future. The group claimed to work with restaurants and caterers to distribute meals to schools and extracurricular programs but instead submitted fake meal count sheets and invoices, raking in millions in administrative fees and getting kickbacks from people who ran their meal distribution sites, prosecutors said.
• A housing program. This summer, state officials shut down a fairly new program designed to help seniors and people with disabilities find housing after discovering “large-scale fraud.” A month later, federal prosecutors charged eight people with defrauding the program, which was run through the state’s Medicaid service, by enrolling as providers and submitting millions in “fake and inflated bills.”
• An autism program. In recent months, two people were charged with defrauding a third state program — in this case, one that provides services to children with autism. Both defendants were accused of hiring unqualified “behavioral technicians” and submitting false claims to the state that indicated the staff had worked with children enrolled in the program. They also allegedly paid kickbacks to parents who agreed to enroll their children in the program, in some cases sending them as much as $1,500, prosecutors said.
• Daycare centers,  YouTuber Nick Shirley drew tens of millions of views in late December when he posted a video that showed him visiting federally supported child care centers around Minneapolis and finding no children present. He alleged nearly a dozen day care centers were not actually providing any service and suggested owners were pocketing the taxpayer funds.

CBS News conducted its own analysis and visited several of the day care centers mentioned by Shirley: all but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. One was subjected to an unannounced inspection as recently as Dec. 4, and our review found dozens of citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment and staff training, but there was no recorded evidence of fraud.

There is nothing in the article about healthcare save the autism program, despite Shirley’s video showing a number of apparently moribund healthcare centers.Trump, of course, has tried to scupper the whole thing with bigotry, calling the Somali community “garbage,” which is incorrect and hurtful.  Nevertheless Governor Walz is in trouble, as he keeps pushing back against the accusations, blaming them on racism and Trump. And he may have to face questions from Congress, although the feds will actually provide the answers.  And here’s the latest fallout:

• The Treasury Department is investigating whether tax dollars from Minnesota’s public assistance programs made their way to al Qaeda affiliate al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization based in Somalia.
• Multiple federal investigators told CBS News Minnesota there is no evidence taxpayer dollars were directly funneled to al Shabaab. “The vast majority of the money that these folks made went to spending on luxury items for themselves,” said Andy Luger, the former U.S. Attorney who led the office which prosecuted the Feeding Our Future case from 2022 until January. “There was never any evidence that this money went to fund terrorism nor was there any evidence that was the intent of the 70 people we indicted.”
• A CBS News review of the files shows that defendants spent taxpayer cash on cars, property and luxury travel. They also wired millions in stolen funds overseas, including to banks and companies in China, where finding the recipients of that cash can become an investigative black hole. The defendants also transferred nearly $3 million to accounts in Kenya.

Luana, who’s fascinated by the dynamics of the whole thing, from Walz down to the perps and the Learing Center, sent me a few tweets that buttress my confidence in Shirley’s report. Here are a couple:

Apparently thieves broke into a daycare center and stole exactly the documents they’d need to defend against charges of fraud. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

Here are two from the same childcare center:

🤔 A manager at Nokomis Daycare Center in Minneapolis reported that someone broke into the facility and stole all of their documents.

Why would someone want a daycares documents?

pic.twitter.com/1txVrcVGe8

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 31, 2025

Minn. Somali-run daycare bizarrely says all their important documents about child care were stolen in mystery break-in https://t.co/EuXztoRdG9 pic.twitter.com/wYBuOLZfbu

— New York Post (@nypost) December 31, 2025

There’s a report here from KSTP in the Twin Cities, which verifies that:

While the center was closed overnight, a burglar appeared to have broken through the back kitchen wall and proceeded to break a wall shared with the Family Dollar next door. The suspect also allegedly broke into their office and took documentation on employees and child enrollment while ripping checks from their checkbook.

Grok says this about the one below:

The X post shares a viral clip from a Minnesota legislative hearing where a Somali childcare provider, reading a prepared statement, hesitates and covers her mouth after uttering “I understand fraud is bad,” sparking widespread online mockery and debate on welfare integrity.

WTF?! Somali woman in Minnesota panics, can’t continue speaking after being forced to say “fraud is bad.”

pic.twitter.com/wCgQ3glwlu

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 31, 2025

Things heat up (you can see this verified by CBS News):

🚨 We’re bringing in Tim Walz to answer for the massive fraud in Minnesota.

Two hearings. Answers. Accountability.
Jan 7 → MN State Reps
Feb 10 → Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison

We will expose failures and identify solutions so we can legislate so this DOES NOT happen again. pic.twitter.com/zJqnMYFoSP

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) December 31, 2025

It’s like a story appearing in The Onion:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej misunderstands The Princess:

Hili: I can’t shake the thought that we have to keep moving.
Andrzej: But you’re sitting.
Hili: That’s not what I meant.

In Polish:

Hili: Nie daje mi spokoju myśl, że trzeba dalej iść.
Ja: Przecież siedzisz.
Hili: Nie o tym mówię.

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

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Meow Incorporated:

Two from Masih today, as she wants the world to know:

Video and message from Hamedan:

“This is a war zone. The Islamic Republic’s real war is against us, the people of Iran.
They are killing us while we are unarmed.”#Iran pic.twitter.com/6t8hWvATcl

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 1, 2026

A teenager from Iran sent me these videos with this message:
“I was terrified while filming them. Please share them and show the world that we, the people of Iran, do not want this regime.”

The protests in Iran began in Tehran and are now spreading to cities across the country.… pic.twitter.com/4xu2S5vh86

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 29, 2025

One that Matthew posted and I found. He’s very modest. . .

Lovely post by Helen Czerski on the Other Place. pic.twitter.com/ND1fQQQf35

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) January 1, 2026

From Larry. the Number Ten Cat:

Happy New Year – perfection from @chocolettchoo pic.twitter.com/FDfU7oyRuL

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 1, 2026

One from my feed. I would love to be pecked like this, as I’ve never seen a woodpecker pecking a human.

Woodpecker mistaking a mountain patrol officer for a tree.pic.twitter.com/97Kcf72tBj

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 1, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Polish Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 2-3 years old, amd wpi;d be 85 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-01-02T11:20:08.609Z

Two from Matthew Cobb. The first one, involving one of Dr. Cobb’s beloved optical illusions, speaks for itself:

I had to get a ruler out to check that all the lines are straight…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-01-01T08:48:12.289Z

And a very bad groaner:

Five ants rented an apartment with five ants.Now they are tenants.Best of the day.Happy new year Bluesky friends ✨

— Lucinda Soon (@lucindasoon.com) 2026-01-01T15:34:06.049Z