Monday: Hili dialogue

March 30, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the penultimate day of the month: March 30, 2026, and National Hot Chicken Day. celebrating a fad that begin with Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville, Tennessee. Wikipedia even has an entry on “hot chicken” that includes this salacious lore:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville’s African-American communities for generations.  The dish may have been introduced as early as the 1930s; however, the current style of spice paste may only date back to the mid-1970s. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. She has operated the restaurant since 1980; before that time, it was owned by her great-uncle, Thornton Prince III.  Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a womanizer, and after a particularly late Saturday night out, his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge.  Instead, Thornton decided he liked it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café.

Hot chicken, indeed. Here’s a video (the higher degrees of hotness are apparently incendiary; I think this is a form of masochism):

It’s also Holy Monday and Turkey Neck Soup Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Part of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:, titled “Hezbollah begs for peace“:

It’s Sunday, March 29, and the thirtieth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $112, up four percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • The USS Tripoli and its Marine Expeditionary Unit have arrived from Japan, including the forces on the USS Boxer and reinforcements from the 82nd Airborne—this marks the largest U.S. military deployment to the region in over 20 years. Trump has extended his ultimatum on the Strait of Hormuz to April 6, while the Pentagon weighs sending up to 10,000 additional troops and prepares plans for limited, weeks-long ground operations focused on targets like Kharg Island rather than a full-scale invasion.
  • Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, damaging refueling aircraft and wounding 10–12 U.S. personnel, some critically, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. The aircraft seem to have been stationed on the tarmac when they were struck, in violation of U.S. Air Force protocol. Open-source imagery verified the attack, while the Pentagon has yet to comment.
  • According to Iran International, the president of Iran and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are in “deep disagreement.” The president warned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could face total collapse within three weeks to a month.
  • Over the weekend, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel for the first time since the October 2025 ceasefire with Hamas. This marks their partial entry into the war. So far, they have refrained from attacking U.S. forces, limiting their attacks to Israel. The Yemen-based group has also yet to declare the closure of the region’s other oil chokepoint, the Bab al-Mandab, which would be a significant boon to Iran and mark their full entry into the conflict.
  • The IDF’s Alpinist force recently climbed from the Syrian slopes of Mount Hermon to Mount Dov in southern Lebanon in an operation against entrenched terrorist organizations along the Lebanese border. This marks the unit’s first cross-border operation in its more than fifty-year history—unsurprising given that Israel and the region are not known for an abundance of snow and cold weather.

At this point in the war, the question is less whether there will be a ceasefire and more what kind it will be—negotiated or unilateral. The reality Israel has understood from the outset is that the war in Iran is Trump’s to decide. When he is done, so is Israel—but the question is whether that principle applies to Lebanon as well.

Hezbollah is aware of this question. Behind the scenes, the group is pleading with Iran to be included in any negotiated agreement. Even a unilateral ceasefire—which would likely involve some degree of coordination behind the scenes—Hezbollah wants to be part of it.

*According to the NYT, “Iran is flooding the internet with disinformation and propaganda in an attempt to undermine support for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.” An excerpt:

The videos and posts relentlessly mock President Trump or vilify him as a bloodthirsty leader who strikes civilian targets indiscriminately. They make up content about attacks on American and Israeli targets, including one on Wednesday that featured a fabricated video of a missile striking Liberty Island in New York Harbor. They regularly mention Jeffrey Epstein.

Iran is waging what researchers have described as a sophisticated information war, aided by Russia and China, that is spreading content designed to exploit worldwide opposition to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign and deflect from the country’s considerable losses on the battlefield.

Nearly a month into the war, Iran’s state media outlets and covert operatives are producing a steady torrent of propaganda, overstated narratives and outright disinformation. They are often wielding generative A.I. tools to create increasingly realistic-looking images and videos, according to human rights organizations and research groups studying foreign influence.

Much of the false content has been debunked, but not before reaching millions of people on X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms.

The information war, the researchers say, has given Iran’s beleaguered leadership a weapon almost as potent as its ability to disrupt the world’s energy economy by throttling shipments of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. While the impact of the information war can be difficult to measure, experts said it appeared to have stoked popular anger and unease about the conflict in the United States and beyond.

“They’re winning the propaganda war,” Darren L. Linvill, a director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said of the Iranians. “They were prepared for it more than the administration, because they’d been preparing for this entire conflict for 50 years.”

. . . Many of the posts appear to come from accounts controlled by humans, rather than automated bots. Researchers at Clemson identified a furtive network of at least 62 accounts on X, Instagram and Bluesky that spread pro-Iranian content.

The Clemson site shows photos of a number of these fake accounts; I was amused to see that several of the bogus accounts were on Bluesky, the site that is supposed to be beyond hatred, showing hateful content:

*The Times of Israel reports that Tehran harbors a priceless collection of contemporary art, largely collected by Iran’s last queen, Farah Pahlavi, with much of the art unable to be shown because it violates Islamic standards.

This time last year, art enthusiasts in Tehran were celebrating an extraordinary event. A masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, “The Painter and His Model,” went on display in the city for only the second time in decades. It was shown at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in an exhibition entitled “Picasso in Tehran” — a rare highlighting of a different face of Iran, with similarly rare approval from the Islamic regime.

The 1927 painting was described by Bloomberg last week as “arguably the most important canvas in the world that cannot be visited or seen.” The work that helped inspire Picasso’s “Guernica,” which showcases the destruction caused by the Spanish Civil War, it sits in what Bloomberg called “one of the world’s most dangerous cities.”

But the current war is only the latest factor preventing the piece from being made available to the public, with little known about the museum’s current fate. (Its website, like many others in Iran, has been down, possibly due to internet disruptions in the country. Some users on social media have shared posts showing artifacts in some museums put away or wrapped in protective materials.)

Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

. . . Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

Deeply passionate about art, the queen took advantage of the soaring prices of oil to bring to Tehran some of the best modern and contemporary art, acquiring works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh and dozens more, including Jewish and Israeli artists such as Marc Chagall and Yaacov Agam, and gay ones like Francis Bacon. In 2018, the value of the collection was estimated at $3 billion.

It’ll be all up and open if the theocracy falls. In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of the Picasso in Tehran exhibit. That is one hell of a diverse group of Picassos!

And here’s the 1927 “The Painter and His Model” from Wikiart:

*Is the “Revival of Christianity,” much touted by religionists, a non-event—fake news? That, at least, is what the Guardian reports for a survey of Christanity in England and Wales (h/t Alan).

A YouGov survey showing a significant rise in church attendance in parts of the UK has been withdrawn after some respondents were found to be fraudulent.

The poll was central to a Quiet Revival report, published by the Bible Society last year, which prompted news stories about an apparent resurgence in Christianity, particularly among young people.

But YouGov, which carried out the research in 2024, said on Thursday that the data sample was flawed, with “a number of respondents who we can now identify as fraudulent”.

The pollster’s chief executive, Stephan Shakespeare, said: “YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened.

“We would like to stress that Bible Society have at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. We are running the survey again with Bible Society to get robust data on this topic.”

The report had claimed 12% of adults in England and Wales were attending church once a month or more in 2024, which YouGov described as “a significant increase from 8% in a previous 2018 study”.

The data also purported to show a rise in young people’s attendance, from 4% of 18- to 24-year-olds attending monthly in 2018 to 16% in 2024.

So YouGov screwed up, but believers were eager to spread the news. The point is that, given the continual decrease in Christian belief in the last several decades, a rise would need explanation, and there’s not a good one. Nevertheless, even when the Christians were told they had been misinformed, they tried to turn it into a good thing (bolding is mine):

The Bible Society insisted there remained “a very positive story to tell”. It said in the past year, “we have seen an unprecedented public conversation about Christianity, with countless stories of a spiritual awakening among Gen Z”.

The chief executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson, said the withdrawal of the data was “both validation and vindication”.

“We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain,” he said. “For almost a year, Humanists UK has taken a rational, evidence-based approach, repeatedly and rigorously explaining why the Bible Society’s claims do not stand up.”

The “public conversation” is due almost entirely to Christians touting the revival of Christianity!  It’s an example of the kind of self-deception that Bob Trivers wrote about..

*And from the UPI’s odd news site, we have the world’s largest carrot cake:

A British Columbia cafe owner celebrated his 80th birthday by baking and assembling a massive carrot cake measuring 17 feet by 17 feet.

Ted Martindale, owner of Granville’s Coffee in Quesnel, teamed up with multiple local bakeries to assemble his birthday cake, which contained over 1,760 pounds of carrots, 700 pounds of butter, thousands of eggs and nearly 2,000 pounds of icing.

Martindale said it took over a month to bake the 430 individual cakes that made up the final product.

The cake was served Wednesday at Martindale’s birthday party at the local senior’s center.

The current Guinness World Record for the largest carrot cake is held by a Surrey, British Columbia, bakery that assembled a 4,574-pound cake in 2016. Martindale said his cake weighed in at about 6,044 pounds, but evidence must still be reviewed by Guinness World Records for him to officially take the record.

There are two things I want to know. First, is it kosher to put together 430 individual cakes and call it one whole cake? Second, is the frosting made with cream cheese? If not, it shouldn’t count.  Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej note the signs of Spring:

Hili: You can feel spring everywhere.
Andrzej: Yes, the forsythia has begun to bloom, and in the newspapers scoundrels are in full bloom.

In Polish

Hili: Wszędzie czuć wiosnę.
Ja: Tak, zakwitała forsycja, w gazetach kwitną łajdacy.

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

From Mark, a goth walker:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Mash, apparently with Kristen Welker on NBC, speaking eloquently about why American should finish the job in Iran.  Masih is quite passionate and yet eloquent when speaking off the cuff:

From Pamela Paresky, but it sounds like the kind of witticism that Andrzej would make (h/t Jay):

Larry the Cat is back tweeting! Yay!  He asks an important question here, but I’m sufficiently anal that I change my stove and microwave clocks the day after the time changes:

From Luana, who says to excuse the politically incorrect word “retarded”:

Two from my feed.  This cat is either mesmerized or hypnotized:

And this kid (yes, it’s a child) is amazing!

Here’s the whole piece that someone posted in the thread; her name is Alexandra Dovgan, and she’s now 18.  I believe she was eleven when she did this piece:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

One from Dr. Cobb, whose hols in Lyme Regis are coming to an end, and he posted some of his holiday snaps:

Scenes in and around Lyme Regis

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T11:45:50.205Z

5 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The goth walker (actually a rollator with its four wheels), even if a real photo, lacks a fundamental requirement for us geezers: a seat. Some of us can walk a good distance but have difficulty standing in place for long periods. A proper rollator with a seat allows for leaning support and sitting at events such as “No Kings Day” demonstrations, thus allowing continuing full political involvement into the elderly elderly (Dr. Paul Offit’s definition for those over 70) years.

    And I have some older neighbor couples who take a walk after dinner each evening, stopping to sit and rest every so often on their rollator seats.

    And yes Larry, I too simply adjust the time shown on my cheap Casio trailwalking (formerly trail running) watch by an hour half the year in my head. Directions for changing time are in too small of a font for me to read and little buttons are too small for my unsteady fingers…and…when retired and old, what does an hour one way or another really matter anyway?

    Reply

    1. The tail looks like it would make it hard to walk behind. And I would expect the axles on the wheels to be symmetric, either both on the inside or the outside, but they are all on the far side in the photo. That makes me think it is AI.

      Reply

      1. Yep. I noticed the axle connection asymmetry also. But regardless, the macro-design is such a bad idea!

        Reply

  2. “It’s also Holy Monday and Turkey Neck Soup Day.”

    That says it all! 😆

    On the other hand,The piano is great! Wonderful lines – I like having the sheet there – gonna load up some Mendelssohn into the library…

    🎼🎶

    … found a G minor concerto … ah look :

    “The title of the work is Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 by Felix Mendelssohn.*”

    Reply

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