Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: May 5, 2026, and it’s National Hoagie Day (also called a “sub” or “submarine sandwich”. It was hard to find a photo of the longest one, but of course it was on Twitter. The damn thing was nearly half a mile long. Guinness says this:

The longest sandwich measured 735 m (2,411 ft 5 in) and was created by members of three teams in total. These teams were Groupe Notre Dame Hazmieh-Scouts de L’Independence (Lebanon), Municipality of Hazmieh (Lebanon)and Mini-B chain restaurants (Lebanon). The attempt took place in Hazmieh village, Beirut, Lebanon, on 22 May 2011.

The sandwich started at Notre Dame des Soeurs Antonines School and ended on Elie Street, in Hazmieh, Beirut, Lebanon. The width of the sandwich was 12.5cm and the overall estimated weight of the sandwich is 577.03kg.

The total number of participants from the three teams who were involved in the preparation and cooking of the sandwich was 136 and 639 participants filled the sandwich, which took 22 hours to make.

Four 4-wheel movable ovens were created especially for this attempt in order to bake one long continuous piece of bread. The dough had been divided into sections and rolled out, at which point they were then joined together by further rolling, before having the movable ovens on each end of the table rolling on top of the bread cooking it as it passed.

This sandwich consisted of chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise, red vinegar, salt, mustard, white pepper, lemon juice, kammoun spices and corriander.

And here’s a photo (a lot of other “long sandwich” records, like the one for Philly cheesesteaks, appear to simply involve regular sandwiches placed end to end, and no attempt to create a long piece of bread).

Today is #NationalSandwichDay therefore it’s only right we tell you that the longest sandwich was 735 metres throughout the streets of Beirut, Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/kPgN0gFoy0

— Guinness World Records (@GWR) November 3, 2020

It’s also Cinco de Mayo, Museum Lover’s Day, National Enchilada Day, Oyster Day, and National Teacher Day.

There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating National Teacher Day. Click on screenshot to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses diverging answer to the question of whether the U.S. and Israel have defeated Iran—so far.

All of this brings us back to the lingering question that has haunted the Israeli defense establishment since the Iranian ceasefire: If the campaign stops here, was it a success?

Two highly informed Israeli experts—both of whom I deeply respect—have come to opposite conclusions. The first is Tamir Hayman, former head of IDF Military Intelligence, who spoke with my colleague Yonit Levi on Channel 12. The second is Yuval Steinitz, a veteran cabinet minister and current chairman of Rafael, whom I interviewed on Meet the Press. And so, in the great Jewish tradition, let us argue:

We can start with their overall assessments. Hayman, ever the measured intelligence chief, concluded that the overall balance of the campaign “leans toward the negative.” Steinitz diverged slightly, calling it “a massive victory” reminiscent of the Six-Day War.

This gap in perception hinges almost entirely on their assessment of Israel’s greatest existential threat: the nuclear program. Steinitz argues that by eliminating top scientists—an achievement he enthusiastically notes happened in the “first 7 seconds” of the campaign—and destroying weaponization equipment, Israel bought itself significant time. He claims that while Iran may have previously been months away from a bomb, “this time in my opinion it is several years,” because the physical mechanisms required to build a warhead were removed from the equation.

Hayman, however, refuses to grade on a curve. To the former intel chief, blowing up weaponization labs and eliminating scientists doesn’t matter if the raw materials are still sitting safely underground. He completely rejects Steinitz’s premise, warning that the fundamental components of a nuclear breakout—the subterranean facilities, the advanced centrifuges and the stockpiles of enriched uranium—were left intact inside the country. He bluntly states that “we hardly touched the nuclear issue,” warning that Iran’s breakout time remains dangerously short, leaving Israel in a situation “similar to the one in which we started the fighting.” While Hayman acknowledges his assessment might shift if a negotiated agreement ultimately collars the Iranian program, short of that, his conclusion is stark: “If the nuclear threat is not addressed, then the question arises—what did we do in this whole event?”

This profound divide extends to their views on the stability of the Iranian regime. Steinitz sees a government on its knees. He argues that the strikes so thoroughly decimated Iranian supply chains and infrastructure that the country has “turned from a tiger into a cat.” In his view, Iran is “highly weakened” and teetering “on the verge of collapse”—suggesting the ayatollahs would have fallen completely had the U.S. not prematurely halted the war.

Hayman views the exact same scenario and sees a disaster. To him, the regime’s sheer survival against a coordinated U.S.-Israeli coalition is a terrifying victory for Tehran. He argues that “in the eyes of the regime itself, it is stronger because it experienced the most severe thing—and survived it.” Worse, he warns that Israel will inevitably have to strike again in the future, and when that day comes in a post-Trump era, there is a very high chance Israel will be left to face an emboldened regime alone.

I have to say that I agree with the pessimist Hayman.  If the attacks on nuclear facilities so far have only bought Israel a few years of respite, how can they be called a success? And isn’t it a victory for Iran if, at the end of the war, the hard-liners remain in control of its regime?  One thing is for sure: we can’t count on a Democratic administration to support Israel’s strikes in the future.

*The U.S. has offered the use of its navy to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, but the WSJ reports that Iran is threatening to fire on any ships that are escorted that way.

Iran on Monday rejected a new U.S. effort to help free ships trapped by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to attack American warships or other vessels that tried to pass through the strategic waterway without Iran’s consent.

President Trump announced the plan on Sunday, but he did not provide details on how the United States would assist the trapped ships. The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said on Monday that two U.S.-flagged ships had safely crossed the strait, but it was not clear whether they did so with American military escorts.

The rising tensions across the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit route for global oil, put the nearly month-old cease-fire between Iran and the United States on shakier ground.

In response to Mr. Trump’s new initiative, Ali Abdollahi, a top Iranian military commander, cautioned “all commercial ships and oil tankers to refrain from any attempt to transit without coordination with the armed forces,” Iranian state media reported on Monday.

“⁠We warn that any foreign armed force, especially the aggressive U.S. military, if they intend to approach or enter the Strait of Hormuz, will be targeted and attacked,” Mr. Abdollahi said.

The U.S. effort was the latest attempt to break Iran’s grip over the strait, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and much natural gas is normally shipped. The Iranian blockade has rattled global energy markets, leading the Trump administration to retaliate by imposing its own blockade on shipping into and out of Iranian ports.

Scattered incidents on Monday reflected the fragility of the truce.

For the first time since a U.S.-Iranian cease-fire was reached in early April, the United Arab Emirates said that four cruise missiles had been fired from Iran at Emirati territory. Three were intercepted and one fell in the sea, the Emirati authorities said.

Also on Monday, the Emirates accused Iran of launching a drone attack on an oil tanker owned by the Emirati state oil company, ADNOC, while it tried to transit through the Strait of Hormuz. And South Korea’s government said a cargo ship belonging to a South Korean company caught fire after an explosion in the strait.

There was no immediate response from Iranian officials. State media in Iran also claimed that the country’s military forces had fired warning shots at an American ship traversing the strait, although the U.S. military denied it.

Mr. Trump, for his part, warned that any Iranian interference in the operation to free stranded ships, named Project Freedom, would be dealt with “forcefully.” U.S. forces, including destroyers and some 15,000 personnel, were work

All this shows is that the war with Iran is far, far from over, and now Iran is making the boneheaded move of attacking other Gulf Arab states.  “Wait and see” is my motto.

*The Free Press reports that a new animated version of Orwell’s Animal Farm has reversed the book’s thesis. While it was originally a parable against the Russian Revolution leading to authoritarian Stalinist Communism it’s now become a critique of, yes, capitalism.

The new film, voiced by a cast of A-list actors including Glenn Close, Seth Rogen, Steve Buscemi, and Woody Harrelson, earned bad press when its trailer was released late last year, but the reality is somehow even worse than it seemed back then. The film feels, to put it plainly, like a bad joke about Orwell that a right-wing X account would dream up to get mad at. Hey guys, what if those crazy, woke socialists in Hollyweird actually went back and rewrote “Animal Farm” to be about the exact opposite of what the author intended? In the film, the message is no longer about how the revolutionary dreams of doing away with capitalist hierarchy are inevitably dashed by the avaricious realities of human nature. The problem, as portrayed by Serkis, is instead corporate greed under capitalism.

In the film, we experience events through the eyes of a pig character named Lucky, who doesn’t appear in the book. In an opening scene, as the animals break out of a slaughterhouse truck, it becomes clear that their revolution is not ultimately against Farmer Jones, as in the original text. Rather, it’s against a bank to which Jones owes unpaid mortgage payments. And the bank is working hand in glove with a gigantic faceless conglomerate called Pilkington, which seems to own factory farms, malls, and hydroelectric plants. The conglomerate’s evil CEO also drives an unmistakably Tesla-like car. This is just the first sign that the movie is not about any longstanding political idea, but rather is an attack on right-wing figures as they currently exist. More attacks come fast and thick. The Joseph Stalin-like pig, Napoleon, voiced by Seth Rogen, repeatedly uses Trumpian locutions, arguing against the noble Leon Trotsky-like pig, Snowball, voiced by Laverne Cox, with such rhetorical flourishes as “many animals have been saying.”

You get the idea. But I promise you that it is worse than you think. For one thing, this film’s crimes are not merely its ideological smallness but also its sheer ugliness. There is the corny revolutionary rap version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” that plays over the opening credits. There are the fart jokes and the shaking pig butts and the terrible attempts at timely dialogue. (Napoleon, who spends half the film driving a Lamborghini, is called “Napopo.”) Upon visiting a Pilkington-branded shopping mall, the greedy pigs express their consumerism thus: “Don’t think, just buy it. Buy it all!” Some kind of disco beat dance number breaks out seemingly every five minutes, in what feels like an ill-fitting attempt to capitalize on the success of films like Shrek or Despicable Me.

The biggest problem, however, is the movie’s ending. The bleak novel ends when the oppressed animals betray their utopian vision so completely that they are indistinguishable from their former oppressors. In the Animal Farm movie, Lucky instead has a change of heart, disgusted with what he and his fellow pigs have become after they have sold the farm to the conglomerate to build, I kid you not, a hydroelectric dam. (As it happens, building out large, clean-energy infrastructure projects is just about the most pro-social kind of activity a large conglomerate could ever engage in, but it is depicted as having very bad vibes.) Lucky goes back to the other animals and apologizes that the revolution has gone wrong. “I want us to remember that feeling that we had on the first day when we chased the slaughterhouse truck off the farm,” he says. Boxer (Woody Harrelson), the kindly and hardworking horse who represents the ordinary prole, delivers this howler: “To work hard for our friends, not because we have to but because we choose to, that is freedom.”

I ain’t gonna see this movie, but it’s ironic that the movie combines the theme of Orwell’s novel with that of another novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which involved both the erasure and the reversal of history by the regime, which is precisely what the moviemakers are doing.

Here’s the trailer, though it doesn’t show much about capitalism:

*The U.S. Supreme Court, in line with an earlier decision, has restored mail access to the drug mifepristone, an abortion-inducing medication that’s been proven safe and effective. But it’s a temporary decision.

The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail.

In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and shipping them to patients, causing confusion for providers and patients. The one-sentence order imposes a pause until at least May 11. He requested that the parties file briefs by Thursday, and then the full court will determine how to proceed.

The state of Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail has allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban.

Medication is now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States, and is typically delivered in the form of a two-drug regimen through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Friday’s ruling from the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily reinstated an F.D.A. requirement that patients visit medical providers in person to obtain mifepristone while the litigation continues. That rule was first lifted in 2021.

Two manufacturers of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In court filings, they said the Fifth Circuit ruling would cause chaos for providers and patients — and upend a major avenue for abortion access across the country. About one-fourth of abortions in the United States are now provided through telemedicine.

Justice Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, was provisional and expected, but an important interim step for women seeking to obtain mifepristone in the next week. The order does not signal how the full court may eventually handle the case.

. . .After the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, Republican-led states like Louisiana imposed strict bans. In response, many Democratic-led states passed shield laws that protect abortion providers who prescribe pills by telemedicine and send them to patients in states with abortion bans.

Louisiana and abortion opponents have asserted in court that the F.D.A.’s decision to allow abortion pills to be available by mail posed safety risks to women and in

Alito, who may be set to retire, decided this by himself, as he’s handling emergency orders. The full court will decide the case later, and what happens after May 11 is yet unknown.  What we have here is a clash between state laws that will be adjudicated by a federal court. But the Postal Service is a federal agency, and it would be weird, I think, if the Supreme Court banned it from carrying medication that’s legal in prescribing states but illegal in some or all recipient states.  I’ve always been “pro choice,” so I applaud this decision and hope it becomes permanent.

*Some sports from the NYT: an article called “Is Padres closer Mason Miller the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived?” (archived link). But in contrast to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer is “yes.” Miller is a “closer”: a relief pitcher brought in expressly to finish the game when his team is likely to win. Miller has been pitching only since 2023, so his record is fantastic, but it’s been for only three years.

Has it hit you yet what we’re watching? Has it sunk in what is happening when Mason Miller takes the mound to finish off another thank-you-and-drive-home-safely baseball game in San Diego?

We are watching the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Period.

There. I said it. And now I’m here to prove it.

I’ve looked at everyone who ever had a case to hold that title: Nolan Ryan … Aroldis Chapman … Josh Hader … Edwin Díaz … Craig Kimbrel … Mariano Rivera … Eric Gagne … Pedro Martínez … Randy Johnson … Jacob deGrom … Sandy Koufax … Walter Johnson … and on and on.

I’ve talked to two of the greatest closers of modern times, Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner.

I’ve dug deep into every number that could shape this argument.

It has all pointed me right back to the same place: The Padres’ closer is the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Fortunately, I had no trouble finding two Hall of Fame closers who were right there with me.

But second, I honestly am prepared to prove this theory. It isn’t even that hard. Just check out these numbers for yourself.

I started with Miller’s appearance last Aug. 6, the day after his final run allowed last year — and kept counting until he finally gave up another run four days ago. Now get a whiff of Miller’s Sidd Finch-ian numbers in between. Unlike Sports Illustrated, I didn’t make any of these up:

• Opposing hitters went 7-for-127 (.055), with 87 strikeouts

• Let’s repeat that: 87 strikeouts … and … 7 hits

• He faced 141 hitters. Not one of them scored.

• 39 straight games with zero extra-base hits allowed

• 39 straight games without ever allowing more than one hit

Compares to Mariano Rivera, whose longevity gives him the title so far:

. . . . we’re not here to pretend that the current closer for the Padres is anywhere near that status. He’s a guy who has faced exactly nine hitters in October in his life. So he has another 500 to go before we start comparing him to Mariano. On the other hand …

So we don’t know yet where Mason Miller is going. But if it looks anything like this, whew. We might all be in for a show unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed.

“Is he going to pull off 10 seasons where he’s able to do these kinds of numbers?” Wagner wondered. “Only time will tell. But he’s — what, three years in? — and he’s as dominating a pitcher as there ever has been in the whole history of the game.

Here he is in his third season, striking out batter after batter. The ratio of strikeouts to balls on single pitches is astounding.

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a somewhat out-of-focus Hili’s still asking the Big Questions:

Andrzej: What are you looking for?
Hili: I’m checking whether the meaning of life isn’t lying under this bush.

In Polish:

Ja: Czego szukasz?
Hili: Patrzę, czy pod tym krzakiem nie leży sens życia.

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

From CinEmma:

From Stacy:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih, another young Iranian executed for protesting:

Another life taken. Another young man hanged by Iran’s regime. Another family destroyed.

Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, 27, arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, was tortured for over 40 days and forced into a false confession.

He told the court he was innocent. He asked… pic.twitter.com/0XZtWEoftM

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 3, 2026

From Luana; and yes, I agree that there’s no more cultural need for whale hunting:

The left treats the Indigenous as some sort of mythical forest elves who cannot do wrong.

Whale hunting is bad. It was necessary for some people in ages past. But it is not anymore. I don’t care that it’s “cultural.” Many terrible things are cultural. They should knock it off. https://t.co/CF7pThMuk7

— Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban) May 1, 2026

From Jay; what a graceful landing!

Swans have one off the coolest landing technique ever.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/HvdqdpKEY3

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 3, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a kitty brought back from oblivion—in a 120-year-old photo.

Le photographe français Mathieu Stern a découvert par hasard un vieux film négatif datant d’il y a 120 ans.

Après l’avoir imprimé, il s’est avéré qu’il s’agissait d’un chat.

🤪👍 pic.twitter.com/Lgm3cfWM9c

— 🅶🅾🆁🅺 (@Raclure03) May 4, 2026

A very dangerous but successful solo free climb by a moggy:

The drama, the music, the sheer mysticism, even the sound effects and that POV shot….

I could watch nine seasons of this pic.twitter.com/dJi05WFehH

— Cats with Aura 😺 (@catwithaura) May 3, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven years old and would be ninety today had he lived. https://t.co/tdScHWpQcE

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 5, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the 1893 World’s Fair. I live only about a block from the Midway. There are 9 photos at the link.

The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in 9 stunning color photos http://www.popsci.com/science/chic…

— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T20:06:02.089Z

An Etruscan duck jug:

This delightful duck is an askos, a ceramic container used for storing and pouring oil.It was made over two thousand years ago by the Etruscans, who inhabited a reigon called Etruria in what is now central Italy.

— Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (@ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T07:00:47.673Z