Thusday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Thursday, May 7, 2026, and both the National Day of Prayer and the National Day of Reason. What is one to do? I vote for the latter. that it’s also National Cosmopolitan Day, celebrating the made famous by the t.v. show “Sex and the City”, an episode of which appears below. The video features not only the drink and a rich guy trying to pick up Samantha, but also DONALD TRUMP, for crying out loud. I’m pleased at having found it!

Wikipedia describes the drink as “a cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice. The traditional garnish is a lime slice but a twist or wedge can be used instead. Other variations substitute lemon or orange.” I’ve never had one, but the ladies on the show were drinking them constantly.

It’s also National Roast Leg of Lamb Day, and National Tourism Day.

I have only a few scattered readers’ wildlife photos, so please send in any good photos you have.

There’s a Google Doodle celebrating K-pop, an dire genre of music; you can see the YouTube animation by clicking on the screenshot below:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Suicides first:  The government released the text of a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein and found by his cellmate. Here’s the image from the WSJ credited to “the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York”:

From the NYT:

*Obituaries: Ted Turner died at 87. How many of today’s young folk even know who he was, or how influential he was?

Ted Turner, the swashbuckling media titan who helped shape the modern cable-television industry, ushering in the era of 24-hour news with CNN while building other major networks that bear his name, died Wednesday at age 87, according to a spokesman.

Adventurous and impulsive, Turner made a mark in many walks of life. He was a sailor, a conservationist who was one of the largest U.S. landowners, and a major philanthropist who helped set a model for generous giving by billionaires.

He was best known for turning the billboard-advertising company he inherited from his father into Turner Broadcasting System, an Atlanta-based television and movie giant that he eventually sold in 1995 to Time Warner. Turner joined the company and stayed with it through its ill-fated January 2000 merger with America Online before leaving in 2003.

As Turner battled rival media titans like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone in the 1980s and 1990s, they collectively brought cable TV into the mainstream, fostering an explosion of investment, new channels and consumer subscriptions.

At TBS, he seized on breakthroughs in satellite technology to turn a local Atlanta TV station into a national “superstation.” That network and TNT became cable TV counterparts to what were then the big three broadcast networks—ABC, CBS and NBC.

Starting in the 1980s, CNN redefined how breaking news is covered on television, with round-the-clock updates and live reports during major events like the first Iraq war in 1990, the O.J. Simpson murder trial and natural disasters. Programs like “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire” were early signs that talk shows and commentary would have a major role in cable TV.

. . .He at turns kept a bear and an alligator as pets, was adamantly antireligion, and, as he admitted himself, had a knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

Turner said in a 2018 interview with CBS that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder that he said made him tired and forgetful. Turner, labeled “Captain Outrageous” for his erratic behavior, had once been thought to have bipolar disorder. He told CBS that was a misdiagnosis, and that his confusion and the “euphoric highs and dark lows” he was known for were symptoms of the dementia.

From the WSJ

You might recall that he was also once married to Jane Fonda.

*It’s Noon in Israel predicts that “The Islamic Republic ‘will not survive 2026’.”

It’s Wednesday, May 6, and according to my colleague at Channel 12, Barak Ravid, within 48 hours, the U.S. expects Iran’s response to a framework that brings both sides closer to a deal than at any point during the war. The proposed pact trades an Iranian uranium enrichment freeze for U.S. sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, and a mutually reopened Strait of Hormuz. This framework is strictly an interim measure; if the final negotiations collapse, a return to all-out war is entirely possible.

Still, it is unfortunate timing. Last night, a very senior Israeli intelligence source estimated that if the status quo blockade remains, the Islamic Republic “will not survive 2026.” Predicting the complete collapse of a half-century-old theocracy within the next eight months sounds like a bold gamble—until you look at the math.

The Iranian rial is in freefall, crashing to 1.8 million to the U.S.dollar. That is a 25 percent plunge from the exchange rate that triggered mass protests just this past January—and it’s only getting worse. To prevent mass starvation, the government is propping up a heavily subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar just to import basic food supplies. The wider economy is faring no better. Even before the blockade, non-oil trade had plummeted by 50 percent. The much-touted economic “pivot to China” has failed entirely, trade is down 80 percent, and regional hubs for evading sanctions, like the UAE, have slammed their doors shut. Two million Iranians have lost their jobs already, and that number is expected to skyrocket.

But the most devastating blow has landed on the regime’s lifeblood: oil.

Right now, Iran has 184 million barrels of oil sitting uselessly on the water. Roughly 60 million of those barrels are physically trapped inside the blockade zone across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The other 124 million are anchored near China, but buyers are too terrified of secondary U.S.sanctions to touch them. Between stalled oil and frozen petrochemical exports, the blockade is draining the regime of an estimated $400 million to $500 million every single day.

Worse, this blockade is rapidly evolving into an existential crisis for Iran’s energy sector. Once Iran’s onshore and floating storage tanks reach 100 percent capacity—which is expected within 15 to 60 days—the state will be forced to physically shut in active oil wells. For mature oil fields, capping wells amounts to a death sentence, as the underground pressure required to extract the oil dissipates. If this happens, Iran could permanently lose 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day of production capacity. That is $9 billion to $15 billion in annual revenue wiped out.

Iran currently has a surplus of men with guns and a deficit of loyalty. The only things bridging that gap are fear and cash—and when the latter runs out, the former loses its edge. In a desperate bid for survival, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun cannibalizing the state, hoarding whatever liquidity remains at the cost of the rest of the system. Some regular army units and police forces have now gone unpaid for months.

These are not the ingredients for a peaceful transition. The regime will inevitably resort to massacres to keep its grip on power, but there comes a point where desperation will simply override fear. The ultimate result remains the same: the death of the Islamic Republic.

The end of 2026 is far, far away, and I think, given the pressure bearing on Trump to end the war, Segal is in my view overoptimistic.  I wish he were right, but I’m not confident.

*More religious mishisgass from The Free Press, which is constantly touting religion: “These two Catholics see signs of God in UFOs“. One of the Catholics is, for crying out loud, Ross Douthat, described as one of “the most thoughtful and provocative writers in America”.  Provocative, yes, thoughtful, well, I don’t think so.The other Catholic (see below) is “perhaps the only scholar of religion who has been taken to see the possible physical remains of an alien starship.” (There’s also a 44-minute video.) The interviewer is Will Rahm:

As we close out this four-part series about what everyday Americans should think about UFOs, we are joined by two people who have put a lot of thought into the religious aspect of all this: Diana Pasulka and Ross Douthat.

Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the author of American Cosmic, which examined UFOs as both a religious and nuts-and-bolts technological phenomenon. She has visited the scene of a supposed UFO crash site in New Mexico looking for the elusive hard evidence of intelligent life beyond our planet. A practicing Catholic, Pasulka also combed through Vatican archives looking for clues as to what these things might be. Her new book, out in July, is The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny..

. . .WR: What does the Catholic Church make of UFOs?

DP: Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. So they do look at nonhuman intelligence all the time. There are apparitions of the Virgin Mary. People have experiences that they would consider to be angel events. There are saints who levitate. And so the Catholic Church assesses these on a case-by-case basis. And they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence, be it extraterrestrial or interdimensional. And this is called the preternatural.

Pope Benedict XVI has actually written about this. His categories are natural, supernatural, or preternatural. And the supernatural is of God, things that are of divine origin, which Catholics believe in. Natural is natural: what we see is the world, science, things like that. But then there’s a category that’s called the preternatural. And the preternatural has to do with things that are not necessarily from God but are in between.

“Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. . . they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence.” —Diana Pasulka

That category would include the Virgin Mary apparitions that are not yet approved by the church. The preternatural has to do with angels and fallen angels, both of which the church believes in. A lot of American Catholics today would say, “yeah, sure, angels exist,” but it’s not like they encounter an angel or see an angel. But this category of UFOs then opens up this idea of perhaps people are having experiences that are preternatural. This falls directly within Catholic theology.

RD: Most Catholics are pretty comfortable with a set of categories that are real but invisible. And it would be a shift, let’s say, if the church said, “And by the way, some of these preternatural beings can show up on Air Force cameras.” That would not be impossible, but it would be a different mode of thinking about these things than most Catholics have right now.

It goes on, but the gist is that both Catholics don’t see UFOs as a problem for their faith because they fit into the preternatural/supernatural spectrum.  And they are pre-programmed to believe things with little or no evidence, anyway.  What I most wanted to know (and I didn’t listen to the podcast) was what Pasulka saw at the UFO “crash site.” And how did they know it was a UFO crash site? And what about those possible physical remains of an alien starship.”  What were they? It would also be fun to ask the Catholics why Jesus didn’t contact the aliens, who would then be Christians.

*When the NYT’s Bret Stephens writes a column called “A Democrat who makes me listen,” I’m going to read it, as I’m still groping in the dark for a good Democratic Presidential candidate.  Stephens suggests one.

This should be a season of electoral hope for Democrats. Donald Trump’s disapproval ratings are reaching new highs. The war with Iran is overwhelmingly unpopular. As of early May, Polymarket gives the party a 51 percent chance of winning the Senate and an 83 percent chance of taking the House.

But Americans still harbor deep doubts about Democrats: A recent Pew survey shows only 39 percent have a favorable view of the party, against 59 percent who don’t. And Democrats are deeply divided about whether to steer centerward or move further left.

Jake Auchincloss — it’s pronounced AW-kin-kloss — is one of the most thoughtful voices in this conversation. The 38-year-old Harvard and M.I.T. graduate and Afghan war veteran, where he served as a Marine officer, is now in his third term as the representative from Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District, which stretches from the wealthy Boston suburb of Newton to the working-class city of Fall River.

Politically, he’s often described as moderate, even somewhat right-leaning when it comes to fraught issues like Israel. But as he made clear over two in-depth interviews with me, his thinking is not neatly categorizable on a simple centrist-to-progressive x-axis.

What Auchincloss and other Majority Democrats have in common is a determination to meet voters where they are. That includes acknowledging mistakes like the Covid-era school closures and the Biden administration’s lax border enforcement. Mainly, though, it’s about championing working- and middle-class concerns against the interests of what he calls “an ossified American aristocracy.” And it’s about restoring an old type of patriotism, based on foundational American ideals, against the blood-and-soil patriotism championed by the likes of JD Vance.

There’s then an interview with Auchincloss, and you can see that the man is deeply smart and thoughtful.  I have space for only two Q&As:

Stephens: You’re aware of the need for deep capital markets, for a culture of risk-taking and innovation. If you were having a conversation with a young Democratic Socialist, explain to that person where he or she goes wrong.

Auchincloss: Free enterprise is a core way that you make manifest our thesis as a party that every individual has inherent dignity and equality and that they should be able to pursue their happiness in the world. Because if you want to go start a socialist commune, you can. Go to a socialist country and try to start a capitalist commune, it doesn’t work out so well.

So what’s a Democratic case for how capitalism should work? To me, it’s an understanding that markets work, markets can be impaired by government overregulation, and markets can be impaired by corporate monopolization. And while that is pretty obvious to most economists, it’s somehow become a partisan football in a way that’s just not productive. . .

. . . Stephens: You have been, much more so than most of your caucus, outspoken in your defense of Israel’s right to defend itself. Do you worry that the Democrats are becoming an anti-Israel party? And do you worry about the antisemitic current running in at least some parts of the progressive left?

Auchincloss: Yes, about the antisemitic current running in parts of the Democratic left, and the antisemitic current running on the MAGA right. We have a horseshoe phenomenon here. Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are much more influential in their party than any antisemitic hashtags are in the Democratic Party, and we should be cleareyed about that. It’s unacceptable on both sides, and it needs to be called out by political leaders of their own parties when it happens on both sides.

. . .Stephens: Let’s pivot to foreign policy: Iran.

Auchincloss: This president owns the fact that we’ve replaced one hard-line regime with a younger, more-hard-line regime. We have yielded to Iran a new strategic deterrent in the Strait of Hormuz. The highly enriched uranium is still at large. And the regime has been given the ideological tailwinds of having been seen globally withstanding more than 13,000 strikes and surviving.

I think we come out of this in a position where Iran is operationally degraded, no doubt, but strategically stronger. And this president is thereby the first president in American history to single-handedly start and lose a war by himself.

Auchincloss’s “solution,” though, assuming that we do lose the war in his sense, isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s this: “we have to have a point of view about how to build back from strategic failure. My core argument would be that it has to be based on knitting together NATO with the Abraham Accords through energy, defense and infrastructure.”  And how, exactly, is that going to prevent Iran from promoting terrorism in the Middle East and keep it from getting nuclear weapons? Yes, I’ll keep an eye on Auchincloss, but he doesn’t stand out to me yet.

*Finally, from the UPI’s odd news, we have a man pulling a ten-ton bus with his neck:

A 49-year-old athlete from Aruba earned his 10th Guinness World Records title by pulling a bus a distance of more than 65 feet using his neck.

Egmond Molina used a rope around his neck to pull the 21,737-pound bus on Jan. 9, and Guinness World Records has now confirmed he officially broke the record for the heaviest vehicle pulled by the neck.

The previous record of 17,769.26 pounds was set by Ukrainian Dmytro Hrunskyi in 2024.

“With the rope compressing my airway, I must generate force while carefully controlling my breathing under intense strain. It becomes a psychological battle to remain composed while the body is under severe stress,” Molina told Guinness World Records.

The strongman’s previous Guinness World Records titles include the fastest 20-meter bus pull with one finger, 33.32 seconds; the fastest 20-meter tram pull with teeth, 39.9 seconds; the fastest hot water bottle burst, 2.87 seconds; and the most crown cap bottles opened with both hands in 30 seconds, 6 bottles.

Molina said his records are dedicated to his children, Nigel, Egmond Junior, Benjamin and Adelinda, as well as the youth of Aruba.

Here’s the feat:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is trying to get rid of mosquitoes one at a time:

Hili: What are you after?
Szaron: I’m trying to cut down the mosquito population.

In Polish:

Hili: Na co polujesz?
Szaron: Próbuję zredukować populację komarów.

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From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Meow Incorporated (remember that Newton invented the catflap):

From Things with Faces; some happy eggs:

From Masih, calling attention to the very sick Nobel Peace Laureate in Iranian custody. As I suspected, Iran is trying to kill her without making it obvious.

Disgusting and should be condemned at every turn. https://t.co/GNrHrntx9I

— Ambassador Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) May 5, 2026

From Luana; a panacea:

WTF? pic.twitter.com/JoWrRvKG0E

— Headshok1962 (@Headshok1962) May 4, 2026

Emma’s solution to the hantavirus ship epidemic:

It strikes me that there are enough private villas in the world, with fully stocked in-room bars and whatever food and legal entertainment you want provided, to effectively quarantine 200 people for several weeks with zero non-compliance. pic.twitter.com/VJAx6kMQFF

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 6, 2026

An appropriate response to Brenton’s suggestion:

Funny isn’t it how no-one is looking to stab Iranians or Russians unless they denounce those regimes ? https://t.co/Y6eFoctrRx

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) May 2, 2026

One from my feed; the performative nature of land acknowledgements (this references Canada):

The all time best parody of Canadian Land Acknowledgement rituals.

Brilliant! pic.twitter.com/TMdn55VgJp

— Marc Emery (@MarcScottEmery) May 6, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrivedd in Auschwitz. He was six years old and would be 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/QNKHtgcZtC

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 7, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, they managed to sequence the genome of a forty-year-old specimen of Drosophila—with carnivorous, aquatic larvae!

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S…

— Marcus Stensmyr (@marcusstensmyr.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T15:41:20.058Z

And a live puffin cam from the Farne Islands:

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