Sunday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Sunday, May 10, 2026, the Sabbath for gentile cats and Mother’s Day.  I have only one photo of my mom, and I’ve already shown it, but below is her obituary from The Washington Post:  I’m not sure who wrote it, but I don’t remember the “tireless letter writer” and “Girl Scout leader” bits.  And I don’t like the bit about Heaven at the end; I’m not even sure she believe in it.

Note her friendship with Edward P. Jones, who lived across the hall from her and dad (and me, for a few years) when we occupied an apartment in Arlington. Jones was a tax attorney and aspiring writer then, and mom used to bring him food all the time, as he couldn’t cook.  He later wrote several works of fiction, with one of them—The Known World—winning the Pulitzer Prize.  As another Washington Post article said:

He makes his home near Washington National Cathedral in an apartment so disheveled that he allows only close friends inside. There is no bed (he sleeps on a pallet), no bookshelves, no couch, nor much to sit on other than a kitchen chair. He does not have a car, a driver’s license or any mechanized means of transport, not even a bicycle. He has no cellphone, no DVD player, and his Internet connection is sporadic. Though he loves movies and trash daytime television — in particular, those judge shows — he has only a 10-year-old, 13-inch TV and has never had cable. He has never been to a sporting event. He has no deep romantic attachments. He says his closest friend has been Lil Coyne, an elderly woman who for 20 years lived down the hall from him in an apartment building in Alexandria. She died this summer at age 90.

Yes, Jones is a reclusive and odd duck but was great writer (The Known World is superb), though for some reason he decided to stop writing. He still has no bed and hardly any furniture. And the apartments were in Arlington, Virginia,  not Alexandria.  But he still takes my sister and brother-in-law to a fancy dinner once a year—in honor of our mother and his.

Is it ghoulish to show an obituary on Mother’s Day? I hope not.

:

It’s also National Liver and Onions Day, a dish that my dad loved but we hated (and it made the house stink), and National Shrimp Day.

There’s a new Google Doodle today celebrating Mother’s Day. Click to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Tip: I don’t often read Mo Dowd at the NYT, but her latest column on Ted Turner, called “My Ted talk“, is quite good (the link goes to an archived version).

*After reading in many places that the Democrats were set to dominate Congress in the midterms, and maybe even overturn the House, the news is now telling us that all the unwarranted party-based redistricting, done by both parties, is favoring the Republicans. Oy! Does the news simply need something to run with? From the NYT:

Just two weeks ago, Democrats felt increasingly emboldened about taking control of the House in November after seeming to fight the redistricting wars to a draw.

But two court rulings — one by the Supreme Court and another by Virginia’s top court — and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months.

Put bluntly, Republicans have roughly 10 more House seats that favor them than they did just 10 days ago, and Democrats are suddenly grappling with a new landscape.

“This is now clearly closer than it was just a week and a half ago,” Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said of his party’s chances to retake the House.

Democrats are still widely seen as favored to win the House this fall. Republicans face a daunting political climate, saddled with President Trump’s sagging approval ratings, high gas prices and an unpopular war with Iran. In special elections and last year’s races for governor, Democratic enthusiasm has swamped Republican turnout.

“I was anticipating about a 15-to-20-seat pickup before the last week and a half,” Mr. Boyle said. “Now I would be anticipating a 10-to-15-seat pickup.”

That would be more than enough to wrest the majority from Republicans, who are clinging to a current edge of 217 to 212 seats. And history is not on Republicans’ side: The party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections.

So the headline, saying that Democrats’ confidence is shaken, is misguided.  As long as the Democrats have a five-seat majority, the House is good to go. But remember that Trump still has veto power over Congressional bills, so we may be in for a few years of stalemate.  And this subheadline in the story is also misleading:

*I was surprised to see a strong editorial-board op-ed criticizing AOC in the Washington Post, a paper she’d recently criticized. It was about, of all things, Airbnbs. First, a recent tweet in which AOC says that the American Revolution was actually an economic revolt against the “billionaires of their time.”

FIGHTING LIKE THE FOUNDING FATHERS? Watch Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compare taking on billionaires to fighting the Revolutionary War. pic.twitter.com/0lJ3n2blag

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 9, 2026

History goes down the memory hole. Now, the kerfuffle:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is on a tear, spinning yarns about the American Revolution being an uprising against the rich while complaining that The Post is standing in the way of her humble ambition to remake the country as a socialist utopia. We prefer to simply debate policy.

Consider AOC’s recent criticism of Airbnb. The legislator received blowback after telling a millionaire friend that all billionaires come by their wealth illegitimately. She then pointed to the short-term home rental platform as an example of how a service that millions of people like to use is actually harmful to society.

Ocasio-Cortez argued that Airbnb’s business couldn’t exist without destabilizing housing markets and rapaciously evicting millions: “Now young people are planning for a future where they will never be able to afford to own a home while others have 20 and live off renting it out to them at extortionate rates with zero protections.” A few make billions while millions of Americans bear the cost, she insisted.

Airbnb has achieved impressive scale, but it’s nothing compared to the government. Fewer than 2 percent of American homes are listed on the platform. While there is some evidence it affects home prices in extremely high-tourism areas, it can’t come close to explaining the national rise in home prices.

The housing crisis visible around the country is a result of government simultaneously constricting supply while stoking demand.

. . . Airbnb is a particularly strange example for the congresswoman. Her city effectively banned the platform in 2023 in response to a lobbying campaign by hotels. Has housing become abundant and affordable in Gotham? Of course not, but taking thousands of units off the market has made it a lot harder to find a reasonably priced hotel. Room rates have risen 12.6 percent since the law took effect, compared to 3.6 percent nationwide.

The socialist argument is also baffling to people who benefit from using the platform. In the first three months of this year, guests spent nearly $30 billion on Airbnb, but the company’s net income was only $160 million, according to earnings released Thursday. Not exactly rapacious.

. . . If Ocasio-Cortez runs for president, her campaign increasingly looks like it will be based not on inspiration and unity but demagoguery and division. The race for the Democratic nomination remains wide open, and there will be a lane for exactly the opposite of what the congresswoman has offered so far.

Dear god, I’m still enough of a Democrat to urge my comrades to keep AOC out of the running. If she runs for President, the Democrats will lose. She has neurons, but they don’t work well, and she’s eager and willing to distort facts if they don’t support the “progressive” agenda. I love the Post’s characterization of AOC’s “socialist utopia.”

*The British Medical Association used to be opposed to The Cass Review of 2020, which harshly criticized the treatment of gender dysphoria in the UK by the National Health Service.  Before Cass, the NHS was largely dispensing “affirmative care,” giving puberty blockers to adolescents and putting them on a treadmill to medical transition.  As a result, the UK has banned puberty blockers to people under 18, save for clinical trials, and has moved all gender care to only two clinics.  Now the BMA has dropped its opposition to Cass. Still, although the BMA doesn’t oppose the report, it still wants doctors to have autonomy to prescribe puberty blockers to anyone they think warrants them:

The British Medical Association has said it no longer opposes the Cass review into gender medicine, but that doctors should still have the “autonomy” to prescribe puberty blockers.

In July 2024, the BMA’s council voted to “oppose the implementation” of the review, which called for an overhaul of NHS gender services and a move away from a “medical pathway” that had led to thousands of children being put on powerful sex hormone drugs.

The BMA said at the time that the recommendations by Dr Hilary Cass, now Baroness Cass, were “unsubstantiated”. The union criticised her methodology and called for restrictions on giving children puberty blocker drugs to be paused until it had conducted its own review.

On Wednesday, the BMA published this long-awaited critique of Cass’s work, written by a “task and finish group” of 12 union members.

Professor David Strain, the chair of the BMA’s board of science and the report’s lead author, told The Times that “the baroness has been vindicated in the way she approached the data”.

He praised her methodological approach, and when asked to name a single one of Cass’s 32 recommendations which the BMA opposed he said: “I can’t.”

BUT (there’s always a but):

. . .The BMA said that while it was not “disagreeing with Cass” it did have an issue with the way the review had been implemented, including how slow the NHS had been to set up new “holistic” services.

The union also criticised the decision of Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to pass legislation in 2024 banning the use of puberty blockers. Strain said the legislation was an “overreach” and NHS doctors should still be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers.

The BMA said it was “continuing to oppose a ban on puberty blockers for several reasons, not least because it is a threat to the autonomy of a doctor. We spend decades training on how to use drugs, and to have a political decision affecting the way we prescribe is wrong.”

The BMA is wrong. Puberty blockers have not been tested for long enough to be prescribed willy-nilly and, critically, people under 18 may not have the maturity or the understanding to get on the gender-affirming treadmill, which for many leads to surgery and a “sex life” without the possibility of orgasms.  The BMA wants to hold onto a bit of superstition even while it admits that Cass was, by and large, right.

*A man was arrested for hurling a big rock at a locally beloved  monk seal in Hawaii. (This is the Hawaiian monk seal, Neomonachus schauinslandi, vulnerable and reliant on conservation to survive. It’s one of only two mammals endemic to Hawaii, though it’s found on other mid-Pacific islands.). Some idiot chucked a big rock at the pinniped, but fortunately it missed narrowly, for it could have done serious damage had it hit the seal in the head. From People (with a video below):

An investigation is underway in Maui, Hawaii, after a man was caught on video throwing a rock at an endangered monk seal.

HawaiiNewsNow reported that the incident took place on the morning of Tuesday, May 5, on Front Street in Lahaina, Maui. Video footage captured by a bystander shows a man picking up a large rock and throwing it toward a seal swimming near the shore.

“What are you doing?” the person filming yelled out in the clip.

As another Hawaiian news outlet reports, “[the] monk seal, known as Lani, has a federal tracker and has been known by the community for about seven years.”

Back to People:

Speaking with the outlet, Maui resident Kaylee Schnitzer, 18, shared that she and another bystander witnessed the man — identified by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) only as a 37-year-old adult male from Seattle, Wash. — throwing “a rock the size of a coconut.”

“He threw it, directly aiming towards the monk seal’s head,” she said, sharing that the seal then swam toward some nearby rocks.

Schnitzer also told KHON2 that, once they confronted the man, he allegedly said, “I don’t care, I’m rich.”

“I turned around, and I was like, ‘You can’t do that,'” she recounted to the outlet. “That’s when he told me, ‘… I’m rich. Fine me with whatever you want. I can pay for it.”

The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) confirmed on Wednesday, May 6, that the Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement (DOCARE) and the Maui Police Department were alerted to the incident and had opened an investigation.

“When the [DOCARE] officer arrived at the scene, the officer contacted a 37-year-old adult male from Seattle, Washington, who matched the description of the suspect,” the agency said. “The male was detained, identified, and advised of his legal rights. The male declined to make a statement and invoked his legal rights by requesting counsel of an attorney.”‘

Can you believe that? “I’m rich so I can afford to hurt seals”!!!  This is a federal crime and the feds are investigating it; see the report at the Department of Land and Natural Resources describing the crime:

In accordance with the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which provides protections for Hawaiian monk seals, DOCARE will be turning over the state investigation of this incident to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement (NOAA-OLE) for further review and action.

To see the wanton act, view the KOMO news video below.  What kind of person would do something like this? Yes, an aggressive and vicious moron. I hope they throw the book at him! He’s not Stay tuned, as I’m following this one:

*The Movie “Saturday, October 7” comprises interviews with survivors of the the slaughter of Israelis in 2013, is getting totally bimodal ratings at the Internet Movie Data Base, as I saw on a Facebook post, People are rating the movie either with either a “10” or a “1”, with almost no scores in between. You’d think the average score would be a bit 5 stars instead of the 3.3 given, but the IMDB weights the scores in some way they won’t disclose:

When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system.   To ensure that our rating mechanism remains effective, we do not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating.

Here’s the breakdown:

You’d think that the “1”s are those who didn’t like the movie, but all the written comments on the site are positive. As the FB post says, this almost certainly reflects those who have seen the film (the 10s) and those who haven’t but want to destroy the ratings because the movie’s about attack on Jews.  Here are a couple of the written summaries (again, there are no written negative ones, just scores of “1”):

Important documentary: This is a must-watch documentary with real stories of people who overcame a life-threatening situation. It is a testament of human strength and the capacity for survival, not only in the terrifying hours but in restoring their lives afterward. It gives you a clear geographical and historical perspective of the situation with a human perspective.

Undeniable facts—a must-see film. The courage of these survivors teaches us all so much. Each person’s story supports that hate is evil and it doesn’t matter what your age or background. It teaches us of the human spirit– to overcome the most brutal circumstances one could not even imagine. As humans, we have an obligation to witness and learn from what these brave souls survived.

Must watch. This is a must see. The tragic harrowing tale of seven survivors of unspeakable, unimaginable horror. It is a tale of tragedy and resilience in the face of such horror. In this world on endless propaganda and demonization, this movie speaks truth to power. The world can learn a thing or two. It is a MUST WATCH.

I tell you, the Jews can’t catch a break. Even a movie showing the October 7 slaughter is assaulted by haters who haven’t even seen it.

Here’s a 3-minute trailer:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is nervous:

Hili: Come to bed already, it’s late.
Andrzej: I just need to check what the tyrants are planning again.

In Polish:

Hili: Chodź już spać, jest noc.
Ja: Jeszcze tylko muszę sprawdzić, co znów knują tyrani.

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

From  The Language Nerds:

From Things With Faces, a sad parfait:

From Cats that Have had Enough of Your Shit:

From Masih. I’ve shown something similar to this before, but we need to remember what the Iranian regime is doing to its people:

This is the reality.
Bodies left in the courtyard of a hospital in Tehran after the regime’s massacre during the January 2026 uprising.

Families were told to come and search among the dead for their loved ones. pic.twitter.com/RHtuIxgkXa

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 8, 2026

From Luana; a rare Democrat who is fighting for women-only spaces, like sports and prisons.

I am a Democrat running in San Francisco who supports single sex spaces for women. I won’t be bullied by @scott_wiener or anyone else. pic.twitter.com/iR3Mv2pWU1

— Marie Hurabiell for Congress (@MHurabiell) May 8, 2026

From Keith, a visionary:

So creative 🤗pic.twitter.com/k1DkawGcY2

— Interesting things (@awkwardgoogle) May 2, 2026

One from my feed. An amazing dance (sound up):

The Zaouli dance is a traditional dance of the Guro people of central lvory Coast.pic.twitter.com/5ylZ4iFFMo

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 9, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This is the birthday of a Polish Jew who went to France to work, and then was sent to Auschwitz at 32. As usual, the record says, "He did not survive."

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-10T09:15:37.159Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, Simon’s Cat wishes David Attenborough a happy 100th birthday:

Sir David Attenborough turns 100 today 🎉💯 A champion for planet earth, guiding us through jungles, oceans and other wonders of our planet. 🌍 #HappyBirthdayDavidAttenborough

— Simon's Cat (@simonscatofficial.bsky.social) 2026-05-08T13:02:42.452Z

And I didn’t know there were insects that played dead. Here’s one, and the Wikipedia page says this:

When threatened, the beetles are able to feign death. A. verrucosus may reflex bleed during their death-feigning ritual. Releasing hemolymph which acts as an adhesive, partially covering the larvae in sand and debris, helping evade desert-dwelling predators. The species is becoming increasingly popular in the pet trade, due to their ease of care, hardiness, and longevity.