Thursday: Hili dialogue

May 28, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, May 28, 2026, and it’s National Hamburger Day. Here’s a bacon burger I had in Honolulu in January, 2019, and, like many Hawaiian plate lunches, it came with macaroni salad. It’s as if the Billy Goat Tavern were transported to Hawaii, and when you ordered a cheeseburger they’d yell, “No fries—macaroni salad!”  But it was good.

It’s also National Brisket Day.  It’s a thin day for commemorations, but brisket and hamburger are sufficient—if you’re a carnivore.  Here I am downing Texas brisket (and sausages) at a BBQ joint in 2004, though I can’t remember the place.  Beans, pickles, potato salad, and (of course) white bread are the sides.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Breaking news, ripped from the headlines:  Iran says that it retaliated today for U.S. strikes on missile sites.

Iran said that it had retaliated on Thursday against the latest U.S. strikes in southern Iran by targeting the American military base from which they were launched, warning that its response to further U.S. attacks would be “more decisive.”

The statement from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did not say where the U.S. base was or how it had been targeted.

The Kuwaiti military said on Thursday morning that its air defenses were intercepting hostile drones and missiles, without specifying the origin or extent of the attack. The United States has five military bases in Kuwait.

On Wednesday, American forces conducted what a U.S. official said were self-defense strikes in southern Iran. The United States knocked down four one-way attack drones that the official said Iran had launched over the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. military then struck a drone ground-control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas before Iran could fire a fifth drone, said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The Revolutionary Guards said on Thursday that it was responding to U.S. strikes in Bandar Abbas.

The strikes add to the recent hostilities, which have threatened a fragile cease-fire and dimmed hopes that peace talks between Iran and the United States could quickly reopen the strait.

It looks like the “retaliation” was lame: a token effort by Iran to say “we won’t let you attack us without consequences.” In the meantime, Trump still says he’s negotiating and “doesn’t care about the midterms.”  Perhaps a lot of Republicans are, but I don’t know how a protracted war with affect voters’ decisions.

*In theTexas Republican primary for a vacant Senate seat, candidate Ken Paxton wiped the floor with his fellow GOP candidate, incumbent Senator John Cornyn.  This may be good news for Democrats given Paxton’s checkered history, which means it’s bad news for Republicans.  It’s good news for Trump, as he had endorsed Paxton over Cornyn, but Trump will be long gone when the victor sits out his term in the Senate.

President Trump and Democrats rarely find themselves in alignment. Yet both sides wanted the same outcome in Tuesday’s Texas Senate primary runoff election.

Ken Paxton’s trouncing of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican runoff represents Trump’s latest triumph in maintaining his grip on his MAGA base after he similarly ousted rivals in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky. But to the delight of Democrats, the president’s decision to make an 11th-hour endorsement of Paxton could put the Senate seat in play for James Talarico after decades of Democratic futility in the Lone Star State.

Paxton’s primary showdown with Cornyn was the costliest Senate GOP primary on record, according to AdImpact, with Cornyn’s forces alone spending nearly $100 million in their attempt to defeat the Trump-endorsed state attorney general, who survived impeachment and scandal to win the runoff with nearly 64% of the vote.

Paxton’s wide margin of victory showed the power of the Trump endorsement and his ability to coalesce GOP support around his favored candidates. In the initial March primary, Cornyn narrowly edged Paxton, 42% to 40%, but no one cleared the required 50%, forcing a runoff.

“When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas, he didn’t listen. Instead, he gave his complete and total endorsement,” Paxton said of the president in a speech to supporters Tuesday night. “His endorsement…is the most powerful force in politics.” He called Talarico “a threat to everything we hold dear in this state and in this country.”

The risk for Republicans is that more moderate and independent voters in the general election will be turned off by Paxton, providing an opening for Talarico, the seminarian and state lawmaker who has become a fundraising force among national Democrats hungry for victory in Texas. Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.

The GOP has been painting Talarico as the Texas version of Kamala Harris, a progressive who takes bizarre positions.  And the GOP is now issuing fake, AI-generated ads, like this one (I won’t show it) going after him.  That has to be illegal or something, no?  Talarico’s “progressive” tweets in the ads are real, I think, but can they really use fake video and an AI-generated voice?

*Every time Bret Stephens comes out with a new op-ed at the NYT I read it ASAP, knowing that what he says (especially about Jews and the Middle East) will likely be agreeable to me, but also sharpen my thinking. That’s the case in his latest piece, “Deal or no deal with Iran”  (I believe you’ll find it archived here, but let me know). First he gives the powerful arguments for striking a deal with Iran, but then says that there are three risks to striking a deal.

First, an agreement that allows the regime to emerge from the war as the perceived victor instantly magnifies our overall geopolitical risks.

China will take note not only of our munitions shortage (which it could have learned of before the current war simply by reading The Times) but also of the fact that the president lost his appetite for war after just 39 days and 13 military fatalities. U.S. allies in the region will take similar note: Why would the Saudis or Pakistanis want to incur the domestic risks of recognizing Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, as Trump is now imploring them to do, if Israel and the United States look like the weak horses against Iran in the struggle for regional hegemony?

. . . Second, the adage, familiar to this administration, that the Iranian regime has never won a war or lost a negotiation happens to be true. That’s not just because the regime has a genius for bargaining, though it does. It has an equal genius for bending and breaking rules and agreements whenever it suits its needs. . . .

The closer we get to the midterms, the more political incentive Trump has to avoid conflict.

The Iranians know this, which is why they’ll play for time with a carefully balanced set of tantalizing promises and extraneous demands, whether about Hezbollah or the financial payoffs they’ll insist upon in exchange for easily reversible concessions.

Iran has done this for ages, yet every American President save Trump in his second term has ignored it.

. . . Finally, Trump will get no political relief in the midterms if his signature presidential act for 2026 is a failed war. Not many like paying more for gas, but many are also willing to swallow the cost for a worthy objective — such as removing a potent and rising menace to America’s security and our vital interests. But economic pain in pursuit of strategic futility is an unforgivable political blunder. Trump is on the cusp of it now.

Here’s Stephens’s solution:

So what should the administration do? Heed the words of Robert Frost: “The best way out is always through.”

Though it’s easy to miss, given the information blackout that (at least until this week) Iran imposed by shutting down the internet, the regime itself hangs by slender threads: a worthless currency, a mostly bankrupt state, a badly wounded military, all-but-undefended airspace, and a leadership whose final claim to legitimacy is that it has stood up to the Great and Little Satans and, so far, survived.

Trump can still deny them that claim. The United States struck some targets in Iran on Monday. Now Trump can announce that we will destroy a facility of military significance to the regime pending a material Iranian concession, and make good on the threat. The next day, two targets, and so on. If Iran opts to retaliate against our Gulf allies, then it’s past time they start behaving like cooperative allies, by either joining the fight or at least not obstructing it.

Trump need not be defeated in this war, but he’s close. Should he lose it, what remains of his presidency will go down with it.

Stephens doesn’t say anything about regime change or the sad plight of the Iranian people, so I wonder what he means by “winning this war”. Presumably it means opening the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic, sans tolls, and ensuring that Iran can no longer make nukes. Yes, those things need to be done, and Trump is cooked if he doesn’t do them, but what about the persistence of a regime that promulgates terror throughout the world?

*Nichola Kristof is at it again, tweeting unsupported allegations that I’m pretty sure are false.  But does he care? He seems bent on demonizing Israel, as he did with the dog-rape accusation, which he justified by citing cases of men committing bestiality.  Have a look at this:

Here’s what the linked Reuters article says:

Activists released from Israeli custody after being detained on a flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organisers said on ​Friday, with several hospitalised with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.

Israel’s prison service denied the allegations, and Reuters was not able to verify them independently.

Germany said some ‌of its nationals had been injured and that some accusations were “serious”, without giving further details. A legal source in Italy said prosecutors there were investigating possible crimes including kidnapping and sexual assault.

“The allegations raised are false and entirely without factual basis,” an Israeli prison service spokesperson said in a statement.

“All prisoners and detainees are held in accordance with the law, with full regard for their basic rights and under the supervision of professional and trained prison staff,” it said.

“Medical care is provided according to professional medical judgment and ​in accordance with Ministry of Health guidelines.”

*Rebecca Winthrop, identified by the NYT as “the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and led its global task force on A.I. and education” maintains in a NYT op-ed that AI is going to erode the writing abilities of students, something I’ve maintained for a while. How can it not? Your writing may look better to a third party, but you haven’t learned how to confect a cohesive and coherent piece of writing using your own brain.

But I’ve recently drawn a sharp line in the sand: no A.I. for writing. I’m not talking about expense reports or routine emails. I mean actual writing, and the creative brainstorming that precedes it to explore different perspectives or develop novel insights. Increasingly, many people I talk to — from students to teachers to peers — tell me that they think it’s OK to use A.I. chatbots for brainstorming as long as they do the “real work” of writing.

But this misunderstands something critical: Brainstorming is the work that’s fundamental to writing. As a researcher studying A.I.’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas — what we call creative thinking. This seems to be especially true for students. A.I.’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories.

The erosion of creative thinking means young people will struggle to navigate uncertainty. Workers will strain to adapt to a shifting labor market. And society will miss out on the new ideas that can solve complex problems and enhance lives.

For the past eight years, the Georgetown University neuroscientist Adam Green has been leading a national research team tracking the range of novel ideas that college-bound high school students present in their application essays, before and after the introduction of ChatGPT. In one study, he and his team examined personal statements from more than 370,000 students, and found that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas. And the linguistic coverup worked; post-ChatGPT essays were rated as more “creative” by human judges, even if the substance of the essays trod familiar territory.

That is all ye need to know; it’s concise, clear, and buttressed with data. I can see no way that outsourcing your contemplation to a computer algorithm can help you be a better writer or a better thinker.  And “writing abilities” goes not just for humanities, but also for science, for scientists too need to learn to write. We already find the literature full of stilted prose, passive voices, and generally unengaging writing. And that’s the literature: every scientist worth their salt should be able to write for the public, and for grant-giving bodies whose members aren’t all in the same field.  There must be an article on how AI is useful and how it’s harmful in science, but I can’t be arsed to find one.

*Cass Sunstein is a polymathic legal scholar who taught at my university for many years, but now teaches at Harvard Law.   Over at his Substack site, there are two essays on viewpoint diversity worth reading.  The first, “Viewpont diversity” describes what it was like to be at the University of Chicago Law school in the Eighties, a time when viewpoint diversity was pervasive and constructive but, argues Sunstein, also largely independent of political leaning.  A more recent essay, “A problem with thje debate over ‘Viewpoint Diversity,” uses his earlier piece along with the Chicago Principles of Free Expression to recommend the best way to form a university with diverse viewpoints.

The first piece is great, recounting the four-time-a-week lunches (yes, Saturday, too) involving a host of Big Brains at the law school. It was not about university business or chit-chat; it was about law, cases, and principles (the subtitle of the piece is “The University of Chicago Law School, 1980s: A love song”).

But I want to emphasize something else: the crackling energy and the sheer intensity of the place.

We had lunch together four times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. The roundtable, as it was (and is) called, was usually full. Sometimes a latecomer couldn’t get a seat. I would often make a lame joke to the effect that some Greek had proved that you could always add a seat to a roundtable – and we would almost always add a seat.

At these lunches, the discussion was always substantive. Always. No one discussed sports or the law school as such, or their families, or other law schools, or even politics, unless there was something academic to say about it. If someone said something that wasn’t substantive (about students, for example, or the news, or gossip), they would get a puzzled, stern, disapproving stare; the norm would kick in, and someone would discuss an article they were thinking about writing.

Examples: Stone had a new idea, to the effect that “viewpoint discrimination” should be forbidden under the First Amendment. Or Epstein had a new idea, to the effect that the takings clause had been interpreted far too narrowly. Or Epstein had a new idea, to the effect that New York Times v. Sullivan was all wrong. (Epstein seemed to have a new idea every day.)

Or Posner had a new idea, which is that courts really should promote “wealth maximization.” Or Easterbrook had a new idea, a seemingly odd one, about “statute’s domains.”

Or McConnell had a new idea, to the effect that the courts had gotten the Establishment Clause all wrong. Or Scalia had a new idea, to the effect that courts could not readily enforce the nondelegation doctrine (and shouldn’t try). Or Strauss had a new idea, to the effect that constitutional law is really common law.

It goes on, but you can read it for yourself. What a time, and what a cast of characters!  In the second piece, Sunstein uses the Chicago Principles—largely the “Shils Report”, on the criteria for hiring and promotion (see the full report here)—to make his point.

In an earlier essay on this platform, I said something like that, but also said that the debate over viewpoint diversity seems to me to have a clanging sound. To get at the problem, I described the University of Chicago Law School in the 1980s, which had plenty of viewpoint diversity, but whose amazingness could not be captured, or could be captured only in a thin, tinny, coarse, and lame way, by pointing to its “viewpoint diversity.” Chicago in the 1980s had that, to be sure, but that was hardly all that Chicago had, and it was not what made Chicago amazing.

My friend Tony Kronman, in a kind and generous note to me on that essay, wrote these words about viewpoint diversity:

“The phrase, I think, is a sad reflection of how habituated we’ve become to thinking of the life of the mind in political terms.”

Thanks Tony. That’s what I did not see clearly enough.

. . . When the University of Chicago Law School hired Michael McConnell as an assistant professor, people said that he was “the most brilliant Chicago student in a generation”; they did not say a word about his “viewpoint.” When the school hired the legal historian Richard Helmholz, they spoke of his pathbreaking work, not of his “viewpoint.” When David Strauss was tenured, his “viewpoint” was neither here nor there. (It was not mentioned.)

This is complicated, I know. Viewpoints have always mattered, at least in some sense; that is inevitable. It would be naive to deny that point. (There are plenty of issues to discuss there.)

Also: Those who seek greater viewpoint diversity are correct. They are responding (I think it fair to say) to people who have seen, and who see, academic life in political terms (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously). They are meeting fire with fire.

Still, some of them are seeing academic life in intensely political terms, and thinking of academic life in intensely political terms. That is their focus. It’s right, sometimes, to focus on what they are focusing on, but consider the possibility that some of them are focusing on it too much (and living in it, kind of, and overexcited by it), and at the expense of other things on which they might focus.

And this is straight out of the Shils Report:

At the University of Chicago Law School in the 1980s, there were three criteria for hiring or promoting faculty members. The first was collegiality. Was the person a good colleague? Meaning: Was the person around a lot? (Every weekday would be good!) Did the person comment on papers? Did the person go to workshops and contribute? Collegiality was not the most important thing, but it was important. Richard Epstein, David Strauss, and Michael McConnell were regarded as exceptional colleagues.

The second was teaching. Was the person a good teacher? Did students think so? If students did not think so, were they wrong, in the sense that they learned a lot (but perhaps were not having a ton of fun)? A bad or not-good teacher would have a tough time getting appointed. David Currie and Walter Blum were regarded as exceptional teachers.

The third was scholarship, and that was the most important. Chicago was (and is) famous for productivity, and sheer quantity mattered. One good article, every three years, would be a problem. Five good articles, every year, would be a really strong plus. Of course quality mattered most. Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook were regarded as exceptional scholars.

The only thing missing from this discussion is this: neither Kronman nor Sunstein mention that the life of the mind and the evaluation of ideas should also be viewed independently of ethnicity, sex, or gender.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried about Andrzej. But look at that great picture of her!

Hili: I’m worried about you.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You’ve lost your sense of humor.

In Polish:

Hili: Martwię się o ciebie.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Straciłeś poczucie humoru.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

 

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From CinEmma:

Masih didn’t tweet yesterday, so here are some words of wisdom from the Number Ten Cat:

Two from Luana today. This first one makes me sad.

And I retweeted this one:

Rowling corrects a common misconception (or deliberate distortion) about biological sex:

One from my feed. This is not free speech because, as you’ll hear if you listen to the whole thing, waving flags at a ceremony like this violates University policy. He finally surrenders his flag because he wants his degree. (BTW, have you ever seen a graduate waving an Israeli flag? I haven’t.)

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb.  I haven’t yet said anything about the stupid “cage fight” that Trump is putting on at the White House to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. I can think of many ways to celebrate it, but a cage fight is not one.

This is what happens when a toddler takes over the white house

— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) 2026-05-27T15:50:20.501Z

This is not only morphological camouflage, but behavioral camouflage.  Fantastic! (I’m guessing that it tends to stay in the center.)

Look again!That's a common baron caterpillar (Euthalia aconthea) sitting on its favorite food source, a mango leaf.This little guy, native to India & Sri Lanka, has perfect camouflage so long as it stays perfectly centered on the leaf's midrib.(📷: SatyamRajput004)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-05-22T01:15:40.711Z

6 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. People talk like Nick Kristoff hasn’t been a clown for decades when he has, but there you go.

    On the yacht LARP flotilla of resistance against the mean Joos: If you estimate the IDF/Navy aren’t utter idiots, you’d have to imagine that every single second, from horizon to deportation of these clowns is covered by cameras, at all times, from various angles.
    And yet… after a decade of these flotillas (the first being Turkish, years ago) no actual footage of anything other that Swedish truant Greta eating a cutlet.. has come to light. Maaybe these spoiled, stupid floating fools are….. lying?

    D.A.
    NYC 🗽

    Reply

  2. The only law I am aware of regarding A.I. videos like that of Talarico is a California law which requires a watermark to indicate it is A.I, which this video has.

    Reply

  3. I enjoyed reading Prof Sunstein’s recollection on how fully serious the scholarship used to be at the Law School. I have no reason to doubt it and like to think that it was. On a quick scan I could not find a reference to such a regular faculty activity today other than a once a week works-in-progress lunch and this photo from last Summer of a more impromptu gathering. I am struck by the fact that none of them appears to have a legal pad or e-tablet for note-making. Please see url
    https://www.facebook.com/UChicagoLaw/photos/one-of-the-reasons-that-uchicagolaw-faculty-are-so-incredibly-prolific-with-thei/1205257061630077/

    Reply

  4. Hamas kids dance routine:
    Never shy to plug my own column here, 🙂 I wrote about the Gaza/Pal education system, with jokes! some time ago, variously syndicated, here w/o paywall or ads.

    HERE is what the Pals who, remember, come from a “Religion of Peace” and “Just want to liiiive” have taught their children… all our lives.

    https://democracychronicles.org/kindergarten-jihad-who-plays-the-beheaded/

    Let’s give these people a state where they can import unlimited armaments! Cool!

    D.A.
    NYC 🗽

    Reply

  6. “Germany says” is false.

    Correct is: Various German media outlets have spread claims that the Sumud Flotilla activists were mistreated. However, there are serious doubts about this. There are posts on social media showing supposedly injured activists on a stretcher giving interviews to journalists. Shortly thereafter, these people were back on their feet without any signs of pain, grinning and flashing victory signs at the camera.

    Furthermore, a member of the flotilla openly admitted that their mission was never about humanitarian aid, but rather about directly confronting Israeli troops at sea and drawing attention to Gaza.
    https://x.com/StarrJpost/status/2058799846199382167

    Reply

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