Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 23, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 23, 2026 and National Detroit Style Pizza Day, celebrating a rectangular pie that has spread to Chicago. Wikipedia says this:

Detroit-style pizza is a rectangular pan pizza with a thick, crisp, chewy crust. It is traditionally topped to the edges with mozzarella or Wisconsin brick cheese, which caramelizes against the high-sided heavyweight rectangular pan. Detroit-style pizza was originally baked in rectangular steel trays designed for use as automotive drip pans or to hold small industrial parts in factories. It was developed during the mid-20th century in Detroit, Michigan, before spreading to other parts of the United States in the 2010s. It is one of Detroit’s most famous local foods.

Here’s supposedly the best Detroit-style pizza in Chicago, but I haven’t tried it though it looks good (there does seem to be a surfeit of crust). But my own preference in Chicago is for stuffed pizza or deep-dish pizza, and it’s not the same anywhere else in the U.S.

It’s also National Hydration Day, National Pecan Sandies Day (a cookie), and SAT Math Day (make it obligatory to apply to college!)

And I got a Kit Kat bar without any biscuit inside. It was two sticks of chocolate, and must have been a mistake at the factory.  I demand restitution!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Footy news: Lionel Messi set the record yesterday for most goals scored in World Cup play: 18 goals in 6 World Cups, helping bring Argentina to a 2-0 victory over Austria. Messi scored both of Argentina’s goals.

Is Lionel Messi the greatest of all time? His latest landmark achievement — breaking the record for most goals scored at the World Cup with his double against Austria — certainly strengthens his case.

Messi, inevitably, was the centre of attention in Dallas, his goals earning Argentina a 2-0 win that booked the reigning champions’ place in the knockout stages.

The Inter Miami forward’s 17th and 18th World Cup goals (and fifth in two matches) took him past Germany’s Miroslav Klose as the all-time leading scorer in football’s biggest tournament.

It came after he missed a penalty earlier in the first half, a wasted opportunity that only delayed the inevitable.

. . . Argentina never force-fed Messi; instead, as usual, chances around the box found him. His fluid movement repeatedly placed him in prime positions, even as Austria did well to box him in as he strolled around the pitch. For a while, Austria reacted quickly when he escaped and blocked two of his close-range chances.

But as half-time approached, the goal felt more inevitable. Argentina’s plays were too pretty, the outbursts too swift for Messi not to capitalize. In the 38th minute, Facundo Medina found Messi trailing, unmarked at the top of the box, and Messi found the back of the net. He had read the play brilliantly, but you can’t leave him open like that.

Fans wept in the stands as Messi and his team-mates huddled in celebration. Now the songs began in earnest.

Here are 15½ minutes of highlights. On the video, the record-setting strike begins at 4:20 and Messi scores at 4:30, and the moment is replayed several times. His second goal is at 13:10. (He misses a penalty kick at 2:36.) In the opinion of many cognoscenti, he’s the greatest soccer player of all time. I’m not soccer expert, but I have never seen better.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal considers the ceasefire talks in Geneva and says they are “ultimately pointless.”

It’s Monday, June 22, and Vice President JD Vance is hailing the Geneva talks as “historic,” pointing to the unprecedented level of face-to-face engagement between U.S. and Iranian leaders. Historic indeed—rarely have the two sides been close enough for Iran to spit directly in Washington’s face.

After eighteen hours of “intensive” talks, the second major round of U.S.–Iran negotiations in Geneva this year concluded with Tehran projecting absolute confidence and Washington walking away with little of substance to show for it.

Reports swirled yesterday that negotiations had already been derailed, after Trump warned the Iranians to restrain Hezbollah or be struck again, “harder.” In response, the Iranian delegation walked out, threatening to boycott the talks unless Trump issued an apology and Israel fully withdrew from southern Lebanon. Neither outcome materialized. Instead, mediators circumvented the roadblock by establishing a “High-Level Committee” for overseeing further technical discussions and a joint “de-confliction cell,” involving Lebanon, to monitor and halt military operations.

What does this mean for Israel? Iran’s maximalist posturing is driven by necessity: the regime must signal strength to an increasingly fractured hardline base at home while reassuring Hezbollah that it is not abandoning its most powerful ally and core deterrence asset. But the posturing is also engineered to pay off. Clause 13 of the MoU holds that talks on a final nuclear deal begin only once the U.S. implements clauses 1, 4, 5, 10, and 11—a ceasefire on all fronts including Lebanon, the lifting of the naval blockade, the reopening of Hormuz, oil-sanctions waivers, and the release of frozen assets. By design, then, the longer Tehran can keep Lebanon lodged as a roadblock, the more frozen assets it reclaims and the more oil it exports—all before conceding a thing on its program. Fittingly, Iran’s negotiating team focused solely on implementing these clauses; Iranian media noted that not one member of its “nuclear committee” even made the trip.

So while the optics are ambiguous, we shouldn’t assume the U.S. has abandoned the Israeli position in southern Lebanon. Given what Iran had to gain by making the maximalist demand, it was inevitable. Ultimately, Tehran may settle for a half-victory in Lebanon, halting Hezbollah’s active degradation rather than forcing a full withdrawal, in exchange for a fuller victory in the economic or nuclear arena.

Meanwhile, Trump’s idea of handing the fight against Hezbollah to Syria seems never to have reached the table. In a Fox News interview yesterday, he said he was “disappointed Israel can’t put Hezbollah away.” “They can’t do anything without knocking buildings down,” he added. Praising the Syrians as more “precise,” he went further: “I’m close to giving it over to Syria.”

As usual, it’s depressing, but it’s true. Israel is pretty much on its own, and Trump doesn’t seem to understand urban warfare. I’m not betting that Syria will get rid of Hezbollah.

*J. D. Vance has announced that Iran will now agree to nuclear inspections—the same type they allowed under the Obama deal, and which Trump discarded.

Vice President JD Vance said Iran agreed to allow international inspections of its nuclear program, which would restore a safeguard from President Barack Obama’s deal with Tehran that President Donald Trump threw out.

“That is a major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” Vance said Monday at a news conference at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland. U.S. and Iranian officials are working with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan to turn last week’s fragile ceasefire into a more comprehensive peace agreement. Vance said he would return home soon as technical talks moved forward.

The Iranians threatened to walk out Sunday after Trump warned the U.S. may “hit Iran very hard again,” Vance said. But the negotiators stayed past 1 a.m. local time, and their team of technical experts was still present, Vance said.

“What we told the Iranians yesterday is when you guys engage in what us millennials might call trash talk, you can’t expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record,” Vance said. He denied that Trump’s threat threw “a wrench into the system.”

The ceasefire memorandum that Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday gave the U.S. and Iran 60 days to resolve their hardest disputes, including over the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend, Israeli attacks in Lebanon tested the deal as Iran threatened to close the strait, a major choke point for global oil and gas shipments.

If you remember, Trump ditched the Obama agreement because he considered it fatally flawed, injurious to American security, the inspection provisions were weak, and Obama’s deal didn’t address Iran’s development of ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads. So the question to Trump is obvious, “Why did you go back to making a deal that you once consider fatally flawed?”  You can be sure, though, that Israel will be monitoring Iran for compliance along with the International Atomic Energy Agency. We also need to pay attention to whether the agreement has time limits, so that after a given period Iran will again allowed to enrich uranium to the 90% level required for nuclear weapons. Remember that Trump asserted that Iran would never have nuclear weapons.

*Yesterday Kier Starmer, who was deeply unpopular, resigned as Prime Minister of the UK. Many people now think that Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, will replace him; that would leave the PM position in the hands of Labour. (Matthew, who lives in Manchester, also sees Burnham filling Starmer’s slot.)

Andy Burnham has twice run unsuccessfully for the leadership of Britain’s governing Labour Party. Now his decisive victory in a special parliamentary election puts him within reach not just of that goal, but of entering Downing Street as prime minister.

A fluent communicator known for his bonhomie and charisma, Mr. Burnham has for nine years been mayor of Greater Manchester, where he cultivated an image of optimism, activism and the type of authentic plain speaking characteristic of northern England.

With a seat in Parliament representing Makerfield, in northwest England, Mr. Burnham will need the support of 81 fellow Labour lawmakers to mount a leadership challenge to the country’s unpopular prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Supporters see Mr. Burnham — who in Manchester won the nickname “king of the North” for his defense of the area during the Covid-19 pandemic — as Labour’s potential savior against the populist right-wing Reform U.K. party, led by Nigel Farage. Critics portray Mr. Burnham as a political chameleon who would face the same economic constraints that have stymied Mr. Starmer’s lackluster government, and the same restless, impatient electorate.

Either way, he would be a different kind of leader from the one he wants to replace.

“He’s just optimistic and happy and seems to enjoy being a politician,” said John McTernan, an adviser to Tony Blair when he was prime minister and someone who has known Mr. Burnham since his days as a researcher for a lawmaker in south London. “Leaders either inspire you, or they slightly depress you,” Mr. McTernan added, noting that there had been several recent prime ministers “who didn’t really seem to enjoy it” — Mr. Starmer included.

I am not conversant with British politics, but I just looked up Burnham’s record on the Jews since Labour has been accused of being tinged with antisemitism. Fortunately, there’s not a shade of antipathy to Jews in Burnham’s record.

Here’s a video of a new report showing Starmer’s resignation speech. He does appear to be on the verge of tears. (I can’t comment on the editorializing by the journalists.)

 

*Reader Pyers sent me a link to a cool story in the Times of London about an Australian spider that rigs up a snare that catapults green tree ants into its web for consumption (the original Current Biology paper is here). An excerpt from the Times, which has videos, as does the Current Biology site. Sadly, I couldn’t find any on YouTube that I could embed, but do look at how fast that snare snaps up the ant!

The ballista was an ancient Roman catapult used to hurl bolts and stones. Now, in the rainforests of northern Australia, a newly discovered spider has been seen building a similar contraption from silk.

The nocturnal spider catches green tree ants with a unique spring-loaded snare that flings them into its web, one at a time, with astonishing precision.

The species, found near Cooktown in the north of Queensland, has been nicknamed the ballista spider after the Roman siege weapon. Scientists say that its hunting method is an unprecedented example of specialisation in a spider’s web.

Green tree ants are aggressive, territorial and live in large colonies, which makes them dangerous prey. When threatened, they can summon vast numbers, which is enough to deter most small predators.

However, the ballista spider has found a novel way to feast on them. During the day it hides in foliage above a trail used by the ants. After dark it lowers itself and fixes a tight silk line between a leaf that the ants can reach and a twig above it.

It repeats this for hours, until it has made a fan of between 15 and 60 stretched silk lines, suspended between the leaf and a branch above. On the leaf, the lines all meet at one point, marked with a tiny silk cone.

The result is a loaded spring. The stretched silk stores energy. The cone is the trigger.

After the spider finishes the trap a green tree ant will be drawn to the cone. The researchers suspect that the spider adds a pheromone scent to attract the ant and provoke it into attacking.

The ant will bite into the cone, which springs the snare. The cone breaks free from the leaf and the stretched silk lines snap upwards. The ant, unable to let go of the sticky silk in its jaws, is ripped from the surface of the leaf and hurled upwards into a web the spider has built above.

Once it bites into the silk, spring-loaded cone, the ant is snatched up at an acceleration of 1300 meters/sec²! And there’s a bit more:

Professor Ajay Narendra, of Macquarie University in Sydney, said: “It’s very unusual for a spider to feed on ants, because they’re notoriously dangerous, and even more bizarre to find a spider that eats only one particular ant species.

“The ballista spider’s snare is bioengineered to store elastic energy in the silk and rapidly release it, giving it incredible instantaneous power density, greater than any other specialised silk-based biological catapults.

“The ants it preys on have adhesive pads on their feet, so the contraction of the bundle of tension lines has to overcome a force of many times the ant’s body weight to lift it.”

Here’s a diagram from the Current Biology paper by A. Naredra et al., but it’s no substitute for looking at the video.

 

*And it’s time for some DUCK NEWS from the “reliable” Associated Press.  It turns out that a Pekin duck named Merlin, wearing Mexico’s colors, has become the mascot of that country’s World Cup Bid.  Merlin even showed up at Claudia Sheinbaum’s press briefing (you may recall that she’s Mexico’s first woman President and first Jewish President.):

Wearing the green jersey of Mexico’s national soccer team and a FIFA tie, he waddled into the room ahead of President Claudia Sheinbaum, took a seat facing reporters and quickly became the star of her Monday morning news briefing.

Merlín the duck — Mexico’s unofficial World Cup mascot — didn’t take any questions; his owner, Carla Gómez, did that for him.

Gómez, a street vendor who sells water and soft drinks, introduced her family with pride and determination, presenting them as representative of countless other working-class Mexicans. “We are the working part” of Mexico, she said.

Sitting beside the lectern, with Merlín at the center, were her sons, Carlos, 22, and Cristian, 14, who “doesn’t rest after school” and helps her every day by selling goods and carrying packages.

Merlín, he said, is “the boss of our little business. He’s the one who follows behind us, making sure we’re working and doing things the right way.”

The family takes great care with his diet, feeding him small fish, crickets and, on Sundays, even a meat taco.

Gómez said she was moved by the way Merlín captured the hearts of World Cup fans.

“It has been the best thing that has happened to us in this life,” she said, though she noted that other ducks the family had owned also became local celebrities in Mexico City’s historic center, including Bruna, who wore tennis shoes.

The president eventually had to cut off questions to move the news conference along, but not before trying to pet Merlín and posing for a photo with the family.

Everybody loves ducks!  (A chicken just wouldn’t do as a mascot.) I am so glad that they take care of Merlin. They might think of giving him freeze-dried mealworms, too!  Here’s a short video of Shinbaum and Merlin:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s getting a treat later:

Hili: No meat for dinner?
Andrzej: Don’t worry, I’ve got something delicious for you.

In Polish:

Hili: Bezmięsny obiad?
Ja: Spokojne, mam dla ciebie smakołyk.

(Photo: D.M)

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

From Nicole:

From Stacy (Matthew points out that this works only if you mispronounce the painter’s name):

 

From Things with Faces, a jolly hydrant:

From Masih, a woman in the Morality Police (black burqa) is ejected by young Iranians.  This is the regime the U.S. is allowing to stay:

From Luana. There’s an age discrepancy here, but I don’t think the UK has laws about the age at which one can use social media:

My beloved Natasha has written an article for the NY Post showing how Mayor Mamdani gets it wrong when he talks about Israel and international law:

Two from my feed. First, rescue of a pair of sea lions ensnared by plastic.  What horrible deaths these lovely people prevented!

Another heartwarming rescue, this time with no humans involved. Elephants are fricking smart:

TWO I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And a mass murder of psychiatric patients by gas and shooting:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, more “best ofs” from the Cobb holiday trip:

Best train: Zermatt – GornergratBest weather: ZermattBest walk: ZermattBest welcome: ArlesBest breakfasts: ZermattBest hotel: Zermatt Best environmental scents: Arles

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-21T10:49:34.949Z

A scene from Arles and Vincent’s famous painting of the site:

Starry starry night

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-19T20:51:45.757Z

5 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Back in the 80s and 90s there were often a whole lot of 4 finger KitKats that used to sneak through QC with chocolate fingers, presumably at the end of a batch when the wafer ran out. Given the price of their chocolate bars I always regarded it as a win when one or more fingers were just chocolate and I would buy at least a couple more while that batch was still in the shop/vending machine and I was rarely disappointed. My record was two entirely chocolate KitKats!

    Edit: “but I don’t think the UK has laws about the age at which one can use social media”

    Not yet, but two-tier Keir was determined to introduce the 16 threshold in spring 2027, who knows whether sense will prevail and actually make parents responsible rather than imposing an age proof burden on everyone else.

    Reply

  2. Messi is special!

    Yes he scored both goals. He’s scored all five goals for Argentina thus far. That’s both good and bad. Bad because others had chances but didn’t convert them. They’ve beaten Algeria and Austria. There will be sterner tests in the near future. Germany is more balanced. France seems more balanced too, even with Mbappe scoring most of their goals.

    If green tree ants are aggressive and territorial as the article says, I have no sympathy for them. Bad bad bad bad bad bad ants! I’m on the side of the ballista spiders as long as they stay away from me 🙂

    Reply

  4. My g*d that ballista spider video is amazing! The most astonishing biology I’ve seen in a long time! I’m glad videos are standard journal material now.

    BTW cast iron is superb for making Detroit pizza. I have a recipe. The crispy cheese has a name : frico.

    AKA “Pizza Hut pizza” – yeah, built that chain on Detroit pizza. Their pans are round, and iron (afaik).

    I think I say that about Detroit pizza every year here 😁

    Reply

  5. Loved the the communal elephants rescue of the baby who fell into water it couldn’t handle. And the humans motivated to rescue ensnared sea lions. Hate that some human’s probable carelessness made a rescue necessary.

    Reply

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