Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 12, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, July 12, 2026, and National Pecan Pie Day, the best of all possible pies and a triumph of American cuisine.  Here’s an individual pie that I saw on my 2021 post-pandemic BBQ Tour of Texas (this is from Cooper’s Pit BBQ in Llano Texas).  Most commercial pecan pies are light on the pecans and heavy on the filling, while a good one has pecans all the way to the bottom crust.

It’s also Different Color Eyes Day, National Eat your Jell-O Day, and National Michelada Day.

Here’s a duckling I photographed in Botany Pond in 2021. I get sad when I realize that there will be no ducklings here this year. This one had something to say:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news:  England beat Norway 2-1 in extra time, while my favorite team Argentina beat Switzerland 2-1 (highlights of latter game here).  I watched the Norway/England game, and that’s what we shall see below.

A brace from Jude Bellingham in the oppressive heat in Miami was enough to get England over the line against Norway in a 2-1 win after extra time and book a place in the World Cup semifinals.

England had looked set for a frustrating night after Andreas Schjelderup gave Norway an early lead, his mishit cross looping over Jordan Pickford after Harry Kane was dispossessed in midfield. The Three Lions were fortunate not to fall further behind too, with Alexander Sørloth hesitating on a two-on-one break instead of releasing Erling Haaland, allowing England to escape.

Norway were punished just before the break. Anthony Gordon drove in from the left before cutting the ball back for Bellingham, who shifted onto his right foot to create space and fired low beyond Ørjan Nyland to restore parity in stoppage time.

The second half became a battle of endurance in Florida humidity. Torbjørn Heggem thought he had restored Norway’s advantage from a corner, only for Clément Turpin to penalise Haaland for a push on his new Manchester City teammate Elliot Anderson before the delivery. Chances were scarce thereafter as tired legs and soaring temperatures forced the contest into extra time.

It was Bellingham who proved decisive once again. Nyland could only spill Morgan Rogers‘ strike into his path, allowing the midfielder to turn home the winner. England still had work to do, surviving a late scare after Djed Spence‘s penalty appeal was overturned following a pitchside review, before Dan Burn was introduced to navigate the closing stages as the Three Lions reached their second semifinal in three editions.

Bellingham’s brace moved him to six for the tournament, and booked his country a meeting with Argentina on July 15 for a place in the final.

Here are the highlights: the goal-scoring plays appear on the video at 3:00 (Norway), 5:05, and 14:30.  Haaland and his team will be rowing home.

There were no World Cup games yesterday, nor will there be any today, as FIFA has built a short restorative break in the schedule.

Following this break, there will be two more days without World Cup action before the tournament reaches its conclusion.

After the semifinals are played on Tuesday, July 14, and Wednesday, July 15, there will be no matches on Thursday, July 16, or Friday, July 17. The two-day pause gives the finalists additional time to recover and prepare for the biggest match in world soccer.

The tournament then resumes on Saturday, July 18, with the third-place playoff, before the 2026 World Cup comes to a close on Sunday, July 19, when the final is held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

*Bulletins:  South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsay Graham died yesterday at 71 after an unspecified “brief and sudden illness.”  And the U.S. struck several targets in Iran yesterday after the Iranians attacked a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran responded by attacking American bases in the UAE and Qatar, but nothing was hit.

*The WSJ reports that the Trump Administration is becoming increasingly dubious that Iran will meet the MoU demands to never produce a nuclear weapon. And the AP reports as well that  the U.S. has demanded that Iran state publicly that they’re opening the Strait of Hormuz to allow free passage.  From the WSJ:

The Trump administration believes that a nuclear deal with Iran is growing increasingly unlikely, senior U.S. officials told reporters Friday, in a rare acknowledgment that one of the president’s core foreign-policy goals of capping Tehran’s nuclear program might not be achievable through peace talks.

The officials said Iran should release a statement declaring that the Strait of Hormuz is open and that it will stop shooting at ships. One of the officials suggested there would be serious consequences if such a promise isn’t made by Saturday, while others didn’t suggest there was a firm deadline.

The comments raise questions about whether President Trump is preparing for another major shift in strategy after declaring the U.S.-Iran ceasefire over.

Among his options would be to resume all-out war to try to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He also could sign a deal that falls short of his demands or walk away from the conflict altogether, even though doing so would leave control of the strait in question.

“They violate the agreement every day, they lie, they cheat, they kill people,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “They’ll never build a nuclear weapon under our deal, but I don’t know if we’re going to have a deal.”

Under an interim peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran, which was signed in June, Iran promised to make arrangements to restore shipping and ensure safe passage of commercial ships. Iranian hard-liners have interpreted the agreement as maintaining control of the strait, firing upon commercial ships that don’t transit along designated routes.

The senior U.S. officials said that if Iran can’t abide by the agreement—which gave Iran financial benefits in exchange for reopening of the strait—then there is little hope of reaching a far more complex deal to dispose of Iran’s nuclear material and impose long-term caps on its program.

From the AP:

[This week’s resumptions of U.S. strikes] comes as U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated on social media Friday that he views the interim ceasefire deal as “OVER!” But he said the U.S. would continue talks aimed at putting a permanent end to the war.

The officials said Friday that Trump is giving U.S. negotiators limited time to reach a deal with Iran, but, in a sign of the challenges ahead, they underscored that the president had a wide range of options if talks fall apart. They also said a power struggle was playing out in real time in Iran after U.S. and Israeli strikes at the start of the war killed its longtime leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

. . . Iran has said the strait must now be under its sole control and that vessels should begin to pay fees to Tehran — even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began.

What this adds up to is that the deal is not going to happen Trump’s way, if it happens at all. Iran is standing firm that it will control the Strait of Hormuz and we will not see an agreement that prohibits Iran from ever having nuclear weapons. (And how could that be enforced after a new President is elected?).  Either Trump must attack Iran hard again and resume the war, walk away (equivalent to Iran winning), or agree on a “deal” which leaves Trump a loser. Which do you think he’ll choose?

*The NYT headline tells the tale: “Trump, ending decades of protection, opens wild habitats to drilling and mining” (article archived here).

The Trump administration on Friday moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century.

It did so by recasting a single word, “harm.”

For more than 50 years, the federal government has used a broader definition of harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law. It included any significant “modification or degradation” of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed.

The Supreme Court upheld this interpretation in 1995, ruling against property owners who argued that harm should only mean directly killing or injuring an endangered animal.

But on Friday, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced a final rule that rescinded this longstanding interpretation. Under the rule, destroying an endangered species’ nest or habitat would no longer be considered illegal.

The change could open the door for fossil fuel companies, agricultural interests, land developers and others to disturb or even destroy the habitats of vulnerable species. Many species are already running out of places to live, and the new rule is likely to add extreme pressure, experts said.

Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said it planned a legal challenge. But if the case were to reach the current Supreme Court, its conservative supermajority could enshrine the change, preventing future administrations from reversing it, said Karrigan Börk, an environmental law professor at University of California Davis.

This is totally bogus. “Harm to species”, as the Supreme Court has already ruled, includes destroying their habitat. And how can destroying the next of an endangered bird species be construed as not harming it?  All we can do is wish that the Supreme Court would abide by stare decisis in this case, taking their previous ruling as firm.

*I didn’t know that Michael Shermer was writing for the Free Press, but I came across a piece by him called “Why the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories will never die” (I think access is free). He wrote the book on this stuff: Why People Believe Weird Things. 

This week, the preliminary hearing finally began in the case that sent shock waves around the world: the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025.

The proceedings, which began Monday in Utah and are expected to conclude on Friday, have surfaced overwhelming evidence against accused killer Tyler Robinson. For example: He confessed the crime by text to his transgender roommate Lance Twiggs (“you werent the one who did it right???” “I am, I’m sorry.”); his own parents recognized him from released images, and said that the rifle he used matched that of his grandfather; Robinson’s DNA was found on the rifle’s trigger, a spent cartridge casing, two unspent cartridges, and the towel used to wrap the rifle; surveillance footage showed Robinson jumping down from the rooftop where the fatal shot appeared to be taken; and bullet cartridges recovered at the scene featured engravings (“Hey fascist! Catch!” and “OwO what’s this?”) made with a tool found in Robinson’s bedroom, alongside a shell casing engraved “test shot.”

This is not an exhaustive list.

You might assume, given all this, that the vicious conspiracy theories sparked by Kirk’s assassination, which have infected our society ever since, would have faded.

You would be wrong.

He then lists a few “viable” conspiracy theories, including “Turning Point USA (TPUSA), Erika Kirk, or Mossad/Israel was involved in the murder.“.  His thesis becomes this

There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever for any of these conspiracy theories. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence proving the opposite.

Why, then, do so many people insist on believing, or at least entertaining them?

The answer has to do with “proportionality bias,” a well-documented concept in the study of conspiracy theories. Proportionality bias kicks in when there is an imbalance or mismatch between the size or importance of an event and that of its purported cause. The Holocaust is an example of proportionality: It was one of the worst genocides in history, perpetrated by one of the most evil regimes in history. This creates a sense of “cognitive harmony”: balance between the cause and effect. Which means that, while there are conspiracy theories attempting to minimize or deny the Holocaust, few suggest it was perpetrated by someone other than the Nazis.

Shermer then gives examples of “disproportionate” deaths, including that of JFK, a U.S. President killed by a nobody, and the death of Princess Diana, killed in a traffic accident. Conspirators must be found!

Thus, it is no surprise that, like JFK and Princess Diana before him, Kirk’s death has been drawn into the machinery of mythmaking and conspiracy. And it’s no surprise that the simplest explanation is also the hardest for many people to accept.

The problem is, it happens to be true: Charlie Kirk was a human being killed by another human being.

If we care about truth more than comforting narratives, that is where the story must end.

This may well be true.  The explanation sounds credible, but I haven’t chewed it over since I read it.  Let us know what you think.

*A Pew Poll taken in early May and published just three days ago gives some distressing results.  Much of it we already know: Americans tend to have a more favorable view of Israeli people than of the Palestinian people, and, except for the religiously unaffiliated (!) and Muslims, have a more favorable view of the Israeli government than of the Palestinian government. But look at who has a favorable view of Hamas!  Most groups of Americans don’t, but 44% of American Muslims do. 44% of them have a favorable view of a terrorist group sworn to kill Jews. That makes it impossible to support the statement that “The vast majority of American Muslims are peaceloving and don’t favor terrorism.” (h/t Jay)

i24 News from Israel adds this:

The survey also pointed to a broader generational shift, with younger Americans across religious groups more likely to view Palestinians favorably than Israelis, according to the Post. Attitudes toward Israelis are said to have deteriorated among both Republicans and Democrats in the past decade.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the findings broadly resembled polling conducted among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
And if you go to the tweet in the last link, you’ll see data from a poll in Palestine that says this:

Pew poll showing 44 percent of Muslims in America support Hamas squares with Palestinian polls, as surveyed by the Palestinian PCPSR-Polling and Survey Research. As recently as October 2025, one in every two Palestinians thought that October 7 was a correct move and opposed the two-state solution (meaning they want all the land, from the river to the sea, as Muslim Arab Palestine). Also, a plurality of 43 percent of Palestinians thought “armed struggle” was the way to an independent Palestine (again, from the river to the sea with Israel vanishing).

***********

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s voting for her favorite of all foods:

Andrzej: What are we eating for lunch today?
Hili: My vote is for beef.

In Polish:

Ja: Co jemy dziś na obiad?
Hili: Głosuję za wołowiną.

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

From Anna:

From Kitty Litterposting:

From Things with Faces; a sink playing a wind instrument:

From Masih; Iranian television accidentally airs a pro-regime woman telling the truth about the celebrations after the Ayatollah Khamenei’s death:

From Colin Wright; total insanity of Candace Owens: dinosaurs are “fake and gay”. Does she really believe what she says, or is she just getting attention?

From Luana, who doesn’t hate Jews—excuse me, “Zionists”:

From the Number Ten Cat, pointing out an ungrammatical construction:

One from my feed. I do believe it’s real and, if so, this guard is the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. He sleeps here with FOUR CHEETAHS!

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one he posted about the Tour de France:

Hot temperatures devastating the livestock on the Tour

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-07-11T12:52:22.199Z

And a stoat in a playful frenzy, undoubtedly preparing itself for real hunting:

Had to delay going out into the garden this morning as I didn't want to interrupt this lunatic's frolicking #stoat #salopobs

— Tom Lowe (@saloplarus.bsky.social) 2026-07-11T13:13:55.688Z

6 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  2. Norway beat England? Has anyone told the teams and the BBC because they think that England are through to the semi-finals. 🙂

    Reply

  3. According to Gemini and grok, background for the group that advertised in the London Underground:

    Direct Action Training is a clandestine activist network in the UK formed to recruit and train people to disrupt the arms trade.

    Origins: It emerged publicly around mid-2026 as a successor or spin-off effort linked to Palestine Action (proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK in 2025). Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori has publicly directed supporters to it for continuing direct action training and activities after the ban. It functions as a “new collective” to bypass UK government crackdowns and proscription threats against Palestine Action.

    Purpose: Its online registration platforms explicitly state that the organization provides training “specifically aimed at dismantling the Zionist war machine in the UK” by targeting facilities, banks, and insurers linked to firms like Elbit Systems.

    Tactics & Security: The group’s digital infrastructure is intentionally hosted via IP addresses in Iceland to utilize strict data protection laws. Potential recruits are required to complete a 14-question screening about their ideological motivations, willingness to take actions risking arrest, and proficiency in specialized skills like climbing.

    Reply

  4. With Iran I think the framing as argued by the WSJ and PCC(E) at times is …off.

    Apologies for reposting this, but my argument is we’re being too maximalist in our hopes. You can’t always get what you want. Reality and the opposition enforce parameters on our best case scenario.

    https://themoderatevoice.com/the-iran-war-reframed/
    I think we’re doing very well indeed.

    D.A.
    NYC

    Reply

  5. Jerry asks:

    Either Trump must attack Iran hard again and resume the war, walk away (equivalent to Iran winning), or agree on a “deal” which leaves Trump a loser. Which do you think he’ll choose?

    My guess: The U.S. and Israel will resume intense military action after the U.S. midterms. I think Trump is serious about preventing the Islamic regime from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, and knows that continuing to just “mow the lawn” is too risky in light of Iran’s determination to build hardened nuclear facilities that cannot be penetrated by air power. Reportedly, the Iranians continue construction at Pickaxe Mountain and other underground facilities in spite of the MoU.

    Reply

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