Friday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the end of another week, and a sad one given the duckling situation. (I have now been apprised of yeat ANOTHER nesting hen hearby.)  It’s Friday, July 17, 2026 and National Tattoo Day. For some reason many soccer players are tattooed, including Lionel Messi, who didn’t have this tattoo a while back but showed up with a heavily tattooed left arm. The caption below: “Messi celebrating after scoring against Egypt in the 2026 FIFA World Cup round of 16.”

It’s also National Peach Ice Cream Day and Wrong Way Corrigan Day, celebrating a famous ruse:

[Today] commemorates the day in 1938 when Douglas Corrigan made a transatlantic flight. He had recently purchased a 1929 Curtiss Robin plane and rebuilt and modified it. In July of 1938, he flew it from California to New York. He then applied for permission to make a transatlantic flight but was denied. On July 17, 1938, he flew out of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, with the supposed intention of flying back to California. He instead started heading east and flew all the way to Dublin, Ireland. As he disembarked from the plane he said, “Just got in from New York. Where am I?” He claimed his flight had been an accident and he had gotten lost after his compass failed to work. His pilot’s license was suspended but was soon reinstated. He became a celebrity and gained the name Wrong Way Corrigan. Until his death in 1995, he maintained that his transatlantic flight had been done on accident. In 1987, in Long Island, he was honored on the 49th anniversary of his flight. Beginning in 1992, his hometown of Galveston, Texas, began celebrating Wrong Way Corrigan Day. Corrigan has since been celebrated across the country on Wrong Way Corrigan Day.

Corrigan never admitted thet he planned this wrong way journey. Here’s the New York Post‘s famous backwards headline announcing the flight:

Yesterday the smoke from Canadian wildfires finally hit Chicago, causing a dense smog that limits vision as well as a yellowish tinge to the air, a smell of woodsmoke, and dangerous air conditions. Here’s the view from my crib; normally you can clearly see the skyscrapers of downtown, six miles away. Yesterday you could barely see a block. This is not fog: the sky was clear except for the woodsmoke:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news, from a NYT op-ed written by Matthew Rose, identified as  “an Opinion editorial director and a long-suffering England soccer fan”: “England defeats itself. Again” (archived here). Remember that England last won the World Cup was 1966:

Little good comes when a country measures itself by looking backward: Misty nostalgia makes the real problems of the present harder to tackle. Ever since 1966, the English soccer team, like Britain itself, has been burdened by the dead weight of impossible expectations, yearning for past glories while failing to grasp why things, in general, are not glorious. In political terms, that helped usher in Brexit, economic stagnation and six prime ministers in 10 years, all of whom tried and failed to restore Britain to something like its former self.

The sporting equivalent comes every four years, when England somehow convinces itself, despite a pile of evidence to the contrary, that it ought to win the World Cup. And every four years, this ends badly.

It started with the 1982 cup, famous for Maradona’s two goals, one brilliant and one involving a handball and cheating.

Then 1990 was Germany on penalties in the semis. No one talks about 1994. Four years later was another tragic blowout against Argentina. And 2002 was grim. I’d moved to New York by then and watched the loss to Brazil in a sticky pub on Third Avenue surrounded by my gloomy, pale compatriots. On to 2006: quarterfinals, again; lost on penalties, again. And 2010 was a 4-1 drubbing by the old enemy, Germany. The less said about 2014 the better. In 2018, the team somehow ended up fourth. In Qatar four years ago, England lost to its other, older enemy, the French.

There is an undeniable pattern here, in addition to not winning. England is stuck in some kind of middle rank — not the best, not the worst, always flattering to deceive, usually grinding it out until the gravity of reality takes over. This isn’t the cheery optimism of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Wait ’til next year.” This is deeper — an aching sense that things just won’t work out.

. . .In the 1990s, The Sun, a spicy tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, superimposed the head of a particularly hapless England soccer manager onto a turnip. In 2000, the newspaper lobbied for a donkey called Jack Ass to take the job. And yet after England’s June win over Croatia, even it fell victim to the ancient habit. “Spooky omen is good news for England fans,” the paper intoned. What was this spooky omen? The final score, 4-2, was the same as the final score in ’66.

For a month, England clawed and grimaced its way to the semifinals, accompanied by fans chanting “IN-GER-LAND” to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Sun, changing its tune, said the team was “one-dimensional.” The Guardian called it “turgid.” England edged the Democratic Republic of Congo, defeated Mexico in a match that resembled the siege of Leningrad, and somehow didn’t lose to Norway. Finally, the agony of hope was mercifully extinguished by Argentina (yet again).

Maybe by the 2030 World Cup, Britain will be back in the European Union, just one country among many. Maybe England’s undeniable stars will function as a team. Maybe the country will embrace its position as a midtable perennial, and be just fine with that. And perhaps then it might be able to win.

I don’t dare comment on this as I’m neither a Brit nor a footy expert, but the piece does use Brexist as a touchstone of why England can’t win at soccer. I will let the Brits comment.

Meanwhile, from the NYT daily newsletter:

What’s next? Argentina will play Spain on Sunday with a chance to become the first country in 64 years to win back-to-back men’s World Cups. It will be a something of a peculiar reunion for Argentina’s national hero, Lionel Messi, and Spain’s teenage sensation, Lamine Yamal. In 2007, when Messi was a rising star, he gave a bath to a 5-month-old Yamal for a charity calendar. Read the remarkable back story.

*My affection for James Carville is well known; I love the old curmudgeon, though sometimes he’s misguided, as when he enthusiastically endorsed Kamala Harris rather than calling for a quick convention. Over at The Hill, though, Carville is on track when he indicts far-left Democrats—”progressives”—as being a serious problem in the Democratic Party. And he doesn’t omit the swearing.

Democratic strategist James Carville recently said far-left Democrats are a “part of the problem” within the party, slamming candidates for critiquing it during their campaigns instead of uplifting the collective messaging.

“Is their solution to beat Republicans to run against Republicans? No,” Carville said in the Friday episode of his “Politics War Room” podcast.

“Their solution is to beat Democrats like they’re part of the problem. You are part of the problem because you’re a f—ing idiot,” he added.

He pointed to Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat vying for the party nomination for Senate in Michigan, as an example of one far-left candidate bucking the party.

“He’s running for Senate … and he’s running against both parties. Oh, so it’s both parties’ fault. No, it’s not both parties’ fault,” he said during the podcast.

“One party expanded health insurance, all right? Another party destroyed it. One party balanced the budget and created economic prosperity. The other party destroyed it,” he continued.

The Democratic strategist said far-left candidates are pushing voters toward Republicans.

He said, “in this century, if it wouldn’t be for the Democratic left wing, we might not have even had a Republican president. We sure wouldn’t have had one in 2000. And we sure wouldn’t have had one in 2016.”

Carville said he was proud to brand himself as a “liberal” but noted the identity should be separated from being on the far left.

“I am a proud liberal. I am not a leftist. I don’t believe you ought to break the thing up. I think the role of government is to help people, to be a partner with people, to help them get educated, to help them have retirement security, to make them secure in this world, and make them secure in their homes,” he told listeners.

“And if you believe that, blame the left wing of the Democratic Party for the catastrophe that we’re facing right now, because as much as any group, it’s their fault.”

We’ll see. The Democrats seem impervious to any formerly Democratic principles, espousing the “progressive” views of the the DSA. The party seems to be catering to young voters, which means that candidates must diss Israel to be viable. The saddest thing I’ve seen lately (besides waterlogged ducklings)  is the pandering of Rahm Emanuel and the silence of J. B. Pritzker and Josh Shapiro on Israel. See the next piece:

*This is very sad: a NYT article titled “Almost half of House votes to end aid to Israel” (archived here).

The House on Wednesday rejected a measure to eliminate U.S. aid to Israel, but almost half of Democrats supported the move, reflecting a rapid and dramatic shift within the party away from decades of unequivocal support for the Jewish state.

The measure, which sought to cut all $3.3 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Israel from a foreign affairs spending bill, failed by a vote of 104 to 314, with 10 voting “present,” and all but one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a sponsor, voting no.

But more Democrats supported it than opposed it, including many who said they voted in favor despite their opposition to the cuts to humanitarian aid. It was the latest and starkest evidence of a major divide over backing Israel within the Democratic Party, which is grappling with a groundswell of hostility in its ranks toward Israel and its conduct of the war in Gaza.

Supporters said the measure was their only way to register their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and their desire for a fundamental change in course in the U.S. relationship with Israel.

“While I wish we could vote on an amendment targeted just to military aid, and of course support humanitarian programs, we do not have that option,” Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas and the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a letter to his members, in which he urged all 98 of them to follow his lead in backing the proposal. “The American people are crying out for an end to U.S. tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military.”

The vote even split Democratic leaders.

Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, and Pete Aguilar of California, the No. 3 Democrat, voted against the measure, while Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the minority whip, voted in favor.

. . . In the final tally, 103 Democrats voted to cut off aid while 98 opposed doing so, with another 10 voting “present,” declining to register a position. That amounts to more than half of the Democratic Caucus unwilling to reject a measure that would terminate U.S. assistance to Israel.

It took me a while to find the votes broken down by individual; I failed using Google but Grok took me to the site. You can see how your representative voted here. I guessed correctly that everyone in the “squad” voted “aye”—to cut off aid.  The Democrats who voted that way probably want to cut off all ties with Israel, but certainly don’t want to support the only democracy in the Middle East.  And they’d probably want a two-state solution—so long as the Palestinian State was right next to Israel and was controlled by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

*And Amit Segal’s take on the vote above from It’s Noon in Israel:

“The tide is changing,” Representative Thomas Massie declared last night after his attempt to zero out Israel aid failed 104-314. What made it a shift in tide wasn’t the outcome—a doomed show vote from the start—but the Democratic split: 103 Democrats voted yes, 98 voted no, and ten voted present. Massie was the sole Republican in favor.

The good news: that’s well short of the 150 some predicted—a figure inflated precisely because the measure was certain to fail, letting members vote against Israel at no policy cost. The bad news: it’s 66 more than two years ago, when the House faced a similar vote, and 99 more than 2016, when the chamber passed the memorandum of understanding 405-4. According to sources, another 60 Democrats might have joined the provision without leadership pressure holding the line.

More bad news: those 98 who voted no are not, by and large, Israel hawks. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries called the amendment “overly broad,” warning it would gut humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, and the ability to confront Hamas and Hezbollah—then conceded that “there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government,” and that “a meaningful change in direction is needed” ahead of the new memorandum of understanding. Congressman Sam Liccardo, who opposed the underlying funding through a separate vote, drew the line others left implicit: no to 3.3 billion dollars in offensive weapons, yes to defensive systems like Iron Dome, and a new memorandum of understanding treating Israel “as an important ally, not a supplicant.” The no column was against the vehicle, not the destination.

. . .Good news: there aren’t 103 Zohran Mamdanis in Congress. Representative Katherine Clark voted yes “not because I agree with the entirety of the amendment, or the GOP’s cynical motivations for its consideration, but because I believe we must change course”—the status quo, she said, “is not tenable.” Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was blunter, calling the amendment “ill-conceived” and voting yes anyway “for the message that it sends.” Clark even swiped at the mechanism she was endorsing, dismissing it as “more stunts from Congressional Republicans who would rather score cheap political points than lead.”

Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, captured the hedge: many yes-voters “haven’t turned their back on Israel, recognizing there’s a distinction between the people of Israel and the current Israeli government.”

The problem is how much longer that distinction holds; one suspects that the anti-Israel passion in the Democratic party is not simply directed against the current makeup of Israel’s governing coalition, no matter how much moderate Democrats wish it were.

I agree with the last sentence: blaming everything on Netanyahu is identifying a scapegoat for disliking all of Israel, and I suspect that any Prime Minister, be they right- or left-wing, could be substituted for Bibi.  Democrats either changed their minds on Israel, are Jew-haters anti-Zionists like the Squad, or are pandering to the young electorate.

*It’s not often that a new species of primate is discovered, but LiveScience says we have one (h/t Nicole).

Scientists have identified a new species of monkey that has orange lips and makes unique roars and snorting sounds. The distinctive monkey lives in a remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

It is only the fifth new monkey species to be identified in Africa in the past 75 years, and there might be more unknown monkey species in the region, scientists behind a new study suggested. Researchers named the newly identified species of monkey Colobus congoensis, after the region, and it is known by the common name “lik­weli” in the local Kilanga language.

“This is remarkable because it’s not very common these days to find a new, never-before-documented primate species, let alone a relatively large species of monkey,” said Joshua Linder, an anthropologist and president and co-founder of the The Forest Collective, a nonprofit that aims to conserve and restore tropical rainforests.

. . .In their searches between 2018 and 2022, the researchers recorded 114 sightings of the species across an estimated range of about 660 square miles (1,700 square kilometers) naturally isolated between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers. They reported their findings July 15 in the journal PLOS One.

The monkeys, seen hanging out in groups of between one and 20 individuals, are mainly glossy black, but they have a conspicuous orange patch around the mouth and nose. Bare gray skin on their cheekbones makes it look as if they’re wearing masks. They also have a patch of white fur around the anus.

DNA sequencing showed that this species is distinct from any primate known that could be a potential relative. Here’s a video of the creature making its strange calls:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is cogitating:

Hili: You’re playing solitaire again.
Andrzej: Yeah, sometimes I need to sort out my thoughts.

In Polish:

Hili: Znów układasz pasjansa.
Ja: Tak, czasem muszę uporządkować myśli.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Things With Faces:

A good one from The Grammar Police:

From Masih: Another peaceful protester executed in Iran:

In the middle of the war, the regime in Iran executed an innocent protester.
Aref Khoshkar today, joined #WomanLifeFreedom to protest the murder of Mahsa Amini and the hand of morality Police.

They tortured him for years. When that wasn’t enough, they arrested his younger… pic.twitter.com/K0DF8eE31T

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 16, 2026

From JKR via Luana: another objection to Amnesty International’s stand that a “woman counselors only” rape crisis center is a violation of “rights.”

Another letter to add to @AmnestyUK‘s overflowing mail box, this one from women-only rape support service, Beira’s Place. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/iVqyLfNjzZ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 15, 2026

From Jeff Maurer, and yes, the stuff about the Jamestown founder John Smith is true:

Goddamn this should have been the movie. https://t.co/gMVWq2RQj4

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) July 16, 2026

Two from my feed. Isn’t this calf cute?

A Scottish Highland cow born just two hours ago 🤍 🩶 pic.twitter.com/EiS1dvN3wo

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) July 16, 2026

Otters like ice cubes?

At a Japanese aquarium, these baby otters have an end-of-day routine: clean up the toys with grandpa, then collect their well-earned ice cube reward. pic.twitter.com/7JneoxRrxI

— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) July 15, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. Had she lived she would be 91 today. https://t.co/5x8bq8KezA

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 17, 2026

Two from Doc Cobb. Wait for the end of this chick video:

WAIT FOR ITWAIT.FOR.IT! 🪶 🐣

— Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli (@banditelli.org) 2026-07-08T01:51:19.000Z

Ghost cat:

Purranormal activity . 😍🤣

— omgisme (@omgisme.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T02:20:51.796Z