Sunday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the Sabbath made for goyische cats: Sunday, July 19, 2026, and National Daiquiri Day.

Daiquiris were one of Hemingway’s favorite drinks. David Lebovitz says this:

Hemingway did love to drink and while he was a writer, “in moderation” wasn’t part of his vocabulary, especially when it came to rum. He was fond of daiquiris, a classic three-ingredient cocktail made with rum, lime juice, and sugar syrup. But apparently Hemingway didn’t like the sugar syrup component, and the Hemingway Daiquiri was born at El Floridita bar in Havana, which William Grimes called “a close contender with Harry’s New York Bar in Paris for the title of the most famous bar in the world,” where Hemingway liked to drink.

According to Grimes’ excellent book, Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail, Hemingway would drink up to a dozen of these daiquiris at one sitting, made with Bacardi white rum, fresh lime, and grapefruit juice, and six drops of maraschino liqueur blended with ice and served in large goblets.

And here’s Papa with what looks like a daiquiri in hand:

And here’s a classic daiquiri, though they come in frozen versions:

It’s also National Flitch Day (celebrating half the side of a pig made into bacon), National Ice Cream Day, and National Raspberry Cake Day.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the World Cup Final today; click to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: Yesterday’s “bronze match” between France and England was wild; ESPN calls it an “instant classic”. England beat France 6-4 after France made up some of the difference after being down 4-0 at the half; see the report and video below.

First, he WSJ proclaims that holding the World Cup in the U.S. won over the world:

By the time Spain or Argentina lifts the World Cup trophy on Sunday, the U.S. men’s national team will have been out of the tournament for 13 days.

In that regard, the 2026 World Cup has been a head-shaking failure—especially to the fans in star-spangled jerseys who hopped on the bandwagon only to be violently thrown off a few days later. The Americans squandered a generous draw, a high-price coach and a golden opportunity to capture a new generation by blowing their shot at a first quarterfinal in 24 years.

But in every other respect, America’s World Cup can only be regarded as a triumph. Much more than an excuse to sneak off to the pub in the middle of the afternoon, the monthlong party stretching from Miami to Seattle showcased a side of the U.S. that the rest of the world rarely gets to glimpse. They fell in love with the hash browns at Waffle House. They discovered the brisket sandwich of Buc-ee’s. They lamented the lack of public transportation options, then marveled at Waymo. All of it was eye-opening. The scale of our shopping malls, the size of our highways and the cornucopia that is the Costco frozen-food aisle.

At a time when the Atlantic has never felt wider and U.S. foreign policy has sometimes put the country at odds with even its oldest allies, the World Cup was a pointed reminder that America still possesses a shine dazzling enough to entrance the rest of the world.

“On every single thing, the World Cup here has been amazing,” said Norway’s ponytailed striker Erling Haaland, who became so enamored with the States that he went home with several $750 taxidermied raccoons that he bought in Dallas.

“I like the Americans,” he added later. “I think they are kind of hilarious as well. I like the way they are.”

For sure! You can’t get taxidermied raccoons in Norway!

Yesterday’s summary from ESPN:

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Bukayo Saka‘s hat trick helped England survive a dramatic second-half comeback to beat France 6-4 in Saturday’s chaotic third-place playoff and secure their best finish at a World Cup since 1966.

England were up 4-0 at the break as a shambolic France side was dismantled through goals from Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa and two Saka strikes.

Both teams made seven changes following their semifinal defeats, but in his final match in charge after 14 years at the helm, France’s Didier Deschamps introduced four substitutes at halftime, including Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola, in an attempt to trigger a response.

It began just three minutes after the restart. Michael Olise found Kylian Mbappé in space and his first-time left-foot finish beat Dean Henderson.

Six minutes later, Mbappé turned provider, sending Barcola clear to finish inside Henderson’s near post, before Mbappé finished another France chance to score his 10th goal of the tournament.

Mbappé’s brace moved him ahead of Lionel Messi as the men’s all-time World Cup goal scorer at 22 goals. He also is two clear of Messi in the race for the Golden Boot at this tournament ahead of Argentina’s World Cup final against Spain on Sunday.

Olise, whose seven assists in a single World Cup is another record, missed a glorious chance to equalize, somehow side-footing wide from 12 yards out, before England finally steadied themselves.

Djed Spence burst into the box on the overlap and was brought down by Malo Gusto. Saka converted the 87th-minute penalty to become only the fourth men’s player to score a World Cup hat trick for England.

There was still time for France to respond again as Dembélé cut in on his left foot to finish, but substitute Jude Bellingham had the final say, driving into the box before finishing from close range to secure a memorable win.

Bellingham’s late strike made him the first Englishman to score seven goals in a single World Cup.

The combined 10 goals were the most scored in a World Cup match since Hungary beat El Salvador 10-1 in 1982.

Here are the highlights:

Today’s final, featuring Spain versus Argentina, kicks off at 3 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Chicago time).

*Trump has declared that the cease-fire with Iran is now over, and the U.S. struck the country, including its infrastructure. Iran struck at Bahrain and Kuwait.

The United States and Iran expanded the scope and intensity of their attacks on Saturday, striking critical infrastructure sites that included a power station and water facilities, with no sign of an off-ramp to end the fighting.

More than a week after President Trump said the cease-fire with Iran was effectively over, American forces stepped up their assault, targeting “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities,” according to U.S. Central Command.

The bombardment has failed to break the deadlock over the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments that Iran has blockaded. The United States has also reinstated its own blockade on Iranian ports. With no apparent negotiations taking place, the two sides appear to be sliding back toward a wider war.

Iranian state media reported on Saturday damage to bridges and roads in the south of Iran, and said that a water desalination plant in Jask was hit. It cited a local official as saying that about 10,000 people were facing water shortages. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.

Iran has responded with its own attacks on American allies in the Persian Gulf. Air-raid sirens continued to ring out in Bahrain on Saturday morning, warning of new Iranian strikes. And the Jordanian military said it had intercepted 10 Iranian ballistic missiles overnight, without reports of major damage.

On Saturday, Iranian missiles and drones pummeled the Gulf state of Kuwait, where the government said another power and water treatment plant had been attacked — the second in two days — sparking fires. An oil facility was also struck, leading to injuries and “severe material losses,” according to Kuwait’s state-run petroleum corporation.

Kuwait’s Army said late Friday night that several of its personnel had been wounded by Iranian drone strikes on military facilities. Iran’s military has said it is targeting U.S. bases in Kuwait and elsewhere in the region.

So much for the new regime which, as I recall, Trump said was composed of “reasonable people” who would negotiate. And the Fracas is all about the Strait of Hormuz; nobody has mentioned nuclear weapons lately.

*Now that New York State has passed a medical assistance in dying bill, the Free Press reports that a consortium of Catholics is suing the state for violating their faith, even though they don’t actually have to help anybody die.

A coalition of Catholic healthcare providers filed suit in federal court in Albany on Friday, arguing that New York’s new assisted dying law would force them to choose between their faith and their ability to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of New York, names 13 plaintiffs, including multiple congregations of nuns such as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Health, a network of five Long Island hospitals, are also named.

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act, signed into law in February and set to take effect August 5, allows terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to request drugs to end their lives. Governor Kathy Hochul called it a matter of bodily autonomy when she signed the bill. “New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths,” she said.

. . . The law works in tandem with an existing New York statute, the Palliative Care Information Act, which requires doctors and nurse practitioners to inform terminally ill patients of all their end-of-life options. Now that assisted dying is one of them, medical professionals must proactively raise it with patients—whether or not the patient asks.

For the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who care for those dying of incurable cancer at Rosary Hill Home, a small nursing facility about 35 miles north of New York City, compliance with the Medical Aid in Dying Act is not an option. The Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred and that deliberately ending it—or facilitating its ending—is gravely wrong. The sisters consider any participation in that process, however indirect, a violation of their faith.

. . . Mother Marie Edward, the superior of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, said it’s her duty to “support the person to the natural end of their life.”

“Everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, and there is a dignity about the human person,” she told The Free Press. “We are only the guardians of this body. We do not take the charge of whether or not we live or we die. That’s up to God.”

Up to God!  Not up to the patient!  But what if the patient wants to be relived of their suffering?

There’s more:

New York’s law includes a provision permitting religious facilities to opt out of prescribing or administering lethal drugs on their premises. But according to the sisters’ lawyers, the opt-out is among the narrowest in the nation, narrower than similar laws in California, Oregon, and Washington, where religious providers can opt out of all participation if their faith requires it.

Even facilities in New York that invoke the religious exemption must still require physicians to counsel patients about assisted dying, assess their mental fitness, and walk them through every step of the qualification process on that facility’s premises—everything short of writing the prescription and administering the drugs.

The whole thing reminds me of a story Hitchens tells in his indictment of Mother Teresa in his book The Missionary Position:

Mother Teresa apparently considered pain sacred – as long as it happens to somebody else, and as long as that person is poor. Hitchens mentions (p. 41) a filmed interview in which Mother Teresa says with a smile what she told a patient suffering unbearable pain from terminal cancer: “You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.” The patient’s response: “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.”

Apparently the Catholics, who have a responsibility under law to tell patients of their options, don’t want to tell suffers that they can choose to have God stop kissing them.  Note that the law does not require the Catholics to give drugs to patients or help them end their lives. They need only tell patients (or have a doctor tell patients) of their options—their rights.

*I have often thought that the UN should be abolished, but then I think of the good projects it sponsors, like UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. dedicated to giving humanitarian aid to children and fostering their development. How could that be a bad thing? Well, it is in one way: it helps foster hatred against the Jews.  I guess I’ve been paying attenching to UNRWA and not UNICEF, because the latter has been supporting Hamas and promoting Jew hatred for a long time. Have a look at this:

A Gazan religious school funded by U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) held a contest for children to illustrate “the suffering of our brave prisoners inside the occupation’s prisons,” just a month before the State Department awarded the embattled U.N. charity more than $200 million. This latest example of UNICEF’s ties to anti-Israel extremists could fuel fresh concerns about American investment in the troubled U.N. charity.

Al Itqan Educational School in Gaza, a religious school for children which boasted as recently as February about receiving “generous funding” from UNICEF, announced in late April that it was organizing a “drawing competition” around “the prisoners’ issue,” a reference to Palestinian militants in Israeli detention for terrorism and related crimes. Just several weeks later, the school hosted Musbah Abd Rabbuh, director of the Waeed Association for Prisoners and Released Prisoners, which had been designated just months earlier as a covert Hamas support network by the Trump administration. Previously public photos posted on Al Itqan’s Facebook page show Rabbuh speaking in a visibly marked UNICEF structure with several children’s drawings hanging on the wall. The post became inaccessible on Wednesday afternoon, after the Washington Free Beacon sent an inquiry to UNICEF that went unanswered.

“We will be collecting drawings related to the prisoners’ issue” on May 3, the school announced in an Arabic-language Facebook posting that was independently translated for the Free Beacon by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that monitors extremist rhetoric. “The best drawing that expresses the suffering of our brave prisoners inside the occupation’s prisons.”

“Don’t forget the issue of our prisoners,” the flyer added. “It is our issue too.”

. . .The school’s May competition, which awarded the winner “a prize by the school administration,” was held just over a month before the State Department announced a fresh injection of “more than $218 million in assistance to UNICEF” as part of a $1 billion “humanitarian and disaster response” funding package, fueling questions from watchdog groups about how America’s latest investment in the U.N. organization will be spent.

While the State Department maintained that the funds would be contingent on “rigorous performance standards” and “measurable results,” the research organization NGO Monitor expressed concern that UNICEF’s spending in Gaza will help pay for the radical programming most recently seen in Al Itqan’s classrooms.

“Open source evidence clearly shows that UNICEF, like UNRWA and other U.N. agencies that operate in Gaza, has cooperated with individuals and NGOs linked to terror groups,” said professor Gerald M. Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, a research organization that first unearthed evidence of the radical programming at Al Itqan. “As NGO Monitor reported last year, UNICEF coordinates distribution of cash payments and vouchers with a Hamas ministry in Gaza, likely resulting in significant diversion of donor funds. And this case provides another example of UNICEF’s failure to vet their partners.”

Here’s the poster announcing the drawing competion. Note that the boy is wearing a keffiyeh, and he’s drawing a Palestinian prisoner chafing in his cell:

The U.S. government gives about $218 million per year to UNICEF, The solution is simple: withhold all money from schools that participate in this kind of one-sided indoctrination (is that redundant?).  If you donate to UNICEF, make your feelings known. (I give no money to the UN but instead to humanitarian organizations that are ideologically neutral.)

*This may be the greatest thrift-store find of all time: a guy paid $3 at Goodwill for a jacket with “Chamberlain” stitched on the back. It turned out to be a genuine Wilt Chamberlain warm-up jacket that could be worth several hundred thousand dollars (we’ll find out tomorrow when the auction ends).

Ellie [Brown] was home from college. Quinn [hyer brother] was on the brink of something big. They roamed the aisles talking everything but business until Quinn spotted three graphic tees in near-mint condition.

“I think these are pretty good T-shirts,” he said. “And all from the same person!”

“How can you tell?” Ellie asked.

Quinn has sold nearly 10,000 items over the past four years, and he’s learned how to decode things. (The three T-shirts were black, extra-large and looked like they’d been owned by a meticulous heavy metal fan.) But the one mystery he hadn’t yet solved was the one everyone wanted to talk about. How had a Wilt Chamberlain warmup jacket from the 1972 NBA finals ended up in a suburban thrift store? And how had a teenager — a young man whose mom wasn’t even alive when Chamberlain wore it — snagged something so special?

. . . Even before he found the Wilt Chamberlain warmup jacket, that January morning was Quinn’s best day ever at the bins. He’d already found a vintage Carhartt Detroit jacket he figured was worth $150 or $200 when he saw a guy a few years older than him holding up what looked like a short-sleeved Los Angeles Lakers button-up shirt.

Quinn could tell the guy wasn’t sure about the jacket. It was a weird piece of clothing — longer than a lab coat, and skinny, the kind of cut only a man more than 7 feet tall could wear. The other guy examined the item for a moment, then tossed it back into a bin. Quinn grabbed it right away.

Quinn is not a sports guy. He didn’t know exactly what the Lakers jacket was, but he knew it was special. Someone had stitched “Chamberlain” across the back. Even Gen Z guys uninterested in hoops recognize that name. Chamberlain is a legend — the only player to score a hundred points in a single game, holder of 72 records, and winner of two NBA championships and four regular season Most Valuable Player awards.

. . .Usually, Quinn takes his haul to the family garage, scrunches the best pieces to give them a hint of movement, then photographs them to post on the reselling app Depop. His average sale price is $13.

This time, he posted the pictures on Instagram, and one of his favorite vintage sellers called it “the greatest thrift find potentially in history.” The head of collectibles for Sotheby’s commented, too, and asked Quinn to message him. Soon, he’d agreed to let the famed auction house handle the sale.

A few weeks later, the Sotheby’s collector sent Quinn a message: They’d authenticated his discovery. Chamberlain wore the warmup jacket during the 1972 finals run against the New York Knicks, the last championship Chamberlain ever won. It could be worth as much as a quarter-million dollars.

Anything that valuable is too precious to mail, so Sotheby’s sent an armored vehicle to Quinn’s house. He watched as the movers packed his jacket into a little parcel, then a box, then a blue bag and finally a safe in the back of the van. They scheduled the auction for July.

We’ll know tomorrow; stay tuned.

Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s hot and there are mosquitoes:

Hili: The shade of this hazel tree makes this heat bearable.
Andrzej: True. It’s just a shame it doesn’t kill mosquitoes.

In Polish:

Hili: Cień tego orzecha laskowego pozwala wytrzymać w tym upale.
Ja: To prawda, szkoda tylko, że nie zabija komarów.

Photo: Danuta Miłosz

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

From Things with Faces, a d*g in the floor (or is it a deer?):

From Terrible Maps:

From The Grammar Police:

From Masih, who vows to be the voice of the worst-off voiceless. Translation from Farsi:

Today, a message reached me from behind the tall walls of Ward 2 of Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. A message from those in the dungeon of oblivion, asking one thing of us: “Be our voice; do not forget us.”

Ward 2 of Vakilabad is a stark image of silent torture:

• A ward with a capacity of 300 people is today the living grave of 700 human beings! 15-person rooms that now hold more than 30 people.
• For 700 people, there are only 12 toilets and 14 shower stalls. 16 telephone booths for a population that burns for days with the longing to hear their family’s voices. –
• A ward infested with bedbugs, lice, and insects; without a shred of medical care. Worse still, the deliberate separation of crimes has been violated; political prisoners have been abandoned among dangerous criminals, leaving their physical and mental security at risk every moment.
• Their message was short, but earth-shattering: “Be our voice; especially the voice of the children who breathe under the ominous shadow of the death penalty.”
• The freedom-seekers of Ward 2 of Vakilabad have issued their ultimatum; if this inhumane situation does not change, they will turn their lives into a bulwark of hunger strike.
• With all my strength, I will be the echo of your voice. You who have paid the heaviest price for the freedom and human dignity of us all. We will not leave you alone.

امروز پیامی از پشت دیوارهای بلند بند ۲ زندان وکیل‌آباد مشهد به دستم رسید. پیام کسانی که در سیاه‌چال فراموشی، یک چیز از ما می‌خواهند:
«صدای ما باشید؛ ما را فراموش نکنید.»

​بند ۲ وکیل‌آباد، تصویری عریان از شکنجه خاموش است:

– ​بندی با ظرفیت ۳۰۰ نفر، امروز محل دفن زندهٔ ۷۰۰ انسان… pic.twitter.com/UZvHa5wcgu

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 16, 2026

From Luana, a Princeton anthropologist comments and Agustín Fuentes makes two minor corrections but agrees on the main point, that it’s harder to do classical scholarship in anthropology because it’s a “colonial discipline.” You can count poetry or fiction instead!

Umm, this notion, that there are many modes of dissemination of scholarship is widespread across disciplines. There is not a thing weird about it. Plus, she’s not chair of our dept, I am. And that’s not her “presidential address”. And that is not at all what she is saying.

— Agustín Fuentes (@Anthrofuentes) July 17, 2026

Number 10 Downing street is all gussied up for the England/France match. Larry reports, and you can finish the phrase:

England expects…
(Photo @PoliticalPics) pic.twitter.com/vK8esRzNrf

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 18, 2026

From Jeff Maurer, ’nuff said:

England expects…
(Photo @PoliticalPics) pic.twitter.com/vK8esRzNrf

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 18, 2026

One from my feed, and as far as I know this is true:

This is what the internet was invented for.

In 1996, a King Penguin called Lala became a local celebrity in Shibushi, Japan. After being rescued from a fishing net by the Nishimoto family, he refused to return to the wild.

He lived in an air-conditioned room in their home and… pic.twitter.com/NuBZlMlrws

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 18, 2026

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Austrial Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz. She was 11 years old. https://t.co/GUU7IxatXZ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 19, 2026

 

Two from Doctor Cobb. The first one is amazing, but surely adaptive, for meals are rare in the dark and briny deep:

Black swallower fish — swell dining in the deep!During a recent ROV dive near Trinidad & Tobago, the #DeepWonders science team — led by @divaamon.bsky.social — collected spectacular footage of a black swallower fish (Chiasmodon sp.) at a depth of 1259 meters.

— Schmidt Ocean Institute (@schmidtocean.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T18:02:42.271Z

Of course this isn’t real, but it’s funny:

I wasn’t ready for this. ☠️ 😭 Low T Pete will never live this down.

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2026-07-18T02:03:15.941Z