Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 26, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, July 26, 2026, and National Bagelfest Day. Below I put, as always, a genuine bagel rather than the large, airy bread toruses that pass for bagels in America. This was in Montreal ten years ago. No commentary is needed:

One with a schmear. Notice that the bagel is small and dense.

It’s also Aunts and Uncles Day, National Coffee Milkshake Day, and World Tofu Day. In honor of the first holiday, here are my late uncles Bernie (left) and Mo (right)—my mother’s brothers. They’re all decked out for a round of golf, at the Jewish country club, of course (Jews weren’t allowed to join the regular country club):

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

I have visitors for much of this week, so posting will be light; perhaps even days without a Hili dialogue. Caturday posts are being eliminated because interest is low.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news ripped from the headlines: The U.S., prompted by a lack of missiles and Trump’s equivocation, has not attacked Iran in two days.

The war between the United States and Iran remained on pause for a second straight day on Sunday, while the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that there had been some movement in talks between Tehran and mediators over the Strait of Hormuz.

No U.S. strikes on Iran have been reported since Friday, while Iran has similarly held off attacking American allies around the Middle East after about two weeks of skirmishes brought the two countries back to the brink of full-blown war.

President Trump decided last week to put off plans to escalate the U.S. assault on Iran, at least for now, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Trump and his aides were motivated in part by dwindling stockpiles of interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

Mr. Trump has struggled to decisively end the war on Iran that the United States and Israel started jointly five months ago, even as the global economic toll and number of American casualties have mounted. A cease-fire signed last month effectively collapsed after Iran continued to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments.

Iran is and will continue to be the main exporter of terrorism in the Middle East—indeed, in the world.  If it’s allowed to retain the power it had to do that, America will have failed completely in our war aims.

*Trump is considering a big escalation in Iran (article archived here). Because of what I wrote about, this may be passé.

President Trump met on Friday with top advisers and senior members of his cabinet to decide whether to intensify the military assault against Iran, according to four people briefed on the discussion.

The meeting took place as Mr. Trump faces a potential inflection point in his approach to Iran, after the collapse of a fragile cease-fire and a memorandum of understanding that was intended to bring the United States and Iran back to the negotiating table for a longer-term denuclearization.

The White House did not divulge whether Mr. Trump determined how to proceed. But the president indicated that the military was ready to carry out heavier assaults if ordered to do so even while leaving open the door to a diplomatic solution.

“Look, we’re locked and loaded,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. “We’re ready to go, but we’re talking to them, so maybe there will be, maybe there won’t be a tipping point.”

He added: “Maybe they will cry uncle, or maybe they’ll just give up, or maybe they’ll just go into a cave and hide.”

Mr. Trump previewed some of his discussions in an interview with Axios on Thursday, saying: “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”

He also indicated that the Israelis most likely would not be part of a new escalation, saying there could be “consequences” for them, apparently meaning from Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is coming to the United States on Monday and plans to meet with Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced.

Mr. Trump has insisted that the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran would be a relatively short “excursion,” although it has lasted nearly five months, with no end in sight.

In my view, that last sentence is on the border of news and opinion. Nobody knows how long a war would last when it’s started, and nobody predicted that the Iranian regime would decide to tough it out while inflicting economic damage on the world by controlling the Strait of Hormuz. I have no idea whether Trump will escalate (I’m starting to think he will), nor what route he would take if he did.

*In his new NYT column, “Call the Veep, agent Mulder,” Bret Stephens eviscerates J. D. Vance (archived here).

Somewhere around the two-hour mark in JD Vance’s nearly three-hour podcast interview last week with Joe Rogan, the pair got into a serious conversation about supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena. By serious, I mean it in the sense that Rogan seemed to take the subject seriously while Vance cynically, or cretinously, or cravenly, or credulously or conspiratorially — or perhaps it’s all of the above — played along with him.

It contained the following insights from the vice president of the United States:

“If we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is humanlike, but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.”

And:

“If you’re looking for me to concede the point that there is something different or could be something different between an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural but non-any-of-those-other-things beings, yes, I concede that.”

And:

“I got two-and-a-half more years as V.P., and I swear to you, if there are little green men, like body remains, I’m not going to text you. I’m going to try to smuggle a camera in and get a photo of these things.”

Call the veep, Agent Mulder!

By this point, the two men had already propounded one conspiracy theory — that the Los Angeles mayoral election had been rigged (a claim previously debunked by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor); followed by Vance’s accusation that Joe Biden’s staff got him to eat ice cream “in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable” (a remarkable way of turning naked mendacity into adolescent prurience into another conspiracy theory); followed by an exchange about eating corn dogs in public (because, you know); followed by an argument about whether the Ten Commandments should be mandated in Texas public schools, in which neither man appeared to be aware that the commandments are not originally Christian.

The truth — that the most influential media figure in America today, with tens of millions of followers on social media, is a jocular bro with an Everyman affect who seems never to have encountered an idiotic or despicable conspiracy theory he isn’t willing to promote (moon-landing denial) or platform (Hitler revisionism). We are a nation that has moved at speed from the realm of fact colored by opinions to a kingdom of delusion infested with fear.

The truth — that the current vice president is by far the worst person ever to hold the office (move over, Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun and Spiro T. Agnew); that he thinks, probably correctly, that there’s no political downside in today’s Republican Party to talking like a guy who thinks Dan Brown novels are works of nonfiction; and that it’s equally OK for a person who, by his own admission, has access to all U.S. intelligence to tease the possibility of deep-state conspiracies of the sort his political base is likely to believe. The prospect of this callow and sinister opportunist taking the place of the erratic buffoon now governing us may be the single scariest thought in world politics today.

The truth — that Vance’s interview with Rogan (as close as politics gives us to a national cancer diagnosis) was a blip in the news cycle, because crazy today is every day, and our capacity to feel shocked diminishes with every asinine utterance coming from the vice president’s mouth, to say nothing of that of his boss.

The truth is that the demons are here. We elected them.

Ouch!  Well, this is good for the Democrats: there’s plenty of dirt on Vance if he runs for President. But perhaps his acolytes don’t care.

*A WSJ editorial-board op-ed, “Globalizing the intifada in Mamdani’s New York,” rebukes Hizzoner for his “anti-Zionism”:

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been running a campaign to demonize Israel and its supporters for committing “genocide.” He should reconsider after Thursday’s double-stabbing in New York, which included a kippah-wearing Jew attacked after exiting a synagogue.

Police arrested Raul Morales in connection with the stabbings. The mayor said victim and witness statements allege that Mr. Morales yelled “Allahu akbar” while attacking a Jew, Moshe Grunhaus and an Asian, Chok Sung. The NYPD is evaluating if this was a hate crime.

A friend who visited Mr. Grunhaus at the hospital tells us the victim was in the process of moving to Florida, in part due to concerns about crime, antisemitism and Mr. Mamdani. He returned to New York to tie up loose ends and attended synagogue during the fast of Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the ancient temple in Jerusalem.

Earlier this week Mr. Mamdani taped a video accusing Israel of genocide and deliberate child murder. The next day he wished New York’s Jews a “peaceful” fast, in which “mourners will pause and reflect on the history and resiliency of the Jewish people.” That history is in Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but the mayor calls the Jewish state a “settler-colonial” project.

Thursday’s stabbing would fit comfortably with the Palestinian intifadas that Mr. Mamdani and his allies have been keen to “globalize.” Only after repeatedly excusing that phrase did he say that he would “discourage” it. He now sticks to “genocide,” “apartheid,” child-killing and other accusations to render Israel an enemy of mankind, along with the “Zionists” whose crime is to support its existence.

Before his mayoral run, Mr. Mamdani used “Zionist” as a casual slur. He also told comrades: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” Israel’s military.

Mr. Mamdani reacted to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by bashing Israel, not Hamas, and mourning victims on both sides. His wife liked Instagram posts cheering on the Hamas attack. His party, NYC’s Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed a rally by pro-Hamas groups on Oct. 8 in “solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist,” as the DSA put it.

. . .Mr. Mamdani isn’t responsible for Thursday’s stabbing. But he is responsible for promoting a culture of denigration that is all too easy for a fevered mind to hear and conclude that violence against Jews is acceptable. The mayor and his ideological groupies are playing with antisemitic fire.

“When I was growing up,” Rabbi Yosie Levine said Friday, after the attack on a congregant, “the only time we saw security outside my synagogue or my Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak. The police were there to protect him. Today, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us.”

What can I say? Mamdani seems far more concerned with denigrating Israel and accusing it of apartheid and genocide than running his city. And the MSM, save for the conservative Wall Street Journal, won’t mention it at all. (That’s of course because they agree with the Mayor.)

*I am opposed to government-run lotteries and to sports betting, which is rapidly taking over the U.S.  Lotteries are simply regressive taxes, and sports betting is a way to get people addicted to gambling, as well as for the government to collect taxes on a profitable enterprise (the government taxes the companies as well as the winnings of successful betters)—companies that are guaranteed to do better than the sports fans. In an essay in The Free Press, “The case against sports betting,” Coleman Hughes gives us his take.

Infamous as these offenses are, they became so because they were rare. For most of American history, it has been difficult and risky for a professional athlete to place a major bet on his own games.

But with the legalization of sports betting in most U.S. states—touched off by the Supreme Court’s overturning of a federal ban in 2018—we are now entering a darker era. With online betting legal and frictionless, athletes need only a few seconds on their smartphones in order to place a bet (or better yet, get a friend or family member to do the same). And they need not do anything as noticeable as throw a game. A professional basketball player, for instance, can simply bet on individual elements of their personal statistics line (called a “player prop” bet), and then subtly alter their play without drawing unwanted attention.

The scandals are now coming so frequently that it is hard to keep track of them. Just last Friday, the NFL suspended Arizona Cardinals executive Ryan Gold for allegedly betting on his team’s games. A few weeks prior, former NBA player Malik Beasley was indicted for allegedly manipulating his play in at least four 2024 NBA games in coordination with a group of bettors.

In the age of frictionless online betting on player props, all it really takes to cheat is to coordinate with one trusted friend or family member, tell them that you’re not feeling your best before a game, subtly underperform throughout the game, and then accept in-kind gifts from that person. Sure, the authorities will catch those who do this sloppily. But how exactly will they catch a duo who carries out such a scheme in an intelligent and patient manner?

But Hughes has an argument beyond the cheating argument given above—a view more similar to mine:

But the problem with sports betting is not just its effect on the integrity (both real and perceived) of sports. It’s also the unhealthy temptation it creates for sports fans. For psychologically well-adjusted bettors, it’s an innocent hobby. But for a significant minority, it’s a dangerous vice. One scholarly paper found that the introduction of online sports betting to a U.S. state caused a 12-point decline in average credit scores as well as an increase in “indicators of excessive debt, including bankruptcy filings, debt sent to collections, credit card delinquencies, and auto loan delinquencies.”

. . . And where is that money coming from? It’s what people would normally be saving in retirement accounts or for purchasing a home, worthwhile investments that can better their lives. A new study concludes that “risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments,” and instead drive up household debt, even as betting companies soak up billions in revenue.

What to do? As Hughes recognizes, once the government gets a taste of the money, and fans are used to betting, the cat is out of the bad for good. He proposes a more moderate solution:

So what should be done? Returning to something like the pre-2018 status quo—where sports betting was illegal in every U.S. state (except for Nevada, Oregon, Delaware, and Montana)—would be ideal. But it’s not going to happen. Now that states have a taste for the tax revenue that comes from the $167 billion industry, they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. In principle Congress could ban it federally, but that is unlikely for much the same reason.

There are, however, more moderate alternatives. The SAFE Bet Act, introduced by Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal and New York Rep. Paul Tonko, both Democrats, would keep sports betting legal while curbing its excesses. The bill would, among other things, ban in-game betting, advertising that targets minors, and player prop bets. Its main flaw is that it would require bettors to prove that they can afford bets before making them, which would require invasive financial disclosures. But on the whole, it is a decent first draft of the kind of legislation that we need.

I’d still favor a ban on betting, but it ain’t gonna happen.

*The FDA is considering whether to make peptides available to the public by allowing “compounding pharmacies” to make them. (A “compounding pharmacy” makes medicines on site.) The NYT tells us what peptides people want (archived here).  I was interested because I heard on the news yesterday that there’s a peptide for insomnia, but I lost interest after I read about it.

An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration convened Thursday to evaluate whether compounding pharmacies should be allowed to produce seven peptides that were previously banned over safety concerns.

Despite being prohibited, some of these peptides have become increasingly popular among consumers who purchase them from longevity clinics, alternative health providers, biohacking influencers and even TikTok. The peptides may be produced in unregulated labs, often in China, and sold as “research grade” compounds.

The F.D.A. is evaluating the peptides for specific uses, like treating ulcerative colitis, insomnia and osteoporosis. But they are marketed and used for many other purposes, which could be permitted if the drugs were cleared.

F.D.A. staff scientists reviewed the research on the peptides and have recommended against clearing the peptides, citing a lack of safety and efficacy data in humans. Here’s what they found.

I’ll give just two:

BPC-157

BPC-157, sometimes referred to as Body Protection Compound or bepecin, is one of the most popular “gray market” peptides.

The F.D.A. is evaluating it to treat ulcerative colitis, and it is also marketed as helping to reduce gastrointestinal inflammation and prevent ulcers. Another common use is to support muscle and joint healing — it is sometimes referred to as the “Wolverine compound,” after the Marvel superhero, especially when taken in combination with another peptide, TB-500.

A few small studies in humans have suggested BPC-157 might have benefits for knee pain, bladder-related pain or ulcerative colitis symptoms. But these had notable limitations: Two lacked a placebo group, and another was not published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Emideltide

Emideltide, also known as the delta sleep-inducing peptide, is naturally produced in the brain. Levels fluctuate throughout the day, which suggests it is connected to circadian rhythms, and it has been shown to increase deep sleep in animals.

The F.D.A. is considering an emideltide injections for insomnia, narcolepsy and opioid withdrawal. (Scientists think it acts through the opioid system.) It’s also marketed for stress, pain, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

There are several human studies of emideltide, most from the 1980s involving intravenous infusions. The research has generally suggested that emideltide helps people with insomnia fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer compared with a placebo. But the studies were very small and had limitations and did not all show a clear benefit.

The human data was even more limited for narcolepsy — just a single case report in one patient.

There are others, but with just as pessimistic a take.  The upshot for all the peptides discussed is that the evidence is very thin, that there are some with side effects that may be serious, and tjat although some of these may eventually be useful, none are yet ready for prime time.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have a high-level discussion:

Hili: How would you characterize the consciousness of artificial intelligence?
Andrzej: The determinism of algorithms. Though you shouldn’t take me seriously.

In Polish:

Hili: Jak byś określił świadomość sztucznej inteligencji?
Ja: Determinizm algorytmów. Ale nie traktuj mnie poważnie.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Stacy:

From Bored Panda, Larry with his mouse. He’s so proud!

From Masih; an Iranian rapper sentenced to death for what would be free speech in America:

From FIRE via Luana; this doesn’t seem to rise to the level of “fighting words,” though the speech was hateful and odious. Click to read full tweet and get link:

Good news! Larry won’t have to put up with a d*g!

From Jeff Maurer. Very clever prof!

One from my feed, a lovely fawn. I’d like to see the adult:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one came with the email note “Truth”:

— hard-bo̾il̾e̾d̾Gardner (@kgardner.bsky.social) 2026-07-25T09:53:26.313Z

A hare—and one who takes off very fast when it sees the human:

I’ve been standing stock still in this wood for about 10 minutes while I mess about with a photo on my phone. I look up, notice the shape, and slowly crouch down to filmThis has made me so happy I feel I could cry. It’s as close to magic as I hope to get.

— Toby Miller (@tobytram.bsky.social) 2026-07-24T18:37:53.777Z

2 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  2. And someone, somewhere, I can’t find the source now, pointed out that peptide use will be embraced by some of the same people who objected to peptide-based mRNA delivery systems.

    Reply

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