Saturday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the Sabbath for Jewish cats: it’s CaturSaturday, August 8, 2026 and National Whataburger Day, celebrating the opening of the first store on this day in 1950. There’s a AA minor league ballpark for the Corpus Christi Hooks, a subsidiary of the Houston Astros. The stadium is called Whataburger Field (sign below):

It’s also National Bowling Day, National Frozen Custard Day, National Mochi Day, National Zucchini Day (a vegetable whose tastelessness is matched only by its abundance), and International Cat Day (if you’re the first person to send me a photo and a few words about their cat–one cat and one submission only–I will feature it below.

I saw a bunny (an Eastern cottontail) on my way to work this morning. It was dark so the resolution isn’t large with my iPhone, but it let me walk right by it without being spooked. It’s good luck! I think it is a young one.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Stymied by the Supreme Court in his attempt to eliminate American birthright citizenship, Trump is trying to do it again using executive orders (article archived here).

By “businesses,” he means “birthright tourism” outfits, who get pregnant women to pay to come to the U.S. to have their kids.  This confers no immediate visa or citizenship benefits on the parents, but when the child becomes 21 he/she can petition for the parents to jump the queue and apply for a green card.  But I digress; there’s more:

It was not immediately clear how the twin orders could realistically be enforced. They would restrict those who could qualify for birthright citizenship, to exclude children of staff working for foreign governments but serving in the United States, and the babies of mothers who lie about their intentions for visiting the country while pregnant. There is a third category, for babies born in U.S. territories, but that would first require congressional action.

And then there are children whose parents are tagged by the government as being part of known terrorist groups or who are “alien enemies.”

Mr. Trump has criticized birthright citizenship for years, using it as a political tool as he has repeatedly tried to restrict legal immigration. He has talked about trying to end it since his first presidency. And in an unusual move, he attended oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court, a presidential first.

Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser and the architect of much of his immigration platform, and Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, described the orders as important correctives to the current system.

The court will probably rule this a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as it did before, but I have to admit that deliberately coming to the U.S. to have a kid so you can benefit rubs me a bit the wrong way (I knew someone who did that and I didn’t find it wholly kosher). Still the benefits are a long way down the line, and I prefer to let the Supreme Court rule on this—if it hasn’t already.

*And another roadblock for Trump. While he’s busy converting the East Wing of the White House into a monster ballroom, a federal court has temporarily stopped the project pending a required approval from Congress (and perhaps appeals to the Supreme Court). The article is archived here.

A federal appeals panel ruled Friday that President Donald Trump must halt most construction of his planned White House ballroom, saying that he had exceeded his authority by moving ahead with the planned $400 million, privately funded addition.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with a federal judge’s April ruling requiring construction to halt until Congress expressly authorizes the project.

“Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,” Judges Patricia A. Millett and Bradley N. Garcia wrote in their majority opinion.

They stayed their ruling for 14 days to allow the White House to appeal to the Supreme Court.The White House did not immediately say Friday whether it would do so.

Trump relied on private donations to begin the project without seeking an appropriation from Congress, touting the arrangement as a boon to taxpayers. But the courts have found that private financing did not allow him to bypass the separate requirement that Congress authorize major changes to the White House grounds.

Trump announced the 90,000-square-foot addition last year and swiftly demolished the White House’s East Wing without warning to make space for the project. He has said presidents have long needed a ballroom to host VIPs.

The project has drawn scrutiny from congressional Democrats, who have opened investigations into whether Trump has made promises to donors in exchange for their gifts. The ballroom has also been generally panned by the public, with polls finding that most Americans are against the project.

The Congress could, of course, pass a law allowing this demolition to take place, but what if it does and then the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional? Then the building would have to be stopped again. At any rate, I don’t approve of this at all, and if either Congress or the Court stops the construction, what is to be done? Will they have to rebuild the East Wing that has already been torn down? It’s an unholy mess.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal reports on a shakeup at Israel’s prime intelligence agency: “The Mossad admits failure.”

It’s Friday, August 7, and Yitzchak Rabin once remarked that the future Mossad Chief Meir Dagan had “the unique capacity to invent antiterrorist operations that look like movie thrillers.” But what happens when the movie doesn’t have a happy ending?

Presumably, consequences for the writers.

Current Mossad Director Roman Gofman has removed the two officials most closely associated with the agency’s plan to topple the Iranian regime. One had run the Mossad’s intelligence directorate since December; the other headed the Iran division. This follows the ouster of the deputy director last month, who was similarly linked to the operation.

Their plan centered on Iran’s minority populations, built on the theory that armed pressure at the periphery would revive the mass protest movement at the center and finish the job. Removing the architects of this strategy amounts to acknowledging the obvious: the plan failed.

It appeared to start successfully. Israel conducted strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions along Iran’s border with Iraq, timed to open a corridor for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iranian Kurdistan and push toward northwestern cities. Thousands of young Kurds were expected to join them. They were slated to advance eastward while armed militias from other minority groups struck Iranian territory from all directions, pushing toward Tehran. The U.S. had armed these proxy forces, but the plan unraveled when Fox News reported the attack was imminent. Turkish President Erdogan phoned Trump and, in a furious call, talked him out of U.S. backing for the operation.

A pivot to military capability targets, several ceasefires, countless threats and reversals later, we are left with the Supreme Leader still alive and kicking, though only on one leg.

, , ,The dismissals are also part of a larger organizational shift inside the Mossad, which is facing significant internal resistance. Gofman is the first outsider to be appointed head of the agency since Dagan in 2002 and is attempting a similar internal reform; unsurprisingly, an organization founded on secrecy with a notorious and somewhat deserved ego is not a fan of people outside the family taking the reins. According to Dagan, 300 people quit after his appointment—so far, Gofman has only fired three, and only those with whom he reportedly had little to no chemistry.

Ultimately, Dagan was one of the most successful directors the Mossad has ever had, running it longer than anyone else in history except the legendary Isser Harel. That’s because he got results. Gofman’s tenure will be measured in exactly the same way.

Look! It’s Fox News that caused this plan to unravel! Trump was going to support a plan for the Kurds to topple the oppressive Iranian theocracy, but Fox News scuppered the whole thing. I hope they’re happy, for they foiled the once chance the Iranian people had to get their freedom. Of course it’s possible that this plan would not have worked, but now we’ll never know. And how does Segal know that Mojtaba Khamenei has only one leg now? I didn’t even know if the guy is still alive. ‘

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: With the exception of Pearl Harbor.” The first item gives the column its title:

→ Trump on the state of U.S.-Japanese affairs: Quote of the week (said on Sunday but we’ll count it):

Reporter: Mr. President, why is the U.S. intervening to support the Japan yen at this time?

Trump: To support who?

Reporter: To support the Japanese currency.

Trump: Because we have a good relationship with Japan. We’re very strong, very, very strong financially, and they are, you know, they have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help. And we’re always there for Japan. Japan’s been very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor. They were not good.

The man never lets go of a grudge, and frankly, that’s not the worst quality in a president!

This is an excerpt from Nellie’s take on Jason Arday, now an ex-professor who sings with the Choir Invisible:

→ Jason Arday, a star: I’m sure one day, elite institutions will not allow themselves to be conned so thoroughly by hustlers that everyone, including the con man, is humiliated. Today is not that day. Jason Arday—professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, the youngest ever black professor there—has resigned amid scandal, and it is a doozy, folks. He appears to have been a serial fabulist of the classic variety, but because he was black and had beautiful dreadlocks that fell below his hips, everyone around him just took what he said as The Truth. Those who looked askance at Arday and his dumbfounding achievements were clearly jealous and motivated by bigotry. It was the easiest, silliest con of all time. His story began to unravel with simple plagiarism claims, which I didn’t care about last week because all sociology professors just copy-paste their fake studies, back and forth. For me, it doesn’t matter if “A history of the London fashion scene through a transracial lens, 1914–1916” was plagiarized because it actually doesn’t matter at all. But this week things escalated: First, it looks like Arday truly just invented his research, and quite clumsily (read this from a University of Toronto professor digging through it, or this from the UK Times). Then it snowballed. People started looking into his super believable bio: He says he has autism and didn’t speak until he was 11, then at 18 he learned to read and write and went to university. Seems odd. Kind of miraculous. The claims go on. He says he did volunteer work overseas for a particular water charity (the charity says it never sends volunteers abroad). He says he ran 600 miles between Edinburgh and London in six days. Oh! Also that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, adding that he did the last nine marathons on a broken leg. Right. Prior to his Cambridge appointment, he claimed he was a visiting professor at the University of Glasgow, Ohio State University, and an honorary professor at Durham University. All of these institutions have denied that he held such positions. The man is freestyling extracurriculars. The list goes on. Was he even a mute? How much of this is a lie? And how come I had never heard of Arday, who is apparently one of the most accomplished athletes of all time?

When people started to question all this, the defenses were robust, with a group of famous professors, politicians, and other luminaries writing indignantly: “We stand in unwavering solidarity with Professor Arday. We call on universities not only to defend academic freedom and robust scholarship, but also to confront racism wherever it manifests itself, whether overtly or through persistent attempts to discredit exceptional Black academics.” I’m not sure you want to stake all of black academics on Jason Arday and these broken-leg marathons.

→ Can Israelis listen to music? Definitely no: Current Affairs published a piece arguing that Israelis like dance festivals because they’re distracting themselves from their unique and evil crimes. “For decades, a combination of EDM and drug culture have helped to numb the horror of occupation, apartheid, and genocide,” the article says. This logic is used to justify the attacks on Israelis at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, since that music festival was part of their numbing genocide dance, I guess. Here’s how the author describes the attacks on those unarmed young people at the festival:

Palestinians “fight through another smaller festival” as though the dancers at Psyduck are a group of combatants. People have gotten mad about this take, which the author thinks is odd considering that this is her moderate take: “Already, thousands of Zionist hasbara comments have flooded Instagram for an article which isn’t even as #FreePalestine as I am in everyday life.” Oh, honey; we can imagine what you say at dinner! That’s the whole point. You’re telling me that #FreePalestine is just a palatable stand-in for “I want to do unspeakable things to the Jews”? No way!

*Clickbait: Robert Lynch, a bio-cultural anthropologist and postdoc at Penn State, takes on his own discipline in a Quillette article called “What is the point of anthropology?” He sees a huge gap between biological anthropology and cultural anthropology, with the latter field by and large peddling garbage.

The founding premise of anthropology was audacious: that you could actually go and find out what humans are like, rather than simply assume it from the comfort of your own tiny corner of the world. Franz Boas, the discipline’s American founder, rejected the racial hierarchies earlier scholars had simply assumed instead of testing, and he demanded that anthropologists spend years in the field before making any claims about another culture.

. . . My postdoc advisor at the University of Missouri, Napoleon Chagnon, came straight out of that tradition. He spent more than a decade among the Yanomamö in the Venezuelan Amazon, testing fundamental questions about kinship, violence, and reproduction. He once told me that he awoke in his hammock to find the village headman standing over him with an axe raised over his head ready to strike. Do more violent men have more wives and children? It turns out that—in Yanomamö villages, at least—they do. I spent three years working and publishing with Chagnon, and in his day he was one of the most famous anthropologists alive. Because that’s what anthropologists did in the 1960s and ’70s. They asked the most interesting questions they could think of about people and their cultures, then they conducted field work in an attempt to answer them. Today, asking those same questions can get you labelled a racist or colonialist, and studying small-scale societies at all is dismissed as cultural voyeurism.

. . .What are universities for? They used to be places where humans would search for truth. “It is well worth searching for truth,” the philosopher Karl Popper once remarked; “and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.” My cultural anthropology classmates believed that people like Chagnon, Trivers, and Popper had it backwards. Truth is not an empirical matter of correct or incorrect, it is a moral matter of right and wrong. Objective truths cannot be sought, relative truths can only be defended. And those who demand empirical support for assertions are attempting to destabilise moral truths, usually in the interests of some powerful interest or other.

Carolyn Rouse is the president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Earlier this year, a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter offered her the chance to respond to a report that alleged an extreme politicisation of anthropology. The authors of that report found “a widespread deterioration in scholarly standards grounded in a pervasive repudiation of ideals of objectivity together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished.” By the time of the interview, Quillette had already published most of the report.

Rather than reckon with these findings, Rouse doubled down on the very claims the report had flagged as most absurd. No criticism that I could offer—not this essay, not the report itself—was as damning as simply letting the discipline’s most prominent member speak for herself. In 2023, her organisation cancelled a panel discussion at its annual conference about the importance of biological sex as an analytic category in anthropology on the grounds that it might have harmed members’ “safety and dignity”, and that its premise contradicted “settled science”. Asked if she regretted that decision, Rouse said:

All you need to do is literally type into Google and see that we know, factually, that there are different types of “sexes” and “genders”. You can have XY and you present as a woman, you can have XXY—they’re all variations, genetic variations. So the idea that there are two sexes is just factually incorrect, and to force biological anthropologists to teach that is the equivalent of turning an astronomy department into an astrology department. So I don’t know why we’re debating that.

Rouse goes on to call the belief that biological sex is binary “nonsensical” while admitting, in the next sentence, that she doesn’t actually know what people mean by the claim, or “why that matters to people so much”. The whole thing, she says, is “very strange”. The field of anthropology was built to understand unfamiliar beliefs and worldviews, but here was its president dismissing one of the most widely held convictions in human history as “nonsensical.”

Rouse’s response was the culmination of a process that had been gathering momentum in social-science departments for the past two decades. In 2006, I was at a colloquium at Rutgers where the primatologist Ryne Palombit was giving a talk on infanticide in Chacma baboons, a lot of which was devoted to sex differences in baboon behaviour. When it came time for questions, the chair of the department, a cultural anthropologist, raised his hand like someone about to blow a gaping hole through the whole talk and asked, “What exactly do you mean by these so-called males and females?” It is dismaying to hear a question that ignorant in a forum like the one in which it was asked when the scientific answer is so simple and well established.

Note that the deeply misguided sex-is-a-spectrum activist Agustín Fuentes was one of three people who wrote the Society a letter that helped get the sex panel cancelled. That’s news to me, but I’m not surprised.  Lynch’s conclusion:

What is the purpose of a field like anthropology? The people who trained me were some of the most curious people I have ever known. They were people like Robert Trivers, whose observations of pigeons jockeying for position on a railing outside his Cambridge apartment window led to deep insights into parental investment and sexual selection—and why the categories of “male” and “female” were never a matter of chromosomes. They were people like Napoleon Chagnon, who at the age of 26 crawled through a low gap in a palisade wall into a shabono of “burly, naked, sweaty, hideous men staring … down the shafts of their drawn arrows,” and lived with them for more than a decade. Anthropologists never used to need to be reminded that this curiosity was the very heart of their discipline. The Vanderbilt report accused them of losing it. An hour with its president was the only confirmation anyone needed.

Cultural anthropology, at least now, seems totally captured, but there is hope for physical anthropology. Or is there? The studies of human fossils, their genetics, and their meaning, at least, continues.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is having a moment of wonder:

Hili: What is wonder?
Andrzej: That moment when you stop meowing and just stare.

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest zachwyt?
Ja: Moment kiedy przestajesz miauczeć i tylko się patrzysz.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

From Masih: three men scheduled to be executed. Two were hanged, but the third had a heart attack before being executed. (Masih breaks down in the middle of the segment.

English translation:

The painful story of Alireza Sepahi, who suffered a heart attack before being taken to the gallows, on CNN…

The world’s media remained silent about the execution machine in Iran; let’s not allow that.

I will do my utmost to stand against this silence and censorship of the killing and execution of Iranian youth.

قصه‌ی پر دردِ علیرضا سپاهی که قبل از رفتن پای چوبه‌ی‌دار سکته قلبی کرد در سی‌ان‌ان….

رسانه‌های جهان در مورد ماشین اعدام در ایران سکوت کردند، اجازه ندهیم.
در حد توانم تلاش می‌کنم در برابر این به سکوت و سانسورِ کشتار و اعدام جوانان ایرانی بایستم. pic.twitter.com/dP0UgqMKs3

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 6, 2026

From reddit via Maarten via Luana. I don’t know if it’s a joke, either!

Surely this must be satire, right? RIGHT?? https://t.co/N6w2xrT5bi

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) August 4, 2026

From Malcom: a cat gets loose on the field at Yankee Stadium. Poor thing! I hope it was not only rescued, but adopted. You can see a longer video here, but with no indication about what happened to the kitty.

A cat made the entire Yankee Stadium erupt in cheers! Let’s go, cat! 😂 pic.twitter.com/2nxtK0XNre

— Cats That Make You Go Awww (@CuteAdorableCat) August 2, 2026

The Number Ten Cat touts himself:

Monarch of all I survey https://t.co/TmQzD2Nj1R

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 6, 2026

Two from my feed. First, the Jason Arday saga: a gift that never stops giving:

This is wild. The Atlantic has obtained a copy of Jason Arday’s book proposal. In it, he claims to have:

– Experienced ‘locked-in’ syndrome for several months after being hit by a car. Doctors advised his family to have the life support machine turned off, but he awakened…

— Paul Embery (@PaulEmbery) August 7, 2026

As if we needed proof that crows are wicked smart. Translation from the Chinese:

A guy feeds four cookies to a crow all at once, to see how the crow takes them all away. After watching, you can’t help but feel that crows are just too smart!

男子一次性投喂四块饼干，看看乌鸦是怎么全部带走的，看完不禁觉得乌鸦智商太高了！ pic.twitter.com/0OI12KhiYp

— iPaul (@iPaulCanada) August 5, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was five years old, and would have been 89 today had she lived. https://t.co/x4Rnch5aGY

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 8, 2026

From Matthew. I prefer to watch ducklings nap on a rock:

Sometimes in life it is necessary to spend an hour (maybe even two) doing nothing but sitting and watching a baby newt eat worms on top of a waterlily leaf. 🪷

— Juliet Turner (@juliet-turner.bsky.social) 2026-07-28T17:23:07.839Z