Welcome to Sunday, August 9, 2026, the Sabbath for goyische cats, and National Spirit of ’45 Day, meaning this:
National Spirit of ’45 Day honors the can-do attitude of an entire generation affected by the trials and hardships of World War II. Observed every year on second Sunday in August, communities around the country hold events and memorials. Each one honors those who have inspired us, sacrificed, and preserved our nation for future generations.
The image is best expressed in this poster, “We Can Do It!“, by J. Howard Miller, and although the poster is famous now, it wasn’t seen much during the war. (It is meant to show that women stepped into “men’s jobs” when the men went off to war.) As Wikipedia says, this image is “often mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter“, which is a different depiction of a female war production worker.” See the “Rosie” link for the real images.
It’s also Book Lovers Day, International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, Melon Day, National Polka Day, and National Rice Pudding Day (this pudding, along with sticky toffee pudding, are the world’s two best species in the pudding genus).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 9 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The U.S. has stopped attacking Iran, but Iran is reported to have attacked a U.A.E. ship in the Strait of Hormuz just yesterday.
The United Arab Emirates said a ship affiliated with its national oil company came under an Iranian missile attack early Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz, further muddying the outlook for a deal to open the strategic waterway.
The U.A.E. blamed the attack on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary group tasked with protecting the regime and maintaining Tehran’s grip on the strait.
The attack comes as Iran’s top leaders weigh a draft agreement with Oman to set up new shipping lanes through the strait and gradually open it to traffic in exchange for concessions from the U.S. Iran is seeking sanctions waivers to sell its oil and an end to the U.S. blockade.
President Trump called off a wave of U.S. attacks last weekend citing progress in talks and has said a deal to reopen the strait was close. But mediators say it has stalled in recent days amid Iranian demands for financial relief and a U.S. insistence that shipping traffic not be impeded.
The Revolutionary Guard early in the war choked off traffic through the strait—the thoroughfare for a fifth of the world’s oil—and has kept it constrained with regular attacks on ships.
“For us, the Strait of Hormuz is not merely an economic waterway, but rather a key component of our geopolitical and strategic power,” the Revolutionary Guard’s spokesman said on state media Saturday.
The spokesman and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the agreement with Oman wouldn’t reopen the strait without concessions from the U.S.
Iran is vowing to bar U.S. Navy warships from passing through the strait as part of any agreement to reopen the waterway, pressing its goal of curtailing America’s decades-old military presence in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. officials have told mediators they won’t accept Iranian restrictions or tolls on Hormuz traffic.
Now Iran is just shooting itself in the foot, for they stand to gain nothing from such an attack. It does, however, show how persistent they are in their aim to gain some control (and money) from ships going through the Strait. The statement by the Revolutionary Guard Spokesman above is accurate. And if there’s a “ceasefire” that doesn’t take the Strait back to where it was before the war, Trump will have lost one of the big things he said he’d win.
*And, in a related move, Iran issued a long list of conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz (article archived here).
A top Iranian national security official delivered a sweeping set of demands on Saturday that he said the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen to maritime traffic, throwing the fate of the critical trade waterway into question.
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, issued a statement carried by state media laying out multiple requirements for reopening the strait. He called for the United States to lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, withdraw the U.S. military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region and threats against the country.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s demands. A previous cease-fire between Iran and the United States, agreed to in June, had said that sanctions would be fully lifted only in the event of a final deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. And U.S. officials have said in the past that Iran could access its frozen funds only if it committed to giving up its highly enriched uranium first.
The statement from Mr. Zolghadr came as Iran and Oman have been negotiating an agreement on the future management of the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between the two countries. Iran effectively closed the strait in retaliation for being attacked by the United States and Israel in February.
Mr. Zolghadr’s list of demands upended expectations that a deal with Oman would soon allow commerce to flow through the strait once more and ease global energy prices. They will likely put pressure on President Trump to consider Iran’s conditions if he wants to lower consumer prices for Americans, which pose a risk for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections.
These will not stand, at least according to Trump’s latest statements. War reparations? Release of assets? And Iran still controlling transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump usually responds quickly and negatively to such nonsense, but his silence shows that he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. I expect some response today.
*The NYT reports that Iranians protestors are devastated because they believed Trump’s promise that their oppressive theocratic government would be toppled. (article archived here). But Trump himself didn’t even believe what he promised:
In the weeks leading up to the U.S. war with Iran, President Trump cheered on the Iranian protesters rising up against their government, telling them that they should “save the names of the killers and abusers” and that he would come to their aid.
“HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” he promised.
But more than five months into the conflict, liberating the Iranian people has been one of the war’s most glaring unfulfilled objectives.
Iran has executed at least 26 people in connection with the January protests since Mr. Trump made his promise, with many more protesters potentially at risk, according to Amnesty International. U.S. officials believe Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is even more interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon than his father, who was killed in an airstrike on the opening day of the war.
And as Iranians remain locked in crisis, Mr. Trump is looking for a way out. Negotiators are working on a deal to restart shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut down, as Mr. Trump tries to extricate the United States from a conflict that has lasted far longer, and proved far more costly, than he anticipated.
In an interview this summer, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he never really believed that the uprising he encouraged would happen anyway because Iranian security forces would crush the demonstrators.
“I never thought, unless they could be completely armed, I never thought they’d have that kind of uprising, because these people are violent,” Mr. Trump told the conservative podcaster Hugh Hewitt.
But for Iranians who listened to Mr. Trump’s early promises, the sense of betrayal is real.
“I genuinely thought that help was on the way, but I was so wrong,” said Vahid, a 35-year-old from Tehran who works at a start-up company, echoing a sentiment expressed by numerous Iranians in interviews with The New York Times. All spoke on the condition that The Times identify them only by their first names, out of fear of reprisals from their government.
. . . The White House declined to answer questions about Mr. Trump’s promise to help liberate the Iranian people. Instead, officials cited Mr. Trump’s goal — which, as yet, is unmet — of ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon, saying that objective would benefit the Iranian people as well.
Maybe a marginal benefit, but not nearly as much as helping with an uprising (remember yesterday I reported that a Kurdish rebellion was in the offing but was canceled after Fox News reported on it prematurely. It’s sad that America doesn’t care much about ending a dictatorship once we’re in a war with it, and of course we can’t start wars solely to end dictatorships (that’s not why this one was started). But once we’re at war with a dictatorship whose people fervently wish for its end, yes, we should try to end it.
*Fabulist Jason Arday’s new book, Great and Unfortunate Things, is scheduled to come out this week (August 11), and it puts the publisher, Simon & Schuster, in a difficult position. The book likely depicts many things that aren’t true, but it may sell like hotcakes to those who want to see what Arday says about his life. As the Guardian reports, the book hasn’t been withdrawn:
Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism and embellishment, claimed he was paid “1.4 million” for his forthcoming memoir detailing his extraordinary backstory.
Arday was dogged by a growing series of questions over his academic work and credentials before he resigned on Wednesday night, saying the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love”.
His resignation came after Cambridge announced it would launch an investigation following “new information” about his qualifications and career.
Despite allegations against Arday, Simon & Schuster said earlier this week it was planning to go ahead with the publication of his memoir on 11 August in the US and 27 August in the UK. Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication of Great and Unfortunate Things by Jason Arday as planned”.
In a previous interview with the Guardian, Arday said Simon & Schuster had offered 1.4m for the book in a “pre-empt”, a type of deal in which a publisher is so keen on a book they put in a high offer to take it off the table before it can go to auction. Arday did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars. Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum.
One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable. They said a book such as Arday’s would normally be expected to sell about 5,000 copies, so with £2 of royalty per copy, that equates to an advance of £10,000, not 1.4 million dollars or pounds.
The Washington Free Beacon lists some edits the publisher made to defuse the storm they thought would come (and it did):
The wider public would not learn of the accusations against Arday, including those of pervasive plagiarism, until last month. But Simon & Schuster had been making telltale edits to his book since January.
The Free Beacon examined two pre-publication proofs of the book: a U.S. version dated Jan. 6, and the U.K. final edition, dated June 18. Comparing the two iterations reveals that Simon & Schuster made a series of changes, including altering verbatim quotes, that appear to have been an effort to protect his reputation—which is all the more valuable now that he stands accused of sweeping embellishments, dishonesty, and even academic fraud. One edit effectively acknowledges the possibility that he could lose his professorship.
The book, Great and Unfortunate Things, chronicles how, against all odds, a severely autistic, working-class British lad who didn’t learn to read until he was 18 earned a Ph.D. and reached the pinnacle of academia. The memoir was meant to be a literary victory lap after Arday, 41, in 2023 became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s 800-year history.
Perhaps most notably, the book was edited to allow for the possibility that Arday would not be a “professor” indefinitely. In the earlier edition, he recalls marveling upon receiving his assistant professorship at Durham University in 2021: “I’m a professor. Whatever happens, that’s the salutation that I will carry with me for the rest of my days. That’s mad.” The later edition adds the word “professional” as a qualifier, saying he would carry the title “for the rest of my professional days.”
. . . Simon & Schuster’s edits also make it harder, perhaps deliberately, to corroborate or disprove Arday’s stories. The names of two publicists involved in his charitable efforts—and the names of certain professors and a disability officer—were replaced by pseudonyms, or the names were removed entirely.
The original:
What will be published:
It’s clear that Simon & Schuster knew that Arday had a problematic past and exaggerated his accomplishments. The Free Beacon ends this way:
Following the memoir’s mawkish conclusion, in which Arday gives advice to marginalized populations, the early edition tacks on a bio that touts Arday’s superlative academic bona fides. In its place, the updated draft simply includes a playlist of the pop songs he has sprinkled throughout the text as emotional anchor points.
. . . and a bit from theTimes of London article (archived link). yet another couple of speed bumps on his life’s road claimed by Arday:
Professor Jason Arday claimed in a book proposal for his memoir to have had testicular cancer and locked-in syndrome and to have almost died in a car accident when he was a teenager.In the document pitching his autobiography, obtained by The Times, the Cambridge academic said he had been left in a coma by a car accident as a teenager.
According to his account, doctors at his bedside recommended that he be taken off life support “as an act of mercy”, but he was spared after his mother insisted that he was “going to do something with his life”.
Arday was able to report the episode because, he said, he had had locked-in syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which a person is physically paralysed but conscious.
The episode was omitted from the final version of his book, which will be released next week. The 45-page proposal has raised more questions about Arday’s life and professional achievements after he was accused of plagiarising his PhD thesis and exaggerating his athletic and fundraising feats.
I haven’t seen any real evidence for any of Arday’s medical claims—nor for his claims of late speaking (age 11) and late-developing literacy (age 18). It’s hard for me to believe that Simon and Schuster will still publish this book IF they suspected that his stories were made up. Did they omit these fables, or did Arday? We don’t know. But it’s clear the book is coming out: it’s still listed on Amazon (see screenshot below):
*Another from the NYT, reporting that although war has considerably diminished (“decimated,” as the MSM says incorrectly) Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it still has enough uranium to quickly produce as many as ten nuclear bombs (article archived here).
Chief among President Trump’s reasons for launching the war in Iran was preventing it from building a nuclear weapon. More than five months in, officials and experts say,the conflict may have slowed Iran’s nuclear program but not stopped it.
Because Iran has barred U.N. inspections of its most sensitive nuclear sites — a key part of any eventual peace deal — the precise fate of its highly enriched nuclear fuel is unknown. And despite strikes on three key nuclear sites in 2025 and 2026, Tehran appears to have retained a stockpile of enough near weapons-grade fuel to quickly develop as many as 10 nuclear bombs, according to U.N. inspectors.
. . .So far, the war has shown that Mr. Trump’s “‘maximum pressure’ policies and military misadventures did not, and cannot, destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity,” Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, wrote in a recent analysis.
“The capability is largely still there,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, author of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Iran Nuclear Monitor.
. . .James Acton, a physicist and Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said enough of Iran’s nuclear program still exists that, if left alone, “I would imagine they could produce a bomb in less than a year at this point, possibly substantially less than year.”
Ms. Geranmayeh stopped short of putting a timeline on Iran’s ability to rebuild. Still, “without monitoring, Iran could rapidly enrich its existing uranium stockpile to weapons-grade,” she wrote in her most recent analysis.
Iran will do anything, including lying about its actions and intentions, to keep its nuclear program going, for one of the regime’s big aims is to have a bomb they can use on Israel, or as a deterrent against being attacked. Even if they agree to something with Trump, he won’t be President forever, and if there are to be inspections, they should be done without warning, be thorough, and last forever. That’s a big ask.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are in the dumps:
Hili: Life used to be better.
Andrzej: Yes, but we didn’t know it then.
In Polish:
Hili: Życie było kiedyś lepsze.
Ja: Tak, ale wtedy o tym nie wiedzieliśmy.
*******************
An image sent in by Jay Tanzman, showing “An anxious food truck.” It was taken in Saarbrücken, Germany:
From TherionArms:
From Dad Jokes:
From Masih. Apparently the Iranian man depicted below had a heart attack before he was going to be hanged, and they revived him just to hang him again. Masih has trouble getting through this without breaking up.
This video is only one minute. Alireza is dancing. Before they could hang him, his heart stopped, so he survived but now the Islamic Republic wants to hang him.😔
Please write to leaders and influential people to pick up their phone, call Iran or post publicly, demand they stop. pic.twitter.com/tfhmBU4eaV
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 8, 2026
From Luana. I will read this Atlantic article, but I’m not going to read Arday’s memoir. Look at what’s in it (read the whole tweet):
The Atlantic reads Jason Arday’s memoir, and finds his life story was even more inspirational than we thought
He was beaten so badly as a teen he became an epileptic. When the boys who did this were caught, he magnanimously told the judge he didn’t want them to go to prison.… pic.twitter.com/RsJaVd7AOz
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 6, 2026
From the Number Ten Cat, who posted this yesterday on International Cat Day:
Today is #InternationalCatDay – expect all cats to strut around as if we own the place, the same as every other day. pic.twitter.com/zBC57CdSwi
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 8, 2026
From Malcolm. The English translation is, “A so-called Rehcatz,” with “Rehkatz” meaning “fawn” in German.
Ein sogenanntes Rehcatz
🥰 pic.twitter.com/axzvH2uCYq— Frqnk (@FrqnkSt) August 3, 2026
One from my feed—a lovely reunion:
Ein nur wenige Tage altes Lämmchen war verloren gegangen. Schaut nur wie glücklich beide sind, die Mutter und das Lamm, als sie wieder zusammen waren. pic.twitter.com/FhULz99LCi
— Lexa _ Reloaded (@webaxvita) August 7, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was eight years old. https://t.co/6E1ipT9ZDy
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 9, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. His comment on this first one? “They ate the owner.”
The Tacoma Police Department estimates over 30 cats were free-roaming on board a deserted watercraft Thursday – with no sign of the owner.
I’m not sure what this one means, but it would be peachy to come back as a duck:
— beetle moses (@beetlemoses.bsky.social) 2026-07-29T15:28:10.067Z
The thing about Arday that fascinates me is whether he believes his stories? He might be a con man, who knows he is lying and does not believe his own hype. He might be a fantasist, in which case he might have convinced himself.
The fact that his pitch to the publishers contains, er, facts that do not appear in the book (a second brain tumour, testicular cancer, a coma with locked-in syndrome) may suggest that he does not believe his own stories and is willing to change them. Or it may mean that Simon & Schuster didn’t believe them and had him omit them, in which case they are cynically enabling him.
Following the saga on WEIT has been fascinating, and I’ve passed through moments of schadenfreude as the inevitable train wreck unfolds. I don’t know why he did this to himself, but perhaps he couldn’t help it? The tall tales might just tumble out to fill in a void within a man who felt empty, and so one might feel sorry for him right now. But didn’t he himself shut down early doubters by accusing them of racism? So what he did was certainly not a victimless crime.
Those medical stories are so strange. An unlucky young person might have one of those conditions but ALL of them?
Two brain tumours, testicular cancer and locked-in syndrome? And only one makes it into the memoir? Either he doesn’t believe himself, or his publisher doesn’t.
They should go ahead and publish Arday’s book, but as fiction.
God, what if he got a lucrative movie deal? There was that con woman who claimed to be a rich heiress and then wiggled her way into New York high society. A movie was made about her, although she did not benefit from it. The book publishers might see that as a path to getting something out of this.
Very slight correction. “Fawn” in German is “Kitz” or “Rehkitz”, not Rehkatz. Joke still works well enough though.
The Arday episode reveals just how easily the most educated and well-read among us can be seduced. What fools.
Better to avoid calling people “fools”, as we all are fools in some respect.
Arday may be a sensation at the moment, but my guess is that he’ll soon recede from the news and will eventually disappear. He and his book will have a short shelf life. How many of these sorts of crazies have lasting impact?
One of Arday’s classmates from elementary school has made a video gone viral describing Arday as “chatty” and a kind of class clown, which sounds much more plausible given his present personality than his being nonverbal. Equally convincing to me is the fact that none of his childhood teachers has come forward supporting Arday’s claims, which I would have expected them to do if they were true.
I knew a conman like Arday my final year at prep school. He had the entire student body believing he was the scion of a fabulously wealthy family with seven mansions scattered throughout the world while simultaneously, he never paid the school tuition, stringing them along for at least two years with stories of a father in prison having difficulty accessing his funds.
We knew him as Bernie Chubet. He was a sociopath. He also was the most magically charismatic human being I’ve ever known in real life (And I’ve seen Bill Clinton). When Bernie walked into a room – any room – everything stopped and he was beheld by every pair of eyes. And he walked into some pretty fancy rooms – he was obsessed with the Duponts and Rothchilds and crashed their parties and affairs. A kleptomaniac, he stole a fountain pen from a Dupont and was uncovered when namedropping at a party, using the very pen as a prop, from that Dupont’s relative.
He lived across the hall from me, and a group of about five of us became aware of and fascinated by his psychopathy, antics, and predicaments. We would ask him “gotcha” questions just to see him respond. He would literally freeze for ten to twenty seconds, and then the most brilliant lie would unfold like a perfect rose. He was clearly a genius, yet he paid another student to take his SATs.
He was obsessed with Princeton University. Evidently, he attended it, and enjoyed exclusive housing and meals, without actually being matriculated. It made national news – Dan Rather had a segment on it, and here is the NYT account:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1976/01/02/75007387.html?pageNumber=49
Years later, I found out that his roommate kept in touch with him, and was invited to his wedding. He was engaged to a young lady from very old and deep money. He was on the eve of attaining his seven mansion fantasy. His former roommate took his fiancé aside, to warn her about exactly who she was about to marry. She shushed him up midway through, and told him that Bernie had told her everything, and that she was still madly in love with him. The marriage occurred.
Arday, Chubet – no doubt cut from the same cloth.
That name appears in a criminal case involving sales of amphetamine.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/414/1018/84502/
I was a senior in 1971-1972. Your case is appellate from 1969, so likely someone else, as the BC I knew would have been a minor. Haven’t thought about him in years before this thread. What an extraordinary fellow!
One meets these kinds of people occasionally, Roger. Thankfully very rarely as statistically they’re unusual.
That’s a hilarious conman.
I wonder how the marriage turned out. Lemme guess…
🙂
D.A.
NYC
Did Arday really fool anyone? Did the deans and department heads who hired and promoted him not know what they were doing?
If one looks at Arday’s “work”, even without the plagiarism that we now know occurred, is it really enough to be a university professor? No real research, just life experiences. Is that now enough to advance in certain disciplines? I doubt that Arday is the only person whose work is this shallow, and IMO, does not contribute to the body of knowledge. Hardly worthy of the university that promoted him.
We can blame DEI, butt I think that it’s is time to take a hard look at the courses of study being offered by universities. I doubt not believe that universities should limit themselves to STEM subjects; where would we be without the humanities and (real) social sciences? But those subjects have degenerated into word-hashing and folderol, and the serious people remaining in those faculties need to clean house.
Richard Dawkins said it perfectly stating that these fields specialise in obscurantism whereas other fields such as physics have no need for flowery verbose papers. They just use silly words in a particularly incoherent incomprehensible prose style to make up for the shallowness of their ‘study’.
Prof Dawkins in the paper lately, Kelcey.
Apparently he remarried (his 4th wife). Go Richard!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/richard-dawkins-interview-selfish-gene-50th-anniversary/
He is 30 years TO THE DAY older than me. And I’m 3 wives behind!
D.A.
NYC
I met a patient once who when asked a question, would always choose a lie over the truth. Even when there was no reason to lie, he would do it, maybe from some perverse pleasure in duping people, maybe because he always told people pleasant fictions and found that when they believed him his way was smoothed. I first met him in the ER one morning and he got to asking me about my background as my English accent stuck out in rural NS. I explained my parents had moved here several years before me, and eventually he got around to asking about my father’s war service. “North Africa, Mersa Matruh and El Alamein, called Moss too? Ask him if he remembers Blackie!” I rang my father. “There were no Canadian units in the western desert.” He was not amused. I returned to “Blackie” and told him what my father had said. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. It was a game for him, win some, lose some. And so it was, every time we met.
People usually exaggerate a bit, Christopher: particularly in dating contexts. Like… men will inflate their body count, women will low ball it.
Guys lie on dating apps about their height, income, and the broads use filters/ make up (which is AMAZING).
There’s a difference though between what lawyers call “Puffery” or salesmanship, which you can control for and assume… and your friend there who just made stuff out of whole cloth.
Known often as sociopaths.
D.A.
NYC
Sure, there are sociopathological liars running around. What is amazing is that there are those who are in positions in which their claims are easily checked—and should be checked.
One of the most common such lies was—and I guess still is— stolen valor, in which men claim military service that they never did, or military exploits that they never performed. The thing is that the military keeps records, and those that did serve are outraged by such claims. It is too bad that we in the university system do not share that outrage. Many of us worked extremely hard during our doctoral studies, and many of us reached a crisis at some time during those studies. (The ones who overcame those crises are the ones with Ph.D.s, and those who did not found different careers. In my experience, these crises, struggling to get data, difficulty with experiments, following false leads, etc., are the most common reasons for dropping out of programs—and it is really tough on students.)
People making false claims about degrees, or like Arday, receive Ph.D.s without performing any real work, should really be a source of outrage in the academic community.
“ … as Mr. Trump tries to extricate the United States from a conflict that has lasted far longer, and proved far more costly, than he anticipated.” One can’t help mentally comparing this with the behavior of different head of state. Despite Trump’s incessant boasting, lying, and flagrant corruption, he appears to have a keener sense of reality than his sometime Russian pal Vladimir Vladimirovich.