Welcome to The Cruelest Day, Tuesday, August 11, 2026, and Ingersoll Day, celebrating the life of “The Great Agnostic,” born on this day in 1833 (died 1899). Today he’d be called “The Great Atheist.” Ingersoll was an eloquent speaker, great writer, and by all accounts, a genial and lovely man. My favorite quote from Ingersoll, which I often used on lectures about the incompatibility of science and faith, is this:
“There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: ‘Let us be friends.’ It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: ‘Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet’.”
Here he is:
It’s also National Panini Day, National Raspberry Bombe Day, and National Raspberry Tart Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Strait of Hormuz remains a sticking point in the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran. Trump thought the opening was imminent, but that wasn’t Iran’s plan.
For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.
But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.
This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.
“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”
Hanging over diplomatic talks since April has been the White House’s ultimatum that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon. Trump sought to include nuclear talks as part of broader negotiations with Iran, but those have proven too difficult, leading the White House in recent weeks to focus more on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
There we have it: Trump is willing to “walk away without a nuclear deal”—the deal he said was the most important issue for the U.S. Iran was never going to get nuclear weapos, Well, forget about that; all he wants now is an open Strait of Hormuz, and you don’t have to be a genius to realize that Iran is going to delay that and deny it. This “war” may last a while, but Trump will never be able to declare victory on the terms he wanted.
*Now here’s a clickbait headline in the NYT (click to read, or find article archived here):
An excerpt:
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York posted a series of video clips on social media Saturday night saying that she would freeze her eggs despite what she called a “political risk” for sharing her decision.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 36, a Democrat who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, made the announcement hours before saying in a TV interview Sunday that she is open to running for president or the Senate.
“There is very strangely a political risk, or a political tax, that comes with sharing this info,” she said of her decision to freeze her eggs. She added that she had shared the information “to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.” The announcement further fueled speculation on social media that she is gearing up for a presidential run.
Asked on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday morning if she would consider a White House bid, she said, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility,” adding that she was “humbled” by the support she is receiving.
She also suggested she would consider running for the Senate seat held by the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, telling host Jonathan Karl that “anything is possible at this juncture.” But, she added, “I think that we have a responsibility to remain focused on the midterms and not on our individual aspirations or plans.”
Her interview Sunday — her first appearance on a major Sunday news show since 2024 — marked her most public suggestion yet of aspirations for higher office. First elected in 2018, she rapidly became a top voice in her party’s ascendant progressive wing.
While Ms. Ocasio-Cortez identifies as a democratic socialist, she distanced herself in the interview from some of the more radical positions of the Democratic Socialists of America. Asked if she supports all of the tenets of the group’s guiding document, including abolishing the Senate, police and prisons, she said no. She also said she was a member of her local D.S.A. chapter, but not the national group.
I don’t care if she freezes her eggs or not, and I don’t understand why anybody else should care, either. The time has passed when women would be criticized for deciding not to have children, or for delaying that decision. What bothers me instead about AOC is her arrant careerism, combined with no sign that she has leadership abilities to warrant elevation to the Senate, much less the Presidency. From the beginning it was clear that she wanted a Big Time Political Position, but she’s been primary sponsor of zero bills that have become law, though she’s been a co-sponsor of such bills, and has introduced minor amendments that became law. Her main activity in Congress apepars to be self-promotion. And I predicted that she’d back away from her Democratic Socialist positions when she realized that would impede her rise to the Senate. That is exactly what she’s doing now. If she does run for higher office, I hope she gets primaried.
Democrats are lashing out at fellow Democrats for the nation’s largest pandemic-era welfare fraud, theft that handed Republicans a potent example of government waste from Democratic mismanagement.
In a recent debate, Rep. Angie Craig flashed anger as she connected the scandal to progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, her opponent in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
“It pisses me off that you completely put all of the responsibility on the governor of Minnesota when you were the No. 2 elected leader in Minnesota during that period of time,” she said. “Republicans, they are going to have a field day with this with you.”
Flanagan was alongside Gov. Tim Walz when the fraud was uncovered. Craig, who represents a swing district, added she felt it was her “responsibility to warn Democratic primary voters that Republicans are dying to run against you because they believe that you have a unique vulnerability on fraud.”
Flanagan has tried to play down her role in the scandal, saying at the debate that “the governor has taken the lead” in addressing fraud fallout.
. . .Democrats are lashing out at fellow Democrats for the nation’s largest pandemic-era welfare fraud, theft that handed Republicans a potent example of government waste from Democratic mismanagement.
In a recent debate, Rep. Angie Craig flashed anger as she connected the scandal to progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, her opponent in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
“It pisses me off that you completely put all of the responsibility on the governor of Minnesota when you were the No. 2 elected leader in Minnesota during that period of time,” she said. “Republicans, they are going to have a field day with this with you.”
. . . The swindling, perpetrated mostly by Somali immigrants, has been jarring to many longtime residents because they had long clung to an unofficial Minnesota motto: Our taxes may be high, but we have good government and services.
Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, a Republican who served as a state auditor for 12 years before he led the state, said it was stunning how many officials missed major warning signs or looked the other way.
“You’ve got to have a culture that is protective of the dollar, and that culture had long disappeared,” he said.
The reason the Democrats didn’t come down hard on this fraud is because it was done largely, as noted above, by Somali immigrants. Somalis are deemed an oppressed group, and therefore any fraud on their part must be overlooked. This is one result of wokeness among Democrats. The fault is not that the culture is not protective of the dollar, but that it is protective of those perceived to be oppressed, who are treated lightly according to a “progressive” double standard.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses the Board of Peace’s U.S.-inspired plan in a piece called “Destroying the tunnels will take a decade.”
t’s Monday, August 10 and within hours of Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that Israel rejects the 15-point roadmap, Nickolay Mladenov—Director General of the Board of Peace, the Trump-led body meant to oversee postwar Gaza—sat down with me to explain why Israel should want the very thing Bibi had just rejected.
His entire case reduces to one word: verification. Nobody is required to do anything, he insists, “last of all Israel,” before verified steps on the ground. The IDF sits at the yellow line agreed under the comprehensive plan; the Board’s ask is only that it hold there and not fire across unless troops face a real threat. The line moves back only after individual sectors are cleared and their weapons certified, stored, and rendered unusable. If the next stage’s commitments go unmet, “the process stops.”
Why store the weapons in warehouses inside Gaza, where Hamas is “always one wall away from rearming”? Because they will be rendered unusable, he says, by the Board’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza with backing from the international force. More a reassurance than an answer.
Who destroys the tunnels? Contractors, but at this rate it will take more than a decade, and, he adds, this is precisely why Israel needs the Board of Peace: together it will go faster.
What counts as the “personal arms” Gazans may keep—might that quietly include the Kalashnikovs that actually govern the Strip? No, he says; the framework covers everything, heavy weapons to personal ones. He acknowledges that Gaza is ruled from the barrel of a Kalashnikov—which is why, he insists, those rifles and every other weapon must pass to civilian authority.
And Turkey and Qatar—the two governments Israelis least want inside Gaza? Without Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar, he says flatly, Hamas would never have agreed to the roadmap at all; their role was critical. Told that letting them help dismantle Hamas is the fox guarding the henhouse, he answers: “If I have to speak to the devil, I will speak to the devil”—to make sure no second October 7 ever occurs. The verification mechanism, he stresses, is American-led, backed by the ISF and, on paper, by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Morocco.
Pressed on whether Hamas will really disarm itself—whether the whole thing is too good to be true—he offers the tell. “I’m not building any of this on the basis of trust. And none of us are.” Clear-eyed about the risks, he says, and building on verification instead. If it doesn’t work, the process stops.
Yet despite this, Segal is in favor of at least starting to implement this plan:
My take: In contrast to the entire political establishment, I support this plan. It won’t dismantle Hamas—nothing will, not completely. But if it nets a third of the tunnels and half the Kalashnikovs, I’ll take it. Will 100,000 Kalashnikovs be handed in? Of course not. But 40,000 collected and another 300 kilometers of tunnel mapped is not nothing—and the next round, which everyone knows is coming, gets fought on considerably more favorable terms.
I’m not sure why the “next round” will be more favorable to Israel, much less the U.S. Yes, half the guns is “not nothing’, but it’s not far from nothing. We’re a long, long way from peace in Gaza.
*The famous “Furthur” bus documented in Tom Wolfe’s book, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which the Merry Pranksters, Neil Cassady, and Ken Kesey took their act on the road, is getting ready for one more trip (article archived here). I had no idea that it still existed. (Wikipedia’s article on Furthur notes that there have been two buses, but this trip will use the original, the one in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test )
Among the rolling hills outside Eugene, Ore., down a winding gravel path and inside a big barn sits a school bus built in 1939. Its once-blazing colors have faded. Its roof is crumbling. Its windows are cracked. The only regular occupants these days are insects.
It might look like a hunk of junk, but the muted technicolor splotches tell the story of one of the most exuberant periods of San Francisco history.
Sixty years ago, this bus symbolized the city’s counterculture revolution, the embrace of psychedelic drugs and the live-out-loud, love-your-neighbor ethos for which the era is remembered.
With the nation once again facing war, polarized politics and cultural battles, Zane Kesey thinks some of that old bus magic is needed. And that is why he has agreed to send the bus, the one he helped cover in swirls of Day-Glo paint when he was 3, back to the city that spawned a movement.
“I would love to see it adored again,” he said. “And for people to feel that pure, innocent love that came out of it.”
His father, Ken Kesey, who died in 2001, had just written the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” when he purchased the former school bus that a large Bay Area family had tricked out with beds, benches and a refrigerator for road trips. Mr. Kesey and his freethinking friends, called the Merry Pranksters, painted the bus in psychedelic colors, cut a sun roof into it, added a powerful sound system and installed a balcony on top.
. . .So later this month, it will leave the Kesey family farm in Pleasant Hill, Ore., a short drive from Eugene, for the first time since 1969. A flatbed truck will carry it down Interstate 5 to California, over the Bay Bridge and into the city. In the dead of night, when the streets are quiet, it will trundle into Golden Gate Park and into its Hall of Flowers alongside the botanical gardens.
There, starting Sept. 5, the bus will be on display as part of a show called “Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park,” put on by the Haight Street Art Center, which aims to preserve and showcase art and cultural artifacts from the city’s counterculture movement. The exhibit will also feature Jerry Garcia’s BMW, live performers, puppetry and storytelling.
I’d love to see this iconic bus, but if you’re in SF and a Wolfe/Kesey/Cassady fan, go see it! The NYT article has lots of cool photos (see the archived version), but I’ll show two from the Wikipedia article as well as the whole movie about the original trip.
Here’s the original Further in 1964:
And the inside, also from Wikipedia; note the psychedelic painting (the bus was of course loaded with drugs). You can see more in the movie below. Cassady, of course, was the driver, and the only driver.
Here’s the video “Magic Trip” (out in 2011) with Ken Kesey, my hero Neal Cassady, and the Merry Pranksters. I’m so glad this is free on YouTube. Click on “watch on YouTube”, or go here.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cats are making Big Plans:
Szaron: Got any plans for tomorrow?
Hili: Yes, I’ll be lying in a different spot.
In Polish:
Szaron: Masz jakieś plany na jutro?
Hili: Tak, będę leżała w innym miejscu.
*******************
From Funny and Strange Signs, this one in Times Square:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From Meow Incorporated:
From Masih; an Iranian woman hanged for defending herself against sexual assault and killing the assailant.
Islamic Republic in Iran hangs 24-Year-old woman who defended herself from sexual assault
Yesterday the regime executed Marziyeh Neyri yesterday, a young woman who was forced into marriage at age 17 and hanged for fighting back against her attacker.
Marziyeh was 18 years old… pic.twitter.com/mq0I2CcTYy
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 10, 2026
From Luana, the sad state of math proficiency in UCSD students (read the whole tweet):
This sounds like a joke, but it’s not:
– 1 in 12 incoming UCSD freshmen don’t know middle school math,
– and the remedial math course was too advanced,
– so UCSD had to create a remedial remedial math course,
– and a quarter of the students placing into it had a perfect 4.0… https://t.co/cHdBjw38L8 pic.twitter.com/cbymCyG7iI
— Justin Skycak (@justinskycak) August 7, 2026
The Number Ten Cat apparently doesn’t like Ricky Gervais’s new animation, “Alley Cat”, and he strikes back at Gervais:
Two can play this game: I’m writing a cartoon about a comedian from Berkshire who hasn’t written anything funny for a decade https://t.co/x4R7VCyNyd
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 8, 2026
From Malcolm, a Japanese school bus. So cool, and look at the little girl bow before she gets on! (Sound up.)
Translation from the Spanish: “Japan’s school buses are causing a sensation abroad.”
Los autobuses escolares de Japón están causando sensación en el extranjero pic.twitter.com/rX0rxTdVHa
— Sabiduría Eterna. (@LealtadSabia) August 3, 2026
One from my feed; it is a sin to disturb a sleeping cat:
Coming across a cat on his way, this man stopped to play with it until it drifted off to sleep right there. He stayed completely still afterward, careful not to disturb its rest. No act of kindness is ever too small, and the world keeps turning because of men like him, truly 🐾 pic.twitter.com/90Kh0UKV2S
— Enezator (@Enezator) August 10, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
11 August 1928 | Dutch Jewish girl Ariette Wilk was born in The Hague.
In December 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz. After the selection she was murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/YgJGvQGy8V
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 11, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. Matthew says that in the first one, the grouper just wants a cuddle:
— Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! (@standplaatskrk.pl) 2026-08-10T11:55:42.419Z
Matthew sent me this yesterday and told me that perhaps the answer would appear soon. But it hasn’t, and it may be a mistake:
Ok the answer to this is apparently 40 but I have no idea why. Any ideas? 🧪 #academicsky
— John Stott (@jpsastro.bsky.social) 2026-08-09T09:33:56.351Z
Today I will mourn for the loss of both Ariette Wilk and Marziyeh Neyri.
I assume the “trick” in the puzzle is that the missing value is not the square marked “?”. But I still can’t figure out what the missing value actually means, or why it is 40.
But the quesiton says “Can you fill in the missing value?” not “Can you fill in the missing value ?”. The missing space is the “trick” I guess, to make you think it is asking you to fill in that space, when in fact the ? is just terminating the question.
Misprint or one trick card from a company that is not known for inserting trick cards? Question authority.
‐-‐‐———-
John Stott
@jpsastro.bsky.social
· 2d
Disappointed if it is a misprint but also the card pack is no where near difficult enough in general for it to be in a different base
Folks, we lost another war. Among the reasons:
Iran controls the Strait (Thanks Donald).
Gas prices will not come down (Thanks Donald).
Airline fares will remain higher, in part, because of higher fuel costs.
The U.S. is reportedly low on expensive long range munitions because our President does not want soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors to get hurt.
The Iranian regime (particularly the IRGC) is stronger than ever (Donald, they have all the cards).
And our president lied to us and particularly the Iranian people when he said help was on the way.
Mr. President, you’re a coward and a loser.
That’s a bit unfair. Trump said help is on the way, and then the theocratic leaders were taken out en masse. So it was not a lie. At that point Trump probably expected the people to rise up again, but they did not. And the IRGC turned out to be more powerful than expected.
Ken Kesey was a terrific author, and he was not a one-hit wonder. Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion are both well worth reading. And I am glad the bus is taking another trip. I wish that I could see it.
What can we say about Marziyeh Neyri? The execution of Marziyeh is a tragic barbarity, and it is worth remembering her name, so that she does not disappear among the many others murdered by that barbaric regime. As always, thanks to Masih for keeping her memory alive (at the risk of her own life. In an age where the words “courage” and “hero” are overused, she is a shining example of the real thing).
As for the looneyleft idiots who praise that regime, who support legalized rape and killing of women and dissidents: Yep, that is the start of a better world; let’s hear it for the DSA. I hope that anyone who votes for them realizes what they are actually doing. Oh well, we all know what Vladimir Ilyich said about omelettes and eggs.
And as for universities—they are graduating people who are both illiterate and innumerate. And I wish I could say that that will change in the near future, but I don’t believe it. I remember working at UCSD with pioneers of AI and in the supercomputer center (the ugliest building on the campus). How ironic that the university where Rumelhart, McClelland, Norman, Hinton, and other such pioneers worked is now a model of innumeracy.
According to yesterday’s Times of Israel Daily Briefing (always excellent), part of the motivation for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vocal rejection of the Gaza agreement is Israeli domestic politics. He is trying to portray himself as strong enough to stand up to President Trump. Yet, Israel is starting to implement parts of the plan nonetheless. https://youtu.be/TJ4jgPyU-n8?is=h-G5UYqrXonwWPra.
No. Israel should not rely on the promises of others for their security—particularly Hamas (!). If they move forward with the deal, the Board of Peace needs to enforce the verification steps rigidly. Board of Peace Director General Mladenov‘s very public emphasis of the verification steps does put Hamas on notice that it is expected to comply fully. My guess is that the plan will start moving forward, slowly, and so will accusations of non-compliance and threats of withdrawal. We’ll see what happens when the new Israeli government takes shape after the upcoming elections.
Was the woman executed in Iran 18 or 24? Not that the age makes any hanging justified. But the apparent discrepancy undermines the credibility of the report.
She was 18 when she committed the “crime” of defending herself. She was 24 when she was murdered by the regime.
At least that is what I understand from reading Masih’s posts. I see no reason to doubt the credibility.
I had not opened the whole post on X. Your take is correct. Thanks.
It’s very disappointing that the US was not able to dislodge this vile regime.
The blockade still remains and ships are being turned back. This will hurt the regime financially but I don’t think it will cause them to fall.
I don’t know much about AOC but there’s no way I would have publicly announced the egg-freezing. Why would she make it public?
Oh, but she’s doing it for us. Putting her humble familial aspirations on ice so she can embrace the downtrodden and despised, lift us all up in brotherly and sisterly love.
Oye, mamacita. Vamos a bailar.
I don’t get the popularity of AOC among the “anti-colonial” far Left. Shouldn’t the fact that her last name includes Cortez disqualify her for them?
What does it mean to “render unusable” an AK? Anything from removing the firing pin to cutting it in half. If the things are gonna be stored, it must be something like the former, right? Else why would anyone want to store 10,000s of chopped up AKs? So then the “civilian authorities” will ensure Hamas doesn’t get their hands on them….how? Bloodthirsty savages Hamas are but stupid they are not. They’ll find a way to get their hands on those “rendered unusable” guns.
This deal stinks as it is yet another case of Israel being expected to entrust its national security to outside actors, in this case a mini UN because, you know, that’s worked so well in the past.🤦🤦🤦
The only way to disarm Hamas is to prise their guns from their cold, dead hands.
Let sleeping cats lie. Both Ingersoll and Jerry Falwell were born on this day. I learned from Wikipedia that Falwell was a Dispensationalist. I’m looking it up.
My guess is that the IRGC really wants to control that Strait of Hormuz. Otherwise, they have no cash and no leverage. The rest of the world says ‘no’. That includes the US, Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, etc. The only real allies, the IRGC has, are N. Korea and Russia. The conflict will continue, is a reasonable guess.
AOC has made many mistakes. For example, claiming that Venezuela was south of the Equator and that unemployment was low because people had two jobs. Vance dreams of running against her. He is likely to be disappointed.
Ricky Gervais loves cats, and I’m sure he and Larry the Cat would get on well. Larry’s “progressive” ghostwriter is being spiteful because Gervais is gender critical.
POSIWID: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. At UCSD, there’s no mistake involved with eliminating the SAT. They created a system with the purpose of admitting students who lacked basic skills because this enabled them to admit a wider number of non-white & non-Asian students, as well as any other kids they want to admit who don’t have the academic chops to do well on the SAT. This tradeoff would have been known to UCSD when they designed the system. I don’t really understand why they are changing it – the system worked as designed.