Welcome to a Hump Day (“Küürupäev” in Estonian), August 19, 2026, and National Hot and Spicy Food Day. Here’s my heartthrob Jennifer Lawrence tasting and commenting on a row of increasingly spicy chicken wings. She cries in pain when she gets to the really hot ones, about 17 minutes in. She also discusses her career and persona as she noshes.
It’s also International Orangutan Day, National Potato Day, National Soft Ice Cream Day, World Humanitarian Day. and World Photo Day. Here are penguins in Antarctica, photographed in 2019. Oh, how I long to return—and I will, for I’m going on a long trip to South Georgia Island in October, 2027. There is the largest colony of King Penguins in the world.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Another misstep by Trump in the Middle East: he excoriated Oman, a good ally of the U.S., which has been holding talks with Iran over peace and the Strait of Hormuz. Why the lashing out? Because apparently Trumpo is frustrated. (Article is archived here.)
As a crumbling truce with Iran officially collapsed on Monday, President Trump signaled his frustration at his inability to resolve a war that he started but cannot seem to end.
In an interview with Fox News, the president lashed out at an American ally, Oman, that has been trying to mediate negotiations with Iran.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Mr. Trump said in a phone interview, according to Fox News’s Trey Yingst.
The latest threat toward Oman, which has facilitated talks between the United States and Iran for years and maintains that it is still a neutral mediator, came as Mr. Trump found himself without much leverage to reach the goals he set out at the start of the war.
“I think, ultimately, his threats against Oman are just a reflection of his frustration with the situation he’s created, where he has no good options,” said Nate Swanson, of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project. “He’s just reflexively lashing out, and this time Oman got in the cross hairs.”
Hostilities have now stretched past the six-month mark in a conflict that began with the United States and Israel launching strikes across Iran in February. Administration officials pledged at the time that the war would be over in four to six weeks.
On the battlefield, the United States has struck thousands of targets in Iran and dealt serious blows to the country’s military capabilities, but the president has struggled to achieve the war’s political objectives.
Oman has been a pretty faithful ally of the U.S. for a long time, with substantial cooperation in security measures and against terrorism. It’s reprehensible of Trump to take out his frustration on such an ally—just as reprehensible as dissing South Korea and kissing up to North Korea because the South didn’t help us out much in Iran (why should it?). The war may be a decisive factor in Trump (and the Republicans) taking a substantial hit in the midterms.
*Luigi Mangione’s attorneys got their way yesterday as a state court judge indefinitely postponed Mangione’s NY state trial because of his lawyers’ claim that Mangione would be put in double jeopardy with both a federal and state trial. The state of New York has a deadline to respond to the double-jeopardy claims.
Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which was slated to begin Sept. 8, has been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds following his guilty plea last week to federal charges.
Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense’s double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.
Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.
Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.
It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.
ADMangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.
This may go all the way up to the Supreme Court, and I have no idea how it will play out vis-à-vis the state trial. Mangione will have to serve about 85% of his term no matter how long he’s sentenced in the federal trial, and since he’s 28, so assuming that he gets the lighter sentence and the 85% time served with good conduct, he’s be only 48 when he’s released. But if the double jeopardy prohibition stands, I bet Carro will at least give him 30 years, which still doesn’t seem long enough for what he did.
*The Washington Post reports that “progressive” Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan could actually hurt Democrats’ chances of capturing the Senate during the midterms.
Schumer backed Rep. Haley Stevens over El-Sayed in the primary, saying he thought she had a better chance of winning in November. The New York Democrat endorsed El-Sayed after the primary, and the two men have spoken about working together to hold the seat — but they have pronounced differences about Israel.
Schumer, the first Jewish Senate leader, has spoken out against rising antisemitism in both parties. He is a longtime ally of Israel, even as he has castigated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
El-Sayed has said he is as committed to Jewish safety as he is to the safety of his daughters. But his blistering criticism of Israel during the primary alarmed many Jewish voters in Michigan, who say he has not done enough to denounce antisemitism.
El-Sayed’s challenges run deep enough that three Democratic donors in Michigan are hosting a fundraiser for his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers, on Tuesday evening, according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post. One of them, Brian Hermelin, wrote in an email to potential donors last week that El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel and toward Jews meant he could not support him.
“A party has to understand that there are consequences when it moves away from the values that brought us to it,” Hermelin wrote. “For me, this Senate race is that point.”
I had no idea that the situation was dire enough for Democratic donors to be holding fundraisers for El-Sayed’s opponent, but it’s worrisome. And I am sick of Muslim candidates attacking Israel, which is the equivalent of Jewish candidates attacking Palestine repeatedly, something that they don’t do. The criticism is not just of Netanahu, but involves blood libel-ish things like accusations of “genocide” and “apartheid”, which, if anybody’s guilty of it, would be Hamas.
*The National Review has a clickbait article (for me at least): “‘Woke One’ wasn’t just crazy—it was destructive.” Destructive because it wants to rewrite history, says author Becket Adams, because people are now trying to pretend it was something different from what it was, and, in trying to rewrite history, those people (progressives, of course) are trying to pretend they never participated in Woke One. The article’s a bit hyperbolic, but is on point. First, though, when did “Woke One” start? Grok tells me this (with a reference):
The phrase itself was coined by New York City Council Member Chi Ossé in a May 22, 2026, X post (“Woke 1 was crazyyyy”), dismissing some of his own earlier statements from around 2021. It gained wider attention in August 2026 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referenced it in an interview, framing it as a period (especially tied to COVID-era rhetoric) that had gone too far or become outdated.’
On to the New Republic article:
We’re living through a real-life attempt to erase the recent past.
“Woke One was crazy,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) laughed recently during an appearance on ABC News, approvingly quoting a New York City councilman. “Woke One was crazy. Okay, that’s a truth,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl replied. The anchor then asked whether the left had gone too far during “Woke One,” including with its calls to “defund the police.”
This is where Ocasio-Cortez — and many within her ideological cohort, whether it’s writers at Vanity Fair or the New Republic, or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or even failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong — want you to accept their version of events over your own memory.
“I think that during this time and during, especially during Covid, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful.”
She added, “I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
Total nonsense.
She’s simply trying to rewrite the record, and it’s as dishonest as it’s brazen. It’s also glaringly obvious what this is: a cleanup effort by someone with aspirations for higher office.
Her attempt to blame the “woke” era on pandemic hysteria collides with a simple fact: Anyone who is old enough to argue about this lived through 2020 — and 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. We remember the pandemic craziness as a continuation of a broader craziness that was already well underway. The term “cancel culture” appeared widely in mainstream media around 2018; “woke” itself gained popular prominence in the early 2010s.
Becket lists a lot of woke stuff before the pandemic, including all of cancel culture. You’ll remember this:
Then came the pandemic, and “Woke One” was now the effort to cancel Mozart and Flannery O’Connor while removing, dismantling, or toppling monuments to Theodore Roosevelt, the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, and Christopher Columbus.
Well, it’s useful to remember that Columbia and Serra were not perfect human beings. . .
It was the Smithsonian Institution listing as “aspects and assumptions” of “whiteness and white culture” in the United States: rugged individualism, respect for authority, politeness, punctuality, competitiveness, the nuclear family, objectivity, the scientific method, self-reliance, and hope.
And this, especially the “godless” pejorative, is clearly hyperbolic.
A political faction in this country was given carte blanche to enforce its revolutionary vision on every aspect of modern life, and it did so with ruthless devotion, capturing every major industry and social institution along the way, and with zero regard for the chaos, destruction, and lasting damage it caused.
It was an era of godless puritanism; except we know it better as the “woke” era. It was not long ago. It was every bit as bad as you remember. And its champions would prefer you forget the worst parts and the role they played — not from any sense of shame or guilt, naturally, but because the culture has shifted and your remembering might threaten their proximity to power.
What — you don’t think they’re actually sorry for what they did, do you?
Well, no. Ocasio-Cortez is backing off because she wants to be a Senator or even President, but others, like Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, or Zohran Mamdani, are clearly not backing off Woke One. And if Democrats win Congress in the midterms despite the wokeness encompassed by the DSA and its supporters, you won’t hear that much rewriting of history.
*Anti-semitic news. A Jewish student won a gold medal at an academic Olympiad, but, since Israelis weren’t allowed to compete as a country, he competed as a “neutral,” won a gold medal, and then was asked to hand it back because he wore an Israeli flag at the award ceremony. From the Jewish News: (their bolding):
A brilliant 17-year-old student from Rehovot, Yotam Budnik, has had his gold medal win disqualified at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Uzbekistan, because he draped the Israeli flag around himself as his win was announced.
Since 2024, Israel has not been allowed to compete as a national team in the computer science competition. Instead, Israeli contestants are allowed only to compete as neutral and Israel does not appear on the official results scoreboard.
As the winners were lining up on the victory podium, Budnik, the gold medal winner, draped an Israeli flag around his shoulders, aware that the win was being transmitted live on TV. Immediately afterwards the IOI leadership went into emergency session, and voted to disqualify him, wipe his score from the official global leaderboard, and revoke his winner’s certificate.
But though the organisers apparently tried to take back the gold medal itself, Budnik refused to hand it over. He told Israeli media that though his name could be removed from the rankings, his achievement could not be wiped out.
Just three weeks earlier, Budnik won a gold medal — representing Israel — at the 2026 International Mathematical Olympiad in Shanghai, where national flags were permitted.
From StandWithUs on Facebook, a photo of Budnik. It looks as if it’s okay to wear a British flag, as Brits aren’t banned from competing on a national team.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is computer-illiterate:
Hili: Andrzej is trying to find the password manager’s PIN.
Szaron: I won’t be helping him with that.
In Polish:
Hili: Andrzej szuka PIN-u do menagera haseł.
Szaron: Ja mu w tym nie pomogę.
*******************
From Cole and Marmalade:
From Now That’s Wild:
From Jesus of the Day:
Masih’s paean to the brave women of Iran who “refuse to retreat”. Do read the whole post, and remember not just the woman who want to be free, but all the people of Iran who bleed under the theocratic whip:
This is the new face of Iran? Let me tell you the truth: this is what resistance looks like in Iran.
These are the brave women crushing the compulsory hijab law beneath their feet.
And to those sitting comfortably in the West, lecturing me that the Islamic Republic has… pic.twitter.com/cGzXppHtEK
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 18, 2026
Larry the Cat posted this, and I have to say that he looks like he was ridden hard and put away wet. But, after all, he’s nearly twenty years old:
Cat’s life. https://t.co/KCEcbe3Cp3
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 17, 2026
Speaking 0f Botany Pond, here’s a relevant post from Jeff Maurer:
I’m not a “pond guy” but surely there are more efficient ways of fighting an algae bloom. https://t.co/pf8tLf6mJt
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) August 18, 2026
From Malcolm. Why aren’t airlines boarding this way? Because it’s hard to assign boarding groups to facilitate this?
boarding was solved mathematically in 2008. no airline has used it once.
why? pic.twitter.com/5XtS0ksGbd
— Rod (@rod_mallo) August 4, 2026
Two from my feed. The first freaks me out. It was taken in Poland:
July 1, 1941: Lwów.
A single photograph captures the terrifying speed at which humanity can collapse.
In the center, a young Jewish woman cries out in agony, beaten and stripped by a mob of her own neighbors, local militia, and occupying soldiers.
She is completely… pic.twitter.com/yGvlUSrWhu
— Gameover 🇦🇺🇮🇱 (@MarkoS2075) August 18, 2026
And since we have a Holocaust post, here’s another. I’ve seen this photo SO many times, and they’ve identified the murderer. The Post article says this:
The gunman is believed to be Jakobus Onnen, a French, English and gym teacher who was born in 1906 in Tichelwarf, Germany, and joined the Nazi party in 1931.
This became one of the most infamous pictures from the Holocaust. Now, thanks to AI, after 80 years of searching, the name of the Nazi executioner from this horrific photo has been revealed.https://t.co/2OpxoVYDMP pic.twitter.com/NxOHho1Rrc
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 17, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was two years old and would have been 86 today had he lived. https://t.co/ITZB4C9P3T
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 19, 2026
One from Dr. Cobb, who’s busy writing his next book. Poor kitty! (Sound up.)
this timeline is f'd is six dimensions so I cast a counterspell with this old cat vid I saved years back
— Richard McElreath 🐈⬛ (@rmcelreath.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T09:05:38.015Z
I find the use of ai and subsequent publication of a name for the infamous murderer to be horrible in and of itself. Given the number mistakes made by ai algorithms and the obvious fact that the person named (or his family or descendants) cannot face or counter his accuser, this seems like some awful bullying in a kangaroo court with accusers having zero accountability.
You have a good point in general, but you’ll be happy to know that in this case, the historian who identified Onnen as the murderer did extensive additional research to verify the AI before going public with his conclusion. Also, Onnen’s family actually cooperated in the research, by supplying pictures of Onnen.
Excellent. Thanks, Brooke. So maybe, in this case, the description should be “identified through historical research and corroborated by ai”. Or maybe first identified by ai, and then corroborated by additional historical photographic research.
Chi Osse of “woke” fame herein, council member from Brooklyn: is a KNOWN quantity here, marginally famous in fact: he is the hardest left politician in the US, a man who’d make Pol Pot blush and have Kim Il Sung say: Settle down buddy. (sigh)
Greatest city in the history of the world (I actually believe this)…. but we are so cursed here.
Trump’s latest idiocy towards Oman is typically terrible and will be ignored in the M.E.
Oman is an excellent friend, non-crazy Islamic, a cool negotiator and an honest broker. And a nice place to boot!
Wish he’d shut his trap.
D.A.
NYC
Calling the President “Trumpo” would be considered by many to be disrespecting the office of President. But his expressed view (which I believe to be sincere) is that he is the greatest President ever, by far. So the office is very lucky to have him, and shines by his reflected glory. Under such circumstances, Trumpwad’s inglorious aspects cannot possibly diminish the non-existent alleged inherent respect due the office itself, regardless of what Trumpy’s acolytes might argue.
I expect that Trumpzilla’s notion of “respect” is pretty much the same as a gangster (or gangsta). It’s not Trumpster’s fault — usual notions of respect and truth are, in Jim B’s technically apt description, in dimensions orthogonal to Trumpkin’s universe; so Trumptard doesn’t notice them and so cannot care. This is of course potentially very bad news for the rest of us — a Trumpocalypse is plausible given this Trumpanzee’s habit of hurling feces around. We may have inadvertently created a Trumpenstein monster that causes a Trumptastic Trumptastrophe.
[Sincere thanks to ChatGPT for its invaluable and unflinching assistance when asked for ‘the 10 most common one-word insults beginning with “Trump”, e.g. “Trumpo”‘. It of course does not and can not care….]
I agree that such nicknames are extremely disrespectful of the office. However, you get what you give, and Trump inevitably comes up with offensive nicknames for each of his perceived opponents and critics.
Such language belongs in the dumpster, which rhymes with……..
Is it possible Trump got his countries mixed up again?
I’ve seen at least one piece arguing that, if someone says “Woke 1 was crazy,” they should be pushed to explain exactly why it was crazy, and, presumably, which parts of Woke 1 they reject. I would say that, similarly, if someone says Mao was great, but not the excesses, they should be pushed on what they mean by excesses and why they were bad.
On the airplane boarding, airlines won’t do that because boarding early is one of the few perks that they can give frequent fliers. It would help if they stopped charging for checked luggage, which is the major impetus to get on early, so that you can be sure your bag goes in the overhead. Likewise, it would help if you didn’t have to wait twenty minutes or more for checked bags.
I read that the reason they don’t use the steffen method of boarding is that all the time saved in boarding is lost in organizing pre-boarding. Also, the method can’t work in practice because it requires splitting up people who are traveling together, including parents and children.
What surprised the hell out of me is the fact that back-to-front boarding is by far the slowest method. I always thought it was a no-brainer that it would be the fastest. I guess I was the one with no brain.
But what I want more than fast boarding is fast deboarding. For now, I’ve given up even trying. Instead of standing in the aisle and fuming because some #!@! is taking his sweet time taking his stuff out of the bin, I just stay seated until the aisle is almost clear and then cruise out. It feels fast, even if I’m the last one off.
I was also coming down here to comment about boarding. Here’s a video going into details, if you’re interested on why back to front is the worst, and why more structured versions are better (putting baggage into overhead bins is probably the biggest driver):
YouTube: The Fastest Way to Board a Plane Feels Like the Slowest.
As you already pointed out, the Steffen boarding method just isn’t practical for the real world, what with the passenger-by-passenger organization needed to implement it, getting everyone to actually follow the rules, and not wanting to break up groups and families.
And when you look to other structured methods, the time savings vs. random boarding just aren’t that big of a deal (screenshot from the above video):
https://www.jefflewis.net/graphics/quora/Airline_Boarding.jpg
Thanks! I’ve put the video on my youtube list.
Would it make more sense in the Mangione trial for the federal case to be postponed so that the state trial may proceed?
“Woke 1” seems like a foolish concept, invented to make woke politicians seem reasonable—as if they have abandoned the most egregious parts of the program. I don’t see a break here; only a continuum.
And today’s antisemitic pictures are jarring, even though I’ve seen the first two many times. Just imagine how much would have been different if the State of Israel had existed at the time those pictures were taken, or if the British had allowed Jews entry into Palestine at the time.
The airplane boarding is even more confusing to the typical person than ranked choice voting. And it no doubt originated from the same class of elites who promoted vaccines and other vulgarly unpopular concepts.
Congratulations on getting a ride to South Georgia! Only bad part… you have to wait over a year before you go.
Referring to Woke “1.0” is obviously meant to distinguish it from “Woke 2.0”, or similar. So this acknowledges that some form of Woke is still with us, which unfortunately is all too easy to see. A new, more highly evolved form of Woke, don’t you know.
The admissions of staunch progressives like AOC that Woke 1 was “crazy” are meant only to make their current positions seems moderated and reasonable.
It’s just a charade. Now that we all agree that Woke 1 was crazy, exactly what is it about Woke 2 that is not? AOC and her gang may be regretting some of the most egregious excesses, but at its core Wokeness is still the same, whether 2.0 or whatever. Progressives still think that Wokeness is essentially right and necessary.
While it is amusing to see these statements from AOC and others, we should all know better than to take them seriously.
The Smithsonian list one of the most egregious manifestations of the insanity and disservice of “woke 1”.