Friday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Friday, the last one in August: it’s August 28, 2026 and National Bow Tie Day. I’ve worn one only at a prom, and that was years ago.

Here’s a Doctor Who video featuring bow ties (two “crackers of ties”), but it’s even better because Dr. Who and his assistant (played by Karen Gillan) transport Vincent van Gogh to the future so he can see (at the Musée d’Orsay) that he became posthumously famous and beloved, even though during his lifetime he was obscure and neglected. This clip always makes me tear up—like Vincent.

Yes, I know I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth more than one look. On a second look you may notice, for example, how Vincent is taken aback by seeing a Monet: for van Gogh knew Monet’s Impressionist paintings well and admired them.

It’s also National Cherry Turnovers Day and Red Wine Day (you know what to do).

There’s again a subtly moving Google Doodle gif honoring the National Parks (this one is Yosemite). Click to see where it goes:

As I’ve intimated, traffic, or at least comments on this site, have slowed, and if you want it to continue at least let me know you’re reading. I know the difficulties of commenting on a phone, but you shouldn’t be reading this on a phone!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A giant flood devastated parts of Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday and Thursday, likely killing over 2,000 people, including many visitors (the area is popular with tourists). The cause of the flood isn’t yet known but was probably triggered by a landslide (article archived here).

Emergency workers and helicopters scoured steep Himalayan valleys on Thursday in a desperate search for survivors after a torrent of water, mud and ice killed hundreds — and perhaps many more — as it swept through a river valley that runs through Tibet and Nepal. More than 1,400 people were still missing.

A New York Times reporter and photographer who traveled to the region with rescuers found miles of devastation and weeping residents unsure if their families and neighbors would ever be found. In one Nepalese village, a man described what sounded like a thunderclap before a wave of muddy water crashed into his home, carrying away his wife and two daughters. “They all died and I lived,” he said, adding that he still clung to a slim hope they had somehow survived.

The flood that tore through the remote river valley in northern Nepal and the Tibet region of China caught many of its victims without warning. Its speed and force destroyed roads and bridges, toppled buildings and severed communications — all of which were complicating rescue efforts.

Scientists said the flood was probably unleashed by a massive rock landslide that coincided with the collapse of a glacier high in the mountains near the border on Wednesday morning, unleashing a wall of water that surged down the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers. Survivors described lightning fast floodwaters laden with debris that shattered houses and quickly swallowed up people trapped in buildings or as they fled on foot.

Warming temperatures caused by climate change may have destabilized the rock face and precipitated the disaster, scientists said, though they added it was too early to determine a precise cause.

Images captured the flood’s terrifying speed and force, and Times journalists traveling with the Nepali military on Thursday surveyed the devastating aftermath. One highway, near the Bhotekoshi River, had mostly disappeared. Scars on hillsides showed that in some places the river had risen as high as 650 feet during the flood.

Shisir Khanal, Nepal’s foreign minister, called the flood “one of the largest natural disasters we have experienced in recent memory.”

Here’s a photo shown by the NYT and credited as “Composite 3D image from Google Earth.” Although I’ve been to Nepal three times, trekking in the Himalayas, this is one area I never visited.

And here are 12 minutes of news videos, with some really scary video of the flooding. At the beginning, look at at those buses tossed about like rubber ducks by the massive wall of water! And all those people you seei n that segment are probably dead as well.

*It seems to me that Republicans are hell-bent on indicting Anthony Fauci for accusations that he lied about U.S.-funded research on viruses in the Wuhan institute, and that he tried to suppress any evidence that Covid came from a lab leak.  When he testified before Congress about all this in early August, Fauci took the Fifth (refused to testify on the grounds that it might incriminate him) over 100 times, leading to the Republican-majority Senate Homeland Security Committee to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Now, as the WSJ reports, efforts to indict Fauci for pleading the Fifth appear to have stalled, despite Rand Paul’s desire to see Fauci behind bars.

A Republican push to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci for contempt of Congress has stalled as the Trump administration questions whether the legal approach supports an indictment by the Justice Department.

Three weeks after a GOP-led Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, some administration officials are skeptical that the current approach is procedurally sound enough to indict him for failing to answer questions before lawmakers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Aug. 6 contempt vote was brought by Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a longtime Fauci critic. He sought to bypass the Senate’s customary full-floor vote by having Vice President JD Vance certify the resolution, allowing him to refer it directly to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Paul, who has said Fauci should go to prison, pushed a contempt vote against the 85-year-old former public-health official after he declined to answer questions before Paul’s committee over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The contempt resolution, which passed on a party-line vote, would traditionally be considered by the full Senate. Given his resolution would almost certainly fail to meet a 60-vote threshold to pass, Paul’s measure called on Vance to certify it in his capacity as Senate president.

But as of early Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said that Vance’s office had yet to receive a document to certify. Paul’s office sent the report to the vice president late Tuesday, according to people familiar with the process, following repeated inquiries from The Wall Street Journal about its status. The Justice Department, which received a letter from Paul the day of the vote laying out the committee’s case against Fauci, has yet to receive a formal referral, a person familiar with the matter said. And President Trump hasn’t determined whether he wants the Justice Department to act on the referral, according to people familiar with the discussions, who say the issue hasn’t been a high priority for the president.

Paul’s move put the White House in a tough situation. While Trump has criticized Fauci, certifying the document could force the White House to defend it in court, where some administration officials say it might not survive a motion to dismiss without a full Senate vote.

This smacks of a vendetta. Yes, Fauci did lean on scientists to oppose the lab-leak hypothesis when they were writing a paper, and I consider that bad behavior. But I don’t see it as criminal behavior, and nothing I’ve read about him indicates that he should be indicted—unless he lied under oath. Even so, the guy is 85 years old and, as the article notes, a contempt resolution would be unlikely to pass a full Senate vote. The J.D. Vance maneuver circumvented normal procedure. Leave the old dude alone!

*A distressing (for me) report from the Free Press: “Are Americans losing faith in capitalism? We asked them.”  The FP partnered with the think tank Populace to survey Americans of different ages and political stripes, and here are the main results:

A big question has dominated political debate in this year’s primary elections. With the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who have racked up victories from New York and Pennsylvania to Colorado and Florida, our elections have become a referendum on our economic system. So we decided to ask Americans what they’re thinking about capitalism versus socialism.

The results suggest that the public is feeling down about capitalism but is still wary of full-blown socialism. And many are deciding whether a few socialist candidates might help shake up the system. We found that:

—Just a third of Americans privately say they have a positive view of capitalism.

—Less than half of Republicans privately express a positive view of capitalism, though two-thirds support it in public.

—Almost half of women privately say they would consider voting for a socialist.

—Nearly a third of Gen Z publicly say that America would be better off as a socialist country, but only 14 percent say so in private.

—The majority of blacks publicly say capitalism is the cause of America’s social ills, but only 37 percent say so privately.

—Of people earning more than $150,000 a year, 58 percent privately say they are open to voting for a socialist, though only 42 percent say so publicly.

They add this, too:

We asked other questions too—about Israel and antisemitism, AI and data centers, income inequality, and more. Stay tuned for our next batch of results next week.

I’m not looking forward to the data on Israel!  Anyway, you can read the methodology here and how they distinguished public from private opinions. It’s a relatively small survey.  Here’s what they see as most telling:

While many Americans express a low view of capitalism, and a significant share say they’re open to socialist candidates, only a very small share would prefer to adopt socialism altogether. In public, merely 18 percent say America would be better off socialist. In private, support drops to a meager 11 percent.

The younger the respondent, the more willing they are to embrace socialism in public. Nearly a third of Gen Z say publicly that America should adopt socialism, along with more than a fifth of millennials. Yet support drops considerably in private, to 14 percent among Gen Z and 10 percent among millennials. Meanwhile, Boomers are equally opposed in public and private, standing pat at only 7 percent support.

The most notable result of all may be the public-private gap among the left. Thirty-eight percent of liberals and 28 percent of Democrats say publicly that a switch to socialism would be good for the country. But in private, the left’s faith in socialism wanes by double digits. Only 22 percent of liberals and 14 percent of Democrats want America to trade in its current economic system in favor of a fully socialist one.

I wonder if those who think American should “adopt socialism” know what that really entails.  Surely the approbation for socialist candidates is not the same as a full-hearted embrace of socialism, and I’d like to know the different (and undoubtedly diverse) construals of “socialism”. Do the respondents know that, classically, it means that the state owns all the means of production and distribution? I think the poll largely reflects a widespread ignorance about “socialism”.

*Also depressing: a NYT op-ed by former Time magazine writer Charlotte Alter, “What are moderate Democrats for?” , which, tellingly changed its title yesterday afternoon to “What ever happened to the young, exciting, moderate Democrats?” (article archived here). Since I’m one, I want to know. Alter’s example of someone who should be exciting all of us is Seth Moulton, a Congressman from Massachusetts who’s running for a Senatorial seat this fall. Alter’s thesis is that moderate Democrats, in contrast to “progressives,” haven’t laid out what they stand for, or what changes they want to make.

Democrats are not “screaming that we want socialists,” as Mr. Moulton pointed out to me in an interview. Instead, he said, “there’s a whole bunch of Democrats saying, ‘The party establishment is failing us.’” But progressive Democrats do have a clarity advantage: American voters know what they stand for, whether they like it or not. Center-left candidates tend to offer more pragmatic versions of progressive ideas or wonky political strategies to achieve incremental change. This forces voters to make exhausting calculations about how to actually get things done.

. . . It’s always been clear what Mr. Moulton is against: the geriatric Washington establishment, the inertia of incumbency, whichever oldster happens to be in charge. But he’s been so busy fighting the establishment, he hasn’t explained precisely what he was fighting for.

. . . So while I had Mr. Moulton on the phone, I asked him: What does his campaign stand for, besides a new generation of leadership?

“Well, I mean, it’s a new generation of ideas,” he said. Even though he and Mr. Markey have many of the same goals, Mr. Moulton argued that he is more pragmatic. Mr. Markey is running on Medicare for all, while Mr. Moulton favors an expanded public health care option. The housing crisis in Massachusetts, Mr. Moulton said, means that “obviously, whatever Senator Markey has been doing or not doing with regards to housing hasn’t worked.” He said that expanded rail transit could improve housing affordability and that Mr. Markey’s proposed transportation plan is out of the “1910s.”

None of this is particularly new or inspiring.

But what if we consider people other than Moulton? What about Pete Buttigieg? What about Gretchen Whitman? And even what about my own Governor, J. B. Pritzker?  Alter may be right that no centrist Democrat has articulated a particularly stirring message, but I’d rather vote for one of them than for a “progressive” who has articulated a disturbing message, like AOC.

*More Woke Canada, and this reprehensible: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has reminded its staff and journalists not to refer to the 9/11 attacks as “terrorist” attacks, as the word “terrorist” is “loaded” and “controversial,” supposedly impeding journalism (h/t Jeff).

With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on the horizon, the CBC has circulated a memo to reporters and editors across all its news platforms reminding them not to refer to the attacks that claimed 3,000 lives and changed the modern world as “terrorist attacks.”

The missive from the broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices office, a copy of which was obtained by National Post, includes a section of the “longstanding language guidance” on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda.

“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” it reads about halfway through, with the first part bolded and the last two words linking back to the CBC’s internal language guide.

. . . Kerry Kelly, a public affairs spokesperson for CBC, told National Post in an email that “it is wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act.”

Rather, she said the memo was a regular reminder about adhering to the CBC’s language guide for “the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism.’

“CBC preferences use of these words with attribution to credible sources, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations,” Kelly wrote, pointing to an October 2023 blog by Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief and general manager.

He was writing in response to a similarly leaked memo to staff regarding the use of the same words in reporting about Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel that had occurred a week earlier.

Staff will use the terms, he said, but they will always be “attributed to government officials, authorities, experts and politicians.”

“But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism,” Fenlon said, noting the policy has existed for decades and many news outlets employ their own.

The post included a portion of the language guide, which urges employees to “exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism” because they can be “highly contested” in some instances and potentially raise questions about the CBC’s “consistency and impartiality” in covering other attacks.

Well, language evolves, but this is not a natural evolution of language; it’s an attempt by the CBC to take the “terror” out of people who, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are  “[People] who who [use] violent and intimidating methods in the pursuit of political aims; esp. a member of a clandestine or expatriate organization aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects.” Is that a biased definition?

The OED adds that the word “is generally considered to be derogatory; hence the use of terms such as partisan, freedom fighter, etc., by those who approve the actions of the individuals concerned.”  DUH!  So what word are you going to use? “Freedom fighter” for the pilots of 9/11? I’m sure the CBC doesn’t do that, but it probably says stuff like “Hamas, generally considered by Western governments to be a terrorist organization.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is experiencing something similar to me:

Hili: Retirement is the busiest time of your life.
Andrzej: I get that feeling too, but since no one pays me for it, I can call it fun.

In Polish:

Hili: Emerytura to najbardziej pracowity okres w twoim życiu.
Ja: Też mam takie wrażenie, ale ponieważ nikt mi za to nie płaci mogę to nazwać zabawą.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Weird, Fantastic, Beautiful and Odd: a honey badger who doesn’t give a toss:

It’s hard to believe this stuff, but that’s the Iranian theocracy. Read the whole tweet, along with Masih’s reply:

“So here is my answer to the mullah, in simple words: Women don’t need to cover themselves to control men’s behavior. Men need to control themselves.”

A cleric in Iran just announced that if a woman gets to choose her own clothes, then a man gets the right to rape her.

Do not scroll past that. Read it twice.

That is not a slip of the tongue. That is not a fringe opinion from the back of a mosque. That is Kazem Rohbakhsh an… pic.twitter.com/ik5fpapOds

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 27, 2026

From Malcolm, eight life lessons from cats (plus a coda); sound up:

Follow these life lessons and surely you’ll live a happier life 🤣 pic.twitter.com/CEi7x5n9Dt

— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) August 8, 2026

The Number Ten Cat corrects Trump’s latest stupid attempt at renaming:

“Ontario” is a Native American word. It’s from the Iroquoian language of the Wyandot people and means sparkling water.
“America” is from the name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. https://t.co/5Xd1HUzYlY

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 27, 2026

From Jeff Maurer. I didn’t know that it was a custom to change Wikipedia photos after someone dies:

I hope they do that for me. And I mean that photo, of Dolly Parton — she looks light years better than I ever will. https://t.co/PwPfJ2O3AM

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) August 27, 2026

Two from my feed. First, the renaming from the White House’s mouth. The name change will apply only to U.S. government use, not to other countries’ usage:

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Lake Ontario is renamed to LAKE AMERICA! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ZFww8PexiW

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 27, 2026

I’m sure Dolly would be vastly amused by this:

CNN forced to apologize to Dolly Parton’s family for using photo of Vegas impersonator in covering icon’s death https://t.co/L6M20jULjY pic.twitter.com/QwYd0ulhCC

— New York Post (@nypost) August 27, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old and would have been 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/QNAovhMO3O

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 28, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb, showing a male elk apparently having a dream:

This elk appears to be dreaming! About a pristine lake? About finding an apple orchard? About being late for school?#mammals #nature #deer #love #trailcam #Seattle #wildanimals #goodmorning #PNW #nokings #wildlife #elk

— Menestune (@menestune.bsky.social) 2026-08-26T13:48:16.714Z