Thursday: Hili dialogue

September 3, 2026 • 7:00 am

Welcome to Thursday, September 3, 2026, and it’s Welsh Rarebit Day, celebrating the British concoction of toasted bread covered with melted cheese. It’s supposed to give you weird dreams, which is the subject of Winsor McCay’s fantastic comic strip of the early 20th century, “Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.” The theme: someone would eat a rarebit before bed, and all bets were off: horrible dreams would inevitably ensue. The strip is famous for its unique artistry, especially for the time; here’s one example, and note in the last panel the attribution of the dream to eating a pre-bed rarebit. I’d recommend getting a whole book of these marvelous cartoons.  Click twice to enlarge:

Wikimedia Commons

It’s also International Cabernet Sauvignon Day as well as National Baby Back Ribs Day. I used to buy BBQ rib tips on the South Side (the ends of baby back ribs), and Uncle John’s was by far the best place. It went extinct when pitmaster Mack died, but then his relatives opened a joint just as good, and pretty close to me on 47th Street: “Uncle J’s BBQ.”  That too is gone, and there is no longer a place to get world-class rib tips in Chicago.  What’s the point of living?

The bearded guy to the left is geneticist Michael Turelli, who was visiting and wanted to sample Chicago’s best BBQ:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As expected given the exchange of fire the other day, attacks between the U.S. and Iran are intensifying, with Iran claiming that one American attack killed four people and injured many more at a wedding (this claim could not be verified; NYT article is archived here).

The United States carried out a new wave of attacks against Iran on Tuesday, the latest surge of violence to puncture weeks of relative calm as President Trump has tried to pivot from a military campaign to one of strangling Iran’s economy.

U.S. Central Command said it had struck military targets in Iran in retaliation for attacks on ships and American forces in the region. Hours later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said in statements that it had launched missiles on an American military base in Jordan and U.S. military equipment warehouses in Iraq. It warned of fierce retaliations on U.S. interests in the region.

The new strikes came three days after the United States and Iran traded fire for the first time in a month. The latest strikes were far broader and more intense, according to initial reports, and Iranian officials said civilians had been killed, including at a wedding. While it was unclear if the violence would escalate further, the hostilities underscored how remote a durable solution to the conflict remains, six months into a conflict that Mr. Trump once predicted would last a few weeks.

Mr. Trump, in a social media post referring to the Strait of Hormuz, said the U.S. attacks were “large and powerful, and in retaliation for the Iranians’ failed attempt at adding sea mines to the Strait.” He added that “if the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level.”

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that it had struck air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities and communications sites.

Iranian state media said projectiles had hit sites in Chabahar and Konarak, southern port cities east of the Strait of Hormuz. Two Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. attacks, said the strikes had also hit several other sites across Iran’s southern shores, including a military base in Bandar Abbas, the perimeter of the commercial airport on Qeshm Island and targets in the cities of Sirik and Jask. The officials said the attacks had caused significant damage.

Are you getting tired of a war conducted in dribs and drabs, one that never seems to end? Join the club. But Iran never seems to level “fierce retalizations on U.S. interests in the region,” as its missiles and drones are always shot down.

*Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi (NY) writes in the Free Press why “Democrats must reject the DSA” (Democratic Socialists of America). His reason:

Millions of Americans are losing faith in their government, their institutions, and an economic system that no longer seems to reward hard work. They struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and education while watching wealth become increasingly concentrated at the top. They’re mad as hell, in other words, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

But if Democrats are going to earn the confidence of these Americans this November and beyond, the answer will not be found in the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) platform. Although relatively small in number—the organization counts 120,000 members in a country of some 330 million people—the DSA is aggressive and disciplined. Candidates affiliated with the group are winning Democratic primaries. But we cannot allow them to drag our party to the far left.

Modern political history offers two stark warnings about what can happen when a determined ideological movement catches a party divided, complacent, or unprepared. We’ll start with the Republicans.

In 1964, GOP leaders badly underestimated Barry Goldwater, a fiercely right-wing Arizona senator. Many considered his views too conservative and his appeal too narrow. But Goldwater’s supporters were better organized and understood that party contests can be won by mobilizing passionate voters while the broader electorate remains divided or disengaged.

Goldwater won the Republican presidential nomination but then suffered one of the largest defeats in history that November. Lyndon Johnson carried 44 states and more than 60 percent of the popular vote.

Eight years later, Democrats experienced their own ideological takeover.

South Dakota senator George McGovern was a decent man, a decorated veteran, and a principled opponent of the Vietnam War. His campaign inspired activists who believed the party needed fundamental change.

But his supporters were more representative of the activist class than of the general electorate. His campaign mastered new primary rules while traditional Democrats divided their support and failed to recognize his strength until it was too late.

McGovern won the nomination in 1972 and President Richard Nixon defeated him easily, taking 49 states and more than 60 percent of the vote. At the same time, however, more moderate Democrats defeated Republicans in a slew of downballot races, retaining control of the House and even expanding their majority in the Senate.

The lesson is not that parties should silence ideological movements. It is that intensity is not the same as broad public support, and success in a primary is not the same as electability in November. That distinction could determine control of Congress in this year’s elections.

I remember both of these election, particularly the second as I campaigned for McGovern. I remember sitting in the Rockefeller University student lounge next to the famous philosopher Saul Kripke as the election results rolled it, and it was a rout. As I recall, McGovern won only Washington D.C. and Massachusetts.  But the fact is that “progressives” have won Democratic nominations for both the House and Senate over more moderate Democrats, and it may well happen that those “progresives” (do I have to keep putting the word in air quotes?) will take over the Senate this fall. Where Suozzi goes wrong is in the last paragraph, for some of these progressive victories are in states that are reliably Democratic, so in those cases victory in a primary is prety much the same as victory in November. See the next item:

*Speaking of progressivism, an 80-year-old progressive who’s in favor of biological men competing in women’s athletics, walloped a younger liber in the Democratic Party primary for a Senate seat (sound familiar)? The other day I wrote about 80-year-old Ed Markey, who takes a position on this one transgender “right” that is opposed by a majority of Americans.  Well, Massachusetts apparently either approves of or doesn’t mind Markey’s stand, as he handily defeated 47-year-old Seth Moulton.(article archived here).

Senator Edward J. Markey, a progressive Massachusetts Democrat who has served in Congress for a half-century, swept past a much younger rival in a primary race on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

The victory by Mr. Markey, who at 80 is the oldest senator in his state’s history, came at a moment when many Democratic voters are anxious for the party’s aging leaders to make way for a younger generation. Mr. Markey used a fiercely progressive message and the support of many younger left-wing leaders to ward off Representative Seth Moulton, 47, a moderate Democrat who had campaigned on a message of generational change.

With nearly 80 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Markey led Mr. Moulton by about 30 percentage points.

Mr. Markey will be an overwhelming favorite to win the November general election in deep-blue Massachusetts, positioning him to serve in the Senate until he is at least 86.

. . . This year, Mr. Markey targeted Mr. Moulton over his position on transgender rights. The younger congressman had urged his party after the 2024 election to shift its stance on transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports, saying he did not want his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.”

Mr. Markey, in turn, campaigned as a strong supporter of trans rights, declaring that his opponent had thrown trans kids “under the bus.” Mr. Moulton said he was sorry if his comments had hurt anyone, but he stood by their substance.

Elected Democrats, aware that polls indicate that most Americans do not think trans athletes should be allowed to play in girls’ sports, have almost universally shied away from the issue since 2024. But in a primary in a deeply Democratic state, Mr. Markey appeared to have found a winning argument, saying that “I believe you can be right, but too soon.”

A progressive cavalry also rallied to Mr. Markey’s cause. Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts joined him on the campaign trail. And he received endorsements from younger progressives such as Representative Ayanna Pressley of Boston and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who is selective about wading into Democratic races.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 36, issued a statement hailing Mr. Markey as an “inspiration to many of us who are committed to building a better future for all.”

And an inspiration for those who are committed to ruining women’s sports as well.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes how Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security organization) captured the head of Hamas’s internal security organization.

Early yesterday morning, under the cover of air strikes, Shin Bet forces raided a building in the heart of Gaza City and walked out with Moain al-Arabid—the head of Hamas’s Internal Security Apparatus. The man is Hamas’s equivalent to Shin Bet Chief David Zini, but where Zini protects the citizens of Israel, al-Arabid is a central node in the oppression of Gazans, his primary tasks involve purging collaborators, enforcing loyalty, and protecting the leadership.

Before Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the operation had succeeded, every Hamas channel was boasting that “alert resistance members” had foiled the raid through sheer vigilance. When further details surfaced, they pivoted to damage control: yes, a hostile force had been exposed and made to pay, and yes, three collaborators were arrested—but the Israelis had only managed to grab an unnamed “senior member” who “happened to be present at the scene,” not the figure they were after.

Now that a picture of a captured al-Arabid has been published, Hamas is working to downplay him as a mere commander within the apparatus rather than its head. But official Hamas publications named him head of internal security for Gaza City back in 2015—eleven years and dozens of targeted killings of senior officials ago. He and most of the current Hamas leadership owe Israel’s security forces a debt of gratitude: most of their promotions were provided by the IDF. By any account, he is a treasure trove—the custodian of secrets on the security of Hamas’s leadership, its counter-espionage, its network of collaborators.

there is a more important point made by this operation. Change the setting from Gaza to Hebron or Jenin and the story becomes considerably less extraordinary—Shin Bet and IDF forces routinely extract terrorists from the hearts of those cities. Not to diminish the tradecraft behind the operation, but its success is, in essence, the fruit of the security regime Israel has established in Gaza over the past three years.

Shin Bet is a good organization with many contacts on the “other side”, and members of Hamas still in Gaza, particularly the bigwigs, will be a bit rattled by this.

Right now I’m reading a fascinating yet disturbing book, Rise and Kill First (Ronen Bergman, 2018), about the history of Israel’s targeted assassinations. These involve not just Shin Bet, but also Mossad as well as the IDF’s intelligence division (Israel has three separate intelligence groups). It’s mesmerizing but, in cases where killings went wrong and many civilians were eliminated instead of the “target”, it shows the moral problems surrounding such endeavors.

*From the AP’s odd news section, we learn of the oldest person to complete hiking the Appalachian Trail. It was a guy who was 91!

More than 14 million older adults fall every year in the U.S., perhaps none so often as 91-year-old Dale Sanders.

By his count, Sanders fell 71 times while reclaiming his record as the oldest hiker to complete the Appalachian Trail. Six were what he calls hard falls, including one that led to a brief hospitalization and another just 200 yards from the finish. But none were enough to permanently divert him from the 2,193-mile (3,530-kilometer) trail that runs between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines a thru-hike as completing all of the trail’s sections in any order within a year, allowing for pauses. Sanders started Sept. 6 in West Virginia, hopscotched around with some brief breaks and finished Monday atop Maine’s highest peak, where he paused to pray at the sign marking the summit.

“I had to thank God, and I had to thank my support team and everybody that got me here,” he said.

. . .Sanders was born in Kentucky in 1935, two years before the Appalachian Trail was completed. Bullied as a child for his small size, he gained confidence in solo sports like acrobatics and swimming. He later served in the Navy and retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreation.

Sanders holds numerous other age-related records, including becoming the oldest person to paddle the entire length of the Mississippi River, an 87-day trip he started on his 87th birthday.

Here’s the intrepid old git!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej had to clean the windows by himself, without divine help:

Hili: Was it you who washed the windows on the veranda?
Andrzej: Yes, because the angels have already flown off to warmer countries.

In Polish:

Hili: To ty umyłeś okna na werandzie
Ja: Tak, bo anioły już odleciały do ciepłych krajów.

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

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Masih, another nonviolent protestor sentenced to death, and after torture:

Maarten Boudry found a lot of AI in a Skeptical Inquirer article by Armadeo Sarma (see below), including the use of two nonexistent quotes. The whole piece was 78% AI, and I’m peeved as Luana and I published a piece in there (with no fake quotes!). The journal has issued a correction, but the correction is in the middle of the piece (see here).

From Simon, who says, “It’s that time of year again”:

Well I hadn’t heard from Milo Yiannopoulos for a long time, but it looks like ICE got hold of him and deported him for overstaying his visa. Larry the Cat reacts:

Two from my feed. First, what a little water can do.

Translation from the French:

UNUSUAL: A man discovered a hollow in a tree that he filled with water during the heatwave. He set up a camera trap there for a week to show just how much a simple little water source can be a lifesaver for wildlife. 

I love baby skunks! (I had a pet skunk once that I got as a baby; it was descented). Look at their threat displays.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

From Matthew; this well known museum is closing for good, and it’s very sad:/audrajwolfe.bsky.social/post/3muhvtq7gmk2j’

 

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21 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  2. I appreciated the back and forth on Scientific American on WEIT a few days ago and on the advice from a fellow commenter that SciAm had turned over a new leaf and gotten better, yesterday, I looked through the latest copy on our news stand. I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see pretty much the same as I recall … not the Helmuth wokeness, but all articles by science writers as opposed to real scientists. When I tried to track down the authors’ cv’s, to see what their formal education was in, I could not find anything other than they were “science writers”. The layout is still confusing to me also.

    On the other hand, while there, I looked at the latest American Scientist (sept-oct) which had just arrived. It is excellent. Articles are written by scientists (and I think science-educated philosopher in one case). There was a nice short article by a science writer on flooding in southwestern Virginia, but she had a phd in biology and appeared to have had an active ten year or so research career before emphasizing writing. I bought a copy and continue to enjoy Am Sci in place of SciAm.

    But thanks for the heads up on SciAm changes and I will continue to at least check it each month.

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    1. True that it’s weird that the authors are listed as nothing more than “So-and-so is a science writer based in Brooklyn.” The magazine used to have a short section that gave brief bios of contributors. I don’t recall seeing that recently.

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      1. I even googled about 6-7 of them and thats all I found under their names. No wikipedia page (i guess such a thing is passe these days) listing early life and education. Just bios from a number of outlets they write for saying free lance science writer or the like.

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  3. Maarten Boudry found a lot of AI in an article by Armadeo Sarma in The Skeptical Inquirer (see below), including the use of two nonexistent quotes.

    Armadeo Sarma was the long-time president of the German skeptics’ organization GWUP. He did a great deal for the organization. When he announced in 2023 that he would not run for re-election as chairman, he witnessed how “woke” members of the organization initiated a takeover in order to use authoritarian measures to prevent critical scrutiny of, for example, identity politics or intersectionality. Fortunately, the new “woke” board was voted out a year later, before it could cause any major damage.

    The fact that Armadeo Sarma apparently relied too heavily on AI when writing the article unfortunately casts a shadow over his undeniable contributions to the GWUP. His opponents will surely be rubbing their hands with glee.

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      1. It might, using the same sorts of linguistic analyses that humans have used to identify plagiarism, forgeries, pseudepigraphic Pauline epistles, etc. — but much more quickly, accurately, and inexpensively.

        Pangram (“An AI detector that actually works”) rates RPGNo1’s comment as “100% Human Written”. Run it yourself (for free) on the SI article and see.

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  4. My father, who worked in the newspaper industry at the beginning and end of his working life, lamented the death of the editor in the 90s. One would think that in this day of A.I, publishers would take advantage of its capabilities to check pieces to see if they were written by A.I. and, especially, that the quotes were real. Sloppy.

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    1. And of course, while standard British and American English has only “you” for the 2nd sg. and pl., the Scottish 2nd pl. “youse” (or “yous”) is retained not only in Scottish, but also in some dialects of American English alongside “y’all” in the south and “you guys” as the most common substitute in Standard American English (and even “yinz” in western Pennsylvania).

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      1. My mother was from western PA, and I recall hearing her family use that term, but my recollection (60+ yrs ago) was it sounded more like You-inz.

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  6. I have toyed with hiking the Appalachian Trail, though not necessarily with the goal of thru hiking. But then I was diagnosed with osteopenia, and reluctantly put that idea to bed, since it’s inevitable that I’d take at least a few bad falls on such a rugged trail. It’s not the idea of breaking a bone that bothers me as much as the idea of having to be rescued.

    Even men get osteopenia at an advanced age. But that 91-year-old hiker has no doubt kept his bones dense enough to survive falling without getting any fractures due to carrying a heavy backpack every day for miles on end. It really works. I actually increased my bone density slightly after beginning a regime of weight-lifting using the principle of progressive overload.

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  7. The hollow tree filled with water reminds me of a question that I’ve had over the years. How do so many animals find the water? A dozen species of bird, deer, and even pigs (or are they tapirs?) all found the site, and sometimes in large numbers. I can see how one animal discovers the aqueous bounty, but how does the information spread? And how does it spread across such different creatures—birds and mammals? Do the animals purposely communicate the presence of the water to each other? (That would at first glance seem to be self-destructive.) Does the commotion—the splashing sound and the sounds of drinking and bathing—attract others? My guess is that the sound of splashing is what gets things going, but is there more to it than that?

    We put out a birdbath this summer—a chunk of basalt with a basin carved into it. It took several days for our local Dark-eyed Juncos to find it, but now there are several individuals that frequent the bath. We haven’t seen any tapirs or giraffes yet, but that may just be because we don’t have a game camera watching the site.

    Oh, yes. The other news. It’s all bad.

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    1. I wonder if it could just be the sense of smell operating in most cases. Even humans have apparently been shown to be very sensitive to the smell of rain/water even quite some distance away, and we have a relatively poor sense of smell compared to many wild creatures.

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  8. Welsh Rarebit & nightmares – probably a valid correlation since the stuff is often (at least) made with superannuated pieces of cheese which accumulate tyramine (from decarboxylation of the amino acid tyrosine), which can have psychoactive effects.

    And with Dale Sanders, even if it wasn’t an advantage from the standpoint of making time on the trail, being short probably helped minimize the damage from his falls.

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  9. When I read you sat next to Saul Kripke, that name tickled my memory. I just now remembered why: He was the author of a book I had to read in a phil class – Naming and Necessity. I’ve never forgotten it because it was one of the most fascinating philosophy books I’ve ever read.

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    1. IMO Kripke was one of the most significant modern logicians, up there with Russel, Gödel, and Tarski. He provided a simple solid foundation for whole fields of non-standard logic — one of those rare ideas where a common response would be “Of course! Why hadn’t I seen that?” Have a quick read of his Wikipedia bio for the details. I do wish I had met him.

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  11. “Are you getting tired of a war conducted in dribs and drabs, one that never seems to end?”

    Dribs and drabs are now the nature of the fight. Most everyone versed in airpower application foresaw this outcome, even if they watched the initial decapitation campaign with interest and mild hope. Timelines must flex to that nature and can’t be arbitrarily imposed.

    Part of what we struck was a radar system that Iran had largely rebuilt. You strike when it is near complete rather than wasting ordnance in the early rebuild stages; the reconstitution drives the timeline. Similarly, if launchers are buried or otherwise hidden, you wait until you have evidence of pending use and the systems are more vulnerable. We hit some of those, too.

    I understand the urge to strike more prominent targets such as Kharg Island. But if we are successfully blockading the export of Iranian oil, and it seems that we now are, then there is no need to destroy export terminals or production facilities. Should this regime fall and be replaced by one somewhat more reasonable, how would they govern if we destroyed the physical infrastructure for their prime source of revenue?

    After the initial strikes, this was always going to be a long fight of behind-the-scenes operations punctuated by more visible activity to contain and further degrade Iranian military capability. It’s not clear that Trump understood that timeline. Perhaps he overestimated his ability to spin the reality. Maybe he bought into excessive confidence in the decapitation strategy. But to his credit he now seems to have accepted the longer timeline regardless of midterm consequences.

    One can reasonably argue that he never should have started the fight given that decisive victory was implausible, land invasion infeasible, and American patience short. But people making that argument need to tell us a credible alternative to war that would contain the nuclear ambitions of apocalyptic theocrats. I haven’t seen one. Ensuring the nuclear materials remain buried and surveilling for reconstitution elsewhere appears to be our least bad option.

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  12. I actually respect the administration for booting Milo Y. At least they’re not playing favorites (at least in this case)!

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