Sunday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Sunday, September 6, 2026, the second day of a three-day weekend, for tomorrow is Labor Day in America. It’s also National Read a Book Day (note, they don’t say “Listen to a book”). I’m on a Maggie O’Farrell kick, and after reading and enjoying Hamnet and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, I’m now reading her first novel, After You’d Gone.  I’ve just finished Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, by Ronen Bergman, which is very good, fascinating, but scary.

It’s also Fight Procrastination Day (don’t worry, you can do it tomorrow), National Coffee Ice Cream Day, and Great Egg Toss Day, celebrating a day when people compete to toss an egg to a partner without breaking it. Here’s what the link says:

Great Egg Toss Day takes place on September 6th, because that was the day in 1981 that Risto Antikainen threw a fresh egg 317 feet, 10 inches, to Jyrki Korhonen. But, there is other evidence that a Guinness World Record was set in 1978 with a throw of 323 feet, 2 inches, in a toss from Johnny Dell Foley to Keith Thomas. This was listed by Guinness World Records until 2000, when they removed egg tossing from their book. The World Egg Throwing Federation currently holds egg throwing events, and contestants regularly toss eggs over 200 feet.

Here’s the World Championships in 2024, combined with another contest: Egg Roulette!

The Guinness Record is still posted, but if they stopped keeping records it’s reprehensible.

Posting will be light over the next week as I have a writing assignment I must complete. Bear with me; I do my best.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As the war with Iran continues (described yesterday by Trump as “small potatoes”), the U.S. military says it hit three Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for Iran targeting two U.S. warships (article archived here).

The U.S. military said Saturday it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in a statement that its strikes disabled an oil carrier off the coast of Kharg Island and another off Jask, and it destroyed a third one in the Gulf of Oman.

“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Iranian state media earlier in the day reported that an oil tanker was hit by U.S. missiles near Kharg Island.

Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kharg Island, about 15 miles from the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf, is the centerpiece of Iran’s oil-based economy, with about 90 percent of the country’s oil exports moving through there.

Why don’t we attack Kharg Island directly, then, as it would be the most devastating thing we could do to Iran?  I suspect it’s because that would devastate the world oil market (and of course raise gas prices in the U.S.), because it would invite the harshest retaliation yet, and because to secure it might require the presence of “boots on the ground”, something the U.S. is unwilling to do. Trump could make a threat, of course, but he’d have to be prepared to carry it through when Iran calls his bluff.

Here’s a satellite image of Kharg Island taken in 2010; the T-shaped structures to the right are oil terminals:

*The Wall Street Journal declares that “Time is no longer on Iran’s side in the battle of the blockades.”

By squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the U.S. and Iran expected to outlast their foe, believing time would work in their favor.

Now, it looks like the trend is moving against Tehran.

The U.S. naval blockade has prevented Iran from shipping any oil from the Persian Gulf since July. At the same time, despite Iranian drone and missile attacks, Washington has been able to assist Gulf Arab states in moving significant amounts of their crude through the waterway, keeping global oil prices from surging above critical levels.

“The Iranian blockade is more leaky than the U.S. blockade,” said Samir Madani, co-founder of the maritime intelligence firm TankerTrackers.com. “The Iranians just aren’t able to shut it all down.”

The strategic question of whether time will eventually work in favor of Washington—or the Tehran regime—has yet to be settled. Iran retains ways of escalating what has now become a protracted conflict, raising costs for the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. military’s ability to maintain the naval blockade for many more months is also uncertain.

But now it is clear that Tehran’s calculation six months ago, as it shut down the Strait of Hormuz and bottled up one-fifth of the world’s crude oil supply, proved erroneous. The move didn’t trigger a worldwide economic crisis or force President Trump to end the war on Iranian terms.

Yet, Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports, imposed in April and reimposed in July, after a short-lived memorandum on reopening the waterway collapsed, hasn’t changed Iran’s behavior either. Despite growing economic disruption, the blockade didn’t spur a popular uprising against the Islamic Republic—and didn’t convince Tehran to reopen the strait to allow free navigation.

. . . For now, however, Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz is slowly but surely being eroded by the U.S. military campaign in the region. Crude oil prices remain below $100 a barrel on international markets, elevated but well below the critical threshold for the global economy. In part, this was due to China drawing on domestic reserves and reducing imports.

As the WSJ points out, “the clock is ticking more for the Iranians because they are under enormous economic strain.” Taking out Kharg Island’s facilities would make the clock tick really fast, and do we really need American troops won the ground to do that?

*Lindsay Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial because apparently one juror held out for a “guilty” verdict while the other 11 wanted to declare her not guilty. But now, according to the NYT, she faces years of confinement. However, many Americans apparently want no confinement at all (article archived here).

Whatever happens next in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy after a Massachusetts jury failed on Friday to reach a verdict, it is certain that she will remain institutionalized for many months, if not years.

Even if she is not ultimately convicted, medical and legal experts have said that her future will be one of confinement.

Ms. Clancy does not deny strangling her three children with exercise bands in 2023. Her symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the months before she killed them were at the center of her defense. Her lawyers argued that she was not legally responsible for the deaths.

That view apparently persuaded most of the jury members in the monthlong trial. Notes from the jury suggested that 11 of the 12 jurors seemed ready to acquit Ms. Clancy. But one lone juror declined to join the rest, even after apparently expressing doubts about her guilt.

A similar debate has captivated and divided the American public for weeks. At its core is a fundamental disagreement about how Ms. Clancy should spend the rest of her life. Should she be labeled a criminal and imprisoned? Or should she be regarded as a victim of a sort, who should be provided treatment? In neither case would she go free. But to what end should her confinement serve?

Whatever happens next in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy after a Massachusetts jury failed on Friday to reach a verdict, it is certain that she will remain institutionalized for many months, if not years.

Even if she is not ultimately convicted, medical and legal experts have said that her future will be one of confinement.

Ms. Clancy does not deny strangling her three children with exercise bands in 2023. Her symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the months before she killed them were at the center of her defense. Her lawyers argued that she was not legally responsible for the deaths.

That view apparently persuaded most of the jury members in the monthlong trial. Notes from the jury suggested that 11 of the 12 jurors seemed ready to acquit Ms. Clancy. But one lone juror declined to join the rest, even after apparently expressing doubts about her guilt.

A similar debate has captivated and divided the American public for weeks. At its core is a fundamental disagreement about how Ms. Clancy should spend the rest of her life. Should she be labeled a criminal and imprisoned? Or should she be regarded as a victim of a sort, who should be provided treatment? In neither case would she go free. But to what end should her confinement serve?

. . .The murder charges against Ms. Clancy remain intact after the mistrial, and will keep her locked up in a local psychiatric hospital for now, while the state decides whether to try her again, according to her lawyer, Kevin Reddington.

In remarks after the judge declared the mistrial, Mr. Reddington said that Ms. Clancy would be returning to Tewksbury Hospital, where she was held during the trial. It is a state-run psychiatric facility about an hour’s drive from where Ms. Clancy was tried in Plymouth, Mass.

If Ms. Clancy is ultimately found not responsible for the crimes, experts say she may be sent to a high-security forensic psychiatric hospital — a center to treat people who have stood criminal trial — for long-term mental health care.

Several psychiatrists said that for many women, symptoms of postpartum psychosis are treated and resolved within a year. But even if she is found not guilty because of that diagnosis, Ms. Clancy will most likely be treated for other ongoing issues, such as suicidal thoughts and a potential diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which can be a risk factor for postpartum psychosis.

Dr. Katrina Furey, a reproductive psychiatrist, has treated patients with postpartum psychosis for about a decade. She said treatment could be conducted through a combination of drugs, and sometimes with electroconvulsive therapy, in which electricity is used to trigger a short seizure that can help “reset the brain.”

The treatment has a bad reputation from Hollywood movies, Dr. Furey said, but is routine and often effective.

“The end game of treatment is for mom to feel like her normal self again,” she added.

I agree that Clancy should be helped, not punished, but doesn’t that hold for all criminals? As a determinist and consequentialist, I see no point in retributive punishment, which assumes a nonexistent free will. To me, there are three valid reasons for confinement after conviction: deterrence of others, keeping bad people out of society lest they do harm, and rehabilitation. The third is important, and would seem to the most urgent in Clancy’s case.

Clancy is 36 years old and will almost surely have no more children, so the risk of this happening again is small. But she should be freed only after being pronounced “cured” by reputable therapists, and not be allowed ever again to have unsupervised contact with minors.

*In May of 2025, John Spencer‘s website, “War Scholar” (he’s teaches urban warfare at, among other places, West Point), had a useful article with Arsen Ostrovsky list “The top 7 lies about Israel and IDF operations in Gaza.”  It’s still useful. I’ll summarize the “lies” using quotes from the article (all indented), but there is more on each point on the site:

1. Lie: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Genocide is the most serious crime under international law, defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention as acts committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Crucially, genocide requires specific intent — not simply that civilian deaths occur during war, but that they are intended as part of a broader plan to exterminate a people. This specific intent — known in legal terms as dolus specialis — sets a uniquely high bar that distinguishes genocide from even the most destructive military actions.

2. Lie: Israel intentionally targets civilians in Gaza.

Under international humanitarian law, the presence of civilian casualties in war — while tragic — does not equate to a war crime unless civilians are directly and intentionally targeted.

The IDF is one of the only militaries in history to systematically exceed the legal obligations to protect civilians.

3. Lie: The civilian-to-combatant ratio in Gaza proves Israel is committing war crimes.

One of the most dangerous and misleading claims is that civilian casualty figures alone prove Israel is committing war crimes. This is a fundamental distortion of international humanitarian law (IHL). Under the law of armed conflict, the legality of an attack is not judged by its outcome — such as the number of civilians killed — but by what commanders knew or reasonably could have known at the time of the attack. The legal test is proportionality: whether the expected incidental harm to civilians was excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

4. Lie: Israel is starving Gaza’s population.

The accusation that Israel uses starvation as a weapon is flatly contradicted by facts on the ground — and by the sheer scale of humanitarian aid Israel facilitates even during wartime. Since October 7, according to COGAT (the Israeli government body coordinating humanitarian operations), almost 100,000 trucks have entered Gaza carrying 1.75 million tons of aid, including humanitarian supplies, medicine and food, at a volume that in some periods has exceeded pre-war levels. In addition, Israel has also facilitated the supply of water and fuel, and even enabled the construction of numerous field hospitals.

The real cause of humanitarian suffering in Gaza is Hamas, which systematically hijacks and weaponizes aid for its fighters, attacks crossing points, and manipulates civilians as human shields.

5. Lie: Israel indiscriminately attacks hospitals and schools.

International law protects hospitals, schools, and religious sites — but that protection is not absolute. If these facilities are used for military purposes — such as storing weapons, housing fighters, or command operations — they lose protected status.

Hamas has repeatedly, and systematically, turned Gaza’s hospitals into fortified military compounds and terrorist staging grounds, a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

6. Lie: Israel is illegally occupying Gaza.

The assertion that Israel occupies Gaza is a misrepresentation of the current geopolitical reality. In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, evacuating all Israeli civilians and military personnel, and dismantling its settlements. Since then, Hamas has maintained de facto control over Gaza, exercising both political and military authority.​

7. Lie: Israel violates Hamas prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Conventions.

The 3rd Geneva Convention defines Prisoners of War (POWs) as combatants who meet four key conditions: being part of a recognized armed force, carrying arms openly, wearing a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, and conducting operations in accordance with the laws of war.

Hamas meet none of these standards. They hide among civilians, wear no uniforms, and routinely commit war crimes by targeting Israeli civilians, while shielding behind Palestinian ones, and embedding their combat operations within hospitals, schools, Mosques and residential areas.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to make these points in arguments—and I’ve lost friends for making them—but anybody engaged in debate about the Israel/Gaza war should know the assertions as well as the rebuttal in this article.

*The conservative National Review calls for our culture to return to “biological realism,” which it defines as “a sensible acknowledgement of human limits and biological realities,” arguing that, “The normalization of extreme claims about humans’ ability to push past or ignore those realities has only increased in recent years, to the detriment of our common culture and common sense.”

The article gives several examples where “biological realism” was ignored. One is AOC’s freezing of her eggs, adding this:

. . . it remains a harsh biological reality that most women experience a significant decline in fertility after the age of 35, and the women most likely to achieve successful pregnancies using their previously frozen eggs are those who froze a lot of them before 35. If Ocasio-Cortez were intent on educating women of her generation about preserving their fertility (rather than turning her personal choices into yet another Instagram-enabled political stunt), she would have noted these biological realities. She might also have acknowledged that the largely unregulated fertility industry raises many ethical and legal questions and has been implicated in cases of abuse and fraud.

Well, one might say that the NR is being too hard on AOC, though if she wanted to inspire women, she should have pointed out the advantage of freezing eggs earlier. But there are other examples where the biology is unrealistic:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly paid a Canadian company, Nectome, a deposit of $10,000 to secure a spot on its waiting list to one day freeze his brain, with the expectation that the company will scan it and grant him some form of digitized immortality. “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,” he said. Altman is one of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs on a quest for life extension and immortality. Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil has long predicted that humans, nanobots, and artificial intelligence will eventually merge to form a new species, while others in the AI successionism movement want AI to replace humanity.

Bryan Johnson, champion of the “Don’t Die” movement who is tracking and monitoring every possible bodily function he has while taking extreme measures to prolong his life, describes his journey as follows: “Conquering death will be humanity’s greatest achievement.” Talking to Ross Douthat on the Interesting Times podcast, Johnson described himself not as a man, but as “the first Don’t Die Homo sapien prototype.” Comparing himself to a self-driving car, he noted, “I’m building a self-driving body so it just automatically takes care of itself.”

The denial of biological limits is perhaps most prominent among transgender activists, who insist that biological men can become women and that those men should be allowed access to women-only spaces, including in women’s sports. Just as a child had to point out that the emperor wore no clothes, former NBA players Kanter and White highlighted the absurdities of men in women’s sports by declaring their intention to play on women’s teams. Their stunt was in part a response to criticism of professional athletes like WNBA player Sophie Cunningham for simply stating the obvious: Significant biological differences between the sexes make it unfair to allow men to compete against women. The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with her, and when Cunningham told reporters her position was “common sense,” she was correct.

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Common sense does not fare well when pitted against the ideological zeal of an extremely small minority — especially when that minority controls the levers of power in institutions. During a press conference, WNBA Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve hemmed and hawed but stuck to the ideological script, saying, “We need to protect trans kids.” Some WNBA players, like Golden State Valkyries player Gabby Williams, went so far as to claim she would “welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime.” Even though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld states’ right to ban men from playing on women’s teams, the mainstream media and trans activists continue to push the message that biological men should be allowed to take spots on teams from women.

There are other examples as well; Luana and I pointed out some cases of biological unreality in our Skeptical Inquirer article. I am still flummoxed about why, among WNBA players, only Sophie Cunningham has spoken out against biological men playing in their league, while other players and coaches waffle.  Not only do most Americans frown upon biological men playing in women’s sports, but the data show the advantage of being a man, even one who has taken hormones to “transition.” But in this case, ideology outweighs the data. It’s simply against the progressive agenda to say that trans-identified men should not participate in women’s sports.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are both griping:

Hili: Tomorrow will be better.
Szaron: Yesterday’s tomorrow is today, and it’s not any better at all.

In Polish:

Hili: Jutro będzie lepiej.
Szaron: Wczorajsze jutro jest dziś i wcale nie jest lepiej.

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

From Waterfowl Addicts Anonymous (Ducks, Geese, and Swans) with the caption, “How fast was that duck going?”

 

From Jesus of the Day (the site gives no indication of whose cartoon this is, but it must be Steve Nelson, the artist who creates “Twonks”):

From Terrible Maps:

From Masih; a bunch of Iranian men and women mocking her activism. It’s a testimony to her power, though, that so many people make these videos and ensure that they get to Masih. She just laughs and posts them.

Translation from the Farsi. “White Wednesdays” are days on which women protesting the regime wear white.

Take a look at this creep in the videos I found, who was loudly claiming with all their might that they were in the “majority” and mocking the women who were engaging in civil disobedience during the White Wednesdays. Now they’re backpedaling hard now that they’ve realized they’re just a bunch of stray sex toys in the minority.

این عرزشی را در این ویدیوهایی که پیدا کردم ببینید که با قدرت می‌گفتند در «اکثریت» هستند و زنانی را که در چهارشنبه های سفید نافرمانی مدنی می‌کردند اینطوری مسخره می‌کردند. حالا به غلط کردن افتاده‌اند وقتی فهمیدند یک مشت آلت‌های جنسیِ سرگردانِ در اقلیت هستند https://t.co/oCl2IFkQfY pic.twitter.com/kDrYW1qqco

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 31, 2026

From Malcom; a potpourri of black cats:

black cats are just orange cats with intelligence pic.twitter.com/4InbNQjah1

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 3, 2025

The Number Ten Cat protests Trump’s characterization of the war with Iran as “small potatoes”, and I agree with Larry that this was thoughtless wording:

Private Isabella Gonzales
First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan
Captain Cody A. Khork
Sergeant 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens
Sergeant 1st Class Nicole M. Amor
Major Jeffrey O’Brien
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan
Maj. John ‘Alex’ Klinner
Captain Ariana Savino
Technical Sergeant… https://t.co/VqDTJc80OW

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 4, 2026

Maarten Boudry describes his treatment at the University of Ghent in Belgium. And his Substack article is here, but you’ll have to pay (this excellent one is for free, though).

My own rector, Petra De Sutter, turned the “Gaza genocide” into official university policy, threatening anyone who dared to question it. Multiple professors emailed the previous rector behind my back, urging disciplinary action against me. Philosopher and former friend… https://t.co/AyTXfOkuMt pic.twitter.com/B6J5AZ8wWH

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) September 5, 2026

One from my feed; a botfly larva emerges from The White House (sound up):

OMG — This is so funny and hilarious! 😆 pic.twitter.com/43vGXsE9G8

— Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 (@LucasSa56947288) September 5, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Norwegian boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seventeen years old. https://t.co/YThd9j23Yv

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 6, 2026

Two from Doc Cobb. First, a lovely set of photos with a biology lesson:

Night eyes 😎 Finally got proper pictures of this amazing phenomenon! Mantises change their eye color (and light sensitivity) at night by transporting pigments from the surface of each compound eye unit toward the deeper eye region. Same female Tenodera sinensis, two different times. #bugsky

— D. Allan Drummond (@dadrummond.art) 2026-09-04T21:17:03.981Z

. . . and a playful baby bear:

Toddler bear burning off some energy while mom rests just off camera.#mammals #nature #bears #love #trailcam #Seattle #goodmorning #PNW #nokings #babyanimals

— Menestune (@menestune.bsky.social) 2026-09-05T15:03:50.951Z