Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Tuesday, not the Cruelest Day this week because in America this “work week” has only four days.  It is September 8, 2026 and it’s National Ants on a Log Day. What is that? This “healthy snack” comes from my childhood, and consists of peanut butter spread on a celery stick and dotted with raisins. Wikipedia, which has an article on this comestible, says there are variants:

Ants on a log is a North American snack made by spreading peanut butter, cream cheese, ricotta cheese, or another spread on celery, pretzels or bananas and placing raisins, blueberries, or chocolate chips, etc. on top. The snack and its name are presumed to originate in the 1950s.  The classic peanut butter version of ants on a log is recommended as a healthy snack by the McKinley Health Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

. . .There are numerous variations of ants on a log, including:

• Gnats on a log: currants
• Ants on vacation: without “ants” (raisins)
• Ants on a Slip ‘n Slide: add honey on top of the peanut butter before adding raisins
• Ants on a canoe: substitute apple slices for traditional celery
• Pigs in a pen: substitute pimento cheese for peanut butter and replace “ants” (raisins) with bacon bits (pigs)
• Ants on a ranch: substitute ranch dressing for peanut butter and peas for raisins
• Fish on a stream: Hummus spread on a celery stalk and topped with Goldfish crackers

The “classic” version, not to be mistaken for the much tastier Chinese dish called “ants climbing a tree.”

It’s also International Literacy Day, National Ampersand Day (&), National Date Nut Bread Day, National Actors Day, and National Pledge of Allegiance Day (“The day takes place on September 8, marking the anniversary of the day the Pledge first appeared, in 1892, in The Youth’s Companion).”

To celebrate actors day, here are two of them in a great scene from the 1954 movie “On the Waterfront“: Marlon Brando (perhaps the greatest actor of our time) and Eva Marie Saint.  Saint is still alive at 102; it’s hard to believe that someone who acted with Brando in that movie is still with us. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and Brando won for Best Actor. The film is seen as having popularized method acting—acting in which an actor’s life experiences and personal emotions are used to inform the role.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A far-right German political party, the Alternative For Germany (AfD), trounced its rival in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, but in the German system that may not give it the power to govern. This victory, according to another NYT, may be a bellwether for far-right victories in other European countries.

The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election on Sunday, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to become the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era.

If those results hold, the AfD, as the party is known by its German initials, could still assume power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the negotiations among rival parties that have vowed not to support an AfD government.

Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state, and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the election result sent shock waves through the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from ever returning to power.

“The AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt is less a reflection of the appeal of its political agenda than a stark demonstration of the political establishment’s failure to articulate a convincing vision for the state’s economic, political and social future,” said Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah. Still, the party tapped into voter frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win about 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in the Parliament.

Remember that this was a small state (population about 2 million) and was absorbed into East Germany; it was re-constituted when Germany was unified. From the second link:

Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe.

This wasn’t just any European country; it was Germany, a country that has relentlessly isolated far-right political parties since the calamity of Nazism. And it wasn’t just a strange outlier, but rather the latest step in a steady, decade-long march that has brought the far right ever closer to the fulcrum of power in Europe.

With elections scheduled across Europe next year, the striking success of the party, Alternative for Germany, could be a harbinger of further far-right victories, according to analysts, as well as a template for how they can be engineered. Its populist, anti-immigrant message echoes those of nationalist leaders in Britain, France, Italy and Spain, all countries where voters harbor many of the same grievances as those in Germany.

From the WSJ:

Germany’s Alternative for Germany scored a historic victory at a regional election on Sunday but was just short of the majority needed to form the country’s first far-right government since World War II, according to preliminary results.

The result will present other parties on the right and the left with a stark choice: continue banding together to keep the AfD out of power despite deep political differences—a decades-old strategy known as the firewall—or let the AfD form a minority government for the first time.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal sees the Gaza situation over the last 7 months as one that “has been maintained by an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object—the former being Israel’s determination not to give an inch of ground, the latter, Hamas’s refusal to disarm.” According to an unnamed source on the Trump-mandated Board of Peace, Israel now has four options:

The first is to keep the current policy, which “could lead to another October 7”: attacking Hamas but never fully destroying it, with Hamas still in control of the Gazan population, still fully armed, and with more terrorists than it had before the war began. I would quibble with the prediction of another October 7, but the reputational and alliance costs he didn’t explicitly mention are considerable.

The second option is to hand Gaza over to the PA. This is the preferred option of most of the Arab states and the UN, which is itself enough to disqualify it. I would count this as the most likely to lead to another October 7.

The third, according to them, is for Israel to conquer and control all of Gaza, assuming responsibility for 2 million Gazans with no international support and likely copious amounts of international hostility. The IDF would have to draft tens of thousands of reservists to take Gaza and even more to maintain their hold on the Strip. This we can agree is unviable.

The fourth and “only viable option,” they claim, is to cooperate with the Board of Peace and abide by the 20-point peace plan. It’s a “win-win for Israel,” they insist. Israel keeps the Yellow Line and does not withdraw. If Hamas fully disarms, the BoP and National Committee for the Administration of Gaza take control of Gaza, headed by President Trump. Israel withdraws fully only after Hamas is removed from governing and stripped of all its military capabilities. If Hamas does not fully disarm, then Israel has a green light to destroy it, while the BoP takes care of the population in areas outside Hamas control. No isolation for Israel, no bill for occupation.

. . .Yet for all my criticism of his framing, I don’t disagree. Israel needs to entertain the process and put the pressure back on Hamas to start moving on disarmament. Despite what newly minted Israel critics may claim, the country never had the luxury of unconditional support or a blank check. Uncompromising stubbornness comes at an incredibly high price, but Israel can reduce the bill with the occasional cooperation. It’s called give and take.

My take: see how many Kalashnikovs the BoP can collect, how many Hamas members they include in their police force, and proceed accordingly. Regardless, ensure Israel isn’t the one to blame if the process collapses. But as Kushner accurately diagnoses, none of this will happen before elections.

Segal, like me and “The Source,” sees option 4 as the best by far. This is not a “two state solution” but it’s the best that can be done right now.  Segal doesn’t think Trump gives a hoot what happens in Gaza, but Israel does! I cannot believe that, after all this, Hamas will disarm.

*Iran has widened the “exclusion zone” within which ships near the Strait of Hormuz are liable to Iranian attack.

The new head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Sunday said Tehran plans to announce an “exclusion zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz aimed at vessels it believes are attempting to transit the waterway.

Mohsen Rezaei’s comments to Iran’s state broadcaster came with few details, a day after the U.S. struck three Iranian oil tankers in response to Tehran launching ballistic missiles at U.S. warships. Experts called the launches a dangerous escalation after Iran’s previous attacks at sea targeted commercial shipping.

The new zone should be announced in the coming days and weeks and “will begin from the line of the U.S. naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz, and from this side continue into the Persian Gulf,” Rezaei said. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list.”

It is not clear where Iran defines the location of the weekslong U.S. blockade, which is aimed at Iranian ports and keeping Tehran from shipping out its oil. The U.S. military has said over 20 warships are supporting the blockade, which as of Sunday had redirected 92 commercial ships and disabled three.

The U.S. has been introducing new measures to increase the economic pain on Iran after negotiations collapsed and no end to the intermittent fighting appears in sight. Meanwhile, Iran continues to attack some ships trying to transit the strait, which has become an important source of leverage for Tehran in the war that began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes.

I wonder what the Iranian “sanctions list for ships” consists of.

*Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised free universal childcare were he elected, and there’s a small program for poor families with young kids. But as for the “universal part,” the WaPo reports that, based on New Mexico’s experience, it’s probably impossible.

A year after New Mexico launched free child care for all families, Dakota Rivera still can’t find a place to send her kids.

The mom of two was ecstatic when the state’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, announced last September that New Mexico would expand its day care assistance program to any family who wanted it.

But Rivera lives in a city with an acute shortage of child care centers. She still spends her days piecing together care with help from family members, canvassing social media and searching for babysitters.

She’s on 10 different waiting lists.

“I think the systems that they put in are great, sure, but it’s just not there yet,” Rivera said, as she triedto answer work emails while holding her 8-month-old daughter, who was cooing and waving a plastic giraffe. “In five years, maybe. For parents trying to do it now, it’s impossible.”

When Lujan Grisham first announced the programin a state with a majority-female legislature, it was widely praised as a historic step to address an issue that consumes the lives of parents everywhere — and their incomes. Costs for caring for an infant can often exceed a year’s rent, according tothe U.S. Department of Labor.

But the groundbreaking program, in part funded by the state’s sizable oil and gas revenue, has had a rocky debut.

The number of children who have enrolled has skyrocketed, far outpacing the capacity of day care centers in the state. Lujan Grisham has had to grapple with legal challenges, including a whistleblower case from the program’s chief financial officer, who says she was fired after flagging an $83 million budget deficit.

Critics have raised concerns that annual costs could balloon to more than $800 million — nearly $400 million more than when the program debuted. State legislative analysts have also found that newly eligible, higher-income families may be squeezing out some of the lowest-income recipients. The state’s GOP leaders dubbed the program“Nannies for Millionaires.”

The stakes could not be higher as more Americans say raising children is too expensive and as political leaders look to New Mexico as they try to address overwhelming child care needs. Vermont and Connecticut already have smaller-scale programs, and New York MayorZohran Mamdani (D) is rolling out free day care for thousands ofthe city’s 2-year-olds — a move that has also had a bumpy start.

When I asked Grok why the program had a rocky start, it told me this:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free 2-K program for 2-year-olds—the first phase of his campaign promise of universal childcare—has faced a rocky rollout because of delayed city payments and contract approvals that have left many daycare providers short of cash just days before the September 10, 2026 start date.

Providers report they have not received the usual August advance payments needed for furniture, supplies, teacher salaries, and utilities. Some have warned parents their sites may not open. City-offered interest-free bridge loans have also been slow to arrive, forcing operators to tap personal savings, 401(k)s, high-interest loans, or family members. One Bronx operator with four planned 2-K classes put it bluntly: the city created the program “but they didn’t set up the infrastructure to make it work.”

These delays are not new. New York’s early-childhood contracting system has struggled with late payments for more than a decade, beginning with the 2014 Universal Pre-K launch under Bill de Blasio. The problem worsened under Eric Adams after hundreds of staff—including instructional coordinators who worked directly with providers—were cut or reassigned. The Division of Early Childhood Education remains understaffed, and launching a new 2-K cohort on top of existing 3-K and pre-K programs added more contracts than the depleted office could process quickly.

Nobody believes that Mamdani will keep a majority (or any) of the pie-in-the-sky promises that got him elected. But neither do people care. He’s a socialist and hates Israel, and that is apparently what’s important to people.

*And the ever-reliable AP Odd News site reports a massive theft of Guinness Stout:

 British police have a stout task ahead: recovering 70,000 pints worth of stolen Guinness.

Two trailer truckloads of the famously creamy dark beer valued at 115,000 pounds ($155,000) were stolen from a depot near Liverpool in northwest England, the Cheshire Constabulary said Thursday.

“It is famously said that ‘Guinness is good for you,’ but that is only the case when it has been bought and paid for,” Det. Sgt. Gary McClatchy said. “We will settle for nothing less than the full recovery of all the items stolen.”

The Guinness had been destined for pubs, but was snatched Monday night by two drivers who pulled up to an industrial park in Runcorn and hauled away the trailers containing about 800 barrels of stout.

The value of the trailers was estimated at 50,000 pounds ($67,000).

The theft comes just weeks after a beer heist in the United States captured the public’s attention because of the brewer’s cheeky social media posts about the loss of roughly 34,000 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

What I don’t understand is this: these are not cans or bottles of Guinness, but CASKS that were intended for pubs. So what is going to happened to the 800 barrels of purloined stout? You need a whole system (including a cool cellar) to tap these kegs, and there are hundreds of them.  It’s a very odd thing to steal!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the conversation is getting antiwoke:

Hili: And again, we’ve turned today into yesterday.
Andrzej: Please, don’t tell me that time is a social construct.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów zmieniliśmy dziś we wczoraj.
Ja: Proszę, nie mów, że czas to konstrukt społeczny.

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

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

From Terrible Maps:

From Masih; the fiancée of an executed protestor took her own life. Please remember these things when you think about Iran.

THEIR WEDDING WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THIS MONTH.

But Aida could not bear the pain of losing her fiancé to the regime’s bullets, and ultimately took her own life. 💔

Aida Heydari, 25, was engaged to Abolfazl Soleimani, a 27-year-old young man who was shot and killed by regime forces… pic.twitter.com/pqefuuF6up

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 7, 2026

From Luana. I don’t know what’s worse: people helping others to cheat who then lose their jobs, or people simply cheating. I suppose it’s the former.

Any way you want to look at this it’s insane:

“At its peak early this decade, at least 40,000 people in the city were being paid to do other people’s homework, researchers estimated” pic.twitter.com/10FvS3DEpu

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) September 7, 2026

It looks like Milo Yiannopoulos has become Muslim. When he was gay (no longer, I think) he was violently opposed to Islam. Wikipedia says this:

Yiannopoulos is a frequent critic of Islam and has said the “fear of Islam is entirely rational”.^{[91][needs update]} He has blamed Islam, not just extremist groups and terrorists, for violence against women and homosexuals. Yiannopoulos said “I’m not talking about Islamists. I’m not talking about terrorists. I’m not talking about radical Islam. I’m talking about mainstream Muslim culture”.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

خيارُكم في الجاهليةِ ، خيارُكم في الإسلامِ إذا فقُهوا

“The best of you in the time of ignorance (Jāhiliyyah) are the best of you in Islam, if they gain understanding.”

— Sahih al-Bukhari 3383; Sahih Muslim 2378 pic.twitter.com/3aaSBugNt8

— MILO (@Nero) September 6, 2026

The Number Ten Cat looks as if he’s been ridden hard and put away wet:

My old pal @PoliticalPics caught me between naps https://t.co/PtfQj88cKX

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 7, 2026

One from my feed. Sound up to hear the otter’s squeals of joy:

Lola the baby otter tries fish for the first time

[📹 paulcuffaro] pic.twitter.com/45n60nu9ag

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 7, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

A Czech Jewish girl, here photographed at age 2, was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz ten years later. https://t.co/JJaFnNeXy4

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 8, 2026

Two from Doctor Cobb. Look at all those rays!

A circling school of Cownose Rays near the beach in Clearwater, Florida yesterday. Nature is Awesome! Notice the long trail of sediment being stirred up by the rays. Different marine life often leaves different tracks to follow just like land animals. #animals #wildlife #nature #florida #awesome

— See Through Canoe (@seethroughcanoe.bsky.social) 2026-09-07T13:59:16.175Z

Matthew took this photo himself, and I think I’ve been to this store!

Great antiques shop window in Edinburgh.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-09-06T18:18:11.947Z