Wednesday: Hili dialogue

September 9, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Puckeldagen” in Swedish), Wednesday, September 9, 2026 and it’s National Teddy Bear Day.  Here is my teddy bear, whose name you should know if you’ve read this site for a while (put it below if you remember0.  The first person to send a photo of their teddy along with a few words of description will have it posted below. I got this bear when I was born, and here he is nearly eight decades later, battered, head sewed back on, new eyes, and nearly devoid of fur. That makes two of us (save for the head part).

It’s also National “I Love Food” Day (why the quotation marks? are we only supposed to pretend we love food?), National Steak Au Poivre Day, International Buy a Priest a Beer Day, and National Wiener Schnitzel Day. Here’s a schnitzel mit Kartoffel I had in Israel of all places—in an Austrian restaurant where I was taken.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 9 Wikipedia page.

Again I note that posting will be light for a while. Not only do I have a writing assignment, but my insomnia has returned big time. And I’m still anxious about the ducklings, though I think they’ll be all right.

Da Nooz:

*Canada began putting new tariffs on American goods, and there’s no end in sight to this trade war (article archived here):

New Canadian tariffs targeting roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports officially snapped into place on Tuesday, the latest escalation in an increasingly costly trade war that has ensnarled two longtime allies.

The duties apply to a variety of U.S. goods, including clothing, cheese, metal parts and wood products. The approach is meant to mimic the taxes that President Trump imposed on Canada after trade talks between the two neighbors collapsed in acrimony last month.

For now, the economic effects of the tit-for-tat may be limited because the tariffs encompass only a small portion of the annual trade between the United States and Canada. The more pressing concern is a potential cycle of retaliation, one that results in even higher and more exhaustive duties that harm families and businesses on both sides of the border.

In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to position himself as a bulwark against Mr. Trump’s trade aggression, describing his nation as “at war.” Canadian officials generally have pledged to respond “dollar for dollar” to any U.S. duties.

In Washington, the president and his aides have repeatedly mocked their Canadian counterparts and the size of their ally’s economy and military. Mr. Trump has already threatened additional tariffs on auto imports from Canada, and on Friday, he even suggested he could try to halt bilateral trade outright.

Then, hours before Canada’s new tariffs took effect, Mr. Trump took to social media to continue his attack. He singled out Bombardier, a Canadian plane manufacturer, claiming there would be “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!”

Bombardier said in a statement that aerospace products are a top American export and that the company makes crucial components like wings in California and Texas. “Bombardier is a strong contributor to the sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs across the United States,” it said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The spat with Canada offered the latest evidence that Mr. Trump remains as committed as ever to his disruptive strategy of trade brinkmanship. Despite nearly two years of blistering court defeats, vicious international disputes and mounting domestic blowback, tariffs remain the president’s preferred tool to try to boost domestic manufacturing and broker better trade deals.

Trump is not only dead wrong about tariffs, but is also alienating our friendly neighbor to the north. It galls me that Canadians may think that most Americans are anti-Canadian, but in reality most Americans have taken a dim view of Trump’s tariff rampage. This is not going to be good for Trump or the Republicans in the midterm elections.

*There’s a new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the now jailed creator of  the blood-testing company Theranos. The documentary, called “You Can See Everything”, is are somewhat secret as even the NYT doesn’t want to give away the spoilers, the film doesn’t open until October, and the trailer, below, is just over one minute long. (In 2023 Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in the federal pen.) An excerpt from the NYT piece, which is archived here.

Thirty-four days before Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the medical testing company Theranos, reported to prison to begin her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors, she invited a camera crew into her rented home in Southern California in an effort to clear her name. Yet the two people she chose to chronicle her life were Nathan Fielder, the absurdist comedian behind “Nathan for You,” and the documentary director Lance Oppenheim.

That decision turned into a three-year odyssey for the filmmakers and a three-hour documentary called “You Can See Everything” that may upend the documentary genre itself. The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in a secret screening on Sunday night that was not revealed until audience members took their seats. It will make its theatrical debut, courtesy of A24, on Oct. 16.

The movie features long, intense conversations between Fielder and Holmes with extreme close-ups. It also reveals that while Holmes serves her time at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, she and her partner, Billy Evans, are making plans “to launch a new and improved Theranos,” the company that collapsed after its deceptive claims about blood-testing technology were exposed in The Wall Street Journal in 2015.

What can’t be featured in on-camera interviews is depicted in innovative recreations. Two weeks before she leaves for prison, Fielder moves into the home and is there for moments many would consider off limits. There’s also a surprise plot point that shouldn’t be spoiled.

“I don’t know why I’m there,” Fielder said in a post-screening question-and-answer session at Telluride. Throughout the film he gives the couple many opportunities to turn off the cameras, he noted. “I’m really struggling to this day to understand what I experienced,” he added. “I’m excited for this movie to come out and for people to help me with what I experienced.”

That’s a plenty weird documentary, and the trailer, below, is equally weird.  I don’t believe for a minute she’s telling the truth; what she has to gain is burnishing her image:

As for “launching a new and improved Theranos, Holmes should forget about it. I think she may be forbidden to do that kind of stuff for a while, and who, in view of her deception and crimes, would invest in it?

*Here are the results of yesterday’s poll on Lindsay Clancy. There were some good comments, too. The votes weren’t numerous—another sign of the dying of this site—but to my surprise the most votes went to “guilty” with “not criminally responsible” in second place (as you can see from the yellow bar, I voted “no opinion or unsure” as I wasn’t on the jury and really don’t have an opinion).  As I note below, I think the jury was going to render a verdict like “not guilty by reason of mental illness,” which still would have put Clancy in jail for a long time.

As the NYT revealed, three of the jurors spoke and demonized the one holdout man who wouldn’t vote “not guilty” (article archived here):

It had looked like the end of deliberations in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy.

Eleven of twelve jurors had agreed not to convict Ms. Clancy. Then the one holdout “admitted he had reasonable doubt,” the jury’s forewoman, Roni Carlson, said in an interview with the television station NBC10 in Boston on Tuesday.

According to the judge’s instructions, if jurors had considered all the evidence but still had reasonable doubt about the charges against Ms. Clancy, they had to acquit her.

So Ms. Carlson, a retired teacher, started to fill out the three verdict forms, she said in the interview. She got as far as writing her signature on each sheet. But then, Ms. Carlson recalled, the holdout juror said, “I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

In the first public statements by jurors since the monthlong trial, Ms. Carlson and two other jurors opened up about the grueling week of deliberations in which the jury of nine women and three men were deadlocked, prompting Judge William Sullivan to declare a mistrial

Now I’m not sure whether “not guilty by reason of insanity” equates to “not criminally responsible for murder,” but I

Apropos, over at the City Journal Christina Buttons describes the effect that housing criminal defendants has had on psychiatric facilities (a lot more violence and assaults on staff). She favors a hybrid jail/treatment option:

States should take a different approach. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Stephen Eide argues that they should invest in psychiatric care inside jails rather than continually moving offenders into state hospitals. Jails already have legal obligations to provide health care, and competency restoration often consists of psychiatric stabilization along with teaching defendants enough about the legal process to participate in their cases. States can fund specialized restoration programs within secure correctional settings while reserving hospital transfer for defendants whose conditions actually require hospital-level treatment. The ACLU has opposed this approach, calling jail-based competency treatment “inhumane” and arguing that defendants should instead receive restoration in a therapeutic setting.

Eide’s proposal recognizes that treatment and criminal accountability can coexist. A defendant can suffer from serious mental illness and still belong within the criminal-justice system. Improving psychiatric care in jails would allow states to provide treatment without turning ordinary psychiatric hospitals into de facto correctional facilities. It would also preserve scarce civil beds and reduce the burden on staff and patients when hospitals are asked to manage forensic populations they were not designed to house.

The debate over Lindsay Clancy reflects the same tendency to treat compassion for the offender as incompatible with criminal accountability. Much of the public response has centered on her suffering rather than on the three children she killed. The same priorities appear in policy when the needs of offenders take precedence over crime victims, hospital workers, and psychiatric patients who committed no crime.

*The head of the Smithsonian Institution is stepping down, though he denies that Trump’s efforts to reshape the Institution’s message had anything to do with the premature retirement:

The Smithsonian Institution’s top official, Lonnie G. Bunch III, is retiring, ushering in a seismic transition at the nation’s museum and research organization just as President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign to influence its portrayal of American history.

Bunch, the 73-year-old historian who founded the National Museum of African American History and Culture and then became the Smithsonian’s first Black leader, publicly announced Tuesday that he is stepping down after more than seven years in the institution’s top job.

Bunch plans to depart by the end of the year, the Smithsonian said in a statement.

Bunch’s resignation comes at one of the most politically fraught moments in the Smithsonian’s 180-year history. Since March 2025, Trump has sought to purge what he calls “improper ideology” from its museums, while his administration has threatened the institution’s federal funding, tried to fire a museum director and challenged its authority over personnel and exhibitions.

But the president does not choose the Smithsonian secretary. That power belongs to its governing body, the Board of Regents, which is made up of high-level government officials, members of Congress and citizens appointed by Congress. As vice president, JD Vance sits on that 17-member board, which currently includes two vacant seats.

Bunch said in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday that the administration’s pressure played no role in his decision and that he was still ready to do battle to protect the Smithsonian’s autonomy.

“We’re at a time when people are challenging that independence,” he said, “but I feel very strongly that it is as independent as we were before, and that I will continue to fight — for as long as I’m in this chair — for the independence of the Smithsonian.”

Bunch said he had been contemplating retirement for about a year and settled on leaving after spending several weeks this summer with his children and grandchildren. He originally planned to serve five years as secretary but eventually decided to stay into the nation’s 250th anniversary year and through the approaching 10th anniversary of the African American history museum.

Well, I’m not sure whether Bunch’s statement that he’s fighting for the Smithsonian’s independence has nothing to do with Trump. Who else is threatening that independence?

*More renaming insanity from the President: Trump has now posted a map suggesting that the state of New Mexico be renamed “New America.”

President Trump appeared to suggest on Sunday that New Mexico should be renamed “New America,” prompting swift backlash from the state’s Democratic leaders over his latest effort to put an American stamp on geographic names.

On social media, Mr. Trump shared an image of a map of New Mexico with the word “Mexico” crossed out with a red X and replaced with “America.” The White House re-shared the image shortly after on its official X account.

The president posted again several hours later, with what appeared to be an A.I. video of him placing a label with the word “America” over “Mexico” on a “Welcome to New Mexico” road sign.

Mr. Trump has no legal authority to rename any state, which in New Mexico’s case is written into its Constitution. Any proposed change would have to originate within the state, a prospect that New Mexico’s Democratic leaders rejected forcefully on Sunday.

“New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote on social media.

Representative Melanie Stansbury was more blunt: “Oh hell no!” she wrote on X, adding, “Our state’s name carries generations of history, culture, and family — and it belongs to us.”

Here’s the map Trump posted, though the El Paso Times notes that it originated at a parody account:

The “New America” map was previously posted on Sept. 1 on the parody account Daily Noud, which posted a fake image falsely claiming Trump had signed an executive order renaming New Mexico. Daily Noud account on X states, “These are fake stories.”

And the AI video showing Trump posting the new name. Are we taxpayers funding someone in the White House to make these videos?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili demands attention.

Hili: Did you really forget I was here?
Andrzej: Sometimes, when I’m reading, I even forget about you.

In Polish:

Hili: Naprawdę zapomniałeś, że tu jestem?
Ja: Czasem, czytając zapominam nawet o tobie.

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

From Stacy:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Things With Faces:

From Masih: a rapper was hanged for doing nothing besides peacefully protesting—the same old story in the odious theocracy of Iran:

From Bryan, two views of Chicago from space (“LED vs sodium vapor”) showing our famous grid street design:

From Luana, three minutes of academic insanity, this time involving “body fascism”:

Two from my feed. I probably posted this one before but, if so, here it is again. I love the sign!

Only in Japan:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, the most important job at 10 Downing Street:

Welcome to the most important job you'll ever have @andyburnham.bsky.social Cartoon brilliance by @bjennings90.bsky.social for @theguardian.com

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T12:21:20.263Z

Matthew’s just published a brief biography of J. D. Watson in an Indian journal aimed at schoolchildren:

I just published a brief account of Jim Watson’s life, aimed at students. It leans heavily on the insights of @nccomfort.bsky.social, whose biography of Watson will be out next year. Free link here: rdcu.be/M91CnnE3N4wa

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-09-07T08:33:32.981Z

 

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