Welcome to Monday, Septenber 14, 2026 and it’s National Eat a Hoagie Day. Also known as submarine sandwiches, subs, grinders, or hero sandwiches. Where does the name “hoagie” come from? It’s a mystery, but the term is endemic to New Jersey and Philadelphia. Here are thrr theories as listed by Wikipedia (they give two more:)
- In 1953, a reader letter to the Philadelphia Bulletin reported that Italian-Americans working at the World War I–era shipyard known as Hog Island, where emergency shipping was produced for the war effort, introduced the sandwich by putting various meats, cheeses, and lettuce between two slices of bread. This became known as the “Hog Island” sandwich; shortened to “Hoggies”, then the “hoagie”.
- Dictionary.com offers the following origin of the term hoagie – n. American English (originally Philadelphia) word for “hero, large sandwich made from a long, split roll”; originally hoggie (c. 1936), traditionally said to be named for the jazz musician Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981), but the use of the word predates his celebrity and the original spelling seems to suggest another source (perhaps “hog”). The modern spelling dates from about 1945; it may have been altered by influence of Carmichael’s nickname.
- The Philadelphia Almanac and Citizen’s Manual offers a different explanation saying the sandwich was created by early-twentieth-century street vendors called “hokey-pokey men”, who sold antipasto salad, meats, cookies, and buns with a cut in them. When Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore opened in Philadelphia in 1879, bakeries produced a long loaf called the pinafore. Entrepreneurial “hokey-pokey men” sliced the loaf in half, stuffed it with antipasto salad, and sold the world’s first “hoagie”. This hypothesis seems unlikely, as “hokey pokey” men were known street vendors of an ice cream product.
Here, from Wikipedia, is a “salami, ham and cheeses on a hoagie roll“:
It’s also Gobstopper Day, National Black and White Cookie Day, and National Cream-Filled Donut Day. Here’s one I ate in Hawaii in 2019. These donuts, which originated in Portugal, are called “malasadas” in Hawaii, and aren’t easy to find.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT reports on how a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners are taking action against the U.S and it allies. without approval of the country’s leaders, who are furious (article archived here).
Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran, was riding high in early July, fresh off the successful negotiation of a peace agreement with the United States, and had traveled to neighboring Iraq for part of a weeklong funeral spectacle for Iran’s slain supreme leader.
Suddenly he got stunning news.
Iranian forces had opened fire on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, setting ablaze a Qatari L.N.G. tanker and damaging other vessels. Iran was under siege in world opinion.
Outraged, Mr. Pezeshkian phoned Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, the commander in chief of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and in a raised voice called the actions reckless and demanded answers, according to five Iranian officials and two Guards members familiar with the events.
General Vahidi told the president that he had neither authorized nor had advance knowledge of the strike, the five officials said. The nation’s Supreme National Security Council, which plays a critical role in both the war and negotiations, had also been in the dark, he said.
In fact, much of the country’s leadership was unaware that a fringe hard-line faction had decided to act on its own. Ultimately, those clandestine efforts derailed a push by more moderate pragmatists in Iran to reach an end to hostilities with the United States and repair their nation’s ailing economy.
The hard-liners succeeded in part because the only figure with the authority to resolve such disputes — the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — has been a phantom since taking office in March. He has not been seen, and his voice has not been heard. And the authenticity of written statements and messages attributed to Ayatollah Khamenei has been questioned, including by Mr. Pezeshkian, according to three Iranian officials.
Mr. Pezeshkian immediately returned to Tehran. By the next morning, even as the funeral ceremonies were still underway, the United States had retaliated with airstrikes on Iran. The two countries were back at war.
Senior Iranian officials and a Guards member said in interviews that what followed were some of the most volatile political confrontations within Iran’s leadership in memory. Officials engaged in shouting matches. Two senior generals threatened to resign. Accusations of treason and betrayal flew.
*From the WaPo, a clickbait headline for me: “We asked dozens of people what they want from Democrats. Here’s what they said.” (The title appears to have been changed, and it’s an interesting change. See the archived version for the new title.)
Here’s the intro and a few comments
Outside a highway rest stop named after former president Joe Biden, it was easy to pick up on the frustration and lack of enthusiasm that many Democratic voters are feeling toward the party he once led. But many also said they’ll set those misgivings aside and vote for Democrats in November.
The responses are in line with recent national polling, which has found that more Democrats than Republicans are certain to vote, even as the Democratic Party’s favorability and public image remains weak. About 91 percent of Democratic registered voters said they would definitely vote, compared with 79 percent of Republicans, according to a YouGov-Economist poll from August. The same pollster has found the favorability rating of Democrats has steadily risen over the last year to 40.5 percent and 30 percent among independents.
The Washington Post interviewed dozens of voters at the Biden Welcome Center off Interstate 95.Here’s what they said they’re feeling about the 2026 midterm elections — and what they want from Democrats:
Ronald Makarutsa
45, nurse practitioner in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, will vote Democratic
“They need to have more of a spine and stand up for one another. When a Republican does something, they all say the same thing until they achieve their goals. Some of the Democrats, they don’t support one another. … They have to put up a united front.”
Ashish Pandy
39, driver and nonprofit founder in Queens, will vote, but not sure for what party
“People have forgotten humanity. … Rather than big issues, rather than bringing up Russia or the Middle East, they should be bringing up things that matter to people: People shouldn’t be hungry. They should have access to a good life.”
Lindsay Morgan
43, restaurant manager in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, will vote Democratic
“Democrats need better people to run. If you want to change what’s happening, you have to get a powerhouse that doesn’t give the other side fuel to say we have ‘Sleepy Joe.’ [But] they need not to fall so far left that it detracts from some of those Republicans you might capture.”
Carlos Roman
21, college student in Newark, Delaware, will not vote
“The Democratic and Republican Party are just two groups that serve one group, and that collective is the oligarchy.”
I wonder what group Roman doesn’t think “serves the oligarchy.” At any rate, what we have is a panoply of answers and nothing enlightening. It’s interesting that nobody in the article said they’d vote Republican, and that percentage among all those surveyed isn’t given. Yet they interviewed dozens of people. Since the article was about what Democrats want from their party, that’s perhaps understandable. Note, though, that there are several people who aren’t sure how they’ll vote, and one who won’t vote at all.
*People on this site seem divided about whether artificial intelligence is an existential danger or is not to be worried about. But, according to the NYT, “Top A.I. leaders call for slowing down A.I,. development.” All this stems from an announcement and resignation from Anthropic by Jacob Coxon, ho had also worked for openAI, that those companies are irresponsible to the point of endangering humanity.
Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology.
Top executives of other major A.I. companies quickly signed on to the effort. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI; Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I.; and Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, wrote in social media posts that they agreed on the need for a slower pace.
Mr. Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote in his essay that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too rapid a pace for researchers to continue safely.
“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Mr. Amodei wrote. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
Mr. Amodei has warned about the safety risks of A.I. for years. But his essay amounted to one of the most full-throated calls for urgent action from a leading A.I. company executive to date.
He called for independent auditors to check the companies for safety standards and urged global cooperation in creating rules around A.I. development.
The appeal for an industrywide pause follows months of escalating concerns across the technology industry as A.I. model development has made significant strides at companies like Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, as well as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and Google’s DeepMind.
Tensions rose further after the leading A.I. labs discovered security breaches carried out by their own programs without their knowledge. In one incident this year, OpenAI’s systems breached an A.I. start-up called HuggingFace, which was not detected until HuggingFace informed OpenAI weeks after it had happened. Since then, A.I. researchers have conferred to discuss what to do.
People here have said that the warnings are overblown, and I don’t know if AI bots can destroy humanity without a person behind them. But I don’t know squat. If the top executives call for a slowdown, though, that’s good enough for me.
*The Free Press has an editorial, “9/11 and the work to be done,” which indicts many Americans for largely forgetting (or even approving) the desire of many Islamists and terrorists to kill Americans and destroy the things that make America worth inhabiting.
It is clear that the unity that Americans experienced immediately after the attacks has dissipated almost completely. We are now furiously divided over basic questions of national identity and purpose. And astonishingly, we’re even divided over who is to blame for the attacks.
Leading figures shaping the views of millions, and especially young people, have distorted the history and meaning of 9/11, making it more difficult to fully and collectively honor the dead, the sacrifice of first responders, and the courage of those willing to fight and die for our country. To take two examples who have been in the spotlight lately, that includes Hasan Piker, who once declared that “America deserved 9/11,” and has become the darling of the Democratic left, livestreaming to his fans with a framed image of the burning towers in the background. And it includes Tucker Carlson, who recycles the libelous conspiracy theories he once denounced, promulgated in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 by Hezbollah, suggesting that Israeli and American Jews were in on the plot.
In 2001, Americans were shocked by the deep reservoir of ideological hatred in the Arab and Islamic world that the terrorist attacks brought into the open. Today, we are shocked by how familiar open hatred of America has become. All of the ideological -isms we believed we had cast off in the 20th century—anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-Westernism, anti-Zionism—are now growing natively on American soil. It’s no wonder Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People” became a viral TikTok sensation in November 2023. This was one month after similarly inspired Hamas terrorists, armed and trained by the Islamic Republic of Iran, massacred and kidnapped men, women, and children in southern Israel, only to be embraced by credulous students and professors at elite American institutions who affirmed the terrorists’ barbaric belief that Westerners, and Jews in particular, had it coming. Those students and professors had no idea what drives radical Islamists, or that our enemies on many fronts are fighting for one cause.
What did university students who celebrated the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, know about the men, women, and children murdered on airplanes, in burning and collapsing buildings, in the wreckage of the Pentagon, and on the earth of rural Pennsylvania, where heroic passengers crashed the fourth plane to prevent it from being turned into one more weapon of mass destruction? What had young Americans been taught about the apocalyptic ideology that sanctified the slaughter of 9/11, and that continues to fuel a war against the West, whose destruction it proclaims as its sacred mission?
Although the problem has worsened recently, there have always been those in the West who declined to recognize that killing Westerners is a fundamental aim of Islamists everywhere. Ground Zero was still a smoking pit when the French ambassador to Israel, Jacques Huntzinger, rejected any comparison of Hamas terrorists—who had been blowing up men, women, and children, along with themselves, on buses, in coffee shops, and in pizzerias—to the al-Qaeda terrorists who had flown airplanes into buildings. “We all condemn the terrorism Hamas and Islamic Jihad perpetrate here,” Huntzinger told an Israeli journalist, “but this terrorism is linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which must be solved.” Like many of his peers in the U.S. and Europe, he preferred to ignore the overarching motivation that unites the enemies of Americans and Israelis.
. . . The question today is whether Americans will retain our sense of good and evil, and continue to keep the promise we made back then, that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” There is a lot of work to do.
Yes, some will call this essay jingoistic, while other may even say it’s Islamophobic. But recognizing the dangers of Islamism (note the term) is not an irrational fear but an issue to grapple with it. All you have to do is live on a liberal college campus to recognize that there is a lot of truth to what the essay says.
*Are Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner really gay, or have some kind of amorous relationship? That is the reaction some fans are having to the new movie, “Coyote vs. Acme,”
Maybe the Road Runner was just playing hard to get.
For decades, cartoon canine Wile E. Coyote has been pursuing the speeding bird throughout the American Southwest, aiming to eat him and getting blown up in the process.
But in the eyes of some fans, the violent chase was actually a classic tale of tortured love. And right now they’re doing a victory lap.
That’s because of “Coyote vs. Acme,” a new film with a different twist on the hot pursuit. In the movie (spoiler alert), Wile E. Coyote sues the Acme Corporation over their defective products, which consistently backfire as he closes in on the bird. The case goes to a congressional hearing, where Road Runner bursts into the room and becomes the only creature to testify on Coyote’s behalf. Through his language of “beeps,” Road Runner tells the room he considers Coyote a friend and asks, “Are you coming back?”
Apparently that’s all the internet needed to hear.
“Road Runner admits that he sees Coyote, even whenever Wile E. dislikes him or doesn’t think that he’s looking,” said Lisbon LaSure, a 24-year-old in Jacksonville, Fla. “It’s so nice to be seen like that. It’s really deep and it’s really powerful and it’s really validating and just overall like really romantic.”
Social media is teeming with people celebrating the characters’ “toxic yaoi,” a Japanese term for male lovers. You’ll also find people “shipping” them—wishing they were in a relationship—through fan art or TikTok videos where their interactions are reframed through careful editing and songs like Paul Anka’s “You Are My Destiny” or Olivia Rodrigo’s “Stupid Song.” (Sample lyrics: “I want you more than any stupid song could ever say.”)
Annie Tarin, a University of Arizona student, made a viral montage set to Chappell Roan’s “The Subway,” in which the pop star croons about a former soulmate. In the clips Tarin uses, Coyote looks longingly at one of Road Runner’s feathers. Road Runner seems to stare into Coyote’s soul with his curious gaze.
I’m not ready to admit that there’s an amorous relationship between the two (are their sexes even known?) until I see the movie, which I’m not inclined to do. Has anybody seen it? Here’s the trailer:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the editor is bothering the worker:
Hili: Am I bothering you well enough?
Andrzej: Exceptionally well.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy dobrze ci przeszkadzam?
Ja: Wręcz doskonale.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild:
From 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!
From Meow Incorporated:
From Masih; vintage video of Iranians mourning the killings in America on 9/11:
Look carefully at these images.
Twenty-five years ago, we Iranians took to the streets after 9/11. We lit candles. We mourned the victims. We chanted against terrorism.
We did not need anyone to explain terrorism to us.
We had lived it. We knew what it looked like.
We knew… pic.twitter.com/53nrdhdv56
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 11, 2026
From Luana; Elizabeth Warren appearing a bit dense:
Dynamic pricing means prices go down as well as up. So this is conclusive evidence that either (a) she’s stupid, (b) she’s dishonest, or (c) both. The strange thing is, I genuinely can’t guess which it is. Could she lie this overtly? https://t.co/gh6sqFU4o4
— Paul Graham (@paulg) September 13, 2026
From Malcolm. I’m hoping these are all real, and so far there are no “community notes” that this is AI:
Pets that imitate their owners pic.twitter.com/VQDH9z240f
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 8, 2026
Two from my feed. First, translated from the Turkish: “At first glance, I thought it was a lion-shaped toy～ Turns out it was moving”:
İlk bakışta aslan şeklinde bir oyuncak sanmıştım～ Meğer hareket ediyormuş 🤩 pic.twitter.com/iFXcmhPipo
— Gözde (@DearGozde) September 12, 2026
From JKR:
You can’t help but be moved by the quiet dignity and eloquence of his argument. pic.twitter.com/5ocS0U9aRj
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 12, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as the arrived in Auschwitz. She was eleven years old. https://t.co/ANEhaDM5M4
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 14, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. He’s right when he says, “Real, not AI”:
Red Lip Bat FishI swear they are real
Ducklings! (Sound up.)
Best things in life are three plus one our little Muscovy ducklings
— Chris and his farmily of forever farm friends (@caenhillcc.bsky.social) 2026-09-10T15:40:54.622Z
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