Wednesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Wednesday, September 30, 2026—the last day of the month and also a Hump Day (“Lillördag” in Swedish). It’s also International Goose Day, and here’s a goose and two goslings I photographed on Svalbard last year. Do you know the species?

It’s also Confucius Day, National Mocha Day, National Coffee Day, and of course to go with that it’s National Biscotti Day.

There was a Google Doodle yesterday; click on it to see where it goes:

There will be no Hili tomorrow as I have to go to the retina doc for a checkup and I feel pretty awful.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news, ripped from the headlines (h/t Jay): there was a foiled hijacking of a plane bound for Israel. Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal described it as “Miracle on flight FZ1073.”

It’s Wednesday, September 30, and for the first time in over 20 years, someone has tried to hijack a plane bound for Israel. Miraculously, the attacker, an Omani pilot, was overpowered before he could complete his mission.

The entire region held its breath as the morning Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv sent an emergency signal, flashed the hijack code and appeared to veer off course over Saudi airspace. The region then exhaled, almost with a chuckle, when early reports blamed a scuffle between the two pilots. That laughter quickly died as security assessments and passenger testimony revealed that the co-pilot had repeatedly stabbed the captain. The terrorist then seized the controls and pointed the plane toward the ground, dropping almost 20,000 feet in just over a minute, until several crew members and passengers forced their way through the cockpit door and subdued him. Many were injured in the process. The plane made an emergency landing in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where the passengers are now waiting for Israel to bring them home.

The assailant’s specific motive and affiliation are still unconfirmed, but Israel is treating the incident as terrorism.

It’s also reported in the NYT, which describes it as a “clash in the cockpit”. Jay Tanzman sent me this email:

I was up all night watching this unfold in real time on X. Copilot on a FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv repeatedly stabbed the pilot and took over the flight, diving the plane toward the ground in an apparent 9/11-style hijacking. Israeli passengers broke into the cockpit and overpowered and subdued the copilot. Two pilots, who were on board as passengers, then took over the flight and landed the plane, which had suffered significant tail damage in the high-speed dive, at a Saudi Arabian airport, while an Israeli doctor tended to the critically injured pilot.

*Why hasn’t anyone accused Russia of genocide given that it’s constantly attacking Ukrainian civilians with no military purpose. Russia just did it again, sending a drone to destroy a big warehouse of children’s books and textbooks.

The first Russian jet-powered drone slammed into the warehouse about 11 a.m. on a Saturday in August. The fire burned so hot that employees could not extinguish it. Within minutes, the second drone hit the building, and everyone ran for the shelter. The fire burned for almost a week. By then, almost everything inside was gone.

This was no weapons depot, no drone manufacturer, no cog in the war machine. Instead, the warehouse targeted by the drones belonged to Ranok Publishing, one of the largest children’s book publishers in Ukraine. The company, based in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, was attacked during one of its busiest times, when it was preparing textbooks for the new school year.

“It’s such a disaster,” said Viktor Kruglov, the publishing house’s chief executive, who was working at the warehouse with about 50 employees — all of whom escaped injury — when it was hit.

“Russia thinks that books are more dangerous for them than military equipment,” he said. “They deliberately damage, erase, extinguish everything which is connected with Ukrainian culture.”

All eight million books inside the warehouse were destroyed, including 620,000 textbooks. Though the strike was the worst attack on books this summer, it was far from the only one. All told, Russian shelling has destroyed as many as 15 million new books in recent months, almost half of Ukraine’s annual production, said Artem Bidenko, chief executive of the Ukrainian Publishing Association.

Note that aiming at civilian facilities with no military import is a war crime. Ukraine has done it too, but not to the extent that Russia has. And since Ukraine gave Russia no provocation to start a war, one might call this a Ukrainian genocide.

*In an ideal world this shouldn’t need to be written, but we don’t live in that world. And so we have a piece by Eli Lake at the Free Press called “The moral illiteracy of Hasan Piker.” (Remember that he’s campaigned with Abdeul El-Sayed, AOC, and Ilhan Omar (the latter two to mobilize voters).

Is America really worse than al-Qaeda? It’s hard to imagine that any serious person could answer yes. But that is the sincere view of Hasan Piker, the wildly popular left-wing Twitch streamer who has been elevated by many Democrats and progressives during the 2026 midterm elections as a way to attract Gen Z men.

“Pound for pound, as far as the number of deaths, yes,” said Piker in response to Axios reporter Alex Thompson in an interview clip released Thursday. Piker went on to claim that America sows terror all over the world. For example, during the opening strikes of the Iran war in February, a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile hit an Iranian girls’ school in Minab, collapsing a main building. “If you’re killing 140 schoolgirls, that is an act of terror,” Piker added in the Axios interview.

This is moral blindness: the death of the schoolgirls was an accident based on erroneous information; it was not meant to happen. But wait: there’s more.

This is the kind of sophistry that passes for sophistication in a streamer’s comment section. In national politics though, such claims should be self-discrediting. Al-Qaeda deliberately kills civilians to advance its warped ideology. America also kills civilians, but not by design, and usually only in wars being fought to advance the national interest.

The strike on the Iranian girls’ school in Minab was a tragedy, but it was not because U.S. war planners wanted to kill civilians. Rather, it was because the targeting data was out of date. The missiles missed their intended target, U.S. officials have said. An investigation by the U.S. military has not been published. In contrast, when al-Qaeda operatives hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001, and turned them into guided missiles aimed directly at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the intention was to kill as many innocents as possible.

. . . Piker still insists that the forces of jihad are superior to America and her allies. Piker has praised the so-called resistance operations of the Houthis and Hezbollah. This week on the MS NOW show Clock It with Symone & Eugene, when Piker was asked about his previous statement that “Hamas is a thousand times better than Israel,” he responded that what he said was “intentionally provocative” but also “not untrue.”

. . .The problem is that many Americans do not remember what it was like when we were under attack on 9/11. For the 35-year-old Piker and those who see the world as he does, the legacy of 9/11 is the spread of Islamophobia, the curtailing of civil liberties, and pointless wars in the Muslim world. Perhaps this ignorance was inevitable, but Democrats do not have to indulge it.

Sadly, that is exactly what many Democrats—and the left more broadly—have chosen to do when it comes to Piker. For a while at least, Piker was not challenged and condemned. He was feted. In April, The New York Times featured him on a podcast to discuss the virtues of shoplifting. The College Democrats of America invited Piker to speak at its annual convention in July, where he delivered a fiery speech dressed in the style of the late Chinese dictator Mao Zedong. Piker also was a crucial surrogate in Abdul El-Sayed’s successful primary campaign to be the Democratic nominee to represent Michigan in the Senate.

Piker’s stock has dropped since then, but he still has millions of followers and Grok estimates that this American-hating chowderhead makes $2-4 million per year.

*Reader Norman points out a letter signed by “more than 6,000 leaders across entertainment, academia, and public life” that “rejects the ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel. (It’s also highlighted in an article in the Jerusalem Post.) Bolding is from the letter’s website.

Released today by Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) in partnership with Yossi Klein Halevi, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, and Professor Jonathan Karp (the authors of the letter), the initiative brings together a broad coalition spanning politics and public policy, academia and scholarship, entertainment and media, and religious and civic leadership.

Among the political and public-policy figures signing the letter are former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson; former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler; former UK Cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi; former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie; former senior U.S. diplomat Elliott Abrams; and former White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman. They are joined by prominent scholars, historians and intellectuals, including Harvard professor Steven Pinker; historian Benny Morris; historian Sir Niall Ferguson; Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, University Distinguished Professor at Emory University and former U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism; former Yad Vashem Chief Historian Dina Porat; Yossi Klein Halevi, Author and Senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute; Brandeis University Professor Emeritus Jonathan D. Sarna; historian Simon Sebag Montefiore; historians Jeffrey Herf and Norman Goda; UCLA professor Judea Pearl; author Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Binghamton University Jonathan Karp; and urban-warfare expert John Spencer.

I signed it too, thugh I ain’t no “leader”.  From the Jerusalem Post:

“There is a vigorous debate within the Jewish community over aspects of how this war was fought, and that is a sign of moral health. So is our pain over every innocent life lost. But we must unite in repudiating the lie of genocide,” the letter states.

It goes on to address the “unprecedented combat conditions” in Gaza, including Hamas’s use of “hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, thousands of boobytrapped homes [and] the conflating of combatants with ‘journalists’ and ‘human rights workers.’”

It also addresses the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio, which it says is “considered low for asymmetrical urban warfare.”

Taking the Gaza Health Ministry’s current death toll, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, alongside INSS’s May estimate of more than 23,000 terrorists killed, the implied civilian-to-combatant ratio would be roughly 2:1.

The letter also cites “the absence of mass starvation despite repeated claims of imminent catastrophe” and “the warnings given to civilians before attack,” and asserts that “All these factors were erased in the eagerness to indict Israel for genocide.”

Meanwhile, the letter argues that Israel went to war after October 7 to break what it calls an “Iranian-led siege of terror enclaves” on its borders, while noting that anti-Zionists were already leveling accusations of genocide against Israel the following day.

“The bitter irony is that Israel, home to half the world’s Jews, is the only country to face a sustained war of attempted genocide – from its inception in 1948 until today,” the letter states.

And although I signed the letter, I’m under no illustion that it will accomplish much—or anything. The “genocide” mongers have simply changed the definition of a well-established term to suit their purposes, and they’re not going to admit that they’re wrong. All one can do is point out that many, many things that Israel has done in the Gaza war are apparently aimed not at extirpating civilians, but helping them.  I have seen no responses when those things (warning civilians of strikes, creating “safe zones”, sending polio vaccines) are mentioned.

*This is what AI makes possible. The WaPo reports that a University of Chicago statistician “published” (I’m not sure where) over 200 coauthored papers and 14 books in a single year.  An online site where his papers were placed, the Social Science Research Network, has removed 257 of them.

Many academic researchers publish only a handful of papers each year, seeking scientific discoveries or solutions to everyday problems facing businesses and government agencies. Some especially busy professors might publish a dozen or more studies a year.

Then there’s the curious case of Nicholas Polson.

The University of Chicago statistician has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers and as many as 14 books released this year, unleashing speculation on the internet about whether he used artificial intelligence to inflate his production without disclosing the assistance.

. . .The online platform where Polson posted his papers said itremoved 257 of his works over the past month after his surge in releases. Critics have not accused Polson of fraud, but have raised questions about whether Polson properly disclosed his use of AI and whether it’s even possible to produce that many high-quality papers in so short a span.

Polson acknowledged in an email to The Post that he used AI to help produce the work, but did not say whether he disclosed the use of AI in any of the papers he published.

Most of Polson’s papers focus on advanced statistics and mathematics, though some touch on topics of broader interest. Those include efforts to understand the financial pressures that could lead to cuts in Social Security and other benefit programs, why players excel at certain strategic games like chess, and how TikTok serves up certain videos that engage viewers without informing them.

University of Central Arkansas economist Jeremy Horpedahl was stunned by Polson’s productivity.

“Two hundred-plus papers in nine months is both unheard of and unbelievable,” he said.

The questions about the papers were so significant that SSRN, the platform Polson used to share the research papers, took down the articles over the past month and froze the accounts used to post the works.

Polson suggested the complaints stemmed from jealousy.

“Clearly AI makes a productive researcher far more productive,” he wrote in an email to The Post.

The controversy highlights a growing concern in academia about whether some researchers could rely too heavily on AI to churn out a wave of papers that overwhelms journals charged with vetting the work.

Well, overwhelming journals with papers is not the problem: the problem is whether producing so many papers involves producing a number of trivial results that shouldn’t be published because they’re trivial or don’t really advance knowledge.

*College officials (including Dartmouth’s provost) and faculty are being found out and called out for using AI, even as they ban it from the classroom.  Bolding is mine.

College professors and administrators have been busting students for cheating with artificial intelligence for several years. Now, the professors and administrators are getting in trouble, too.

Dartmouth College last week announced it was investigating its provost, Santiago Schnell, after the college’s student-run newspaper found that some of his published writing appeared written by A.I.

Dr. Schnell, a mathematical biologist, is perhaps the most prominent in a growing cast of college professors and administrators who have been accused of using A.I. in a way that crosses ethical lines. There have been instances of opinion articles, research papers and even campuswide messages to students showing traces of A.I. influence. He issued a statement apologizing.

Administrators wring their hands, and sometime issue punishments, when students outsource writing assignments to a robot to save time or avoid the hard work of thinking.

Some students are calling out the examples of faculty doing the same thing as hypocritical.

“It just goes against all the values of our institution and the concept of academia,” Eli Moyse, a Dartmouth senior, said in an interview.

A working group at George Washington University said in a report in August that many students reported “doubts that faculty themselves are using A.I. ethically and transparently.”

And at Brown University, a survey found that close to two-thirds of undergraduate students who responded had some worries about faculty members relying on A.I. to develop course lectures and other content.

At Dartmouth, Dr. Schnell’s A.I. use in public writing came up in an investigation in August by the news site Semafor about A.I.-created writing appearing in the opinion pages of major publications. That investigation said an Aug. 9 commentary by Dr. Schnell in The Washington Post was written by A.I. The opinion article was about A.I. cheating in school.

Here’s the Pangram analysis of Schell’s WaPo commentary: 78% written (not tweaked) by AI:

(The Semafor investigation also found indications of A.I. writing in New York Times opinion articles.)

The follow-up investigation in September by the student publication, The Dartmouth, found extensive A.I. use in Dr. Schnell’s published work this year.

Dr. Schnell told The Dartmouth in a statement that he used A.I. “for language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient.” The newspaper then ran Dr. Schnell’s statement on his A.I. use through an A.I. detector, which flagged the statement itself as apparently written by A.I.

Dr. Schnell did not respond to a request for comment.

Crikey, if you’ve gone all the way up to Provost, or a tenured professorship, you damn well better be able to write!  Tweaking may be okay, but Pangram looks for AI-generated content, not just writing tweaked by AI. The Washington Post should annotate or even remove Schnell’s article, for 4/5 of it wasn’t written by him.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s a big day tomorrow!

Hili: Tomorrow is the release of your book.
Andrzej: Yes, it’s going to be a busy day.

In Polish:

Hili: Jutro premiera twojej książki.
Ja: Tak, to będzie pracowity dzień.

As of yet the book is only in Polish, but you can see its website in English here (the title in English is The Blue Stone of Sisyphus.And I’m honored to have taken the cover picture:

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

From Things With Faces; a pensive melon:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Masih; these kinds of refusals seem rare:

I want to thank Hannah Neumann for her principled decision to reject a meeting with officials of the Islamic Republic.

Member of the European Parliament Chair of the Delegation for Relations with the People of Iran understood what tyrants never do: the Islamic Republic is not… https://t.co/X1IvEhiMJq

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 29, 2026

From Rawan Osman, a lesson in hypocrisy:

This scene is the epitome of ignorance. Not only in Gaza or Ramallah would this protester be lynched, but also in any Arab or Muslim city.

Do these useful idiots have any Muslim friends? Do they have any Palestinian friends? Do they know anything about the cause they are… pic.twitter.com/Koel1sQadd

— Rawan Osman روان عثمان (@RawaneOsmane) September 28, 2026

From Malcolm; a baby caracal making laser-beam noises:

Apparently Caracal kittens sound like laser beams. pic.twitter.com/saQ0nLp0jb

— cat of the day (@catoftoday) September 22, 2026

From Luana. You can read the new “definitions” here (section 2):

Today, the Trump Administration is formally putting into regulation what the law has said all along: Title IX’s protections are based on SEX, not “gender identity.” pic.twitter.com/N0K36S90Dy

— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) September 28, 2026

Two from my feed. Imagine how it would sound if the mother of a gay son wanted a straight son!

Actress Camryn Manheim says she is upset her son didn’t turn out to be LGBTQI+ after she dressed him up in drag as a kid.

“I always wanted a gay son…I have photographs of my son in high heels, in full drag, he knows every word to every musical…” pic.twitter.com/z7RepkFUMo

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) September 29, 2026

Flower birds!

The Hawk-Headed Parrot is a striking Amazonian bird known for its dramatic feather crest that fans out when excited or alarmed.

It is highly intelligent, long-lived (up to 40 years), and native to South American rainforests.

[📹 ventusparrots_] pic.twitter.com/rkdIkwd52X

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 29, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was fifteen. https://t.co/laYHyWD414

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 30, 2026

And one from Doc Cobb, which he sent in an email titled, “The audacity of these people.”  And he’s right.

New HHS Hall of Heroes: John Snow, Ignaz Semmelweis, Joseph Lister, Alice Stewart, Herbert Needleman, Frances Kelsey, Rachel Carson, Jay Bhattacharya bit.ly/4hg6Rn0

— Greg Folkers (@gregfolkers.bsky.social) 2026-09-26T17:49:37.851Z

Today’s music is a rare live performance from the wonderful Laura Nyro (1947-1997). Largely forgotten these daya, her influence nevertheless percolated through the industry (“Hello it’s me” by Todd Rundgren, a future selection, was influenced by her music), and she had many hits made famous by other artists: these include “Blowing Away“, “Wedding Bell Blues“, “Stoned Soul Picnic“, “Sweet Blindness“, and “Save the Country“; as well as Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary singing “And When I Die“; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson recording “Eli’s Comin'”; and Barbra Streisand recording “Stoney End“.  Nyro’s first album, containing at least four all-time classics (including the one below), was recorded when she was just nineteen. Sadly, Nyro died of ovarian cancer at only 49.

In my view, her best song was “And When I Die“. Here it is from her first album, and remember she’s nineteen when she’s singing here. But she wrote the song when she was just seventeen. Imagine a teenager producing such a complex and sophisticated classic!

I consider this better than the more famous Blood, Sweat & Tears version, which itself is very good.