Welcome to the Sabbath made for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, August 16, 2026, and it’s National Tell a Joke Day.  Here’s a grammatical joke, and it may even be true:

France’s greatest lexicographer, Émile Littré, was once found by his wife, in flagrante delicto, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid.
“Emile,” cried Mrs Littré, “I am surprised!”
“No, my dear,” replied the adulterous lexicographer calmly. “You are astonished. It is WE who are surprised.”

Here’s another joke (it can stand alone without the photo):

It’s also National Airborne Day (the Chicago Air and Water show is this weekend), National Bratwurst Day (another speciality of Chicago), National Rum Day, and National Roller Coaster Day.

Here’s what’s labeled “one of the scariest roller coaster on Earth.” You flip upside down at times! Would you ride it?

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Wall Street Journal tells us, in a news piece, “The Iran war is now about who blinks first under economic pressure.”

Senior Trump administration officials have doubled down on economic pressure in the fight with Iran, making lower oil prices a top war aim and vowing unprecedented financial sanctions that would force Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran late Thursday attacked two United Arab Emirates ships in the strait, Emirati officials said.

With those strikes, Iran is signaling that it is impervious to more economic sanctions and is willing to take the military initiative even when President Trump appears reluctant to return to a shooting war. With Trump relying more on the Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports as financial pressure on Tehran, Iran’s leaders are trying to show they won’t relent and will keep the strait closed until energy prices force the U.S. to back off, analysts said.

“Tehran has drawn a simple lesson from every game of chicken with Washington: Hold your nerve long enough, and America swerves first,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa. “For a system that believes it is fighting for survival…existential threats tend to harden resolve, not impose a price ceiling on resistance.”

Washington this week indicated it would slap new restrictions on Iran’s economy in the coming days. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would be a “one-two punch” along with the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The efforts by both sides to inflict economic damage on each other put them further from the diplomatic off-ramp they appeared to reach with the deal in June. That agreement set out financial rewards for Tehran if it reopened the strait and entered serious negotiations on its nuclear program.

There’s one more thing:

While Iran is suffering mounting economic pain, it is shifting into a survival economy designed to endure it. Tehran, which has endured years of sanctions, is pushing more of the burden onto households by rationing fuel and electricity, restricting scarce foreign currency and cutting investment while preserving essential imports and state resources.

Unless Trump takes some military action and stops with the sanction stuff, he is going to lose this war. Iran will neither allow the Strait of Hormuz to go back to the way it was before the war, nor promise (and take action) to stop trying to make nuclear weapons.

*In light of the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln leaving the Middle East after reports of poor maintenance, food, and facilities, now Trump has stuck his nose into the design of new U.S. aircraft carriers, and it’s a nose-sticking that will be expensive and perhaps injurious to carriers themselves:

The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The service isevaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.

The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

. . .The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The service isevaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.

The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

. . .Relocating the island would be “a major redesign,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. Such an alteration to the carrier’s layout, he said, would affect the ship’s buoyancy and weight and come at a significant cost.

“You could change it,” he added, “but it’s very disruptive.”

Here we have the man who’s destroyed a wing of the White House to build a ballroom, who’s designing a triumphal arch that will ruin the entry to Wsshington from Virginia, and who renamed the Kennedy center (or rather forced others to do so). Now he wants to aircraft carriers to be redesigned to look like ones in World War II. That will not only cost a gazillion sollars, but will, as the officer above says, affect the ship’s weight and buoyancy. It seems to be infinitely preferable to let the ship designers design the ships.

*The NYT has an op ed “Is Ocasio-Cortez ready for the glass cliff?” The author, Tressie McMillan Cottom, seems to think that AOC should run, but she’ll face misogyny. Yes, for sure, but that’s not the reason I oppose her candidacy. (The article is archived here.)

Oh, she’s running.

I’ve been watching the signs that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be considering a bid for president for over a year. She spoke about foreign policy at the Munich Security Conference in February. A few months later, she brandished her organizer street cred with a visit to a rural Georgia community fighting a data center. She is among the astonishingly few big-name Democrats embracing data center resistance, a rare point of bipartisan agreement in a divided electorate.

This week she all but soft-launched the presidential bid so many of us have been expecting, with a video series about freezing her eggs. The rollout — personal, confessional and intimate — had all the social media savvy that made her a political star. It also gets ahead of the inevitable questions about how, or if, she will have children. In short, Ocasio-Cortez has crafted a political message in which the form and content suggest that she will run as a woman but unlike how every woman before her was forced to run.

To be a viable potential presidential candidate is no small feat for any woman, much less a young, attractive woman without a political dynasty. Were she to formally declare a presidential bid, she would be one of the youngest and most progressive people to do it. She can run. But can she win?

To say women haven’t had an easy path to presidential power would be an understatement.

. . . Hillary Clinton was both too unfathomable (a first lady who wanted more) and too well known (saddled with her husband’s scandals and positions). Kamala Harris was, alternately, too novel (a mixed-race Black woman) and too much like the same old (a capitalist hawk). They each were condemned as too uncharismatic to overcome a culture that is supremely suspicious of women who want, pursue and hold power. The ambition that brought them within reach of the of the presidency was a trap that ensured they couldn’t win it.

But these are different times. Ocasio-Cortez is a different woman, and Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down. Social scientists call it the glass cliff — the phenomenon in which women are recruited to lead failing companies. President Trump’s businessman brand of governance has many Americans feeling this nation is failing. I suppose the dumpster fire of climate denialism, political corruption and general scamminess of, well, everything would be dire enough circumstances to make a female president possible.

In particular, Democrats — whom you might expect to be wary of placing another female candidate before the American public — are facing a political disaster of their own making. Americans are primed for an anti-incumbent electoral wave. They want an alternative to Trump’s MAGA-dominated Republican Party, but a lot of them indicate they would have to hold their nose to vote for mainstream Democrats.

Well, there are many of us who would have to hold our noses to vote for progressives like AOC.  She has done almost nothing in terms of getting bills passed in the House (she’s originated some, but they didn’t pass, and has co-sponsored some more bipartisan bills that became law), seems to spend most of her time either flubbing speeches and interviews or promoting herself on social media, and is unable to answer even very simple questions if she has to extemporize rather than stick to a script.  As a progressive, she is a Democratic Socialist, and many of their policies don’t resonate with either me or the public (AOC will, of course, disavow the bad ones before she runs). She has no executive experience or foreign-policy expertise. Like all “progressives,” she detests Israel. What she has is big ambition, and it shows. As for electability, her progressivist views will energize Republicans, something we don’t need. And this seems batty to me:

This is why Ocasio-Cortez’s choice to lead her campaign intentions with a very public discussion of reproductive choices is so important. She is performing the preservation of her status as a mother for the public, creating the possibility that she would be a mother for the nation, even if she is not yet a mother..

Whaaaat?  Where did that crazy idea come from? Who cares if a woman President has kids or not? Certainly not I. Nor am I opposed to a woman President; in fact, it’s time we had one, though she has to be qualified. That’s why I wrote in Gretchen Whitmer in the last election, and I’d be delighted if she were to run. But no, not Kamala Harris, who brings me no joy.

*A bit more on the death (likely suicide) of Jason Arday, which I reported yesterday. Although the police, as is the case in the UK, didn’t release his name, they noted that the deceased was 41—Arday’s age. And his family did issue a death notice. From the NYT:

Jason Arday, the former Cambridge University scholar whose remarkable rise to stardom was followed by a rapid fall from grace in recent weeks, has died, his family said on Friday.

“Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse” in the years since he accepted a role at Cambridge, his family wrote in a statement. “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”

The Metropolitan Police of London said that an ambulance was called on Friday afternoon to a South London residence connected to Mr. Arday after a report that a man there had been found unresponsive. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said, without confirming his identity, in keeping with British police practice.

The death was being “treated as unexpected” but was not believed to be suspicious, the police said.

“We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news,” Professor Deborah Prentice, the Cambridge vice-chancellor, said in a statement. “Our heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.”

The family’s statement was issued by his publisher, and appears in full in The Independent. Here it is:

“Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him.

“The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.

“We are in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son.

“We won’t comment further at this point beyond asking the press to leave us alone now, and to stop the campaign of harassment which has been waged against Jason and his family for too long.”

The family is going along with Arday’s claim that he was abused and subject to a “campaign of misinformation” and “harassment.” While some people might have been motivated by bigotry in going after Arday, the fact is that what was uncovered were very disturbing allegations, and an autobiography that was at best exaggerated and at worst an arrant litany of lies.

But of curse the man had a family who loved him, and that is why his death saddens me. I cannot bear those who say he “had it coming” because of what he did. He was either mentally ill or a grifter, but either way he had a bad comeuppance, and that is a tragedy which triggered his suicide—another tragedy. He needed help and didn’t get it, but we can’t blame those who didn’t intercede. He is no longer at Cambridge; he resigned before killing himself. It is all ineffably sad.

*Finally, from the UPI’s “odd news” site, we hear about a hula-hoop record, all derived from a doctor’s diagnosis of obesity:

A Chinese man managed to spin 33 hula hoops around his body while suspended upside down to break a Guinness World Record.

Yan Yanjia was suspended upside down from playground equipment in Guilin, Guangxi, and two friends then helped pull the hula hoops over his head and down to his hips.

Yanjia was able to keep the hoops spinning for the time required by Guinness World Records, earning him the title for the most hula hoops spun while suspended upside down. He beat the previous record by 10 hoops.

Yanjia said he started hula hooping eight years ago as a means of losing weight.

“In 2018, I was diagnosed with fatty liver due to obesity, and my doctor advised me to lose weight. At that time, I bought a 2-kilogram [4.4-pound] hula hoop for exercise, and in a month, I went from 80 kg [175 pounds] to 63 kg [132 pounds],” he told Guinness World Records. “Of course, the main factor in successful fat loss is gradual control of diet.”

Yanjia said the next record his has his eye on involves spinning hula hoops while doing pullups.

“This exercise consumes many times more force than dozens of hula hoops upside down, requiring much greater core stability,” he said.

Of course you’ll want to see it, so here is Mr. Yanjia:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili puts things in their proper perspective:

Hili: We talk about everything while leaving out the most important thing.
Andrzej: And what’s the most important thing?
Hili: Buying beef.

In Polish:

Hili: Rozmawiamy o wszystkim pomijając to, co najważniejsze.
Ja: A co jest najważniejsze?
Hili: Kupno wołowiny.

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

From Stacy, original posted by the National Park Service:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of your Shit: I can haz cheeszburger?

From Masih, detailing two women who were killed for defending themselves against rape; she notes the insuperable obstacles, under Muslim law, of even mounting an accusation of rape:

Under Sharia law in Iran, to prove rape, a woman must produce four male witnesses to the act itself. Four. Male. Witnesses. If she cannot, her accusation becomes a confession. She is no longer the victim. She is the criminal, facing flogging, prison, or death.

To those who asked why Iranian women Marzieh and Reyhaneh didn’t report rape in court before defending themselves.

Marzieh Nayeri was forced to marry a man at 17. Child marriage is legal under Sharia law in Iran.

At 18, her husband’s business associate, drunk, in her own home,… pic.twitter.com/a0abJbocKe

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 15, 2026

From Richard Dawkins via Luana: an infuriating exposé about how Cambridge University (yes, the school that hired Arday) is promoting creationism. This time it’s in the education faculty, and the anti-science, pro-creationist view is promoted, don’t you know, by “the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), [which] is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir..  It’s being done to placate Islamic sentiments, which don’t countenance evolution. Read the whole tweet:

Extracts from a further Spectator article (Aug 15) by Andrew Gilligan:

An academic project hosted by Cambridge University platforms creationism, the belief that the world was created by God in seven days. It promotes an academic paper demanding that schoolchildren be taught to…

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 15, 2026

From Jeff Maurer, who retweeted this saying, “Somebody should fix this.”  The “fix” involved putting up a waning sign:

Someone made the really, really poor decision to situate the chair in nonstop direct sunlight, and the bronze doesn’t just get hot. It becomes literally SCALDING. Like today, a breezy 80°, you can’t put your hand on it for more than a second before >actually< burning yourself. pic.twitter.com/N1NI7lF8Oc

— Nick Carr (@nickcarrscouts) August 14, 2026

From Barry.  The next tweet says, “Credit @sarahseeandersen.bsky.social“.  That’s Sarah Andersen’s site, which has a gazillion great cat cartoons.

— Wil Eelsing (@wileelsing.bsky.social) 2026-07-25T10:26:58.195Z

Speaking of AOC, Jay sent this in:

Maybe I should be her translator. pic.twitter.com/CYkTEVXvLV

— Ami Kozak (@amiKozak) August 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Austrian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about ten years old. https://t.co/OU6jj5D2oM

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 16, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a whole show about the Beatles in one post:

The prologue is superb, and just how I recall shows like this in the 60s. Sitting up with my parents / elder sister watching some music prog like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TDL&#8230;

— Gary Cummins (@garyinscotland.bsky.social) 2026-08-13T16:57:18.900Z

. . . at least they’re not eating them!

They're wearing the cats…..

— JeffTrnka (@jefftrnka.bsky.social) 2026-08-07T14:57:53.477Z

Welcome to the tail end o’ the work week: Friday, August 14, 2026, and National Navajo Code Talkers Day.  (Wikipedia lists other Native American languages also used as codes during WWII.)  Here’s a short video of this remarkable endeavor:

It’s also National Creamsicle Day (do they still make this delectable frozen treat?), and National Tattoo Removal Day (it’s supposed ot be painful!).

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

Da Nooz:

*Have a look at The Washington Post‘s article “Sizing up the 2028 Democratic Presidential contenders” (archived here).  Here are the first-tier “standouts” (others are given but not shown here):

Jon Ossoff, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock and other newish names: The Democratic base seems hungry for new leaders right now. Ossoff, the 39-year-old Democratic senator from Georgia, is fitting that bill in a big way. He’s getting millions of views for his sharp social media posts and campaign speeches that mercilessly criticize President Donald Trump.

“This is the cruelest and most arrogant group of people who have ever ascended to high office in modern American history,” Ossoff told supporters in July.

He is running for reelection in Georgia, and his race will be one of the most competitive in the country.

Other Democrats point to Ossoff’s fellow senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, as a potentially strong contender. (Warnock is not up for election in November.)

“For the first time since Obama, there’d be a candidate that unites the progressive Democratic lane and Black voters,” Texas-based Democratic pollster Nancy Zdunkewicz said.

Moore, the first-term Maryland governor and only sitting Black governor, is described by some Democrats as young and vibrant.

“Ossoff is currently on fire,” Anzalone said, “and Moore is also the type of guy who could really catch fire.”

Kamala Harris: This summer, Democrats recommended South Carolina vote first in the 2028 Democratic nominating process. That boosts Black voters’ representation in picking the nominee and Harris’s fortunes, given the former vice president and 2024 nominee is probably the candidate on this list with the most support among Black women. She’s been rallying voters for the midterm elections by touting her “controversial” plan to abolish the electoral college and add justices to the Supreme Court. “They are ruthless! We need to be ruthless too,” she said recently of Republicans. Some Democratic insiders don’t see her as a viable candidate, given she lost to Trump.

Gavin Newsom: The other California Democrat on this list aside from Harris has used his position as governor of the largest Democratic-run state to consistently oppose Trump. This summer he announced he and his wife were under federal investigation. (The Post has reported prosecutors are looking into potential tax crimes related to a nonprofit Newsom’s wife is linked to.) Newsom framed it as a compliment: “He’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president,” Newsom said of Trump.

Josh Shapiro: The popular Pennsylvania governor has had a relatively low-profile summer compared to other candidates on this list. He appeared in a music video. He has declined to take sides on the progressive-versus-centrist split in the party (at least for now). His breakout moment may be coming. He’s up for reelection in November and is trying to help Democrats take back control of the House by helping his party win four of the most competitive races in the nation, all in his state.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Democratic socialists are having their own moment. After helping elect New York City’s mayor earlier this year, they and the broader progressive movement ousted longtime members of Congress in deep blue cities and won a hard-fought primary in Michigan. Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, was one of the first members of the Democratic Socialists of America to win federal office, and she’s an obvious pick for the broader progressive movement to get behind if she runs for president. She hasn’t ruled it out, though she could also run for Senate.

Mark Kelly: The senatorfrom Arizona has emerged as a forceful pushback against his party’s turn to the left. He’s also a candidate some Republicans say scare them: He’s a former astronaut (at a time when astronauts are cool again) and an astronomical fundraiser from a swing state.

Pete Buttigieg: President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary is cited by Democrats as one of the party’s best messengers and another young candidate who can catch fire. Despite not currently holding office, he’s near the top of several polls of Democratic primary voters.

*As you know, Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialist, was favored to win the Democratic primary for Governor in Wisconsin. She lost by a hair. And the winner was James Crowley, a moderate Democrat and, in the pre-voting polls, was a distant second.  The NYT explains “How the polls got it so wrong in Wisconsin” (the article is archived here).

Why were the polls so wrong?

Possible explanations range from a genuine, last-minute change in voter sentiment — Ms. Hong, a state representative, faced significant negative publicity in the closing days of the race — to miscalculations by pollsters about the makeup of the primary electorate.

The disparity between polls and results in Wisconsin and Michigan prompted Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant, to jokingly call for “a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on” in an early-morning X post on Wednesday.

. . . Polls failed to predict the outcome of Tuesday’s election, but they did not significantly overestimate Ms. Hong’s portion of the vote. Most surveys estimated she would win about 40 percent of the vote, and she ended up winning 39 percent.

What changed was Mr. Crowley’s support. In a ballot-counting marathon that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he over-performed the Marquette poll’s estimate by more than 30 points.

Explanations:

Many primary voters tune in at the last minute

Mr. Crowley may owe much of his success to the support of previously undecided voters.

Polls expected more young voters to show up

Even after an internal poll found that Mr. Crowley was trailing Ms. Hong last week, his campaign manager predicted that polls would not reflect the primar

. . . Across elections, primary voters tend to be older, and Wisconsin is no exception. Older voters and moderates were also more likely to remain undecided until close to the end, Mr. Franklin said, based on his polling data.

Hong’s supporters may have been more eager to respond to polls

Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of the firm State Navigate, which conducted polls in Wisconsin, suggested that Ms. Hong’s early and enthusiastic supporters may simply have been more willing to respond to polls, thus skewing the results.

Republicans and independents were wild cards

Conducting surveys in partisan primaries has long been a challenge for pollsters, requiring them to make assumptions about the partisan composition of who will actually turn out to vote.

That is particularly difficult in states like Wisconsin and Michigan that hold open primaries and where voters are not registered by party.

As pollsters attempt to target likely Democratic primary voters in surveys, they are often unsure about the percentage of

Republicans and independents were wild cards

Conducting surveys in partisan primaries has long been a challenge for pollsters, requiring them to make assumptions about the partisan composition of who will actually turn out to vote.

That is particularly difficult in states like Wisconsin and Michigan that hold open primaries and where voters are not registered by party.

In other words, Republicans who voted in the primaries were not supporters of Hong. I suppose some of these explanations are empirical claims that could be tested, but I’m satisfied enough that Hong lost. It was a bright spot in a dark season of DSA and “progressive” candidates winning.

*Big trouble in Israel, and it doesn’t reflect well on the country. As the ToI reports, Israeli settlers have been blocking entrances to Palestinian homes on the West Bank, and the IDF can’t manage to free those homeowners.  And as Amit Segal writes at It’s Noon in Israel, “Israel is losing the battle for Judea and Samaria.”

First, from the Times of Israel:

The IDF on Thursday ordered the evacuation of 15 homes in the northern West Bank village of Qusra, as part of an operation that was purportedly aimed at clearing several Israeli illegal outposts surrounding the town.

But while Palestinians were ordered to leave the area, settlers from the outposts who have been laying siege to a pair of homes in Qusra since Sunday remained on site.

It was unclear why the IDF needed to remove Palestinians from their homes in order to clear settlers from the area, but the IDF rescinded the evacuation order shortly after it began making headlines.

Some Palestinians were allowed to return to their homes, but one of the two besieged families told The Times of Israel that they were still barred from reaching their house.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee slammed the settlers as “terrorists” and said Israeli security forces were in the area at the US Embassy’s request.

From It’s Noon in Israel:

For four days, the most capable military in the Middle East could not clear a path for a family to reach its own front door. The family lives on the outskirts of Qusra, south of Nablus. On Sunday, settlers from the encampments seeded by the Tel Talpiot outpost sealed the entrance to their home and would not let them in or out.

The most damning verdict of the event comes from Israel’s most faithful friend, Mike Huckabee. The most pro-settlement ambassador in the history of the post, a man who will not so much as use the word “settler”—called the men at Qusra “Israeli terrorists.” He described what they did as a deliberate act of intimidation and harassment against the family, with “no excuse for such thuggish behavior.” One of the besieged homes belongs to an American citizen, and Washington is rightly furious.

The army moved to end it. But the plan leaked to the press, and by the time the troops arrived, dozens of activists were waiting, blocking the roads with boulders. That a handful of stones could stop a military that routinely penetrates through tens of meters of solid rock deserves an explanation.

Start with the obvious. These are not Hezbollah fighters or Iranian operatives. For all their open contempt for state authority, they are Israeli citizens, and overwhelming military force is not an option.

Then consider who actually showed up. The first forces on the scene were not Border Police or infantry trained for this, but Home Front Command reservists—a consequence of the manpower shortage the army has been running on for three years. They did not understand the scenario they had walked into. Some of them joined the prayer at the outpost, which has since been reported as solidarity. It was ignorance.

. . . Settler violence is a sensitive issue in Israel. Only a vanishingly small share of the settler population supports or takes part in such acts, but because the problem is exaggerated and used to obscure Palestinian violence against them, they bristle at hearing about it—even from Israel’s greatest friends.

Yes, but the reason we should prevent such acts is not because they look bad, but because they are bad. Yes, Israel may be held to a higher standard than other countries, but the solution is for Israel to behave impeccably, not ask others to lower their standards.

*I’ve written a bit about why I don’t use AI to write and look down on those who do. It turns out that Bret Stephens agrees, and in his latest NYT column, “I’m begging you: Never write with A.I.,” tells us why (article archived here).

This column isn’t so much an argument as it is a plea: Don’t use artificial intelligence to help you write. Never let A.I. do your writing for you.

Don’t use it for school papers, work briefs, letters to your in-laws, speeches at your company gathering or emails (however perfunctory) to your colleagues or friends. Don’t let it organize your notes. Don’t let it suggest an opening sentence, a segue or a closing paragraph. Don’t ask it to write a first draft and pretend that editing that draft somehow makes it your own. It doesn’t.

Do none of these things not because they are unethical. Writing with A.I. is unethical when it’s a deception: when you pass off words, ideas and information as your own when they aren’t. An acknowledgment can largely address the problem. Do none of these things, either, not because you might be able to learn to write better than an A.I. can. Pretty soon, if not already, you won’t, just as you can’t outrun a car or outplay a chess app.

The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care. We’re already reckoning with the well-documented decline of reading; A.I. is accelerating the decline of writing, ushering us further into what The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch calls our “postliterate age.”

What, uniquely, does writing do? It compels thought. It compels thinking in ways that silent contemplation or spoken language rarely can. It compels us to subject our thinking to the effort of articulation, the rigor of grammar, the tests of intelligibility and coherence, the inspection of others. In doing so, it also enjoins us to be clear, logical, accurate — and accountable. People may easily forgive a word said in anger but not so easily one written in anger, precisely because the fact that it was written tells us that it was considered.

. . .We become better writers by the constant effort that mundane writing demands. We become better thinkers by investing into that writing a degree of attention we’d never give it if we relinquished the task to A.I. We become more creative when we learn how to put a personal stamp even on routine things, making them unmistakably our own.

These skills are now evaporating. A recent examination using A.I.-detection technology of 100 doctoral dissertations found that 56 percent of them contained “more than negligible” A.I.-generated writing and 19 percent had “more than 50 percent A.I.-generated text.” Anecdotal stories from college professors have a finger-in-the-dike feeling with regard to their efforts to hold back the flood of A.I.-generated student papers. It’s easy to treat the problem as one of mere cheating. But cheating doesn’t capture the real scope of the A.I. threat, which isn’t merely to academic integrity or personal betterment but also to democratic self-governance.

*Whan AOC announced she was freezing her eggs, I thought it wasn’t anybody’s business, and any criticism about that was dumb.  But if it’s just her businesss, why did she post all that information in a long Instagram video? Now, however, Caitlin Flanagan at the Free Press adds that AOC, who’d apparently just split from her fiancé, should, if she intended to empower other women to do the same, have added the success rate of the procedure.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is referring to the Jason Arday affair:

Hili: I’m noticing more and more plagiarism in sociologists’ publications.
Andrzej: Yes, it’s an interesting social phenomenon worth investigating.

In Polish:

Hili: Zauważam coraz więcej plagiatów w publikacjach socjologów.

Ja: Tak, to ciekawe zjawisko społeczne, warte zbadania.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Clean, Funny, and Cute Animal Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, highlighting yet another Iranian protestor liable to be executed:

A 44-year-old Kurdish woman in Iran has been accused of spying for Israel. Under the Islamic Republic, that charge could end with an execution.

Her name is Shamsi Khosravi. She is from Saqqez the city of #MahsaAmini who’s killing in the hand of morality Police sparked a… https://t.co/6aZNXOGH14 pic.twitter.com/rldAaomsnQ

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 12, 2026

From Bryan, who adds, “I just about fell out of my chair (so to speak) when I caught this assertion in the following video clip of an interview.” The purported explanation is in the tweet below the first one, but that one’s really talking about “Islamism”, not “Islam.”  Islam has started off as a religion and is still a religion. 

pic.twitter.com/5QRV7gSD6R

— DeMarked (@Ddano233Dan) August 11, 2026

From Malcolm, with plenty of notes adding that this is surely AI-generated, and it must be. But I’ve seen a cat-shaped cake being cut before, and it still freaks me out:

The owner cut the cat cake in front of the cat. pic.twitter.com/xQP5dNzPku

— Tawadotcom (@Tawadotcom) November 4, 2025

From the Number Ten Cat.

Notice for cat owners: Your cat will expect breakfast to be served as soon as the eclipse is over. Note that in London time, the eclipse started at 6:17 p.m. and ended at  8:06 p.m.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 12, 2026

One from my feed. Note that some of the executed writers were accused of “Zionism”. Read the whole thing:

On This Day — August 12–13, 1952

Night of the Murdered Poets: Stalin massacres the greatest living Yiddish writers in a prison basement.

Thirteen leading Soviet Jewish intellectuals, including poets, novelists, and cultural figures, were taken to Moscow’s Lubyanka prison and… pic.twitter.com/FiBjzT8Vr0

— Captain Allen (@CptAllenHistory) August 12, 2026

And two I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She would be 91 today had she lived. https://t.co/pYsjGvxUkT

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 14, 2026

This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She would be 91 today had she lived. https://t.co/pYsjGvxUkT

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 14, 2026

Father Kolbe died after volunteering to take the place of a prisoner condemned to starve to death as a reprisal for an escape. After a period of starvation in the basement of the infamous Block 11 of Auschwitz, he was pulled out and killed with an injection of phenol in the… https://t.co/MlyTDGeY9x

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 14, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. He says he hopes the first one is not AI but so far indications are that it’s real:

Chimpanzee and tortoise sharing an apple.

— DAPPER DON DHARSHI (@dapperdondharshi.bsky.social) 2026-08-12T13:33:12.482Z

A new species of “axolotl” juvenile barred tiger salamanders. The classic axolotl is a species of “mole salamander”, Ambystoma mexicanum, which is threatened in the wild.

Someone from Montana was telling me they had axolotls in Montana and it seemed odd so I finally googled it. Apparently they have alpine lakes with barred tiger salamanders that stay in a larval state and thus look like axolotls?

— Fossillocator (@fossillocator.bsky.social) 2026-08-10T04:13:48.100Z

Welcome to Thursday, August 13, 2026 and National Filet Mignon Day. From Wikipedia, with a picture of where this cut of steak comes from:

Filet mignon (/ˌfiːleɪˈmiːnjɒ̃/;^[1] French: [filɛ miɲɔ̃]; lit. ‘delicate, fine, or cute fillet‘) in North America, especially the United States refers solely to a cut of beef taken from the smaller end of a tenderloin, or psoas major of a cow. In France, filet mignon usually refers to cuts of pork tenderloin or veal tenderloin.

The tenderloin runs along both sides of the spine, and is usually butchered as two long snake-shaped cuts of meat. The tenderloin is sometimes sold whole. Filet mignon is usually presented as a round cut taken from the thinner end of a piece of tenderloin. It is often the most tender and lean cut. Filet mignon often has a milder flavour than other cuts of meat and as such is often garnished with a sauce or wrapped with bacon.

Due to the small amount of filet mignon able to be butchered from each animal, it is generally considered one of the most expensive cuts of beef.

Butchers can get from 10 to 16 filets per cow. I avoid this cut because while it’s tender, it doesn’t have the beefy flavor of, say, ribeye or other cuts, and it lacks marbling with fat, which is why, as they say, it’s often served wrapped with bacom. If you prize flavor over tenderness, as a good eater should, you’ll avoid this expensive steak.

It’s also National Prosecco Day and International Left Handers Day (the frequency of lefties across the globe is about 10.6%).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Amit Segal discusses the growing amity towards Israel of South America in an It’s Noon in Israel article called “¡Viva Israel, Carajo!”

It’s Wednesday, August 12, and Israel may never have had a better month diplomatically. Back in June, if Vice President JD Vance is to be believed, Israel had a single ally left in the world. Yet in the space of a few weeks it seems to have found several new ones, above all in South America.

Few leaders, Donald Trump included, can out-philosemite Argentina’s Javier Milei, the self-declared “most Zionist president in the world”—he has given even Isaac Herzog a run for his money. But Milei now has competition on his own continent.

Over the past month, Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has moved to reverse wholesale the hostile posture of his predecessor, the leftist Gustavo Petro, who had severed ties with Israel and halted Israeli arms imports over the war in Gaza. In July and August 2026, Bogotá ordered the full restoration of diplomatic relations, pledged to move Colombia’s embassy to Jerusalem, and withdrew from South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Then, on Monday, Colombia became only the second country in the world, after the United States, to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Venezuela, improbably, has moved in the same direction. On Tuesday, the two countries announced they had agreed to renew consular relations, 17 years after severing all diplomatic ties in 2009 under Hugo Chávez. The thaw followed Israel’s dispatch of an aid delegation—led by the Foreign Ministry and the IDF’s Home Front Command—after the double earthquake that killed thousands in Venezuela in late June.

Vance’s advice about not alienating Israel’s most important ally still holds. His claim that it was Israel’s only one is aging rather less well. As Milei would put it: ¡Viva la libertad, carajo! (“Long live freedom, goddamnit!”)

Well, that’s three countries only, but I’m not sure that Israel has no allies other than the United States. I’m told that Brazil remains steadfastly anti-Israel because it’s a “leftist country with a socialist mentality.”

*I was amazed that Dick Cheney lived to be 85 given his history of severe heart problems, but he soldiered on until death. Yesterday his cardiologist uses Cheney’s example to question Trump’s own health in a NYT op-ed. Trump, says, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, “has not looked well” (article archived here).

In June, President Trump celebrated his 80th birthday, and at the end of this term he will be the oldest person ever to serve as this nation’s leader. After Mr. Trump’s medical evaluation in May, Dr. Sean Barbabella, the physician to the president, wrote that Mr. Trump “remains in excellent health” and that his “demanding daily schedule, including multiple high-level meetings, public engagements and regular physical activity, continues to support his overall well-being.”

Despite reassurances from the White House to the contrary, at times over the past year, the president has not looked well. I am not Mr. Trump’s doctor, and have only reviewed his records that have been made public. But Mr. Trump is probably the most photographed president in American history, and a variety of physical ailments are easy to see. He’s had large bruises on both hands, swelling in his legs and episodes when it appears that he is struggling to stay awake. He’s also had advanced imaging performed for unclear reasons. The public is again left to wonder whether the nation’s leader is OK.

Despite the unparalleled power afforded to the president of the United States, there is no formal requirement for the commander in chief to certify his fitness for duty. That’s a mistake. Members of the military, Secret Service agents, commercial pilots, school bus drivers and air traffic controllers all must periodically demonstrate that they are well enough to perform their work. The current practice of reporting the results of a yearly medical examination for the president began in the Nixon administration, but it’s only a custom, not a formal obligation. And, as history has shown, it can be unreliable.

This does not mean that every detail about a president’s health must be disclosed. It’s appropriate to withhold elements of a medical history that could be exploited by an adversary. In 2007, when we replaced Mr. Cheney’s defibrillator, we didn’t share information about a new wireless feature of the device that I considered a security threat to the vice president. (We ultimately were able to get the manufacturer to disable that capacity.)

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows for the best solution to this problem: It permits Congress to establish a panel outside the executive branch to assess the health and fitness of the president. In April of this year, Representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill to create a congressional commission that would do just that. Ideally, such a panel would be empowered to review data from routine presidential physical examinations, as well as assessments performed when medical concerns emerge.

Reiner gives a list of seven questions that the panel should ask Trump or his doctor; I’ll give just two:

1. Dr. Barbabella’s recent report states that the president was evaluated by 22 consultants, an extraordinary number of specialists for even the most extensive executive health evaluation. Why were so many physicians summoned, and what were their specialties?

5. In October 2025, Mr. Trump underwent advanced imaging of his heart and abdomen at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The president’s physician offered a vague description of the reason for the tests: “to identify issues early, confirm overall health and ensure he maintains long-term vitality and function.” He said the tests did not reveal any abnormalities. Was there a specific symptom or clinical event that prompted this testing?

Reiner concludes this way, and I agree:

But the United States does not have a king. In a representative democracy, the people must have confidence in the health of their leader, and in the leader’s capacity to guide the nation. We have been kept in the dark too long.

Don’t we have a right to know if our President has grievous medical ailments? Or should all his conditions be kept private—or even lied about?

*A Free Press article by Liel Leibovitz, “New York is not, a ‘Habibi City’,” discusses another viral piece published in the New Yorker, declaring that Islamist immigrants are turning New York into a city run on Muslim principles, and, this being the New Yorker, thinks that’s peachy. (You can find the New Yorker article mentioned in the story archived here.

I immigrated to the United States from the Middle East for the one and only reason anyone should ever come to America: Because I believe it, firmly and passionately, to be the greatest nation ever endowed by God with the mission of spreading liberty and light to a benighted world, and because I consider it the honor of a lifetime to partake in the solemn work of making America ever greater.

Apparently, my fellow Middle Eastern immigrants have very different feelings. In her now-viral cover story for New York magazine, journalist Zaina Arafat—who was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., but identifies as SWANA, an acronym that previously stood for the Solid Waste Association of North America but now apparently means Southwest Asian and North African, and represents anyone who is vaguely Middle Eastern and dislikes capitalism, America, and the Jews—kicks things into high gear by celebrating the fact that New York is now “Habibi City,” a full-on SWANA enclave.

What does the average day look like in Habibi City? Arafat is all too happy to tell you: There’s a workshop for kids at a Lebanese bookstore dedicated to Middle Eastern culture, then a fundraiser for Gaza at a “women-run Syrian supper club.” Which, Arafat concluded, made her feel “like in the blād,” which means “back home, overseas.”

. . .Arafat, whose book You Exist Too Much won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction, herself attempts an answer, embodied in the name of one of her favorite SWANA-ese publications: it’s called Bidoun, meaning “without,” which is a name “meant to evoke existing without the concreteness of space.” In other words, because SWANA is really a state of mind, we must make sure America becomes its forever home.

It’s a perfect manifestation of a specific grad school sensibility, light on logic and high on pretense and self-importance. But it also captures the real tragedy—and threat—at hand: For Habibi City to be born, New York City must die.

. . .Here’s a thought experiment:

Imagine you are a magazine editor. A writer comes to you and suggests a piece revolving around a new term, SWANA, popularized by academics to protest against alleged American imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. The term, the writer explains, stands for South West Asia and North Africa, a very vast swath of the world that includes hundreds of millions of people and myriad cultures, nationalities, and belief systems.

Fret not, says the writer: These hundreds of millions of human beings stand as one, all sharing a singular and solid identity rooted pretty much exclusively in the belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Would you allow such dross? Or would you argue that coming up with a ludicrous term like SWANA and then explaining it as “a decolonial framework and a way of moving through the world” may be arousing for those privileged enough, like Arafat, to idle away their days on Columbia University’s campus but of no real value to anyone seeking to make sense of the real world?

. . . Sadly, New York magazine chose door number one. It printed all of Arafat’s ramblings, including referring to October 7, 2023, as an attack on Palestinians alone and describing September 11, 2001, as the day Americans, for no particular reason whatsoever and without any provocation, decided to turn nastily suspicious of Middle Easterners. It ran a side column with the perfectly Third World-y title “When Eating Out Is Political” that referred to the Jewish state as “the land mass currently called Israel.” In other words, the magazine didn’t just report on the SWANA-fication of New York: It adopted its rhythms, its feverish and conspiratorial thinking, its senseless and illogical formulations, and its rank biases.

. . . It’s (still) a free country, and anyone, of course, is welcome to build power as they please. But in her helpful piece, Arafat gave us all the best glimpse yet into what this power is being used to achieve. Anyone content with magazines laundering logic and language to fit the prevalent ideology and with politicos using their office to advance the interests of one tribe over the other is welcome to retreat to their favorite women-run Syrian supper club. Everyone else should fight like hell to make sure New York never becomes Habibi City.

It’s curious that although the New Yorker is anti-DSA (or at least that what’s edotpr David Remnik’s interview with the co-chair of the DSA implies), it’s also anti-Israel: conflicting sentiments. But I stopped subscribing to The New Yorker because it got pretty much ideologically captured.  And in this Free Press piece, they should have left out Leibovits’s statement, “If all you care about is your native culture, if you wish to fill every moment of your day with swell SWANA sensations, why not, ya know, go back to SWANA?”  That smacks a bit of the love-it-or-leave it mentality, though I see what he’s getting at.

*Over on his Substack site, philosopher Maarten Boudry decries the “AI slop” infecting writing in a piece called “Show us the prompts.” He is surprised to find so much on the Internet that’s written with AI (he uses the Pangram detector, which I might subscribe to).

The problem of AI slop in writing has been bothering me for a while. As you know many of the earlier cases centered around hallucinated quotes, which are pretty much the only way to catch an author with their pants down, as there is simply no innocent explanation. But as LLMs have improved and trained through human feedback, their tendency to hallucinate sources and quotes has diminished (though not completely disappeared). So now we’re arriving at the stage when there are no longer any smoking guns – just probabilistic estimates from Pangram.

If AI writing becomes so good that it is no longer distinguishable from human writing (except by being far superior to it), should we care? Will we all be reading AI slop soon, with human writing becoming a niche artisanal craft for anti-AI snobs? That’s the question my essay is asking. My main inspiration was this recent piece by Tyler Cowen in The Free Press, which predicts that before long hardly anyone will care whether or not a text was written by a human. Likewise, Richard Hanania wrote that it doesn’t really matter if the author of a piece is human or not. With the possible exception of memoirs, which are inherently personal, he does not care one way or the other. I beg to differ.

Well, I care, too; I want to know that somebody whose name is on an article put in the thought and the work. I don’t even like AI correcting prose, though it’s not as bad (I see putting your name on something that was written by a bot as unethical).  Here’s an article that several people sent both Maarten and I. I didn’t post it because it seemed too glib, and Maarten detected real signs of AI. Here you go:

Or take this viral piece by Israeli writer Nachum Kaplan (originally here) [the title is “I went to an anti-Israel dinner party. It did not go as planned.”]. It is also from “my” political side, lampooning the idiocy of pro-Palestinian discourse, so if anything it panders to my own views and tastes.

Multiple people sent it to me as a brilliant takedown of pro-Palestinian lunacy. But although I find the piece highly entertaining and incisive, I’ve always thought it’s a bit lame to recount an unverifiable conversation you supposedly had with other people, in which you portray your interlocutors as maximally moronic and yourself as maximally savvy and eloquent, delivering one witty riposte after another. In Yiddish, as it happens, they call this trepverter: the witty comeback you only think of when you’re already halfway down the stairs.

I didn’t share the piece online, as I found it a bit too smug, but I didn’t expect that it was written by AI. But you’re not fooling Pangram, which diagnoses it as 100% AI-generated. (But surely here there must have been extensive prompting describing the general outline of the dinner conversation, and some jokes and comebacks? Surely AI is not becoming that good?)

I see AI writing all over Facebook, and when I do I comment “This is AI writing and I’m unsubscribing.” Does that make me a bad person?

*A new world land speed record was set for a car powered by hydrogen:

The only person to break the sound barrier in a car earned another world record Tuesday in a show of force for hydrogen power.

British driver Andy Green reached 406.320 mph (653.908 kph) in a car powered by two hydrogen internal combustion engines with a combined 1,600 horsepower, setting the record for that vehicle category, according to the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the international governing body of motor sports.

The 64-year-old retired Royal Air Force pilot rocketed across the crystalline crust at Utah’s famous Bonneville Salt Flats in a 32-foot (9.75-meter) car engineered by British construction equipment manufacturer JCB. The engines, adapted from those used in the company’s heavy machinery, mix pressurized hydrogen gas with air and ignite it to create bursts of power.

But that isn’t the overall record.

. . .To be clear, Tuesday’s feat didn’t come close to approaching the overall land-speed record, which Green set with jet power in 1997. That year, he climbed into the Thrust SSC, a black needle sandwiched between two cartoonishly large jet engines, and hit 763.035 mph (1,227.985 kph), breaking the sound barrier and achieving a feat no one has come close to matching. His runs in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert produced sonic booms that shook the nearby town of Gerlach.

In 2006, Green also set the land-speed record for a diesel-powered car — 350.092 mph (563.4 kph) — at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He returned there Tuesday with the goal of beating that mark using hydrogen power, which he has called the “fuel of the future.”

Here’s the latest record and the car in a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s notion of reality is undercut:

Hili: Are you sure reality still exists?
Andrzej: Yes, but more and more often, it’s artificial.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy jesteś pewien, że rzeczywistość jeszcze istnieje?
Ja: Tak, ale coraz częściej jest sztuczna.

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

From CinEmma:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Masih, another Iranian woman likely to be executed for protesting:

Zeinab went into the street to protest. To demand freedom. For that, the authority charged her with “Moharebeh”, which means; enmity against God, means execution.

If you ask me how you can help me and help Iranians save her life, to be honest, I don’t have an answer. 💔I don’t… https://t.co/4mm8ashWr3 pic.twitter.com/E0s6xgeBap

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 12, 2026

Speaking of fabulists, one from Michael Shermer via Steve Pinker:

My favorite example in the genre of fabulists is Nick Clark, the cyclist who was exposed by local riders for his exaggerated Strava KOM (King of the Mountain) times. For years he said he raced professionally in Europe, that he was also a military soldier/weapons instructor, a…

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) August 11, 2026

From Simon, a sitting duck (clearly AI!) on Air Force One after Trump had been removed in a food container:

The press weren’t the only ones left on Airforce One. pic.twitter.com/LqU4wwzHWN

— Heather Thomas (@HeatherThomasAF) August 12, 2026

From Luana, a double standard for Muslims in Massachusetts (they are the beneficiaries):

Have you ever heard about people from Vietnam, Armenia, or Russia asking for such preferential treatment? No Seventh-Day Adventist Commission? No Shintoism Commission? No Hasidic Jewish Commission? Muslims are special. They deserve unique accommodations in America because… https://t.co/bSIh9SSRi6

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) August 11, 2026

From Malcolm. It’s fake, of course, but I think it’s funny:

Have you ever heard about people from Vietnam, Armenia, or Russia asking for such preferential treatment? No Seventh-Day Adventist Commission? No Shintoism Commission? No Hasidic Jewish Commission? Muslims are special. They deserve unique accommodations in America because… https://t.co/bSIh9SSRi6

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) August 11, 2026

Two from my freed: shameless groveling to Jason Arday by a Cambridge prof:

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of 3, Jason Arday learnt to read & write at 18. On Monday he’ll start work as @Cambridge_Uni’s youngest black Professor. It was a real privilege to help tell his story @BBCNews pic.twitter.com/8sCJnL26fb

— Celestina Olulode (@CelOlulode) March 2, 2023

. . . and a follow-up tweet; you can read the article about the fawning professor here. I’m afraid that Dr. Cremin, the head of Arday’s department, will never live this down.

1./ 🧵My latest article in @spikedonline is about Prof Hilary Cremin. The Cambridge academic who gushed over Jason Arday likes to berate people for their alleged racism. Yet her own intellectual inspiration is a notorious antisemite. Yes, really. 👉https://t.co/tjQWt3iu3E

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) August 12, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Austrian Jewish boy died in Auschwitz. He was 12 years old. https://t.co/2jGuva3XNu

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 13, 2026

One from Doctor Cobb, who says this is “good news” but it’s also sad: the Great Synagogue of Vilna was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941 and the Russians in 1957. Note that this is a video. The bimah is the “pulpit”: the platform from which the Torah is read.

Archaeologists have uncovered the central dais, or bimah, of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, Lithuania.The synagogue was ransacked by the Nazis in 1941 and then destroyed under the Soviet regime in 1957. http://www.timesofisrael.com/buried-for-7&#8230;

— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer.bsky.social) 2026-08-08T21:06:35.071Z

Here’s what it looked like in 1920:

. . and here’s the Holy Ark, that held the Torah scrolls. The synagogue was built in 1633.

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Woensdag” in Dutch): Wednesday, August 12, 2026, and World Elephant Day. I can’t post my own pictures of elephants as my transfer to a new computer has temporarily left my own photos in limbo, but here’s one by David Hughes that appeared in a “Readers’ Wildlife Photo” post from 2024. The caption was “A mother elephant and her calf enjoy the wetter environment along the Khwai River”:

It’s also National Sewing Machine Day, IBM PC Day, National Julienne Fries Day (remember “Freedom Fries”?), Truck Driver Day, Baseball Fans Day, and World Calligraphy Day. In honor of baseball, which has been very, very good to me, I present one aspect of the game: a choice of the ten greatest Major League Baseball outfield throws of all time:

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

Posting will be light today as I have an appointment downtown. Bear with me; I do my best.

Da Nooz:

Breaking news ripped from the headlines:  At last a Democratic Socialist has been defeated. Francesca Hong, predicted to win, actually lost the governorship of Wisconsin to a moderate Democrat, though it was a squeaker and in another election a progressive won a nomination to run for the Senate:

David Crowley, the moderate Milwaukee County executive, won an upset victory for the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin early Wednesday, prevailing over Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who had led in opinion polls but faced questions about whether she could win the swing state in the general election. Mr. Crowley will face Representative Tom Tiffany, a Trump-endorsed Republican, in November.

But another Midwest progressive, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of neighboring Minnesota, won the high-profile Democratic Senate primary there, giving the party’s left wing a mixed showing on a busy night of primaries in six states. In South Carolina, Senator Darline Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, advanced to a Republican primary runoff against Representative Ralph Norman, a hard-line conservative, to run for a full term in November.

Hong can request a recount since the margin of victory is less than 1%. More on her from the WSJ:

The 37-year-old state representative and part-time bartender backs legalizing marijuana to fund high-speed broadband. She also supports a state-run development bank, taxpayer-subsidized child care, government-run grocery stores, the elimination of all college debt, Medicare for All, a 32-hour workweek with no pay cut, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, restoring voting rights to felons and the eventual elimination—or at least reduction—of prisons and police.

*The WSJ reports that the U.S. fired on a Panama-flagged ship running the blockade we’ve imposed on Iran. And we may have fired on another ship:

U.S. forces fired on a Panama-flagged ship that attempted to run the American blockade of Iranian ports early Tuesday, a U.S. official said, stepping up enforcement as the Trump administration attempts to squeeze the regime economically.

A U.S. military helicopter fired at the rudder of the ship after its crew ignored warnings from American personnel working to enforce the naval blockade of Iran’s ports, the official said.

*New reports reveal that, when leaving a NATO summit in Turkey last month, Trump was smuggled out in a catering container on a military jet because of threats from Iran.

Top administration officials engaged in an elaborate deception to spirit President Trump out of Turkey during the NATO summit there last month, transporting him in a catering container to a military jet because of a threat against him and Air Force One from Iran, two senior U.S. officials said on Monday.

Mr. Trump and other officials had said publicly that he would be leaving Turkey on July 8 aboard one of the older versions of Air Force One rather than a luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on. Mr. Trump told reporters at the time that he was making the switch for “old time’s sake.”

Mr. Trump boarded the older plane from the left-side door in view of cameras, and news organizations, including The New York Times, reported that he had traveled on it to Britain, where he switched back to the newer plane. The Times reported at the time that the decision was driven in part by concern about the security of the new plane donated by Qatar, which had not been equipped with all of the defensive capabilities of older versions.

But instead of flying out aboard that older, powder blue, modified 747, Mr. Trump was whisked off that plane via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane from where the journalists traveling with him boarded, one of the U.S. officials said. The president was then taken to a third plane, which he flew in secret to Britain, the official with knowledge of the matter said.

Reporters on the older plane were not told that Mr. Trump had not flown with them from Turkey to an air base in Britain, making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with some White House staff members, to serve as unknowing decoys.

After Mr. Trump arrived in Britain, he was secretly moved back to the older version of Air Force One. He then disembarked in view of reporters and walked across the tarmac to the plane donated by Qatar, which he flew to Washington.

The elaborate plan appears to have been developed in a matter of hours after officials determined that a threat against Mr. Trump from Iran was credible. It came after years of threats against Mr. Trump from Iran and amid the war he launched against that country. And it was an unusual instance of the public being deceived about a president’s whereabouts.

I have to say that this is pretty clever, though the thought of Trump being ferried to a fighter inside a big steel box of cookies and Diet Coke is amusing, though it may be his idea of paradise!

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal reports that “Trump gets the nuclear dust“. This refers to a felicitous removal of nuclear material from Syria, of all places.

It’s Tuesday, August 11, and with Israeli help, the Trump administration has reached a deal to denuclearize an Islamist nation: Syria. According to Axios’ Barak Ravid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will soon remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine site in the country.

But first, context.

It was 2007, a simpler time, when disabling a nuclear program and deterring a genocidal dictator from rebuilding it took a single resolute strike. Israel showed the evidence of a secret reactor to the Bush administration, hoping for support. At the time when the Bush administration feared the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” the way today’s administrations fear “boots on the ground,” Israel went it alone. It destroyed the reactor in Operation Out of the Box, and in the aftermath the United States, Israel, and Syria all officially pretended nothing had happened. Syria denied the reactor had ever existed—even after IAEA inspectors found evidence of undeclared nuclear material and declared the country in noncompliance with the NPT.

Bring us to the late days of 2024 when the Assad regime collapsed, Israel—suspicious of the ex-jihadist government that replaced it—set about crippling Syria’s military. A country it wouldn’t trust with fighter jets it certainly wouldn’t trust with nuclear material, so it kept the old reactor site under watch.

According to the report, that monitoring picked up movement around the site a few weeks ago—enough to suspect the new government was reneging on understandings and trying to reach the nuclear material. Israel wasn’t going to let that stand. It told the Trump administration it would strike the site again if the material wasn’t removed, or if there were any sign Damascus was trying to get to it.

Syria’s new government, for its part, is eager to clear away the sensitive files it inherited from Assad—the nuclear and chemical weapons programs chief among them—that could sabotage its bid to rehabilitate the country’s international standing. The ultimatum handed it the perfect opportunity to look responsible, especially set against other Islamist states in the region.

This is great news. The last thing we need is another unstable Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons. But Syria, unlike Iran, is not sworn to destroy Israel. It doesn’t like Israel, but is hewing to a non-conflict status with respect to the Jewish state. So, it’s pretty good.

*Trump’s and RFK Jr.’s war against vaccines continued, as Trump signed an executive order recommending fewer vaccines and more spaced-out immunizations. Health experts object strenuously.

For the third time in less than a year, President Trump on Monday issued an executive order that calls for American children to be routinely immunized against fewer diseases, as they are in countries like Denmark.

The latest version embraces more explicitly than its predecessors a revised schedule that recommends immunizing children against 11 diseases, rather than the 17 that are currently recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The order also “directs the attorney general to advance legal challenges against states that violate children’s rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions,” Mr. Trump said.

Speaking in the Oval Office before signing the executive order, Mr. Trump said he was motivated in part by concerns over whether vaccines were tied to autism, even though dozens of studies have found no link between the two.

It is unclear whether the order has any legal power. Vaccine recommendations in the United States are made by a committee of experts who advise the C.D.C., and are then adopted by the agency’s director. But only states can require vaccinations for children to enter school or day care.

The administration’s previous attempt at implementing a shorter vaccination schedule was already frozen once by a federal court. That ruling is part of a continuing lawsuit, brought by medical organizations, that argued that the administration did not follow proper procedure and that it made “arbitrary and capricious” decisions. A judge agreed with that claim, saying the government had bypassed the careful, evidence-based practice that has traditionally underpinned vaccine recommendations.

“This is not likely to address the court’s concern, and is not a legally valid way to fill the statutory requirements about vaccine recommendations, it’s just not,” said Dorit Reiss, an expert on vaccine policy and law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

The president cannot legally circumvent the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is empowered by Congress to make vaccine recommendations, she said. Attempts to enforce the order are likely to run into the same legal challenges, Ms. Reiss said.

I’m heartened that Trump cannot circumvent the immunization committee, and that experts are criticizing this order:

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that harm was “inherent” in the executive order, because ignoring evidence-based vaccine recommendations would lead to more children getting sick.

The executive order recommends splitting the vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella into individual shots, rather than administering them in combination as is now the case. “Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal, and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal, but just very effective,” Mr. Trump claimed on Monday.

There is no evidence that the M.M.R. shot is lethal, and many decades of evidence for its overall safety. The combination shot has been associated with a small risk of seizures if a child develops a fever, but that type of seizure does not cause long-term harm, according to the C.D.C.

Individual vaccines are available in some countries, but would need to be tested in the United States before they can be administered.

My only question is why some European countries recommend fewer vaccines than the U.S. Are some diseases less prevalent in those countries? Regardless, I presume there is evidence underlying the recommendations of the immunization committee, and Trump should keep his nose out of places where it doesn’t belong, like medical advice. He’s the President, not a doctor.

*“In the U.S. we don’t hear much news about author J. K. Rowling, but she’s still busy defending women’s rights from her home in Edinburgh. Quillette summarizes her latest campain in an article called, J. K. Rowling vs. Amnesty“, with “Amnesty” being Amnesty International.  Here’s what’s happening:

On 31 July, Amnesty International publicly apologised for publishing an “anti-rights” briefing at the heart of a weeks-long public clash with author J.K. Rowling. The document, “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK,” purported to map a nationwide “anti-rights ecosystem” that included Beira’s Place, the Edinburgh sexual-violence support service established by Rowling in 2022. Transgender-rights activists have long criticised the charity for excluding transgender women from its services.

Rowling was having none of it, and she launched a scathing public attack on an NGO that she said has “become a tyrant that persecutes those who don’t espouse what it decrees acceptable beliefs.” She invited any of the groups named on what she called Amnesty’s “blacklist” to apply to the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund for legal support. Amnesty quickly realised that it had picked the wrong fight. Its earlier, carefully calibrated expression of “regret” collapsed into a full mea culpa; it withdrew the briefing. The document had been uploaded by mistake, the organisation said, bypassing its established and normally rigorous internal-review processes. An internal investigation was announced, to be followed by an independent external review.

Her tweet:

Should any of the women’s organisations targeted by @AmnestyUK‘s recent ‘anti-rights’ blacklist wish to take legal action, applications can be made to the JK Rowling Women’s Fund. https://t.co/iyohnrgVZN https://t.co/D28OInpM5g

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 13, 2026

At a glance, Amnesty’s climbdown seems to close a brief but turbulent chapter in the history of one of the world’s most influential human-rights organisations. But if it hopes that its procedural explanation will satisfy critics and end scrutiny of its operations, it is mistaken; it only raises more questions. How, for instance, does a document of this significance—which named more than a hundred British organisations and might have seriously damaged their reputations and funding—reach publication without passing through the oversight that Amnesty claims it applies to all its work? And if that process failed here, why should anyone assume that it has not failed elsewhere?

As senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), I saw the machinery behind major human-rights publications up close. It beggars belief that a complex document like this one about a highly sensitive issue simply slipped out of the door unnoticed. A less fantastical explanation is that it was not a rogue briefing, but the most legally exposed expression of a settled institutional view. In May, Amnesty published a related report titled “Like a Snowball: The Growth and Impact of the Gender-Critical Movement in the UK,” which included comparable characterisations of many of the same organisations and was finally withdrawn on 31 July. Also withdrawn was a parliamentary briefing produced for Pride Month this year that likewise described 51 gender-critical organisations as “anti-trans.”

Amnesty’s approach in the Rowling affair followed the familiar NGO playbook that has allowed human-rights organisations to survive crises for decades to preserve their moral authority and avoid meaningful accountability. First, downplay the incident by framing it as a regrettable breakdown in an otherwise scrupulous system; second, promise an investigation; third, wait for the news cycle to move on. But maybe that won’t work this time. Is it too much to hope that Rowling’s stand-off with Amnesty will finally produce a reckoning for an increasingly unaccountable sector?

Amnesty has, of course, also demonized Israel:

We found that the conclusions of NGO investigations were sometimes determined before completion, including Amnesty’s 2024 “genocide” report, which was already moving through internal systems under its pre-agreed heading while research was supposedly still underway. We also found that research was bent to the demands of ideology, buried, or delayed for political reasons. While Amnesty issued a report accusing Israel of “genocide” a year after Hamas’s 2023 massacres, it took more than two years to release a report on the 7 October atrocities. Internal documents show that staff were concerned an earlier publication date might generate sympathy for Israel.

Other NGOs like Doctors Without Borders have been subject to the same ideological capture. Amnesty can be added to the list of agencies that you might not want to donate to. As for Rowling, she abides and persists.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is concerned. Did Szaron eat the spider?

Hili: There’s been a dead fly in that spiderweb for two days.
Andrzej: So what?
Hili: I’m afraid someone ate the spider.

In Polish:

Hili: W tej pajęczynie od dwóch dni jest martwa mucha
Ja: I co z tego?
Hili: Boję się, że ktoś zjadł pająka.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From CinEmma:

From Things With Faces:

From Masih; another female political prisoner about to be executed:

This is another Iranian woman who is about to be executed soon.

Every morning I write about someone Iran has just executed; within minutes, a message arrives from a mother, a sister, a friend, begging me to write about their loved one on death row. Before it’s too late.

That’s… https://t.co/EWkmjigTpo pic.twitter.com/4UPeuqEVo6

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 11, 2026

From Maarten Boudry, another piece about performative academic purity tests, this time at Bates College in Maine (Atlantic article here).

Here’s another brilliant piece by a Black (ex-)academic describing his experience of being treated like a mascot by his white liberal colleagues, and why he (@Tyler_A_Harper) eventually left his tenured job. It’s mind-boggling.

Both this piece and the one above also refute the…

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) August 11, 2026

The Number Ten cat points out a coincidence:

If I had a pound for every time a bumbling, egotistical political leader with outrageous hair hid in something designed for food, I’d have £2, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it’s happened twice https://t.co/HL0nxuqBpC pic.twitter.com/8FLfba1MyS

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 11, 2026

One from Malcolm, who says this is not for him. But I’d ride it!

Yay or Nay? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/MN51Ccn6Pv

— Wat_the_deuce 🍀🇮🇪☘️ 2 (@wat_thee_deuce_) August 13, 2024

One from my feed. I love border collies!

Border collie clears traffic jam..🐕🐾🐑🐑🐑🐑😍 pic.twitter.com/gMROLPR07M

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) August 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed, together with her mother, immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was three years old, and had she lived she’d be 84 today. https://t.co/Wm8rrbSfk1

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 12, 2026

Two from Matthew. The first one shows a dying person hoping for reincarnation as a better being. There are others in the series, but I like this one best.

— Skol Squatch (@skolsquatch.bsky.social) 2026-08-11T03:59:47.223Z

Once an eyesore, The Headington Shark is now a national treasure:

The Headington Shark, installed 40 years ago, initially a source of anger, confusion, complaints then extended legal combat with the council, now on an Historic England register due to the efforts of that same civic body.📷 Roger Close

— Bruce Gorrie (@bsrg1.bsky.social) 2026-08-11T16:57:48.106Z

Welcome to The Cruelest Day, Tuesday, August 11, 2026, and Ingersoll Day, celebrating  the life of “The Great Agnostic,” born on this day in 1833 (died 1899). Today he’d be called “The Great Atheist.” Ingersoll was an eloquent speaker, great writer, and by all accounts, a genial and lovely man.  My favorite quote from Ingersoll, which I often used on lectures about the incompatibility of science and faith, is this:

“There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: ‘Let us be friends.’ It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: ‘Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet’.”

Here he is:

It’s also National Panini Day, National Raspberry Bombe Day, and National Raspberry Tart Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Strait of Hormuz remains a sticking point in the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran.  Trump thought the opening was imminent, but that wasn’t Iran’s plan.

For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.

This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.

“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”

Hanging over diplomatic talks since April has been the White House’s ultimatum that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon. Trump sought to include nuclear talks as part of broader negotiations with Iran, but those have proven too difficult, leading the White House in recent weeks to focus more on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

There we have it: Trump is willing to “walk away without a nuclear deal”—the deal he said was the most important issue for the U.S. Iran was never going to get nuclear weapos,  Well, forget about that; all he wants now is an open Strait of Hormuz, and you don’t have to be a genius to realize that Iran is going to delay that and deny it. This “war” may last a while, but Trump will never be able to declare victory on the terms he wanted.

*Now here’s a clickbait headline in the NYT (click to read, or find article archived here):

An excerpt:

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York posted a series of video clips on social media Saturday night saying that she would freeze her eggs despite what she called a “political risk” for sharing her decision.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 36, a Democrat who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, made the announcement hours before saying in a TV interview Sunday that she is open to running for president or the Senate.

“There is very strangely a political risk, or a political tax, that comes with sharing this info,” she said of her decision to freeze her eggs. She added that she had shared the information “to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.” The announcement further fueled speculation on social media that she is gearing up for a presidential run.

Asked on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday morning if she would consider a White House bid, she said, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility,” adding that she was “humbled” by the support she is receiving.

She also suggested she would consider running for the Senate seat held by the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, telling host Jonathan Karl that “anything is possible at this juncture.” But, she added, “I think that we have a responsibility to remain focused on the midterms and not on our individual aspirations or plans.”

Her interview Sunday — her first appearance on a major Sunday news show since 2024 — marked her most public suggestion yet of aspirations for higher office. First elected in 2018, she rapidly became a top voice in her party’s ascendant progressive wing.

While Ms. Ocasio-Cortez identifies as a democratic socialist, she distanced herself in the interview from some of the more radical positions of the Democratic Socialists of America. Asked if she supports all of the tenets of the group’s guiding document, including abolishing the Senate, police and prisons, she said no. She also said she was a member of her local D.S.A. chapter, but not the national group.

I don’t care if she freezes her eggs or not, and I don’t understand why anybody else should care, either. The time has passed when women would be criticized for deciding not to have children, or for delaying that decision. What bothers me instead about AOC is her arrant careerism, combined with no sign that she has leadership abilities to warrant elevation to the Senate, much less the Presidency.  From the beginning it was clear that she wanted a Big Time Political Position, but she’s been primary sponsor of zero bills that have become law, though she’s been a co-sponsor of such bills, and has introduced minor amendments that became law. Her main activity in Congress apepars to be self-promotion. And I predicted that she’d back away from her Democratic Socialist positions when she realized that would impede her rise to the Senate. That is exactly what she’s doing now.  If she does run for higher office, I hope she gets primaried.

*The Wall Street Journal describes a squabble among Democrats over the huge welfare scandal in Minnesota,

Democrats are lashing out at fellow Democrats for the nation’s largest pandemic-era welfare fraud, theft that handed Republicans a potent example of government waste from Democratic mismanagement.

In a recent debate, Rep. Angie Craig flashed anger as she connected the scandal to progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, her opponent in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.

“It pisses me off that you completely put all of the responsibility on the governor of Minnesota when you were the No. 2 elected leader in Minnesota during that period of time,” she said. “Republicans, they are going to have a field day with this with you.”

Flanagan was alongside Gov. Tim Walz when the fraud was uncovered. Craig, who represents a swing district, added she felt it was her “responsibility to warn Democratic primary voters that Republicans are dying to run against you because they believe that you have a unique vulnerability on fraud.”

Flanagan has tried to play down her role in the scandal, saying at the debate that “the governor has taken the lead” in addressing fraud fallout.

. . .Democrats are lashing out at fellow Democrats for the nation’s largest pandemic-era welfare fraud, theft that handed Republicans a potent example of government waste from Democratic mismanagement.

In a recent debate, Rep. Angie Craig flashed anger as she connected the scandal to progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, her opponent in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.

“It pisses me off that you completely put all of the responsibility on the governor of Minnesota when you were the No. 2 elected leader in Minnesota during that period of time,” she said. “Republicans, they are going to have a field day with this with you.”

. . . The swindling, perpetrated mostly by Somali immigrants, has been jarring to many longtime residents because they had long clung to an unofficial Minnesota motto: Our taxes may be high, but we have good government and services.

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, a Republican who served as a state auditor for 12 years before he led the state, said it was stunning how many officials missed major warning signs or looked the other way.

“You’ve got to have a culture that is protective of the dollar, and that culture had long disappeared,” he said.

The reason the Democrats didn’t come down hard on this fraud is because it was done largely, as noted above, by Somali immigrants. Somalis are deemed an oppressed group, and therefore any fraud on their part must be overlooked. This is one result of wokeness among Democrats. The fault is not that the culture is not protective of the dollar, but that it is protective of those perceived to be oppressed, who are treated lightly according to a “progressive” double standard.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses the Board of Peace’s U.S.-inspired plan in a piece called “Destroying the tunnels will take a decade.”

t’s Monday, August 10 and within hours of Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that Israel rejects the 15-point roadmap, Nickolay Mladenov—Director General of the Board of Peace, the Trump-led body meant to oversee postwar Gaza—sat down with me to explain why Israel should want the very thing Bibi had just rejected.

His entire case reduces to one word: verification. Nobody is required to do anything, he insists, “last of all Israel,” before verified steps on the ground. The IDF sits at the yellow line agreed under the comprehensive plan; the Board’s ask is only that it hold there and not fire across unless troops face a real threat. The line moves back only after individual sectors are cleared and their weapons certified, stored, and rendered unusable. If the next stage’s commitments go unmet, “the process stops.”

Why store the weapons in warehouses inside Gaza, where Hamas is “always one wall away from rearming”? Because they will be rendered unusable, he says, by the Board’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza with backing from the international force. More a reassurance than an answer.

Who destroys the tunnels? Contractors, but at this rate it will take more than a decade, and, he adds, this is precisely why Israel needs the Board of Peace: together it will go faster.

What counts as the “personal arms” Gazans may keep—might that quietly include the Kalashnikovs that actually govern the Strip? No, he says; the framework covers everything, heavy weapons to personal ones. He acknowledges that Gaza is ruled from the barrel of a Kalashnikov—which is why, he insists, those rifles and every other weapon must pass to civilian authority.

And Turkey and Qatar—the two governments Israelis least want inside Gaza? Without Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar, he says flatly, Hamas would never have agreed to the roadmap at all; their role was critical. Told that letting them help dismantle Hamas is the fox guarding the henhouse, he answers: “If I have to speak to the devil, I will speak to the devil”—to make sure no second October 7 ever occurs. The verification mechanism, he stresses, is American-led, backed by the ISF and, on paper, by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Morocco.

Pressed on whether Hamas will really disarm itself—whether the whole thing is too good to be true—he offers the tell. “I’m not building any of this on the basis of trust. And none of us are.” Clear-eyed about the risks, he says, and building on verification instead. If it doesn’t work, the process stops.

Yet despite this, Segal is in favor of at least starting to implement this plan:

My take: In contrast to the entire political establishment, I support this plan. It won’t dismantle Hamas—nothing will, not completely. But if it nets a third of the tunnels and half the Kalashnikovs, I’ll take it. Will 100,000 Kalashnikovs be handed in? Of course not. But 40,000 collected and another 300 kilometers of tunnel mapped is not nothing—and the next round, which everyone knows is coming, gets fought on considerably more favorable terms.

I’m not sure why the “next round” will be more favorable to Israel, much less the U.S. Yes, half the guns is “not nothing’, but it’s not far from nothing. We’re a long, long way from peace in Gaza.

*The famous “Furthur” bus documented in Tom Wolfe’s book, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which the Merry Pranksters, Neil Cassady, and Ken Kesey took their act on the road, is getting ready for one more trip (article archived here). I had no idea that it still existed. (Wikipedia’s article on Furthur notes that there have been two buses, but this trip will use the original, the one in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test )

Among the rolling hills outside Eugene, Ore., down a winding gravel path and inside a big barn sits a school bus built in 1939. Its once-blazing colors have faded. Its roof is crumbling. Its windows are cracked. The only regular occupants these days are insects.

It might look like a hunk of junk, but the muted technicolor splotches tell the story of one of the most exuberant periods of San Francisco history.

Sixty years ago, this bus symbolized the city’s counterculture revolution, the embrace of psychedelic drugs and the live-out-loud, love-your-neighbor ethos for which the era is remembered.

With the nation once again facing war, polarized politics and cultural battles, Zane Kesey thinks some of that old bus magic is needed. And that is why he has agreed to send the bus, the one he helped cover in swirls of Day-Glo paint when he was 3, back to the city that spawned a movement.

“I would love to see it adored again,” he said. “And for people to feel that pure, innocent love that came out of it.”

His father, Ken Kesey, who died in 2001, had just written the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” when he purchased the former school bus that a large Bay Area family had tricked out with beds, benches and a refrigerator for road trips. Mr. Kesey and his freethinking friends, called the Merry Pranksters, painted the bus in psychedelic colors, cut a sun roof into it, added a powerful sound system and installed a balcony on top.

. . .So later this month, it will leave the Kesey family farm in Pleasant Hill, Ore., a short drive from Eugene, for the first time since 1969. A flatbed truck will carry it down Interstate 5 to California, over the Bay Bridge and into the city. In the dead of night, when the streets are quiet, it will trundle into Golden Gate Park and into its Hall of Flowers alongside the botanical gardens.

There, starting Sept. 5, the bus will be on display as part of a show called “Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park,” put on by the Haight Street Art Center, which aims to preserve and showcase art and cultural artifacts from the city’s counterculture movement. The exhibit will also feature Jerry Garcia’s BMW, live performers, puppetry and storytelling.

I’d love to see this iconic bus, but if you’re in SF and a Wolfe/Kesey/Cassady fan, go see it!  The NYT article has lots of cool photos (see the archived version), but I’ll show two from the Wikipedia article as well as the whole movie about the original trip.

Here’s the original Further in 1964:

And the inside, also from Wikipedia; note the psychedelic painting (the bus was of course loaded with drugs). You can see more in the movie below. Cassady, of course, was the driver, and the only driver.

Here’s the video “Magic Trip” (out in 2011) with Ken Kesey, my hero Neal Cassady, and the Merry Pranksters. I’m so glad this is free on YouTube. Click on “watch on YouTube”, or go here.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cats are making Big Plans:

Szaron: Got any plans for tomorrow?
Hili: Yes, I’ll be lying in a different spot.

In Polish:

Szaron: Masz jakieś plany na jutro?
Hili: Tak, będę leżała w innym miejscu.

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

From Funny and Strange Signs, this one in Times Square:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Masih; an Iranian woman hanged for defending herself against sexual assault and killing the assailant.

Islamic Republic in Iran hangs 24-Year-old woman who defended herself from sexual assault

Yesterday the regime executed Marziyeh Neyri yesterday, a young woman who was forced into marriage at age 17 and hanged for fighting back against her attacker.

Marziyeh was 18 years old… pic.twitter.com/mq0I2CcTYy

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 10, 2026

From Luana, the sad state of math proficiency in UCSD students (read the whole tweet):

This sounds like a joke, but it’s not:

– 1 in 12 incoming UCSD freshmen don’t know middle school math,

– and the remedial math course was too advanced,

– so UCSD had to create a remedial remedial math course,

– and a quarter of the students placing into it had a perfect 4.0… https://t.co/cHdBjw38L8 pic.twitter.com/cbymCyG7iI

— Justin Skycak (@justinskycak) August 7, 2026

The Number Ten Cat apparently doesn’t like Ricky Gervais’s new animation, “Alley Cat”, and he strikes back at Gervais:

Two can play this game: I’m writing a cartoon about a comedian from Berkshire who hasn’t written anything funny for a decade https://t.co/x4R7VCyNyd

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 8, 2026

From Malcolm, a Japanese school bus. So cool, and look at the little girl bow before she gets on! (Sound up.)

Translation from the Spanish: “Japan’s school buses are causing a sensation abroad.”

Los autobuses escolares de Japón están causando sensación en el extranjero pic.twitter.com/rX0rxTdVHa

— Sabiduría Eterna. (@LealtadSabia) August 3, 2026

One from my feed; it is a sin to disturb a sleeping cat:

Coming across a cat on his way, this man stopped to play with it until it drifted off to sleep right there. He stayed completely still afterward, careful not to disturb its rest. No act of kindness is ever too small, and the world keeps turning because of men like him, truly 🐾 pic.twitter.com/90Kh0UKV2S

— Enezator (@Enezator) August 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

11 August 1928 | Dutch Jewish girl Ariette Wilk was born in The Hague.

In December 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz. After the selection she was murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/YgJGvQGy8V

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 11, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. Matthew says that in the first one, the grouper just wants a cuddle:

— Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! (@standplaatskrk.pl) 2026-08-10T11:55:42.419Z

Matthew sent me this yesterday and told me that perhaps the answer would appear soon. But it hasn’t, and it may be a mistake:

Ok the answer to this is apparently 40 but I have no idea why. Any ideas? 🧪 #academicsky

— John Stott (@jpsastro.bsky.social) 2026-08-09T09:33:56.351Z

Welcome to another “work” week: it’s Monday, August 10, 2026 and World Lion Day.  There is only one species of lion, Panthera leo, though it has a disjunct distribution, living in sub-Saharan Africa and the Gir Forest of India (habitat destruction undoubtedly led to this distribution).  Here’s a short video showing a young female cub joining the crèche of her pride and meeting her dad:

It’s also National Duran Duran Appreciation Day (count me out), National S’Mores Day (count me in), and Smithsonian Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Israel has rejected Trump’s 15-point plan for a cease-fire in Gaza, a key element of the overall peace plan (see the 15 points here).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected President Trump’s plan for disarming Hamas, a key plank of the Gaza peace process that also requires Israel’s gradual withdrawal from the enclave.

The Israeli leader issued a statement in a government meeting Sunday spelling out his rejection of the plan, in an unusual public break with Trump. The move risks angering the president, who hailed what he called “a historic agreement” to disarm Hamas late last month.

Netanyahu faces uphill elections in October and has come under domestic criticism from his hard-right coalition partners who accused him of misleading them over the terms of the plan, which would see the decommissioning of Hamas’s weapons in exchange for phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“Israel rejects the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarmament of Hamas, I mean heavy weapons, less heavy weapons, light weapons, all the weapons,” Netanyahu said in a video statement released by his office at the opening of an Israeli cabinet meeting, using an acronym for the Israeli military.

When Trump announced that a deal had been reached between Hamas and his Board of Peace, a body he created to oversee Gaza’s postwar transition, he said Israel was very happy with it.

But Israel and Hamas are deeply distrustful of each other, and major disagreements about the 15-point plan’s details have since emerged, such as the sequencing of disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal.

The Gaza plan arrives at a sensitive moment for Netanyahu with polls showing he is likely to fail to secure a ruling majority in the coming general election. While the U.S. would like to see Israeli troops withdraw from what Israel calls buffer zones in Gaza, as well as Lebanon, these moves are likely to be very unpopular with the Israeli prime minister’s right-wing voter base who see Israel’s presence there as important to their country’s security.

Netanyahu’s announcement comes despite intense pressure, including from the U.S., for Israel to agree to the plan, according to two people briefed on the matter. The Gaza plan was raised by U.S. officials in a recent meeting between Netanyahu and Trump in late July, according to one of the people briefed.

It only makes sense, given the mendacity of Hamas, to condition Israel’s withdrawal on the complete demilitarization of Hamas.  And yes, Netanyahu will lose support from his right-wing base if he bows to the plan. But I dislike every move that Israel makes like this being attributed to Netanyahu’s desire to be re-electerd.  Maybe the motivations are 100% correct, but maybe part of them is due to not endangering Israel in the future. I agree that Hamas should completely disarm as step #1 of the plan. There is no place for Hamas—armed or not—in a reconstructed and peaceful Gaza.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses what the U.S. (and Israel) might do vis-à-vis Iran now that America is running out of missiles.

It’s Sunday, August 9, and “I will fight tooth and nail, if necessary,” Netanyahu declared when President Biden imposed a weapons embargo on him. But what, exactly, will the United States fight with? Even without an embargo, its own arsenals are approaching the red line fast. The commander of United States European Command warned the Pentagon that there aren’t enough resources to defend against the coming confrontation with Iran while protecting both Israel and American forces—they will have to choose. Reuters reported that the U.S. Army has nearly exhausted its entire stock of precision missiles. In Israel, it was reported that the bunker-buster bombs of the kind dropped on Fordow last year are also nearly gone after a single night of strikes, making an attack on Pickaxe Mountain difficult.

And all this after just a few weeks of fighting a failing Middle Eastern dictatorship—torn from within and teetering on economic collapse. What happens if Russia stages a provocation somewhere else in Europe? Or if China decides to push forces toward Taiwan? The state of the U.S. military brings to mind the IDF on the eve of October 7: an imposing image that, in practice, delivered failure after failure, draw after draw. Its only clear victory since the end of the Cold War was over Saddam Hussein, a quarter of a century ago.

The whole world is now watching Trump. Will he end the war with Iran still controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the regime still standing, and its army merely licking its wounds?

Two absurdities. The first: the American—and especially Republican—trauma of a ground operation and a bloody quagmire is the very thing that has kept the Iranians alive. Almost any ground operation—to seize uranium, take Kharg Island, or capture senior officials—would likely have triggered a dramatic upheaval of the regime. The second: it is precisely the fear of a dramatic collapse in American standing that stops Trump from ending this conflict the way Washington ended Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. Walter Russell Mead, a prominent American conservative commentator, proposed years ago that the United States finish off Iran—the small, weak, estranged son of the Sino-Russian-Korean axis, and the only one that doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons. The message, he wrote shortly after October 7, would land well in every capital that loves evil—even if the message is that the United States can no longer win.

I fear that this conflict will end the way Vietnam did, withdrawal and ending with nothing accomplished. I opposed the Vietnam War in the first place, as we had no business being there and losing 50,000 American lives in vain.  But we do have business being in Iran; it’s just that Americans, as Segal said, have no stomach for ground troops on Iranian soil.  This is, in my mind, a just war on two counts: it has the potential to free the Iranian people from an oppressive and murderous theocracy, and Iran, unlike Vietnam, is already engaged in spreading terrorism throughout the world.

*At his website Critical Mass, physicist Lawrence Krauss describes what he sees as the greatest threat to modern society.  No, it’s not nukes or AI—it’s Islam. This may be only part of his website, as I don’t have a subscription:

I have been thinking for some time what may be the greatest threat to modern civilization. While a lot of attention is given to AI, I don’t think that is it–at least yet. AI will change everything, but so did writing, and we survived, and in fact flourished as a result. We have to be vigilant, but I know a lot of smart people who are working on AI safety, so at least it is not being ignored.

Obviously nuclear weapons exist as as sword of Damocles hovering over civilization, and the dangers of nuclear conflagration are increasing with time. I was Chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin Atomic Scientists for a decade, following on heroes like Einstein, Oppenheimer, and my immediate predecessor Leon Lederman, so I know first-hand that the dangers of nuclear war are something that should never be taken for granted. I am particularly concerned about the lack of active effort in nuclear arms control amongst the nations with nuclear weapons right now. That concerns me as much as worries about proliferation in Iran, North Korea etc.

But, perhaps surprisingly, I think the most immediate and least hypothetical threat to modern society may be the rise of Islam. This religion not only has a growing base of adherents, it imposes itself on all aspects of people’s lives, and its scripture demands both complete adherence and urges punishment for apostasy. Thus, it has built in ‘anti-virus’ protection, as a computer scientist friend of mine put it.

As a result, Islam may not easily evolve over the centuries like the older and now more comfortable religions such as Christianity or Judaism, where most adherents don’t take their scriptures literally, and instead pick and choose what they like so they can use their religion as a crutch when needed.

Needless to say, all the three religions are based on similar false myths, but to the extent that they don’t interfere with day to day life in a secular society that can be largely (but not always) innocuous. Unless we can figure out a way to de-fang Islam, encouraging secular muslims who identify as muslims but at heart are non-believers, like so many Christians and Jews, and who can coexist with other secular ‘people of faith’, as well as atheists, I think Islam has a reasonable chance of destabilizing modern civilization in this century.

Lawrence has a point about “defanging” Islam, and it’s the subject of a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now. It was a good book, but at the time I remarked that it was impossible to implement her recommendations since many Muslims won’t voluntarily be defanged. I just hope Krauss watches his back, as Hirsi Ali has bodyguards 24/7. and you know what happened to Salman Rushdie.

*It looks as if Andrew Sullivan has made his latest weekly Dish post, “Will the two cults finally fall?“, free, as I no longer subscribe but can see it. The two cults he’s referring to are that of the far Right and far Left—namely, Trumpism and wokeness.

There are two complementary cults in America today, it seems to me: the cult of Trump and the cult of Woke.

They exist alongside but also currently control the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. And they have a sick, mutually perpetuating and advantageous relationship. By “cult”, I mean a collective embrace of a compelling figure or dogma, the worship and protection of which dominates everything else. (I presaged this almost a decade ago now: “America’s New Religions.”)

That our politics will not recover until these two cults are unraveled is in some ways the core conviction of The Weekly Dish. And the good news, I think, is that it’s finally happening. Cult leaders, however charismatic, are usually sociopaths when they aren’t simply sexual abusers, and so cults tend to implode when the leader’s flaws emerge beyond any denial. Fixed dogmas can also collapse when the lies required to sustain them simply become too absurd, too huge to believe, when the avatars of the system are exposed as frauds and liars. And to my eyes, the emperors’ clothes on both sides are now unmistakably falling.

Why the Trump cult is ending:

Out. Of. His. Mind. The reporter who has followed Trump most closely, Maggie Haberman, tells us that around 70 percent of the president’s mental bandwidth is now occupied by his various cockamamie — and grotesquely kitsch — construction projects around DC. If the Democrats were not completely useless, this presidency would be over.

And who in the world takes anything Trump says seriously anymore? Every definitive statement is abandoned in days, if not hours. No deal is ever finished. Major gambits, like the tariff wars, collapse under the weight of incompetence. The sheer fecklessness of the Iran War has undermined deterrence everywhere. China has eaten Trump’s lunch on trade. The IRGC treats him as a mere noise machine. Pretty soon, a supermajority of Americans will be there too.

And by November, if the cult is emphatically rejected at the pols, the Trump era could be done.

But he doesn’t tell us why the woke cult is ending; in fact, Sully says it’s going strong:

The cult of woke is far less easily defenestrated because it’s not just one unhinged man. It is an elaborate, networked edifice of lies and power grabs, with deep tribal appeals to the worst of human nature, sustained by an elite overwhelmed with self-regard and incapable of self-reform.

Some argue that wokeness is over, and they talk about vibes and shifts. But they never point to actual legislative or institutional change — because no such change is happening. Women still have dicks, America is still a “white supremacy,” all gays are queers, all cops are suspect, borders are racist, and oppression is omnipresent. These lies are still held as sacred truths by every major institution in America.

And with the case of Jason Arday, we have the apotheosis of this moral and intellectual rot.

. . . I’ve spent the last decade tilting against [these cults] — and it has seemed pointless half the time, as the Trump faction has doubled down on its hero at the expense of our Constitution, and the woke have kidnapped the culture at the expense of our liberalism. But lies always fail in the end. And in the quiet these days, you can hear them dying. Our task now is to ensure that whatever follows both of these noxious, illiberal cults is something rooted in empirical truth, everyday English, and constructive solutions to our common problems.

His confidence (“know hope,” he says unconvincingly) is that wokeness is build on lies and lies always fail.  Well, it may take a while. . .

*The NYT has a lovely article on salticids (jumping spiders), with lots of movies and photos that I can’t reproduce, nor can you see the videos in the archived article (here).

Jumping spiders — a common variety of spider that lives on every continent except Antarctica and includes at least 6,000 species — have become social media’s tiniest and unlikeliest animal celebrities. Their popularity as pets has been fueled by their appeal on social media, where they appear in close up shots, perched on a human’s manicured fingernail, staring intently with eight penetrating, beady black eyes.

These arachnid social media stars have cute names like Bambi, Ivy, Juniper, Pumpkin and Flower. They do adorable things: tilting their heads to one side quizzically, curling up in their little web hammocks, waving their front legs above their heads as if hailing a taxi, crawling around miniature bakeries and supermarkets and watching mini toy TV sets while munching on live worms.

Their fans call them spooders, spoods and web puppies.

Some of these spider fanatics were once frightened of the animals they now lovingly live with. “I was terrified of them,” said Olivia Ontkean, 34, a dance teacher in Portland, Ore., who became “fully addicted” to spiders after conquering her phobia.

She now has close to 250 adult spiders in her home, and countless baby spiders, which she sells through her business, Dances With Spoods. Another spider convert, Joleen Hernandez, 39, a stay-at-home mother of five in Oakley, Calif., said social media changed her perception of spiders as scary and gross, and inspired her to get her own jumping spiders.

“My friends and family thought I was crazy,” she said. Common responses were “why” and “ew,” she added.

Spiders, long maligned as creepy or terrifying, have undergone a remarkable reputational makeover. It’s partly because, their fans say, they’re just such good content.

In an era when so much social media content is repetitive, trend-driven or sponsored by brands, the spooder-boomlet delivers a jolt of something different: a tiny fuzzy friend crawling across glittery gemstone nails, a spider no bigger than a coffee bean doing “uppies” (raising its front arms like a toddler asking to be picked up), then leaping onto a person’s hand.

. . .Spider aficionados say jumping spiders are the perfect arachnid ambassador: They’re small, curious and observant, and can often adapt to being handled by humans.

“People are really just discovering how clever and charming these animals are,” said Nathan Morehouse, an ecologist and associate professor at the University of Cincinnati, who studies jumping spiders. “If you as a person are interacting with them as a pet, you quickly begin to realize they’re paying attention to you very closely.”

I’d love to have one of these, but they don’t live all that long and I wouldn’t want to get attached to something that dies too soon. I’ve put a video of a pet salticid below, but if you’re considering getting one, also watch this video of the pros and cons of having a salticid.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s the same old-same old for Hili’s and Andrzej’s lunch:

Andrzej: Are we repeating yesterday’s lunch today?
HilI: This is beginning to look like an epidemic of plagiarism.

In Polish:

Ja: Robimy dziś powtórkę wczorajszego obiadu?
Hili: To zakrawa na plagę plagiatów.

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

From Divy:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Things With Faces: not a cow!

From Masih; they’re coming for women’s legs in Iran. “And put your headscarf on, too.”

A woman waiting at bus stop in northern Iran. Her crime? Wearing shorts.
A hijabi woman attacks her. Police arrive and force her to put on pants in the street.

They cannot keep the hijab on Iranian women’s heads. Now they’re coming for their legs pic.twitter.com/wwabOzc9Fh

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 9, 2026

From Luana. I’ll highlight the Atlantic review later today, along with other reviews.

The Atlantic reads Jason Arday’s memoir, and finds his life story was even more inspirational than we thought

He was beaten so badly as a teen he became an epileptic. When the boys who did this were caught, he magnanimously told the judge he didn’t want them to go to prison.… pic.twitter.com/RsJaVd7AOz

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 6, 2026

The Number Ten Cat gets petted:

Everything is right in the world when you’re stroking a cat https://t.co/3LAS7xSA10

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

From Malcolm, a lovely fountain (the sphere has to be pretty spherical, though):

A kugel fountain is a water feature or sculpture where a sphere sits in a fitted hollow in a pedestal, and is supported by aquaplaning on a thin film of water. pic.twitter.com/miZxHGxzqa

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 1, 2026

One from my feed, and this is new to me:

This is fore-edge painting: a scene hidden in a book's gilded edge, invisible until you fan the pages just right. Here it meets Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

— Digital Brain (@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social) 2026-08-09T13:41:50.000Z

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was 12 years old. https://t.co/u8lDDHYHtH

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 10, 2026

And two from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb. First, one skunk chasing another:

More from my trail camera 🤣🦨🦊 youtube.com/shorts/mtvJh…

— Wildmaven (@wildmaven.bsky.social) 2026-08-08T23:52:39.011Z

Of this Doktor Cobb says, “Look at that snoot!”

Snack time with Tilli the aardvark! 💖📹: Animal care staff Alex

— Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@ptdefiancezoo.bsky.social) 2026-08-08T00:47:37.144Z

Welcome to Sunday, August 9, 2026, the Sabbath for goyische cats, and National Spirit of ’45 Day, meaning this:

National Spirit of ’45 Day honors the can-do attitude of an entire generation affected by the trials and hardships of World War II. Observed every year on second Sunday in August, communities around the country hold events and memorials. Each one honors those who have inspired us, sacrificed, and preserved our nation for future generations.

The image is best expressed in this poster, “We Can Do It!“, by J. Howard Miller, and although the poster is famous now, it wasn’t seen much during the war. (It is meant to show that women stepped into “men’s jobs” when the men went off to war.) As Wikipedia says, this image is “often mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter“, which is a different depiction of a female war production worker.” See the “Rosie” link for the real images.

It’s also Book Lovers Day, International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, Melon Day, National Polka Day, and National Rice Pudding Day (this pudding, along with sticky toffee pudding, are the world’s two best species in the pudding genus).

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

Da Nooz:

*The U.S. has stopped attacking Iran, but Iran is reported to have attacked a U.A.E. ship in the Strait of Hormuz just yesterday.

The United Arab Emirates said a ship affiliated with its national oil company came under an Iranian missile attack early Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz, further muddying the outlook for a deal to open the strategic waterway.

The U.A.E. blamed the attack on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary group tasked with protecting the regime and maintaining Tehran’s grip on the strait.

*The NYT reports that Iranians protestors are devastated because they believed Trump’s promise that their oppressive theocratic government would be toppled.  (article archived here). But Trump himself didn’t even believe what he promised:

In the weeks leading up to the U.S. war with Iran, President Trump cheered on the Iranian protesters rising up against their government, telling them that they should “save the names of the killers and abusers” and that he would come to their aid.

“HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” he promised.

But more than five months into the conflict, liberating the Iranian people has been one of the war’s most glaring unfulfilled objectives.

Iran has executed at least 26 people in connection with the January protests since Mr. Trump made his promise, with many more protesters potentially at risk, according to Amnesty International. U.S. officials believe Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is even more interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon than his father, who was killed in an airstrike on the opening day of the war.

And as Iranians remain locked in crisis, Mr. Trump is looking for a way out. Negotiators are working on a deal to restart shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut down, as Mr. Trump tries to extricate the United States from a conflict that has lasted far longer, and proved far more costly, than he anticipated.

In an interview this summer, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he never really believed that the uprising he encouraged would happen anyway because Iranian security forces would crush the demonstrators.

“I never thought, unless they could be completely armed, I never thought they’d have that kind of uprising, because these people are violent,” Mr. Trump told the conservative podcaster Hugh Hewitt.

But for Iranians who listened to Mr. Trump’s early promises, the sense of betrayal is real.

“I genuinely thought that help was on the way, but I was so wrong,” said Vahid, a 35-year-old from Tehran who works at a start-up company, echoing a sentiment expressed by numerous Iranians in interviews with The New York Times. All spoke on the condition that The Times identify them only by their first names, out of fear of reprisals from their government.

. . . The White House declined to answer questions about Mr. Trump’s promise to help liberate the Iranian people. Instead, officials cited Mr. Trump’s goal — which, as yet, is unmet — of ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon, saying that objective would benefit the Iranian people as well.

Maybe a marginal benefit, but not nearly as much as helping with an uprising (remember yesterday I reported that a Kurdish rebellion was in the offing but was canceled after Fox News reported on it prematurely.  It’s sad that America doesn’t care much about ending a dictatorship once we’re in a war with it, and of course we can’t start wars solely to end dictatorships (that’s not why this one was started). But once we’re at war with a dictatorship whose people fervently wish for its end, yes, we should try to end it.

*Fabulist Jason Arday’s new book, Great and Unfortunate Things, is scheduled to come out this week (August 11), and it puts the publisher, Simon & Schuster, in a difficult position. The book likely depicts many things that aren’t true, but it may sell like hotcakes to those who want to see what Arday says about his life. As the Guardian reports, the book hasn’t been withdrawn:

Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism and embellishment, claimed he was paid “1.4 million” for his forthcoming memoir detailing his extraordinary backstory.

Arday was dogged by a growing series of questions over his academic work and credentials before he resigned on Wednesday night, saying the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love”.

His resignation came after Cambridge announced it would launch an investigation following “new information” about his qualifications and career.

Despite allegations against Arday, Simon & Schuster said earlier this week it was planning to go ahead with the publication of his memoir on 11 August in the US and 27 August in the UK. Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication of Great and Unfortunate Things by Jason Arday as planned”.

In a previous interview with the Guardian, Arday said Simon & Schuster had offered 1.4m for the book in a “pre-empt”, a type of deal in which a publisher is so keen on a book they put in a high offer to take it off the table before it can go to auction. Arday did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars. Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum.

One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable. They said a book such as Arday’s would normally be expected to sell about 5,000 copies, so with £2 of royalty per copy, that equates to an advance of £10,000, not 1.4 million dollars or pounds.

The Washington Free Beacon lists some edits the publisher made to defuse the storm they thought would come (and it did):

The wider public would not learn of the accusations against Arday, including those of pervasive plagiarism, until last month. But Simon & Schuster had been making telltale edits to his book since January.

The Free Beacon examined two pre-publication proofs of the book: a U.S. version dated Jan. 6, and the U.K. final edition, dated June 18. Comparing the two iterations reveals that Simon & Schuster made a series of changes, including altering verbatim quotes, that appear to have been an effort to protect his reputation—which is all the more valuable now that he stands accused of sweeping embellishments, dishonesty, and even academic fraud. One edit effectively acknowledges the possibility that he could lose his professorship.

The book, Great and Unfortunate Things, chronicles how, against all odds, a severely autistic, working-class British lad who didn’t learn to read until he was 18 earned a Ph.D. and reached the pinnacle of academia. The memoir was meant to be a literary victory lap after Arday, 41, in 2023 became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s 800-year history.

Perhaps most notably, the book was edited to allow for the possibility that Arday would not be a “professor” indefinitely. In the earlier edition, he recalls marveling upon receiving his assistant professorship at Durham University in 2021: “I’m a professor. Whatever happens, that’s the salutation that I will carry with me for the rest of my days. That’s mad.” The later edition adds the word “professional” as a qualifier, saying he would carry the title “for the rest of my professional days.”

. . . Simon & Schuster’s edits also make it harder, perhaps deliberately, to corroborate or disprove Arday’s stories. The names of two publicists involved in his charitable efforts—and the names of certain professors and a disability officer—were replaced by pseudonyms, or the names were removed entirely.

The original:

What will be published:

It’s clear that Simon & Schuster knew that Arday had a problematic past and exaggerated his accomplishments. The Free Beacon ends this way:

Following the memoir’s mawkish conclusion, in which Arday gives advice to marginalized populations, the early edition tacks on a bio that touts Arday’s superlative academic bona fides. In its place, the updated draft simply includes a playlist of the pop songs he has sprinkled throughout the text as emotional anchor points.

. . . and a bit from theTimes of London article (archived link). yet another couple of speed bumps on his life’s road claimed by Arday:

Professor Jason Arday claimed in a book proposal for his memoir to have had testicular cancer and locked-in syndrome and to have almost died in a car accident when he was a teenager.

In the document pitching his autobiography, obtained by The Times, the Cambridge academic said he had been left in a coma by a car accident as a teenager.

According to his account, doctors at his bedside recommended that he be taken off life support “as an act of mercy”, but he was spared after his mother insisted that he was “going to do something with his life”.

Arday was able to report the episode because, he said, he had had locked-in syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which a person is physically paralysed but conscious.

The episode was omitted from the final version of his book, which will be released next week. The 45-page proposal has raised more questions about Arday’s life and professional achievements after he was accused of plagiarising his PhD thesis and exaggerating his athletic and fundraising feats.

I haven’t seen any real evidence for any of Arday’s medical claims—nor for his claims of late speaking (age 11) and late-developing literacy (age 18). It’s hard for me to believe that Simon and Schuster will still publish this book IF they suspected that his stories were made up. Did they omit these fables, or did Arday? We don’t know. But it’s clear the book is coming out: it’s still listed on Amazon (see screenshot below):

*Another from the NYT, reporting that although war has considerably diminished (“decimated,” as the MSM says incorrectly) Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it still has enough uranium to quickly produce as many as ten nuclear bombs (article archived here).

Chief among President Trump’s reasons for launching the war in Iran was preventing it from building a nuclear weapon. More than five months in, officials and experts say,the conflict may have slowed Iran’s nuclear program but not stopped it.

Because Iran has barred U.N. inspections of its most sensitive nuclear sites — a key part of any eventual peace deal — the precise fate of its highly enriched nuclear fuel is unknown. And despite strikes on three key nuclear sites in 2025 and 2026, Tehran appears to have retained a stockpile of enough near weapons-grade fuel to quickly develop as many as 10 nuclear bombs, according to U.N. inspectors.

. . .So far, the war has shown that Mr. Trump’s “‘maximum pressure’ policies and military misadventures did not, and cannot, destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity,” Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, wrote in a recent analysis.

“The capability is largely still there,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, author of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Iran Nuclear Monitor.

. . .James Acton, a physicist and Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said enough of Iran’s nuclear program still exists that, if left alone, “I would imagine they could produce a bomb in less than a year at this point, possibly substantially less than year.”

Ms. Geranmayeh stopped short of putting a timeline on Iran’s ability to rebuild. Still, “without monitoring, Iran could rapidly enrich its existing uranium stockpile to weapons-grade,” she wrote in her most recent analysis.

Iran will do anything, including lying about its actions and intentions, to keep its nuclear program going, for one of the regime’s big aims is to have a bomb they can use on Israel, or as a deterrent against being attacked. Even if they agree to something with Trump, he won’t be President forever, and if there are to be inspections, they should be done without warning, be thorough, and last forever. That’s a big ask.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are in the dumps:

Hili: Life used to be better.
Andrzej: Yes, but we didn’t know it then.

In Polish:

Hili: Życie było kiedyś lepsze.
Ja: Tak, ale wtedy o tym nie wiedzieliśmy.

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

An image sent in by Jay Tanzman, showing “An anxious food truck.” It was taken in Saarbrücken, Germany:

From TherionArms:

From Dad Jokes:

From Masih. Apparently the Iranian man depicted below had a heart attack before he was going to be hanged, and they revived him just to hang him again. Masih has trouble getting through this without breaking up.

This video is only one minute. Alireza is dancing. Before they could hang him, his heart stopped, so he survived but now the Islamic Republic wants to hang him.😔

Please write to leaders and influential people to pick up their phone, call Iran or post publicly, demand they stop. pic.twitter.com/tfhmBU4eaV

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 8, 2026

From Luana. I will read this Atlantic article, but I’m not going to read Arday’s memoir. Look at what’s in it (read the whole tweet):

The Atlantic reads Jason Arday’s memoir, and finds his life story was even more inspirational than we thought

He was beaten so badly as a teen he became an epileptic. When the boys who did this were caught, he magnanimously told the judge he didn’t want them to go to prison.… pic.twitter.com/RsJaVd7AOz

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 6, 2026

From the Number Ten Cat, who posted this yesterday on International Cat Day:

Today is #InternationalCatDay – expect all cats to strut around as if we own the place, the same as every other day. pic.twitter.com/zBC57CdSwi

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 8, 2026

From Malcolm. The English translation is, “A so-called Rehcatz,” with “Rehkatz” meaning “fawn” in German.

Ein sogenanntes Rehcatz
🥰 pic.twitter.com/axzvH2uCYq

— Frqnk (@FrqnkSt) August 3, 2026

One from my feed—a lovely reunion:

Ein nur wenige Tage altes Lämmchen war verloren gegangen. Schaut nur wie glücklich beide sind, die Mutter und das Lamm, als sie wieder zusammen waren. pic.twitter.com/FhULz99LCi

— Lexa _ Reloaded (@webaxvita) August 7, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was eight years old. https://t.co/6E1ipT9ZDy

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 9, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. His comment on this first one? “They ate the owner.”

The Tacoma Police Department estimates over 30 cats were free-roaming on board a deserted watercraft Thursday – with no sign of the owner.

— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee.com) 2026-08-08T01:50:10Z

I’m not sure what this one means, but it would be peachy to come back as a duck:

— beetle moses (@beetlemoses.bsky.social) 2026-07-29T15:28:10.067Z