Welcome to Sunday, September 13, 2026; it’s the last day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which ends at sunset.

It’s also National Peanut Day, celebrating a legume best eaten in two forms: peanut butter and as boiled green peanuts. It’s nearly impossible to get the latter anywhere besides roadside stands in the South, but if you see a sign like the one below, stop immediately and buy some. They taste nothing like regular peanuts, but are terrific. This was taken (and peanuts consumed) on a seminar trip I gave in early 2013. That was the trip when I had to have a bodyguard (packing heat) when I lectured on evolution at the Augusta Public Library. Sure enough, two people (unarmed) charged the stage. I was talking only about evolution!

It’s also Bald Is Beautiful Day, International Chocolate Day, National Cachaça Day, celebrating Brazil’s iconic drink, Snack a Pickle Day (half sours for me) and Fortune Cookie Day.

Here’s a pastrami sandwich from the famous and overtouristed Katz’s Deli in NYC. It’s expensive and crowded, but their pastrami is excellent, and you get plenty of pickles. (Katz’s is of course the site of the famous “fake orgasm” scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally”. The woman who says to the waiter afterwards, “I’ll have what she’s having,” is Estelle Reiner, the mother of director Rob Reiner.

Notice the half sours dominating the pickles, as well as the Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray (celery-flavored soda), the must-have accompaniment to corned beef or pastrami.

If you haven’t read my essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Jason Arday and the corruption of science”, it’s no longer paywalled and you can read it on the Chronicle’s Substack here for free.

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

Da Nooz:

*Houthi terrorists, backed by Iran, seized an island in the southern narrows of the Red Sea, further cutting off movement of oil-carrying ships from the Middle East (article archived here).

The Iranian-backed Houthi militia seized an island in a choke point of the Red Sea after days of fierce fighting, two Yemeni government officials said Friday, giving Iran and its allies sway over the two main routes for shipping oil out of the Middle East.

The capture of Perim Island came as Saudi Arabia announced that it had shut down a critical oil pipeline, a day after Houthi forces swept into the strategic port city of Mokha in Yemen. Both were major setbacks for the Saudi kingdom, which exports most of its oil through the Red Sea. The kingdom’s foreign ministry said the pipeline was hit on Thursday by drones launched from Iraq.

Perim Island sits in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow pathway at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Its seizure adds a new dimension in the war between the United States and Iran. The Islamic republic has already largely cut off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and leveraged that influence to demand concessions from Washington.

Now, the Houthi militia, Iran’s ally, has a foothold at a bottleneck in the Red Sea and could further disrupt shipping there.

The island’s capture came after intense ground battles in Yemen as the Houthis have staged a lightning advance against forces allied with the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has faced frequent Houthi attacks on its tankers and energy facilities, even as its leaders have tried to avoid a direct war with the group, analysts say.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia spoke to President Trump about the escalation in Yemen in calls this week, and urged the United States to take military action against the Houthis, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations. Mr. Trump told him he was not willing to do so, the officials said.

We don’t have the wherewithal to intitiate yet another war, but it would be nice if some of the allies helped, for, after all, they have to move their goods through the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

Here from Wikipedia is a map showing Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, next to Cheikh Saïd peninsula of Yemen, with Djibouti and Eritrea to the west across the strait. A zoomed-out map is inset at the lower right. The distance from the island to Yemen is about 2-3 km, while that to the coast of Eritrea or Djibouti is about 26-30 km.  Not much space.

*According to the Guardian, this takeover is concurrent with about 50,000 Yemeni civilians fleeing before the advancing Houthi.

Nearly 50,000 people have fled a sudden advance by Houthi forces in western Yemen, with entire villages emptied and families trapped near frontline fighting with depleting food supplies, according to aid workers.

Civilians in the Middle East’s poorest country have found themselves victims of a global struggle for control over one of the most important shipping routes in the world, which threatens to turn Yemen’s on-off conflict into a forever war.

In a lightning advance this week, the Iran-backed Houthi militants have seized a string of towns along the Red Sea coast from forces aligned with the US- and Saudi-backed Yemeni government. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. Many fear a return to the full-scale civil war that killed 150,000 and brought many others to the brink of famine.

The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday that 46,000 people had been displaced across the governates of Taiz and Hodeidah, where steep verdant mountain ridges give way to arid coastal plains. For many families, this was their second or even third time they had been forced out of their homes.

A significant number of people were observed to be leaving the city with their belongings. Fighting has cut key roads, while phone lines are down in some areas. “The scale of displacement is increasing rapidly,” said Joe Lowry, IOM’s Middle East and north Africa spokesperson in Cairo.

. . .By taking control of key areas this week, including islands off the coast, the anti-west Houthis hope to gain a direct presence near the Bab al-Mandab strait, a 20-mile stretch of water and vital trade and energy route that connects Asia with Europe. ​

The strait’s name is roughly translated as “the gate of tears” or “the gate of grief”, and its strong currents and winds made the passage between the Arabian peninsula and Africa’s east coast hazardous for centuries. Modern-day cargo ships have no physical issue passing through.

​But if ​the Houthis were to close the natural chokepoint, the impact on the global economy could be disastrous. Ships would have to reroute around the southern tip of Africa, adding thousands of extra nautical miles. The fighting has already contributed to the price of oil rising above $100 a barrel after weeks when it was trading closer to $80.

More bad news, but we can’t let terrorists control the flow of shipping in the Middle East.

*The WSJ reports that Chinese support for Iran in its war with the U.S. and Israel has extended to the Chinese supplying Iran with high-resolution satellite images of a U.S. base in Jordan that Iran attacked several times with ballistic missiles.

Before Iran carried out its attack that killed three U.S. troops in July, Tehran acquired high-resolution satellite images of the base in Jordan from Chinese entities, according to U.S. officials familiar with details of the incident.

It is the clearest evidence so far that Chinese support for Iran during the war has had lethal consequences for U.S. forces, according to the officials, who say the U.S. has connected the imagery to the attack.

The U.S. officials declined to identify the Chinese entities that supplied the imagery to Iran and didn’t allege direct involvement by Beijing. Tehran procured the images both before and after the attack.

But the finding could deepen U.S.-China tensions ahead of the planned summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sept. 24, after months of frustration with Beijing’s rejection of U.S. warnings about Chinese companies providing imagery to Iran.

Senior U.S. officials raised the imagery linked to the July 17 attack with their Chinese counterparts, who pushed back and demanded proof, the U.S. officials said. China has repeatedly dismissed Washington’s concerns, refusing to acknowledge that any Chinese companies are engaged in such activity, the officials said.

The strikes on the base came after senior Trump officials spent months warning their Chinese counterparts that Chinese companies were providing satellite imagery Iran could use to target U.S. personnel and assets in the region, officials say. The Trump administration sanctioned several Chinese companies in May, saying that supplying satellite imagery to Iran “threatens American and partner personnel.”

Within three days of the July attack, Iran released high-resolution images showing damage to three separate areas of the base. Publicly available lower-resolution satellite imagery analyzed by The Wall Street Journal showed damage to more than 20 structures across the three areas of the base.

Here are the images, with translation from the Farsi below:

New images of Iran’s damages to #America‘s assets in the region

تصاویر جدید از خسارات ایران به دارایی‌های #آمریکا در منطقه pic.twitter.com/Z8FmluCT2j

— کامران شیرازی (@kamranshirazii) July 20, 2026

Well if this doesn’t involve the government of China, I’d be very surprised.  Do NGOs in China have spy satellites, and sold the photos to the Iranians? Even if they did they’d need permission of the Chinese government.

*Douglas Murray, now a correspondent for the Free Press, analyzes the victory of the “far right” Alternative for Germany (“AfD”) party in one small state. His article is called “Who’s afraid of the ‘far right?“, with the subtitle, “German leaders enabled the rise of a populist party through their failures. Now those leaders cling to power by branding their challengers as extreme.”  As I suspected, the MSM has played down the role of immigration in Europe’s move to the right.

For people concerned with the future of Europe, the AfD is a vital as well as a special case. As such, it requires special attention. Unfortunately, most of the people writing about the party from outside Germany are intent on performing this feat of political analysis with all the care of a brain surgeon attempting to operate while wearing boxing gloves.

To start with, it is not the case that the AfD is a far-right party. Which is not to say that it does not have people within it who could be described as far right, or that it could not become such a party in the future.

There is a simple explanation for why the AfD has risen to become the leading opposition party in Germany: mass immigration, legal and illegal. But it took years for that issue to dominate. When the AfD was founded in 2013, it was mainly focused on addressing the fallout from the Eurozone crisis. The new party rejected the European Union’s extraordinarily optimistic belief that a single European currency could combine Greek balance sheets with German bookkeeping.

But in 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the gates of Europe and Germany to anyone from North Africa or the Middle East who wanted to walk in and call it home, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war. Normal border protocols were abandoned. More than a million migrants arrived in a matter of months. Germany, and in particular its welfare state, was overwhelmed by the surge and attempted, too late, to stem it. The vast majority of the arrivals from those years remain a net drain on the German state. In addition to this economic reality, a small but significant number of arrivals have brought extremism, terrorism, and petty as well as large-scale criminality. It might also be noted that the movement has brought a mass importation of antisemitism into a country that did not exactly need a boost in this area.

Given the extraordinary consensus that existed over the past decade among the mainstream parties of the right, center, and left, it was inevitable that some political movement would arise in Germany to point out and oppose the folly of Merkel’s policy. The AfD was well-placed to do so, and, in time, the economists who had dominated the party in its early years were replaced by people who believed that immigration was the number one challenge facing Germany.

Their success in the years since 2015 has been remarkable

. . .But in 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the gates of Europe and Germany to anyone from North Africa or the Middle East who wanted to walk in and call it home, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war. Normal border protocols were abandoned. More than a million migrants arrived in a matter of months. Germany, and in particular its welfare state, was overwhelmed by the surge and attempted, too late, to stem it. The vast majority of the arrivals from those years remain a net drain on the German state. In addition to this economic reality, a small but significant number of arrivals have brought extremism, terrorism, and petty as well as large-scale criminality. It might also be noted that the movement has brought a mass importation of antisemitism into a country that did not exactly need a boost in this area.

Given the extraordinary consensus that existed over the past decade among the mainstream parties of the right, center, and left, it was inevitable that some political movement would arise in Germany to point out and oppose the folly of Merkel’s policy. The AfD was well-placed to do so, and, in time, the economists who had dominated the party in its early years were replaced by people who believed that immigration was the number one challenge facing Germany.

Their success in the years since 2015 has been remarkable.

. . . It is for these reasons, among others, that the foreign coverage of Germany’s political shifts is so unsatisfactory. In the aftermath of this weekend’s election, the easiest thing in the world is to say—as almost every headline writer has—that “the far-right AfD” won the regional election. The fact that these same publications, from the BBC to The New York Times, rarely, if ever, use the same scary monikers to describe far-left parties gaining support across the continent is a matter for another day. But the hope appears to be that the public will be sufficiently uninterested in the details and that the prospect of the Nazis returning will be enough to spook readers into reflexive opposition.

. . . If all opposition to the migration crisis can be said to be the work of German neo-Nazis, then Europe is lost. Because no party of opposition will be untainted. If Germany can be saved, then Europe can be saved. But in order for that to happen, people—including the international press—need to listen to what is actually happening in Germany, take notice, and recognize the situation as it is, not the strange Nazi-haunted fever dream that they curiously seem to wish it to be.

The problem of course is that the Western MSM, at least of the liberal stripe, is afraid of saying the I-word, much less recognizing the effect on people of mass immigration, often of people who simply don’t integrate into European society. Ergo the movement of nearly every country in Europe to the right.  If people don’t wake up and at least recognize the problems, including the drain on local economies and the erosion of Western institutions and values, Europe as we know it will be gone when the next generation of children grows up.

*When I was a kid, I was allowed to walk to and from elementary school starting when I was about 9 years old, and that was a longish walk along major roads. I was also allowed, when I got home, to get on my bike and go visit friends. Those days are gone: such unsupervised activity by children is regarding as endangering them, even though the rate of such endangerment has dropped as the rules get toughter. In early June a mother in Williamsburg, Virginia let her five-year-old walk alone a half mile to a pond in their gated and security-patrolled community in Virginia; his goal was to collect goose feathers. She was summarily arrested, charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor (!), and given a six-month suspended jail sentence. This is the subject of a WaPo op-ed called, “A 5-year-old’s nighborhood walk shouldn’t be a crime” (article archived here).

While everyone wants kids to grow up healthy and happy, people have different ideas about how to achieve that. Until the past generation or so, a sunny upbringing usually included a fair amount of free, unsupervised time. One book I cherish from 1981, “Your Six-Year-Old: Loving and Defiant,” provides a checklist of the things a neurotypical child was expected to be able to do upon entering first grade. “Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly?” and “Can he tell left hand from right?” Perhaps the most salient query: “Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?”

Compare that with a survey released this year by the Institute for Family Studies, which asked nearly 24,000 parents at what age they’d let their kids do things on their own. Eleven percent of 14-year-olds aren’t able to leave the house unsupervised. Fifty-five percent can’t go beyond their block. In other words, today’s high school freshmen have a fraction of the freedom that used to be given to first-graders. It’s little wonder they’re so anxious.

This new, limited idea of what kids are capable of explains why a 5-year-old walking around his neighborhood at lunchtime can look like a baby crawling along I-95 at midnight. Thanks to Karyann’s transgression — trusting her son — she was placed on Virginia’s child abuse and neglect registry for seven years. In court, she was found guilty of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” — a Class 1 misdemeanor — and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.

. . . over the years, parents started to contact me when they got penalized for giving their kids the same freedom they’d grown up with. That included Brittany Patterson of Fannin County, Georgia, who was arrested when her son, 10, walked to town without telling her. Mallerie Shirley received similar treatment when she was investigated after her son, 6, rode his scooter unsupervised in Atlanta. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were likewise investigated for letting their kids, 6 and 10, walk home from a park in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Those stories and others have thankfully given the public pause. They’ve helped move 13 states to pass “reasonable childhood independence” laws, which clarify that “neglect” happens only when kids are put in serious, obvious danger, not any time their parents take their eyes off them. Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) and Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Virginia) are seeking to enshrine that protection nationwide with their Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act.

When Karyann let her son collect feathers, she wasn’t ignoring danger. She was ignoring cultural norms that are keeping kids indoors, and parents in fear. For the sake of our families and our collective mental health: Let kids roam.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron isn’t going on the beat:

Hili: You were supposed to go on your rounds.
Szaron: I changed my mind, I’ll sit here with you for a while.

In Polish:

Hili: Miałeś iść na obchód.
Szaron: Rozmyśliłem się, posiedzą sobie tutaj razem z tobą.

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

From Merilee:

From Wholesome Memes:

And Bat sent this amazing image from the International Space Station showing the 9/11 attacks on New York City; it appeared on Space.com. 

A quote:

Frank Culbertson had a birds-eye view of one of the most memorable and tragic events in American history.

The NASA astronaut was the only American off of Earth on Sept. 11, 2001. He was circling the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when terrorists flew commercial jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,700 people.

The ISS passed over New York shortly after the attacks took place, so Culbertson saw the devastation from an eerie remove. He shared his thoughts with Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in real time, chronicling the tragedy like no one else could.

“We could see New York City and the smoke from the fires,” Culbertson said. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there and everywhere else here — I’m looking up and down the East Coast to see if I can see anything else — and to the people in Washington.”

There’s more information at the site.

From Masih, who’s rightly pleased at the progress she’s inspired.

Translation from the Farsi:

There’s no greater pleasure than seeing your efforts bear fruit—watch closely, brave woman: you were alone and singular here, but now women like you have multiplied, because courage is contagious! From 2014 until today, I was cursed at and attacked for launching campaigns against compulsory veiling and calling on women to send videos of themselves unveiled. Thousands of women in Iran were attacked for removing their veils and engaging in civil disobedience. We faced mass assaults from all sides for “White Wednesdays,” for “Our Camera Is Our Weapon”—assaults from those who were the minority! They arrested us, beat us, threw us in prison, threatened us, sent assassins abroad to murder us, and said this resistance was pointless. But today, every woman who walks unveiled in the streets is a continuation of that same disobedience. This isn’t just about removing a piece of fabric; it’s about reclaiming control over a woman’s body, life, and dignity, and tearing down the wall of fear. Compulsory veiling may still be law on paper, but in the streets of Iran, women have been issuing its death sentence for years. We are the echo of each other’s voices, and we persist until the day of liberation. These videos are from the #دوربین_ما_اسلحه_ما  [“our camera is our weapon”] campaign and are being reposted to humiliate the zealots who these days are rampant on Twitter and Instagram, railing against women’s free dress in Iran’s streets—so they can understand the rugged, winding path Iranian women have traveled, and that we never give an inch!

هیچ لذتی بالاتر از نتیجه دادن تلاشهایت نیست، خوب تماشا کن زن شجاع، اینجا یکه و تنها بودی ولی حالا زنانی مثل تو تکثیر شدند، چون شجاعت مسریه!

از سال ۲۰۱۴ تا امروز، من به خاطر راه اندازی کمپین‌های ضد حجاب اجباری و دعوت از زنان برای ارسال ویدیوهای بی‌حجاب فحش خوردم و‌مورد حمله… pic.twitter.com/6T0GgLwkN6

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 12, 2026

From Luana; two tweets showing double-takes of people who learn that the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case was black (and male):

🚨 Stunning revelation: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin says the lone holdout who blocked an 11-1 insanity acquittal was the jury’s only Black member. The other 11 jurors were white.

Gayle’s reaction is something else! pic.twitter.com/aWEkaSdc7E

— Brandon Tatum (@TheOfficerTatum) September 11, 2026

Here is a stupefied “non-practicing white”. What doest that mean?

Lindsay Clancy fan discovering that the lone juror is black might be the greatest video in history pic.twitter.com/jIAjIvMcU5

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 11, 2026

Larry was left out at first!

Fixed it. pic.twitter.com/qGo6MerFVS

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 9, 2026

From Malcolm; cats doing the crab walk:

pic.twitter.com/cGlreYGIAB

— cute cat 😺 (@CartoonCraze37) September 9, 2026

Two from my feed. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS EAGLE!

👀 WOW… This Is A Female, Full Grown Harpy Eagle
She Is Beautiful❣️🤍 pic.twitter.com/Mf7Yik8HgY

— ✨ Bee ✨ 🐝🌿 (@BeeAwake1) September 11, 2026

An “awwww!” moment:

A mother cat reassuring her kittens that the golden retriever is harmless pic.twitter.com/cFjncgx9KW

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 11, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

A must-watch from Bill Maher. He dismantles the Gaza “genocide” canard in 9 minutes, holding it reponsible for the antisemitism sweeping the West—as well as the erosion through cowardice of the credibility of the Democratic party. https://t.co/W3j5Zc7IvQ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 12, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb in Manchester; a beautiful potter wasp:

Red DevilPotter wasp in Lanzarote Canary Islands 🇮🇨 Canon R5 and Sigma 150mm f2.8 macroSS1/3200 F7.1 ISO3200#macro #wasp # insect # arthropod #entolomology

— @macro_action (@birdzandbees.bsky.social) 2026-09-11T19:15:26.158Z

 

Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 12, 2026 and shabbos for Jewish cats as well as the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with the holiday ending tomorrow at sundown. The shofar, or ram’s horn, is blown at various points during the holiday; here’s an example:

This reminds me of a joke, but since it’s not family-friendly I can’t write it down here.

It’s also German Language Day, National Blackberry Day, National Chocolate Milkshake Day, and World Dolphin Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

There were plenty of memoriams and articles about the 9/11 attacks that occured 25 years ago yesterday.  I will only mention one short piece from the NYT below, as you can find the pieces everywhere, and I have little to add to them. Like nearly all Americans, I watched the attacks on television (turning it o0n after the North tower was hit; we had a b&w television in the lab back then), and saw the South Tower hit live, which made clear it was a terrorist attack. Processing it mentally took days, like the JFK assassination, and I was glad they caught the perpetrators, though I would have liked to see Bin Laden captured alive and tried. The people jumping off the buildings to their deaths, the recordings of phone calls of people about to die, calling their loved ones to say goodbye—all this was ineffably heartbreaking. And because it’s ineffable, I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t been said by others.

*Yesterday’s New York Times morning newsletter discusses the “meaning” of 9/11, as if their lucubrations carried weight, but there is also a section about what remains unresolved about the attack:

What remains unresolved:

The forever war. Al Qaeda, the terrorist group American troops went abroad to fight in the weeks after 9/11, is still a force in Afghanistan. By one estimate, the war on terror cost more than $8 trillion and 900,000 lives. This collection of images from 25 years of conflict is sobering. (The photograph from a 2009 suicide bombing in Kabul, in particular, has stayed with me all this time.)

The site. A quarter-century after the attack, the apartment building designed to replace 5 World Trade Center still hasn’t gone up. Around the corner, the 9/11 Museum is struggling to stay afloat. About one in three Americans was born after Sept. 11; it may have shaped their lives, but their memories are not seared.

The historical significance. At the time, it seemed that something was ending and another thing, maybe worse, was beginning. But was it? Charles Homans argues that life does not divide into neat geopolitical demarcations. Instead, 9/11 “is a middle chapter in the story of American fracture rather than the pyrotechnic beginning.”

For more

*Rather than reiterate the NYT’s extensive memories of 9/11, here’s an oped by a WSJ editor, “September 11 changed the world order. But not for the reason we may think.” (The NYT has an editors’ op-ed that makes the same point.)

When the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground 25 years ago, they triggered a seismic wave that seemed to smash the world order.

It was now “a different world,” President George W. Bush warned Congress. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: “It was before 9/11 and after 9/11.” Vice President Dick Cheney added: “That day changed everything.”

They were right, with a caveat. The attacks were a monumental tragedy. The world order did change. But it was the aftermath—the U.S. response to 9/11, not the terrorism itself—that made the difference.

Sept. 11 marked a shockingly successful attack by a stateless and relatively small group of Islamist militants. The U.S., though, launched a massive military response: a War on Terror. It attacked two countries, one uninvolved with 9/11. The rhetoric was so sweeping, Washington borrowed language from World War II and the Cold War. America was now confronting an Axis of Evil.

Consumed by the War on Terror, the U.S. had less capacity to address other global priorities such as the pivotal rise of China and an increasingly hostile Russia. That inattention to shifting global forces was what really changed the world.

U.S. leaders were “certainly distracted” and “we continually found ourselves sucked back into the morass of our misadventures in the Middle East,” William Burns, who served in several administrations and later became director of the CIA, said in 2019. “Imagine if a bigger part of the time, energy and resources spent on the Global War on Terror had instead been spent on giving form to an affirmative vision for America’s role in Asia.”

“China and Russia have welcomed” the War on Terror, the scholar Robert Kagan wrote in 2008, “because it has distracted the United States’ strategic focus away from them.”

And this is blamed on the U.S. response to 9/11:

“While the U.S. was heavily involved in the Middle East and South Asia…the geopolitical balance moved against the U.S. in both Europe and East Asia thanks to the emergence of a more aggressive Russia and a more capable and assertive China,” Richard Haass, former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in 2021.

When Russia invaded Georgia (during George W. Bush’s presidency) and then seized Crimea (during Barack Obama’s presidency), Western responses failed to prevent further expansionism. Russia later launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Many analysts say the West should have imposed much tougher sanctions on Russia, and done a better job arming vulnerable neighbors, among other measures.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine is what failed deterrence looks like,” writes Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe. “We were not ready or united in recognizing that Russia was a real threat.”

*Trump made another stupid gesture at the “Republican midterm convention” on Thursday, a promise to give all American five thousand bucks if the GOP retains both houses of Congress after the midterms. It’s not only dumb and impossibly expensive, but we all know Trump is not serious.

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.

The dubious promise would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.

This is nothing more than a bribe to vote Republican, and I pity the fools who do so expecting to line their pockets. It’s a promise that won’t be kept, as so many of Trump’s other promises. I swear—every day, when I think he can’t do anything more stupid than he’s done, he goes ahead and crosses another line. Now he’s running scared because voter sentiment and his low approval rating portends bit Republican losses in the midterms.

*The founding editor of Ms. Magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, has a nice memoriam in the NYT, “My 55 year friendship with Gloria Steinem” (archived here).

“What’s Gloria really like?”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked that question since Gloria Steinem and I teamed up with a group of other editors to start Ms. magazine and, in the process, launched our 55-year friendship. As opposed to, “What’s Gloria’s cell number?”, to which my usual reply was, “You’ve got to be kidding,” when queried about the “real” Gloria, I always answered: “What you see is what I get; only I get more of it, up close.”

People find it hard to believe that someone as famous as Gloria had spent most of her life trying to evade the spotlight. She hated her celebrity status and was plagued by stage fright. What most clearly defined her was not a quote, gift, gesture or anecdote. It was her intrepid, lifelong resistance to being made the face of the women’s movement. Cameras ceaselessly sought her out; interviewers behaved as if hers was the definitive voice to speak on women’s issues or American feminism. Instead, she consistently deflected credit to women who couldn’t command media attention for their urgent work in, say, women’s health, reproductive rights, academia, labor unions or rape crisis counseling.

Put plainly, for Gloria, the personal was political and the political was personal. The warm, eloquent, witty writer and activist the world came to know was the same person in every setting: at a friend’s dinner table, where she’d rattle off puns and remind us to lobby our Congress members on an anti-discrimination bill, or in her living room hosting a “talking circle” of young women, none of whom she’d ever met before.

I didn’t know she was half Jewish (her dad was, her mom wasn’t):

. . . . Gloria loved our seder’s boldly revisionist, women-focused ceremonies, starting with an opening ritual of introducing ourselves by our matrilineage. Gloria’s voice was as loud as the rest of ours when we called out contributions to our list of the Ten Plagues (or more) suffered by women and the Four Questions (or more) that women never got to ask. She used to say, “Never in my life have I identified myself as a Christian, but wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew.”

. . .She once told her friends the line she wanted engraved on her tombstone: “Wait! I’m not done.” Gloria showed us the virtues of building a movement one person, one new coalition, one rebellious action and one act of kindness at a time.

Last year, she gave her friends beaded bracelets that proclaimed, “We are linked, not ranked.” The message was directed at us, but also at everyone who might see it. We’re not done.

It is a lovely paean to a woman who avoided the limelight as much as she could.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual.”

→ AI will steal your work: After rumors swirled about a solution to a Millennium Problem, a set of famously unsolved math problems, OpenAI spun up all its resources to solve it first. And they did, I guess. Congrats! Or, um, how dare you? The internet is divided!

Sam Altman admits they solved the problem because they heard a solution was coming: “It is true that we tried this because there were rumors on the internet last week that Anthropic’s models had solved a [M]illennium [P]roblem and we were curious if ours could do it too.” Guys, don’t be jerks just for the fun of it. Like, let those weird professors whose names no one knows solve their one math puzzle across decades in peace so they can eventually go to the awards lunch and have a turkey sandwich. But no. And the best part is that the mathematicians were using OpenAI tools in some capacity, and so it’s possible these AI tools took their human knowledge and then borrowed it on the side to solve the equation in full. The company writes: “We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly—in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models⁠.” OpenAI tools are one big mind. If you give them something, they know that information and will use it anywhere else. It is a collective consciousness. It would be like Google Docs deciding to publish that book you’re working on as a Google Doc production; like, I guess it’s technically true.

The sad, forgotten human names: Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster. Sorry guys. You can read Tristan’s statement about all this drama. It’s long and detailed and hard to parse, because he’s a brilliant mathematician and that’s kind of their thing. I’ll get ChatGPT to summarize it later.

→ Perhaps some of the asylum claims are less than genuine: Only about 1 in 100 asylum claims in the UK is credible, according to one UK Home Office official and whistleblower. The whistleblower, identified as “J” in The Times, says many asylum seekers arrive with what are called “package claims,” suspiciously similar asylum narratives. He says Iraqi Kurds, for example, often claim the same story of having had a romantic relationship with the daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan Region. So many claim this, he says, that it’s become a “running joke” among co-workers. I don’t judge the princess of Kurdistan, but I do have some logistical questions. Then tons of Pakistani asylum seekers, J says, have claimed they were in a homosexual relationship (yes, we’ve covered this before, but there’s a twist this time) with the same man! Who provided letters supporting their claims! The whistleblower said those homosexuality claims also featured photos from the same London gay hot spot, Legs 800 Club, which closed last year, of Pakistani men “standing there topless in the club with their arms around each other taking pictures to try and prove they are gay.” This is an amazing pitch for a Vogue centerfold editorial.

And what of the Bangladeshi asylum seekers? Many of those applicants allegedly claim they were part of a political party called the Awami League, but can’t answer basic questions about the party or their role in it. Weird!

→ Speaking of bogus asylum claims: This week in bizarro Daily Mail headlines: “Shameless failed asylum seeker who raped a 14-year-old girl is NOT bisexual—and must leave Britain, judge rules.” I guess if he were bisexual, he could stay. But not a straight man. It’s a bridge too far. The immigration tribunal found his evidence of bisexuality was suspect. Judge R. Abdar said in the immigration tribunal’s conclusion: “I am satisfied that the appellant has failed to rebut the presumption of the appellant posing a danger to the community. I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual.” I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual. Can you imagine a tribunal about your bisexual status? You have to place yourself on a spectrum of fruity to bland, name five women and five men you’re equally attracted to, demonstrate proficiency in mouth stuff to both sexes (hell), and then a verdict is delivered. I mean, my college co-op was a tribunal about bisexual status every night, but can you imagine like, a real British judge doing this? Do you think he wears the wig when he asks defendants which cast member they identify with most on Queer Eye? “I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual” sounds like the judge had a bad night with the appellant. Honestly, it sounds like the appellant is just experimenting in college and will probably grow out of it, which means deportation.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is checking out the situation:

Hili: Where are you going?
Szaron: To make the rounds of the local reality.

In Polish:

Hili: Dokąd idziesz?
Szaron: Na obchód lokalnej rzeczywistości.

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

From Fat Cat Art: security throughout the world

From Things With Faces:

From Clean, Funny & Cute Animal Memes:

Masih turned fifty yesterday, and had some thoughts on turning a half-century old:

Today is my birthday. And somehow, I am beginning fifty suspended between earth and sky.

I had a flight to catch, so here I am, looking down at the world from an airplane window, thinking about the woman I have become and all the women we are still fighting to be free enough to… pic.twitter.com/8HqyoWQBFZ

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 11, 2026

From Larry the Cat about Trump’s offer of $5K dollars to Americans for, in effect, voting for Republicans. As Hamlet said, “The funeral baked meats/Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 

Handing out free money to win elections is wrong https://t.co/haTyPqNjL4

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 10, 2026

From Malcolm. This is a bit grim, but it’s biology, Jake! Translation from the Turkish: “This snapping turtle uses its tongue like a live bait to catch fish.”

Bu kapan kaplumbağası, balıkları yakalamak için dilini canlı bir yem gibi kullanıyor. pic.twitter.com/l09gjHZiV1

— Belgesel Dünyası (@belgeseIdunyasi) September 8, 2026

Two from my feed. I don’t think this first one is AI or fake:

Mamdani and AOC are spotted laughing with each other as people cry while the names of those who died are read during the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. pic.twitter.com/Ib5lm57fmV

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 11, 2026

I love this one. It’s been so much fun controlling Hollywood!

Agents,

As the sun sets on 5786, we would like to thank you for another successful year of controlling the weather, the media, the banks, Hollywood, global shipping, your neighbor’s Wi-Fi and the price of eggs.

We have an ambitious operational schedule for 5787:

✅ Convince… pic.twitter.com/5lyfpBKNO8

— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) September 11, 2026

Translation from the Spanish:

How do I explain to the psychologist that I saw a lost little kitten and its mom found her, scolded her, and after checking that she was okay, gave her a smack and took her home.

Cómo le explico al psicólogo que vi una gatita perdida y su mamá la encontró, le dió una regañada y después de ver que estuviera bien, le dió una cachetada y se la llevó a la casa. pic.twitter.com/5A15hxLo7Q

— El CondeNado (@elconde_nad0) September 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three years old and would be 87 today had she lived. https://t.co/e2y6FgIvkE

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 12, 2026

Two from Matthew. First, a lovely millipede:

Take a stroll along a mossy log with this Euryurus leachii, one of eastern North America’s beautiful native millipedes.

— invertebrate (@crevicedwelling.bsky.social) 2026-09-11T14:22:47.240Z

I don’t know if the dogs like this song. Click screenshot to hear it:

 

Welcome to Friday, September 11, 2026, and the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which 19 people hijacked four aircraft, two hitting the World Trade Center towers and bringing them down, cone rashing into the Pentagon and the last, after passengers attacked the terrorist pilots of United 93, crashed into the ground.  There were 2,977 innocent victims on top of the 19 terrorists.

Here’s a video of the second plane hitting the South Tower while the first is on fire, and then both buildings collapsing. You may not want to watch it if it evokes strong feelings:

It’s also National Emergency Responders Day, National Hot Cross Bun Day, and National Women’s Baseball Day.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sundown tonight and extends to sundown on Sunday.

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

Da Nooz:

*An article in the Free Press by Daniel Kokotajlo, who worked at OpenAI, says that AI may really destroy all of humanity. I did not take such scenarios seriously until I read this article and found that this possibility is openly discussed in AI firms.

On Tuesday, AI researcher Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic in a mega-viral post on X: “I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic,” he began. (Pretraining is an important part of the training process for AI models like Claude and GPT-6.)

He continued: “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. . . . These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. . . . The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

He’s right. I know this because I worked at OpenAI for two years, forecasting AI progress internally and working on model evaluations and alignment research, and because I still talk with friends at OpenAI and Anthropic.

But you don’t need insider knowledge to understand where Jacob and I are coming from. The argument is straightforward:

1. Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to train self-improving AIs, ultimately superintelligent ones—meaning models that exceed the cognitive capacity of humans—as fast as they can. (This is not a secret. They talk about this in interviews and on their websites.)
2. If they actually succeed at training self-improving, superintelligent AIs, that would be a reckless gamble with our lives. (This part is fairly obvious, but has been explained at length by many people over the years, including the world’s two most-cited living AI scientists.)
3. They may actually succeed soon.

Many people doubt the third premise. AI companies have an incentive to overhype their products. After all, it’s common for tech companies to overpromise and underdeliver, so why should we trust their forecasts?

To that I say: We shouldn’t. Instead, we should look at publicly available evidence and forecasts made by independent experts. Unfortunately, that evidence base supports the third premise.

. . .The recent rogue AI cyberattack—in which AI agents in a controlled OpenAI experiment escaped of their own volition and hacked the company Hugging Face—illustrates these realities. OpenAI tried to spin the incident in a self-serving way. (Go watch their presentation at the Black Hat USA conference; they basically use the cyberattack as a reason to encourage customers to buy their AI protection services.)

But should we therefore conclude that the whole thing was a setup, a conspiracy by OpenAI to make their product seem scary and therefore powerful? No. OpenAI didn’t want their models to attack another company. It happened anyway, due to inadequate alignment and security practices at OpenAI. And the Hugging Face affair isn’t an anomaly. Smaller-scale incidents have been happening at other companies (and third-party evaluators) for months.

. . .Once the frontier AI companies have fully automated the AI research process, things will start moving very quickly. AI will get rapidly smarter than us in a variety of different ways, oversight of AI will be itself delegated to the models, and it will be all too easy for things to go wrong in a way that we can’t recover from.

The U.S. military is planning to integrate AI into many aspects of its operations. Businesses are planning to use AI for many things, including to design new technologies and run robot factories that build more robot factories. Superintelligent AI wouldn’t even need to take over by force; the current plan is essentially to put it in charge.

If Kokotajlo thinks it’s possible, well, it’s possible, as I know almost nothing about this. But some human malefactor would have to be behind a wholesale attack on humanity.  Kokitajlo’s solution is transparency and oversight forced upon AI companies, for “These companies cannot control their own AIs today, and should not be trusted to do so in the future.” All of us are ignorant about this, but if the doomsayers are right, we should at least pay attention.

*Mirabile dictu (again): the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri Supreme Court decision invalidating a redistricting of the state that favored Republicans.

Holding a general election with a different map than what was used in the primary is rare legal territory, with no specific guidance so far from the courts on how nominees should be selected.

Thursday’s ruling landed just as a hearing about remapping was about to begin at the Missouri Supreme Court in Jefferson City.

That court’s judges were considering whether to hold the secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, in contempt for not following their order to use the previous House map, which would position Democrats to retain a seat in the Kansas City area.

Before Thursday’s order from Washington, Missouri Republican leaders had been insisting they would stick with their preferred map for the general election.

In Jefferson City, a lawyer from the Missouri attorney general’s office, William J. Seidleck, said the secretary of state’s office was “evaluating next steps.”

*There’s a new report in our student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, noting that the proportion of males admitted to the school is at its highest rate in decades: 58%. (I would have thought that the proportion of women (42%) would exceed that of men. Further, the proportion of black and Hispanic students has dropped pretty substantially since 2022, with black admissions being halved: from 10% to 5%.

The share of incoming students in the College identifying as Black fell for the third consecutive year in academic year 2025–26, while the proportion who were male increased to its highest level in decades, according to detailed UChicago enrollment data released last week.

The University reports data on its first-year classes annually in the Common Data Set (CDS), a standardized survey that asks institutions nationwide to disclose student demographics, high school academic performance, and financial aid awards, among other statistics.

The College enrolled just 71 Black first-year students last year, down from 97 in 2024 and over 150 three years ago, the University reported in the CDS. The number of white students showed a corresponding slight increase, while enrollment among other demographic groups stayed roughly unchanged year over year. Black students made up about five percent of domestic students of known race in the Class of 2029.

. . .The CDS release comes two admissions cycles after the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges and universities could not explicitly factor applicants’ race into their admissions decisions, effectively banning affirmative action policies favoring historically disadvantaged demographic groups. The University had submitted a brief in the case opposing an affirmative action ban.

Without affirmative action, many selective universities have admitted fewer Black and Hispanic students and more white and Asian students, though those shifts have been uneven across institutions. At UChicago, white and Asian shares of domestic first-time enrollment have climbed by about three percentage points each since the decision took effect, while Black and Hispanic enrollment shares have dropped by three and four points respectively.

The number of new first-years who did not report their race to the University jumped sharply last year, from 52 to 126, or seven percent of the Class of 2029.

You can see the change for race below; the vertical line marks the legal prohibition of race-based admissions:

The College also continued a years-long climb in male enrollment, the CDS release showed: more than 58 percent of the Class of 2029 identified as male, a three-point jump from the previous year and up from 52 percent for the Class of 2025. That weight toward male students persisted even as the College reported nearly 5,000 more female applicants than male ones.

UChicago had not welcomed an incoming undergraduate class with as high a proportion of male students since fall 1987, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data.

The University is an outlier when it comes to gender breakdown. Nationally, women comprised 57 percent of undergraduates in fall 2022. The only other Ivy Plus institutions with more male than female first-year enrollees last year—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Dartmouth College—also had more male than female applicants. Even so, none had a higher share of male first-year enrollees than UChicago.

The decline in Hispanic and black students is surely connected with the Supreme Court ruling, though it can be circumvented in various ways. But schools are afraid of being sued like Harvard was. The increasing number of male applicants, and the increasing disparity between the sexes here is mysterious to me.  (Note that the Maroon says the numbers of “genders” is two, and what they really mean is sexes.)

*The British Museum has opened its exhibit of the Bayeux Tapestry, a project that’s been in the works a long time. I’ve longed to see this 70-meter embroidery of the Norman Conquest of England (dated to the 11th century), but never got to Normandy to see it.

Here, from the tapestry, is the death of King Harold of England, apparently struck in the eye by an arrow or spear. The legend says (Hic) Harold rex interfectus est, “[Here] King Harold was killed”. The King is apparently the unmounted figure in the middle, holding onto the spear or arrow. But some people say he’s the figure on the right, also apparently struck by a sword. We do not know.

Halley’s Comet also appears in the tapestry, and we know it showed up in 1066, the year Harold was crowned King of England but also died at the Battle of Hastings. Here’s the comet in the tapestry: people are looking at it with the caption, in Latin, “These men marvel at the star,” while Harold gets the news of the phenomenon.

Were I a Brit (or going to England), I’d do everything I could to see this exhibit. But who knows–it may be sold out until it closes.

*The WSJ reports that two people (Roland Fryer and Bill Ackman) are giving a million-dollar award to scholars who have the courage to tell the truth about “taboo” topics.

One of us (Mr. Fryer) released a study in 2016—later published in the Journal of Political Economy—finding that police aren’t more likely to shoot black Americans than white Americans, after accounting for the relevant context. Colleagues who read the draft warned him not to publish: “You’ll ruin your career.” The paper was denounced on social media within minutes of release, and Mr. Fryer needed armed protection for more than a month. Privately, scholars who read the study called it rigorous, honest work. Publicly, many of the same scholars said nothing. No single study settles a question this large—but silence isn’t how science advances.

That silence is the problem—a cultural and an economic one. When the professional cost of publishing an unwelcome finding exceeds the cost of suppressing it, rational scholars suppress it. The result is that social-science literature reflects what researchers are permitted to say rather than what they actually discover. The scope of the problem is difficult to measure, because its most important effects are invisible—though the data we have suggest it is getting worse. In a 2024 survey of more than 6,000 professors by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 35% said they had toned down their written work for fear of controversy—roughly four times the share of social scientists who admitted the same at the height of McCarthyism.

Mr. Fryer raised the alarm about suppression of inconvenient findings in a November 2024 Wall Street Journal essay. He called for something like a MacArthur Fellowship or an X Prize for academic truth-telling. The prize should be large enough to matter, prestigious enough to serve as a public credential for scholars who were right when it was costly to be right. Shortly after that piece ran, we found each other and decided to launch the Carob Trust Prize for Academic Courage.

The prize awards $1 million each to as many as five social scientists a year who have demonstrated intellectual independence, published findings that were attacked rather than answered, and been validated by the evidence—despite the professional cost. The selection criteria are designed to distinguish courage from contrarianism: Nominees must show a sustained commitment to following logic and evidence regardless of pressure, a willingness to ask questions others avoid, and work that has shifted academic debate, public discourse or policy—often despite being misread, mischaracterized or vilified at the time of publication.

The inaugural prize is limited to the social sciences; in future years we hope to broaden it to additional disciplines and to add a category for institutional leadership. Nominations are open through Nov. 1, and the first winners will be announced in early 2027.

Well, good for them.  The prize is enormous (up to $5 million per year, and must reflect the money or fundraising of billionaire Bill Ackman, as Roland Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard. They emphasize in their editorial that the prize will not be partisan; it will reflect simply those who publish credible findings that are considered taboo. In the end, of course, this will largely involve findings demonized by the Left.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is ethnically cleansing her territory:

Hili: Let’s try to settle this diplomatically.
Kulka: What do you mean?
Hili: Go back to your home.

In Polish:

Hili: Spróbujmy to załatwić dyplomatycznie.
Kulka: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Wracaj do swojego domu.

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

From Stacy:

nchanged: Unchanged:

From The Non Sequitur Assemblage of the World:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Masih: a mother talks about her daughter murdered and mutilated for protesting. The mother (sans hijab) vows to take revenge for her daughter. This is heartbreaking.

Translation from the Farsi:

What a nightmare these people lived through. What crimes did the Islamic Republic commit during those two days to cling to power, and the full extent of it remains hidden. Listen to the harrowing words of Javidnameh’s mother, Maedeh Moradi-Kian. The 22-year-old bride whose wedding was just one week past. On the 19th of Dey, when the people of Iran took to the streets in Qaemshahr for freedom, agents of the Islamic Republic fired a military bullet into this girl’s head. The little bride of Iran fell to the pavement. Her mother says that when they found Maedeh’s body, one of her hands had been severed with a machete, and her body was missing a hand. We still don’t know if they cut off her hand before shooting her in the head or after. What we do know is that this crime, this mutilation of the body of this young woman who had come to the streets empty-handed, was the work of Khamenei’s thugs. Her mother lit a candle by her daughter’s grave and said, Maedeh is my hero. I won’t find peace until I take revenge for her. Mother, we hear your voice. She is the hero of us all, and you are not alone. We will carry the story of this atrocity and Maedeh’s brutal killing to the entire world.

چه کابوسی را زندگی کردند این مردم. چه جنایاتی جمهوری اسلامی در آن دو روز مرتکب شد تا در قدرت بماند و ابعادش هنوز پنهان است.
صحبتهای تکان دهنده مادر جاویدنام مائده مرادی‌کیان را بشنوید.
نو عروس بیست و دو ساله که فقط یک هفته از عروسی‌اش گذشته بود.

نوزدهم دی، وقتی مردم ایران برای…

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 10, 2026

My repost (and riposte) to Steak-Umm, whose account Jeff Maurer touts as “The Standout Philosopher of Our Time”.  Bosh!

This is totally bogus. Which one you choose is determined by the laws of physics.

Steak-umm is a lousy philosopher. https://t.co/ypvzE0jUm9

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 10, 2026

From Luana; how DNA analysis helps us reconstruct human history:

Here’s a better map tbh using both Qpadm and G25 https://t.co/vmbM6uaABb pic.twitter.com/JUlvJIvVL6

— SuN (@SuN_BR0NZ3) September 8, 2026

A good and surprising video about suicide prevention posted by the Number Ten Cat:

Every 90 minutes, someone in the UK or Ireland dies by suicide.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. Suicide is not inevitable. You can interrupt someone’s suicidal thoughts. You could save a life.

I’ve shared this video before; it’s message remains as important and powerful…

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 10, 2026

From Malcolm: Cat yoga!

The cat 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/jnhIxp0X3t

— Rob (@_ROB_29) September 8, 2026

One from my feed; and a sad one:

🕊 The missing Twin Towers returned to New York for a few minutes

A light show was held on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The drones first rose into the night sky in a spiral, then formed the outlines of the destroyed World Trade Center towers.… pic.twitter.com/obSuNKuAX0

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auchwitz. He was four years old and would be 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/3K68Fmx3Xb

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 11, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, a cat “tattoo” that may be AI. Who knows?

Le chat a un tatouage de son ex.

— Johnney (@johnneygirard.bsky.social) 2026-09-10T01:24:13.636Z

. . . and the world’s tallest horse. He’s a big ‘un!

everyone, meet Hugowww.bbc.co.uk/news/article…

— The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) (@themerl.bsky.social) 2026-09-10T13:54:20.024Z

Welcome to Thursday, September 10, 2026, and National Hot Dog Day, celebrating Chicago’s most famous foodstuff. As all Chicagoans know, the best version is the one called “dragged through the garden”, as this short video explains (you don’t have to make them yourself: they’re on sale at many places). The dogs are made by Vienna Beef with natural casings, and the buns are Rosen’s poppy-seed buns. The “sport peppers” are small hot peppers. The combination of meat and vegetables (and MUSTARD, never ketchup) is ethereal.

It’s also National Port Wine Day and TV Dinner Day, celebrating those pre-bought dinners in partitioned aluminum containers that you ate on individual fold-up tables while watching television. I had many of these as a kid; here’s a Swanson TV Dinner ad from 1963 (unfortunately, it lacks dessert). If you’ve eaten one of these, you’re old; I don’t even know if they have them any more.

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

Oh, and Sue Gould pointed out, in yesterday’s Hili, this fantastic video showing the Democratic Penguins Republic filling the gap in Canada left by the dumb Trumpian tariffs (look at the other videos on the site. too—they’re devilishly clever):

Da Nooz: (lotsa nooz today; skip if you wish)

*The Times of Israel reports that the UAE told Netanyahu days before the October 7 attack that Hamas was “planning war”, but Bibi ignored it (h/t Norman). Israel denies it all:

Some 10 days before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally warned by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive move against Israel, but did not update Israeli security leaders and did nothing with the information, according to a report on Tuesday.

An Emirati source familiar with the conversation confirmed the Haaretz newspaper’s report to The Times of Israel later Tuesday, and said the warning came during a phone call between the two leaders.

The UAE itself declined to confirm or deny the report, issuing a statement that noted “open lines of communication” with Israel through which “all relevant intelligence has been and continues to be communicated.”

Netanyahu’s office issued a statement Tuesday evening saying that “the press reports are false. No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates before October 7. If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries.”

The Haaretz report cited a new book, “Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment,” by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, based on interviews with dozens of sources including senior officials in Israel and around the world. It said three senior foreign officials were updated on the contents of the 45-minute phone call at the end of September, and it cited a Palestinian adviser to Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed who emigrated from Gaza to the UAE and had direct knowledge of the conversation.

But over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal dismisses this, in an article called “What did Bibi know?”, as an unfair indictment of the Prime Minister.

But let’s assume every word of this dramatic report is correct—who cares?

People excited by more ammunition to fire at Netanyahu forget that the problem was never a lack of information. The Hamas plan—kibbutzim, hostages, GoPros and all—was captured the year before; three months before the attack, an army analyst warned her superiors that Hamas had rehearsed precisely that over a full day. At the fence, the observation-post soldiers, the infamous tatzpitaniyot, had spent months reporting the drills but were similarly ignored. Most illustrative of all, on the night itself, the Shin Bet detected dozens of Israeli SIM cards activated simultaneously inside Gaza—and made the decision to send in the Tequila team—a small counterterror element meant to repel small raids, not an invasion.

The fundamental problem was never a lack of signs, but a lack of understanding.

The overused but precise term for this is conceptzia—a rigid, overriding paradigm, shared by political and military leadership, that traps them into thinking the status quo is immutable. Before October 7 it referred to the prevailing atmosphere preceding the surprise attack of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Those familiar with the history might recall that 11 days before that war, King Hussein of Jordan did significantly more than call: He helicoptered in secret to a Mossad safe house near Tel Aviv and met Golda Meir, warning her that Egypt and Syria were planning a joint attack. The day before the war, Israel learned that Moscow—patron of both Syria and Egypt—was pulling the families of its officers out of Damascus and Cairo—and did nothing. Meanwhile, a junior intelligence officer in Southern Command put in writing that the Egyptian deployment was preparation for a real war, not a drill. Israel’s leadership read the reports and then dismissed them—after all, Egypt wouldn’t dare attack the militarily dominant Israel; besides, why risk escalation or a false alarm, especially when mobilizing the reserves would paralyze the economy?

In 2023, Israel had even more information, and faced virtually no cost to blunt the threat. Any of the security chiefs could have picked up a phone at any point and told a battalion: listen, something is moving, get ready, there might be a war tomorrow. Not one did, including Netanyahu.

So spare me the search for the single leader who ignored the obvious signs or the one warning that would have changed history. From the chief of staff to the prime minister, all were trapped in a conceptual prison guarded by their own presumptions and upkept by groupthink that none escaped.

In late October Israeli voters will choose the members of the parliament (the Knesset), and that vote will determine who becomes Prime Minister. Netanyahu has said he’ll be in the running again, and it remains to be seen whether this latest report, which I haven’t seen in American MSM, will affect any votes. But if he’s deposed, I predict that the worldwide hatred of Israel, often based on Netanyahu’s presence, will not lessen.

*There’s endless psychologizing of President Trump with respect to what he is trying to do in Iran, and Middle East expert Michael Doran weighs in at The Free Press with his view (a siege) in an article called “Trump is charting a new course on Iran.”

Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump agreed on the objective: an Islamic Republic stripped of its nuclear program and of the power to hold the region hostage. But they frequently disagreed about how to make Tehran yield. Graham never wavered. More force, he recommended.

Three weeks into the war, the senator revealed the advice he had given the president: “Keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island. . . [and] let this regime die on the vine.” In May, he put the theory plainly: “Hurt them more. Maybe they’ll make a deal if you hurt them enough.” And in June, three weeks before his death, he predicted that if Iran contested the Strait of Hormuz, “We will obliterate them.”

Since last Easter, Trump has repeatedly threatened Tehran in accordance with the late senator’s advice. During the summer, the U.S. military prepared what reportedly would have been the largest strike of the war. At the urging of regional allies, however, the president again gave the military the order to stand down. Graham did not live to accept that rejection, but many of his political allies, my friends among them, reached what they considered to be an obvious conclusion: Trump had lost his nerve.

. . . [Trump’s] actions reveal a president steering between what he considers to be two wrecks. The first is George W. Bush’s regime-change war in Iraq. Trump called that war possibly the “worst decision” in presidential history and promised his voters never to repeat it. The second is Barack Obama’s Iran policy. After Iraq, Obama concluded, America’s only remaining course was to retreat, pay Tehran for quiet, and call it peace.

. . . Trump’s critics can imagine only these two headings, so each camp accuses him of steering toward the one it hates. But the president is attempting something harder: He is applying enough force to change the calculus of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) without tipping into the war of conquest toward which the dynamic of the conflict is pulling him. The bombing has proved insufficient, so he is tightening an economic siege in its place. Whether that middle course can succeed is the real question of the stalemate. Answering it begins with the military balance, which Graham’s theory took for granted.

. . .Graham’s theory held that enough bombardment would eventually produce capitulation. Six months on, Trump appears to have found another way to apply the pressure he prescribed: not simply by escalating the bombing, but by shifting the contest onto terrain where American advantages are greater. Iran created local overmatch in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is answering with naval power, economic warfare, and control of the global financial system.

The stalemate has therefore changed shape. It is no longer a question of whether a course exists between Bush’s war and Obama’s retreat. Trump is attempting to create one: suppress Iran’s disruptive capabilities enough to keep Gulf commerce moving, deny Tehran the same privilege, and use America’s global economic power to impose costs that airpower alone could not. Whether this strategy will compel Iran remains unknown. Five days of financial warfare do not settle a six-month war. But the experiment is now underway. Graham wanted to hurt Iran until it wanted a deal. Trump is trying to do precisely that.

In response to this I can only utter the immortal words, “We shall see.”

*Tomorrow will be the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist airplane attacks in the U.S., and the news is preparing a big spate of articles. This one, in the Washington Post, and by former Justice Department prosecutor David Raskin, is very good: “The 9/11 trial that never happened“, with the subtitle, “President Obama’s wavering and Congress’s fear killed the court case Americans deserved to hear.” (You can see the article archived here.) The trial, of course would have been that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the main architect of the plane attacks. Mohammed has been held by Americans since 2003, and then was transferred to Gitmo, where he’s spent the last two decades.  A trial date in the U.S. is scheduled for June, 2028. From the article:

As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches, I still think about the case that never happened.

In 2009, I was preparing to help lead what would have been the most important criminal prosecution in American history: the trial in a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators for orchestrating the murder of 2,977 people. It would have been a civilian trial, in open court, before a federal judge, held only a few blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.

Had it gone forward, it would have been the Justice Department’s finest hour.

The case was to be tried before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, a no-nonsense jurist with deep experience handling complex, high-profile terrorism cases. Kaplan presided over the 2010 trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a former Guantánamo detainee charged in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. From arraignment to sentencing, that case took a little more than a year and a half.

I can imagine how Kaplan would have responded had Mohammed tried to grandstand in court — with swift, unsentimental control, enforcing the rules of his courtroom without theatrics or indulgence. It would have been orderly and dignified. The public deserved to see such a trial, the victims were entitled to see it, and the Justice Department could rightly have taken pride in delivering it.

The evidence would have spoken for itself. Critics of civilian trials in the case warned that jurors could not bear to relive the horror of Sept. 11 or that classified evidence could not be handled safely. That was wrong. Federal courts had already convicted dozens of terrorists — including Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, and Zacarias Moussaoui, once called the 20th hijacker — using lawful, tested procedures designed to balance the public’s right to see powerful evidence, the defendant’s right to a fair trial and the nation’s interest in protecting intelligence-gathering sources and methods.

In the Mohammed case, we would not have relied on statements tainted by torture. Unlike the military commissions underway at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which planned to use so-called clean team FBI interrogations conducted after years of abusive detention until a military judge recently suppressed them in Mohammed’s case, a civilian prosecution would have had no need to flirt with legal gray zones. The admissible evidence was overwhelming. It included financial records, communications, co-conspirator testimony, physical evidence, Mohammed’s own uncoerced admissions and some surprises that have never been made public.

That trial would have ended in conviction long ago, as the evidence demanded. The defendants might have received death sentences, or they would have been condemned to spend the rest of their lives in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. I have been there. It is the last place on earth any convict wants to end up.

But none of this happened.

The moment Attorney General Eric Holder announced in November 2009 that Mohammed would be tried in Manhattan, a chorus of opposition erupted. Some critics insisted that Sept. 11 was not a crime but an act of war, and that the perpetrators therefore deserved the “rough justice” of a military commission, not the protections of the Bill of Rights. Others spun up security fantasies, generating ridiculous fears the New York police commissioner used to justify an outlandish estimate of security costs. Still others complained about the inconvenience of it all, lamenting the burden of street closures and traffic jams.

Shame on all of them.

They did not understand how broken the military commissions already were. Our push to move the case to federal court was not ideological. It was about getting the job done. The commissions were a brand-new, untested system, plagued by endless litigation over their legality and procedures. And, ironically, they turned out to be more defense-friendly than civilian courts, reflecting the military justice system’s traditional role in protecting the rights of accused U.S. service members. Far from being the instruments of swift justice many envisioned, the commissions became a defense lawyer’s dream.

Nor did critics understand the detention conditions at Guantánamo. Mohammed and his co-defendants were not desperate to leave. Pretrial detention at the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan was far less appealing. Yet the White House wavered. President Barack Obama, who entered office pledging to close Guantánamo and end the commissions, announced in May 2009 that instead they would continue, albeit with reforms. That equivocation proved fatal. It signaled weakness and emboldened opponents of civilian trials in Congress and elsewhere.

At the height of the backlash, what was needed was a clear, unequivocal statement from the Oval Office: “Knock it off. I stand by my attorney general. We are doing this.” But that never came. Congress stepped into the breach, eventually barring the transfer of Guantánamo detainees to the mainland for civilian trials. The plan to try Mohammed and the others in New York faded.

Amen. This case should never have been put into the hands of the military, and now it’s too late to undo that. And Gitmo is far more comfortable, I’m told, than where Mohammad is likely to end up if he’s tried here: an American Supermax prison.

*The Free Press reports on “The Civil War inside the DSA” (Democratic Socialists of America).

The latest sign of the organization’s growing clout came Monday, when likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom became the latest Democratic establishment figure to welcome the DSA into a prominent role in the party. The California governor told Politico he’s “not alarmed” by the rise of socialism and that “it’s where a lot of the energy in the party is.”

As one DSA member joked to me this summer: “How insane is it that we’re in a political moment where the Democrats are so discredited that a knucklehead organization like DSA. . . is getting courted by all these national politicians because our brand is so good?”

But the DSA’s sudden success has also inflamed its long-standing internal debates. The struggle is between avowed Marxist-Leninists who want to abolish the Pentagon and refuse to condemn Hamas, and a more practical kind of socialist who believes prioritizing police and prison abolition is the wrong way to go about amassing electoral power.

One side of the fight—call it the pragmatic wing—is betting that socialists will succeed by continuing to rack up victories in Democratic Party primaries and gaining influence within that old husk. This approach requires the DSA party faithful to let candidates make occasional compromises on policy and put up with sometimes out-of-step officials like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former beau ideal of a socialist lawmaker who has drifted somewhat from the DSA over her four terms in office.

The other side, the purist wing, views any efforts to meld the socialist project with the Democratic Party as a betrayal of the coalition’s revolutionary roots. Their goal is to overthrow the two-party system, not to partake in it and risk their own corruption.

How this tension resolves in coming months may determine whether the DSA carves out a durable political presence on the mainstream left or reverts to what it’s long been: a fringe movement more interested in ideological purity than winning power.

As far as I’m concerned, the DSA is in no way beneficial for the Democratic Party. If it’s successful, the Party becomes woke and extremist, as well as more antisemitic. The DSA platform is largely insane, though there’s no way Americans are going to get rid of the Presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the cop, or that will open our borders fully. But besides corrupting the Democratic Party, they’re also splitting it, making it harder to beat Republicans. All they have to do, with a candidate like AOC or Mamdani (who, fortunately, is ruled out as President), is to quote some of what they’ve said.

*The WSJ describes how the CBS News show “60 Minutes” is trying to right itself after a shake-up (accompanied by several departing correspondence) caused largely by the appointment of Bari Weiss as the CBS News editor.

Many veteran correspondents and producers left or were ousted during a shake-up in which some departing talent accused Weiss of putting a political thumb on the scale. Weiss denied those charges.

Since then, [60 Minutes head Nick] Bilton and his team have been rebuilding its roster of correspondents and lineup of stories. His leadership faces its first test when the show returns Sunday for its 59th season.

CBS leadership gave Bilton the option to wait to premiere the new season until October, according to people familiar with the matter. But he decided to go ahead. “We’re ready,” he told the network, the people said.

Technology, particularly artificial intelligence, will be a theme this season, people familiar with the matter said. Bilton sees AI as the kind of defining story “60 Minutes” tackled in previous eras, including the Vietnam War, the fight against Big Tobacco and the Sept. 11 attacks.

He has also promised a renewed emphasis on original investigations, long a hallmark of “60 Minutes.”

People close to the show say that 35 stories are being shot or edited and 60 more are in development.

I just haven’t watched the show for ages, and this doesn’t make me want to start. Seriously, AI as a “defining story”? I’m so sick of AI stories, and there’s a lot going on in the world besides the rise of AI.  I just don’t have the interest any more.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is getting quite philosophical while Andrzej retains his sense of humor:

Hili: The present fades away, the future is unknown, the past is nothing but a story now.
Andrzej: Even an atheist will sometimes say – amen.

In Polish:

Hili: Teraźniejszość mija, przyszłość jest niewiadomą, przeszłość jest już tylko opowieścią.
Ja: Bywa, że i ateista mówi czasem – amen.

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

From Meow Incorporated; I think this is a real photo of a cat loose on a playing field:

From Stacy:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Masih; in Iran, a woman is refused medical care because she’s not wearing a hijab.  This is one of the reasons that America should prioritize changing the Iranian regime.

This is what enforced hijab looks like.

In a clinic, a woman refuses to provide medical care to another woman because she is not wearing a hijab.

“I’m in charge here. You have to wear a hijab,” she tells her.

The woman refuses, drops her appointment number, and walks out.… pic.twitter.com/1fYD82hYvd

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 9, 2026

From Malcolm: some cats that have been imprinted on d*g behaviors:

This is what happens when cats and dogs grow up together 😂 pic.twitter.com/G46kb27pP9

— smooth (@Smoothfund) September 7, 2026

From Luana. The comment is right on—how can you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone did not have an episode of mental illness when they committed a crime? The burden of proof should be on on the person who asserts that his/her crime is the product of mental illness.

This is opposed to federal law, which puts the burden on the defendant to establish insanity by clear and convincing evidence.

This… pic.twitter.com/4mgPrdOHXX

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) September 9, 2026

From Jeff Maurer:

So no one on this REPUBLICAN staff knows baseball enough to say “Sir, you swing like an old lady with rickets trying to swat a spider web with a broom”? https://t.co/01kYyz8QOI

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) September 9, 2026

One from my feed. Sand cats (Felis margarita) are gorgeous small cats and well adapted to a very arid environment, getting most of their water from their prey.

In Morocco’s, remote Sahara, wildlife photographer Rémi Vacher, encountered one of the world’s most elusive wild cats: the sand cat.

[📹 remivcr] pic.twitter.com/xwHCPoFlt9

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 8, 2026

TWO I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial; one who survived and one who did not.

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed when she arrived in Auschwitz. She was four years old, and would have turned 86 today had she lived. https://t.co/aoetTuH70X

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 10, 2026

One who survived, and is celebrating a birthday today. https://t.co/qojYhdkRFI

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 10, 2026

And two from Doctor Cobb.  Look at this cunning bird!

A #bird following a #stingray to catch #fish startled from their hiding place in the sea grass as the stingray passes over them. Cormorants also follow kayaks & paddleboards in this part of #florida to catch fish startled from their hiding places by the kayaks shadows. #nature #animals #wildlife

— See Through Canoe (@seethroughcanoe.bsky.social) 2026-09-09T13:26:52.361Z

And look at this pink fish!

A pink scorpionfish #gili #giliislands #lombok #diving #scuba #trawangan #diveandstay #giliair #pets #ocean #sealife #marinelife #padi #fish #scorpionfish

— Terumbu (@terumbudivers.com) 2026-03-23T18:22:22.000Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the WSJ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She’s on 10 different waiting lists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the conversation is getting antiwoke:

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

In Polish:

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

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

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

From Terrible Maps:

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

THEIR WEDDING WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THIS MONTH.

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

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

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 7, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Prophet ﷺ said:

خيارُكم في الجاهليةِ ، خيارُكم في الإسلامِ إذا فقُهوا

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

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

— MILO (@Nero) September 6, 2026

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

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

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

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

Lola the baby otter tries fish for the first time

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

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 7, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

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

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 8, 2026

Two from Doctor Cobb. Look at all those rays!

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

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

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

Great antiques shop window in Edinburgh.

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

Welcome to Monday, September 7, 2026, and since it’s the first Monday in September, it’s Labor Day, an official government holiday.  Here’s a brief history of the one day a year dedicated to celebrating workers:

It’s also Grandma Moses Day, celebrating the painter born on this day in 1860 (she lived to be 101).  She started painting at age 77, older than I am now, and you can see some of her paintings here. It’s also National Acorn Squash Day, National Beer Lover’s Day (note that the apostrophe implies that the holiday celebrates only one lover of beer), and Salami Day.  Salami is of course an Eastern European treat, and, in the porkless form, beloved by Jews. Here’s a photo that was in the window of Katz’s Delicatessen in New York City in 2010 (it was clearly taken during WWII):

Finally, today’s Google Doodle celebrates Labor Day; click the icon to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In a NYT op-ed, Margaret McMillan (“a historian and a former warden of St. Antony’s College, Oxford”) predicts a worldwide apocalypse, or perhaps even a world war, in a piece called “A new world order is coming. We aren’t ready” (article archived here).

Today, there are dead rats all around. Temperature records have been set and reset this summer, the earth has baked in droughts, and wildfires have raged. Debt across advanced economies is approaching historic highs. Cuts in medical and food aid, most significantly by the United States, have caused unnecessary deaths and helped the spread of diseases, one of which, sooner or later, could become another pandemic. Artificial intelligence continues its rapid, unregulated rise, threatening jobs, security and, in darker projections, human existence.

Revisionist powers flout rules and norms with impunity. Electorates are angry and volatile. Slow, deliberate, necessarily discreet diplomacy, which builds trust and understanding, has given way to a performative, brash style more suited for TikTok-addled attention spans or the playground.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program recorded 65 state-based conflicts last year — the most since 1946. Great powers find themselves bogged down in asymmetric wars with countries that are making the most of new technologies. Russia’s war in Ukraine, meant to be won in a matter of days, is creaking through its fifth year. Iran, using inexpensive, mass-produced drones to attack American forces and allies, has gained control, perhaps permanently, over a crucial corridor of world trade, drastically reduced U.S. missile stocks and mired President Trump in a war of his own choice.

A world war is not inevitable, but the threat of a catastrophic conflict between big and well-armed powers is closer than it was for decades.

. . .But a new reality has arrived with startling speed. The world order that held together for most of our lives started to erode when those within it got too comfortable and complacent and when there was too much acceptance — even approval — of bad behavior.

We have arrived in a new age of disorder. We must prepare ourselves, beginning with being honest about the seriousness of the moment we’re in and accepting that our fragile system is faltering. That countries are already adjusting, for better and worse. And that any future of cooperation will have to look different.

McMillan ends on a hopeful note: perhaps we can rebuild something afresh, something that will not fail. Her example is what the Allies created after WWII.  Unfortunately, that lasted only 80 years.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal gives us another dip on the roller-coaster ride of his Iran war coverage: this time he argues that although launches of drones and missiles from Iran have fallen substantially, they could in principle be replenished quickly:

By the tenth day of Operation Epic Fury, US officials assessed that Iranian drone launches had fallen 83 percent from their opening levels and ballistic missile launches by roughly 90 percent. But a recent report by the Hudson Institute’s Can Kasapoğlu argues that despite the seemingly optimistic numbers, Iranian drones and missiles can make a quick recovery.

His broader assessment is that attrition has hurt the IRGC badly without breaking it. Inventories are depleted and infrastructure damaged, but the order of battle, doctrine, discipline and cohesion have held. Despite the killing of much of the senior leadership in the first 24 hours of the war, the direct Mossad phone calls, and the apparent double agent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there have been no senior defections and no organizational fragmentation. Precisely what is needed for an organization to rebuild.

Drones will come back first. The inputs are modular and substitutable, spread across universities, workshops, front companies and foreign vendors. Strikes can eliminate stockpiles, but so long as the knowledge and the suppliers survive, so will the drone threat. Kasapoğlu expects Iran to regain drone mass within months. They won’t be the highest quality, but it doesn’t take million-dollar drones to keep Gulf capitals up at night and the United States restrained.

Missiles will return more slowly, held up by a chemical chokepoint. Solid-propellant production depends on large planetary mixers and on sodium perchlorate from China. Rebuilding a bombed factory is the easy part. Restoring controlled chemical flows, specialized machinery and skilled production teams is not.

Whether that flow resumes depends less on Washington than on Beijing. China supplies the vast majority of Iran’s missile-fuel precursor and more than 60 percent of the electronics in the Shahed drone family, along with navigation modules, optics, batteries, machine tools and fibre-optic cable. Publicly, Beijing has assured Washington that no weapons will reach Iran; in practice, sanctioned Iranian ships have kept docking at Chinese ports.

None of this would matter much if not for one fact: US and Israeli interceptor stocks are stressed, and take far longer to replace than the cheap weapons fired at them.

Much of the mainstream media has hauled the battered Iranian boxer off the canvas, checked he’s still breathing, and declared him the winner for lasting a few rounds with the champion. It continues to insist, even as the effects of the blockade and sanctions have made it clear who has the upper hand.

My argument is simply not to swing from the doomerism of the past two months into triumphalism now. The lion may be trapped and starving, but it still has claws.

Well, does the U.S. have the upper hand? We haven’t stopped the Iranian nuclear weapons program for good, the Strait of Hormuz has a lot less traffic than before the war, and the Iranian people are still under the yoke. I call that something close to a standoff.

*Over at the Free Press, psychiatrist Sally Satel tells us what kind of verdict she thinks should have been handed down by the jury in the Lindsay Clancy case.

Clancy continues to be charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Her lawyer and the prosecutors will consider next steps while she remains in a mental-health facility.

Whatever comes next, the case is a reminder about the hazards of addressing mental illness challenges in the courtroom, the need for legal and psychiatric reforms, and the urgency of educating doctors as well as patients about psychosis in general and postpartum psychosis in particular. If Clancy is retried, here is why I hope the next jury will find her not criminally responsible.

. ., .The tragedy was the culmination of five months of anguish and help-seeking. Although Clancy said she initially felt well following Callan’s birth in May 2022, she saw a psychiatrist in late summer for help with depression, severe insomnia, and feelings of being overwhelmed by simple tasks like dressing or showering.Over time, she allegedly began having suicidal ideation and experiencing what have been variously described as “intrusive thoughts” and “auditory hallucinations” telling her that she was “damaged” and would “not be the same,” and that “the only option is to die.” In December 2022, she told her husband and mother that she had thoughts of harming her children and was worried that other people could hear those thoughts.

. . .Massachusetts uses the McHoul standard for insanity. It allows for a determination of “not criminally responsible” if a person with a mental disorder or defect (which every expert agreed Clancy had) lacks either the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or the capacity to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law. If the defendant presents evidence to support her lack of responsibility, the prosecutors bear the burden to prove her responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Some thought the prosecutors did not carry this burden; others thought they did.

I see particularly strong reasons to doubt Clancy’s capacity to conform her behavior to the demands of the law. After her husband left on the errand, she experienced an audible command to kill. She felt she had to “obey,” according to psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, an expert for the defense. Resnick also testified that Clancy suffered a “delusion of influence” (a formal term) just before and during the killing. “She felt that her body was taken over by an external force, where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body,” Resnick told the jury. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.” In short, this compulsion made it impossible for her to follow the law.

I could also make a case for solid skepticism that Clancy appreciated the wrongfulness of her conduct. This does not mean that she was ignorant of the law—she surely knew that murder was wrong and illegal. Rather, it means that she was acting on a deranged belief that her kids would suffer so greatly without her that they needed to die. Clancy genuinely believed, Resnick said, that she was protecting the children by taking them with her to heaven. Consistent with this formulation was Clancy saying to a hospital chaplain a week after the killings: “I am so glad my children are safe.”

In reaching these conclusions, I have accepted the truth of Clancy’s description of the voice she heard and her explanation of why she followed its command. I believe her account because absolutely nothing in her past foreshadowed her cataclysmic act.

Well, Clancy is responsible in the sense that she killed her kids, but to me that’s all a jury can decide, and it’s something that she already admitted. The second part of the justice system, which shouldn’t involve a judge or jury, is to determine how the accused is treated when convicted—treatment that can only be, in my view, for deterrence, sequestering a baddie from society, and for rehabilitation. Already there’s a parallel case in which a North Carolina woman did something pretty similar to Clancy, probably inspired by her (the woman was transfixed by the Clancy case). So yes, we may need deterrence. I can’t make a good case that Clancy remains a danger to society since she has no more children and is probably unlikely to attack strangers.  As for the cure, well, that’s the job of the therapists. If a woman’s mentally ill but no longer a danger to society, can she be locked up against her will?

*If you read here regularly, you’ll know that although formal affiliation with religion is dropping among Americans, many still claim they have a “god-shaped hole” in their soul that needs to be filled with some faux-religious activity. Now the Democratic Socialists of America are trying to fill that hole with social (and socialist) activity; this is reported in the WSJ article, “The DSA is using coffee with comrades and socialist softball to convert the curious” (nice alliteration!).  Sure enough, while I was thinking the above when reading the article, the word “church” appeared!

On a recent Saturday morning, a youngish group gathered around a table in the sun-dappled garden of a Brooklyn coffee shop. Beneath a bright blue sky they were sipping drinks, chatting—and building socialism.

The “Coffee With Comrades” was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America. It was yet another in an endless buffet of social events the DSA uses both to attract new members and more closely bind existing ones to the movement.

*In the “Trilobites” biology column of the NYT, science writer Kate Golembiewski reports on insect fossils, noting that “The world’s first bugs had way more legs” (six is the standard number now). The article is archived here, and the Nature paper it summarizes is linked below (click the title to read).The word “bug” is unfortunate as Golemiewski really means “insects” (“true”bugs are insects in the order Hemiptera). This insect, from 324 million years ago, is identified as an insect because it shares “apomorphies” (derived traits common to all members of a group) with all insects, living or fossil; those traits are include “an ovipositor and a terminal filament but differ[ing] from crown-group insects, most notably with respect to the presence of multisegmented abdominal legs with paddle-like modifications.” The multisegmented legs and their position are not known in modern insects. An excerpt:

Erik Tihelka’s first glimpse of one of the world’s oldest insects came from an outdated Russian textbook that he bought on eBay.

In it, a small line drawing of a fossil, labeled as an early crustacean that had lived 324 million years ago, caught his eye. “The more I looked, the more intrigued I got,” said Mr. Tihelka, a doctoral student in paleontology at Cambridge.

For a fossil described as a crustacean, it seemed to have an awful lot of insectlike traits, such as a body split into three parts, a pair of antennae and six legs emerging from the central part of the body. Overall, it looked a lot like a modern silverfish.

But there was one big difference between this fossil and our current definition of an insect, which has six legs: This one had 24.

Today, insects make up more than half the known species of animals, but their early origins are shrouded in mystery. The many-legged fossil, unearthed in Texas and stored in the collections of the San Diego Natural History Museum since 1985, could represent a breakthrough. In a new study published in Nature, Mr. Tihelka and his colleagues propose that his discovery is one of the oldest insect fossils ever found, and that these early insects had four times the number of legs seen on a standard bug today.

Genetic analyses have shown that insects’ closest relatives are crustaceans, but they split off into their own group and moved onto land. Very little is known about this transition, because insects and their fellow six-legged arthropods are missing from the fossil record from roughly 385 to 322 million years ago. Paleontologists call this period the “hexapod gap.” But the insect-resembling fossil in Mr. Tihelka’s textbook was from 324 million years ago — just inside the gap.

Based on the illustration alone, he couldn’t be certain that he’d really spotted an early insect. “Although it’s a very nicely preserved fossil, it’s a black fossil on a black rock,” Mr. Tihelka said. “I had an inkling, but I thought, I have to make sure.”

. . .He took his first trip to the United States to examine the fossil in person. Using a microscope and specialized light polarization filters to highlight subtle features, he was able to confirm that the fossil had a combination of insect and crustacean traits. He hypothesized that the extra legs were “a holdover from its crustacean ancestors,” but the fossil was indeed an insect.

From the paper’s abstract:

Together, these stem-group fossils represent the earliest uncontested insects and partly reconcile the incongruence between molecular clock estimates and the fossil record. The unusual abdominal gill-like appendages of Chosha suggest a semiaquatic mode of life in at least some stem-insects and revise our understanding of the assembly of insect morphological organization.

Here’s a figure (with caption) from the paper, showing the 24-legged proto-insect (click to enlarge):

“Trilobite” gives this lesson: collections are important!

In addition to providing new insight into the history of life on Earth, Dr. Knecht said that the study highlights the importance of museum collections like the one where Chosha was kept for 40 years before being recognized as an insect. “It allows us to go back, revisit, and sometimes make big discoveries using new technologies or new insights that we didn’t have the first time we looked at the fossil,” Dr. Knecht said.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili isn’t ready for sleep:

Andrzej: It’s late already, time to go to bed.
Hili: Let’s read for another half an hour.

In Polish:

Ja: Późno już, pora iść spać.
Hili: Poczytajmy jeszcze pół godziny.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices; inappropriate apostrophes. The only possibly accurate one is “massage”:

From Meow Incorporated:

From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!

From Masih; a sixteen-year-old girl beaten to death with batons by the Iranian police. Why? She was peacefully demonstrating, of course.

Let me introduce you to Sarina Esmailzadeh, another hero from my country, Iran.

She was 16 years old. And like so many teenage girls her age, she had a YouTube channel.

She filmed herself baking cookies. She vlogged about her life in Karaj. She talked about compulsory hijab,… pic.twitter.com/HPUHTBAMTB

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 31, 2026

From Malcolm; my dream (note that the tiger sounds like a buzzsaw):

A cat is a cat no matter the size pic.twitter.com/JdkFellG0D

— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) January 20, 2025

From Luana. People will believe anything, including that correlation proves causation. Also, maybe, over history, the rise of fascism is correlated with less food for both sexes.

Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.

“As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

The Number Ten cat has a bit of hubris:

Magnifique! https://t.co/9Ng0bdldF7

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 3, 2026

One from my feed, and it’s a good one:

Norway’s Prime Minister rips apart Trump’s stupid letter. Love this!
Every leader that receives a letter like this from DJT should do the same.
Thanks for your attention to this matter! BRILLIANT! pic.twitter.com/dkytn3qp5t

— Helena (@HelenaGoransson) September 6, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about eleven years old. https://t.co/B67izB4WK4

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 7, 2026

Two from Matthew Cobb. The first one he deems “accurate” (it’s a loon, of course).  Click on it to go to original, as I can’t embed it.

A series of “reincarnation” cartoons on this thread; they’re of varying quality. Here, the second is far better.

A bit late, but what even is time cosmically speaking?

— Adrian Brightmoore / The World Foundry (@theworldfoundry.com) 2026-08-31T06:16:15.385Z

Welcome to Sunday, September 6, 2026, the second day of a three-day weekend, for tomorrow is Labor Day in America. It’s also National Read a Book Day (note, they don’t say “Listen to a book”). I’m on a Maggie O’Farrell kick, and after reading and enjoying Hamnet and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, I’m now reading her first novel, After You’d Gone.  I’ve just finished Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, by Ronen Bergman, which is very good, fascinating, but scary.

It’s also Fight Procrastination Day (don’t worry, you can do it tomorrow), National Coffee Ice Cream Day, and Great Egg Toss Day, celebrating a day when people compete to toss an egg to a partner without breaking it. Here’s what the link says:

Great Egg Toss Day takes place on September 6th, because that was the day in 1981 that Risto Antikainen threw a fresh egg 317 feet, 10 inches, to Jyrki Korhonen. But, there is other evidence that a Guinness World Record was set in 1978 with a throw of 323 feet, 2 inches, in a toss from Johnny Dell Foley to Keith Thomas. This was listed by Guinness World Records until 2000, when they removed egg tossing from their book. The World Egg Throwing Federation currently holds egg throwing events, and contestants regularly toss eggs over 200 feet.

Here’s the World Championships in 2024, combined with another contest: Egg Roulette!

The Guinness Record is still posted, but if they stopped keeping records it’s reprehensible.

Posting will be light over the next week as I have a writing assignment I must complete. Bear with me; I do my best.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As the war with Iran continues (described yesterday by Trump as “small potatoes”), the U.S. military says it hit three Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for Iran targeting two U.S. warships (article archived here).

The U.S. military said Saturday it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in a statement that its strikes disabled an oil carrier off the coast of Kharg Island and another off Jask, and it destroyed a third one in the Gulf of Oman.

“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Iranian state media earlier in the day reported that an oil tanker was hit by U.S. missiles near Kharg Island.

Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kharg Island, about 15 miles from the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf, is the centerpiece of Iran’s oil-based economy, with about 90 percent of the country’s oil exports moving through there.

Why don’t we attack Kharg Island directly, then, as it would be the most devastating thing we could do to Iran?  I suspect it’s because that would devastate the world oil market (and of course raise gas prices in the U.S.), because it would invite the harshest retaliation yet, and because to secure it might require the presence of “boots on the ground”, something the U.S. is unwilling to do. Trump could make a threat, of course, but he’d have to be prepared to carry it through when Iran calls his bluff.

Here’s a satellite image of Kharg Island taken in 2010; the T-shaped structures to the right are oil terminals:

*The Wall Street Journal declares that “Time is no longer on Iran’s side in the battle of the blockades.”

By squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the U.S. and Iran expected to outlast their foe, believing time would work in their favor.

Now, it looks like the trend is moving against Tehran.

The U.S. naval blockade has prevented Iran from shipping any oil from the Persian Gulf since July. At the same time, despite Iranian drone and missile attacks, Washington has been able to assist Gulf Arab states in moving significant amounts of their crude through the waterway, keeping global oil prices from surging above critical levels.

“The Iranian blockade is more leaky than the U.S. blockade,” said Samir Madani, co-founder of the maritime intelligence firm TankerTrackers.com. “The Iranians just aren’t able to shut it all down.”

The strategic question of whether time will eventually work in favor of Washington—or the Tehran regime—has yet to be settled. Iran retains ways of escalating what has now become a protracted conflict, raising costs for the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. military’s ability to maintain the naval blockade for many more months is also uncertain.

But now it is clear that Tehran’s calculation six months ago, as it shut down the Strait of Hormuz and bottled up one-fifth of the world’s crude oil supply, proved erroneous. The move didn’t trigger a worldwide economic crisis or force President Trump to end the war on Iranian terms.

Yet, Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports, imposed in April and reimposed in July, after a short-lived memorandum on reopening the waterway collapsed, hasn’t changed Iran’s behavior either. Despite growing economic disruption, the blockade didn’t spur a popular uprising against the Islamic Republic—and didn’t convince Tehran to reopen the strait to allow free navigation.

. . . For now, however, Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz is slowly but surely being eroded by the U.S. military campaign in the region. Crude oil prices remain below $100 a barrel on international markets, elevated but well below the critical threshold for the global economy. In part, this was due to China drawing on domestic reserves and reducing imports.

As the WSJ points out, “the clock is ticking more for the Iranians because they are under enormous economic strain.” Taking out Kharg Island’s facilities would make the clock tick really fast, and do we really need American troops on the ground to do that?

*Lindsay Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial because apparently one juror held out for a “guilty” verdict while the other 11 wanted to declare her not guilty. But now, according to the NYT, she faces years of confinement. However, many Americans apparently want no confinement at all (article archived here).

Whatever happens next in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy after a Massachusetts jury failed on Friday to reach a verdict, it is certain that she will remain institutionalized for many months, if not years.

Even if she is not ultimately convicted, medical and legal experts have said that her future will be one of confinement.

Ms. Clancy does not deny strangling her three children with exercise bands in 2023. Her symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the months before she killed them were at the center of her defense. Her lawyers argued that she was not legally responsible for the deaths.

That view apparently persuaded most of the jury members in the monthlong trial. Notes from the jury suggested that 11 of the 12 jurors seemed ready to acquit Ms. Clancy. But one lone juror declined to join the rest, even after apparently expressing doubts about her guilt.

A similar debate has captivated and divided the American public for weeks. At its core is a fundamental disagreement about how Ms. Clancy should spend the rest of her life. Should she be labeled a criminal and imprisoned? Or should she be regarded as a victim of a sort, who should be provided treatment? In neither case would she go free. But to what end should her confinement serve?

Whatever happens next in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy after a Massachusetts jury failed on Friday to reach a verdict, it is certain that she will remain institutionalized for many months, if not years.

Even if she is not ultimately convicted, medical and legal experts have said that her future will be one of confinement.

Ms. Clancy does not deny strangling her three children with exercise bands in 2023. Her symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the months before she killed them were at the center of her defense. Her lawyers argued that she was not legally responsible for the deaths.

That view apparently persuaded most of the jury members in the monthlong trial. Notes from the jury suggested that 11 of the 12 jurors seemed ready to acquit Ms. Clancy. But one lone juror declined to join the rest, even after apparently expressing doubts about her guilt.

A similar debate has captivated and divided the American public for weeks. At its core is a fundamental disagreement about how Ms. Clancy should spend the rest of her life. Should she be labeled a criminal and imprisoned? Or should she be regarded as a victim of a sort, who should be provided treatment? In neither case would she go free. But to what end should her confinement serve?

. . .The murder charges against Ms. Clancy remain intact after the mistrial, and will keep her locked up in a local psychiatric hospital for now, while the state decides whether to try her again, according to her lawyer, Kevin Reddington.

In remarks after the judge declared the mistrial, Mr. Reddington said that Ms. Clancy would be returning to Tewksbury Hospital, where she was held during the trial. It is a state-run psychiatric facility about an hour’s drive from where Ms. Clancy was tried in Plymouth, Mass.

If Ms. Clancy is ultimately found not responsible for the crimes, experts say she may be sent to a high-security forensic psychiatric hospital — a center to treat people who have stood criminal trial — for long-term mental health care.

Several psychiatrists said that for many women, symptoms of postpartum psychosis are treated and resolved within a year. But even if she is found not guilty because of that diagnosis, Ms. Clancy will most likely be treated for other ongoing issues, such as suicidal thoughts and a potential diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which can be a risk factor for postpartum psychosis.

Dr. Katrina Furey, a reproductive psychiatrist, has treated patients with postpartum psychosis for about a decade. She said treatment could be conducted through a combination of drugs, and sometimes with electroconvulsive therapy, in which electricity is used to trigger a short seizure that can help “reset the brain.”

The treatment has a bad reputation from Hollywood movies, Dr. Furey said, but is routine and often effective.

“The end game of treatment is for mom to feel like her normal self again,” she added.

I agree that Clancy should be helped, not punished, but doesn’t that hold for all criminals? As a determinist and consequentialist, I see no point in retributive punishment, which assumes a nonexistent free will. To me, there are three valid reasons for confinement after conviction: deterrence of others, keeping bad people out of society lest they do harm, and rehabilitation. The third is important, and would seem to the most urgent in Clancy’s case.

Clancy is 36 years old and will almost surely have no more children, so the risk of this happening again is small. But she should be freed only after being pronounced “cured” by reputable therapists, and not be allowed ever again to have unsupervised contact with minors.

*In May of 2025, John Spencer‘s website, “War Scholar” (he’s teaches urban warfare at, among other places, West Point), had a useful article with Arsen Ostrovsky list “The top 7 lies about Israel and IDF operations in Gaza.”  It’s still useful. I’ll summarize the “lies” using quotes from the article (all indented), but there is more on each point on the site:

1. Lie: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Genocide is the most serious crime under international law, defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention as acts committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Crucially, genocide requires specific intent — not simply that civilian deaths occur during war, but that they are intended as part of a broader plan to exterminate a people. This specific intent — known in legal terms as dolus specialis — sets a uniquely high bar that distinguishes genocide from even the most destructive military actions.

2. Lie: Israel intentionally targets civilians in Gaza.

Under international humanitarian law, the presence of civilian casualties in war — while tragic — does not equate to a war crime unless civilians are directly and intentionally targeted.

The IDF is one of the only militaries in history to systematically exceed the legal obligations to protect civilians.

3. Lie: The civilian-to-combatant ratio in Gaza proves Israel is committing war crimes.

One of the most dangerous and misleading claims is that civilian casualty figures alone prove Israel is committing war crimes. This is a fundamental distortion of international humanitarian law (IHL). Under the law of armed conflict, the legality of an attack is not judged by its outcome — such as the number of civilians killed — but by what commanders knew or reasonably could have known at the time of the attack. The legal test is proportionality: whether the expected incidental harm to civilians was excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

4. Lie: Israel is starving Gaza’s population.

The accusation that Israel uses starvation as a weapon is flatly contradicted by facts on the ground — and by the sheer scale of humanitarian aid Israel facilitates even during wartime. Since October 7, according to COGAT (the Israeli government body coordinating humanitarian operations), almost 100,000 trucks have entered Gaza carrying 1.75 million tons of aid, including humanitarian supplies, medicine and food, at a volume that in some periods has exceeded pre-war levels. In addition, Israel has also facilitated the supply of water and fuel, and even enabled the construction of numerous field hospitals.

The real cause of humanitarian suffering in Gaza is Hamas, which systematically hijacks and weaponizes aid for its fighters, attacks crossing points, and manipulates civilians as human shields.

5. Lie: Israel indiscriminately attacks hospitals and schools.

International law protects hospitals, schools, and religious sites — but that protection is not absolute. If these facilities are used for military purposes — such as storing weapons, housing fighters, or command operations — they lose protected status.

Hamas has repeatedly, and systematically, turned Gaza’s hospitals into fortified military compounds and terrorist staging grounds, a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

6. Lie: Israel is illegally occupying Gaza.

The assertion that Israel occupies Gaza is a misrepresentation of the current geopolitical reality. In 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, evacuating all Israeli civilians and military personnel, and dismantling its settlements. Since then, Hamas has maintained de facto control over Gaza, exercising both political and military authority.​

7. Lie: Israel violates Hamas prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Conventions.

The 3rd Geneva Convention defines Prisoners of War (POWs) as combatants who meet four key conditions: being part of a recognized armed force, carrying arms openly, wearing a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, and conducting operations in accordance with the laws of war.

Hamas meet none of these standards. They hide among civilians, wear no uniforms, and routinely commit war crimes by targeting Israeli civilians, while shielding behind Palestinian ones, and embedding their combat operations within hospitals, schools, Mosques and residential areas.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to make these points in arguments—and I’ve lost friends for making them—but anybody engaged in debate about the Israel/Gaza war should know the assertions as well as the rebuttal in this article.

*The conservative National Review calls for our culture to return to “biological realism,” which it defines as “a sensible acknowledgement of human limits and biological realities,” arguing that, “The normalization of extreme claims about humans’ ability to push past or ignore those realities has only increased in recent years, to the detriment of our common culture and common sense.”

The article gives several examples where “biological realism” was ignored. One is AOC’s freezing of her eggs, adding this:

. . . it remains a harsh biological reality that most women experience a significant decline in fertility after the age of 35, and the women most likely to achieve successful pregnancies using their previously frozen eggs are those who froze a lot of them before 35. If Ocasio-Cortez were intent on educating women of her generation about preserving their fertility (rather than turning her personal choices into yet another Instagram-enabled political stunt), she would have noted these biological realities. She might also have acknowledged that the largely unregulated fertility industry raises many ethical and legal questions and has been implicated in cases of abuse and fraud.

Well, one might say that the NR is being too hard on AOC, though if she wanted to inspire women, she should have pointed out the advantage of freezing eggs earlier. But there are other examples where the biology is unrealistic:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly paid a Canadian company, Nectome, a deposit of $10,000 to secure a spot on its waiting list to one day freeze his brain, with the expectation that the company will scan it and grant him some form of digitized immortality. “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,” he said. Altman is one of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs on a quest for life extension and immortality. Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil has long predicted that humans, nanobots, and artificial intelligence will eventually merge to form a new species, while others in the AI successionism movement want AI to replace humanity.

Bryan Johnson, champion of the “Don’t Die” movement who is tracking and monitoring every possible bodily function he has while taking extreme measures to prolong his life, describes his journey as follows: “Conquering death will be humanity’s greatest achievement.” Talking to Ross Douthat on the Interesting Times podcast, Johnson described himself not as a man, but as “the first Don’t Die Homo sapien prototype.” Comparing himself to a self-driving car, he noted, “I’m building a self-driving body so it just automatically takes care of itself.”

The denial of biological limits is perhaps most prominent among transgender activists, who insist that biological men can become women and that those men should be allowed access to women-only spaces, including in women’s sports. Just as a child had to point out that the emperor wore no clothes, former NBA players Kanter and White highlighted the absurdities of men in women’s sports by declaring their intention to play on women’s teams. Their stunt was in part a response to criticism of professional athletes like WNBA player Sophie Cunningham for simply stating the obvious: Significant biological differences between the sexes make it unfair to allow men to compete against women. The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with her, and when Cunningham told reporters her position was “common sense,” she was correct.

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Common sense does not fare well when pitted against the ideological zeal of an extremely small minority — especially when that minority controls the levers of power in institutions. During a press conference, WNBA Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve hemmed and hawed but stuck to the ideological script, saying, “We need to protect trans kids.” Some WNBA players, like Golden State Valkyries player Gabby Williams, went so far as to claim she would “welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime.” Even though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld states’ right to ban men from playing on women’s teams, the mainstream media and trans activists continue to push the message that biological men should be allowed to take spots on teams from women.

There are other examples as well; Luana and I pointed out some cases of biological unreality in our Skeptical Inquirer article. I am still flummoxed about why, among WNBA players, only Sophie Cunningham has spoken out against biological men playing in their league, while other players and coaches waffle.  Not only do most Americans frown upon biological men playing in women’s sports, but the data show the advantage of being a man, even one who has taken hormones to “transition.” But in this case, ideology outweighs the data. It’s simply against the progressive agenda to say that trans-identified men should not participate in women’s sports.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are both griping:

Hili: Tomorrow will be better.
Szaron: Yesterday’s tomorrow is today, and it’s not any better at all.

In Polish:

Hili: Jutro będzie lepiej.
Szaron: Wczorajsze jutro jest dziś i wcale nie jest lepiej.

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

From Waterfowl Addicts Anonymous (Ducks, Geese, and Swans) with the caption, “How fast was that duck going?”

 

From Jesus of the Day (the site gives no indication of whose cartoon this is, but it must be Steve Nelson, the artist who creates “Twonks”):

From Terrible Maps:

From Masih; a bunch of Iranian men and women mocking her activism. It’s a testimony to her power, though, that so many people make these videos and ensure that they get to Masih. She just laughs and posts them.

Translation from the Farsi. “White Wednesdays” are days on which women protesting the regime wear white.

Take a look at this creep in the videos I found, who was loudly claiming with all their might that they were in the “majority” and mocking the women who were engaging in civil disobedience during the White Wednesdays. Now they’re backpedaling hard now that they’ve realized they’re just a bunch of stray sex toys in the minority.

این عرزشی را در این ویدیوهایی که پیدا کردم ببینید که با قدرت می‌گفتند در «اکثریت» هستند و زنانی را که در چهارشنبه های سفید نافرمانی مدنی می‌کردند اینطوری مسخره می‌کردند. حالا به غلط کردن افتاده‌اند وقتی فهمیدند یک مشت آلت‌های جنسیِ سرگردانِ در اقلیت هستند https://t.co/oCl2IFkQfY pic.twitter.com/kDrYW1qqco

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 31, 2026

From Malcom; a potpourri of black cats:

black cats are just orange cats with intelligence pic.twitter.com/4InbNQjah1

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 3, 2025

The Number Ten Cat protests Trump’s characterization of the war with Iran as “small potatoes”, and I agree with Larry that this was thoughtless wording:

Private Isabella Gonzales
First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan
Captain Cody A. Khork
Sergeant 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens
Sergeant 1st Class Nicole M. Amor
Major Jeffrey O’Brien
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan
Maj. John ‘Alex’ Klinner
Captain Ariana Savino
Technical Sergeant… https://t.co/VqDTJc80OW

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 4, 2026

Maarten Boudry describes his treatment at the University of Ghent in Belgium. And his Substack article is here, but you’ll have to pay (this excellent one is for free, though).

My own rector, Petra De Sutter, turned the “Gaza genocide” into official university policy, threatening anyone who dared to question it. Multiple professors emailed the previous rector behind my back, urging disciplinary action against me. Philosopher and former friend… https://t.co/AyTXfOkuMt pic.twitter.com/B6J5AZ8wWH

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) September 5, 2026

One from my feed; a botfly larva emerges from The White House (sound up):

OMG — This is so funny and hilarious! 😆 pic.twitter.com/43vGXsE9G8

— Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 (@LucasSa56947288) September 5, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Norwegian boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seventeen years old. https://t.co/YThd9j23Yv

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 6, 2026

Two from Doc Cobb. First, a lovely set of photos with a biology lesson:

Night eyes 😎 Finally got proper pictures of this amazing phenomenon! Mantises change their eye color (and light sensitivity) at night by transporting pigments from the surface of each compound eye unit toward the deeper eye region. Same female Tenodera sinensis, two different times. #bugsky

— D. Allan Drummond (@dadrummond.art) 2026-09-04T21:17:03.981Z

. . . and a playful baby bear:

Toddler bear burning off some energy while mom rests just off camera.#mammals #nature #bears #love #trailcam #Seattle #goodmorning #PNW #nokings #babyanimals

— Menestune (@menestune.bsky.social) 2026-09-05T15:03:50.951Z