Category: Hili Dialogue

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 9, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, May 9, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats and National Lost Sock Memorial Day.  I don’t know where the errant socks go, but I do check the washer and dryer during each bout of laundry and I still lose socks. I have been thinking of throwing an old, useless sock into the washer at the beginning to propitiate the Sock God who is undoubtedly taking my socks, but I haven’t tried it yet.

It’s also Iris Day, celebrating one of my favorite flowers, International Migratory Bird Day, Martin Z. Mollusk Day in Ocean City, Maryland, National Butterscotch Brownie Day, National Moscato Day (best as a sweet Australian “stickie” from a good producer, Tear the Tags Off the Mattress Day, American Indian Day, National Train Day, and World Belly Dance Day.

Here’s a belly dance that’s received about 42 million views on YouTube. The abdominal action begins about a minute in, and I have to say it’s impressive:

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

Da Nooz:

*After exchanges of fire with Iran on Thursday, Trump announces that the ceasefire is still intact.

President Donald Trump said the ceasefire with Iran is still in place afterU.S. forces launched strikes in response to attacks on American warships, casting fresh doubt on efforts by Washington and Tehran to reach a negotiated settlement that would end hostilities

Speaking to reporters Thursday during a visit to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, which he is having renovated, Trump described Iran’s attacks on U.S. destroyers as “a trifle”:

“They trifled with us today. We blew them away.”

Trump said a deal with Iran “might not happen, but it could happen any day. I believe they want the deal more than I do.”

Speaking to reporters Friday in Rome, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is expecting a response from Iran “today at some point.”

“We’ll see what the response entails. The hope is it’s something that can put us into a serious process of negotiation,” he said, adding: “I hope it’s a serious offer. I really do.”

The U.S.’s “self-defense strikes” came after the destroyers USS Truxton, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mason were attacked with “multiple missiles, drones and small boats,” U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said in a statement.

No American vessels were hit, the statement said, and U.S. forces responded by striking Iranian military facilities deemed responsible, officials said in the statement. They included missile and drone launch sites, command-and-control locations, and positions from which Iranian forces were surveilling U.S. forces and gathering intelligence, the statement said.

What a euphemism: an exchange of fire is a “trifle”!  I wonder how long it’s going to take before Trump realizes that Iran is not going to give up the ability to make nuclear weapons.  And even if he does realize that, and agrees to to it, he’ll find a way to couch the loss of his main war aim as a “victory.”

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal reports what’s going on with the promised demilitarization of Hamas. It ain’t being demilitarized, of course. (Segal also described a planned but failed Kurdish overthrow of the Iranian regime that was aborted.):

Hamas is currently dividing into three factions, observes a senior official in the Peace Council: those who want to die as martyrs, those who do not want to die as martyrs, and those who want to buy time without the population rebelling against them. The first faction shrank significantly during the war because, as we know, most of them indeed got what they asked for. The question of whether the demilitarization of Gaza will succeed depends heavily on the current balance of power.

Hamas has discovered a very different kind of American than the ones they encountered during the hostage release negotiations last year. Last year, they were spoken to as equals, befitting an entity holding dozens of Israelis. Now, the Americans look down on them and issue direct orders.

Last year, the whole world courted them, and they enjoyed the mediation services of numerous countries seeking proximity to the center of global attention. Since then, four Arab countries have already announced the severing of ties with Hamas. It is no coincidence that these are four countries that were attacked by Iran. “We are being bombed and you remain silent?” they raged at Hamas.

The most prominent of these is Qatar, which effectively expelled Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official. The man left Doha and has not been allowed to return since. Senior Hamas officials are now relocating their residences to Turkey, their last remaining supporter in the world. We’ll always have Istanbul.

All this is well and good, but what will actually come of it in the Gaza Strip? After all, an atmosphere of gloom prevails in Israel amid claims that Hamas is strengthening its position in the areas it still controls within the Strip. When Hamas wants to cheer itself up, it reads the Hebrew press, and when Israelis want to cheer themselves up, they go on social media to look at accounts from Gaza.

Well, the Peace Council believes that in the coming months (even before Oct. 27, for the attention of reader Netanyahu), some areas of Gaza will be cleared of weapons and tunnels and formally handed over to the new entity. Israel will be required to withdraw only after the entire cleanup is complete, certainly not at its start. The pressure is heavy, backs are against the wall, international isolation is worsening—all that remains is for Hamas to be convinced as well.

Don’t look forward to Gaza as a peaceful entity at any time in the near future, and you can forget about a two-state “solution.”

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Too crazy and not crazy enough.”

→ Add a billy into that bill: Ol’ Trumpo has said many times that the new White House party ballroom will be paid for by private donors, but it looks like taxpayers might just have to add a tiny touch to the total. Just a pinch from the tax base, just enough to cover a chandelier or 20. In a big $72 billion border package, the administration slipped a $1 billion ballroom “security adjustments and upgrades. . . relating to the East Wing Modernization Project,” including “above-ground and below-ground security features.” Now, I’m actually pro-ballroom and pro-security. Because I’m pro–White House ragers and anti-assassinations. I would personally like to make it home from my trips to the nation’s capital. I know that’s controversial these days, but I do think American electeds should be able to gather without being killed off by whichever substitute teacher went haywire that day. But! However! Just consider for a moment how everyone would react to Kamala Harris tapping an extra billion from the tax base for her ballroom. I think with Trump, we’ve grown accustomed to occasional real estate mayhem. Paving over the Rose Garden, getting freaky with the plaques in the West Wing. As any chronic renovator understands, these things always take twice the time and four times the money. Did I spend a year creating a small deck? Yes, I did. Did it bring me endless heartache, then joy? Also yes. We knew what we were getting into here.

→ Interesting response to the random stabbing of Jews in London: After a Somalian-born British man allegedly rampaged through a heavily Jewish London neighborhood, stabbing two Jewish men, many public intellectuals have been reflecting. Much to consider about that. Here’s Mehdi Hasan, who runs the very successful Zeteo news organization, arguing that violence is bad but the real issue is the Jews: “It becomes more complicated because, of course, many people in the Jewish community do support Israel and that becomes a problem. I think we need to be able to have these conversations, but at the same time all agreeing that violence is never the solution.” A guy stabs Jews on the street, and this is the response. It becomes more complicated because, of course, many people in the Jewish community do support Israel and that becomes a problem. The Jew-stabbing, it’s not good, but we should talk more about why they might be Jew-stabbing, because they have a point. The real problem is not the Jews getting stabbed, but the bad, bad thoughts in the Jews’ heads, and what we’re going to do about them.

→ What’s the use of college anyway?: With the arrival of ChatGPT and Claude, we are really having to confront what the heck college is, and what it’s good for. There’s an easy solution to all the ChatGPCheating, which is to make kids take tests in person, pen-to-paper, ass in seat. But colleges are now run by people who think that’s crazy, unfair, wrong. What about the kids with no hands? And certainly every student has a letter from a doctor saying they have a condition that bars them from timed exams. Those are table stakes. Anyway, two great essays on it this week: One in The New Yorker on “Will AI Make College Obsolete?” and one in New York magazine called “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College.” For the crime of writing that New Yorker piece, Jay Caspian Kang has been the villain of Bluesky all week. He wrote this very funny take on X: “Bluesky really is the weirdest social media site ever created. It’s like the most toxic liberals built themselves a prison and then locked themselves up in it and now have 10 riots a day. Why would you do that lol.” It’s fascinating how the next tech wave is shaking out politically. Electric, self-driving cars that will make less air pollution are being coded as right-wing (more on that later). And using artificial intelligence in school, which undermines the entire existing knowledge economy and might turn our brains into a banana puree, is being coded as left-wing. Very curious outcome. The anti-knowledge, anti-testing movement has gone so far that it is now comfortable letting kids just not think at all. Full brain death is the most equitable. So the student copy-pastes the essay prompt into Claude, then copy-pastes the response into an email to the professor, who copy-pastes it back into Claude for a grade. Education: SOLVED. Playing field? Leveled. Moving on!

Note the accurate characterization of BlueHair above!

*An article in the National Review condemns yet another anti-Israel action of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “Mayor Mamdani’s shameful condemnation of a Manhattan synagogue.”

On Tuesday night, the preschool attached to Park East Synagogue closed early because staff could not ensure a safe dismissal. Outside, protesters had gathered to demonstrate against an aliyah event, a gathering where Jews could learn about fulfilling the commandment of living in Israel. Some of the rioters chanted antisemitic slogans; some carried Hezbollah flags. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had just issued an official statement explaining, in essence, that even though he would begrudgingly allow police protection, the synagogue really had it coming.

Mamdani’s office said he was “deeply opposed” to the event because it allegedly promoted property in West Bank settlements, which the statement called “illegal under international law.” That statement was wrong in three ways.

First of all, Mamdani’s job is not to pronounce on international affairs, and second, promoting moving to Israel (even to the West Bank, where some Jewish settlements exist “legally”, is not itself a violation of international law.  Mamdani doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  But I digress: Mamdani spoke out of turn in several ways:

First, it defies the logic of basic governance. When a crowd targets a house of worship, the mayor’s job is not to explain why the crowd has a point. It is to protect the people inside. That duty does not depend on whether the mayor approves of the sermon, the speaker, or the politics of the people attending. It extends to synagogue members, guests, staff, clergy, and the children who could not get home. Security is not a favor. It is the job.

Second, it violates the Constitution. Government officials speak with public authority. Their words signal enforcement priorities, invite public pressure, and chill protected activity. That is why the First Amendment treats official hostility differently from private opinion. A mayor may criticize Israeli policy, condemn settlements, and oppose any foreign-policy position he likes. What he may not do is use the authority of his office to declare that a lawful, religiously significant event at a synagogue is morally suspect because of the viewpoint or identity commitments of the Jews inside.

The Supreme Court has been clear on this. In Rosenberger v. Rector (1995), it held that the government may not treat speech differently based on the viewpoint of the speaker — and a mayor who singles out a synagogue event because it reflects Zionist commitments is doing exactly that. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), it recognized that official condemnation can chill protected expression without any formal prohibition. In NRA v. Vullo (2025), decided last year, the Court reaffirmed unanimously that officials may not use public authority to pressure others into punishing disfavored speech. The Constitution is not fooled by informality. What a mayor cannot do by ordinance, he cannot do by statement directed at a religious institution while a mob gathers outside it.

Aliyah is not unlawful because Mamdani dislikes Zionism. For most Jews, connection to Israel is not a detachable political position. It is bound up with history, peoplehood, theology, and memory. In Masterpiece Cakeshop (2018), the Supreme Court held that official hostility toward religious motivation itself constitutes a constitutional violation, regardless of whether formal action follows. Mamdani’s statement, issued as his constituents could not get their children home safely from synagogue, fits that pattern precisely. The government does not get to decide which Jewish gatherings are acceptable and which deserve condemnation. And the harm here was not abstract. A Jewish preschool closed early because administrators were worried about getting the children home from school safely. That is what chilled religious life looks like in practice.

Tuesday night was not an aberration. It was a pattern producing a result: A Jewish preschool closed early, and the mayor’s first move was to explain the grievance of the people outside. When a public official uses his office to condemn Jewish institutions at the very moments those institutions need protection, courts and citizens are entitled to ask whether the government is acting neutrally. Under Monell v. Department of Social Services (1978), a city bears direct liability when an equal protection violation flows from official policy or custom rather than individual misconduct. That is what a pattern of deliberate, documented choices looks like. He is building the case against the city himself.

Lastly, consider the law Mamdani actually invoked. International law gives the mayor of New York no license to condemn lawful synagogue activity. And even on his own theory, he was wrong. The provisions most often cited in this debate come from Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which regulates the conduct of an occupying power — deportation, forcible transfers, and state-directed population movement. They say nothing about private individuals relocating voluntarily. They say nothing about a Manhattan synagogue hosting a discussion of aliyah. Invoking them to justify official condemnation of a Jewish community event is not legal reasoning. It is absurd.

This is a substantial extract because I dislike Mamdani and consider him an antisemite. Second, I want to show that he’s sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong—and yet the Jews who voted for him apparently love it! Finally, he’s positioning himself, I think, for higher office in the party: perhaps a Representative or, Ceiling Cat forbid, a Senator. It would be a sad day if a Jew-hater like him wins a Democratic seat in Congress.

*The Supreme Court of the state of Virginia dealt a blow to Democrats yesterday when they struck down a voter-approved redistricting (read “gerrymandering”) measure that would have given the Democrats several extra seats in the House of Representatives.

Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle.

The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterm elections with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out more red districts across the country.

Congressional maps have for generations been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, mid-decade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.

After the Virginia map passed in a statewide referendum late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps, which will favor Republicans.

Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.

Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority, including worries about the economy, the unpopular war with Iran, high gas prices and Mr. Trump’s sagging approval ratings.

Gerrymandering is gerrymandering, whether it’s based on party lines or ethnicity.  In my view, it’s always wrong, whether when practiced by Democrats or Republicans.  Mathematicians have devised ways to divide up states into roughly equal population districts without this kind of geographical contortion. The states should be using them, but of course they won’t because state governments have their own interests.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili abhors a mess like nature abhors a vacuum:

Hili: Why is garbage so irritating?
Andrzej: Because amid the world’s chaos, tidiness creates a sense of order.

In Polish:

Hili: Dlaczego śmieci są tak irytujące?
Ja: Ponieważ w chaosie świata schludność daje wrażenie ładu.

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

From Stacy:

From CinEmma:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

I believe I missed this post from Masih reporting three Iranian protestors hanged by the regime the other day:

From Elizabeth Warren. I’ve never liked her breathless progressivism, as I don’t think she’s sincere. Here, knowing that Spirit Airlines was ging under, she pushes it further down.

I’ve warned for months that a @JetBlue–@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares.@JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.

From Luana; I’ve added a reply for context. However, eventually robotic devices will replace the hands of surgeons in most operations (or so I think):

Two from my feed. First, a possible source for Michael Jackson’s dancing

I wonder how they got the bird to display in such close quarters. . .

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Three from Matthew on Sir David’s 100th birthday yesterday:

Sir David Attenborough turns 100 today 🎉💯 A champion for planet earth, guiding us through jungles, oceans and other wonders of our planet. 🌍 #HappyBirthdayDavidAttenborough

— Simon's Cat (@simonscatofficial.bsky.social) 2026-05-08T13:02:42.452Z

Commiserations to Sir David Attenborough on his 100th birthday, as he is now too old to be allowed to play with LEGO.

— ianVisits (@ianvisits.co.uk) 2026-05-08T05:39:35.109Z

x

— Xim123 (@xim123.bsky.social) 2026-05-08T08:14:37.862Z

And a photo of Matthew with The Great Century Old man:

. . . and a photo of Matthew with the Great Century-Old Man. They know each other because Matthew helped Attenborough update life on Earth (see below the photo).

From the intro to Life on Earth:

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 8, 2026 • 4:45 am

Welcome to Friday, May 8, 2026, and National Have a Coke Day. That link explains the date:

John Stith Pemberton invented a cola syrup at his Eagle Drug and Chemical house in Columbus, Georgia. He brought it to Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta and mixed it with carbonated water to make the first cola drink, and it was introduced to the world on May 8, 1886. Both Columbus and Atlanta have since laid claim to the creation of the drink. It was originally sold as a health drink or medicine, for getting rid of hangovers and headaches.

I believe it was M. F. K. Fisher who said that if Coke and onions were things that were very rare and precious, people would pay very high prices to get them.

Have a coupon, which Wikipedia labels, “Believed to be the first coupon ever, this ticket for a free glass of Coca-Cola was first distributed in 1888 to help promote the drink. By 1913, the company had redeemed 8.5 million tickets.”

Coca-Cola Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s also National Coconut Cream Pie Day, National Give Someone a Cupcake Day, No Socks Day, and Victory in Europe Day. A brief history of VE Day:

Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, had committed suicide on 30 April [1945] during the Battle of Berlin, and Germany’s surrender was authorised by his successor, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg Government. The act of military surrender was first signed at 02:41 on 7 May at the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) in Reims. A slightly modified document, considered the definitive German Instrument of Surrender, was signed on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin at 22:43 local time.

The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 23.01 hours Central European time on 8 May 1945…

— German Instrument of Surrender, Article 2,

Here’s a two-minute video about VE Day:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TURNS 100 TODAY! As reader Pyers emailed me, “Well, he made it!  Probably the most influential person working in the natural history and biological fields since the war.  Not a scientist himself, although IIRC his degree is in zoology, but so many current professors and academics in the UK and around the world acknowledge their debt to him in spawning their interest in the natural world through his pioneering and frankly astonishing TV shows.” There’s a celebratory article at the BBC, which includes this:

Sir David Attenborough has said he has been “completely overwhelmed” by the messages he has received ahead of his 100th birthday.

The veteran broadcaster and environmentalist celebrates the milestone on Friday, with a special concert planned in the evening at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

In an audio message released on Thursday, Sir David said: “I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas.

“I have been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings, from pre-school groups to care home residents, and countless individuals and families of all ages.”

He added: “I simply can’t reply to each of you separately, but I’d like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages, and wish those of you who have planned your own local events: Have a very happy day.”

Friday evening’s show at the Royal Albert Hall is the climax of a week of special events and broadcast programming in honour of Sir David, who was born in 1926 and joined the BBC in 1952.

Presenter Kirsty Young will host the special 90-minute concert celebrating Sir David’s life, which will air on BBC One and iPlayer from 20:30 BST on Friday.

Pyers says he’ll be raising a glass to Sir David, and so will I. As far as I can see, his life was an unalloyed good, and he simply inundated us with knowledge about the natural world. Happy Birthday, sir David!

*From the lead article in It’s Noon in Israel, “IDF vs. Mossad: how to defeat them.” The IDF’s goals differ from Mossad’s.

It’s Thursday, May 7, and a severe dispute has erupted—and still persists—between the army and the Mossad over the ultimate goal of the war in Iran. The IDF views the removal of uranium from Iranian territory as the ultimate achievement. The Mossad, however, believes the objective is toppling the regime. Even today, contrary to the retrospective cover-your-ass culture prevalent in our region, the Mossad insists on this. While the IDF settled for the amorphous definition of “creating the conditions to topple the regime,” the Mossad simply dropped the first four words.

From here, reality splits into two perspectives, sometimes entirely opposed. Senior IDF officials are intensely frustrated by the American decision not to seize the enriched uranium in a military operation. Thus, Operation Roaring Lion was halted with almost no improvement in the struggle against the Iranian nuclear program compared to Operation Rising Lion. Uranium, uranium, uranium, they chant. Take it, and you’ve erased the nuclear program.

The second approach argues: What good does it do to extract it via an operation or an agreement? If the regime stands, and even if tons of 3 percent enriched uranium remain, you’ve only set them back a few years—a blink of an eye in geopolitical terms. A regime without sanctions will be richer, more despicable, and will want to destroy Israel just as before. Only regime change will uproot the plans for Israel’s destruction from the source. This contrasts with senior defense establishment figures who would gladly welcome the liberation of tens of millions of Iranians from the yoke of dictatorship, but for whom the priority remains strictly Israel first.

The practical expression of this lies in a hypothetical question: What happens if President Trump tells Israel, “You have a green light for one operation”? Most of the defense establishment would say thank you and send the Air Force to raid the uranium stockpiles. The Mossad, one might guess, would support destroying energy plants and refineries, literally plunging Iran into total darkness. This would drastically accelerate the population’s rebellion process. Their anger threshold has already surpassed the levels recorded during the January riots, but simultaneously, the fear threshold has also spiked. When there is no electricity—and with starvation expected to begin in Iran in two months—that wall of fear will collapse.

Which goal is more ambitious? At first glance, toppling the regime seems like a monumental task, while destroying the uranium appears to be a localized, manageable event. But history suggests otherwise: regimes have fallen throughout history, but no country has ever willingly surrendered or lost its enriched nuclear material while the government survived. As the old Talmudic proverb goes, the dilemma is whether to take a “short path that is long”—a quick tactical strike that fails to solve the root problem—or a “long path that is short”—the arduous task of regime change that permanently removes the threat.

I’m for regime toppling, though that may require American “boots on the ground”, which won’t happen.  The last paragraph above is telling: we won’t get permanent cessation of nuclear enrichment until there’s a new regime in Iran. If Trump is holding out for “no nukes,” he’s holding out for regime change (though he doesn’t seem to realize it).

*But if you’re feeling optimistic that Iran will be driven to its knees, read the WaPo exclusive, “U.S. intelligence says that Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months” (article archived here).

A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.

The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.

Iran retainsabout 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

Trump painted a rosier picture in Oval Office remarks on Wednesday, saying of Iran: “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had.”

Three current and one former U.S. official confirmed the outlines of the intelligence analysis, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Asked for comment, a senior U.S. intelligence official emphasized the blockade’s impact. “The President’s blockade is inflicting real, compounding damage — severing trade, crushing revenue, and accelerating systemic economic collapse. Iran’s military has been badly degraded, its navy destroyed, and its leaders are in hiding,” the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said in a statement. “What’s left is the regime’s appetite for civilian suffering — starving its own people to prolong a war it has already lost.”

It looks as if Trump wouldn’t be able to wait out the three to four months required to inflict severe damage on Iran, for Americans are getting more and more tired of the war and are beefing at the gas pump. I can wait it out, of course, but I don’t drive much and don’t make my living burning fossil fuels.  If the report is accurate, we are in for a long war, which Niall Ferguson has been predicting in The Free Press, and reiterated today.

*Trump has waffled again, suspending U.S. defense of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This coincides with a new American peace proposal that is being evaluated by Iran, while Iran’s own proposal is being evaluated by the U.S.

Iran said on Wednesday that it was reviewing an American proposal to end the war, a day after President Trump abruptly paused a new U.S. military effort to protect ships in the Strait of Hormuz, citing “great progress” in talks with Tehran.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said that his government had not yet given its response to Pakistan, which has been acting as a mediator between Tehran and Washington. Neither he nor Mr. Trump said what the U.S. proposal contained.

“After finalizing its considerations, Iran will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Mr. Baghaei told the semiofficial Iranian news agency ISNA.

Mr. Trump, speaking at a Mother’s Day event at the White House, said the Iranians “want to make a deal; they want to negotiate.”

“We’re not going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and we’re not going to let that happen, and we won’t let that happen,” Mr. Trump said. “So we’re dealing with people that want to make a deal very much, and we’ll see whether or not they can make a deal that’s satisfactory to us.”

Though Mr. Trump said he was pausing the effort to safeguard ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military was continuing to enforce a blockade on Iranian ports aimed at strangling the Iranian economy.

From the second link:

The United States was waiting on Thursday for Iran to convey its response to the latest American proposal to end the war, after public messages from top-ranking officials on both sides suggested a burst of behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity.

Business leaders, consumers, politicians, shipping companies and many others around the world have also been watching closely for signs of a breakthrough. The conflict, which has dragged on into a third month and prompted Iran and the United States to implement rival blockades around the Strait of Hormuz, has choked off a major oil transit route, wreaking havoc on global supply chains and causing energy prices to spike.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said late Wednesday that his government was reviewing an American response to a 14-point Iranian proposal to end the war and would give its response to Pakistan, a key mediator. Neither Tehran nor Washington has said what the U.S. response entails.

“The exchange of messages through the Pakistani intermediary is ongoing, and reviews of the exchanged texts are continuing,” Mr. Baghaei told IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster.

Earlier in the day, another Iranian official had dismissed a reported proposal to end the war as a “list of American wishes.”

The NYT says that Trump’s reversal on escorting ships was attributable to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who considered the project unfeasible and likely to exacerbat the war, denying U.S. warplanes access to Saudi airspace. Meanwhile, more U.S. troops are in the Middle East: 50,000 of them. The soap opera goes on, with hard-line Islamists on one side and a possibly demented authoritarian on the other.

*The Free Press has an article about detransitioning. It will anger many, but it’s time air stories like this rather than just go along with the gender activists. The article’s called “I de-transitioned.  My body will never be the same,” and the author is Joni Skinner, a natal male who transitioned and then went back to his birth sex, but not without permanent injury.

I’m a gay man who testified last month against what has been called a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-rights bill. I was there because I believe the proposed law could silence the one kind of help that could have saved me from years of anguish and a future permanently marked by what was done to me as a child.

. . . From my earliest awareness, I knew I was not like other kids—and certainly not like other boys. I moved and spoke in ways others called “girly.” I loved dress‑up games, butterflies, and anything pink. I was obsessed with The Princess and the Frog and looked up to Disney princesses more than any male character. I also knew, from a very young age, that I liked boys. I didn’t have words for it then, and in the world I grew up in, it was considered sinful and shameful. But the feeling existed long before I had any name for it.

. . .When I was 13, I told my mom I thought I might be transgender. Her reaction was one of confusion and fear. She had spent years working nonstop to keep us afloat and taking me to therapy appointments for my autism. She had watched me be bullied, and now my tutor, someone she trusted, told her there could be a medical explanation and treatment for me.

My tutor told us about the gender services program where she was receiving treatment and explained to my mom they were experts who could figure out what was really going on with me. It was four hours away, so my mom and I made the drive.

And this is what “affirmative therapy” does:

When we arrived, I sat down with the therapist who was the program manager for the hospital’s gender services program. She asked me to tell her everything, so I shared every worry I had about growing up gay in my community. I told her that I was afraid I would never make friends, because for as long as I could remember most kids wanted nothing to do with me. I told her I was terrified of God’s judgment and of spending my teenage years surrounded by people who hated who I was.

Rather than helping me work through any of it, she affirmed all of my fears. She said she could see why I was afraid of the discrimination I would face. She told me that nowhere would be a good place to be gay for someone like me, because I had a “feminine essence” and gay men wanted men, and that just wasn’t who I was. She said I could transition and fly under the radar as a woman in my hometown. And I could find a man to love me that way.

She then handed me a gender dysphoria checklist, which I filled out on my own. It asked me to rate how I felt about my body, gender expression, and puberty. One question asked about erections: I checked that I was “totally uncomfortable” with them, and then wrote in the margins “I don’t have any yet,” with a little smiley face. I felt embarrassed and out of my depth, pulled into a world of adult decisions I didn’t understand.y.

After that appointment, the therapist totaled my score. I got a 53 out of 60, which she described as an open-and-shut case. I was definitely transgender, she said.

She then told my mom that if I matured through male puberty, the prejudice and worsening mental health would be so crushing that around 60 percent of kids in my position would choose to kill themselves rather than live that way. Since then, my mom and I have discussed that appointment at length, and she still remembers that warning. It’s still so emotional for her that she rarely talks about it. My mom had watched me struggle for years—coming home from school in tears, and withdrawing more and more into myself. And here was a professional, in a clinical setting, telling her that the alternative to medical transition was her child’s death. My mom says she was so ultra-focused on the suicide risk that it became her top concern: She just wanted to keep me alive.

Yep, the suicide warning, which turns out to be completely erroneous. New studies show that there’s no more chance of someone in this state committing suicide than someone who doesn’t transition committing suicide. At any rate Joni got puberty blockers and then female hormones, and was apparently not told she’d lose her ability to have orgasms, which is almost always true in such cases.  There were all kinds of debilitating side effects, and Joni decided to “detransition” to a male biology. Only then did he discover the doubts that doctors had about “affirmative care” (remember about 80+% of people with gender dysphoria who don’t “transition” turn out gay, with no medical side effects).

*How fast is the Universe expanding? We know that it is from several pieces of data, most notably the red shift of light, but a new paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics, discussed by the Wall Street Journal, details not only how fast it’s expanding, but how miniscule the expansion is. Don’t ask me to explain the paper, which is above my pay grade; I put a link above so those with the relevant expertise can read it.  From the WSJ:

Scientists know our universe is expanding. Now they have a better idea how fast.

Cosmologists who study the universe know it began with the big bang and has been expanding from a single point ever since. Even about 14 billion years later, this expansion moves objects like galaxies in it farther away from us. Scientists try to determine the rate of expansion because it can help tell us how old the universe is.

An international gathering of experts last year in Switzerland confirmed that objects recede faster as they become more distant. For instance, a galaxy 3 million light-years away will move away from us by 46 miles per second, the scientists calculated. A galaxy at twice that distance would be moving away at about 90 miles per second.

I’ve seen this compared to blowing up a balloon.  As it expands, the distance between two dots on the balloon will increase faster the farther they were apart initially, even at a constant rate of intlation. But look at this (bolding is mine):

The rate, detailed recently in a study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is the most precise ever calculated. It is also mind-bogglingly small: If you took an empty space the size of a football field, and it was expanding at the rate our universe is, it would take more than 1 million years to expand by a single centimeter, said study author Caroline Huang, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The calculation has called into question a major scientific theory. It is about 10% faster than what the standard model of cosmology—essentially our theory of how everything works in the universe—says the rate should be.

This means there is probably something missing from the standard model, or a force we don’t fully understand, said Stefano Casertano, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and study co-author. Dark matter, the invisible cosmic glue that holds galaxies together, and dark energy, which pushes them apart, are two likely culprits.

The discrepancy also raises questions about what experts thought they knew about the end times.

Currently, a prevailing theory is that the universe will keep expanding until it experiences “heat death”—stars will lose all their fuel and die in about 100 trillion years or so, leaving everything cold and dark, according to another study co-author, Dillon Brout, from Boston University.

“But now that we know there’s a crack in our theory of what is governing the universe at the largest scales, we can’t make any predictions at all for its fate,” Brout said. “It both keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning.”

I can’t quite wrap my head around the fat that distant galaxies are receding so quickly although the universe is expanding so slowly. It must be because the Universe is so big. As for what it’s expanding into, well, physicists say either that we don’t know, or the whole question is nonsensical.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is shy:

Sharon: A foreign car in the orchard.
Hili: I’m heading back home, I’m not up for talking to unfamiliar people today.

In Polish:

Szaron: Obcy samochód w sadzie.
Hili: Wracam do domu, nie jestem dziś w nastroju do rozmów z obcymi ludźmi.

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

From Meow Incorporated:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From David; which diretion are you driving?

From Masih; another Iranian protestor executed, this time for “spying for Israel”:

Here’s the latest toll of deaths in Gaza, and you can get constant updates by clicking here. Maarten Boudry tells me that, as best we know, Aizenberg’s figures are reliable:

The California arsonist admired Luigi Mangione, as many misguided blockheads do, and that may be why he set the fire.  As Niall Ferguson wrote:

The militant left is on the march, with a shockingly high share (one in four) of young, “very liberal” voters saying political violence can sometimes be justified. Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, who is accused of intentionally starting the Pacific Palisades fire, killing 12 people and destroying thousands of homes, was inspired by slogans such as “free Luigi Mangione” and “lets take down all the billionaires.” As he told investigators, “We’re basically being enslaved by [the rich].”

From Barry: a sly horse with a sense of humor:

This horse has a one-of-a-kind sense of humor. Watch as it teases the cat and then puts on an innocent face when caught in the act.

— Digital Brain (@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social) 2026-05-06T13:24:03.000Z

One from my feed; cats!

One I reposted at The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, the plant is really attacking the galls that harbor wasps:

Botanical parasitism of an insect by a parasitic plant: Current Biology http://www.cell.com/current-biol…

— Scott P. Egan (@scottpegan.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T11:36:30.436Z

Look at all those satellites!

Incredible video made using images taken by the Artemis II crew shows satellites in orbit around Earth. This is at 30x speed x.com/i/status/205…

— Jacob Aron (@jjaron.bsky.social) 2026-05-06T20:22:07.170Z

Thusday: Hili dialogue

May 7, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, May 7, 2026, and both the National Day of Prayer and the National Day of Reason. What is one to do? I vote for the latter. that it’s also National Cosmopolitan Day, celebrating the made famous by the t.v. show “Sex and the City”, an episode of which appears below. The video features not only the drink and a rich guy trying to pick up Samantha, but also DONALD TRUMP, for crying out loud. I’m pleased at having found it!

Wikipedia describes the drink as “a cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice. The traditional garnish is a lime slice but a twist or wedge can be used instead. Other variations substitute lemon or orange.” I’ve never had one, but the ladies on the show were drinking them constantly.

It’s also National Roast Leg of Lamb Day, and National Tourism Day.

I have only a few scattered readers’ wildlife photos, so please send in any good photos you have.

There’s a Google Doodle celebrating K-pop, an dire genre of music; you can see the YouTube animation by clicking on the screenshot below:

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

Da Nooz:

*Suicides first:  The government released the text of a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein and found by his cellmate. Here’s the image from the WSJ credited to “the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York”:

From the NYT:

A federal judge has released a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein that was sealed for years as part of the criminal case of his cellmate.

“They investigated me for month — FOUND NOTHING!!!” the note begins, adding that the result was charges going back many years.

“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continued.

“Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!” the note reads.

“NO FUN,” it concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”

Mr. Epstein’s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he discovered the note in July 2019 after Mr. Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth wrapped around his neck. Mr. Epstein survived that incident, but he was found dead weeks later at age 66 in the now shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.

The note was made public on Wednesday by Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, N.Y., who oversaw the cellmate’s case. The judge acted after The New York Times petitioned the court last Thursday to unseal the document and published an article in which Mr. Tartaglione described the note and how it came into his possession.

The Times has not authenticated the note, which was placed on the court docket Wednesday evening. The note repeats a saying — “bust out cryin” — that Mr. Epstein wrote in emails. It included another phrase — “No fun” — that Mr. Epstein also used in emails, as well as in a separate note found in his jail cell at the time of his death.

This was on the evening news last night, and they added that it appeared to be in Epstein’s handwriting. The news made a big deal of it, but I don’t see why. All it does, if real, is support the notion that Epstein killed himself, and that won’t add much to investigations of the victims of his enterprise.

*Obituaries: Ted Turner died at 87. How many of today’s young folk even know who he was, or how influential he was?

Ted Turner, the swashbuckling media titan who helped shape the modern cable-television industry, ushering in the era of 24-hour news with CNN while building other major networks that bear his name, died Wednesday at age 87, according to a spokesman.

Adventurous and impulsive, Turner made a mark in many walks of life. He was a sailor, a conservationist who was one of the largest U.S. landowners, and a major philanthropist who helped set a model for generous giving by billionaires.

He was best known for turning the billboard-advertising company he inherited from his father into Turner Broadcasting System, an Atlanta-based television and movie giant that he eventually sold in 1995 to Time Warner. Turner joined the company and stayed with it through its ill-fated January 2000 merger with America Online before leaving in 2003.

As Turner battled rival media titans like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone in the 1980s and 1990s, they collectively brought cable TV into the mainstream, fostering an explosion of investment, new channels and consumer subscriptions.

At TBS, he seized on breakthroughs in satellite technology to turn a local Atlanta TV station into a national “superstation.” That network and TNT became cable TV counterparts to what were then the big three broadcast networks—ABC, CBS and NBC.

Starting in the 1980s, CNN redefined how breaking news is covered on television, with round-the-clock updates and live reports during major events like the first Iraq war in 1990, the O.J. Simpson murder trial and natural disasters. Programs like “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire” were early signs that talk shows and commentary would have a major role in cable TV.

. . .He at turns kept a bear and an alligator as pets, was adamantly antireligion, and, as he admitted himself, had a knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

Turner said in a 2018 interview with CBS that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder that he said made him tired and forgetful. Turner, labeled “Captain Outrageous” for his erratic behavior, had once been thought to have bipolar disorder. He told CBS that was a misdiagnosis, and that his confusion and the “euphoric highs and dark lows” he was known for were symptoms of the dementia.

From the WSJ

You might recall that he was also once married to Jane Fonda.

*It’s Noon in Israel predicts that “The Islamic Republic ‘will not survive 2026’.”

It’s Wednesday, May 6, and according to my colleague at Channel 12, Barak Ravid, within 48 hours, the U.S. expects Iran’s response to a framework that brings both sides closer to a deal than at any point during the war. The proposed pact trades an Iranian uranium enrichment freeze for U.S. sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, and a mutually reopened Strait of Hormuz. This framework is strictly an interim measure; if the final negotiations collapse, a return to all-out war is entirely possible.

Still, it is unfortunate timing. Last night, a very senior Israeli intelligence source estimated that if the status quo blockade remains, the Islamic Republic “will not survive 2026.” Predicting the complete collapse of a half-century-old theocracy within the next eight months sounds like a bold gamble—until you look at the math.

The Iranian rial is in freefall, crashing to 1.8 million to the U.S.dollar. That is a 25 percent plunge from the exchange rate that triggered mass protests just this past January—and it’s only getting worse. To prevent mass starvation, the government is propping up a heavily subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar just to import basic food supplies. The wider economy is faring no better. Even before the blockade, non-oil trade had plummeted by 50 percent. The much-touted economic “pivot to China” has failed entirely, trade is down 80 percent, and regional hubs for evading sanctions, like the UAE, have slammed their doors shut. Two million Iranians have lost their jobs already, and that number is expected to skyrocket.

But the most devastating blow has landed on the regime’s lifeblood: oil.

Right now, Iran has 184 million barrels of oil sitting uselessly on the water. Roughly 60 million of those barrels are physically trapped inside the blockade zone across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The other 124 million are anchored near China, but buyers are too terrified of secondary U.S.sanctions to touch them. Between stalled oil and frozen petrochemical exports, the blockade is draining the regime of an estimated $400 million to $500 million every single day.

Worse, this blockade is rapidly evolving into an existential crisis for Iran’s energy sector. Once Iran’s onshore and floating storage tanks reach 100 percent capacity—which is expected within 15 to 60 days—the state will be forced to physically shut in active oil wells. For mature oil fields, capping wells amounts to a death sentence, as the underground pressure required to extract the oil dissipates. If this happens, Iran could permanently lose 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day of production capacity. That is $9 billion to $15 billion in annual revenue wiped out.

Iran currently has a surplus of men with guns and a deficit of loyalty. The only things bridging that gap are fear and cash—and when the latter runs out, the former loses its edge. In a desperate bid for survival, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun cannibalizing the state, hoarding whatever liquidity remains at the cost of the rest of the system. Some regular army units and police forces have now gone unpaid for months.

These are not the ingredients for a peaceful transition. The regime will inevitably resort to massacres to keep its grip on power, but there comes a point where desperation will simply override fear. The ultimate result remains the same: the death of the Islamic Republic.

The end of 2026 is far, far away, and I think, given the pressure bearing on Trump to end the war, Segal is in my view overoptimistic.  I wish he were right, but I’m not confident.

*More religious mishisgass from The Free Press, which is constantly touting religion: “These two Catholics see signs of God in UFOs“. One of the Catholics is, for crying out loud, Ross Douthat, described as one of “the most thoughtful and provocative writers in America”.  Provocative, yes, thoughtful, well, I don’t think so.The other Catholic (see below) is “perhaps the only scholar of religion who has been taken to see the possible physical remains of an alien starship.” (There’s also a 44-minute video.) The interviewer is Will Rahm:

As we close out this four-part series about what everyday Americans should think about UFOs, we are joined by two people who have put a lot of thought into the religious aspect of all this: Diana Pasulka and Ross Douthat.

Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the author of American Cosmic, which examined UFOs as both a religious and nuts-and-bolts technological phenomenon. She has visited the scene of a supposed UFO crash site in New Mexico looking for the elusive hard evidence of intelligent life beyond our planet. A practicing Catholic, Pasulka also combed through Vatican archives looking for clues as to what these things might be. Her new book, out in July, is The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny..

. . .WR: What does the Catholic Church make of UFOs?

DP: Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. So they do look at nonhuman intelligence all the time. There are apparitions of the Virgin Mary. People have experiences that they would consider to be angel events. There are saints who levitate. And so the Catholic Church assesses these on a case-by-case basis. And they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence, be it extraterrestrial or interdimensional. And this is called the preternatural.

Pope Benedict XVI has actually written about this. His categories are natural, supernatural, or preternatural. And the supernatural is of God, things that are of divine origin, which Catholics believe in. Natural is natural: what we see is the world, science, things like that. But then there’s a category that’s called the preternatural. And the preternatural has to do with things that are not necessarily from God but are in between.

“Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. . . they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence.” —Diana Pasulka

That category would include the Virgin Mary apparitions that are not yet approved by the church. The preternatural has to do with angels and fallen angels, both of which the church believes in. A lot of American Catholics today would say, “yeah, sure, angels exist,” but it’s not like they encounter an angel or see an angel. But this category of UFOs then opens up this idea of perhaps people are having experiences that are preternatural. This falls directly within Catholic theology.

RD: Most Catholics are pretty comfortable with a set of categories that are real but invisible. And it would be a shift, let’s say, if the church said, “And by the way, some of these preternatural beings can show up on Air Force cameras.” That would not be impossible, but it would be a different mode of thinking about these things than most Catholics have right now.

It goes on, but the gist is that both Catholics don’t see UFOs as a problem for their faith because they fit into the preternatural/supernatural spectrum.  And they are pre-programmed to believe things with little or no evidence, anyway.  What I most wanted to know (and I didn’t listen to the podcast) was what Pasulka saw at the UFO “crash site.” And how did they know it was a UFO crash site? And what about those possible physical remains of an alien starship.”  What were they? It would also be fun to ask the Catholics why Jesus didn’t contact the aliens, who would then be Christians.

*When the NYT’s Bret Stephens writes a column called “A Democrat who makes me listen,” I’m going to read it, as I’m still groping in the dark for a good Democratic Presidential candidate.  Stephens suggests one.

This should be a season of electoral hope for Democrats. Donald Trump’s disapproval ratings are reaching new highs. The war with Iran is overwhelmingly unpopular. As of early May, Polymarket gives the party a 51 percent chance of winning the Senate and an 83 percent chance of taking the House.

But Americans still harbor deep doubts about Democrats: A recent Pew survey shows only 39 percent have a favorable view of the party, against 59 percent who don’t. And Democrats are deeply divided about whether to steer centerward or move further left.

Jake Auchincloss — it’s pronounced AW-kin-kloss — is one of the most thoughtful voices in this conversation. The 38-year-old Harvard and M.I.T. graduate and Afghan war veteran, where he served as a Marine officer, is now in his third term as the representative from Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District, which stretches from the wealthy Boston suburb of Newton to the working-class city of Fall River.

Politically, he’s often described as moderate, even somewhat right-leaning when it comes to fraught issues like Israel. But as he made clear over two in-depth interviews with me, his thinking is not neatly categorizable on a simple centrist-to-progressive x-axis.

What Auchincloss and other Majority Democrats have in common is a determination to meet voters where they are. That includes acknowledging mistakes like the Covid-era school closures and the Biden administration’s lax border enforcement. Mainly, though, it’s about championing working- and middle-class concerns against the interests of what he calls “an ossified American aristocracy.” And it’s about restoring an old type of patriotism, based on foundational American ideals, against the blood-and-soil patriotism championed by the likes of JD Vance.

There’s then an interview with Auchincloss, and you can see that the man is deeply smart and thoughtful.  I have space for only two Q&As:

Stephens: You’re aware of the need for deep capital markets, for a culture of risk-taking and innovation. If you were having a conversation with a young Democratic Socialist, explain to that person where he or she goes wrong.

Auchincloss: Free enterprise is a core way that you make manifest our thesis as a party that every individual has inherent dignity and equality and that they should be able to pursue their happiness in the world. Because if you want to go start a socialist commune, you can. Go to a socialist country and try to start a capitalist commune, it doesn’t work out so well.

So what’s a Democratic case for how capitalism should work? To me, it’s an understanding that markets work, markets can be impaired by government overregulation, and markets can be impaired by corporate monopolization. And while that is pretty obvious to most economists, it’s somehow become a partisan football in a way that’s just not productive. . .

. . . Stephens: You have been, much more so than most of your caucus, outspoken in your defense of Israel’s right to defend itself. Do you worry that the Democrats are becoming an anti-Israel party? And do you worry about the antisemitic current running in at least some parts of the progressive left?

Auchincloss: Yes, about the antisemitic current running in parts of the Democratic left, and the antisemitic current running on the MAGA right. We have a horseshoe phenomenon here. Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are much more influential in their party than any antisemitic hashtags are in the Democratic Party, and we should be cleareyed about that. It’s unacceptable on both sides, and it needs to be called out by political leaders of their own parties when it happens on both sides.

. . .Stephens: Let’s pivot to foreign policy: Iran.

Auchincloss: This president owns the fact that we’ve replaced one hard-line regime with a younger, more-hard-line regime. We have yielded to Iran a new strategic deterrent in the Strait of Hormuz. The highly enriched uranium is still at large. And the regime has been given the ideological tailwinds of having been seen globally withstanding more than 13,000 strikes and surviving.

I think we come out of this in a position where Iran is operationally degraded, no doubt, but strategically stronger. And this president is thereby the first president in American history to single-handedly start and lose a war by himself.

Auchincloss’s “solution,” though, assuming that we do lose the war in his sense, isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s this: “we have to have a point of view about how to build back from strategic failure. My core argument would be that it has to be based on knitting together NATO with the Abraham Accords through energy, defense and infrastructure.”  And how, exactly, is that going to prevent Iran from promoting terrorism in the Middle East and keep it from getting nuclear weapons? Yes, I’ll keep an eye on Auchincloss, but he doesn’t stand out to me yet.

*Finally, from the UPI’s odd news, we have a man pulling a ten-ton bus with his neck:

A 49-year-old athlete from Aruba earned his 10th Guinness World Records title by pulling a bus a distance of more than 65 feet using his neck.

Egmond Molina used a rope around his neck to pull the 21,737-pound bus on Jan. 9, and Guinness World Records has now confirmed he officially broke the record for the heaviest vehicle pulled by the neck.

The previous record of 17,769.26 pounds was set by Ukrainian Dmytro Hrunskyi in 2024.

“With the rope compressing my airway, I must generate force while carefully controlling my breathing under intense strain. It becomes a psychological battle to remain composed while the body is under severe stress,” Molina told Guinness World Records.

The strongman’s previous Guinness World Records titles include the fastest 20-meter bus pull with one finger, 33.32 seconds; the fastest 20-meter tram pull with teeth, 39.9 seconds; the fastest hot water bottle burst, 2.87 seconds; and the most crown cap bottles opened with both hands in 30 seconds, 6 bottles.

Molina said his records are dedicated to his children, Nigel, Egmond Junior, Benjamin and Adelinda, as well as the youth of Aruba.

Here’s the feat:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is trying to get rid of mosquitoes one at a time:

Hili: What are you after?
Szaron: I’m trying to cut down the mosquito population.

In Polish:

Hili: Na co polujesz?
Szaron: Próbuję zredukować populację komarów.

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

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Meow Incorporated (remember that Newton invented the catflap):

From Things with Faces; some happy eggs:

From Masih, calling attention to the very sick Nobel Peace Laureate in Iranian custody. As I suspected, Iran is trying to kill her without making it obvious.

From Luana; a panacea:

Emma’s solution to the hantavirus ship epidemic:

An appropriate response to Brenton’s suggestion:

One from my feed; the performative nature of land acknowledgements (this references Canada):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, they managed to sequence the genome of a forty-year-old specimen of Drosophila—with carnivorous, aquatic larvae!

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S…

— Marcus Stensmyr (@marcusstensmyr.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T15:41:20.058Z

And a live puffin cam from the Farne Islands:

x

x

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 5, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: May 5, 2026, and it’s National Hoagie Day (also called a “sub” or “submarine sandwich”. It was hard to find a photo of the longest one, but of course it was on Twitter. The damn thing was nearly half a mile long. Guinness says this:

The longest sandwich measured 735 m (2,411 ft 5 in) and was created by members of three teams in total. These teams were Groupe Notre Dame Hazmieh-Scouts de L’Independence (Lebanon), Municipality of Hazmieh (Lebanon)and Mini-B chain restaurants (Lebanon). The attempt took place in Hazmieh village, Beirut, Lebanon, on 22 May 2011.

The sandwich started at Notre Dame des Soeurs Antonines School and ended on Elie Street, in Hazmieh, Beirut, Lebanon. The width of the sandwich was 12.5cm and the overall estimated weight of the sandwich is 577.03kg.

The total number of participants from the three teams who were involved in the preparation and cooking of the sandwich was 136 and 639 participants filled the sandwich, which took 22 hours to make.

Four 4-wheel movable ovens were created especially for this attempt in order to bake one long continuous piece of bread. The dough had been divided into sections and rolled out, at which point they were then joined together by further rolling, before having the movable ovens on each end of the table rolling on top of the bread cooking it as it passed.

This sandwich consisted of chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise, red vinegar, salt, mustard, white pepper, lemon juice, kammoun spices and corriander.

And here’s a photo (a lot of other “long sandwich” records, like the one for Philly cheesesteaks, appear to simply involve regular sandwiches placed end to end, and no attempt to create a long piece of bread).

It’s also Cinco de Mayo, Museum Lover’s Day, National Enchilada Day, Oyster Day, and National Teacher Day.

There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating National Teacher Day. Click on screenshot to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses diverging answer to the question of whether the U.S. and Israel have defeated Iran—so far.

All of this brings us back to the lingering question that has haunted the Israeli defense establishment since the Iranian ceasefire: If the campaign stops here, was it a success?

Two highly informed Israeli experts—both of whom I deeply respect—have come to opposite conclusions. The first is Tamir Hayman, former head of IDF Military Intelligence, who spoke with my colleague Yonit Levi on Channel 12. The second is Yuval Steinitz, a veteran cabinet minister and current chairman of Rafael, whom I interviewed on Meet the Press. And so, in the great Jewish tradition, let us argue:

We can start with their overall assessments. Hayman, ever the measured intelligence chief, concluded that the overall balance of the campaign “leans toward the negative.” Steinitz diverged slightly, calling it “a massive victory” reminiscent of the Six-Day War.

This gap in perception hinges almost entirely on their assessment of Israel’s greatest existential threat: the nuclear program. Steinitz argues that by eliminating top scientists—an achievement he enthusiastically notes happened in the “first 7 seconds” of the campaign—and destroying weaponization equipment, Israel bought itself significant time. He claims that while Iran may have previously been months away from a bomb, “this time in my opinion it is several years,” because the physical mechanisms required to build a warhead were removed from the equation.

Hayman, however, refuses to grade on a curve. To the former intel chief, blowing up weaponization labs and eliminating scientists doesn’t matter if the raw materials are still sitting safely underground. He completely rejects Steinitz’s premise, warning that the fundamental components of a nuclear breakout—the subterranean facilities, the advanced centrifuges and the stockpiles of enriched uranium—were left intact inside the country. He bluntly states that “we hardly touched the nuclear issue,” warning that Iran’s breakout time remains dangerously short, leaving Israel in a situation “similar to the one in which we started the fighting.” While Hayman acknowledges his assessment might shift if a negotiated agreement ultimately collars the Iranian program, short of that, his conclusion is stark: “If the nuclear threat is not addressed, then the question arises—what did we do in this whole event?”

This profound divide extends to their views on the stability of the Iranian regime. Steinitz sees a government on its knees. He argues that the strikes so thoroughly decimated Iranian supply chains and infrastructure that the country has “turned from a tiger into a cat.” In his view, Iran is “highly weakened” and teetering “on the verge of collapse”—suggesting the ayatollahs would have fallen completely had the U.S. not prematurely halted the war.

Hayman views the exact same scenario and sees a disaster. To him, the regime’s sheer survival against a coordinated U.S.-Israeli coalition is a terrifying victory for Tehran. He argues that “in the eyes of the regime itself, it is stronger because it experienced the most severe thing—and survived it.” Worse, he warns that Israel will inevitably have to strike again in the future, and when that day comes in a post-Trump era, there is a very high chance Israel will be left to face an emboldened regime alone.

I have to say that I agree with the pessimist Hayman.  If the attacks on nuclear facilities so far have only bought Israel a few years of respite, how can they be called a success? And isn’t it a victory for Iran if, at the end of the war, the hard-liners remain in control of its regime?  One thing is for sure: we can’t count on a Democratic administration to support Israel’s strikes in the future.

*The U.S. has offered the use of its navy to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, but the WSJ reports that Iran is threatening to fire on any ships that are escorted that way.

Iran on Monday rejected a new U.S. effort to help free ships trapped by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to attack American warships or other vessels that tried to pass through the strategic waterway without Iran’s consent.

President Trump announced the plan on Sunday, but he did not provide details on how the United States would assist the trapped ships. The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said on Monday that two U.S.-flagged ships had safely crossed the strait, but it was not clear whether they did so with American military escorts.

The rising tensions across the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit route for global oil, put the nearly month-old cease-fire between Iran and the United States on shakier ground.

In response to Mr. Trump’s new initiative, Ali Abdollahi, a top Iranian military commander, cautioned “all commercial ships and oil tankers to refrain from any attempt to transit without coordination with the armed forces,” Iranian state media reported on Monday.

“⁠We warn that any foreign armed force, especially the aggressive U.S. military, if they intend to approach or enter the Strait of Hormuz, will be targeted and attacked,” Mr. Abdollahi said.

The U.S. effort was the latest attempt to break Iran’s grip over the strait, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and much natural gas is normally shipped. The Iranian blockade has rattled global energy markets, leading the Trump administration to retaliate by imposing its own blockade on shipping into and out of Iranian ports.

Scattered incidents on Monday reflected the fragility of the truce.

For the first time since a U.S.-Iranian cease-fire was reached in early April, the United Arab Emirates said that four cruise missiles had been fired from Iran at Emirati territory. Three were intercepted and one fell in the sea, the Emirati authorities said.

Also on Monday, the Emirates accused Iran of launching a drone attack on an oil tanker owned by the Emirati state oil company, ADNOC, while it tried to transit through the Strait of Hormuz. And South Korea’s government said a cargo ship belonging to a South Korean company caught fire after an explosion in the strait.

There was no immediate response from Iranian officials. State media in Iran also claimed that the country’s military forces had fired warning shots at an American ship traversing the strait, although the U.S. military denied it.

Mr. Trump, for his part, warned that any Iranian interference in the operation to free stranded ships, named Project Freedom, would be dealt with “forcefully.” U.S. forces, including destroyers and some 15,000 personnel, were work

All this shows is that the war with Iran is far, far from over, and now Iran is making the boneheaded move of attacking other Gulf Arab states.  “Wait and see” is my motto.

*The Free Press reports that a new animated version of Orwell’s Animal Farm has reversed the book’s thesis. While it was originally a parable against the Russian Revolution leading to authoritarian Stalinist Communism it’s now become a critique of, yes, capitalism.

The new film, voiced by a cast of A-list actors including Glenn Close, Seth Rogen, Steve Buscemi, and Woody Harrelson, earned bad press when its trailer was released late last year, but the reality is somehow even worse than it seemed back then. The film feels, to put it plainly, like a bad joke about Orwell that a right-wing X account would dream up to get mad at. Hey guys, what if those crazy, woke socialists in Hollyweird actually went back and rewrote “Animal Farm” to be about the exact opposite of what the author intended? In the film, the message is no longer about how the revolutionary dreams of doing away with capitalist hierarchy are inevitably dashed by the avaricious realities of human nature. The problem, as portrayed by Serkis, is instead corporate greed under capitalism.

In the film, we experience events through the eyes of a pig character named Lucky, who doesn’t appear in the book. In an opening scene, as the animals break out of a slaughterhouse truck, it becomes clear that their revolution is not ultimately against Farmer Jones, as in the original text. Rather, it’s against a bank to which Jones owes unpaid mortgage payments. And the bank is working hand in glove with a gigantic faceless conglomerate called Pilkington, which seems to own factory farms, malls, and hydroelectric plants. The conglomerate’s evil CEO also drives an unmistakably Tesla-like car. This is just the first sign that the movie is not about any longstanding political idea, but rather is an attack on right-wing figures as they currently exist. More attacks come fast and thick. The Joseph Stalin-like pig, Napoleon, voiced by Seth Rogen, repeatedly uses Trumpian locutions, arguing against the noble Leon Trotsky-like pig, Snowball, voiced by Laverne Cox, with such rhetorical flourishes as “many animals have been saying.”

You get the idea. But I promise you that it is worse than you think. For one thing, this film’s crimes are not merely its ideological smallness but also its sheer ugliness. There is the corny revolutionary rap version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” that plays over the opening credits. There are the fart jokes and the shaking pig butts and the terrible attempts at timely dialogue. (Napoleon, who spends half the film driving a Lamborghini, is called “Napopo.”) Upon visiting a Pilkington-branded shopping mall, the greedy pigs express their consumerism thus: “Don’t think, just buy it. Buy it all!” Some kind of disco beat dance number breaks out seemingly every five minutes, in what feels like an ill-fitting attempt to capitalize on the success of films like Shrek or Despicable Me.

The biggest problem, however, is the movie’s ending. The bleak novel ends when the oppressed animals betray their utopian vision so completely that they are indistinguishable from their former oppressors. In the Animal Farm movie, Lucky instead has a change of heart, disgusted with what he and his fellow pigs have become after they have sold the farm to the conglomerate to build, I kid you not, a hydroelectric dam. (As it happens, building out large, clean-energy infrastructure projects is just about the most pro-social kind of activity a large conglomerate could ever engage in, but it is depicted as having very bad vibes.) Lucky goes back to the other animals and apologizes that the revolution has gone wrong. “I want us to remember that feeling that we had on the first day when we chased the slaughterhouse truck off the farm,” he says. Boxer (Woody Harrelson), the kindly and hardworking horse who represents the ordinary prole, delivers this howler: “To work hard for our friends, not because we have to but because we choose to, that is freedom.”

I ain’t gonna see this movie, but it’s ironic that the movie combines the theme of Orwell’s novel with that of another novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which involved both the erasure and the reversal of history by the regime, which is precisely what the moviemakers are doing.

Here’s the trailer, though it doesn’t show much about capitalism:

*The U.S. Supreme Court, in line with an earlier decision, has restored mail access to the drug mifepristone, an abortion-inducing medication that’s been proven safe and effective. But it’s a temporary decision.

The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail.

In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and shipping them to patients, causing confusion for providers and patients. The one-sentence order imposes a pause until at least May 11. He requested that the parties file briefs by Thursday, and then the full court will determine how to proceed.

The state of Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail has allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban.

Medication is now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States, and is typically delivered in the form of a two-drug regimen through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Friday’s ruling from the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily reinstated an F.D.A. requirement that patients visit medical providers in person to obtain mifepristone while the litigation continues. That rule was first lifted in 2021.

Two manufacturers of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In court filings, they said the Fifth Circuit ruling would cause chaos for providers and patients — and upend a major avenue for abortion access across the country. About one-fourth of abortions in the United States are now provided through telemedicine.

Justice Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, was provisional and expected, but an important interim step for women seeking to obtain mifepristone in the next week. The order does not signal how the full court may eventually handle the case.

. . .After the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, Republican-led states like Louisiana imposed strict bans. In response, many Democratic-led states passed shield laws that protect abortion providers who prescribe pills by telemedicine and send them to patients in states with abortion bans.

Louisiana and abortion opponents have asserted in court that the F.D.A.’s decision to allow abortion pills to be available by mail posed safety risks to women and in

Alito, who may be set to retire, decided this by himself, as he’s handling emergency orders. The full court will decide the case later, and what happens after May 11 is yet unknown.  What we have here is a clash between state laws that will be adjudicated by a federal court. But the Postal Service is a federal agency, and it would be weird, I think, if the Supreme Court banned it from carrying medication that’s legal in prescribing states but illegal in some or all recipient states.  I’ve always been “pro choice,” so I applaud this decision and hope it becomes permanent.

*Some sports from the NYT: an article called “Is Padres closer Mason Miller the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived?” (archived link). But in contrast to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer is “yes.” Miller is a “closer”: a relief pitcher brought in expressly to finish the game when his team is likely to win. Miller has been pitching only since 2023, so his record is fantastic, but it’s been for only three years.

Has it hit you yet what we’re watching? Has it sunk in what is happening when Mason Miller takes the mound to finish off another thank-you-and-drive-home-safely baseball game in San Diego?

We are watching the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Period.

There. I said it. And now I’m here to prove it.

I’ve looked at everyone who ever had a case to hold that title: Nolan Ryan … Aroldis Chapman … Josh Hader … Edwin Díaz … Craig Kimbrel … Mariano Rivera … Eric Gagne … Pedro Martínez … Randy Johnson … Jacob deGrom … Sandy Koufax … Walter Johnson … and on and on.

I’ve talked to two of the greatest closers of modern times, Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner.

I’ve dug deep into every number that could shape this argument.

It has all pointed me right back to the same place: The Padres’ closer is the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Fortunately, I had no trouble finding two Hall of Fame closers who were right there with me.

But second, I honestly am prepared to prove this theory. It isn’t even that hard. Just check out these numbers for yourself.

I started with Miller’s appearance last Aug. 6, the day after his final run allowed last year — and kept counting until he finally gave up another run four days ago. Now get a whiff of Miller’s Sidd Finch-ian numbers in between. Unlike Sports Illustrated, I didn’t make any of these up:

• Opposing hitters went 7-for-127 (.055), with 87 strikeouts
• Let’s repeat that: 87 strikeouts … and … 7 hits
• He faced 141 hitters. Not one of them scored.
• 39 straight games with zero extra-base hits allowed
• 39 straight games without ever allowing more than one hit

Compares to Mariano Rivera, whose longevity gives him the title so far:

. . . . we’re not here to pretend that the current closer for the Padres is anywhere near that status. He’s a guy who has faced exactly nine hitters in October in his life. So he has another 500 to go before we start comparing him to Mariano. On the other hand …

So we don’t know yet where Mason Miller is going. But if it looks anything like this, whew. We might all be in for a show unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed.

“Is he going to pull off 10 seasons where he’s able to do these kinds of numbers?” Wagner wondered. “Only time will tell. But he’s — what, three years in? — and he’s as dominating a pitcher as there ever has been in the whole history of the game.

Here he is in his third season, striking out batter after batter. The ratio of strikeouts to balls on single pitches is astounding.

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a somewhat out-of-focus Hili’s still asking the Big Questions:

Andrzej: What are you looking for?
Hili: I’m checking whether the meaning of life isn’t lying under this bush.

In Polish:

Ja: Czego szukasz?
Hili: Patrzę, czy pod tym krzakiem nie leży sens życia.

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

From CinEmma:

From Stacy:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih, another young Iranian executed for protesting:

From Luana; and yes, I agree that there’s no more cultural need for whale hunting:

From Jay; what a graceful landing!

Two from my feed. First, a kitty brought back from oblivion—in a 120-year-old photo.

A very dangerous but successful solo free climb by a moggy:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the 1893 World’s Fair. I live only about a block from the Midway. There are 9 photos at the link.

The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in 9 stunning color photos http://www.popsci.com/science/chic…

— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T20:06:02.089Z

An Etruscan duck jug:

This delightful duck is an askos, a ceramic container used for storing and pouring oil.It was made over two thousand years ago by the Etruscans, who inhabited a reigon called Etruria in what is now central Italy.

— Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (@ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T07:00:47.673Z

 

Monday: Hili dialogue

May 4, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Monday in May: May 4, 2026, and Bird Day in the U.S.  A bit about the holiday:

Bird Day was established by Charles Almanzo Babcock, the Oil City superintendent of schools, in 1894. It was the first holiday in the United States dedicated to the celebration of birds. Babcock intended it to advance bird conservation as a moral value. It is celebrated on May 4 of every year.

Here are the prettiest birds I’ve seen personally in 2026, and right outside my building, hanging around Botany Pond:

It’s also Anti-Bullying Day, International Firefighters’ Day, International Respect for Chickens Day, National Orange Juice Day, National Candied Orange Peel Day (I don’t know who thought of doing this, but it was a great idea, as I love the stuff), and Star Wars Day (the site says, “The eponymously-titled first film of the series was released on May 25, 1977. Later gaining the title Episode IV: A New Hope, the film became a worldwide cultural phenomenon and helped usher in the concept of the blockbuster movie”).

Reader Jez writes, “Greenpeace is organising an online birthday card for David Attenborough’s 100th birthday on Friday that anyone can sign. Here’s the link, just in case you’re interested. I was, and I signed it.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Amit Segal at It’s Noon in Israel discusses something I didn’t know was in the works: trials of the perpetrators of the October 7, 2023 massacre and kidnappings are being planned by Israel. (Read more here about how the cases is being built.)

It’s Sunday, May 3, and two months ago, the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee convened for a pivotal discussion on one of the most sensitive questions of the post-October 7 era: how will the trials of the perpetrators be conducted? According to a compressive report by Yedioth Ahronoth’s Guy Asif, the committee is currently refining a bill that will serve as the legal, organizational, and moral framework for what is destined to be the largest and most complex judicial event in Israel’s history.

Amidst the legislative debate, the human dimension remains profoundly raw. Carmit Palty-Katzir, a daughter of Kibbutz Nir Oz, offered harrowing testimony to the committee. Her family was shattered: her father was murdered, her mother was kidnapped and died shortly after her release, and her brother, Elad, was murdered in captivity after 99 days. “I walk around with unsolved murder mysteries,” she told the committee, voicing a pain shared by hundreds of families seeking closure. While demanding that the perpetrators face the full severity of the law, she also issued a warning. She argued against the trials devolving into a “media circus” or a “gladiator arena,” urging that the pursuit of truth not be eclipsed by a “stampede toward the death penalty.”

Palty-Katzir’s concerns underscore the dilemmas of the Prosecution of Participants in the October 7 Massacre Events Bill. Having passed its first reading in January, the legislation is now being prepared for its final stages. Yet, even as the Knesset’s summer session approaches, several complex questions remain.

How public should the proceedings be? The judiciary must balance the public’s right to see justice served with the necessity of protecting survivors from secondary trauma.

What standard of evidence should be required? Applying the threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt” to the scale of a mass massacre leaves a distinct possibility that a known perpetrator could walk free if the case isn’t perfectly airtight.

And then there is the most potent question of all: what punishment is truly appropriate? The prospect of the death penalty—a historical rarity in the Israeli legal system—remains the central point of debate.

. . .When it became clear that the civilian courts could not absorb the weight of hundreds of parallel cases, the responsibility shifted to the military. While the IDF didn’t want touch such a controversial process, it was the only viable option. The military possesses the unique ability to draft seasoned prosecutors and judges into reserve service, creating an instant, elite legal force. Furthermore, military infrastructure is inherently designed to manage the high-risk transport and detention of dangerous detainees—a logistical requirement that would paralyze any standard city courthouse.

The next question: where?

The Prison Service lobbied for a site near Ktzi’ot Prison for convenience, while others suggested the Gaza Envelope for its symbolic weight. Ultimately, the decision landed on Jerusalem. Plans are now underway to transform a massive industrial site in Atarot, north of the city, into a sprawling judicial complex. This “hangar city” will house a primary courtroom, multiple halls for parallel hearings, and dedicated viewing areas for the public. The court is expected to operate with an unprecedented focus: five days a week, eight hours a day, with judges dedicated exclusively to these cases. The goal is to begin within a year of the legislation’s passing and conclude the primary proceedings within a few years.

The trials promise to reveal investigative materials far more harrowing than anything yet released to the media. For the first time, victims will take the stand to testify, often face-to-face with the perpetrators. This brings a painful paradox to the forefront: the public’s right to historical truth versus the victims’ right to privacy.

. . . The prosecution faces the historic burden of framing a national narrative, but the primary challenge remains the “resolution” of proof: linking specific defendants to individual victims amidst the chaos of a mass massacre. Investigators have reportedly solved this issue by creating an exhaustive mapping system that catalogs every detainee by their military unit and infiltration point, cross-referencing their confessions with terabytes of bodycam footage, digital media, and forensic scene reconstructions.

This wil undoubtedly demonize the IDF more, but one would hope that terrorists’s own testimony would alert the world to the war crimes committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.  But it won’t.

*A federal appeals court has blocked mail access to the abortion drug mifepristone, and the pill’s makers have filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.

The makers of the abortion pill mifepristone filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court on Saturday urging the justices to pause a lower-court ruling that temporarily blocked Americans from accessing the drug through the mail.

The fast-track case, filed with conservative Justice Samuel Alito, puts the drug and the issue of abortion back on the high court’s docket less than two years after the justices rejected a similar challenge — a decision that allowed the drug to remain widely available.

The rush appeal comes a day after the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a nationwide requirement that the medication be obtained in person, undermining access to the method of abortion that has grown more widespread since the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that established a constitutional right to abortion.

The lower-court ruling, Danco Laboratories told the Supreme Court in its appeal Saturday, “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.”

“What happens when patients arrive for scheduled appointments this weekend and beyond, or walk into pharmacies in New York, Minnesota, Washington, and many other states today to obtain Mifeprex that was prescribed by a provider yesterday?” the company’s attorneys wrote. “What should a patient do if she cannot obtain an in-person appointment immediately?”

Danco urged the Supreme Court to issue an “administrative” stay that would immediately pause the 5th Circuit’s decision. It also urged the Supreme Court to case the case up on the merits.

GenBioPro, the maker of the generic version of the drug, filed a separate emergency application later Saturday. The court is likely to handle the two cases together.

And from CNN:

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, abortion-seekers have been able to obtain mifepristone – one of the two drugs in the medication abortion regimen – through telehealth appointments. President Joe Biden’s administration finalized rules that ended the requirement that the pills be obtained through an in-person doctor’s visit in 2023, after the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Supreme Court had earlier blocked a request that the FDA ban the drug everywhere in America—based on a bogus claim that it was dangerous (there’a a lot of data showing that milfepristone is both effective and safe, and it’s now used in 2/3 of all abortions.) I’m not an expert on this, but although individual states can block the drug from being recommended or dispensed by doctors, or dispensed by pharmacies, the U.S. Mail is a national organization, and there’s I can’t see any constitutional grounds to prevent it from shipping a drug that is not federally banned. It will be interesting to see if a conservative court sides with the manufacturer or with the religious /anti-choice people who banned the drug in 15 states.

*A Washington Post/Ipsos/ABC poll reports that Trump’s approval ratings are lower than they’ve ever been, with just a 37% overall approval and not much better on any other matter (in fact, worse on most important issues):

Six months ahead of the November midterm elections, the Republican Party faces a deteriorating political climate, with Americans broadly dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s leadership on the Iran war and other key issues and an electorate in which Democrats are significantly more motivated to vote, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Trump’s approval on economic issues, which were critical to his political comeback in 2024, has fallen since he launched the Iran war in late February.

Americans disapprove of his handling of the situation with Iran by 66 percent to 33 percent. His rating on the economy has declined by seven points, to 34 percent, as gas prices have spiked. His approval rating on inflation has fallen five points in that time to 27 percent and his lowest rating comes on perceptions of his handling of the general cost of living, with 23 percent approving vs. 76 percent disapproving.

Trump’s overall approval now stands at 37 percent, largely the same as the 39 percent figure in February. But his disapproval has reached 62 percent, the highest of his two terms in office. Among Republicans, Trump’s approval has held steady at 85 percent, but his ratings among Republican-leaning independents have reached a new low of 56 percent. His approval rating stands at 25 percent among independents overall.

. . . Trump gets his best ratings for handling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border (45 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval). His ratings for handling immigration overall are worse at 40 percent approving and 59 percent disapproving, hardly changed from 40 percent positive vs. 58 percent negative in February, though that marked the worst for his second term.

The president’s weak approval ratings put the Republicans’ slender House majority in grave danger and now threaten their Senate majority as well. Among registered voters, Democrats hold a five-point advantage on the question of which party people favor in House elections. That is up from a two-point edge in February and October.

I’m surprised that the ratings are so low for both immigration and U.S.-Mexico border immigration, but that may largely be attributable to the ICE shootings. However, given the political divisions in the U.S. most Democrats are simply going to disapprove of Trump’s performance in any area.

This is going to sting the GOP in the midterms unless more centrist voters don’t cast a ballot at all, but that’s unlikely.  Pundits are saying that the House is likely to go Democratic, and the Senate less likely but still possible.

*The NYT’s Ross Douthat is both a conservative and religious, and not smart about either stand. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Douthat is on the mark with his new op-ed, “Slouching toward Kamala Harris.” Oy, just the headline gave me shpilkes in my kishkas!

. . . The third [statistic that helps us understand the Democrats in 2026] is polling for the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, in which the leading Democratic candidate is consistently Kamala Harris, the face of the party’s 2024 debacle.

All three numbers are linked to the dominant mode in Democratic politics right now. It’s not the rebellion or radicalism manifest in, say, Hasan Piker’s Twitch-streamer Marxism or Zohran Mamdani’s telegenic democratic socialism. Notable as those tendencies may be, the Democrats’ fundamental condition is a late-Trumpian stasis — in which the president’s stark unpopularity encourages his opponents to imagine that they can keep everything basically as it was in the Biden era, with the same broad priorities and deference to activists and interest groups, and float back to power automatically.

The continuing appeal of Harris is a useful indicator of this stasis. Yes, she is unlikely to be the 2028 nominee, and part of her support is name recognition; Mitt Romney did well in such polls in 2013 and 2014. But she seems to want a second run more than Romney did, and if she goes for it, she will have one notable advantage: the fact that many Democrats who find her renomination unthinkable are nonetheless incapable of acknowledging the real reasons that she lost.

I’ll list some of those reasons. First, her party was seen as too beholden to progressive activists on a range of issues, including immigration, crime, education, energy and the transgender debate. Second, Harris’s vice presidency was itself a creation of the 2020 identity politics moment, without which Joe Biden never would have picked her, and she succeeded him without a fight in part because no one wanted to acknowledge her painful limits as a politician. Finally, she tried to solve both the policy problem and the identity politics problem through evasion and distraction and yet more identity politics, with empty rhetoric of “joy” and circumlocution about her past positions and a mediocre Midwestern white guy running mate.

Despite being on the record taking radical positions, Harris was never a radical politician. Rather, she was a perfectly hapless embodiment of a Democratic establishment that aspired to manage its base without ever strongly resisting its demands and that aspired to win moderate voters not by moderating on the issues but through a change of affect or a change of subject.

That’s still clearly what Democratic elites would prefer to do, and it’s also what you see in many of the figures contending for influence in the party, outsiders and insiders alike. Politicians as distinct as Graham Platner, Gavin Newsom, James Talarico and Abigail Spanberger have all offered new directions for the Democrats that are primarily image-based. The theory is always: What if we had the same basic policy orientation that makes moderates distrust us, except that this time we’ll talk like a bearded oyster farmer … or like Trump himself on a social media bender … or like a sunny youth pastor … or like a former C.I.A. officer?

[To hold their gains and govern successfully], Democrats first need to consistently win over enough former Trump voters to claim a meaningful Senate majority — something the polls don’t show them doing yet. And then they need a theory of governance that doesn’t immediately alienate those voters — something that is nowhere in evidence at the moment.

I’m still groping about for a candidate (as in years gone by, I favor Pete Buttigieg), but I know one thing: the Democrats will not win with Kamala Harris, an unpalatable alternative to even the low-polling Trump. And I still resent those Democrats who pretended that she was a good candidate—one who even brought them “joy.”  Are we really that dumb?

*Timmy the stranded humpback whale who was rescued in a water-filled barge, towed out to sea, and then released, all at great expense, seems to be doing okay, at least for now. I’ve read that a GPS sensor was affixed to it, so we’ll know more later. But nobody’s willing to predict that Timmy will be fine.

“He is doing well,” Mr. Gunz [one of the millionaires who funded the rescue] said in a message, adding that the whale had blown a “great fountain” as it swam away.

. . . . Though rescuers said that they expected Timmy to recover in his more suitable habitat, more than 200 nautical miles from where he was stranded, experts said there was no guarantee that it would survive for long.

“Even short-term survival is very questionable,” said Burkard Baschek, the director of the Ocean Museum Germany and the scientific coordinator of the second and third rescue efforts. The whale was extremely weak, having made very little movement over the past few weeks, and suffered from other issues in addition to the freshwater skin disease, he said.

The stress of being in a barge, including the loud echo of the water splashing against the steel hull, was also probably difficult for the whale, Dr. Baschek said.

“I know how sad it is to have an animal dying at the beach where you can watch it,” he said. But the rescue, he added, was “not increasing its survival chances.”

Dr. Baschek said that he was heartened by how much empathy for the whale had spread over Germany and the world. But he noted that more than 300,000 whales and dolphins die every year after becoming entangled in fishing nets. He hoped that attention in the future would focus not on rescue operations but on making oceans safer for marine life.

Timmy has become a symbol of determination, and I want it to live, for even though lots of whales die every year from entanglement, this is one life that we know about. If it recovered and swam the open North Sea, it would be a palliative in these troubled times.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is a keen weathercat:

Hili: It’s terribly dry.
Andrzej: Apparently it’s supposed to rain next week.

In Polish:

Hili: Strasznie sucho.
Ja: Podobno za tydzień mają być deszcze.

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

From CinEmma:

From Terrible Maps:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih; Iran hanged this 21-year-old karate athlete for protesting. He was not a criminal, just a critic.

David Reich on prehistoric “colonialism”.  It doesn’t fit the narrative, of course, but so be it:

From Luana; a tweet that proves once again that academics don’t have to be savvy. Mohamed Abdou was at Columbia University (of course) and apparently still is.

Two from my feed. First, a jailbreak:

Bird dances to phone rings:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, a great optical illusion:

The footsteps illusion-like pausing and sticking illusionThe rectangles in the upper half appear to move to the right and stop periodically; however, they are moving to the right at a constant speed in the same way as the rectangles in the lower half.

— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@akiyoshikitaoka.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T09:28:49.225Z

Interspecies friendship:

We have a wild hedgehog who lives in our garden and is friends with our cat (this isn’t their first meeting, they know each other well)

— Juliet Turner (@juliet-turner.bsky.social) 2026-05-02T09:25:30.008Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 3, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to shabbos for gentile cats: it’s Sunday, May 3, 2026, and Lemonade Day. Here’s a lemonade joke from the FB page The Language Nerds:

It’s also National Chocolate Custard Day, National Raspberry Popover Day, National Two Different Colored Shoes Day, Paranormal Day, and World Press Freedom Day.

Yesterday my last Ph.D. student, Daniel Matute (now a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), was given the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award for Early Achievement by the The University of Chicago Medical & Biological Sciences Alumni Association. The award was for his contributions to science, and he was the only Early Achievement Recipient.

Daniel, born in Colombia, showed up in my lab when I was on sabbatical, asking to do a short rotation. He was clearly a ball o’ fire, and I took him on as a student, whereupon he worked very hard and excelled beyond any expectations, publishing a gazillion papers before he graduated in 2011, and and winning the Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution awarded “to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist.” (My first student, Allen Orr, won it in 1993, and I’ve had just four students).  Daniel’s c.v. shows an astounding 153 papers already, and he’s just a kid! He’s working on the genetics of speciation, mostly with Drosophila, and I’m proud of the lad. Congrats, Dr. Matute!

Here he is getting his award:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has reached the Congressional deadline for pursuing the Iran war without authorization, but now deems the conflict “terminated.”

President Donald Trump claimed in a letter to Congress on Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated” as he reached a legal deadline that requires military operations to halt unless lawmakers authorize force.

Trump’s claim came as the United States continues to enforce a naval blockade of Iran and as he declined to rule out additional strikes on the country.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires presidents to remove U.S. forces from any conflict that Congress has not authorized within 60 days of the White House notifying Congress of hostilities — a deadline that Trump hit on Friday.

Trump wrote in his letter to lawmakers Friday that the conflict has been effectively over since the United States and Iran agreed last month to a ceasefire.

The president’s argument echoed what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Trump also suggested Friday that he believes the requirement to withdraw U.S. forces within 60 days is unconstitutional.

“Most people consider it totally unconstitutional,” Trump told reporters. “Also, we had a ceasefire, so that gives you additional time.”

Well, we’ll let the Supreme Court determine if it’s constitutional or not; can’t they do an emergency order if it’s not? As for Trump, he apparently doesn’t recognize the system of checks and balances that underlies our government.

*The budget carrier Spirit Airlines has shut down after it didn’t get a big bailout from the government.

Spirit Airlines reshaped aviation in the United States by stripping down flying to its essentials and selling what were often the cheapest tickets around. But the airline shut down for good on Saturday, a victim of the rising costs it once excelled at controlling.

In a statement just after 2 a.m., Spirit said it had canceled all flights and told passengers not to go to the airport. On the airline’s homepage, a bright yellow banner declared that the airline was “winding down all operations.”

The budget airline had lost billions of dollars in recent years as it struggled with intense competition at its most important airports — Las Vegas, Florida and New York among them — and rising labor and aircraft maintenance costs.

As a result, Spirit filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and again in 2025. It had aimed to emerge from the second bankruptcy this summer as a smaller company, but those plans fell apart as jet fuel prices rose dramatically in recent weeks, a consequence of the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. The Trump administration started an 11th-hour effort to provide Spirit a lifeline, but government officials and the airline’s creditors could not reach a deal in time to save the company.

The shutdown leaves 17,000 full- and part-time Spirit employees without work and tens of thousands of customers without flights. Spirit said it would automatically issue refunds for tickets purchased on credit or debit cards and was working to get more than 1,300 flight crew members home.

Many other airlines said they would offer affected travelers discounted prices on flights to and from the airports that Spirit served. Some said that they would help stranded Spirit employees get home and United Airlines invited them to apply for jobs.

It’s gone, vanished: it is an ex-airline, singing with the Choir Invisible. There are no more bargain flights; even my favorite cut-rate airline, Southwest, is now charging for bags and its ticket prices have skyrocketed.  This is going to put a crimp on people’s summer vacations, though Duck Duty will probably keep me here this summer.  As for Southwest, well, I am no longer wedded to that airline, which is also a victim of rising prices but also of a willingness to abandon the unique character of that airline.

*After the NYT published a deeply misleading review of a book whose autistic author used “facilitated communication” to write (see my post here),, it’s now published an op-ed by Amy Lutz that’s a corrective:  “Profound autism is difficult enough without this debunked method.” (h/t Greg Mayer).

As the mother of a profoundly autistic son, now 27, I have wished for so many miracles over the years: that Jonah was not really as cognitively impaired as he appeared; that one of the countless treatments we tried would be transformative; that he would one day go to college, pursue a meaningful career and do everything parents want their children to do. So I understand the allure of facilitated communication and similar methods, which promise to grant those wishes with a simple letter board or keyboard.

Facilitated Communication, or F.C., is an intervention in which profoundly autistic individuals spell messages with the physical support of a nondisabled facilitator, who generally provides direct touch to the speller’s hand, wrist, elbow or shoulder. There are variants of F.C., such as Spelling to Communicate and the Rapid Prompting Method, in which the facilitator typically holds a letter board and offers prompts. Grouped together, these methods are often referred to as “spelling.”

Such facilitation, proponents claim, unlocks hidden literacy inside people previously considered severely cognitively impaired. In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interviewed the father of a speller who wrote a book with his son. Discussing his takeaways from the book, Mr. Kennedy says the son “learned to do calculus in essentially a day.” According to “The Telepathy Tapes,” a popular podcast that first aired in 2024, there are spellers who can read their facilitators’ minds.

Here’s the thing about F.C., though: The science doesn’t back it up.

There are augmentative and alternative communication methods that work for many nonverbal or minimally verbal individuals: simple forms of sign language, various digital applications and the Picture Exchange Communication System — which employs small cards with images or icons primarily to convey requests. But communication produced by F.C. and its counterparts isn’t autonomous; it’s influenced by facilitators.

. . .Over time, many such studies have reported essentially the same thing: Spellers could not communicate information unknown to their facilitators. A 1995 study of seven adults in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis found that spellers “typed the correct answer only when the facilitator had access to the same information, never typed the correct answer when the facilitator had no information or false information and typed the picture or activity presented to the facilitator when it was different from the one experienced by the client.” In other words, when spellers and their facilitators were shown the same picture — for instance, a telephone — the speller successfully spelled out “telephone.” But when the speller was shown a telephone and the facilitator was shown a different picture — for example, a hat — the subject spelled out “hat,” which is what the facilitator saw.

A 2014 Finnish analysis concluded that messages produced using F.C. “revealed a large degree of facilitator influence on the content of the messages produced.” A review of this extensive literature published in 2014 found “unequivocal evidence for facilitator control: Messages generated through F.C. are authored by the facilitators rather than the individuals with disabilities.”

Virtually every relevant professional organization — including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities — has issued position statements opposing F.C. Some have also specifically issued statements recommending against the use of variants like the Rapid Prompting Method.

Not only the NYT, but also NBC fell for the notion that Woody Brown was really the “author” of the novel Upward Bound, but it worked only when Mom was the facilitator, and if you watch the videos, Woody is not pointing at the letters that his mother spells out.  If you haven’t seen this video debunking the notion that Woody is “speaking” through his mom, do watch it. Facilitated communication has become a religion, completely untethered from reality.

*I was sure that the young humpback whale (“Timmy”) who was stranded in shallow water in Germany, and then towed back to the open sea in a huge, water-filled barge, was doomed. It simply couldn’t work, I thought, despite the tremendous expense (financed by rich animal lovers) of constructing the barge, putting in the whale, and then making the long, slow trek to open water. But it appears to have worked, which makes me very happy!

Rescuers have released a young humpback whale that became a national sensation after it was beached in shallow waters off the coast in Germany, although marine experts have said its chances of survival are low.

The whale, variously nicknamed Timmy or Hope, was released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported there in a water-filled barge by rescuers.

The 10-metre long calf swam out of the barge and was later observed blowing through its blowhole and swimming freely “in the right direction”, according to Karin Walter-Mommert from the rescue initiative.

The rescue attempt had been criticised by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) as “inadvisable” because the whale appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.

Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast also recommended the creature should be left to die in peace.

The whale has been described as lethargic and covered in blister-like blemishes, and parts of its mouth were believed to be caught in a fishing net.

The museum’s director, Burkard Baschek, has said trying to save the whale amounted to “pure animal cruelty”.

The rescue attempt was funded by two multimillionaires who said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the whale, which became stranded on a sandbank in Wismar Bay near the city of Lübeck nearly six weeks ago.

As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.

But after the whale’s plight garnered national interest, with coverage from TV channels and social media influencers, German authorities were persuaded to approve a privately financed rescue plan.

Initial attempts to save the whale with inflatable cushions and pontoons were unsuccessful, but divers eventually managed to help the creature on to a flooded barge , watched by hundreds of onlookers.

. . and here’s a video:

And 0ne of Timmy blowing after release. Go, Timmy!

He might still die, but I sure hope not. (And I hope they tagged it so researchers can keep track.)

*It’s really sad when a Nobel Laureate is imprisoned for political reasons, and it’s even sadder when she has recurrent medical problems but won’t get proper care in prison. That is the situation of Narges Mohammedi, 54, who has been in and out of Iranian prisons for political activity for ten years, and she’s currently in. (She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023.) As the AP reports, she’s been hospitalized with serious health issues.

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after a “catastrophic deterioration” of her health, her foundation said Friday.

The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said the Nobel Prize laureate had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis.

Earlier Friday, Mohammadi had fainted twice in prison in Zanjan in northwestern Iran, according to the foundation. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident. At the time, she appeared pale, underweight and needed a nurse to help her walk.

The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest on Dec. 12, the foundation said.

“This transfer was done as an unavoidable necessity after prison doctors determined her condition could not be managed on-site, despite standing medical recommendations that she be treated by her specialized team in Tehran,” the foundation said.

Mohammadi’s family had advocated for her transfer to adequate medical facilities for weeks.

The foundation, quoting her family, said her transfer Friday to a hospital in Zanjan was “a desperate, ‘last-minute’ action that may be too late to address her critical needs.”

Mohammadi’s brother Hamidreza Mohammadi, who lives in Oslo, Norway, said in an audio message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation that her family is “fighting for her life.”

“My family in Iran is doing everything they can. But the prosecutors in Zanjan are blocking everything,” he said.

On March 24, Narges Mohammadi’s fellow inmates found her unconscious, her lawyers said she told them during the visit a few days later. Upon later examination at the prison’s clinic, a doctor told her that she probably had had a heart attack. She had chest pain and breathing difficulties since.

Mohammadi, a human rights activist and critic of the Iranian government, should have been released a long time ago, and while she was imprisoned she was not receiving much medical care.  What she really needs is to go to a good hospital in Israel, Europe, or the U.S where she can can get the best treatment. Iran, of course, would prefer that she died, as they could just say it was an act of Allah and not due to the imprisonment. But of course it was a combination of both.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the kitties are playing The Wizard of Oz:

Andrzej: Where are you guys?
Hili: Look behind the curtain.

In Polish:

Ja: Gdzie wy jesteście?
Hili: Zajrzyj za firankę.

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

From Animals in Random Places:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From CinEmma:

From Luana; a duck story:

Masih is quiet today, but J. K. Rowling is her usual snarky self:

From Luana; Portland Mayor Katie Wilson, a “progressive” (and daughter of evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson), dodges questions about surveillance cameras after four shootings in Portland between April 26 and May 1. For the full video, go here.

The Number Ten cat is having a snooze:

Two from my feed. What can you say about the first one?

A man helps a thirsty baby elephant. Is the mother thanking him?

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed together with his mother after they arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T10:17:30.367Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, voyeurs in Texas sank a boat:

Also discovering Important Sciencey Facts – in their case in the fields of weight distribution and buoyancy – were the people who gave rise to this NBC News story in 2004

— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-05-02T09:03:13.519Z

And an Oggsford drake:

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 2, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to shabbos for Jewish cats: it’s Saturday, May 2, 2026 and National Truffle Day. They mean chocolate truffles, but let’s look at how they find the fungus-y ones. They are usually sniffed out by pigs or d*gs—the latter in this case.

It’s also Beer Pong Day, Herb Day (the plant, not the person’s name), International Drone Day, National Homebrew Day, the day of the Kentucky Derby. World Tuna Day, and National Play your Ukulele Day.  Here’s Paul McCartney playing one of the late George Harrison’s ukuleles in a star-studded version of “Something” in a concert for George. Clapton’s there, too, and too many others to name. The event was the The Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 29, 2002.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Supreme Leader of Iran, who may in fact be dead, has issued a statement asserting that the country would not only retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, but would not give up its drive for nuclear weapons.

Iran’s supreme leader issued a rare statement on Thursday saying that the United States had no place in the future of the Persian Gulf region and making clear that his country planned to manage the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway going forward.

In the defiant message, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei also vowed that Iran would retain its nuclear capabilities. The lengthy statement from the Iranian leader, who has not been seen in public since he was named to the top post nearly two months ago, was shared by his office.

It touched on two of the thorniest issues stalling talks on permanently ending the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which began in late February and paused when a cease-fire was reached this month. Those positions put Iran at odds with the United States, which has sought to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions and insisted that it cannot restrict use of the Strait of Hormuz to vessels of its choosing.

“By the will and power of God, the bright future of the Persian Gulf region will be a future without America,” said the statement, which was released on Iran’s National Day of the Persian Gulf, an annual commemoration of a 1622 military victory over Portugal in the Strait of Hormuz.

Of the battle over the narrow waterway, one of the most important shipping routes for global oil supplies, the statement said: “Foreigners who come from thousands of kilometers away, acting maliciously out of greed, have no place there, except at the bottom of its waters.”

It went on to say that Iran would implement “new legal frameworks and management of the Strait of Hormuz,” suggesting that the country had no plans to relinquish control over the shipping route. Such a system, it added, would benefit its neighbors and prove economically fruitful.

. . . The war has devastated Iran’seconomy, with the Iranian rial currency sinking to new lows against the dollar this week.

Well, we’re at an impasse, then. The Iranian economy will get worse and worse, and the question is whether the people of Iran will rise up (or the regime dissolve) before pressure from the U.S. people and Congress forces Trump to quit.

*However, the WSJ reports that Iran is increasingly in trouble because it simply can’t break the U.S. blockade.

For almost five decades, Iran’s Islamic government has survived financial pressure from the U.S. by selling oil to China. It confronted American military might with guerrilla tactics. But with the U.S. Navy’s blockade, that strategy might have met its match, analysts said.

Tehran thought it was gaining the upper hand after the war started in February as it attacked ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz, shutting down commercial traffic and blocking a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies. Six weeks into the conflict, the U.S. responded by blockading shipments from all Iranian ports.

That shut down Iran’s network of shadow ships, which for years defied U.S. sanctions on Iran’s substantial oil exports by going dark at sea before clandestinely transferring their cargoes to China. The tankers have been unable to breach a cordon of U.S. warships that have chased them all the way to the Indian Ocean.

In Hormuz, “Iran was able to create a crisis of market confidence. But disruption is not control,” said David Des Roches, a former director responsible for Persian Gulf policy at the Defense Department. “With the U.S. blockade, it’s facing a reckoning.”

Alternative trade routes won’t be sufficient. Iran has been working to send some of its oil by rail to China and to import foodstuff by road from the Caucasus and Pakistan. Only 40% of Iran’s trade can be redirected away from blockaded ports, the Iranian Shipping Association said Thursday via the Fars news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s security services.

The risk of a spiraling crisis has split Iran’s political system between moderates such as President Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-liners including Saeed Jalili, a former presidential candidate who leads Iran’s most conservative faction.

The moderates believe in holding fire and negotiating a favorable deal with President Trump, whom they view as eager to get out of the messy war as soon as possible. They worry Iranians are growing tired of the conflict after an initial nationalist uptick.

“The regime has to do something to break this deadlock,” Saeid Golkar, who studies Iran at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Moderates want a deal because they think more destruction is political suicide,” he said.

A growing camp of hard-liners believe Iran has to take the military initiative and start a shooting war again to send oil prices soaring higher and increase the pressure on Trump. They argue that the blockade goes beyond the sanctions Iran has faced down in the past and amounts to an act of war that must have a military response.

Even a rule by moderates won’t stopo the oppression that has killed tens of thousands of protesting Iranians. My preference is for the U.S. to continue the blockade.  Here’s a map from the article of the U.S.’s blockade line:

Source: Source: Department of Defense (blockade line)

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: A new tux on the dirty Hilton floor.”

→ Park Slope Food Co-Op: A meeting at Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Co-op—which I’m pretty sure is just a factory that produces news to be turned into items for this column (I’ve never been to Brooklyn)—was more aggressive than usual this week as the discussion naturally turned to Israeli products. “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country,” said one attendee, kind of giving away the game there. The darkest part: Some 50 people applauded the comment. The topic: banning Israeli goods. The jeerers, presumably: well-heeled Park Slope parents. There are about 10 Israeli items sold in the shop, and it has led to years of battles.

Meanwhile, the hottest new fashion accessory in New York is a Hamas headband, as sported in Manhattan’s Flatiron District neighborhood, where protesters harassed diners at a kosher-style (not even fully kosher!) restaurant. They surrounded the tables and called the diners “pedophiles” and the “Epstein class,” which is, of course, reasonable criticism of Israeli policies.

→ I guess I need to learn about this new fetish now: An Oxford biochemistry professor is now teaching while wearing enormous Z-cup prosthetic breasts and low-cut shirts to class. If you’re reading this over breakfast, maybe don’t because I am obligated to inform you that his long wispy beard grazes the tits. I will not include a picture [JAC: the picture’s at the next link.] As Jo Bartosch at Spiked put it, it’s “a giant rubber rack.” We’re talking Bryon Noem–sized knockers here. She concludes: “Regrettably, it seems Matt Rattley will be at liberty to display his plastic tits until university officials find their ovaries.”

And now I’ve had to learn that this is a kink, yet another thing about men I would rather not know. Because it’s indeed the same thing as that Canadian high school shop teacher, Kayla Lemieux, who went viral for wearing, yes, Z-cup prosthetic breasts in class. Hopefully these are just strange, unique episodes. But it is funny, isn’t it, that both of these men are in charge of kids. Not ha ha funny. But you get it. When I revive a lesbian separatist commune in Michigan, I want you to know that this new kink (bearded men, Z-cup tits, teaching kids, plus we’re supposed to applaud them) tipped me over the edge. Me, Pat, Jill, and our holistic herb healer Ingrid are going to be over here keeping chickens. Zero cleavage.

→ More defense of microlooting: In the pro-microlooting podcast episode of The Opinions from The New York Times last week, there was a little part about how stealing from the Louvre is cool. Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker agreed it’s one of the “cool crimes” that there should be more of. I need you to see now how the American progressive intelligentsia explains this as backlash inevitably arrived. This is a major writer in the movement and genuinely one of its smarter representatives:

Of course, the real threat to American museums is Climate Action protesters armed with cans of soup, but the idea that you can just replace a precious, one-of-a-kind object with another one from the basement is insane. I love it.

I think Malcolm and his ilk are smarter than they’re letting on. I think the real argument is: Yes, take apart the Louvre. Take apart Western culture, since it’s an evil thing. But maybe not. Maybe he really does think there are a dozen Mona Lisas in CubeSmart storage so who cares.

→ In other foreign policy news this week:

No further questions. As you were.

*Here, watch some British tourists in Vietnam mercilessly harass a Jewish couple simply because the woman had an Israel-shaped tatoo. They call them “rats” and “monsters”. Oy! (h/t Ginger):

A video has gone viral of a pair of tourists who filmed themselves hurling antisemitic and anti-Israel abuse at an Israeli couple dining in Vietnam, calling them “rats” and using white supremacist memes, until the Israelis get up and leave while other diners do nothing.

It was unclear when the video was made before it was apparently uploaded to social media by the British pair.

In the video, one of the abusing tourists asked the Israeli man and woman if they were “from Palestine” upon noticing an Israel-shaped tattoo on the woman’s arm.

The Israeli woman smiled and said, “It’s difficult.” The British women continue in the same line of questioning, asking the Israelis if they speak Arabic.

When the Israeli man said they speak Hebrew, the British women explode.

“Oh, right, you’re Israeli… Fake state of Israel,” said one.

A video has gone viral of a pair of tourists who filmed themselves hurling antisemitic and anti-Israel abuse at an Israeli couple dining in Vietnam, calling them “rats” and using white supremacist memes, until the Israelis get up and leave while other diners do nothing.

It was unclear when the video was made before it was apparently uploaded to social media by the British pair.

In the video, one of the abusing tourists asked the Israeli man and woman if they were “from Palestine” upon noticing an Israel-shaped tattoo on the woman’s arm.

The Israeli woman smiled and said, “It’s difficult.” The British women continue in the same line of questioning, asking the Israelis if they speak Arabic.

When the Israeli man said they speak Hebrew, the British women explode.

“Oh, right, you’re Israeli… Fake state of Israel,” said one.

“Were you part of the IDF, IOF… Did you kill innocent civilians?” asked the other. The abbreviation for “Israeli Occupation Forces” is frequently used on pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel social media to refer to the Israeli military.

The Israeli man appeared about to respond, but his partner signaled to him not to take the bait, before she herself said: “Everyone is part of the army.”

“So then you’re a murderer,” said one of the British tourists. “You can refuse to be in the IDF.”

“I want to eat my lunch in quiet,” the Israeli woman said, and continued eating.

“Well, we want to save humanity,” answered the British tourist from her own table.

“Now they’re going to cry, I didn’t have my lunch in peace,” said the second UK tourist.

. . .“Look at them, the rats running away,” said one woman as the Israeli couple moves. “Go on, rats. Murderers, savages.”

Rats have long been deployed as an antisemitic trope to depict Jews.

Israelis abroad have faced mounting harassment, sometimes descending into physical violence, since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023. A poll last year found that a majority of Israelis fear they will be unable to travel abroad due to mounting global criticism of Israel.

Here’s a tweet with the video. The degree of hate is horrific and persistent, too. We Jews can’t catch a break:

It would be lovely if someone could identify these moronic antisemites so they could face public opprobrium. It’s antisemitism, not anti-Netanyahuism or anti-Zionism—unless the chowderheaded critics think that a tattoo of Israel makes you a Zionist. (While we’re at it, let’s just eliminate the word “Zionist” and use “Jew”. Nearly all Jews are Zionists since they favor the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign Jewish state).

*The world record for the most expensive tuna was set by a sushi chain in Japan, which purchased a large bluefin tuna for no less than $3.25 million dollars

A Japanese sushi chain has bought the world’s most expensive tuna at auction.

Sushizanmai, part of Kiyomura Corporation owned by “Tuna King” Kiyoshi Kimura, bought a bluefin tuna for JP￥510,300,000 ($3,254,277) at the annual first fish auction of the year in Koto, Tokyo — officially breaking the Guinness World Record for the most expensive tuna fish to be sold at auction.

Following the Jan. 5 sale, Kiyomura was presented its official Guinness certificate during a ceremony at the chain’s main Tsukiji location on April 20, per Malay Mail.

“We will continue to offer high-quality tuna next year and beyond,” said Kimura, president of Kiyomura Corporation, during the ceremony.

The tuna, sold at Toyosu Market, weighed a whopping 243 kg (535 lbs 11.52 oz) and was caught in Oma in Japan’s northern prefecture of Aomori. The fish was then cut at the Tsukiji location of Sushizanmai and distributed across the company’s numerous shops across Japan.

“Although the tuna was crowned the most expensive tuna fish, the tuna sushi served post-auction was sold at the regular price range,” Guinness World Records noted in its announcement.

Kimura is no stranger to a massive fish sale. In 2020, he paid $1.8 million for another huge bluefin tuna — weighing a whopping 608 pounds — at the same annual first fish auction of the year at Toyosu Market. The fish was also caught in Aomori.

Following the remarkable sale, Kimura expressed his joy and excitement at securing the large fish for his corporation’s consumers.

“This is the best,” Kimura said, Agence France-Presse reported at the time. “Yes, this is expensive, isn’t it? I want our customers to eat very tasty ones this year, too.”

I would have liked to try some of that sushi! Here’s the hapless tuna with the Tuna King carving it up.  はい!!!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s still neurotic about the garden:

Hili: Dandelion!
Andrzej: We lost the fight against dandelions many years ago. Now we have decided to like them.

In Polish:

Hili: Mlecz!
Ja: Walkę z mleczami przegraliśmy wiele lat temu. Teraz postanowiliśmy je lubić.

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From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Terrible Maps (this is true. but only on Sundays!):

From Masih. Iran killed this protestor on Thursday; I was hoping they would let him go. No chance.

From Luana; Agustín Fuentes is doing his thing again:

From the #10 Cat, reprising the history of America. I didn’t realize that Trump had lifted taxes on whiskey from Scotland in honor of the Royal visit to the U.S.

From “Captain Ella” (now Colonel Ella), the Muslim, Arab-speaking spokesperson for the IDF. I love her. English translation:

Hezbollah threatened to occupy the Galilee, but it only occupied the homes of the Lebanese. Thousands of combat means were seized in Lebanon. What’s left? The weapons – we seized them The tunnels – we destroyed them The elements – we lined them up Their threats went down the drain.

Two from my feed. First, a cat gets a Hero D*g award:

This is a great way to get people in shape!

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And one from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb. He went home from Chile via Amsterdam, and here is the clock he photograph at Schiphol airport. Yes, the minute hand gets “repainted” every minute, and the hour hand every hour.

The clocks at Schiphol are a hoot

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T07:39:40.753Z