As you know, the University of Ghent in Belgium has been involved in a big kerfuffle over the Jason Arday affair, with Ghent’s involvement comprising an invesigation of a scholar they previously hired: Nathan Cofnas, the academic who exposed Jason Arday‘s plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis. Arday, you may recall, was the youngest black academic hired by Cambridge University, and one of the few scholars of color on its faculty (he was in education and sociology).

Arday’s plagiarism got the press and social media further involved in investigating his life, whereupon it turned out that he was apparently a fabulist, having made up a lot of stories that were unbelievable as well as providing a fake c.v. on what academic positions he’d held. Shortly thereafter, Cambridge University announced it was investigating Arday. He then resigned and then was found dead—an apparent suicide.

Arday’s death exacerbated the fracas, with some blaming racism and the press (and calling for restrictions, like limiting the number of articles the media could write about a person!), while others argued that the media held no responsibility for Arday’s death, pinning it on Arday himself with some help from Cambridge University, who apparently had hired a fabulist and unqualified scholar on the grounds of ethnicity and disability rather than on merit.

But that wasn’t all. Cofnas, who exposed Arday’s plagiarism, had moved on to the University of Ghent as a postdoctoral fellow. After Arday’s death,  Ghent was inundated with letters and petitions calling for them to fire Cofnas, who had studied the radioactive topic of race and IQ. (Ghent surely knew what Cofnas worked on when they hired him.) The rector suspended Cofnas pending an investigation, apparently on the grounds that Cofnas was working on things not specified in his contract, that his work on IQ and race violated Belgian law against discrimination, and that his continued presence at Ghent was a threat to the university community.

(See all my posts on this matter here.)

A number of us—800-odd academics, including me, signed an open letter to the Ghent Rector Petra de Sutter, saying that Cofnas was being punished for “whistleblowing” about Arday and that Ghent was violating Cofnas’s academic freedom. The letter ended with an appeal: “Therefore we urge Ghent University to protect Dr Cofnas from being punished for exercising his academic freedom.”

The Ghent student newspaper (Schamper) wanted to cover all this, and apparently sent many of the signers—again including me—an email asking us to respond to four questions (you’ll see them below). The email was signed by Leone Mattheus, the editor of the newspaper.

Dear Professor,

I am writing to you on behalf of Schamper, the independent student newspaper at Ghent University in Belgium. We are currently preparing an in-depth investigative article on the ongoing institutional, ethical, and legal developments surrounding postdoctoral researcher Dr Nathan Cofnas, including Ghent University’s recent decision to launch a preliminary disciplinary inquiry and impose a precautionary suspension.

We noticed that you are one of the signatories of the international open letter addressed to Rector Petra De Sutter (“Letter opposing punishment of Nathan Cofnas for whistleblowing”).

To ensure our coverage accurately reflects the arguments and concerns of the international academic community, we would be very grateful if you could briefly share your perspective on the following questions:

I decided not to respond as the questions appeared loaded, in line with the rector’s own urging of the University community to write damning letters about Cofnas. The “neutral” investigation is really aimed at getting rid of Cofnas. And the Schamper has a reputation, I’ve found, for “progressive” views, as we call them, including “anti-Zionism.”

I will show the answers to the four questions provided not by me, but by Professor Michael Ben-Gad of the Department of Economics, City St George’s, University of London. Ben-Gad is an Israeli who, like nearly all Israelis, had served in the IDF. For that he himself has been somewhat demonized.

I’ll put the questions asked by the student newspaper in bold and Ben-Gad’s answers in plain text. I of course have permission to publish Ben-Gad’s responses. I thought it would be useful to see a rational response to a biased inquiry:

Dear Leone:

1. The open letter characterizes Ghent University’s disciplinary proceedings as potential retaliation for Dr Cofnas exposing academic misconduct and plagiarism. Why do you consider his public writings on Professor Jason Arday’s work to be protected whistleblowing rather than a breach of institutional conduct?

Critiquing others’ work is not an anomaly but a normal part of an academic’s duties as a scholar and is usually classified as service to the discipline. This happens every time I am asked to referee a paper or review a grant application. As a macroeconomist, I work with and publish with Keynesians but remain publicly critical of large elements of the Keynesian approach. Is that a breach of my contract? Why? Keep in mind, the Keynesian economists whose work I have criticised are not engaged in plagiarism or data manipulation, they simply do not share my perspective on how best to model the economy. With Arday we are not talking about a difference of opinion—Cofnas performed an important service by uncovering serious academic malpractice.

2. Critics argue that while exposing textual overlap is legitimate, using one scholar’s case to make generalized claims about diversity policies and Black professorial representation violates academic and ethical standards. How do you view this distinction?

I think the management of an insurance company, car company or bank should be entitled to insist that their employees not publicly criticise the institution’s policies or their products as everyone has a fiduciary responsibility to the owners and shareholders. Universities are not-for-profit public institutions devoted to the production and dissemination of knowledge and by tradition operate differently. Diversity policies are perfectly legitimate targets for criticism especially when they lead to the hiring someone for one of the most prestigious positions in academia who are so clearly unsuitable as Jason Arday.

As a general rule, we do not ordinarily check the work of job applicants for plagiarism. The working assumption has been that it is not widespread. Hence, it is unfair to single out Cambridge or any of Arday’s previous employers for not uncovering it. What was plainly visible was that Arday’s published work was scandalously poor. It amounted to little more than a litany of accusations that UK higher education institutions were actively harming the mental health of ethnic and racial minority students without any explanation for why this would be. All this gleaned from interviews with a small carefully selected group of his peers that seem to have been in part also fabricated.

To read Arday’s work, one might think that acquiring a degree from a UK university like Cambridge is equivalent to surviving Dachau. If we apply the same standard, would this not also be an ethical violation? Actually, I think Arday was entitled to hold and express these views, but only an academic discipline that has been so politicised and captured by an ideological fringe would elevate such nonsense.

Cofnas’ ‘racial realism’ is not immune from criticism either. Not because its implications might be politically or socially uncomfortable but because many of his theories are based on weak evidence and that the data that contradicts his thesis is either ignored or explained away by invoking sample bias. This sample bias might be real, but unless he can provide evidence, this is little more than circular reasoning. Yet none of this factor in the decision to suspend Cofnas.

3. What message or precedent does Ghent University’s decision to suspend Dr Cofnas send to the wider international academic community regarding academic freedom and research integrity?

First, Ghent has form in this arena, I wish to highlight the university’s hostile treatment of a serious scholar such as Maarten Boudry, all for questioning the outrageous contention that Israel’s war in Gaza after the atrocities of 7 October amounts to genocide.

More broadly, this is a replay of 2020 when critical theory escaped its containment vessels in departments of sociology, media studies and education and activist scholars and the EDI bureaucracy sought to in effect colonise (they call it decolonise) what they deem to be unenlightened disciplines, including my own. That meant rather than merely critiquing traditional standards of empiricism and logic as White, Racist, Colonial and Eurocentric they sought to impose their values on the entire university. I experienced all this directly, when I was nearly cancelled for failing to alter my macroeconomics curriculum to incorporate racism, colonialism and social justice (Fanon and Lenin in place of Smith, Ricardo and Friedman) and to implement a racial quota (minimum 20%) on the authors of any readings I assigned. I made it clear at the time, that I would not interrogate the ancestry of anyone before I decide whether they belong on a reading list. This was deemed a violation of university policy by some in management, though ultimately not by the President which is why I still have a job.

4. The letter notes concerns about universities acting on internal distress or external boycott threats. Where do you draw the line between a university’s duty of care toward its campus community and its obligation to defend controversial or unpopular scholarship?:

As an economist I believe in incentives. If universities cave to claims of distress or threats of boycott, every group with a cause or grievance will be able to force the university to comply with their agenda.

I can also draw on personal experience. In October 2025, I was subjected to a second campaign to remove me on account of my national service in the IDF in the early 1980s and having studied as an undergraduate at Hebrew University which activists characterise as built in the 1920’s on stolen land. This included demonstrations, threats and and invasion of my lecture. The student and staff unions sided with the activists (even confronted me in Senate and the Board of Studies arguing that I was causing mental distress to the students. I was offered paid leave but insisted on completing all my assigned teaching. Had I not, others, perhaps more vulnerable would have soon been targeted in turn.

Note that Ben-Gad criticizes not just Arday but also Cofnas.  But his criticisms of Cofnas do not rise to the level of trying to deprive him of his academic freedom. Note too that Ben-Gad has experienced several bouts of attempted cancellation because he was both an Israeli and because he refused to bow to academic “purity tests.”

It will be interesting to see what the student newspaper says about all this. I’m betting they too call for Cofnas’s firing.

I thought the media fracas about Jason Arday would settle down soon after he died (likely via suicide), but it hasn’t.  Now people are busy affixing blame for his behavior, and death, with blame attaching to his fabulism, his  plagiarism and obvious lies, the press, and the lack of proper oversight by Arday’s Ph.D. committee and by Cambridge University who hired him.

Because Arday was a black man and the youngest professor of color at Cambridge, and because his story is at once outrageous and tragic, the accusations are flying fast, and coming from the Right, the Left, and the middle. What caused the whole mess? The media? Arday’s own tendency to make up stories? The University of Cambridge? Racists determined to bring him down?

Well, all of these are surely factors in the series of events that led to Arday’s resignation and death, but I won’t even attempt to make a mental pie diagram apportioning the blame.  I will say that some motivations surely involved racism, but those are not the same thing as condemning Arday’s hire because it was likely based on his ethnicity and his claimed hardships. Those are objections to DEI, which need not be racist.

And I won’t psychologize here, as it’s not productive. Yes, Arday made up stories, but did he initially or later come to believe that they were true? Who knows? Was philosophger Nathan Cofnas, who initially reported the plagiarism in Arday’s Ph.D thesis, motivated by racism? Cofnas is self-described as a “race realist,” but he was cleared of charges of racism by a disciplinary committee of his own University (Cambridge again, though he subsequently left). I can’t and won’t point the finger of racism at him. And what about all the media firestorms? Did those arise from racism? They involved Arday’s race, but remember that he kept emphasizing race himself, both before and after his plagiarism fabulism were discovered. One could argue that he was hired in part because of his constant invocation of racism as a hurdle he overcame.

All I’m willing to say is that there was plagiarism, that Arday’s stories are unbelievable (though it’s not clear whether he believed them), and that his rise to prominence surely involved prioritizing race and claimed disability over merit.

And while racism surely played some role in the tragedy, given who is writing about it—people who don’t seem to be arrant racists—I can’t believe, as some are claiming, that people went after Arday solely because of his race, nor that the media focus on his stories and tragedy (admit it, it is a eomplelling if sad story) was the equivalent of a “digital lynching”.  I’ll highlight some of the more prominent or telling pieces of journalism or commentary. Click on screenshots below to read them; I’ll provide excerpts that are indented, though what’s flush left is mine.

The article  from rom Inside Higher Ed below reports that a group of black academics is asking the press to evaluate its “relevant editorial standards”; the implicit message is that the press should regulate itself or be regulated. In other words, it’s attacking the press for what it said about Arday, and demanding that they stop the “ridicule and vilification” of Arday they perceived in coverage.

An excerpt:

A group representing Black academics has called on the U.K. press regulator to examine the media coverage surrounding Jason Arday’s private life before his death, saying some of the reporting on the former University of Cambridge professor amounted to “personal ridicule and vilification.”

Black Leaders in Higher Education UK said in a statement that it would ask the Independent Press Standards Organisation to consider “the nature and extent of reporting concerning Professor Arday’s private life and whether relevant editorial standards were upheld.”

“We have been deeply concerned by the scale and intensely personal nature of some of the public scrutiny directed at Professor Arday, including commentary that moved beyond legitimate questions of academic integrity into personal ridicule and vilification,” the group said.

It added that there was “undoubted public interest” in questions of academic integrity but that scrutiny must be applied equally to all academics.

Well, not necessarily equally, for Arday’s story importantly involves race, both via his repeated claim of the barriers he had to overcome as well as the reason he rose to such a high position despite thin accomplishments and a life story that could not be believed. The group of scholars also asks for university support of students of color who were distressed by the Arday affair:

It also urged universities to provide support and reassurance to Black students and staff affected by the debate surrounding the case.

Finally, money is being collected for Arday’s family, and there was a vigil and a petition supporting him:

An open letter addressed to Prime Minister Andy Burnham and the culture secretary has called for an immediate public inquiry into media coverage of Arday. Published by the Good Law Project, the letter says Arday was subjected to “two weeks of relentless harassment” that continued after his resignation, adding that “there cannot be any doubt that racism lay at the heart of this story.”

It so far has more than 80,000 signatures, including from prominent figures such as Diane Abbott, Zack Polanski and Jameela Jamil.

Stand Up to Racism organized an Aug. 17 vigil for Arday outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

A GoFundMe appeal started by Windrush campaigner Patrick Vernon to help Arday’s family with funeral costs has raised more than $200,000.

I disagree strongly with the view that the media has to treat everyone equally, especially when things differ—in this case the role of race—from case to case.  And since this is the British press, they can be hectored to tweak their coverage so it doesn’t strike anyone as racist.  That is wrong, and it’s too late anyway, for the train has left the station. As for collecting money for Arday’s family, I see that as a gesture of sympathy for him, and the guy apparently did have kids, so I have no objection to that except insofar as it’s motivated by the idea that he was the victim of (as Clarence Thomas called his Supreme Court hearing) a “high-tech lynching.”

Speaking of that, here’s a note from Carole Cadwalladr, whose Substack site is given on the second line; she thinks that, in the truest sense, Jason Arday “was the victim of a digital lynching.” I find that ridiculous.

From Coleman Hughes at the Free Press:

Here’s Hughes’s thesis:

Jason Arday was either the most interesting man in the world, or he was a liar. It turned out to be the latter.

All this has revealed many unflattering things about academia: DEI invites fraud by lowering standards, the bigotry of low expectations is alive and well, and a disturbing number of “experts”—not just Arday but all the Cambridge professors and BBC journalists who co-signed him—are compromised by ideology, cowardice, or both.

But the Arday scandal has also revealed something else: White liberals in the English-speaking world want to believe in the archetype of the up-from-nothing black intellectual who, despite huge disadvantages, goes on to achieve greatness. In fact, they want to believe in this sort of story so badly that they are willing to turn off every ounce of skepticism that they would normally bring to bear on fantastical claims.

The irony, however, is that we already have many examples of up-from-nothing black intellectuals who go on to greatness. It’s just that they usually turn out to be conservatives—or if not conservatives, then at least out-of-step with the left-wing religion of racial justice.

Another Free Press article, and one a little less thoughtful. Here Ditum blames academia for elevating someone who lacked merit but had the correct pigmentation:

An excerpt:

And Arday was a perfect silly season story. It was—and I am sorry to say this now that Arday is dead, but it is true—very funny. There was a childish brazenness to his exaggerations and inventions. Running 600 miles in six days, and 30 marathons in 35 days (some with a broken leg): obviously ridiculous. When The Guardian’s Lanre Bakare investigated some of Arday’s more baroque claims of harassment and found they didn’t stand up, Arday’s response was hilarious: “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.” This was a misfortune for Arday too. If he had been less amusing, he’d have attracted less attention.

But it was also (another misfortune) a serious story. It fell plum into the narrative of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) run amok: Arday was significantly underqualified for his job at Cambridge. The story also raised questions more broadly about academic standards in the humanities, regarding both Arday’s education (Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded his doctorate, confirmed that he had received just one in-person supervision while writing his PhD, which was later found to have substantial signs of plagiarism) and the education he provided to his own students.

There was the issue of police overreach. When Jack Grove of Times Higher Education submitted a routine journalistic query to Arday, Arday reported him to the police—and the police called the journalist, pressuring him not to contact Arday again. There was legal chill. Arday retained the law firm Carter-Ruck, which specializes in defamation cases, and threatened reporters with the possibility of libel action. And yes, there was racism: Cofnas is a “race realist” who considers black people intellectually inferior. But it would not have fallen to Cofnas to break the story of a “DEI cover-up” if there hadn’t been a cover-up.

. . . I do not regret writing about Arday, but I am sorry for him, and for all of us, that he was ever put in a position where he was somebody I would have cause to write about. If the plagiarism in his PhD had been dealt with at the time; if Cambridge had vetted his work; if his publisher had fact-checked his manuscript and done him the kindness of rejecting it; if the allegations of his academic malpractice had been dealt with openly in the specialist press, rather than hushed up until they became a legitimate scandal—then maybe Arday would have been spared the punishing glare of a public life.

Yes, this much is clear, but it’s been said before.  Cambridge didn’t do due diligence, but in the end the person responsible for Arday’s death was Arday.  We can draw object lessons about DEI and about suspending disbelief, and those are fine to discuss, but neither DEI, racism, nor the press killed Arday. He killed himself.

I was a bit surprised to see Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times agree with me about the dumb calls for censorship based on the assumption that Arday would be alive if the press had been easier on him. It’s a thoughtful piece and ends with a good quote:

An excerpt:

Those pressing for new controls on the press are making a serious mistake. Some who once championed Arday seem to be trying to deflect from their own embarrassing credulity, and it is unlikely to work. A deep resentment of both growing societal diversity and bureaucratic diversity initiatives, or D.E.I., fuels the right; it’s why Arday’s story was such catnip to the conservative press. But heavy-handed progressive attempts to stifle questions about those initiatives — to use institutional power to police the boundaries of public discourse about race, gender and religion — have a way of making that resentment even more politically potent.

. . .Many of the people who didn’t bother questioning Arday’s backstory should have known better; today their oversight looks less like respect than condescension, as if no one took him seriously enough to think hard about what he was saying. “Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot,” Jason Okundaye wrote in the left-leaning Guardian.

In retrospect, it would have been much better for all concerned if the story of his scholarly mistakes and biographical inventions had broken in a careful, professional outlet like Times Higher Education, instead of festering until it turned into a right-wing parable. Cofnas’s article catalyzed a journalistic feeding frenzy not just because it seemed to show evidence of plagiarism and falsehood, but also because it claimed there’d been a cover-up, and cover-ups tend to drive reporters wild.

Well, the Guardian played a big role in promoting the Arday story, and the last I heard the Guardian was not a right-wing source! And the “journalistic feeding frenzy” was due not just to a cover-up (actually, not so much of a cover-up as institutions ignoring their standards in the interest of equity), but to the bizarre nature of Arday’s claims. But here’s the pull quote from Goldberg’s article, which is great:

For people on the left, it’s sure easier to talk about the feral excesses of the right-wing press than the willful gullibility of certain elite progressives. But both contributed to the Arday disaster. Denying that won’t protect the left. It will just leave leftists out on a limb that grows ever more shaky.

From The Atlantic (archived here):

Harper’s piece is thoughtful but I think suffers from “both-sideism”, as he appears to argue without evidence that there is disproportionate scrutiny of of black scholars. Given the unique features of this case, I’m not so sure. Quotes:

The right would have us believe that the Arday scandal is a story of affirmative action taken to its most caricaturish conclusion. Many progressives see it as something else: a racist witch hunt in which self-righteous zealots with suspect motives hounded a man to death. The problem with these narratives—and it is a sticky problem—is that they are both right.

. , .To be a Black person in elite institutions, and particularly in elite academia, is to have the standards simultaneously set too low and too high: too low because only a Black person with Arday’s dubious qualifications and seemingly invented biography could have been elevated to the top of the mountain in academia and publishing; and too high because only a Black person could have been pushed off that mountain with such nakedly racist enthusiasm, his tumbling fall so ruthlessly documented, analyzed, and cheered. When a famous white man errs, people tend to rightly understand his mistakes or transgressions as an individual’s missteps. When a famous Black man does, the errors are typically turned into spectacle, characterized as proof of the inferiority, suspected all along, of his race.

Around the same time yesterday afternoon that I learned of Arday’s fate, I came across another piece of news: an announcement that Ross Barkan, a white novelist and journalist, had just been dropped by New York magazine after the publication—having investigated allegations regarding dozens of instances of plagiarism in Barkan’s writing—concluded that his work “did not live up to our editorial standards.” Swiftly afterward, Barkan announced that he would now focus on writing a new column at The Nation, another venerable outlet. (After the publication of this article, The Nation told me that Barkan had been “in conversations with his editor about a possible column but nothing had been formalized” and that he was “not under contract” with them.)

‘There are huge differences betweenthe Barkan case and the Arday case; one is not a control for theother.

I hope this will be the last time I write about the Arday affair unless further investigation turns up something remarkable. But I have concluded two things from reading about it.

First, “wokeness” (which I define as “performative virtue signaling”) is still with us, as evidenced by those who try hard to exculpate Arday and blame his resignation and death on a racist witch hunt. For sure there is racism involved, but that is a long way from being the sole reason for Arday’s downfall, and it is not a reason for his suicide.  The controversy that exists is evidence that identity politics and the oppressor/oppressed myth is stil la strong strain in liberalism, despite the fact that Arday’s rise demonstrates that he was elevated, not oppressed.

Second, it has now become okay for the press to raise the issue that merit can be dangerously ignored in some considerations of equity. It used to be taboo to say that a “minoritized” person gained privilege because of their minority status. The term “DEI hire” was always whispered and never discussed openly.  Now, in the Arday case, such matters can be and have been discussed. When they can be discussed without nuances of racism, but simply as mastication of how we want to structure society and enact “social justice,” that freedom of discussion is a good thing.

Finally, some tweets:

The Good Law Project, which created an open letter stating that the plagiarism charges against Arday were false and baseless has now collected nearly 100,000 signatures to demand an inquiry into further limiting the uk press.https://t.co/YsFHc3fZw5 pic.twitter.com/BBPk1CAvuW

— Diana S. Fleischman (@sentientist) August 18, 2026

The death of Jason Arday hit so close to home that I had no words yesterday. But I woke up with words.

To be a prominent antiracist Black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments. You know that at any point, the attacks can come like a lynch… pic.twitter.com/XetSepzJrx

— Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk) August 15, 2026

Unbelievable… the man who drove Jason Arday to his death is suggesting his life is in danger because of a peaceful vigil in Jason’s memory. Straight out of the Zionist/far-right playbook – they similarly describe pro-Palestine marches as hate rallies and purport to be victims https://t.co/mjsk329eYF

— Amara Sophia Elahi (@AmaraSophia) August 17, 2026

This event has to be the most post-truth thing I’ve ever seen. One speaker said Arday had been assassinated, and here they’re chanting his name with cult-like reverence.

It doesn’t matter to them what Cambridge did, or left wing outlets like the Guardian, or Arday himself.

All…

— Nick Dixon (@NickDixon) August 17, 2026

h/t: Greg Mayer for references

The author of Jesus and Mo is again recycling old strips, but I haven’t seen this one, called oops2. Here Jesus questions the notion of a personal God, whereupon that God punishes him by raining on his parade, proving that Jesus’s assertions are wrong:

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Küürupäev” in Estonian), August 19, 2026, and National Hot and Spicy Food Day. Here’s my heartthrob Jennifer Lawrence tasting and commenting on a row of increasingly spicy chicken wings. She cries in pain when she gets to the really hot ones, about 17 minutes in. She also discusses her career and persona as she noshes.

It’s also International Orangutan Day, National Potato Day, National Soft Ice Cream Day, World Humanitarian Day. and World Photo Day.  Here are penguins in Antarctica, photographed in 2019. Oh, how I long to return—and I will, for I’m going on a long trip to South Georgia Island in October, 2027. There is the largest colony of King Penguins in the world.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Another misstep by Trump in the Middle East: he excoriated Oman, a good ally of the U.S., which has been holding talks with Iran over peace and the Strait of Hormuz. Why the lashing out? Because apparently Trumpo is frustrated. (Article is archived here.)

As a crumbling truce with Iran officially collapsed on Monday, President Trump signaled his frustration at his inability to resolve a war that he started but cannot seem to end.

In an interview with Fox News, the president lashed out at an American ally, Oman, that has been trying to mediate negotiations with Iran.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Mr. Trump said in a phone interview, according to Fox News’s Trey Yingst.

The latest threat toward Oman, which has facilitated talks between the United States and Iran for years and maintains that it is still a neutral mediator, came as Mr. Trump found himself without much leverage to reach the goals he set out at the start of the war.

“I think, ultimately, his threats against Oman are just a reflection of his frustration with the situation he’s created, where he has no good options,” said Nate Swanson, of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project. “He’s just reflexively lashing out, and this time Oman got in the cross hairs.”

Hostilities have now stretched past the six-month mark in a conflict that began with the United States and Israel launching strikes across Iran in February. Administration officials pledged at the time that the war would be over in four to six weeks.

On the battlefield, the United States has struck thousands of targets in Iran and dealt serious blows to the country’s military capabilities, but the president has struggled to achieve the war’s political objectives.

Oman has been a pretty faithful ally of the U.S. for a long time, with substantial cooperation in security measures and against terrorism. It’s reprehensible of Trump to take out his frustration on such an ally—just as reprehensible as dissing South Korea and kissing up to North Korea because the South didn’t help us out much in Iran (why should it?).  The war may be a decisive factor in Trump (and the Republicans) taking a substantial hit in the midterms.

*Luigi Mangione’s attorneys got their way yesterday as a state court judge indefinitely postponed Mangione’s NY state trial because of his lawyers’ claim that Mangione would be put in double jeopardy with both a federal and state trial.  The state of New York has a deadline to respond to the double-jeopardy claims.

 Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which was slated to begin Sept. 8, has been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds following his guilty plea last week to federal charges.

Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense’s double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.

Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.

Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.

It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.

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Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.

This may go all the way up to the Supreme Court, and I have no idea how it will play out vis-à-vis the state trial.  Mangione will have to serve about 85% of his term no matter how long he’s sentenced in the federal trial, and since he’s 28, so assuming that he gets the lighter sentence and the 85% time served with good conduct, he’s be only 48 when he’s released. But if the double jeopardy prohibition stands, I bet Carro will at least give him 30 years, which still doesn’t seem long enough for what he did.

*The Washington Post reports that “progressive” Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan could actually hurt Democrats’ chances of capturing the Senate during the midterms.

Schumer backed Rep. Haley Stevens over El-Sayed in the primary, saying he thought she had a better chance of winning in November. The New York Democrat endorsed El-Sayed after the primary, and the two men have spoken about working together to hold the seat — but they have pronounced differences about Israel.

Schumer, the first Jewish Senate leader, has spoken out against rising antisemitism in both parties. He is a longtime ally of Israel, even as he has castigated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

El-Sayed has said he is as committed to Jewish safety as he is to the safety of his daughters. But his blistering criticism of Israel during the primary alarmed many Jewish voters in Michigan, who say he has not done enough to denounce antisemitism.

El-Sayed’s challenges run deep enough that three Democratic donors in Michigan are hosting a fundraiser for his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers, on Tuesday evening, according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post. One of them, Brian Hermelin, wrote in an email to potential donors last week that El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel and toward Jews meant he could not support him.

*The National Review has a clickbait article (for me at least): “‘Woke One’ wasn’t just crazy—it was destructive.” Destructive because it wants to rewrite history, says author Becket Adams, because people are now trying to pretend it was something different from what it was, and, in trying to rewrite history, those people (progressives, of course) are trying to pretend they never participated in Woke One. The article’s a bit hyperbolic, but is on point. First, though, when did “Woke One” start? Grok tells me this (with a reference):

The phrase itself was coined by New York City Council Member Chi Ossé in a May 22, 2026, X post (“Woke 1 was crazyyyy”), dismissing some of his own earlier statements from around 2021. It gained wider attention in August 2026 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referenced it in an interview, framing it as a period (especially tied to COVID-era rhetoric) that had gone too far or become outdated.’

We’re living through a real-life attempt to erase the recent past.

“Woke One was crazy,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) laughed recently during an appearance on ABC News, approvingly quoting a New York City councilman. “Woke One was crazy. Okay, that’s a truth,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl replied. The anchor then asked whether the left had gone too far during “Woke One,” including with its calls to “defund the police.”

This is where Ocasio-Cortez — and many within her ideological cohort, whether it’s writers at Vanity Fair or the New Republic, or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or even failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong — want you to accept their version of events over your own memory.

“I think that during this time and during, especially during Covid, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful.”

She added, “I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”

Total nonsense.

She’s simply trying to rewrite the record, and it’s as dishonest as it’s brazen. It’s also glaringly obvious what this is: a cleanup effort by someone with aspirations for higher office.

Her attempt to blame the “woke” era on pandemic hysteria collides with a simple fact: Anyone who is old enough to argue about this lived through 2020 — and 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. We remember the pandemic craziness as a continuation of a broader craziness that was already well underway. The term “cancel culture” appeared widely in mainstream media around 2018; “woke” itself gained popular prominence in the early 2010s.

Becket lists a lot of woke stuff before the pandemic, including all of cancel culture. You’ll remember this:

Then came the pandemic, and “Woke One” was now the effort to cancel Mozart and Flannery O’Connor while removing, dismantling, or toppling monuments to Theodore Roosevelt, the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, and Christopher Columbus.

Well, it’s useful to remember that Columbia and Serra were not perfect human beings. . .

It was the Smithsonian Institution listing as “aspects and assumptions” of “whiteness and white culture” in the United States: rugged individualism, respect for authority, politeness, punctuality, competitiveness, the nuclear family, objectivity, the scientific method, self-reliance, and hope.

And this, especially the “godless” pejorative, is clearly hyperbolic.

A political faction in this country was given carte blanche to enforce its revolutionary vision on every aspect of modern life, and it did so with ruthless devotion, capturing every major industry and social institution along the way, and with zero regard for the chaos, destruction, and lasting damage it caused.

It was an era of godless puritanism; except we know it better as the “woke” era. It was not long ago. It was every bit as bad as you remember. And its champions would prefer you forget the worst parts and the role they played — not from any sense of shame or guilt, naturally, but because the culture has shifted and your remembering might threaten their proximity to power.

What — you don’t think they’re actually sorry for what they did, do you?

Well, no. Ocasio-Cortez is backing off because she wants to be a Senator or even President, but others, like Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, or Zohran Mamdani, are clearly not backing off Woke One.  And if Democrats win Congress in the midterms despite the wokeness encompassed by the DSA and its supporters, you won’t hear that much rewriting of history.

*Anti-semitic news. A Jewish student won a gold medal at an academic Olympiad, but, since Israelis weren’t allowed to compete as a country, he competed as a “neutral,” won a gold medal, and then was asked to hand it back because he wore an Israeli flag at the award ceremony. From the Jewish News: (their bolding):

A brilliant 17-year-old student from Rehovot, Yotam Budnik, has had his gold medal win disqualified at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Uzbekistan, because he draped the Israeli flag around himself as his win was announced.

Since 2024, Israel has not been allowed to compete as a national team in the computer science competition. Instead, Israeli contestants are allowed only to compete as neutral and Israel does not appear on the official results scoreboard.

As the winners were lining up on the victory podium, Budnik, the gold medal winner, draped an Israeli flag around his shoulders, aware that the win was being transmitted live on TV. Immediately afterwards the IOI leadership went into emergency session, and voted to disqualify him, wipe his score from the official global leaderboard, and revoke his winner’s certificate.

But though the organisers apparently tried to take back the gold medal itself, Budnik refused to hand it over. He told Israeli media that though his name could be removed from the rankings, his achievement could not be wiped out.

Just three weeks earlier, Budnik won a gold medal — representing Israel — at the 2026 International Mathematical Olympiad in Shanghai, where national flags were permitted.

From StandWithUs on Facebook, a photo of Budnik. It looks as if it’s okay to wear a British flag, as Brits aren’t banned from competing on a national team.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is computer-illiterate:

Hili: Andrzej is trying to find the password manager’s PIN.
Szaron: I won’t be helping him with that.

In Polish:

Hili: Andrzej szuka PIN-u do menagera haseł.
Szaron: Ja mu w tym nie pomogę.

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

From Cole and Marmalade:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih’s paean to the brave women of Iran who “refuse to retreat”. Do read the whole post, and remember not just the woman who want to be free, but all the people of Iran who bleed under the theocratic whip:

This is the new face of Iran? Let me tell you the truth: this is what resistance looks like in Iran.

These are the brave women crushing the compulsory hijab law beneath their feet.

And to those sitting comfortably in the West, lecturing me that the Islamic Republic has… pic.twitter.com/cGzXppHtEK

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 18, 2026

Larry the Cat posted this, and I have to say that he looks like he was ridden hard and put away wet. But, after all, he’s nearly twenty years old:

Cat’s life. https://t.co/KCEcbe3Cp3

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 17, 2026

Speaking 0f Botany Pond, here’s a relevant post from Jeff Maurer:

I’m not a “pond guy” but surely there are more efficient ways of fighting an algae bloom. https://t.co/pf8tLf6mJt

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) August 18, 2026

From Malcolm. Why aren’t airlines boarding this way? Because it’s hard to assign boarding groups to facilitate this?

boarding was solved mathematically in 2008. no airline has used it once.

why? pic.twitter.com/5XtS0ksGbd

— Rod (@rod_mallo) August 4, 2026

Two from my feed. The first freaks me out. It was taken in Poland:

July 1, 1941: Lwów.

A single photograph captures the terrifying speed at which humanity can collapse.

In the center, a young Jewish woman cries out in agony, beaten and stripped by a mob of her own neighbors, local militia, and occupying soldiers.

She is completely… pic.twitter.com/yGvlUSrWhu

— Gameover 🇦🇺🇮🇱 (@MarkoS2075) August 18, 2026

And since we have a Holocaust post, here’s another. I’ve seen this photo SO many times, and they’ve identified the murderer. The Post article says this:

The gunman is believed to be Jakobus Onnen, a French, English and gym teacher who was born in 1906 in Tichelwarf, Germany, and joined the Nazi party in 1931.

This became one of the most infamous pictures from the Holocaust. Now, thanks to AI, after 80 years of searching, the name of the Nazi executioner from this horrific photo has been revealed.https://t.co/2OpxoVYDMP pic.twitter.com/NxOHho1Rrc

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 17, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was two years old and would have been 86 today had he lived. https://t.co/ITZB4C9P3T

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 19, 2026

One from Dr. Cobb, who’s busy writing his next book. Poor kitty! (Sound up.)

this timeline is f'd is six dimensions so I cast a counterspell with this old cat vid I saved years back

— Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ (@rmcelreath.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T09:05:38.015Z

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s back to work we go.  Yes, it’s another Monday and the beginning of the “work” week for those who take weekends off; to be precise it’s August 17, 2026 and National #2 Pencil Day, celebrating the only pencil worth using. (I cannot abide mechanical pencils.) Here’s how they’re made, but the process is the same for the unusable #1 and #3 pencils, too. This ten-minute video is quite informative, showing that the pencil number depends on the ratio of graphite to clay in the pencil’s core.

It’s also Baby Boomers Recognition Day, Cupcake Day (in Australia), National Black Cat Appreciation Day (if you have one, the first person to send me a photo will have it posted here), National Pineapple Juice Day, National Vanilla Custard Day, and World Eggplant Day.

Here’s the first photo in: Kira’s black cat named “Gitel”:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes the toll that constant fighting is taking on the IDF. The piece is called “The price of showing up.”

It’s Sunday, August 16, and “I met a young conscript during reserve duty who told me he could not see any future,” said Ori Oberman, a reservist and one of the authors of a new Taub Center study examining the expected impact of prolonged service on reservists and their families. “The young soldier knows that once he is discharged, he will be called up for reserve duty again and again. He cannot see his future.”

It’s been over 1,000 days since October 7, and for many, the time has been marked by days back and forth from reserve duty, some serving as many as 400 days—more than a year. The average reservist, who served 233 days, is expected to lose nearly 5 percent of their salary in the long term, the report reveals. Among reservists who are fathers and served between 290 and 320 days—a population the researchers said numbers more than 100,000 people—the expected salary loss is about 6 percent. Under more severe estimates, the damage to wages could reach about 20 percent. These are prime working years, drawn from the most productive stretch of a working life.

Among salaried spouses, 30 percent reported a hit to their pay and 3 percent were simply fired. Among the self-employed, 73 percent said their business suffered. And non-employment among reservists’ spouses jumped 40 percent between the autumn of 2023 and the spring of 2025—while the comparable figure for women whose partners stayed home didn’t move at all.

Roughly 70,000 students served in 2024/25. Among Jews and others, enrollment dropped below its 2018/19 baseline for the first time—and it fell hardest on women aged 22 to 24 and men aged 25 to 29, the very ages that set the academic and professional track for life.

. . . Underneath it all sits Israel’s version of the “affordability” issue—a pressure most families are feeling that politicians believe will be the hinge issue of the election; fitting for a country in which cost of living has always been secondary to security in voting priorities. Every party, with the notable exception of the ultra-Orthodox, has signaled toward easing the burden: financial compensation, housing benefits, promises of Haredi service. The war on all fronts will likely not be changed by the election, but the conditions of service likely will be—regardless of who wins.

. .  After many of America’s recent wars, the question that greeted returning soldiers was how to relate to those who had sacrificed for a conflict that was deemed unnecessary or was simply unpopular. Israel’s question is simpler and harder: how to keep asking for sacrifice without breaking the people who answer.

How often do people wonder about the conditions under which the IDF works, including the requirement that reservists have to serve if needed? On top of that, they are demonized everywhere they go outside of Israel. At least Israel should make the ultra-Orthodox serve, as there is no excuse for making the hyper-religious exempt from defending their country. You don’t defend it by reading the Torah.

*The NYT asks the now-tedious yet distressing question, “Is the Democratic Party having a Tea Party moment?” (Article archived here.)

A movement of young, progressive outsiders has stormed Democratic politics this year, sparking a wave of contentious primary contests across the country and fueling a fraught debate over whether these new, left-wing candidates are remaking the party in their image.

But as primary season winds to a close, the results reveal not only the strength but also the potential limitations of this insurgent movement.

In Minnesota last week, Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor, won a Senate primary by a double-digit margin, pressing a fiercely progressive message to defeat a more moderate opponent. Just a week earlier, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a left-leaning Democrat, won a Senate primary in Michigan despite being vastly outspent. And Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, came close to winning a primary for governor in Wisconsin, falling short by less than one percentage point.

The results marked a new level of political strength for candidates affiliated with a resurgent, activist left, showing that their movement can be competitive in statewide primaries, well beyond deep-blue House districts.

. . .Yet while a vocal group of strategists, activists and college-educated voters have raced to embrace these pugnacious, boldly liberal — and in some cases untested — candidates, some of the voters who have historically been most crucial to the party’s fortunes remain skeptical.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, both pivotal battleground states, the progressive candidates appeared to have struggled to sway voters who have long been the backbone of the party — including Black, more moderate and older Americans who vote reliably.

As left-wing candidates have notched victories in primary after primary, many progressives hope they will be able to move the Democratic Party further to the left—mirroring, in some ways, how the rise of the Tea Party movement nearly two decades ago pushed the Republican Party much further to the right. But the results raise questions about whether these candidates can piece together a broad enough coalition of Democrats, independents and moderates to win general elections in swing states that could determine whether Democrats are able to regain power in Congress and, eventually, the White House.

. . . The candidates share some unifying principles: Support for “Medicare for all,” opposition to A.I. data centers, a commitment to ending corporate money in politics and a view that opposition to American support for Israel is a moral litmus test, fueled by a belief that the Gaza war amounted to a genocide.\

Not really much new here: progressives have won a surprisingly large number of races, but many of those are primary races. I’d vote for most progressives over nearly all Republicans, but I’d rather not hold my nose when I vote.  I tend to adhere to what’s near the end of this article:

“People are less willing to trust the political class and what we think is electable,” said Lauren Hitt, a Democratic strategist who has worked for candidates across the ideological spectrum. “They’re looking for people who break the mold, but if you break the mold so much that you’re eccentric, that’s not the solution either.”

*At the Free Press, Jed Jed Rubenfeld (a professor of law at Yale), claims that “Mangione pleaded guilty to stalking. He’s still on the hook for murder,” something that people here have argued about. (The federal and state charges are said by some to constitute prohibited double jeopardy.) So can there be a state trial for second-degree murder?  Rubenfeld says the answer may be “yes”:

Technically, while Mangione admitted stalking resulting in the death of Thompson, he did not plead guilty to killing him, because that was not the charge he faced in federal court. (There were murder charges in the original federal indictment, but those charges were dismissed on technical grounds back in January.) Instead, Mangione pleaded guilty to “stalking” Thompson with the intent of killing him.

We don’t know yet what sentence Mangione will receive. What we do know is that Mangione’s New York state court murder trial is set to begin on September 8. The timing of the surprise federal guilty plea strongly suggests that Mangione’s lawyers intend to argue that the state trial is now barred by double jeopardy, and according to some reports, they have already filed motion papers on this basis seeking dismissal of the state charges. “One plus one is two,” Mangione told reporters last February. “This is double jeopardy by any common-sense definition.”

It’s a little complicated, but I think this argument is a loser.

Rubenfeld then discusses Mangione’s “fawning supporters,” a group that is utterly despicable. He’s got thousands of love letters from women, and Rubenfeld doesn’t think Mangione’s guilty plea will turn them off. After all, the evidence against him seemed pretty strong.  At first it looks as if Mangione has a good case against double jeopardy:

The U.S. Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause protects people from being convicted twice for the same offense. On its face, that might seem to apply to Mangione.

But as a constitutional matter, Mangione’s federal guilty plea has absolutely no effect on his New York trial. This rule is called the “dual sovereignty” doctrine. Because the United States and New York are different governments—different “sovereigns”—federal crimes and state crimes are different offenses for constitutional purposes, and the Double Jeopardy Clause therefore does not apply.

But Mangione has another, stronger argument—under state law. States are allowed to give people more protection than the federal Constitution does, and New York happens to have an unusual double jeopardy statute that does so. Under New York’s statute, the dual sovereignty doctrine does not apply. If a person pleads guilty to a crime in federal court, the state can’t prosecute him for the very same crime in a state court.

The argument is a bit convoluted:

But wait—Mangione is set to be tried for murder in state court, and he didn’t plead guilty to murder in federal court. He pleaded guilty to stalking resulting in death, which is not the same crime. It’s not crystal clear whether those crimes should be considered separate under New York law. The question under New York’s statute will probably boil down to whether the crimes he’s charged with in the state prosecution are “designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil” as compared to the crime he pleaded guilty to in federal court. And murder seems pretty clearly to be a harm or evil very different from stalking—even stalking with intent to kill.

There’s a wrinkle though. The federal stalking statutes permit a much more severe sentence—life imprisonment—if the victim dies, and as a result, Mangione’s lawyers will probably argue that the “harm” the federal stalking statute is aimed at is not only stalking, but also killing. It’s conceivable a state judge might buy this argument, but I doubt it.

The death-of-the-victim provision in the federal statute is a penalty enhancement. The underlying crime—the crime to which Mangione just pleaded guilty—remains stalking, not murder, and stalking remains a “very different kind of harm or evil” than intentional murder. For this reason, the judge in Mangione’s state prosecution can—and in my opinion should—hold that Mangione can still be tried for murder despite his guilty plea in federal court.

And there’s more in favor of a state trial:

. . .Putting aside the state murder charge, there are other charges that can almost certainly still go forward in state court. Mangione’s state indictment accuses him not only of murder, but also of a host of gun crimes as well as forgery of a driver’s license. These crimes carry various possible sentences, which, if imposed consecutively, could amount to decades to prison.

In other words, even if the state murder charge were dismissed as double jeopardy (which in my opinion would be a mistake), Mangione still faces serious legal jeopardy in his state court prosecution.

There you have it: from a lawyer’s mouth.  One way or another, Mangione will probably spend the rest of his life in prison, and the love letters will be received behind bars.

*St. Louis Cardinals rookie outfielder Josh Báez did something amazing yesterday, and a first for Major League Baseball: he hit three home runs in his first three times at bat in his debut game, something never accomplished before in the big leagues. And he’s with my favorite team (I was born in St. Louis and inherited my love of the team from my dad.) He hit them against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. It’s a rare accomplishment for any player to hit four homers in a game (and that’s the single-game record, but we haven’t seen three in a row for a rookie debut! I don’t know of any other player who set a MLB record in his first game.  From ESPN:

Cardinals outfielder Joshua Baez smashed the first pitch he saw in the majors about 450 feet then flashed a grin to the St. Louis dugout as he began his home run trot.

“There was a calmness and a smile, like, ‘I’m here,'” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “It’s rare for me to pick my head up to enjoy parts of it. He didn’t exactly give us an option but to actually take a step back and enjoy the heck out of what was going on there.”

There has never been a show quite like it.

Baez, 23, became the first player to hit a home run in each of his first three at-bats in the majors, leading St. Louis to an 8-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Saturday.

Called up from Triple-A Memphis before the game, Baez had 30 family members in attendance at Wrigley Field. The traveling party, which included his mother, Yris, gathered on the field for photos afterward despite rain.

“It’s just unreal,” said Baez, the fourth-ranked prospect in the Cardinals’ system and No. 93 overall, according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel. “To not only get a hit but three home runs? It’s crazy.”

He did it with flair too.

The first came on the first pitch he saw from Matthew Boyd and landed an estimated 449 feet away in the left-center bleachers. It was the third-longest homer in a player’s MLB debut since ESPN began tracking home run distances in 2006. Only Jason Heyward (476 feet) in 2010 and Aaron Judge (457 feet) in 2016 had longer shots.

Baez’s next at-bat ended with a solo shot down the left-field line, and the third, on his ensuing at-bat, went the opposite way, giving him five RBIs.

“He hit three different pitches for home runs. He had a great game. He beat us, for sure,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.

Thirty family members in attendance! You can’t be happier than that, can you!  I wish Báez luck in helping my Cardinals, whose performance this season has been so-so.

Here’s the feat:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s remembering her friendship with the late d*g Cyrus:

Andrzej: Penny for your thoughts.
Hili: I was remembering the walks Cyrus and I used to take to the river.

And do you remember Carol Piller’s polka/klezmer song, “Hili and Cyrus”, first posted here. and put below. It’s a fabulous song—with photos:

In Polish:

Ja: Grosz za twoje myśli.
Hili: Przypomniały mi się spacery nad rzekę z Cyrusem.

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

From Kitty Litterposting:

From the Dover Public Library, which has a great sense of humor:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Masih: yet another young protestor killed by the state in Iran:

I am sorry, Shahram. Until they hanged you this morning, I didn’t know your name. I didn’t even have your photo.

That is exactly what the Islamic Republic wanted.

This is Shahram Sadeghi. A young protester from the January uprising. Arrested. Tortured. Hanged at dawn, after the… pic.twitter.com/vxlRxLj41g

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 16, 2026

From Jay, and I think it’s real. Uncle Lynx is a bit portly, though!

When uncle lynx comes to visit pic.twitter.com/MVD99NRdvh

— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) August 14, 2026

From Jeff Maurer. How about one that says, “We eat chalk”?

Outstanding designs! Can you make one that says “Great At Slogans, Shit At Policy”? https://t.co/HLPgTdj08W

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) August 16, 2026

From Malcolm. Oy!:

Dozens of fishermen have lost fingers (and worse) to wolffish… even after the fish was dead and decapitated.

The head can still bite down hard for a long time thanks to powerful jaws and lingering neuromuscular reflexes. pic.twitter.com/E4mGLV9Dp9

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 28, 2026

Two from my feed. First, Ibram Kendi defends the late Jason Arday, but McWhorter calls Kendi out (see Kendi’s article here):

No engagement with the arrant lies, the massive plagiarism, the airy public addresses. Kendi thinks all of that is okay if you’re Black (and have dreadlocks) and that Arday was still a legitimate academic seized upon because of his color.

Kendi thinks Blackness exempts one from… https://t.co/BvUtVe2M1B

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) August 16, 2026

Is this “genocide”?

On This Day — August 15, 2005

Israeli soldiers and police began forcibly removing the last Jewish residents from Gaza under Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement Plan.

Almost 9,000 Jews from 21 communities were evacuated. Families were carried out of their homes. Synagogues were… pic.twitter.com/77OPzWQE3m

— Captain Allen (@CptAllenHistory) August 15, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was eight years old. https://t.co/dfpXW9o11k

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 17, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb: a beautiful video of rays swimming:

The way the morning sun's rays lit up this pair of big, beautiful Spotted Eagle Rays yesterday at the beach near Clearwater, Florida. #nature #animals #wildlife #rays #florida

— See Through Canoe (@seethroughcanoe.bsky.social) 2026-08-16T12:08:39.263Z

I wanted to remind readers of the “Roolz” (the commenting rules) for two reasons. First, there are some new commenters who should read them, as some people violate them from the get-go (e.g., calling other readers names or being generally uncivil).

Second, even long-time readers who know the rules should be reminded about the frequency-of-posting recommendation. Here’s rule number 9 (wasn’t that a Beatles song?)

9. Try not to dominate threads, particularly in a one-on-one argument. I’ve found that those are rarely informative, and the participants never reach agreement. A good guideline is that if your comments constitute over 10% of the comments on a thread, you’re posting too much.

The ten percent guideline is there to prevent people from commenting over and over again, as some try to do. Although I vary in how hard I enforce it, I don’t like to see someone posting, say, three comments out of the first ten that appear. Of course, as comments accumulate, the rule becomes less and less relevant, but be aware that if you make comments, they should generally constitute about 10% of what’s there at the time you comment. One way to avoid violating the guideline is to wait a while until comments accumulate, and then have your say.

Although I tolerate and sometimes like one-on-one discussions, they should generally be limited to four comments total (two each). Persistence in the face of fact can be construed as obtuseness, which is frowned on.

Oh, one more thing: please don’t leave comments consisting only of a link. At least add a few words about what the link refers to, or what it says.

Thanks!