Thursday: Hili dialogue

July 16, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, July 16, 2026 and National Cherry Day. Here’s a bowl of pie cherries from Andrzej and Malgorzata’s orchard, next to a pie that Malgorzata made in 2016: my first cherry pie in Dobrzyn:

It’s also Guinea Pig Appreciation Day, National Corn Fritter Day, National Fresh Spinach Day, and World Snake Day. Here’s a snake I photographed in 2015; can you guess the species?

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

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: In a fantastic comeback, Argentina, behind by 1-0 at the 55th minute,,scored two goals within 7 minutes in the second half to beat England 2-1. I was happy because Argentina is my team. I wanted Messi to go out on a World Cup win, and if they beat Spain on Sunday they will (Messi assisted in both of Argentinas goals yesterday).

Argentina sealed a dramatic semifinal fightback against England at Mercedes-Benz Stadium with two goals in the closing minutes to clinch a 2-1 win and book a World Cup final clash with Spain on Sunday.

The reigning world champions, who won their third title in Qatar four years ago, looked set to be eliminated with England leading well into the dying stages following a second-half goal from Anthony Gordon.

But as so often in this tournament, Argentina responded and Enzo Fernández leveled the scores with a stunning shot from 20 yards in the 85th minute.

Lionel Messi, who assisted the first goal, again played supplier for the second. His cross to the far post was met by substitute Lautaro Martínez, who headed the winning goal into the net from close range in the second minute of stoppage time.

“This is incredible, it’s truly incredible,” Martínez said. “I dreamed it, I swear. I told Alexis [Mac Allister] I was going to score a goal; I told Facu Medina that I was going to come on and win the match.

“We stretched the team and went all in. We got the goals in the end, and after three-and-a-half years, we’re back in a World Cup final.”

Messi now has 10 assists in the World Cup knockout stage, at least six more than any other player in at least the last 60 years. And the 39-year-old has recorded a goal or assist in 11 straight World Cup games dating back to 2022, extending the longest such streak since at least 1966.

England’s failure to hold onto their lead means the 1966 world champions’ wait for a second World Cup final appearance goes on.

Here is a video of the highlights; the goal-scoring play are at 5:46 (England), 10:15, and 11:47 (during stoppage time).

*In a “news analysis” piece, the NYT argues that the war with Iran has entered a new phase—one centered not on nuclear weapons, but on the Strait of Hormuz and who controls it:

The Trump administration has lurched back into a war against Iran that had never really ended.

When the war started more than four months ago, U.S. forces targeted Iranian military bases, missile launchers, ships and naval facilities. Israel, fighting alongside the United States, hit leadership targets, hoping to bring down Iran’s hard-line government.

Their record of success has been mixed, at best. Israel killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but the leaders who succeeded him were even more hard-line. U.S. forces struck thousands of targets, but did not destroy Iran’s ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil typically flows.

For roughly 90 days beginning in April, an on-again-off-again cease-fire prevailed. And then it was over.

The United States now appears to be entering Round 2 of its military campaign. This round has a new focus — but not necessarily a clearer strategy.

Iran’s ability to control the strait, despite the pummeling its navy took, is by far the most important lesson of the first phase of the war. So it is no surprise that the Trump administration is focused on trying to loosen Iran’s grip on it.

Last Tuesday, in retaliation for attacks on tankers, President Trump ordered airstrikes on dozens of targets in Iran, including coastal radars, anti-ship missile launchers and a fleet of small Iranian attack boats.

After a short lull, the United States hit 140 military targets in the first of three consecutive days of heavy bombing this week.

U.S. forces carried out new rounds of attacks on Iran throughout Tuesday and resumed a naval blockade of Iranian ports, a strategy that showed some success in the earlier phase.

The strikes are intended to open the waterway to shipping. The purpose of the naval blockade is to put economic pressure on Iran by choking off its trade and to flex American military might.

Well, the last paragraph outlines a strategy that’s pretty clear, even if the NYT doesn’t approve of it. The “memorandum of understanding” was hopeless from the start, not only because it was ambiguous but because Iran would never agree with it. This conflict is going to go on for a while unless Trump loses it and declares victory, stops all fighting with Iran and leaves (which amounts to the same thing), or intensifies its pressure on Iran, squeezing it until the theocracy declares “uncle.”

*A new article in the WSJ reports widespread abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli officials.  No, there is no dog rape, but there are claims of beating, starvation, medical neglect, and yes, anal penetration with a stick. The treatment began, says the WSJ, after the October 7 attacks of Hamas. This is a serious report with Israeli sources.

. . . . the thousands of Palestinians held at Lavi prison in the Negev and other prisons across Israel now faced harsher conditions. Thousands more joined them, swept up in raids amid the ensuing war.

Auditors from Israel’s Ministry of Justice and United Nations agencies later found that detainees were subjected to beatings, particularly during transfers and searches, and starvation. Autopsies of some Palestinians who died in custody showed signs of physical assault, medical neglect and malnutrition. Doctors and rights groups described instances of sexual violence.

In addition to those reports, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a dozen Palestinians released from Israeli prisons since 2024, mostly as part of ceasefire agreements with Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. All said they experienced physical abuse, such as being bound in stress positions and beaten, and severe hunger. Two men said they were sexually assaulted in front of other prisoners.

“Every day, three times a day, someone was being beaten,” said Iyad Omar, 44, one of the men held in Lavi (formerly known as Ketziot), who had been imprisoned since 2002 and was convicted of attempted murder. “This kind of thing never happened before Oct. 7. Back then, we only faced this type of abuse if there was a hunger strike or a riot.”

. . .Physicians for Human Rights Israel, an Israeli medical-advocacy nonprofit that monitors prisons, said it has visited 59 detainees since February, with all reporting insufficient food and medical treatment.

About 9,300 Palestinians are in Israeli custody for alleged security offenses, up from about 5,200 before the war, according to Hamoked, an Israeli nonprofit that has access to prison population data. Most of them are held without charge, the group says.

Government officials in Israel have said they intentionally made life harder for detainees after Oct. 7, including reducing food rations and banning visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which are standard in conflicts around the world.

The changes were designed to toughen punishments for terrorists and enhance deterrence against extremism, some officials have said. They say basic standards of care are met, and deny allegations of systematic abuses.

“The allegations described are false, recycled, and entirely without factual basis,” a spokesperson for the government’s Israel Prison Service said in response to questions from the Journal. It said that all detainees are held in accordance with the law, with full regard for their basic rights, including medical care, and that complaints or allegations of abuse are investigated.

Pressure is building on Israel to provide a more thorough accounting of its prisons since the Oct. 7 attacks, as more reports of alleged abuses come to light. Some in Israel and many abroad are calling for greater accountability.

. . . There have been only a handful of investigations into alleged crimes against Palestinians in Israeli detention, with one known conviction since the start of the 2023 war in Gaza.

And the sexual abuse accusation:

Mohammad Mardawi, 47, said he was imprisoned in 1999, and official records show he was later convicted of membership in a militant group and shooting toward people. He told the Journal that while he was held in Lavi, he was put into a small, single-person cell in April 2024 with two other men, and watched through a sliver of space beneath the door as Israeli soldiers fired guns at the feet of a group of new detainees, then beat them.

Later that day, he said, guards came into the cell and bound him and the other two prisoners and told them to kneel on the floor with their heads to the ground.

“That’s when they put the stick inside me,” Mardawi said. He gestured to explain how a guard slipped an object into his pants and penetrated him anally.

“I wished that I would die,” he said.

This investigation is far more credible than Nicholas Kristof’s “dog rape” column, one reason being that the Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights weighed in on “insufficient food and medical treatment.” If this stuff happened it is unconscionable, unworthy of Israel’s democracy, and needs to be thoroughly investigated and any perps punished. The individual allegations of beatings and rape may be hard to substantiate, as there are probably no records, but they should be investigated as far as humanly possible, and anybody participating in this treatment punished heavily. And if the treatment is systemic—known to and okayed by higher ups—they should be punished, too.  It’s a pity for the NYT that they didn’t find Kristof’s piece sufficiently credible to do a full news piece on it.

*Over at the Free Press, Douglas Murray discusses the recent refusal of both Turkey and Egypt to allow an LGBTQ+ cruise to dock; the ship, named The Scarlet Lady, had 2000 passengers Murray says the media have distorted the reasons for the refusal, which are really religious but interpreted as political and the results of colonialism.  Murray, of course, is openly gay.

Talk about a big gay scandal. This week brought news of a gay Virgin cruise ship called Scarlet Lady, which, by my count, is at least a triple entendre. In recent days, the ship was barred from docking in both Turkey and Egypt. To make it even more of a gay hate crime, the Scarlet Lady was carrying not just 2,000 gay Americans but also Patti LuPone.

The mainstream media, and what remains of the gay press, swiftly framed this as a pattern-example of anti-LGBT discrimination. Indeed, CNN ran the story under the headline: “Twice-Rejected American Cruise Puts Spotlight on Rollback of LGBTQ Rights, Passengers Say.”

The story CNN and others ran with was drawn in part from the testimony of one Kyle Olsen, the owner of an LGBT travel company who claimed that the ban reflected a “broader global trend.” He added that “We’re seeing a rise in right-wing governments and increasingly conservative political movements, and in many places LGBTQI+ rights are being rolled back as a result.” According to Olsen, “The decisions by Turkey and Egypt don’t exist in isolation.”

The strong insinuation of these reports is that the spurning of Scarlet Lady is a result of a world in which Donald Trump has been reelected and right-wing populism is on the march worldwide.

. . . Not for the first time, the commentariat is desperate to avoid the obvious and singular cause of Scarlet Lady’s woes: Islamic countries do not tolerate gay and lesbian people, nor recognize their rights. These countries actually do exist in a type of isolation from the rest of the world.. . .

In reality, Turkish authorities rejected the vessel’s landing because, they said, the passengers were “known for behaviors incompatible with the fabric of our society and our moral values.” Passengers hoping to dock in Egypt and take in a quick tour of the pyramids were brushed off for the same reason by authorities in Cairo. The vessel was forced to sail to Greece—ironically, a birthplace of the ancient gay tradition.

Obviously, these countries have not suddenly cracked down on gay rights. In 2001 there was a famous trial in Egypt—known as the Queen of the Nile trial—in which more than 50 Egyptian homosexuals were prosecuted after the cruise ship they were on was raided by police who beat and arrested the ship’s passengers.

. . . In other words it is no news that the Egyptian authorities, like their Turkish counterparts, hold on to the same laws and moral code that they have kept for centuries. These mores are not the result of colonialism—one of the great excuses claimed by apologists, such as Joseph Massad in his book Desiring Arabs. Rather, Islamic norms are derived from the traditions of Islam and upheld by reference to Islamic scripture. As Muhammad is recorded to have said in one famous Hadith, “Whoever you find doing as the people of Lot did”—homosexual relations, that is—“kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.”

. . . But alongside what we might describe as Western “neo-orientalism” is a second oddity. It is a question that some feminists and a small number of gay rights activists have mulled for years: Why does the battle for progressive rights always stop at the borders of Islam?

Instead, the Western rights movements largely chose to focus on encouraging mastectomies on minors, abortion rights up to the month of delivery, pronouns, micro-aggressions, and the addition of ever more letters and categories to the LGBT alphabet soup. While Western activists were focused on micro-aggressions, they ignored the macro-aggressions being practiced on their counterparts in other countries.

My suspicion is that this failing will be judged harshly by history. It will be explained by the fact that in the aftermath of colonialism, post-colonialism persuaded Westerners that we had no right to impose our own moral norms on other societies. But what will bemuse historians of the future is how we were able to run both the thoughts mentioned above at the same time: the presumption that we know the rest of the world, especially the Islamic world, while making no serious effort to understand it or affect it.

All I can say is “amen.”  Muslims, despite their huge numbers and big megaphone—even in Western countries—are still perceived as “people of color” and thus the moral failings of Islamic doctrine must be excused (Israelis are considered “white adjacent”). And the voyatge of the Scarlet Lady shows how pathetic the “gays for Palestine” movement is. It’s also humorous, if you consider arrant ignorance of reality funny.  Somebody should give this article out to Greta.

*A T. rex fossil was sold to a private collector for $50.1 million, setting a record for dinosaur-skeletong sales (article archived here).

Sotheby’s sold a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil at auction on Tuesday for $50.1 million, with fees, topping records set in recent years amid a surging market for prehistoric specimens.

The towering skeleton, nicknamed Gus, was sold after a nearly 10-minute bidding war. The auction house declined to name the buyer, or even reveal the person’s location.

“Try a bigger bite,” said Phyllis Kao, an auctioneer at Sotheby’s during the live sale in New York, which included seven bidders. “It’s a T. rex after all.”

The sale allowed the T. rex to reclaim its title as the most valuable on the commercial fossil market. Two years ago, it had been unseated — by an herbivore, no less — when a stegosaurus fossil was auctioned for $44.6 million.

The record continues a trend of climbing prices for dinosaur bones, which has delighted commercial fossil hunters while drawing criticism from paleontologists at universities and museums who worry that they are being priced out of the market.

The 12½-foot-tall T. rex fossil was excavated from private land in fossil-rich South Dakota in a multiyear process that started in 2021. At that time, the fossil industry had just been supercharged by the sale of another T. rex skeleton — known as Stan — which sold for $31.8 million, driving fantasies of buried treasures out West.

The winning bid was taken by Cassandra Hatton, a Sotheby’s executive, who said in a statement after the sale that “Gus is not only an exceptional find but a specimen that’s been excavated, documented, prepared and cared for with real excellence.”

I appreciate that the finder should make some money from the skeleton, but private bidding drives the prices up beyond the ability of museums to afford them. This removes them from the ambit of scientific study and thus of knowledge about this species. (This specimen apparently bore traces of injuries.)

The prices given in this video differ from those in the NYT article.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the flowers make Hili and Andrzej despondent, because the roses were Malgorzata’s favorites in the garden:

Hili: So many flowers, and so little joy.
Andrzej: Sometimes even beauty can make you angry.

In Polish:

Hili: Tyle kwiatów, a tak mało radości.
Ja: Czasem nawet piękno może gniewać.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Stacy:

I will have only a few tweets today as yesterday I had to deal with the Duck Disaster (see the next post).

From Masih: pro-regime Iranians call for Trump’s head (see English translation):

From Luana; the UN makes a rare admission:

Maarten Boudry sent a post about cats and his alma mater:

Larry the Cat, rooting for England in footy, was happy before the game. . .

. . . and then sad (the quote is from Oasis’s “Wonderwall” album):

One from my feed; this was on the news last night. I don’t know if the guy got his clubs back:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

And one from Dr. Cobb, who thinks that Argentina plays dirty soccer and was rooting for France in their game with Spain:

How France played last night #WorldCup2026

— Reading Museum (@readingmuseum.bsky.social) 2026-07-15T17:23:37.243Z

We have ducklings!

July 15, 2026 • 9:49 am

I can’t believe it! New ducklings on July 15, and likely to be the hottest day of the year.

I’ve been watching the pond regularly, but haven’t seen a hen for at least ten days. I believe it was Margot, named after Margot Fonteyn the ballerina, for the hen had a long, graceful neck. Her partner, the drake Rudolf (Nureyev, of course) hasn’t shown.  This morning I looked on the pondcam and, to my surprise, I saw a hen followed by a bunch of blobs. Ducklings! I ran down to the pond and, sure enough, there was a new brood.

You can see them below in a picture taken at high zoom, so I can’t seem them well enough to know if it’s really Margot, nor do I know how many there are–I think9 or 10.

This is by far the latest brood we’ve had: more often they show up the first two weeks of May.  But Margot hested before and lost her brood to harassing drakes that drove everyone away. Now that we have no drakes, there’s a good chance that this brood will survive to fledging (if they’ll eat), which should be mid-September.  That is not too late to fly, and the weather will be good.

Now you tell me: how many ducklings?

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 15, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Haftanın Ortası” in Turkish): Wednesday, July 15, 2026. It’s also National Hot Dog Day, celebrating the American snack whose epicenter for quality is Chicago.  The classic Chicago dog is a Vienna beef dog (in a natural casing) nested in a Rosen’s poppy-seed bun, and then topped with mustard (NEVER ketchup), celery salt, tomatoes, diced onions, green relish, sport peppers (small hot green peppers), and a pickle spear.

The Chicago dog can be ordered “dragged through the garden,” i.e. with all the veggies above. That makes it healthier than a regular dog. I’ve been to nearly all the places they visit, and also to the winner, Byron’s.  A Chicago dog is a thing of beauty, and you need two (and fries) for a good meal.

Here is a 22-minute video of two guys rating Chicago’s best dog places, pronouncing Byron’s the winner at the end. It’s pretty good, but there are equally good places that make similar dogs.

It’s also Gummi Worm Day, I Love Horses Day, National Respect Canada Day, National Tapioca Pudding Day, and Orange Chicken Day (a Chinese Dish).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: Spain beat a frustrated French team 2-0, with the well-oiled Spaniards shutting down a French team that didn’t seem close to scoring (the Spanish goalkeeper made only a handful of saves).  France will play the loser of today’s Argentina/England match for the third place, while the winner will face Spain in the World Cup final.

Spain booked their place in Sunday’s World Cup final after dismantling France 2-0.

In a semifinal billed as a 50-50 between two European heavyweights, Spain dominated for the majority of the game and more than deserved their victory.

Forward Mikel Oyarzabal put manager Luis de la Fuente’s Spain team ahead in the 20th minute from the penalty spot after France left back Lucas Digne was penalized for inadvertently kicking Lamine Yamal in the box. It was one of a number of mistakes that littered a dismal first-half performance from France.

Didier Deschamps, who will step down as the French coach after the tournament, was dealt another blow 10 minutes later when Arsenal center back William Saliba was forced off with a back injury.

France, winners in 2018 and runners-up in 2022, were briefly better after the break, but any momentum was killed by Spain’s second goal.

Spain right back Pedro Porro played a delightful one-two with midfielder Dani Olmo before he calmly slotted his finish past goalkeeper Mike Maignan.

For all of France’s attacking talent, they ended the game with an expected goals (xG) total of just 0.3 as Spain, the reigning European champions, reached their second World Cup final and first since lifting the trophy in 2010.

Here are the highlights; the goal-scoring plays on the video begin at 3:00 (goal kick) and 8:15.   A Spanish goal at 9:17 was nullified because one of their players was offside.

Today’s game is England vs. Argentina, and will start at 2 p.m. Chicago time or 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal ponders two ironies. The first is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, was actually a Mossad asset (he’s now under arrest). The second, which I’ll give excerpts of, is Trump’s declaration that he’s Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. is going to charge tolls for transit, something we said that Iran (as well as anybody else) could not do). [Note: he rescinded the tolls yesterday; see below.]

Meanwhile, Trump is playing tit-for-tat with a bewildering twist. Iran closes the strait—Trump imposes a blockade. Iran announces service fees on passage through its corridor—Trump announces a 20 percent fee on passage through the American one. He has even given himself a title: Guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi, apparently constitutionally incapable of recognizing irony, responded on X: “20 percent is of course too much. We will be fair.” The two powers are now negotiating competing toll booths on the same chokepoint—which is either the most creative geopolitical standoff in recent memory or a particularly expensive episode of The Apprentice.

The bigger story is the reimposition of the blockade itself—because the first one worked. Mojtaba Khamenei approved the original MoU grudgingly, publicly, with his reservations on the record—only after President Masoud Pezeshkian, terrified of the blockade’s economic consequences, accepted personal responsibility for the outcome and committed to safeguarding the supreme leader’s red lines. It was not diplomacy that brought Iran to the table. It was the prospect of an economy that, by one senior intelligence official’s estimate relayed to me during the original blockade, would not have survived 2026 intact. Khamenei left no ambiguity about where the blame would fall if the deal collapsed. Ahmadinejad may not be the only one with his head on the block.

Accelerating the potential collapse are two factors: the resurrection of Operation Economic Fury and the resumption of strikes. The sixty-day oil sanctions waiver the Treasury issued June 22 made it less than halfway before it was withdrawn—staff who spent last month unfreezing assets are now reimposing sanctions. Meanwhile, US strikes have continued for a third consecutive night, for now focused on military capacity around the strait, though economic infrastructure sits well within the realm of possibility.

As for the American toll, I’ll believe it when I see it. The notion that the only thing separating the US Navy from opening the strait has been a missing financial incentive strains credulity. Unless Trump takes further inspiration from the Iranian playbook—strike ships first, then demand protection money—the US must actually provide a service to collect a fee. During the war, the Navy quietly moved vessels through the Omani corridor; recently even that route has come under fire, and there are conflicting reports about whether sufficient escort capacity exists. If it does, the toll is worth watching.

I don’t think the Americans will impose a toll, and I can’t see the point of making that assertion. For one thing, the U.S. would have to stop ships to collect it, unless it wants to believe their stated cargo value and impose the toll from afar. Second, this violates international provisions that the Strait is open, as well as our claim that passage would be free (and the U.S.’s strong claim that Iran had no right to impose tolls).

UPDATE: Yep, yesterday afternoon, Trump dropped the toll. From the AP:

The U.S. military said it will resume its blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to reinstate it. The president, however, reversed his plan to charge a 20% toll on cargo traveling through the strait. Instead, Middle Eastern countries will make investment and trade deals with the U.S., Trump said on social media.

*Another Democratic congressman, the well known Ro Khanna (CA), is trying to establish himself as being anti-Israel, apparently in a way to improve his party cred. Im “Ro Khanna’s dishonest Israel stunt,” the estimable journalist Haviv Rettig Gur shows that Khanna has manufactured an incident to make it look as if he were bullied and threatened by Israelis official in the West Bank.  There’s video showing Khanna’s fabrication.

You may have heard some recent news about Congressman Ro Khanna’s trip to Israel.

For those who haven’t, early Thursday Israel time, Khanna was touring the West Bank with a small group led by an Israeli guide who heads Breaking the Silence, an activist organization opposed to Israeli military rule in the territory.

During the tour, the group’s car was stopped by a handful of armed Israelis. That was because Khanna was entering an area that many believed to be a closed military zone. Reports have since emerged that the designation had expired, but the Israelis on the ground seemed to have believed it was still in place.

I don’t know the specifics of this particular case, but to be clear about my own position: Sometimes, the IDF uses these closures to displace illegally built Palestinian settlements—settlements that rarely get building approval from the Israeli military authorities. When that happens, I’m on the side of the Palestinians affected. But there are other times, other cases, when the area genuinely isn’t safe to occupy, or when the squatters are recent arrivals, or when the IDF needs to designate an area a military training ground.

. . . a U.S. congressman appears to have spent the days since the incident exaggerating what happened to the point of completely mischaracterizing it. Or as simple folk might put it, lying.

. . .In the wake of the incident, Khanna claimed that he had been detained at gunpoint by “violent” Israeli settlers. This does not appear to have happened. Footage released by Khanna and the tour guide—reluctantly, and only after a great many noticed the suspicious refusal to release any footage at all of said violence—shows the congressman’s guide calmly getting out of the car and having a conversation with soldiers. The soldiers repeated, several times, that they had called the police. When the police arrived, they simply told everyone to let the group continue.

That was it. The entire incident.

Khanna and his group were not “detained,” as Khanna claimed. Detention means you can’t leave. As far as we can tell from available accounts and footage, nothing stopped them from turning around and leaving the way they came. The area was believed to require permission to enter, and Khanna’s group had not coordinated with the IDF, the Israeli police, or anyone else that anyone has been able to find who might have facilitated a U.S. congressman’s visit to the area.

Within about 20 minutes—this, according to the account by Khanna’s own team—an IDF patrol arrived and asked them to wait for the police. Police arrived roughly 30 minutes later—again, according to Khanna’s own team.

In other words, the congressman, after refusing to coordinate his visit, was delayed for about an hour before being allowed to enter the area in question. But if you listen to Khanna, it was “an unprecedented, illegal detention of Americans by a foreign country.”

Here’s the footage; decide for yourself:

And from The Hill:

Khanna claimed that when the military service members arrived, they “blocked the road … siding with the settlers against the Americans.”

But the Israeli military disputed that account, saying, “IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking that road.”

Turner also pressed Khanna on remarks from Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Leiter, who said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that the Israeli Embassy in Washington contacted Khanna to try to coordinate the trip. Leiter said he suggested to Khanna that he meet with survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and that he “visit the borders so he understands the issues that we have on our borders.”

There’s a 44-minute YouTube interview in which Haviv levels his “J’accuse” against Khanna. I find Gur more credible than Khanna, not because he’s Israeli but because Khanna’s been dissing Israel for some time, because of the video, and because it seems incumbent on Democrats who have political ambition, like Khanna, to diss Israel (Rahm Emmanuel just did this, too). Note that in the interview Haviv does criticize Israeli West-Bank settlers for other deeds.

*This has been one of Israel’s most divisive and contentious issues for a long time. Ultra-orthodox Jews (the Haredim) have been exempt from the Israeli draft, as studying the Torah (which is basically all that Haredi men do) was deemed equivalent to military service.  That changed in 2024 when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that there could be no exemption for Haredi men (but women are still exempt, though non-Haredi Israeli women are not). Haredi men would thus have to serve the 32 months that other Israeli men (save Arabs) must serve.  On Monday the Knesset (Israeli parliament) buttressed the Haredi by declaring as a “basic law”—Israel’s equivalent of a U.S. constitutional law—that Torah study is a “foundational value“. That would give the country a legal basis to retain the exemption for Haredi men. But in Israel the Supreme Court has the right to negate a passed law if it’s deemed “un-basic”.  And as it stands, Haredi men were supposed to be drafted, and none were—they became draft dodgers.

Yesterday the Knesset narrowly passed a law banning arrest of the Haredi draft-dodgers, keeping the issue unresolved:

he Knesset votes 58-54 to pass a coalition-backed law banning the arrest and prosecution of ultra-Orthodox men evading military service, a measure that will, in practice, halt most Haredi enlistment to the IDF for at least the next few months.

The law grants tens of thousands of Haredi draft evaders immunity from arrest until November 30, and extends that protection to those who become eligible for military service after it takes effect, effectively eliminating the threat of arrest and making it easier to refuse to enlist during that period. It also suspends ongoing criminal proceedings against those already facing enforcement measures.

Yesterday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir called the proposal “inconceivable,” saying it was “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs” and amounted to “providing mass exemptions from prosecution.”

There are roughly 72,000 Haredi men who were liable to arrest until today, according to figures released in May by the attorney general.

The vote followed an overnight coalition standoff after United Torah Judaism chairman Moshe Gafni demanded the legislation be brought to an immediate vote, threatening to block all other coalition bills until it was advanced. The Knesset debate continued overnight and through the day, with opposition filibustering including 1,748 reservations.

Although I am a “Zionist” in the sense that I believe the state of Israel should remain a sovereign state, and also that its establishment was okay (after all, there are explicitly Muslim countries where Jews are not even allowed to live, though 20% of Israelis are Arabs), I do object to the Haredi exemption. If Israeli Jews are required to serve their country, then that should go for those Jews who engage in Torah study.  Israel, though a state for Jews, is secular in basis, and a religious exemption for studying what I see is nonsense and a waste of time has no justification. The Supreme Court will rule on this, and if I don’t miss my guess, they will overturn this new law, too. Eventually the Haredim will have to serve, and there will be big trouble.

Note that Israeili Arabs are one group legally exempt from mandatory service in the IDF—on security grounds.  But Arabs can and do enlist; they must just undergo a through background check.  You can read more about this fracas as part of Amit Segal’s report today in It’s Noon in Israel.

*Beloved Kiwi actor Sam Neill died Monday in Australia; he was suffering from angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma but we don’t know whether that killed him.

Sam Neill, the ruggedly handsome and remarkably versatile screen actor from New Zealand who appeared in more than 150 films and television shows over a five-decade career and was perhaps best known for his star turn as the dashing paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in the blockbuster “Jurassic Park” series, died on Monday in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.

His family announced the death in an Instagram post but did not specify the cause or where in Sydney he died. Mr. Neill was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in March 2022, but the statement said that he was “cancer free” when he died.

Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, Mr. Neill had the magnetism of a leading man and a character actor’s taste for variety.

Sam Neill, the ruggedly handsome and remarkably versatile screen actor from New Zealand who appeared in more than 150 films and television shows over a five-decade career and was perhaps best known for his star turn as the dashing paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in the blockbuster “Jurassic Park” series, died on Monday in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.

His family announced the death in an Instagram post but did not specify the cause or where in Sydney he died. Mr. Neill was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma in March 2022, but the statement said that he was “cancer free” when he died.

Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, Mr. Neill had the magnetism of a leading man and a character actor’s taste for variety.

The sad part is neither the NYT obituary nor Neill’s Wikipedia page mentioned his deep love of DUCKS. But, courtesy of readers Gayle and Nigel, we’ll fill in that important lacuna in the obituaries. First, a tweet from Neill himself (sound up):

Another cuddle:

*Finally, a hard-to-crack puzzle in the form of four symbols atop the Adobe building in San Jose, California. As the UPI odd news tells us, a software engineer solved it after it was up for 3½ years.

The puzzle — a looping animation of four circles in various positions — has been playing on a loop atop the Adobe headquarters building in downtown San Jose since May 2023.

The San Jose Semaphore, designed by artist Ben Rubin, was finally solved this spring by software engineer Brian Vincent.

Vincent analyzed the patterns and determined they represented a code for colors in the pixels of a digital image — specifically, a single rose from Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting Birth of Venus.

“I want to say that the difficulty level on this puzzle is probably perfect,” Vincent said in a video released by Adobe. “In some ways it seems a little bit simple, but at the same time it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort, and it stands for years before anyone solves it.”

The video about how it was solved is below, and it’s amazing.  A single rose in a Botticelli painting. This is the third puzzle:

The puzzle was the third in the San Jose Semaphore series. The first, installed about 20 years ago, turned out to be the full text of Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49. The second was an audio file of Neil Armstrong saying, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Adobe said a new semaphore puzzle will be installed soon, and the first person to solve it will receive a free two-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej needs a rest from working and Hili needs a rest from supervising Andrzej:

Hili: I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided to take a vacation.
Me: To tell you the truth, I’d like to get some rest too.

In Polish:

Hili: Nie wiem jak ty, ale ja postanowiłam zrobić sobie wakacje.
Ja: Prawdę mówiąc, też chciałbym odpocząć.

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

From Kitty Litterposting; Japanese lore how old house cats become magical:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff. This cat should get an Oscar.

From Stacy; which medieval elephant are you?

From Masih, who discusses Iran’s vow to kill Trump as well as the funeral of the late Ayatollah, which she characterizes as “a terrorist summit”:

Amnesty International is becoming, like the ACLU, an organization that dismisses women’s rights to have some safe spaces. According to the BBC, they criticized a women’s rape center set up by J. K. Rowling to provide rape counseling from women counselors only. The center was, according to AI, “anti-rights.” As the BBC said, AI backed off:

Amnesty International UK has said it regrets publishing a report which classed a sexual violence support centre set up by JK Rowling in Edinburgh as “anti-rights”.

Beira’s Place was established in 2022 by the Harry Potter author and other campaigners who claimed it fulfilled an unmet need for women-only support in the city.

The facility was listed as a gender critical organisation in a briefing issued last week by Amnesty entitled “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK”.

The human rights charity now says the briefing was uploaded without going through the normal checks, and it has been temporarily withdrawn while an internal review takes place.

In a statement it said: “We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions.

“Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.

“We remain committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.”

At least they backed off; the ACLU hasn’t.  Here are a couple of tweets, including one from another organization libeled along with Amnesty’s removal of its tweet and Rowling’s reply:

Yesterday Larry celebrated Bastille Day:

Two from my feed. Sound up on both, please:

Baby giraffe! I wish it could grow up in the wild.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb, who’s now at a meeting and not watching footy. First, Nutmeg died:

A memorial will be held in the coming weeks to commemorate the feline’s legacy.

— The Oregonian (@oregonian.com) 2026-07-13T02:00:02.884Z

Video of a duckling having the zoomies:

Caught a zoomie little guy at sunset last night 🥰 🐣 🪶

— Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli (@banditelli.org) 2026-04-08T21:12:41.416Z

Kamala Harris for President?

July 14, 2026 • 8:45 am

I’m writing this to blow off steam, and also pose a question to readers: “Why were Democrats so enthusiastic about Kamala Harris’s candidacy for President.?” Sure, she was the default candidate and Democrats had to vote for her if they didn’t want the abysmal Trump, but why the outpouring of enthusiasm for someone who seemed palpably unqualified for the Presidency? Whence the “great joy” that Harris brought to some Democrats? Why the “Kamala is brat” memes, with “brat” meaning “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.”

I want to blow off stem because yesterday I had an “animated discussion” with a good friend about Harris, with my point being that Democrats can’t afford to get really enthusiastic over a lame candidate. He told me that Harris wasn’t lame, that he was enthusiastic over her, and that she lost largely because she was a woman. Then it was off to the races. (Upshot: we’re still friends, but agreed to differ.)

Confession: I voted for neither Harris nor Trump. In Illinois, Harris was sure to get the electoral votes, but I couldn’t stand Trump. Harris, on the other hand, made me queasy.  So I wrote in “Gretchen Whitmer.” If I had to go back, I may well have written in “Pete Buttigieg”, who would be a great candidate in 2028 but people consider him unelectable because he’s gay. (I don’t believe that, by the way. If Americans can elect a black person President, they can elect a gay one. After all, voters elected a sexual assaulter who advocated grabbing women by the genitals, who was married three times, and who paid off a pornstar to keep her mouth shut after having sex with her. Next to that, being gay a godly position.)

Why couldn’t I stand Harris?  For several reasons. First, she lacked gravitas, or even the ability to string together words in a meaningful sentence. I don’t know how many times the phrase “word salad” was used to characterize her speeches and interviews.  Have a gander, and this is typical. (Don’t forget that Harris avoided interviews and speeches during her candidacy.)

She was long on metaphors like the coconut-tree meme and “I can imagine what can be, unburdened by what has been,” and, even for NPR she was short on specifics in her “60 minutes” interview. You’l remember that her words in that piece were edited by CBS to remove some of the salad. That interview, below, is just another word salad.

I could not vote for a President who could not outline their views clearly.

I didn’t disdain Harris because she was a woman; after all, I had no compunction about voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and don’t give a hoot about about a candidate’s sex, race, or sexual orientation. What I want is someone who can lead the country. And if you can’t articulate your views, or establish a policy platform, and if you gaslight the American public about “what has been,” you won’t get my vote.

Though averring she was going to distinguish herself from Biden, Harris proffered only a continuation of Biden’s policies—policies on immigration, on economics, and on foreign issues.  She was not particularly pro-Israel, and was insistent that the IDF not go into Rafah (“I’ve looked at the maps,” she said). He campaign focused more on serving up word salad and attacking Trump than on advancing her own policies.

Her past: she was not a particularly good Vice-President, though I realize that the Veep has to make their own jobs. Nevertheless, she was assigned to deal with immigration issues and didn’t do squat. She took the “right” positions on issues like women’s and LGBTQ rights as California’s attorney general as Senator, so I can’t say she was “Trumpish” in any way. My worries are that she went along to get along, wasn’t particularly smart or reflective, was too progressive, and, since she couldn’t put two words together, could not lead in the sense of persuading Americans to go along with her.

Given all this, I was baffled at the outpouring of Demorcratic enthusiasm for her. They not only urged others to vote for her (which was fine), but also extolled her as some kind of iconic Democratic figure (which was not fine). We can’t afford, as liberals, to distort someone’s views and image to win elections.  Rather, we have to find good, solid candidates. Harris was not one. The American public was not fooled by her promises to bring change, nor were they heartened by her incoherence in the few public speeches and interviews she gave.  People weren’t fooled, and she lost.

Our job as liberals (and for me as a left-centrist) is to find candidates who have the potential to be leaders, and can articulate a vision.  I think Pete Buttigieg is one, but can’t think of others, though of course both Clinton and Obama emerged at the last minute to win the Presidency. Please put below the candidates you’re enthusiastic for now.

In his column in today’s NYT (archived here), Thomas Edsall mentions three issues that the Democrats  must be “normies” about if they’re to win (“normies” means adhering to the majority Democratic view, not the “progressive” view. A quote:

Even now, according to a new survey by the left-leaning group Data for Progress, the Democratic Party has a net negative rating of minus 29 percentage points among swing voters, worse than the minus 25 for the Republican Party. Democrats seeking to restore their party’s credibility with the electorate as a whole, but especially among those crucial swing voters, might consider adding three planks — on immigration, urban disorder and transgender issues — to the 2028 Democratic platform.

Why? Because it is these three issues that serve to reinforce the perception that Democrats are willing to sacrifice the interests of the working and middle classes in favor of special interest constituencies.

I am more than a little queasy making these suggestions, but I think the Democratic Party needs to perform a kind of brutal surgery on itself.

And here are the three issues and what Democrat has to believe about them if they’re to win (bolding is mine):

On immigration, I would suggest — with plenty of room for amendment — the following:

Democrats will firmly enforce laws on illegal immigration, including tough border enforcement and deportation of unauthorized immigrants who commit crimes.

Unauthorized immigrants with no criminal record who have been in this country for at least five years, along with Dreamers, should be offered green cards with a path toward citizenship. More recent arrivals should be deported.

On crime:

The Democratic Party supports aggressive prosecution of those accused of violent crime, those who engage in crowdsourced “teen takeovers” of stores, as well as all forms of child abuse.

The party backs restoration of bail requirements in the case of felonies, lifetime sentences for offenders convicted of multiple violent crimes, tough enforcement of child support laws and the death penalty if supported by the voters in a state and endorsed by a jury.

Transgender and gender dysphoria:

There are two sexes: men and women.

A man can claim an identify as a woman, and the same in reverse for a woman. They have every right to do so. Their claim should be respected and they should be protected from any form of discrimination for their choice.

Their claim does not, however, alter their biological sex.

Consequently, it is legitimate in areas such as sports where a transgender person would have a competitive advantage over non-trans people to bar such participation. Similarly, a claim to a sexual identity does not give a trans woman the right to incarceration in a woman’s prison.

Finally, the debate over gender affirming surgery and hormone treatments is fraught with contradictory assertions. For now, because there are credible scientific claims of irreversible harms, such treatments for those under 18 should be barred pending further study.

This is the best of the many pieces I’ve read about what Democrats need to do to start winning.

I agree with all these positions, save that I don’t think the death penalty is justifiable, nor do I think it will turn voters off so long as you advocate for the possibility of life sentences without parole.

The problem with Democrats is that they’ve been gaslighting us: pretending that crime is down, that something close to open borders is okay, and that trans rights always trump women’s rights—that biological men are identical to women in all respects.  Voters are not taken in by these positions, and all three of the critical issues Edsall mentions are ones that Democrats tell us are not problematic.

The next President does need to hew to something like Edsall’s program.  Edsall doesn’t mention Israel, which is the thorn on the rose, and it’s possible that no Democrat can be elected who doesn’t criticize Israel for overreacting in Lebanon and Gaza. Could I vote for someone like that? I suppose I could—if they have the other virtues.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

July 14, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 14, 2026. It is of course Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when the French prison, holding only 7 prisoners, was stormed and opened. It’s a French National holiday, their equivalent of the Fourth of July. It’s also National Mac and Cheese Day, celebrating a uniquely American comestible that was invented in England.

It’s also National Nude Day, National Grand Marnier Day, Shark Awareness Day, and Cow Appreciation Day.

Wikipedia of course has an entry for macaroni and cheese, which includes this tempting photo:

Texasfoodgawker, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And this warning:

Although high in carbohydrates, calories, fat, and salt, macaroni and cheese is a source of protein and certain variations of the dish can decrease the negative health aspects.

In the southern U.S., mac and cheese is often regarded as a vegetable, especially on the iconic “meat and three” plates.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: There’s a good game in the offing: France plays Spain today at 2 pm Chicago time (3 pm Eastern). This is a semifinal, so the winner goes to the final match.

*Iran now claims that it controls the Strait of Hormuz, while strikes have intensified between the U.S. and Iran. In the meantime, Trump reinstated the U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping.

After another night of attacks, the United States and Iran appeared to be reverting to the heightened conflict that existed before their cease-fire, as they exchanged incendiary rhetoric and President Trump said he was reinstating the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran, threatening to escalate the confrontation further, vowed revenge for the killing of its supreme leader, and appeared undeterred by nearly a week of U.S. strikes.

Mr. Trump said the United States would take control of the disputed Strait of Hormuz, charging a 20 percent fee on all goods passing through it. He had lifted the blockade last month after the two countries reached a truce, which has been threatened by repeated strikes by both sides.

Mr. Trump told Fox News that the United States would charge other countries for keeping the strait safe. “We are going to guard it and we’re going to get paid for guarding it,” he said. The suggestion, which would amount to an expansion of the military conflict, echoed previous threats that had not come to pass.

. . .Within Iran, conservative hard-liners have become increasingly vocal in their uncompromising stance toward the United States.

The upswell in rhetoric came after Iran’s military said early Monday that it launched another barrage of strikes aimed at American military assets in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Hours earlier, U.S. forces said they had launched more strikes on Iran aimed at stymying its ability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

UPDATE:

The United States and Iran reignited their war over the Strait of Hormuz, trading strikes as President Trump said he would resume a naval blockade Tuesday on Iranian ports and impose tolls on ships passing through the waterway.

The new attacks over control of the waterway, which is a crucial transit route for oil and gas shipments, raise the specter of an intensifying conflict that has already roiled the global economy and left many dead. Oil prices soared on Tuesday in one of the biggest daily jumps since the start of the war, as Mr. Trump’s preliminary cease-fire deal with Iran lay in tatters.

The latest hostilities follow weeks of strikes between the United States and Iran, as diplomatic efforts stalled to turn the truce into a permanent deal to end the war. Mr. Trump has formally notified Congress that the fighting had resumed, saying last week that the cease-fire was “over.”

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the blockade of Iranian ports, which had been in effect from April to June, would begin late Tuesday local time. It said that its latest strikes on Iran, which concluded early Tuesday morning, were intended to degrade the Iranian military’s ability to target commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

From the WSJ:

President Trump said Monday he is reimposing the U.S. blockade on Iranian shipping, escalating a standoff over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

His comments came after the U.S. launched additional strikes against Iran, which defied American demands that it publicly declare the strait open and instead closed the waterway. Oil prices jumped, with Brent crude trading 4.5% higher.

Trump asserted that the strait remains open under American protection and said the U.S. would charge 20% of every cargo as compensation for its costs. He didn’t detail how that would work but said procedures would be formulated immediately.

“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” the president said on social media.

Iran’s armed forces said, “We will under no circumstances allow the United States to interfere in the management of the Strait of Hormuz.”

The dueling comments herald the likelihood of a continued standoff over control of the strait that is undermining Trump’s deal and risking further pressure on global oil markets.

But the NYT notes that “The U.N. agency that regulates international shipping said it opposed any move to impose tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, after President Trump said the United States would charge a 20 percent fee on all goods passing through the strategic waterway.”

Remember when Trump proclaimed that there was a “new regime” in Iran, implying that one of the war aims—regime change—had been effected. Yeah, a change to an even harder-line regime than that at the beginning of the war. You can forget about the cease-fire, which was a bad deal to begin with.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, in a post called “The monster beneath the mountain,” Amit Segal describes a huge Hezbollah tunnel complex (now captured by the IDF) in a rock mountain beneath an ancient crusader castle, and brings us up to date about Israel’s negotiations with Lebanon.

The ancient Crusader fortress was once the linchpin of Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon: taken in a bloody and heroic assault in the opening hours of the 1982 war, then ringed for the rest of the occupation by IEDs and Hezbollah guerrillas until the outpost earned its nickname—the Monster on the Mountain. Forty-four years later, there is a new monster, and it dwells beneath the crumbling ruins.

Israel did not come back for the view. Since early March, the Beaufort and Wadi Saluki sector has served as one of Hezbollah’s principal firing platforms—more than 400 rockets launched toward northern Israel, most of them at the northern town of Metula, alongside drones and anti-tank fire at troops operating across southern Lebanon, with the ridge functioning as the command node directing the fighting.

The infrastructure sits in territory where the Lebanese army nominally operates. Israel submitted a request through U.N. channels for the LAF to address the site. The request met the fate of Lebanese politicians who oppose the terror group—quietly silenced.

Air power had been tried as well: the complex was struck from above several times, the rock absorbed it, and Hezbollah went back to work. What cannot be bombed from above must be taken from within. So the IDF planned a ground operation long in advance, waited for its moment, and on May 31 the Golani Brigade raised the flag over a fortress Israel had not held since 2000.

Last week, the IDF walked reporters into the mountain. The tunnel—one node in Hezbollah’s “Land of Tunnels” project, an underground construction effort across southern Lebanon supervised by IRGC officers alongside North Korean advisers—runs 1.3 kilometers from the cliff face into solid rock. Inside: water and electricity, living quarters with showers, toilets, and kitchenettes (stocked mini-fridges included, per the Daily Mail’s tour), even a fully equipped, completely sterile operating room. Operatives could live underground for months at a time. It is estimated that construction of the facility took 10 to 15 years and tens of millions of Iranian dollars. The purpose was dual, an officer explained: to fire directly at Israel—step out of the tunnel and Metula is visible on the horizon—and to defend the ridge against precisely the ground maneuver that eventually took it.

The complex functioned as a significant command-and-control center where hundreds of operatives were stationed, managing the fighting from inside the mountain—until the ground operation began, at which point they fled.

As of last Tuesday’s tour, the Beaufort tunnel is wired: charges laid through the rooms and passages, reporters warned not to light cigarettes. That is itself news. Through late June, tunnel demolitions across southern Lebanon were frozen at the American request, when negotiations with Iran had temporarily grabbed President Donald Trump’s attention. Gadi Eisenkot revealed that commanders had been given no authorization to detonate—until the Majdal Zoun complex was finally destroyed on June 28. The freeze, evidently, has thawed. Intelligence assessments reportedly point to something larger still beneath the Beaufort area—a four-story underground bunker, also built with Iranian assistance.

As for the diplomacy:

Above ground, meanwhile, diplomacy continues. On Thursday, an American official announced that Israel and Lebanon have entered the implementation stage of the framework signed in Washington on June 26—the first pilot zone to launch within days, with further zones being mapped. On Saturday, an American military delegation sat down with Lebanese army command in Beirut to work out the mechanics of the first zone: Israel withdraws, the Lebanese army deploys. On Wednesday and Thursday, delegations from both countries will meet in Rome—in a closed session, according to the American framing—to hand the framework off to technical teams. Beirut had conditioned its attendance on Israel first completing the pilot-zone withdrawal; on Saturday it confirmed it will attend anyway.

Later on the calendar, President Joseph Aoun is expected to fly to Washington on July 21 to ask Trump for military support, reconstruction funding, and backing for an international conference on the Lebanese army.

On Friday, he said something Lebanese presidents are often hesitant to say out loud: that despite the presidency’s efforts to avoid another war after the November 2024 ceasefire, Hezbollah refused to cooperate—and that the organization’s decisions are ultimately made in Iran. Aoun is stating the obvious, which in Lebanon is an act of considerable bravery. It is the admission that the real monster was never on the mountain, nor beneath it. In the twist everyone knew but no one dared say aloud, the monster sat in Parliament the entire time.

Yes, that is an act of considerable bravery, but it also cuts Hezbollah free from association with the Lebanese government. It will continue operating as a semi-independent terrorist group funded by Iran and bent on destroying Israel.  This is important for the negotiations with the U.S. in which Iran demands that Lebanon be part of the agreement. If they’re talking about the Lebanese government, it won’t work. But they’re talking, I think about Hezbollah’s right to continue inflicting terror, in which case the U.S. cannot agree—even when relations are strained with Israel.

*A New Yorker in a studio apartment was evicted because his small flat was cluttered with ten thousand books (article with photos archived here.) He fought the eviction, but lost.

For a young Jewish scholar and writer named Mendel Uminer, books are the wellspring of enlightenment. So when he scored a studio apartment a block away from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side a year ago, he brought his books with him — all 10,000 of them. What followed, at least for a little while, was a charmed existence in his 600-square-foot temple of knowledge.

Towering stacks of Judaica lined the walls, heaps of film criticism and opera history filled the prewar bathroom, piles of plays and poems blocked a window, and Uminer slept on a floor mattress engulfed in dog-eared novels. Waking up around noon, he spent his afternoons on his sunlit chaise, devouring the works of Yiddish writers like Chaim Grade and critics like Edmund Wilson, nourishing his mind while the city churned outside.

“I’m always reading,” Uminer, 31, said. “I’m reading to extract knowledge. Every book I own, I need. My library is my manual for life.”

He worked as a freelance Hebrew translator and used the apartment as the headquarters for his fledgling literary journal, Notarikon Review, hosting parties that gained a reputation among quarters of New York’s literary underclass. Striving writers drank beer among the teetering stacks while arguing over foreign affairs and Greek poetry.

The stacks kept rising as Uminer added his hauls from thrift shops, book dealers and eBay deliveries. “I don’t think of myself as a hoarder,” he said, “but I guess my building did.”

This past winter, he received a notice from building management. “You are violating a substantial obligation of your tenancy,” it began. “You are maintaining the Premises in a severely overcluttered condition; permitting the over-accumulation of books in the Premises; creating a fire hazard by over-accumulating combustible books in the Premises.”

“I open this letter,” Uminer recalled, “and they’re telling me my books are a fire hazard, that I have to be out if I don’t get rid of them.”

After he did not heed the warning, eviction proceedings began. He decided to fight back in court.

Mendel lost, but I’m hoping that some rich bibliophile will help him find a big place to dwell among his beloved texts. Rumors are that he’s found a bigger place, but read about his tortuous background at the free link.

*This new paper (below) came out in Ecology Letters and it’s a great, short, and succinct summary of the sex binary and why it’s not made up but based on gametes. Full disclosure: I was one of four reviewers. Click to read for free, and send the link to your misguided friends who claim that sex is a spectrum.

Here’s a bit of the introduction, which makes clear the explicitly political nature of the “controversy”:

Researchers across disciplines have long been confronted with a societal debate about the concept of biological sex that has resurfaced with renewed intensity in recent years (Griffiths 2020; DiMarco et al. 2022; Coyne and Maroja 2023; McLaughlin et al. 2023; Rehmann-Sutter et al. 2023; Arnold et al. 2024; Velocci 2024; Eppley et al. 2026). This controversy stems largely from efforts to reconcile scientific insights and facts in biology with human societal values—an endeavour predestined to misunderstandings and cross-disciplinary tensions. Biology, as a scientific discipline, aims to describe the complexity of life and to understand the mechanisms that generate and govern this diversity. It is not designed to prescribe ethical norms or moral values in human societies, which fall within the domain of other disciplines. Conversely, contemporary societal values or political agendas should not guide the interpretation of empirical observations in biology or the conceptualisation of life’s complexity. Doing so constitutes a ‘reverse naturalistic fallacy’ (or ‘moralistic fallacy’): the illogical attempt to derive an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’, thereby conflating the empirical with the normative (Davis 1978). Based on these premises, we call for a more differentiated discourse on sex, one that separates the scientific conception of biological sex from societal discussions regarding the diversity of gender expressions and identities in humans.

The recognition that biological sex is rooted in anisogamy has been longstanding in biology (Minot 1888; Geddes and Thomson 1889), and there have been several recent accounts illuminating its foundations and explanatory power (e.g., Goymann et al. 2023; Hilton and Wright 2023; Griffiths and Spencer 2025; Wright 2025). Our aim here, without claiming novelty on this well-documented topic, is to (i) explain and support the gametic definition of sex, (ii) take a stand on its most prominent criticisms and (iii) elucidate the association between biological sex and sexual dimorphism beyond anisogamy, as this issue appears to lie at the heart of recent debates.

It goes through the familiar arguments, and then concludes with a warning , below, about extrapolating from sex to gender. As the authors explain above, the only real reason for the controversy is because some people think that if biological sex is binary, then all people have to be slotted into one of the two sexes. Biologically, that’s pretty much true: only about 1 in 5500 people can’t. But since some people argue that their gender (which is not sex) isn’t binary, or that their biological sex is different from their natal sex (this is a common argument by trans activists), sex isn’t binary. It is.  I think the authors, anxious not to offend, give a little to much to claims of “gender identity” below, but overall it’s fine:

Up to this point, we have intentionally refrained from discussing the implications of biological sex for our understanding of sex in humans. Yet, within the outlined definitional framework, humans are not exceptional. Rather, like all other metazoans, we are anisogamous organisms, and it is this shared reproductive feature that makes the binary definition of biological sex directly applicable to humans. Because human individuals can produce only one of the two gamete types, biological sex can be mapped onto individuals, as in other species with separate sexes. Challenges can arise when applying the binary definition of biological sex in society under the assumption that biological sex is universally tied to other traits, such as karyotype, hormone levels, the morphology of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, or behaviour. This assumption, for instance, ignores the possibility that genetic variants or differences in sex development can result in a divergence between gametic sex and phenotypic correlates. Crucially, however, the definition of biological sex based on anisogamy neither relies on nor supports this assumption. Therefore, the binary definition of biological sex is fully compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes beyond anisogamy (Heitzmann et al. 2023; Mank 2023; Loveland et al. 2025) and provides a coherent explanation for a significant part of it. In the context of ongoing societal debates, we emphasise that defining biological sex places no constraints on the diverse spectrum of human gender identities and expressions. While biological insights can inform societal debates on sex, they do not prescribe which gender-related traits society should assign, permit, or encourage for different sexes. Conflating human gender identities and expressions with the binary nature of biological sex is therefore not a scientific inference, but amounts to two fallacies: first, not acknowledging the diversity of human gender identities and expressions because biological sex is considered binary (‘naturalistic’ fallacy), and second, denying that biological sex is binary because human gender identities and expressions are not strictly binary (‘reverse naturalistic’ or ‘moralistic’ fallacy).

*There’s a widespread claim going around that dolphins get high by passing around pufferfish, which have toxins (“tetrodotoxins”) that, in low dose, are supposed to intoxicate the dolphins, getting them high or even making them hallucinate. Here are two instantiations of the claim, with the second, from the BBC, being the one that popularized the claim. Be sure to watch the videos.

But I couldn’t find any scientific papers on the phenomenon (and it could be tested in large aquariums, though it would be hard). This made me dubious, and I found an article by Christie Wilcos in Discover magazine that casts doubt on the hypothesis. Christie Wilcox, a science writer with a Ph.D. in biology, says this:

It sounds too awesome to be true—which means it probably is.

I’m not convinced. Dolphins are curious and intelligent, so I have no doubt that they would investigate a strange animal like a puffer. They might see what happens, explore the texture, taste, or smell of this novel creature in their midst, as they do in this video:

But do they intentionally harass them to get high? I doubt it. I guess it’s possible—but if they do, they’re playing a very deadly game, and one that I doubt is much fun for anyone involved.

When harassed, pufferfish first are true to their names and enlarge their bodies to make themselves less palatable. But if that’s not enough, they have the ability to secrete tetrodotoxin (TTX) to ward off potential predators.

The argument being made by The Sunday Times (and the filmmakers, it seems) is that dolphins are intentionally using TTX to get “high”. I just don’t buy it. A curious bunch accidentally indulging in a little puffer poison? Sure. But I’m to believe that dolphins are using tetrodotoxin regularly to get baked? Or even worse, include these toxic treats as a part of their “diet“? No way. Not even dolphins are crazy enough to take that risk.

Tetrodotoxin simply doesn’t make sense as a drug (and let’s be honest—if it did, humans would be snorting it off bathroom counters already). In very, very, very low doses, tetrodotoxin causes numbness, tingling, and the slight lightheadedness that fugu, the Japanese preparation of raw pufferfish flesh, is known for. I guess it’s possible to see how one might relate these mild effects to the “high” feeling that comes from THC, the main ingredient in marijuana*, but it’s a stretch to say the least. Every illicit drug has one thing in common: they alter minds. It’s right there in the definition of narcotic. Tetrodotoxin, however, doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier; it doesn’t change perception or enhance sensation.

The part that’s dispositive is that tetrodotoxin does not cross the blood-brain barrier where it could exert psychoactive effects. In fact no recreational drugs are known to cross that barrier save poppers (amyl nitrate) whose effects are purely physiological. Nevertheless, it’s possible that tetrodotoxin has a purely physiological effect on the dolphins that makes them relaxed or blissed out.  Look at the video above and tell me if you think they’re just playing with a pufferfish and are getting no effects from it!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, this is no surprise to me, as Andrzej is a workaholic:

Hili: You said that when you finished writing the book, you’d have more time.
Andrzej: I was hoping so.

In Polish:

Hili: Mówiłeś, że jak skończysz pisać książkę będziesz miał więcej czasu.
Ja: Miałem taką nadzieję.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Things With Faces; “between a rock and a hard place”:

From Stacy; a response to the well-known woke sign:

x

x

Today’s Two Minutes of Hate, from Kasparian, of course, elated over Lindsey Graham’s death:

But she also said this (she always works genocide by Israel into things):

The Number Ten Cat makes a jok (read about the baked d*g here):

Jeff Maurer touts his article in the Dispatch, which includes this:

Now, Democrats are going through something a lot like what happened to Republicans a decade ago. The left’s online id has taken corporeal form and scored a few primary wins. Now, the takeover is far from complete; it’s not guaranteed that the 2028 nominee will be either Lenin’s reanimated corpse or someone even worse. But for the first time, I’m contemplating the possibility of a Democratic Party that shares none of my values, which include empiricism, free speech, and being able to say words other than “oligarchy,” “Zionist,” and “don’t judge me by my old tweets.”

I may be politically homeless soon. So, I have a question for Dispatch readers: What’s that like? How does one mentally navigate having political views that are as in-the-zeitgeist as barbershop music? Many Dispatch readers have been clinging to wreckage in the Sea of Political Isolation for roughly a decade—any survival tips for someone whose ship might be about to plunge beneath the waves?

From Luana; some good news, I suppose, but note that the U.N. won’t use the “H-word,” referring to Hamas as the “de facto authorities”:

Two from my feed. First TRUE FACTS ABOUT HEDGEHOGS:

I find this hilarious:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And one from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb, which goes to a YouTube video.

— Tom Peyer (@tompeyer.bsky.social) 2026-07-11T04:35:59.999Z

“Wild Rose” with Jessie Buckley

July 13, 2026 • 9:00 am

One of the finest new movies I’ve seen in the last decade or so was “Hamnet” (2025), about Shakespeare’s relationship with his family and his writing and production of “Hamlet”.  But Will himself makes very little appearance in the film, as the story is driven by a mesmerizing performance from Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife, who lives through the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. While Agnes abides in Stratford, Shakespeare goes off to London to write and produce his plays.

I won’t give much of a spoiler, but I will say that the ending involves Agnes’s unannounced trip to London to see the first production of “Hamlet.”  The most wonderful part is the last ten minutes of the film, which focuses almost solely on Buckley’s face as she realizes that the play is based on her late son.  It is a tour de force of acting done only through facial expression, and it’s mesmerizing, moving rapidly back and forth between grief and elation. When I saw that in the theater, through tears, I thought immediately, “This woman is going to win an Oscar.” And so she did: Buckley took home the 2025 Oscar for Best Actress.

If you haven’t seen “Hamnet,” do so immediately. A few people here haven’t liked it, perhaps because it has a touch of magical realism, but I found it fantastic in both senses. Further, it’s one of those movies just as good as the book that inspired it, the eponymous novel by Maggie O’Farrell (2020).  Two other pairs of great movies made from great books are “The Remains of the Day” (1993 movie based on 1989 book) and “Never Let Me Go” (2010 film based on a 2005 novel). I have a weakness for Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In case you haven’t seen the movie “Hamnet”—nor read the book—here’s the trailer. There is nowhere I can find that whole last crucial scene with Buckley, but this is what’s on YouTube. And the bits of that last scene shown below still make me tear up.

I digress, but today I’d like to recommend a movie brought to my attention by my nephew Steven, who knows of my admiration for Buckley and shares it.  He knows far more about movies than I, watches tons of them, has great taste, is paid to write about them, and calls Buckley, whom he interviewed, “the finest actress of her generation”.

I didn’t know anything about Buckley’s oeuvre, but Steven told me I needed to watch an earlier movie of hers, “Wild Rose,” released in 2018. It couldn’t be more different from “Hamnet.” Here Buckley plays Rose-Lynn, a Glaswegian (with the proper and appealing accent) who’s just been released after a year in jail for having tossed a packet of heroin over the jail fence from the outside. Her dream is to become a country singer, and her dream destination is Nashville. She’s a potty-mouthed single mom with two kids, depending heavily on her mother to take care of them.  Her mother is wonderfully played by Julie Walters, and her employer, for whom she cleans house, by Sophie Ok0nedo, of whom I hadn’t heard but was delighted to see onscreen. Walters is famous, and Okonedo should be. Her background is great:

Okonedo was born on 11 August 1968 in London, the daughter of Joan (née Allman), a Jewish Pilates teacher who was born in the East End of London, and Henry Okonedo (1939–2009), a British Nigerian who worked for the government. Okonedo’s maternal grandparents, who spoke Yiddish, were from families of Russian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish origin. Okonedo was raised in her mother’s Jewish faith.

“Wild Rose” shows Rose-Lynn’s ups and downs as she fights for her dream, and I won’t spoil it save to say that Buckley puts on another bravura and mesmerizing performance. I bet almost no reader has seen it, and it’s surely not widely known in America. Buckley does all her own country singing, and she’s excellent (see below). Steven tells me that the movie’s final song, ““Glasgow (No Place Like Home)”, was written by Mary Steenburgen. Steenburgen, who herself won Best Supporting Actress in “Melvin and Howard”, came to her second career as a songwriter at 47, when after a minor operation on her arm she came out of general anesthesia with her head suddenly flooded with tunes!

I digress again.  If you can see “Wild Rose,” do so. Steven tells me that if you become a Jessie Buckley acolyte, two other “essential” films are “Beast” (2017) and “The Lost Daughter” (2021), which according to Wikipedia “received a four-minute standing ovation from Venice Film Festival attendees in the Sala Grande.”

Here’s the trailer for “Wild Rose”:

One final digression, and I’ll quote my nephew:

Another tidbit about [Buckley] is that she first broke through on a U.K. talent show whose winner got to play Nancy in a West End revival of Oliver! Jessie finished second despite having the support of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was one of the judges. Here she is, at 18 years old, singing a song from Oliver! (She sang about a dozen other songs throughout the run of the show, all viewable on YouTube.)