Spin, strangeness, and charm

My main man, Haviv Rettig Gur of the Ask Haviv Anything podcast, here has a fascinating discussion with his father Rabbi Dr.

Quick updates: • Benny Gantz’s Blue and White shuts down its campaign https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/gantz-takes-responsibility-for-electoral-failure-urges-leaders-not-to-return-to-pre-oct-7-divisions/ • Court extends remand of 7 out of 10 s…

(a) The following interview with a former Flydubai pilot showed up in my feed, and sheds some light on the barely-not-9/11 on FlyDubai 1701.

Shabua tov/a good week!

This video from Israel’s Channel 11 is in Hebrew (and Dutch), but if you view it on YouTube it gets auto-dubbed in English.

https://www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-writer-fatah-hamas-and-hizbullah-leaders-are-rabid-dogs-feeding-flesh-their-own In an article on Ahewar.org titled “The Parade of Monsters – Between Dogs and Donkeys,” Palestinian writer Majdi Abd Al-Wahhab argues…

(a) Firing Americans en masse to replace them with H-1b visa imports from South Asia, that is.

Two great podcasts/interviews about new books today (a) Haviv Rettig Gur interviews the WSJ’s Eliot Kaufman, who with Yonah Jeremy Bob has a new book out “In the War Room”.

If I were to write a blog post about the greatest strategic mistakes Hitler (y”sh) made in WW II, starting the war itself would be the obvious top contender.

A secular Moroccan journalist comments: Meanwhile in England, strontZack Polanski appears to have outlived his usefulness as an idiot shill for the new Herrenvolk: The following cartoon says it all: “Timeo DanaosVerdes et dona ferentes” — I fear GreeksGre…

The walking, talking, sack of excrement[*] leading the Islamo-Communist “Green” Party in the UK was kept out of the Commons.

Been burning the midnight oil working a few days too many in a row.

The end of software secrecy is almost upon us.

“Markets of the Past” has a pretty interesting video on some economic aspects of the Roman empire that look eerily modern.

(a) The Flying For Money channel on YouTube has a pretty decent recap of the FlyDubai miracle.

A year ago, Dame Patricia Routledge passed away at age 96.

Times of Israel’s liveblog summarizes what we know: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/what-we-know-about-the-flydubai-plane-incident Here’s what we know so far about the flydubai plane that signaled an emergency during its flight from Dubai to…

This week, Jews all over the world celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles.

What University Presidents prate about finding important, and what actually worries them, are emphatically not the same thing.

(a) An eye-opening fragment from a discussion on “Dad Saves America” with Richard Miniter: From the description: “Journalist and author Richard Miniter argues that terrorism is fundamentally an elite phenomenon, not a product of poverty or oppression.

As much as I despise Karl Marx shr”y and his legacy, I am somewhat fond of a phrase he quipped after Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte followed his more famous uncle’s example and had himself elected Emperor Napoleon [III].

Isabella Tabarovsky in The Tablet reveals what I wasn’t aware of, but does not surprise me in the least.

Too much craziness in the world right now to keep track of.

Buried under too much stuff, and too much craziness in the world to comment on.

It’s come to this (via Instapundit).

25 years ago..

Just quickly, as we’re traveling: the Times of Israel has a fairly detailed profile of Bibi’s primary challenger for the Prime Ministership, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot [idiosyncratic transliteration of the typical Moroccan-Jewish surname Azen…

Are they really this dumb and ignorant… or is this an elaborate trolling operation?

A few quick comments about the explosive results of regional elections in the German member state Saxony-Anhalt [Sachsen-Anhalt].

Those were the reported words of Neville Chamberlain on September 3, 1939, after the UK’s ultimatum to the Third Reich to cease and desist from its invasion of Poland expired.

No, I’m not dead yet — hardly had a moment to myself in the last week or so of work travel, and when I did, I was overwhelmed by all the stuff worth commenting on.

Via Instapundit, here is an intriguing essay by a Cambridge emeritus professor named David Runciman.

The rector of Ghent University in Belgium, a former leader of the Green Party [p*ss be upon it], has now suspended philosopher Nathan Cofnas — previously at Cambridge University — in the wake of Jason Arday taking his own life after his being an all-around

The Prometheus Award is an award given to libertarian-themed (in the broadest sense) fantastic fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and adjacent genres).

I’ve been wondering about that one for a while, as I’ve voiced on this blog.

See more here: https://jakewallissimons.substack.com/p/the-evidence-is-coming-in-china-is?

A remark about Liszt loving modulations by minor thirds or major thirds (and Tony Banks of Genesis having picked this up through piano lessons from his mother): the proper music theory term for this type of modulation is a chromatic mediant.

In this latest podcast, Haviv Rettig Gur interview Professor Emeritus Ruth Wisse[**] from Harvard, who at age 90 is still sharp as a tack.

Busy as heck at work: just two quick takes.

Greg Lukianoff of FIRE minces no words: https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/what-happened-to-the-aaup-and-why On July 30, the American Association of University Professors did something it has never done in its 111-year history: It endorsed a candidate for…

Shavua tov/have a good week!

(a) The Telegraph has a detailed blow-by-blow social media report of how the Ceuta would-be invasion evolved. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/07/europe-border-ceuta-morocco-social-media The newspaper has lots of stories on the subject. http…

Steven Kotkin didn’t invent the term, apparently, but he used it to great effect in this clip from a long podcast hosted by Dwarkesh Patel: Kotkin’s definition of lumpen-intellectuals is roughly: people who possess educational credentials or ideological a…

Hiroshima Day post: Rush, “Manhattan Project” and Iron Maiden, “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns”

(a) h/t Mrs.