Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
The Jesus and Mo artist sent out a Friday Flashback cartoon from 14 years ago. The strip is called “judge”. And yes, I’ve read the Qur’an, but since it was in translation, I can be accused of not appreciating its beauty. All I can say is that it’s full of the usual scary religious palaver, including murder, damnation of apostates and nonbelievers, wife-beating, and the like. It goes down better with a Guinness, though!
As always, the sassy barmaid gets the better of Mo.
Today’s batch of photos comes from Kevin Krebs, who’s been busy banding birds in south-central British Columbia. Kevin’s captions and IDs are indented, and, as always, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Since 2018, the Vancouver Avian Research Centre (VARC) has been involved in Bluebird Box Monitoring around the city of Merritt in south-central British Columbia.
Like almost all birds, bluebird numbers have been declining, and we’ve recruited many volunteers to maintain and monitor over 400 nest boxes.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join some compatriots checking nest boxes and banding bluebird nestlings.
Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides)
Mountain Bluebirds (Sialia currucoides) are found throughout Western and Central North America. The males are a brilliant cerulean blue that is almost impossible to capture in a photograph. Imagine a small piece of the most vibrant blue sky you’ve ever seen growing wings and flying free.
They’re medium-distance migrants, with some breeding into Alaska, and wintering down into Northern Mexico. They are cavity nesters and rely heavily on old woodpecker holes, often facing significant competition. North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data from 1970–2014 shows an estimated overall population decline of 21%. Recent research suggests a more complex picture, with some populations declining, some stable, and some increasing.
Next box and Mountain Bluebird eggs
On the left, an example of our nest boxes. Most are located on fenceposts, while a handful are placed on trees and stumps.
On the right, an active Mountain Bluebird nest with four eggs. Their nests are made of dried grasses beautifully woven into a cup, with a few feathers often mixed in. Their eggs are pale blue and slightly glossy.
Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) eggs and young nestlings
In addition to Mountain Bluebirds (and rarely Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana)), these nest boxes are frequently used by Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor).
Somewhat similar to bluebird nests, Tree Swallow nests feature significantly more feathers in their construction. On the left is a nest with eight eggs — matte white and much smaller than the bluebird eggs (my fingers give a sense of scale).
On the right: a nest with six very young Tree Swallow nestlings.
Tree Swallow nestlings
Another Tree Swallow nest with at least six older nestlings. Their eyes have yet to open, so they’re probably only a few days older than those pictured above. The comically large and bright mouths are selected to draw as much attention from their parents as possible, ensuring they get fed.
Adult Tree Swallow
An adult male Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) who started out as one of those little eggs.
Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon)
Another bird that occasionally uses these nest boxes is the Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). There’s no mistaking their nests as they have a profoundly different style of nest-building, packing nearly the entire box with dozens of twigs.
On the right, a peek into the nest revealing the feather-lined cup with seven mottled eggs.
Mountain Bluebird nestlings
This is what we were looking for: Mountain Bluebird nestlings. These birds are 9-10 days old, making them old enough to band. We can’t band them when they’re much younger as they store fat in their legs, making them too large for the metal bands we use.
Banded Mountain Bluebird nestlings
Two Mountain Bluebird nestlings in the hand.
Before anyone panics: yes, I am trained to do this and am operating under a permit! I don’t think I need to tell any of you not to try this yourself.
The bird on the left is around 12 days old, while the one on the right is approximately 15 days old — probably within a few days of leaving the nest.
Note that we use federally numbered bands, anodized with a different colour for each year. This allows us to identify adult birds to the year they were banded, even if we can’t get the band number.
Banding in progress
A photo of me in the process of banding some nestlings. The bags on my lap contain birds to be banded and that have been banded. Once they’re all completed, we carefully and quietly place them back in the nest box.
Not pictured is when I sat directly on top of an ant nest while getting ready to band…
Welcome to Friday, July 3, 2024, and for most Americans the start of the three-day Fourth of July weekend. It’s American Redneck Day, although I don’t know why we’re celebrating a group (conventionally, poor Southern whites) whose members are stereotyped as ignorant and bigoted. The site celebrates them this way:
. . . . the 1970s brought “Redneck chic.” This saw it as fashionable to be viewed as a redneck, and the connotations of race or class were not a part of it. Instead, it involved many people pretending to be rednecks, in areas such as their dress—by wearing western clothes—and in the music they listened to—by listening to country music, such as the Outlaw sounds of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. In the 1980s, there began to be more “upscale rednecks,” mirroring films such as Urban Cowboy, while at the same time there were still actual poor “rednecks.”
In the 1990s, the country music boom and the rise of blue collar-comedians such as Jeff Foxworthy brought the redneck aesthetic to an even wider audience, and like the “Redneck chic” of the 1970s and the upscale Urban Cowboys of the 1980s, it to had an underlying level of sophistication to it. For example, many of the country music stars and comedians of the time, and up to the present day, were college-educated and wealthy, while marketing their material to a working-class and non-college-educated audience.
As is apparent, there are many views of what “redneck” means and who is a redneck. Some embrace the term and see it as a symbol of pride, while some reject it. Regardless of your views on rednecks or redneck culture, today is a day to remember the impact it has had on America.
To me, cowboys and lovers of country music are not rednecks, and the term is not the same as “blue collar workers,” but so it goes. Here’s Jeff Foxworthy, who’s made a comedy career by joking about rednecks. Here Foxworthy expatiates on the defining traits of the species:
It’s also National Chocolate Wafer Day, National Eat Your Beans Day (I had some last night), National Fried Clam Day, and, appropriately given the horrible heat wave we’re having, National Stay out of the Sun Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 3 Wikipedia page.
There will be lighter posting tomorrow because it’s a HOLIDAY. Bear with me; I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*Footy News:In yesterday’s World Cup games, Switzerland beat Algeria 2-0, Portugal beat Croatia 2-1, and Spain beat Austria 3-0. Let’s see the last game, which sees Spain going into the knockout round of 16:
Mikel Oyarzabal scored twice as Spain cruised into the World Cup round of 16 with a 3-0 win over Austria at SoFi Stadium on Thursday to extend their unbeaten streak to 34 games.
After an underwhelming group stage, which included a surprise draw with Cape Verde, Spain now head with fresh momentum toward a last-16 meeting with either Portugal or Croatia on Monday in Arlington, Texas.
“The great teams step up when it’s needed,” Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said. “We played a great match. We came close to perfection, but we must keep improving. There is always room for improvement, because every upcoming match will be very difficult.”
It also marked a significant hurdle overcome for one of the pretournament favorites, with Thursday’s result their first knockout win at the World Cup since they beat Netherlands in the 2010 final.
After Spain’s group stage exit in 2014 and failures at the first knockout hurdle in the past two tournaments, Oyarzabal became the first Spanish player to score a World Cup knockout goal since Andres Iniesta’s extra-time winner in the final in South Africa.
The Real Sociedad striker first found the net with a first-time finish in the 34th minute after fine buildup play involving Pedri and Marc Cucurella. And he put the cap on Spain’s dominant win after another cross from Cucurella and another cool finish past the Austria goalkeeper.
Here are the highlights, with Apain’s three goals (on the video) at 5:06, 8:34, and 12:15 (one Spanish goal was called back for interference with the goalkeeper).
*We now know that Trump made over $2 billion in the last year from his investments, though they’re managed by people he doesn’t talk to. And we also know that much of that dosh came from investments in cryptocurrency, especially a meme coin associated with him called $TRUMP (second article archived here).
A large chunk of the $2 billion haul President Trump took in last year came as hundreds of thousands of his fans and other investors bet on a speculative cryptocurrency called $TRUMP, hoping its value would soar with his return to the White House.
But while Mr. Trump amassed an eye-popping $636 million from the cryptocurrency, known as a memecoin, many of his followers who heeded his call to purchase the coin came out losers.
That outcome, documented by an independent analysis of trades and fees paid out from $TRUMP token sales, is drawing renewed attention this week, as Mr. Trump for the first time has detailed the extraordinary $1.4 billion in revenue he secured just from the cryptocurrency industry since he returned to the White House.
The president’s 927-page financial disclosure showed how Mr. Trump and his family reaped huge financial rewards in 2025 through his money-losing Trump Media venture and a separate cryptocurrency firm called World Liberty Financial, even as routine investors suffered vast losses.
He also amassed hundreds of millions through deals that involved foreign governments or corporations with agenda items pending before the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump dismissed questions about how much money he had made after returning to the White House, suggesting that he left personal financial decisions related to his investments to others.
“I don’t know if I had a better career in politics or business,” Mr. Trump said as he was about to board his new Air Force One jet donated by the government of Qatar with his two oldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., looking on. “But I had a great career in business. And you saw the cash.”
The memecoin, which features an image of Mr. Trump pumping his fist the way he did after a 2024 assassination attempt, has no intrinsic value itself. Instead, it was a bet on the aura around Mr. Trump and the idea that the coin’s fortunes would rise with his presidency.
In a way, Mr. Trump’s cryptocurrency windfall is a reflection of the speculative nature of the nascent industry, in which executives behind these often highly volatile ventures are at times able to generate huge profits at the expense of smaller investors, who often lose vast sums on experimental coins.
Former federal financial regulators said Mr. Trump has taken that to a new extreme, structuring his crypto ventures so he always made money on the front end, according to disclosures from the companies, no matter what happened to the business in the long run.
“It is hard to wrap your head around that the president of the United States would engage in this level of self-enrichment at the expense of so many of his supporters,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve Bank examiner who now studies cryptocurrency issues at Duke University. “This is a president of the United States who has made more money off crypto since he took office than he made in any prior year in his entire business career.”
I’m not sure how they structured deal to ensure that Trump always profited, good times or bad, but it seems unethical, even if he doesn’t oversee what’s happening. As for other investments, well, I’d be surprised that the people who oversee them don’t know Trump’s preference sand what he’s likely to do. All in all, it doesn’t seem like his portfolio is “neutral,” and so he makes a billion bucks per year.
*Remember Gaza? Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal summarizes his feelings after “1000 Days since October 7.”
My first visit to Gaza after October 7 showed a relatively intact city, hidden amidst plumes of smoke and sounds of battle. A year later, in November 2024, Jabalia was a massive pile of rubble, stretching from horizon to horizon, with packs of dogs roaming among the ruins and garbage. On the thousandth day of the war, nothing remained in the area. The once densely populated city looked desolate and quiet, like the surface of the moon. Engineering drills searched for tunnels below ground, with D9 bulldozers operating above. In the vast majority of Gaza, nothing remained, neither above ground nor below it.
This is the situation in all the territory controlled by Israel, which now makes up about two-thirds of the Strip’s territory. Rafah was wiped off the face of the earth, as were most of Khan Yunis and huge swaths of Gaza City. Ninety-two percent of the tunnels have been completely destroyed; the rest will soon follow.
Inside Hamas-controlled Gaza, there have been increasing reports of a resurgence, tunnel rehabilitation, training exercises, and an inevitable IDF operation. These reports should be viewed with intense skepticism. Hamas is failing to genuinely rearm after its smuggling routes in the air, on land, at sea, and underground were choked off. Three hundred sixty-two smuggling tunnels from Egypt were destroyed in Rafah. Training is conducted in hiding, reconstruction materials are not arriving, and the newly dug tunnels in the sand are barely shored up with whatever is available: sheet metal, wood scraps. Iran bends over backward to protect Hezbollah; for Hamas, it does not even pick up the phone. That is the consequence for a proxy that starts a war without permission and becomes a lost cause.
Perhaps this is why Hamas recently agreed to terms that include handing over all heavy weaponry, tunnel maps, production sites, and weapons caches. Its leaders agreed that the weapons would be surrendered to a committee, not to Israel. The multinational force that will subsequently deploy will serve as a buffer between Hamas and Israel, and will be responsible for the collection. Israel will withdraw only after Hamas is disarmed, the militias’ weapons are also collected, all government positions are handed over to a technocratic committee, and police officers who fail a security clearance are forced to retire. The agreements make no mention of small arms, which flood Gaza by the tens of thousands. How many are there? The divisions operating in Gaza used to transport rifles to the Israeli border, where bulldozers would run them over and crush them. At a certain point, they asked to stop collecting weapons because it had become their primary activity.
. . . looking back today, I can say this much—through victories and defeats, across a thousand days of heroism and sacrifice, Israel and her people have clawed their way back from the brink of despair.
There is a verse in Ezekiel that has taken on new meaning for me: “And when I passed by and saw you flailing in your blood, I said to you, though you were in your blood, Live! I said to you, though you were in your blood, Live!” Ezekiel is recounting God’s adoption of the Jewish people—his command to live is his first order to his new nation.
It is not a promise that the blood is wiped away, or that the wound stops being a wound. It is a command spoken over a body that has not yet answered—twice, because once was not enough to be believed. Israel, on the morning of October 7, was exactly that: flailing, exposed, drenched in its own blood, with no guarantee it would rise. What the thousand days since have shown is not that the wound healed, but that the command was heeded. Every hostage returned, every enemy brought low, every reservist who answered the call—all of it is the same word, spoken back, day after day: live.
If you’re not Israeli, it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on in Gaza, but what’s above is better than I expected. No more tunnels, no large arms, and no weapons caches. But Hamas “agreed to terms” before and didn’t abide by them. And I’m worried about why they don’t deal with small arms, as Hamas should have no arms. Yes, Hamas certainly lost the conflict, but nevertheless it persists. When it no longer persists, then the serious rebuilding of Gaza can begin.
*I didn’t used to watch soccer until about 20 years ago, and then fell in love with “the beautiful game,” which is now my favorite sport (I still don’t watch any sport much). If you’re a novice, the NYT tells us “How to World Cup,” a title that irks me a bit (the article is archived here). There are tips about what to wear, who to root for, what to say, and so on. I find that a bit ridiculous, but here are a few:
WHAT TO WEAR
The World Cup is not the time to be subtle. If you want to dress like your favorite Epcot pavilion, THIS IS YOUR TIME. When you go to an indie concert, you never want to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re seeing. This tournament is the opposite of that. Wear the colors of the nation you support in shameless fashion. Be full-on Timothée-Chalamet-courtside-at-a-Knicks-game brazen. The only other option is to dress like a large swath of traveling England fans and go shirt-off. If that is the case, be different from all those England fans and make sure you are wearing S.P.F. 60 sunscreen.
WHOM TO ROOT FOR [JAC: yes, they say “whom”!]
The United States, naturally, if you’re reading this in the United States. Our boys have thus far played swaggy, buccaneering soccer and coaxed from audiences the greatest of fan emotions: delusional hope. But the true joy of the World Cup is the chance for fans around the world to reconnect to their roots.
Nope, I’m rooting for Argentina as I want Messi to go out on a World Cup win.
WHAT TO TALK ABOUT [one example]
The smaller teams have roared.Cape Verde, population of around 525,000, an archipelagic nation consisting of 10 volcanic islands scattered across the central Atlantic Ocean, has charmed, becoming the smallest nation ever to reach the knockout rounds. The 40-year-old goalkeeper, known chummily as Vozinha (full name: Josimar José Évora Dias), saved seven shots to hold tournament favorite Spain to a goal-less tie. He now has over 17 million Instagram followers, more than Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama combined.
WHAT NEVER TO SAY
“Nothing can go wrong now” — never let these words escape your lips. Don’t tempt fate and call a game over. On Sunday, Canada made history by reaching the round of 16 for the first time, shocking South Africa with an exclamation-point 92nd-minute strike from Stephen Eustáquio, who instantly wove himself into his nation’s history alongside true greats like Alanis Morissette, Margaret Atwood and Barenaked Ladies. Japan’s dream of a first-ever knockout-stage win was dashed by Brazil roaring back from a goal down, stealing victory in the 96th minute.
Even the United States has not been immune. Our boys won back-to-back World Cup games for the first time in 96 years. We were on our way to being undefeated until the 98th minute of the game against Turkey, when Arda Guler nutmegged our hero Pulisic, a soccer humiliation akin to whipping off his shorts in public, helping his countryman Kaan Ayhan to net the winner with the last kick of the ball. This is soccer. A game in which, within the blink of an eye, both teams can soar and then feel their wax wings melting.
And a good story:
Perhaps my favorite World Cup story occurred in Lawrence, Kan., where the Algerian team set up camp at a local DoubleTree hotel. The town’s citizens quickly fell truly, madly, deeply for North African soccer and culture. When the Fennec Foxes clinched their place in the knockout rounds last weekend, the Lawrencians stood side by side with Algerian fans to welcome the team back in the early hours of the morning. Together they illuminated the Kansas night sky with a spectacular display of firework-fueled passion worthy of Algiers. This was the stuff of World Cup lore, the creation of stories that will be told and retold for generations to come, destined to become only bigger and more wild-eyed with each retelling.
*The Free Press reports on a letter sent by 170 faculty members (Jewish and non-Jewish) to Harvard students avowing solidarity but saying that antisemitism is not under control at Harvard. The article is written by a Harvard professor and a Harvard alumna.
From the editors:
According to officials at Harvard University, its antisemitism problem is under control. Reports of antisemitic incidents on campus are down after the numbers exploded in the wake of October 7, 2023. Today, 170 Jewish and non-Jewish Harvard faculty members will publish a letter stating that there is more to the story, and that while there’s less overt antisemitism at the university this past year, a more insidious form of Jew-hate has emerged. Jewish students are hiding their Star of David necklaces and scrubbing their CVs of references to Israel to self-protect. Two signatories to the letter explain what’s still not working—and what the school should do about it. —The Editors
The entire letter (the Presidential Task Force report they mention is here:
Earlier this spring, a group of Harvard faculty and staff published an open letter condemning theTitle VI lawsuit filed against Harvard by the Department of Justice in March. The DOJ claims that Harvard failed to enforce its rules to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassmentand discrimination, thereby denying them equal educational access. Their letter does notacknowledge any antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias on campus. Instead, it accuses the DOJ of“weaponizing antisemitism.”
We understand why colleagues question the merits and motives of the Title VI lawsuit. But ones hould not turn a blind eye to the fact that many Jewish and Israeli students have suffered harassment and discrimination over the last few years, degrading their Harvard experience. Ignoring students’ accounts is misleading and hurtful. There are many examples documented in the 300-page Presidential Task Force on Combatting Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report and elsewhere, and these problems have been acknowledged by President Alan Garber.
Among the incidents reported to faculty, including members of the Task Force:
(1) Gay Jewish students were excluded from LGBTQ groups in the College and at HLS because they refused to renounce Zionism.
(2) An Israeli undergraduate student was told to leave a classroom by an instructor because her being Israeli made other students uncomfortable.
(3) A Jewish undergraduate student was harassed because of her identity, including in a social media post saying she “looks just as dumb as her nose is crooked.” We believe that the situation has improved to some extent recently, but challenges remain. Over the past year, Jews and Israelis at Harvard have reported hiding their identity including by wearing a baseball cap over their kippot, tucking in their Star of David, and scrubbing Jewish-sounding names or activities from their resumes.
We write in solidarity with all Jewish and Israeli students, especially those who have personally encountered bias. We see you. We hear you. We will continue to stand with you and stand up for you.
Then there are the signatures. The FP article adds this:
Two notable observations about signatories to the faculty letter. First, many are not Jewish—support from allies is crucial. Second, a large proportion come from Harvard Medical School. Physicians are tasked with identifying and treating root causes and attending to both acute and chronic problems. We know that hate and discrimination of any form has absolutely no place in the delivery of healthcare. Moreover, the vast majority of medical students at Harvard will be directly involved in caring for patients who seek their skills and healing capacity; by definition in medicine, this involves providing impartial, empathic, evidence-based care to all, including Jewish and Israeli patients and their families.
There is more work to be done at Harvard. The 170 Jewish and non-Jewish faculty signatories to the letter stand with Jewish and Israeli students on campus, and with the aim that they are free to bring their full selves and identities everywhere on campus without fear of bias, harassment, bullying, or ostracization.
I asked a liberal but non-Jewish colleague at Harvard why he/she didn’t sign the letter, and was told that it might constitute evidence to Trump that Harvard is deeply antisemitic, resulting in the government withholding more grant money from the school. And that, said my colleague, would hurt Jewish students more than the small degree of antisemitism that remains. Don’t ask me, as I’m not there.
*Finally, the WSJ reports that the U.S. is desperately trying to get the Strait of Hormuz back to its prewar state, but it ain’t happening.
The U.S. and Oman are looking for ways to break Iran’s insistence on charging tolls for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Their chief lever in indirect talks was a promise to unfreeze some of the $100 billion in Iranian funds held overseas.
So far, Tehran isn’t taking the bait. Its military leaders are responding with a fresh round of threats against ships passing through one of the world’s most trafficked waterways.
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Doha this week to talk with Qatari mediators about how to break the impasse and settle the implementation of last month’s initial agreement to open the strait. Both the U.S. and Iranian teams discussed recent fighting in Lebanon with Qatari mediators, a conflict that has added another wrinkle to the process, people familiar with the discussions said.
The U.S. diplomats offered a trade-off to Iran, the people said: Relinquish its claim to control the strait and renounce toll payments in exchange for billions of dollars of unfrozen funds.
Under last month’s pact with the U.S., Iran was set to get access to part of the $100 billion of its funds frozen abroad. Iran’s economy is badly in need of a fresh injection of foreign currency amid rampant inflation driven by years of sanctions.
Talks had initially been progressing toward the release of $6 billion held in Qatar but Iran’s decision to block the strait has set back the release, the people said.
On Thursday, Iran signaled the reward wasn’t enough to change its position. Upon returning from Doha, Iran’s negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, insisted Hormuz is “under Iran’s command,” not the U.S.’s.
Tehran’s military doubled down later in the day, warning that any ship not passing through an Iran-approved route would face an “immediate and powerful” response.
I have a three-word response to this: bomb Kharg Island. It’s a good thing I’m not President, eh?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili objects to everything—but nothing in particular. She’s just objectionable.
Hili: I firmly object.
Andrzej: To what?
Hili: That calls for further investigation.
In Polish:
Hili: Stanowczo protestuję.
Ja: Przeciwko czemu?
Hili: To wymaga dalszego badania.
*******************
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Site, interpreting a sign:
From Allison, who says this is familar to all ailurophiles:
From Masih, two sort-of fatwas. By the way, a hundred kilos of gold is at present worth over $13 million.
100 kg of gold for killing Trump or Netanyahu!!!
This was announced, openly, at a pro-government rally in Iran.
Not by a terrorist hiding in a cave.
By a speaker. At a state rally. In Iran.And some people still want to negotiate with this regime. Lift its sanctions. Send it… pic.twitter.com/dBHWp2m2x8
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 2, 2026
From Luana; Hakeem Jeffries congratulates a Democratic Socialist loon on her primary victory. Such is the coopting of the Democratic Party:
A smart, strategic Republican Party would run a slate of bland, pin-striped party cogs who think capitalism and America are good and easily retain the Senate and probably the House, but we don’t live in that universe. https://t.co/N1FxfTuPxV
— Peter Savodnik (@petersavodnik) July 1, 2026
A video described in the Jerusalem Post, released by survivors of Oct. 7 on the 1000th day after the massacre. English translation:
For 1000 days, our family preferred to keep this recording to ourselves. This is the horrifying moment when my little brother confirms to us that Dad and Mom were murdered. Today, we decided to release it, to demand truth, justice, and accountability. Accountability must begin with taking responsibility – everyone who had a hand on the wheel must go home and take responsibility, suits and uniforms alike.
במשך 1000 ימים המשפחה שלנו העדיפה להשאיר את ההקלטה הזאת לעצמנו.
זה הרגע המחריד שבו אחי הקטן מאמת לנו שאבא ואמא נרצחו.
היום, החלטנו לפרסם אותה, כדי לדרוש אמת, צדק, ותיקון.
תיקון חייב להתחיל מלקיחת אחריות – כל מי שהיה עם יד על ההגה חייב ללכת הביתה ולקחת אחריות, חליפות ומדים כאחד pic.twitter.com/VxrXuGIYvX— שיר מתיאס הבת של שחר ושלומי (@MathiasShir) July 2, 2026
Nobody can resist the Number Ten Cat:
Always nice to have the boss of NATO say hi https://t.co/H1FXbz5YqJ
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 29, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a lovely woman rescues a deer stuck in a fence:
Terrified deer saved by heroic woman ❤️ pic.twitter.com/7J79GEEykx
— Beauty of music and nature 🌺🌺 (@Axaxia88) July 2, 2026
What is this mother doing?
A cockatiel singing to its baby 🥹🦜 pic.twitter.com/JgUJfuWSTd
— Nature Moments (@NatureMomentz) July 1, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was not quite two years old, and would have been 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/nGaZNdCIRT
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 3, 2026
And one from Dr. Cobb: Peter Lorre and Siamese cats. Why do celebrities have this breed so often?
Peter Lorre#Caturday
I have tried not to be joyful over the illness and death of my political opponents (or of anybody I don’t like), or to rejoice at their deaths. Yes, I wish Donald Trump was gone, but not via some horrible illness. After all, these are human beings and have feelings as well as families who (by and large) love them, and those people will suffer, too. Further, as a determinist, I realize that these people couldn’t have done other than what they did. That doesn’t mean I excuse their doings, for I am so constituted as to excoriate them, and excoriation (and reward) can change people’s behavior.
But I’ve heard many people wish not just for Trump’s death, but for a painful, agonizing death. This is a staple for all Republicans on certain odious websites, one of which celebrated Mitch McConnell’s illness
The only optimistic news I’ve seen is that Mitch McConnell, one of the architects of the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court, may be dying.
. . . . So maybe a slow, miserable death…but not too painful, since his mind is probably mostly gone. We’ve got time to get some champagne and caviar before his demise! The most generous thing I can say is that I wish he’d retired to the happy bosom of his family and a life of relaxation a decade or two ago. As it is, he overstayed his tenure, and to what end? The poisoning of his beloved Republican party.
Now McConnell is still sitting in the Senate, and it’s fine to wish him gone, and even to say that you’re not very sad if he dies. But to wish for a “painful agonizing death”? I’m sure that if by some magic had the power to inflict that, they wouldn’t think twice.
These are the same kind of people who applauded Luigi Mangione for killing Brian Thompson, which is an even more odious behavior.
Now you can explain why people’s death have removed a deleterious element from society, as Hitchens did for Jerry Falwell, but I see that as different from wishing them to die or suffer while they’re still alive.
But you may feel differently. Let’s take some polls!
and a related one:
I’ve watched with alarm the increase in the number of members and political candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose membership has swelled from 6,000 members in 1982 to 110,000 members this year. I don’t know anybody affiliated with that party, but the positions espoused by their candidates are so extreme that they often come close to lunacy, as in the case of Darializa Avila Chevaler, likely to be elecetd a Congresswoman come fall. They favor open borders, an end to incarceration and most policing, and, to a man and woman, they are strongly anti-Israel. These stands, which come close to antisemitism, used to bar candidates from election, but now are de rigueur for DSAers.
DSA candidates are “progressive,” but in an authoritarian way, and in that respect they are no advance over classic liberals or the “mainstream” Democratic Party—if there still is one! Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of NYC and a DSA member, has been dubbed a “kingmaker”, as the candidates he’s endorsed have won by substantial margins in the primaries. My only consolation is that these are primaries in blue states, though an apparently loony DSAer, Melat Kiros, won a House primary in Colorado a light-blue state. In all of these cases, the DSA candidate is predicted to defeat the Republican in November.
Will this invidious party spread? We already have DSAers in Congress: Rashida Tlaib and AOC, both of whom I detest. Bernie Sanders, though not a member of DSA, is affiliated with them. That’s a small number, but it is going to get larger: DSAers in Congress will at least double next year.
In a new article in The Atlantic, staff writer Jonathan Chait describes the principles and history of the DSA, both of which should scare the bejeezus out of any liberal or mainstream Democrat. Click below to read the article for free:
Some quotes;
The general idea that Democratic Party loyalists seem to have about members of the Democratic Socialists of America is that they’re a lot like Democrats, but perhaps a bit more passionate. Voters in New York City are “not afraid of the term democratic socialism,” Joy Behar recently said on The View, to applause. “Social Security is democratic socialism. Partly, unemployment insurance is. The people who pick up your garbage, the people who take the fire out at your house—all of these things are democratic socialism.”
It’s true that the DSA has areas of ideological overlap with the Democratic Party, and would at least directionally support classic Democratic policies such as a higher minimum wage, defending social spending, and opposing the Trump administration. But the DSA’s version of democratic socialism goes far beyond routine public functions such as garbage collection and Social Security (which most Republicans, not to mention Democrats, support), or even aspirational policies such as Medicare for All.
The DSA, in fact, seems to despise the Democratic Party. Darializa Avila Chevalier has called Joe Biden a “rapist” and wrote “Fuck Kamala Harris” on social media. She proceeded to be nominated for a House race in New York last week by Democratic voters who presumably do not all share those feelings. The DSA now includes a growing caucus of supporters in Congress, has mayoral candidates well positioned to win in several big cities, and has plans to throw its weight behind a yet-to-be-determined presidential candidate in 2028.
The DSA’s feelings about Democrats encompass not only the party’s leadership but also the philosophical commitments that have guided it since the New Deal: a mixed economy undergirded by democratic values. Chevalier, for instance, joined a post–October 7 celebratory rally and portrayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response to Western “bullying.” She previously called for seizing land and the means of production and has repeatedly praised communism.
These positions are not holdovers from the idealism of youth or a bygone “woke” era. They are a by-product of the DSA’s core ideology. The DSA has become a force in Democratic Party politics even as it has grown more hostile to the party, more illiberal, and more dogmatic.
The writer and activist Michael Harrington helped found the DSA in 1982. His goal was to build a socialist movement that would eventually pull the Democratic Party toward more humane domestic and foreign policies. He believed that a commitment to freedom of speech, elections, and other democratic norms was an absolute requirement for any socialist organization. And generations of bitter experience taught Harrington and his allies that socialist organizations had failed because they allowed communists to infiltrate them and take control of their organizing structures. Its founding bylaws accordingly permitted the expulsion of members who were “under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization,” a slightly jargonish way of describing communists.
As Chait describes, the DSA fractured after October 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. Now the organization is pretty much anti-Israel and even sides with terrorists groups (and no, its Jew hatred is based on more than Netanyahu—it’s anti-Zionism, equivalent to antisemitism):
In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian “right to resistance” a central tenet of the DSA. Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists, the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction. “Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead,” a dispatch from the proceedings gloated.
Now, Chait says, more that half of DSA members openly identify as communists, which means that they want authoritarian power (the dictatorship of the proletariat), though some like Mamdani or Tlaib disguise their antidemocratic aims well, supporting uncontroversial ideas like public health care and transportation. But that’s just the veneer:
In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian “right to resistance” a central tenet of the DSA. Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists, the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction. “Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead,” a dispatch from the proceedings gloated.
And do you know about the “dirty break”?
The DSA’s long-term strategy is to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access and reservoir of voters to build its following, and then, after it gains enough power, break off to form its own party, after which the husk of the old Democratic Party would wither and die. This gambit is called the “dirty break,” a term coined by a 2017 article in the left-wing magazine Jacobin.
Not all DSA officials agree on the dirty break. Some still cling to Harrington’s vision of pushing the Democrats leftward. Others favor an immediate split into a third party (a “clean break”). But as Peter Sterne, a onetime DSA member who now reports on New York politics, has written, “The DSA’s current strategy is a ‘dirty break’: gradually build up the necessary partylike infrastructure to eventually break away from the Democrats entirely, while still running candidates in Democratic primaries for now.”
In the meantime, the organization has displayed patience. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the movement’s most valuable political asset, has moved cautiously in office and avoided dramatic policy changes, building political support that he has spent on backing DSA challenges to mainstream Democrats.
. . .Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member, recently appeared on MS NOW, a favorite network for normie liberals, where she blamed Democratic members of Congress for discord with new left-wing nominees. “You,” she said, addressing her incumbent colleagues, “are creating the antagonistic dynamic that we do not need. These are two young, talented, intelligent women that got elected against all odds, against millions of dollars. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them.”
The norm that AOC is trying to create is a ratchet that pushes the Democratic Party ever leftward. The DSA is permitted to excoriate the party, but non-socialist Democrats cannot respond in kind. Moderate Democrats are permitted to exist, at least for now, but the ideological pressure runs in one direction.
Now the last bit might be an exaggeration (I love how AOC slots herself in the group of desirables), but it doesn’t seem far from the truth. Thankfully, at present Democrats as a whole are not behind the DSA:
At the most superficial level, the DSA influx has associated Democrats with a series of kooky beliefs and statements. Although Democratic voters approve of the DSA, voters as a whole do not. A national poll found the group’s approval at 21 percent, and 48 percent disapproved. (The same poll had 36 percent approval of the Democrats.) Its specific platform components are if anything less popular. The DSA’s leadership has approved a platform, set to be ratified at its convention next month, calling for “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,” opening borders, moving to public ownership for the largest corporations, establishing a 32-hour workweek, and defunding the Pentagon.
So why should we be scared? For two reasons. First, those of us who sympathize with Israel have watched with despair as antisemitism (excuse me: “anti-Zionism”) has seeped into the mainstream Democratic Party, and that’s partly the result of the DSA. More important, the DSA is antidemocratic and antiliberal, and woe to us if they get elected. Even so-called mainstream Democrats, like Kamala “Coconut Tree” Harris, are schmoozing with Democratic Socialists, trying to inject some pro-Palestinian notes and more progressivism into their campaigns. Click, read and weep: here’s an article from the Jerusalem Post:
I don’t think Harris has a snowball’s chance in hell of even being a Presidential/VP candidate in 2028, but who knows what will happen in the next two years? After all, Democrats embraced her candidacy in the last election, and then what happened? Here’s Chait’s conclusion about the DSA, and why we should fear it:
What the DSA demands of the Democrats is not merely to advocate more generous social policies, or more cautious foreign affairs, but to welcome, or at least accept, authoritarians as their coalition partners. Democrats are likely to face the same kind of pressure that Republicans confronted with MAGA’s hostile takeover: first to ignore their allies’ sinister goals, and then to rationalize and eventually justify them.
As authoritarian elements gain strength, they become more essential to the success of a political coalition, and the price of confronting them rises. The Republican Party has long since passed the point of no return. The easiest time to draw clear moral lines against the encroachment of illiberalism within one’s own camp is at the beginning.
Never will I vote for one of these jokers.
h/t Callum
Send in your photos if you got ’em, please!
Today’s photos continue the series taken by reader Ephraim Heller in Namibia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Today I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. Today’s post features Damaraland, a 48,000 km² region in the northwest of the country.
Damaraland is not a formal administrative region, but a geographic and cultural designation. It is a jumble of granite kopjes, basalt plateaus, flat-topped mountains, broad gravel plains, and eroded canyon systems. Like much of Namibia, it is desert. Here is an aerial view, taken from the window of a small airplane:
Life is sparse here. A handful of ephemeral rivers cross Damaraland, cutting westward from the interior highlands to the Skeleton Coast along the Atlantic Ocean. These rivers flow above ground for only a few days per year following significant inland rainfall, but each bed sits atop an alluvial aquifer that retains water from flood events for months to years. This subsurface water sustains a few trees, shrubs, and animals along the riverbeds. Here’s another aerial view showing the path of an ephemeral river:
By far the coolest critter I found was the longleg armoured corncricket (Acanthoplus longipes), which has superpowers. It is a large, flightless katydid brandishing big, spiny legs and a heavily armored (American spelling) pronotum. When attacked, individuals autohaemorrhage, shooting a jet of toxic hemolymph from the leg joints toward attackers. I wish I had a superpower like that:
Naturally, any creature with such a magnificent superpower fluoresces under UV light:
Frankly, the rest of this post is anticlimactic. What could possibly beat a longleg armoured corncricket? Not a pretty brush jewel beetle (Julodis humeralis):
A Namib rock agama (Agama planiceps) doesn’t beat a longleg armoured corncricket, not even when it is chowing down on a bug:
One night I went on a walk to see what would fluoresce under my UV light. I found this gecko. Sure, fluorescence is cool and I wish I could do it, but does this gecko autohaemorrhage? No, it does not. The folks at iNaturalist couldn’t identify it – apparently one needs the visible spectrum to make a positive ID:
This is tentatively identified as an orange lesser-thicktail scorpion (Uroplectes planimanus), another critter with the minor UV-fluorescence superpower. Interestingly, researchers do not know why scorpions evolved fluorescence.
Now for the birds. Sadly, they have no superpowers at all. Our lodge had a water feature that was the only surface water for miles around. I spent hours watching the birds bathe and drink.
A violet-backed starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster). The color is produced not by pigment but by thin-film interference: stacks of hollow melanosomes in the feather barbules refract light at specific wavelengths. The male can modulate its apparent coloration through posture:
A black-fronted bulbul (Pycnonotus nigricans):
A Namaqua dove (Oena capensis):
A red-headed finch (Amadina erythrocephala):
The southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus). Egg color varies among females, allegedly as a defense against brood parasitism by the Diederik cuckoo. Because the cuckoo cannot know egg color before entering the nest, color polymorphism in the weaver population raises the probability of parasite detection and egg ejection. Not a superpower, but cool nonetheless. I just like the bokeh in this photo:
Finally, the requisite Namibian desert night sky photos:
Welcome to Thursday, July 2, 2026, and it’s National Freedom from Fear of Speaking Day. Many people have a phobia about speaking in public, but the gentleman in the painting below overcame it to have his say in a town meeting. This is of course Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” painting (the original), one of his famous 1943 series of “Four Freedoms“, all on display at the Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, MA. I photographed this along with another fearless speaker in 2012 meeting, “Moving Naturalism Forward,” organized by physicist Sean Carroll in Stockbridge.
This is what Wikipedia says about the painting:
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen’s announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down, was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol. Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease. A memory of this scene struck Rockwell as an excellent fit for illustrating “freedom of speech”, and inspired him to use his Vermont neighbors as models for the entire Four Freedoms series.
The blue-collar speaker wears a plaid shirt and suede jacket, with dirty hands and a darker complexion than others in attendance. The other attendees are wearing white shirts, ties and jackets. One of the men in the painting is holding a document that reveals a subject of the meeting as “a discussion of the town’s annual report”. Edgerton’s youth and workmanlike hands are fashioned with a worn and stained jacket, while the other attendees appear to be older and more neatly and formally dressed. According to Bruce Cole of The Wall Street Journal, Edgerton is shown “standing tall, his mouth open, his shining eyes transfixed, he speaks his mind, untrammeled and unafraid”, and his face resembles Abraham Lincoln. According to Robert Scholes, the work shows audience members in rapt attention with admiration of the speaker, who resembles a Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart character in a Frank Capra film. According to John Updike, the work is painted without any painterly brushwork.
It’s also National Anisette Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: The U.S. beat Bosnia and Herzogovina 2-0, securing its first win in the knockout round since 2002. But there’s some bad news about red cards:
First, the good news: The United States men’s national team beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 in the World Cup round of 32 Wednesday night.
Now, the problematic: If the Americans are going to continue advancing, they will have to do it without their top goal scorer.
Folarin Balogun scored what proved to be the decisive goal for the U.S. just before halftime — his third of the tournament — but was then sent off just after the hour mark in a controversial decision that will see him suspended for the round-of-16 match against Belgium.
“It wasn’t a perfect day by any means,” defender Chris Richard said. “But it was our day.”
The red card came after Balogun collided with Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic just inside the U.S. attacking third. Both players were on the ground initially, but then the referee, Raphael Claus of Brazil, was called to the monitor by the video assistant referee.
After watching the slow-motion footage, Claus determined that Balogun had raked his cleats down Muharemovic’s leg and onto his foot and ankle, sending him off for serious foul play. Balogun looked shocked; he trudged to the sideline and was consoled by Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah.
“We had to dig deep for that one,” Pulisic said. “It didn’t go exactly to plan with the red card, but that just shows what a good team we are. We said in the hydration break, you know, this is what it takes to be a really strong team. And, we were able to do it.”
Balogun is the fifth American to receive a red card at a World Cup and is the first player from any country to score and receive a red card in the same knockout game since France’s Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 final.
Ah, I remember Zidane kicked out for headbutting an Italian player after they exchanged “words.” Here are 15 minutes of highlights from the game above: the two plays leading to U.S. goals are at 4:50 and 10:51 (penalty kick); the red-card play at 6:56. (The U.S. scored two goals that were erased by offside calls.) The U.S. won despite losing a top scorer for the last 30 minutes of the game, and we’ll now advance to the round of 16.
*A NYT/Siena poll shows that Democrats are within striking distance of taking the Senate in the fall midterms, but not close enough to make this a sure thing.
Democrats face an uphill battle to win control of the Senate but have pulled within striking distance of enough Republican-held seats to put the majority in play this fall, according to new New York Times/Siena polls in six Senate battleground states.
Republicans are hampered by the unpopularity of President Trump and his diminished standing on the economy, while most of the Democratic candidates are so far running ahead of their party’s own struggling brand, the polls show.
Winning the Senate remains a stiff challenge for Democrats. Republicans hold 53 seats, meaning that Democrats would need to flip at least four seats while defending all of their own vulnerable ones.
The Times/Siena polls looked at the six states that are considered to be the Democratic Party’s best shots at flipping Republican-held seats: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. The surveys found that while all six states are close enough to be competitive, if the election were held today Republicans would be favored in enough states to keep control of the Senate.
But the new polls suggest that Democrats have a path.
Mr. Trump carried five of the states in 2024, and if all six states were considered together he won them by an average of eight percentage points. In the polls, the average of the Senate races in those six states was a tie, with 47 percent for both Republicans and Democrats. The shift shows how far the political environment has tilted in the Democrats’ direction ahead of the midterm elections.
The Times/Siena polls show Democrats with a slim edge in Maine and a more substantial lead in North Carolina. Republican candidates lead narrowly in three states: Alaska, Iowa and Ohio. Texas is tied.
Voters across all six battlegrounds were thoroughly frustrated by rising prices — and many blamed Mr. Trump. Only 36 percent of voters approved of his handling of cost-of-living issues, including an abysmal 24 percent among independent voters.
What would it mean if Democrats took the Senate? Well, it would prevent passage of bills that are initiated by Trump. (This assumes that parties would vote as a bloc.) And if the House becomes Democratic as well, then bills that Democrats like and passed in both houses would go to the President’s desk, where he’d veto them; and a veto could not be overriden. We’d thus have a divided government, but if you dislike Trump, his initiatives and appointments would have a smaller chance of passing. I am making no predictions about any changes in Congress as I’m no pundit.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal thinks that Trump has considered resuming the war against Iran, but isn’t yet going forward:.
It’s Wednesday, July 1, and the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, famously defined a conservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” An Iran hawk is made the same way. According to The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump reviewed military options for a full-scale war against Iran to “finish the job,” but has decided, for now, not to move forward.
The Wall Street Journal article is here, and is archived here.
The report says Trump is concerned that renewed military conflict could hurt the chances of a diplomatic resolution and of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, and that he’s shown willingness to let indirect talks in Qatar run past the August 18 deadline. He is said to be fine with continuing limited strikes on Iranian targets if Tehran violates the current temporary deal—as it already has, repeatedly.
How are those negotiations going?
Not well. It seems JD Vance’s “historic” face-to-face achievement was a one-off. Washington has been quietly downgraded from talking to the Great Satan to negotiating with the Little Satan instead—a senior Qatari official confirmed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari officials in Doha, but there are currently no high-level U.S.-Iran meetings scheduled.
How are those negotiations going?
Not well. It seems JD Vance’s “historic” face-to-face achievement was a one-off. Washington has been quietly downgraded from talking to the Great Satan to negotiating with the Little Satan instead—a senior Qatari official confirmed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari officials in Doha, but there are currently no high-level U.S.-Iran meetings scheduled.
Faced with Iran publicly denying that peace talks even exist, Vance is denying reality right back, insisting it’s merely a “Persian negotiating tactic.” He’s not wrong that rejectionism is a tactic—he’s just wrong about what it’s negotiating for. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed the delegation will skip U.S. officials entirely, meeting only the Qataris in Doha to talk about unfreezing Iran’s own assets. The tactic isn’t stalling for a better peace. It’s stalling for a better payment: extract the MoU concessions first, discuss the nuclear file never.
Iranian officials have shown no willingness to meet U.S. nuclear demands, focusing instead on asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it will impose its “sovereignty and new policy” there regardless of whether it reaches an agreement with Oman, calling the strait a purely internal matter. Reports differ on the nature of the proposed transit fees—Iran calls them mandatory, a regional diplomat calls them voluntary, and Oman’s foreign minister rejects fees outright but leaves room for “maritime service” mechanisms such as safety and pollution measures. Regardless of that distinction, Iran seems set on asserting authority over the waterway: it has already indicated that ships paying “security fees” and following IRGC protocols would get priority transit, while others face delays.
Iran will not make a deal the U.S. can accept. That’s the reality. The only question left is how many more “historic” handshakes, Doha detours, and denied peace talks it takes before that reality mugs Vance the way it mugged every liberal Kristol had in mind.
What Segal is saying is that Iran won’t even make a deal that gives Trump ammunition for saying he achieve his goal that “Iran will never have nuclear weapons”—much less anything else he could brag about. If Trump is unwilling to admit defeat or pretend that a total defeat is a total victory, he’d have to go back to war.
*In further evidence of takeover of the Democratic Party by “progressives,” two such Democrats, one of them a Democratic Socialist, won gubernatorial and Congressional primary elections.
Democratic dissatisfaction with the status quo percolated through Colorado’s primaries Tuesday as a socialist defeated a longtime congresswoman and Sen. Michael Bennet lost his gubernatorial bid to the state’s combative attorney general.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic socialist, toppled Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, for a Denver congressional seat, according to the Associated Press. Her win is the latest advance for a socialist groundswell that is forcing a reckoning for Democrats. Bennet lost to Phil Weiser, who assailed Bennet’s votes to confirm some of President Trump’s nominees and increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and criticized his support from wealthy donors.
“The incumbents that are there right now are too complacent,” Kiros said in an interview Tuesday ahead of the election. “I think what we’re seeing is a reckoning and a referendum, frankly, on the leadership of the party to actually fight for the policies that the voters care about.”
Colorado is the latest flashpoint in a Democratic civil war. A slate of left-wing candidates toppled Democratic House incumbents or won crowded races in New York last week, riding endorsements from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In Maine, Graham Platner won the Democratic primary in June, putting a progressive with a working-class message—and a complicated past—on the ballot for Democrats in one of the most competitive Senate seats in the November midterm elections.
The victories in New York set off alarm bells for centrists, and the elections in Colorado served as a barometer for whether progressive candidates appeal to voters outside coastal metropolitan areas. Kiros topped DeGette 51% to 42% with 93% of the vote counted, the AP reported. Weiser led Bennet 56% to 44%.
Centrists scored at least one win Tuesday as Sen. John Hickenlooper fought off a primary challenge from the left. Hickenlooper’s easy victory came in a race that was seen as closer than expected in the final stretch.
Them’s big leads for the progressives, too! I’m not sure why the Democratic party is moving leftwards, which I don’t think is a good way to win Presidential elections, at least. Perhaps the Party is so frustrated with having lost both the Presidency and all of Congress that its members are taking any new direction, especially one that smells like “greater change.” And of course we know now that it’s no impediment to winning if you hate Israel: here’s what Grok tells me about Kiros’s stand on the Jewish nation:
She advocates ending all U.S. military aid to Israel (including defensive systems like Iron Dome), accuses Israel of apartheid, occupation, colonialism, and genocide in Gaza, and calls for an arms embargo. Her positions have been a central part of her campaign, which is backed by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Justice Democrats. She frames U.S. support for Israel as complicity in what she describes as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
*Matt Taibbi, at his Substack site Racket, approves of the Supreme Court’s decision on transgender athletes in a post called “Controversially, the Supreme Court rules for common sense” (h/t Divy).
“It’s a good decision for women and girls,” said Kara Dansky, who wrote an amicus brief supporting the states for the U.S. chapter of the Women’s Declaration International.
Dansky was once senior counsel for the ACLU Center of Justice. In this case she was on the other side of the ACLU, whose attorneys (including co-director of LGBTQ and HIV rights, Chase Strangio) argued against the state bans. The ACLU has also split with former feminist allies by arguing for the housing of biological men in women’s prisons, including those with records of violent sex offenses. These efforts in trying to force society to reimagine biology are clearly failing, but the outraged reaction yesterday shows the fight isn’t over. NBC described the decision as a “major blow to LGBTQ rights,” and former VP contender Tim Walz claimed the “Supreme Court says schools can be cruelto my trans kids”: [note that the NBC link does not go to NBC]
Cruel is an extraordinary word to describe the act of allowing states to object to a radical social program that was implemented virtually everywhere ahead of both scientific and (especially) political consensus. The numbers aren’t close. A New York Times/Ipsos poll last year found 79% of Americans, including 67% of Democrats, are opposed to “athletes who were male at birth” participating in women’s sports. The same poll found 71% of all Americans, including 54% of Democrats, believe no one under 18 should have access to puberty blockers. This was after exposure to years of movement messaging.
Strangio and the ACLU don’t see that they’re asking for something people can’t give them, even if they wanted to, namely the honest belief that people who’ve transitioned have literally changed sexes. The gambit failed for the same reason Spanish speakers rejected “Latinx.”
As with Latinx, activists tried to lobby “sex assigned at birth” into reality, only to have the population spit it back out as “biological sex.” The court just recognized another thing that was uncontroversial until ten minutes ago. Yes, a small percentage of human beings have intersex characterstics, but most of the world’s population can’t be forced to unlearn what it intrinsically knows. Knowing which gametes your body cranks out is another form of “lived experience,” one is irrelevant to activists, apparently, because it’s “normative.” People know they weren’t “assigned” a sex by hospital clerks. Some people tried to think that way. It just didn’t take.
Activists could have started with a proposition: given that sex is binary, what can society do to accomodate people who experience dysphoria and wish to live under a new identity? The same Americans who accepted gay marriage fairly quickly after Obergefell v. Hodges11 years ago likely would have extended as far as they could without jumping into a factual or scientific abyss, on issues ranging from expanded insurance to easier routes to housing or identification. Instead, activists treated access for biological males to women’s locker rooms, sports rosters, even prisons as settled rights matters, against which only right-wing Christian patriarchal bigots could possibly object. Unless 80% of Americans are bigots, a lot of apologies are owed.
With regard to the climate by activists like the ACLU’s Chase Strangio, Taibbi concludes:
This has been a constant theme, that criticism is murder, disagreement bigotry. Everything that wasn’t an instant salute was deemed evidence of lurking genocidal hatred. Even a lifelong trans advocate like Canada’s Dr. Kenneth Zucker had his career ruined for the crime of believing some dysphoria cases dissipate with time. This couldn’t be tolerated because it clashed with the linguistic imperative of “gender-affirming care.” It isn’t rational to insist no troubled boys or girls might eventually become happy ones, just as it isn’t rational to keep denying hormones make hitting the fastball easier.
Having produced a textbook history lesson in how not to persuade, the movement won’t reconsider its aims. Instead, bet on activists searching for ways to bypass the problem of persuasion altogether. A Vox headline yesterday suggested the loss was a “cautionary tale for all left-leaning lawyers.” For a moment it seemed a mainstream pundit was going to suggest not using courts to force into being policies that majorities in both parties reject. Instead, Ian Millheiser’s point was that the left shouldn’t bring cases to this Supreme Court. Why ask permission, when you’re sure you’re right?
*On that topic, the Washington Post floats the idea that the trans rights activists are actually hurting the cause with their tactics.
“The question right now is not whether transgender advocates should fight or not fight — it’s whether going to hostile courts is the most prudent move,” said Duncan Hosie, a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center and a supporter of legal protections for trans people.
Given the Supreme Court’s opinions last year upholding bans on transition care for minors and this week’s ruling on trans athletes, Hosie said, it’s clear that “courts are not the most prudent move.”
Tuesday’s decision found that states can separate teams based on “biological sex” without offending the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and Title IX, a landmark 1972 antidiscrimination law involving education.
The court’s six conservatives led the opinion, but even the court’s liberal justices agreed that such bans do not violate Title IX. They disagreed with the majority’s finding that the bans withstood scrutiny under the equal protection clause.
The ruling capped a year of setbacks for the LGBTQ+ movement, which included a ruling against state bans on “conversion therapy” for gay and trans minors, as well as an order temporarily halting California policies that discouraged notification of parents when their children were socially transitioning at school.
Litigators filing lawsuits on behalf of transgender plaintiffs say they face a frustrating dilemma. On one hand, the Trump administration and Republican-led states have implemented policies sharply restricting the rights of transgender people, and activists say those edicts must be fought.
On the other hand, lawsuits challenging these policies are routinely reaching the Supreme Court and resulting in precedents that are detrimental to trans rights, covering the entire country and potentially lasting for decades.
Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said he recognizes the movement needs to “adapt.” But there are no easy answers, Strangio said, when “you have every branch of [the federal] government stacked against you.“
I’m not sure that going to the courts is the big problem; rather, it’s the uber-activism of the gender movement, so that it pushes things that aren’t widely accepted, like the participation of biological men in women’s sports and the “right” to affirmative care. And that’s on top of some activists’ assertions that are misleading and irrelevant, like “all this legislation is trying to erase trans people” or “there aren’t that many trans athletes, anyway.” It’s the promotion of laws and practices that Americans don’t buy that is what brings these things to court. Of course there are some bigots fighting the activists, but arguing that Americans in general are anti-trans and want trans people contravenes what we see with our own eyes. Listen to the rhetoric of Chase Strangio, a trans lawyer for the ACLU, commenting on the Supreme Court case:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is, as always, cynical:
Hili: The radio said it was going to rain.
Andrzej: People say a lot of things.
In Polish
Hili: Mówili w radiu, że będzie padał deszcz.
Ja: Ludzie różne rzeczy mówią.
*******************
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From Meow Incorporated, WAFFLES!
From Funny and Strange Signs:
From Luana: the newly-elected Democratic candidate for Representative in New York. This is what our party has come to:
“There is no money for schools, or childhood poverty”
These people live in a made up world. NYC spends 44k per year, per child on public school that leaves them illiterate. https://t.co/1jTfSekuoO— Lee Kuan Yimby (@LeeKuanYimby) June 29, 2026
The Number Ten Cat is right here:
Breaking: Three US Supreme Court justices haven’t read the 14th amendment https://t.co/upyyvxlWys
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 30, 2026
Ricky Gervais posting as his cat, Pickle:
My daddy told me the main kitty in Alley Cats was based on me, so I changed the description pic.twitter.com/3Uml48sSfE
— Pickle (@PickliciousF) June 30, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a raptor rescue (I love animal rescues):
That is freaking awesome!🫶🫶 pic.twitter.com/Zlo9JzXEYa
— 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 ✨🎵 (@Hoang_HQ) June 30, 2026
A Snow Horse/Angel. I hope this is real (so far there are no notes on it being AI):
A New Hampshire farm woman lies down in the snow and makes a snow angel.
Her horse does it too.pic.twitter.com/MgIHOHXiZk
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 1, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 2 years old, and would be 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/AVLPSetKRP
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 2, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. Sound up on this video of a deep-sea sponge (sound up to learn about spicules):
Wow, I wasn't expecting the spicules to be that long. Also really cool color on this sponge@schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 935 #deepwonders #MarineLife
And look at the eyes on this fish!
An addition to the "Awesomely Peculiar Hall of Fame" — extremely rare sighting of a barreleye fish, & first footage of this species, Winteria telescopa, alive in situ. Filmed during the #Doldrums expedition at 710 m. Read more about tubular eyes & a light organ here:youtube.com/shorts/1bhh3…
— Schmidt Ocean Institute (@schmidtocean.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T18:29:48.705Z