Sapir: a newish Jewish journal. and an article by Bret Stephens on the weakness of America

June 29, 2026 • 9:30 am

I must have signed up without remembering for a subscription to the Jewish quarterly journal Sapir, which comes in a spiffy thick version on quality paper and nice formatting. (You can sign up too for free, or access it online.) Sapir is edited by NYT op-ed writer Bret Stephens, who has an article on “A Lesson in Resilience for America” in the latest issue, whose them is “Fixing America”.  Click the screenshot below to access all the articles

In Hebrew, by the way, “Sapir” means “sapphire,” but can refer to anything precious and shiny.

Here’s the table of contents for this issue:

I’ve read three of the articles so far, the ones by Stephens, Caroline Bryk, and Yasha Mounk.  Unlike the other themed journals I get for free (like Dadalus, which I recycle as soon as it arrives), it looks as if this quarterly is worth getting. It’s a pleasure to hold in your hands given the quality of production, and at least some of the articles are good.  I’ll excerpt a bit from Stephens’s piece after I expatiate a bit (click below to read):

Stephens’s point is that Americans, by and large, want an end to the war with Iran, while Israelis don’t.  He sees Israelis as being more rational in this belief, even though America isn’t as threatened by Iran as is Israel.  But we are threatened, of course, for Iran spreads terror throughout the world, and some of that not only endangers America, but works to turn some misguided “progressives” towards the side of the IRGC and Hamas. The Democratic Party is becoming infused with antisemitism.

This difference, argues Stephens, is that America has lost its resilience to fight for what is right: we’ve grown soft, unwilling to take on long-term projects that require individual sacrifice, and self-interested as a nation, even if our American principles of freedom are under attack in our democratic allies.  He prescribes American “unlearning”—unlearning of  the mantra that our country was born mired sin and bigotry and unlearning of our self-interest and the notion that “our ideals count for nothing against our material needs or commercial advantages.” We should also relearn rhe real founding principles of America: equality, freedom, universalism, and the rule of law.  That does not, he asserts, mean forgetting the bad parts of America’s past, but remembering the ideals on which America is founded. To Stephens, Israel serves as an exemplar of resilience as it still walks the walk, embracing the ideals on which a nation is founded. (This does not of course mean that Israel is perfect!)

This may seem like a lecture from your grandfather, but we’re supposed to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. Stephens’s words remind me of a bit of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

. . . . The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Here are a few quotes from Stephens’s article:

Maybe it’s to be expected that Israelis, for whom the threat from Iran and its proxies is immediate and existential, should be willing to sacrifice so much for the sake of prospective security. Maybe it’s to be expected, too, that Americans see the threat from Iran as distant and notional, even among those who know that Tehran is responsible for the death of hundreds of U.S. citizens. That sense of distance is surely compounded by the bitter memory of two Mideast wars that cost thousands of American lives without delivering on their promises.

But there’s something deeper at work. Israelis — by necessity, circumstance, and self-selection — largely tend to be tenacious, self-disciplined, resilient people. Americans — through good fortune and a penchant for ease and convenience — tend not to be. That is a long-term threat to America’s safety and well-being. We could stand to take a lesson or two on it from our Israeli friends.

He notes the changes in America since WWII:

Scores of books have been written about how that culture fell by the wayside. Reserve gave way to self-revelation. The old virtue of delaying gratification was replaced by the habit of demanding and getting it — immediately. Material plenty led to an expectation of physical comfort, which later morphed into a demand for emotional cossetting. The word parent went from noun to verb, from a role to an activity, infantilizing adults while coddling children. Safety became a legal requirement; risk-taking, a legal liability; “safetyism,” a state of mind. The status of victim was valorized, and often monetized, at the expense of moral responsibility and personal agency. Ideas such as “microaggressions” and “unconscious bias” took hold; instead of trying to make our skins a little thicker, we discovered new ways to take offense. When things went poorly, we no longer asked, self-reproachingly, “Where did we go wrong?” Instead, we looked, conspiratorially, for a culprit: “Who did this to us?” And while fierce individualism has always been a part of America’s character and creed, we now have a kind of cancerous and metastatic individualism that cannot recognize occasions in national life that call for collective sacrifice.

. . .Now turn to Israel.

Israeli resilience is proverbial — so much so that the idea of it is sometimes resented. “No country should be expected to live indefinitely in a state of managed danger,” writes Joshua Hoffman in his excellent Substack newsletter, Future of Jewish. “When that reality is reframed as ‘resilience,’ something deeply dangerous happens: The abnormal begins to be framed or at least is expected to be normal.”

Hoffman is right that what Israelis must endure just to live should not be normalized to the point of being forgotten. But resilience is a virtue, however one comes by it. And it’s a mistake to ascribe Israeli resilience solely to the forms of adversity that it faces. It also comes from the purposes for which the state was created in the first place.

You can read for yourself about the founding principles of Israel (which were not, by the way, to drive out the Arabs). Stephens ends this way:

Finally, we could stand to learn something from Israel.

That isn’t much in evidence today. On the contrary, polling data show that more Americans are souring on the Jewish state. It would be easy to read that as a bad omen for Israelis, and perhaps it is. But it would be much wiser to see it as a warning sign about us — about our diminished capacity for critical thinking and moral reasoning. How have we in the United States managed to confuse perpetrator and victim in this war? When did we lose the capacity to use the word terrorist? Why have we so easily fallen for the baldest and most blatantly dishonest Palestinian propaganda? Why are we so beguiled by conspiracy theories plainly rooted in antisemitism? And since when do we malign an immensely capable and brave ally that fights by our side?

Most important, how do we fail to see in Israel a model of what a democratic people, which for 78 years has been battling for survival while still managing to thrive, can be capable of achieving through self-belief and the ability to recover its strength after taking blow after blow? Americans cannot hope to regain our old resilience unless we know what resilient looks like. The sooner we learn from the Israelis, the faster we might save ourselves from what, increasingly, we risk becoming.

Without doubt I’ll be called a Zionist—or even a promoter of genocide—for singling out Sapir and this article. Too bad. In my view, America is being weakened not only by the autocracy and mendacity of Trump, but by the “safteyism”, victimhood mentality, antisemitism, and sacralization of theocracy from the Left (see the new Free Press article, “How the Left abandoned the Jews“) . No wonder many of us, including but not limited to Jews, feel that we have no political home.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 29, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today we have photos from Jan Malik taken at Cape May, New Jersey emphasizing the bizarre horseshoe crabs, which are not crustaceans but chelicerates, more closely related to spiders and scorpions than to real crabs.  Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

People visit Cape May, NJ, in spring, mostly to see the migrating birds, but what makes the high density of animal migrants and residents possible in that area is in large part hidden in the water. Delaware Bay is home to a large population of the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) which spawn around the time the migrating birds pass through. Horseshoe crabs’ eggs, along with crabs themselves, are an important link in the food chain that fuels the spring migration.

Early morning visitors to the Delaware Bay side of Cape May are welcomed by the ruckus made by Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla). These birds nest locally but also depend on the crabs as a major food source:

Walking onto the beach in the morning after a high tide, a visitor will see these animals stranded helplessly on their backs, flipped by the waves:

Here is a larger female with a male still attached. All three parts of a crab are visible: the main body (prosoma) with mouth and legs, an abdomen (opisthosoma) with book gills and a tail (telson). What can be also seen here are male’s pincers, modified forelegs used to grasp the carapace of the female:

The crabs are not blind thanks to their pair of compound eyes. They also have 8 other simple eyes and ocelli distributed on top of their carapace and additional photosensors underneath and on the telson. These organs are sensitive to UV and visible light and are used to detect phases of the lunar cycle and determine when to come out of water onto the sand to mate and lay eggs:

The primary function of a telson is to help the animal steer and to right itself in water. On dry land, however, it is of little help and a flipped crab, if left on its own, usually succumbs to desiccation or is preyed upon by other animals:

 A human visitor to the beach has to decide whether to save the crab or leave it to die and let birds have their fill. In my case I usually flip them back on, giving them a chance to live another day. They are used by the medical industry to develop a test for the presence of bacteria in medical devices, which involves catching them, drawing about a quarter of their blood and then releasing them, but such a crab is then greatly weakened and mortality is high:

A Sanderling (Calidris alba) eating a horseshoe crab egg. For some evolutionary reason, these marine arthropods must leave the water in order to lay eggs. They prefer to do the laying at high tide, hence the lunar phase detection. The eggs may be then uncovered by waves and spread far and wide on the beach:

The waves may also uncover a whole cluster of eggs which is then found by shorebirds patrolling the ecotone between the sea and the land:

This is what the washed up eggs look like; eggs are 1.5 mm to 2 mm in diameter and they grow as the embryos inside them grow. This is the main fuel for the thousands of plovers, sanderlings, turnstones, red knots and others on their way toward the Arctic:

Using a macro lens, one can make out an embryo inside, complete with legs, telson and tiny eyes:

I think it was only at the beginning of this century that the significance of these “crabs” (which have a common ancestor with spiders and scorpions) for migrating birds was properly recognized and some harvesting bans were put in place in NJ and Delaware. Before, they would be harvested in excess as crab bait or just for fertilizer. This picture shows how they can be a host to barnacles and limpets:

Even though they can and do come onshore during daytime, they prefer nighttime at high tide, at new or full moon. In the Delaware Bay, many thousands of them come out then, males crowding around the females to claim the best spot and be first to fertilize eggs. They must have been doing similar things for many millions of years – earliest fossils with similar body plans date back to Paleozoic era, 450 mya, which was well before the dinosaurs. Fossils quite similar to the Atlantic crab date back 200 mya. There were many species but now only four are left, this site presents a neat diagram illustrating their evolutionary history:

Just to give a sense of scale, here is a “scrum” of crabs around human feet:

Spring migration attracts many visitors to Cape May, benefiting local businesses. I think it is just to also count humans as dependent on these “crabs”, to an extent. Note that the forefront crab has a tag from the US Fish and Wildlife Services, allowing it to track the animal:

 

 

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 29, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to another damn week; yes, it’s Monday, June 29, 2026, and National Darts Day.  Here’s the finals of the 2026 World Darts Championship, with the winner, getting a million pound. And that winner was Luke “The Nuke” Littler, making his last three throws at 17:56 on the video below. These guys are amazing! And this is one sport in which you don’t have to be in shape to be the best in the world.

It’s also National Almond Buttercrunch Day, Nation Camera Day, and National Waffle Iron Day (what?).

Click on the screenshot below to see the World Cup scores and today’s schedule of games:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Footy news: In the only World Cup game played yesterday, Canada beat South Africa 1-0, winning their first match in the knockout round and advancing to the round of 16.

Stephen Eustáquio scored in the second minute of second-half stoppage time, and Canada beat South Africa 1-0 on Sunday for their first knockout match victory in a World Cup.

A tense match at SoFi Stadium appeared to be headed for extra time until Eustáquio — who plays professionally for Los Angeles FC several miles away — put a stunning volley from outside the penalty area into the bottom corner of Ronwen Williams‘ net.

Co-host Canada hung on with strong defensive play in the final minutes and advanced to face the Netherlands or Morocco in Houston on Saturday, July 4.

Coach Jesse Marsch gathered his players in a huddle after the whistle and gave a spirited speech, declaring: “You guys are Canadian heroes! Canadian heroes!”

Here are about 13 minutes of highlights; the play that scored the winning goal begins at 10:04:

And from yesterday’s NYT:

Lionel Messi became the first player in history to score in seven consecutive World Cup games.

The 39-year-old scored with a free kick after coming off the bench as Argentina won 3-1 against Jordan. It was Messi’s sixth goal of the 2026 World Cup and he leads the Golden Boot race by two goals.

*The fighting is still going on in the Middle East, with Iran and the U.S. trading strikes.

Iran and the United States traded new attacks and threats on Sunday, the fourth straight day of hostilities, with little sign of a de-escalation that would get their two-week-old cease-fire back on track.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement carried by Iranian state media that it had targeted a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait in retaliation for American attacks.

The governments of Kuwait and Bahrain said the attacks had not caused any casualties. There were also no reports of American casualties or of major impact or damage to U.S. assets, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.

But the persistent attacks further eroded hopes for a speedy return to normalcy in the Middle East after the initial truce that the United States and Iran agreed to this month.

The new hostilities began on Thursday, when Iran fired attack drones at a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. officials. American forces responded with a wave of attacks Friday, prompting drone strikes Saturday on another ship and on Bahrain, a U.S. ally, that were widely blamed on Iran.

Iranian officials have not claimed responsibility for attacking ships in the strait, which Tehran was supposed to fully reopen as part of the cease-fire. But the attack came hours after Iran had warned ships that they could travel only through its waters; many had been using an alternate route along the coast of nearby Oman.

. . . The U.S. military said that its latest attacks had hit air-defense sites and other military infrastructure. Iran’s state broadcaster reported explosions in three cities near the strait, and the U.S. official said that the U.S. airstrikes were more expansive than the previous day’s.

And so it goes, with the U.S. and Iran trading attacks, each in retaliation for another. I’m wondering why Trump haasn’t even threatened to hit Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. That would surely cripple the nation’s economy and seems to me a good bargaining chip, since we could destroy the facilities at will. And what would be the objection of America, since that doesn’t require “boots on the ground”?

*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes the peace deal between Israel and Lebanon (the U.S. was also involved) as “history in the making”, and possibly good for both secular Lebanon and Israel.

On Friday, Israel announced a framework agreement with Lebanon, its first accord with the country since the short-lived 1983 treaty. The two sides commit to formally end their state of war and pursue normal relations through later negotiations. The engine is a reciprocal, sequenced process: Lebanon pledges the complete, verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups—Hezbollah is named—and the restoration of Lebanese Armed Forces control over all its territory, while, in exchange, the IDF redeploys zone by zone as disarmament is verified. Two initial “pilot zones” are agreed, with the rest left to a forthcoming Security Annex. Lebanon affirms Israel’s right to exist and that only the Lebanese state may authorize force on its soil; Israel disclaims any territorial ambitions.

In short: Lebanon sublets its own territory to Israel so Israel can evict the problematic tenant, Hezbollah, and hands the keys back once the premises are cleared—with normalization as the reward at the end of the eviction. On paper, it’s a phased withdrawal. In practice, it’s an admission that Israel stays in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is gone. The price of that presence was paid again early this morning, when Captain David Hazut, 21, fell in a firefight with a Hezbollah operative in southern Lebanon. For the past four months, Iran has been demanding Israel withdraw from sovereign Lebanese soil; Lebanon’s own government has effectively answered, “You first.”

Even if the ultimate goal of normalization goes unmet, this is a genuine achievement for Israel because it upends the entire conception that has governed Lebanon until now. The old arrangement was simple: If Israel wanted to stay, the authority it had to consult was Washington, while Hezbollah took its marching orders from Tehran. The Lebanese government, meanwhile, oscillated between the roles of Hezbollah cutout and impotent failed state.

Now the United States has pulled the Lebanese government itself into the anti-Iran camp. And unlike Israel’s first treaty with Lebanon, this one is built to require America as a partner. Lebanon isn’t merely choosing a future without Hezbollah; it’s choosing a new Lebanon—rebuilt and bankrolled by the United States. Put plainly: It needs Trump to hold its spine straight for the confrontation with Hezbollah, and it needs Israel to do the dirty work to win that confrontation.

The agreement is a godsend for Netanyahu. Hezbollah won’t be eliminated by Election Day even if it’s pushed to the last possible day, but if the Israeli public reads southern Lebanon as a story of progress rather than an attritional swamp, he has a chance. Internationally, the framework isn’t about to get his face taken off the dartboard—but it has validated a strategy that drew enormous criticism. It turns out you don’t always need to know the “day after” before you launch an operation. As in Gaza, if you focus on degrading capabilities and keep your options open, opportunities may materialize on their own.

Segal lists several negatives, foremost among them is Hezbollah’s resolute opposition to this agreement, and its ability to mobilize supporters in Lebanon to oppose it. Further, opponents say the agreement is unlawful, and Iran may not sign a ceasefire if Hezbollah is stripped of power, even in a treaty. However, Segal is hopeful, and ends this way:

As we have experienced recently, history in this region is written and rewritten by the week, and there is every chance this agreement ends up where so many others have: abandoned, unenforced and simply a footnote to the next war. But should it hold, June 26 may be remembered as the date a broken country began the long climb back to being the Paris of the Middle East. For now, that possibility alone is more than Lebanon has had in decades.

*Many  folx spurn James Carville as an outdated curmudgeon irrelevant to the Democratic Party. But I love the old guy because he often speaks sense (that said, he did endorse Kamala Harris for the Presidency though, after the election, said that choosing her as a candidates was a mistake). Here he is in two short videos ranting about the victories of the Democratic Socialists in New York (h/t Enrico).

The YouTube notes on this one: “Democratic strategist James Carville discusses the socialist takeover of the Democratic Party on ‘Saturday in America,’ stating he has nothing in common with candidates who want to abolish prisons.”

As the following YouTube video notes, “Speaking with Elizabeth Vargas on Wednesday, he said the two Democratic socialists and the self-styled liberal Zionist would be better off starting their own movement.”

*The Washington Post has an article about a group of trolling demonstrators who pretend to be on the side of the algae polluting Washington’s Reflecting Pool. But it’s a joke, meant to mock Trump and his renovation efforts (h/t Thomas; article archived here).

Craig Paulette’s hair was already dyed neon green, thank you very much.

But the toxic slime hue came in handy when the Reflecting Pool became filled with algae, and Paulette and his friends became filled with the urge to protest.

“You get to be a troll, and it’s so great,” Paulette said while standing by the pool on a recent evening. “This is the best way to spend your time.”

Since last week, Paulette and a small group of others — dubbed Team Algae — have spent almost every evening at the Reflecting Pool, chanting, they said, in support of the algae that has thrown a high-profile wrench in President Donald Trump’s multimillion-dollar plans to beautify the landmark.

Paulette may have green hair, but Nadine Seiler is the one that passersby want to take photos with. That’s what happens when you wear a pink blow-up frog costume emblazoned with the word “AMPHIFA” across the belly.

“I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person,” said Seiler, 61.

The demonstration is absurd — and that’s the point. The protesters — Paulette, Seiler, Karen Irwin and Michelle Peterson — said they care about algae, but what they really care about is drawing attention to what they said the algae represents: the ludicrousness of the president’s Reflecting Pool project.

. . . .“The Reflecting Pool is a reflection of the incompetence of this administration,” Seiler said.

Paulette said the group has faced its fair share of heckling from Trump supporters, but most onlookers have been in on the joke. “It’s wild how much people are embracing it. I think that’s because it’s ridiculous. The cost of entry is really low,” said Paulette, 52.

Somebody told me the algae is not gone, and hooray for that. We could use a good removal system in Botany Pond, as it’s spreading like wildfire here.

Here are the demonstrators, which the NY Post doesn’t like because they’re mocking Trump:

*And if you care about such things, the NYT has sussed out when and where Taylor Swift is marrying football star Travis Kelce. I should have placed a bet on it, but given the data, the payoff would have been small.

One of the biggest events of the summer has been a mystery: When and where are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce getting married? And when does everyone get to celebrate?

New details confirmed by The New York Times suggest a multiple-day event at Madison Square Garden, which an entertainment industry executive said Ms. Swift had rented.

The entertainment industry executive and another person with knowledge of the matter described the anticipated festivities: On July 2, the plans call for an intimate gathering of about 100 people at the Garden. The next day on July 3, about 1,000 guests would gather there for a splashier celebration, with possible stage appearances.

The preparations extend beyond the arena: A permit was filed with New York City to close the streets around Madison Square Garden from July 2 to midday July 4 for the events, according to three people who have knowledge of the matter. Several members of the Kansas City Chiefs have booked hotel rooms for dates around July 3 at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, according to a person told of the accommodations. Amtrak police officers, who patrol the station beneath the arena, have been told to expect a Swift wedding the weekend of July 4.

Since Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce first announced their engagement last August, their relationship has garnered outsize attention. America does not have royal weddings, but the union between, arguably, the biggest pop star in the world and the Chiefs three-time Super Bowl champion comes close.

Go ahead and bet on Polymarket, though you’re not going to win much! What I want to know is why somebody would rent out Madison Square Garden for “an intimate gathering of about 100 people” when the Garden holds about 20,000 people!  And I wonder if some day there will be a Taylor Swift song about Kelce, which assumes they would break up. That might not be a good assumption, and I’m not hoping for it, but it would give us another bad song.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Editor Hili is broiling, but I bet it’s hotter in Chicago (today’s high will be 90ºF or 32ºC, but it will be several degrees higher than that until Friday):

Hili: It’s so hot, even deep in the shade.
Andrzej: It’s cooler indoors.
Hili: But they expect you to work there.

In Polish:

Hili: Strasznie gorąco nawet w głębokim cieniu.
Ja: W domu jest chłodniej.
Hili: Ale tam każą pracować.

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

From Simon, a new drink!:

From TherionArms, another great medieval letter:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

Masih is posting repeatedly about the hypocrisy of Iran and other Islamist countries. But she’s right.

From Jeff Maurer. I’ll take socialism! This cartoon has convinced me.

Emma must be watching the World Cup in Germany:

From Luana; the paper is on BioArχiv with a gazillion authors:

Two from my feed. First, an animal rescue:

Not all Muslims, but many. . .

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial; the mother was in her ninth month of pregnancy.

And a video tweet from Dr. Cobb. Look at this deep-sea isopod. I bet it plays a good game of ping pong:

This is a deep-sea isopod. Dr. Johanna Weston, deep-ocean biologist and guest investigator at @whoisryosuke@mastodon.gamedev.place is confident this is Bathyopsurus nybelini, one of her favorite animals. http://www.youtube.com/@SchmidtOcea…@SchmidtOcean #gloobalmuseum #marinescience #biology

— Global Museum (@globalmuseum.bsky.social) 2026-06-16T19:03:32.520Z

 

Colossal and Trump administration cooperate to sequence and store DNA of endangered species

June 28, 2026 • 10:15 am

Carl Zimmer and Catrin Einhorn are the authors of a new article in the NYT about our old friend Colossal Biosciences, which you’ll remember as the outfit in Texas that has promised to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, the thylacine (marsupial “wolf”), the dodo and the moa, after having claimed that they’ve already de-extincted the “dire wolf”.

As I’ve written at length here (and in an article in the Boston Globe), Colossal has not de-extincted anything. It simply edited 14 genes in a gray wolf cell, and then put that cell into the nucleus of a domestic dog egg. What came out were three slightly tweaked gray wolves, white in color and, Colossal says, larger than  normal wolves. But 14 changed genes in a genome of about 20,000 protein-coding genes, and having 2.5 billion DNA bases, does not turn a gray wolf into a dire wolf. Their response was that a dire wolf is anything that you think resembles a dire wolf, no matter how much. That is disingenuous.

I lost respect from Colossal when they decided to double down on their claim that they’ve brought something back from extinction, which they surely have not.  And their claims that they will release these things into the wild—their ultimate aim—is ridiculous. The three faux white dire wolves (I doubt the original was even white) are kept secretly on an enclosure somewhere in the West, with only a few toadying journalists or donors allowed to visit them.

Likewise, Colossal’s promise to give us woolly mammoths by 2028 is unbelievable, for they won’t be able to put an engineered Asian elephant egg into the endangered Asian elephant, much less produce a creature that has more than a minute fraction of mammoth DNA. On top of that, Colossal says their aim is to release these faux mammoths on the tundra, which won’t happen, and that when they do so, it will help with global warming since the furry elephants’ trampling on the permafrost will prevent release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, ameliorating global warming.  Gullible donors like Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, and Tom Brady have swelled Colossal’s coffers by $400 million, and it’s now worth, notes the article below, more than $10 billion.

I think that when Colossal realized it couldn’t make good on its de-extinction promises, it started investing in other projects.  One of them is described in this article in the NYT (click below or find it archived here). What they propose to do, with the promised help of the Trump administration, is save the DNA from endangered species.  Now this project has its good aspects, for if Colossal sequences a lot of new genomes and publishes the sequences (which it promises to make public), we could learn quite a bit about evolution. And the American taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill for any of it.  But Colossal has no experience in “biodiversity banking” of this sort, even though nonprofit conservation organizations like the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been doing it for over half a century (Colossal is decidely a for-profit company). The San Diego noprofit has in fact created clones of black-footed ferrets, a highly endangered species, from biobanked material, so at least it has something useful to show for its efforts.

Further, if Colossal is doing this for “de-extinction” purposes, and will retain sole possession of the material, as it will do, then it is preventing other organizations or scientists from using what is “banked.” The U.S. government has no business partnering with such an enterprise.  I don’t worry about de-extinction because that is (pardon the pun) a dead issue. But the concentration on biobanking may, as the authors note, “erode support for on-the-ground conservation,” which mainly involves saving existing habitat and keeping humans from destroying new habitat.

A few quotes from the article, which, as science journalism should, maintains a neutral viewpoint while emphasizing both pros and cons:

The Trump administration and a company that is promising to bring long-gone animals back from extinction announced a partnership on Thursday to preserve cells, tissue and DNA from threatened and endangered species.

The company, Colossal Biosciences, said its goal was to store samples from every animal and plant protected under the Endangered Species Act, which includes more than 2,300 listings worldwide.

As more species face the risk of extinction, scientists see such biobanks as a critical backup. But concerns are also growing that the rise of genetic engineering and efforts to revive extinct species will erode support for on-the-ground conservation, which often requires protecting habitat from drilling, mining and other development.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration has been rolling back protections on land and water, including through actions to weaken the Endangered Species Act, in favor of expanded oil and gas exploration, commercial fishing and other economic activities.

“This partnership brings together the scientific expertise of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the ingenuity of the private sector to develop new tools that can help recover species, preserve critical genetic resources, and strengthen the future of wildlife conservation,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said in a statement.

Under a memorandum of understanding, Colossal and the Fish and Wildlife Service will collaborate to identify high-priority actions, and the government will provide a list of which species it wants to prioritize.

Well, I’d prefer that a consortium of scientists decide which species should be prioritized, and I’d prefer that the material be given to the San Diego Zoo organization rather than to Colossal, which will have sole use of the material and is a for-profit organization. The agreement is supposed to run for five years, and that Colossal gets to keep all the samples it collected with its own funding, equipment, or personnel”, which means pretty much all the samples.

Colossal has been busy doing other stuff, too:

After beginning its de-extinction efforts, Colossal branched out into biobanking. In February, the company announced a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to build what it calls a BioVault in Dubai, intended to store cell and tissue samples from more than 10,000 species.

Why Dubai? Why not store all the material in one place? Who knows? And they clone pets!

[Colossal] currently gets revenue from cloning pets and horses through a company it acquired last year, and claims to have future sources of revenue from licensing technology it develops for its de-extinction projects.

The article notes some criticism of Colossal’s proposal, too (I’m not quoting the criticism of the “de-extinction” endeavors, which the article also mentions):

But some conservation biologists expressed worries about depending so much for the long-term guardianship of precious samples on a private company.

“It seems like a bit of a risk for the U.S. government to place biomaterials in a for-profit company that doesn’t have a very long track record,” said Oliver Ryder, a conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which operates a storage effort called the Frozen Zoo that has been preserving cells for about 50 years.

and

Gabriela Mastromonaco, chief science officer at the Toronto Zoo, called the U.S. plan laid out in Thursday’s announcement hugely ambitious.

“To collect every threatened and endangered species, that is a massive endeavor,” she said. “That means tracking, trapping, immobilizing, and getting your hands on a lot of animals.”

She expressed concern that the initial announcement was short on planning details that would be standard in many other nations.

. . . Dr. Mastromonaco of the Toronto Zoo said the announcement left many questions unanswered, such as how Indigenous communities would participate in decisions about the program and the rules for who gets to use the samples for research. She said she was addressing these questions herself as Canada develops its own plan for biobanking wild species.

and

Concerns that genetic engineering would replace critical conservation work heightened when Mr. Burgum, the interior secretary, celebrated the company’s announcement on X, writing that “the marvel of ‘de-extinction’ technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.” The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Interior Department.

Colossal executives emphasize that their efforts are intended to add to conservation strategies, not supplant the important work of protecting habitat.

I guess Colossal needs government cooperation since that’s required to collect DNA samples from endangered species. But if Colossal is dong this “for public good and impact” as Colossal CEO Ben Lamm has said, why do they retain the sole right to use the material? Even if it’s collected by Colossal, the permission to do so has to come from the U.S. government, and we should not be entangled with a private, for-profit company that will store material only it can use.

I see Colossal as having provided some valuable knowledge, but also largely as a pack of grifters, making promises they cannot keep and distorting what they have done.  In my view they should stick to cloning Fido and Fluffy for rich pet-owners who want to “de-extinct” their postmortem pets.

h/t: Don

Pathbreaking new conclusion: all babies are queer

June 28, 2026 • 8:30 am

Here’s an equation, which is mine:

psychoanalysis + queer theory = lunacy.

And it’s a true equation, at least as demonstrated by the paper below (and others) in a special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, brought to my attention by Luana (I don’t know how she finds these things).

I had to read this paper three times to even understand its thesis, but I think I do now. And its thesis is something like this (I may of course be wrong since the paper is not only opaque but dreadful).

  • All babies are queer. But “queer” doesn’t mean the definition below produced by Grok:
In activist and academic circles tied to the LGBTQ movement, it now functions mainly as a broad umbrella label for people who identify as non-heterosexual in orientation or who reject alignment between their self-perception and biological sex. Its meaning remains imprecise by design in many cases.
  • Rather, by “queer”, the author and, I guess, the contributors, apparently mean “a departure from norms”, so that every baby is “non-standard”.  This leads to the question, “How can a baby be non-standard” when all babies are nonstandard?”  This is the conundrum that apparently motivates this issue.
  • The author apparently means, and I quote:

 In our approach, queer babies are neither having gay sex nor are they the babies destined, by the backward logic of cause-effect development, to become gay adults. We are not, in other words, using ‘queer’ as a descriptor of either sex acts or people. Rather, claiming the essential queerness of babies posits that babies are queer on their own terms – which is to say, because we were all babies once, that there is something constitutive about this queerness.

So how were we all queer as babies? To answer this, the author turns to Freud.

Freud provided more than a hint of how to think about the queerness of babies. In his first foray into a theory of sexuality, overtly entitled Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905/1955), Freud introduced the notion of polymorphous perversity, beginning in the first essay with an insistence that what is deemed ‘perverse’ – namely, a deviation from either the normal (reproductive) sexual aim or normal (hetero)sexual object – is so common in sexual life that he is forced to conclude ‘there is indeed something innate lying behind the perversions’ (1905/1955, p. 171). That which is deemed non-normal, or perverse, thus sits at ‘the innate constitutional roots of the sexual instinct’, a claim that Freud further insists is ‘only … demonstrable in children’, specifically in infants. What for Freud is crucial about the early stages of infantile sexuality is that the sexual instinct, which in adults appears to be singular and teleological, is revealed to consist of ‘component instincts’ and partial objects

Okay, so all babies are queer because they all have infant sexuality as construed by Freud, a sexuality instantiated at adulthood when the psychoanalysts get their claws into patients.  But this still doesn’t tell us how babies are “departures from the norms”.

At any rate, this exercise in academic logorrhea combined with discredited Freudian theory can be read by clicking the title below (it’s the introduction to a whole issue on queer babies), or by reading the pdf here.  The author is Misha Kavka at the University of Amsterdam, whose c.v., laden with papers about queerness, is here.

Here is a screenshot of some but not all of the contents so you can see what academics are getting paid to produce:

I will give one extended quote from the paper so you can see how dire it is: full of opaque and just awful writing, wordplay (common in this kind of postmodern piffle), and a questionable thesis that cannot be tested.

For an introduction to the issue of ‘the queerness of babies’, it may be no bad thing to attempt a definition of both terms. First, the easier one: ‘baby’ both is and is not a metaphor, which is why we present it here in the plural. There is no getting away from the fact that the baby, always an overdetermined signifier, slides into a metaphorics of potential on the one hand and helplessness on the other, precisely because the baby in reality is the infans, defined in the psychoanalytic tradition as ‘the one who does not speak, and is therefore not fully inscribed, only partially represented by language as a symbolic system’ (Poulios & Papadaki). This infans who does not yet speak – and who may never speak, as the psychoanalyst Nadine Cordova reminds us – is nonetheless ‘spoken of long before its arrival … and is even inscribed somewhere long before it appears’ (2024, p. 97, my translation). Marked by the trauma of birth, not (yet) in language but already inscribed into and symptomatic of the family, as Bice Benvenuto argues in ‘Oedipus in Pieces’ here, the baby is a psychic enfleshment that arrives both too soon (born prematurely, according to Lacan) and too late (as Diego Semerene posits in this issue, ‘A baby is a commissioned portrait. After someone’). Moreover, as Poulios and Papadaki argue, the infans represents not just an early developmental period but a field of psychic life that remains ‘active during the whole life of the subject, in parallel to and quite independent from the primary and secondary processes of mental function’. In that sense, the baby marks a (prelinguistic) developmental phase as well as a psychic formation which we never leave behind – that is to say, from which we must always depart. Thus, our very attempts to figure, to re-member and/or to analyse the baby make of it a quandary and a question. In that sense, this perfectly standard baby – the infans whom we cannot (yet) make sense of – is also perfectly queer.

Beyond its complicated linguistic history, ‘queer’ in contemporary use tends to circulate between two meanings. As an abstraction, whether philosophical or socio-cultural, it gestures towards that which is non-standard, anti-normative or what Sara Ahmed calls ‘oblique or “off line”’ (2006, p. 161); in Lee Edelman’s psychoanalytically inflected understanding, queerness sits on the edge of the Symbolic, rather like the infans, since it is ‘a matter of embodying the remainder of the Real internal to the Symbolic order’ (2004, p. 25). In its more specific uses, on the other hand, the term ‘queer’ is aligned with sexuality, referring to practices, desires and identities that deviate from heterosexual norms, as denoted by the ‘Q’ in LGBTQIA+. As queer theorists of the last three decades have shown, there are many points of crossover between these two meanings, to the degree that the sexual lurks in many a mention of ‘queer’, however abstracted, in often enticingly scandalous ways.

“Infans” in Latin translates to “one who cannot speak”. Yet Kavka also repeatedly talks about “interrogating the baby,” although babies can’t answer questions. That, too, must be postmodern lingo.

Had enough? I won’t quote the Freudian stuff because the man was a fraud, though the authors swallow his theories as “truths”, just as a pelican swallows a fish.  At the end of the paper, Kavka tells us “what we are calling on ourselves, and others who feel beckoned, to do. A quote:

  • to turn our attention to the baby, the infans, as the post-foetal but pre-Symbolic agent provocateur who arrives both too soon and too late;
  • to acknowledge the baby as a primary site of queerness, which describes the as-yet-undetermined formation of the becoming-subject;
  • to separate the sexual from the genital and, by extension, to understand sexuality (infantile and beyond) on the spectrum of polymorphous perversity rather than as a binary;
  • to position the queer baby before identification and hence before the adoption of sexual identity, while acknowledging its necessary connection to the sexual nature of the drive; and
  • to turn our attention to the clinic, where the invitation to question the baby in a different way can, we hope, open up ‘the path to sovereignty amidst inhospitable conditions’ (Poulios & Papadaki).
At any rate, you can see what the authors are called to do, which again includes “questioning the baby,” even though the baby cannot speak.

After reading this paper several times, between swigs of Pepto Bismol, I left both amused and angry. Amused because the author could have given her thesis in one paragraph, but tricks it out with all kinds of allusions to Freud, postmodernist thought, and wordplay like this (bolding is mine):

. . . let us begin by sitting with the notion that the baby is ‘essentially queer’ – which is, no bones about it, both the core contention and the field of play for the contributors to this issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

. . . Taking an autotheoretical approach to disinterring the personal, political and familial histories that swaddle the baby within the (in)vestments of those who came before, Semerene adopts the word travesti – reclaiming the Latin American term for a not-quite-passing transwoman – to figure the travesti baby as a stand-in for parental lost objects whose hand-me-downs fit only ‘as an act of passing’.

. . . If this polymorphous yet indeterminate baby, swaddled but never quite separate, is a symptom of the family, as Benvenuto reminds us, then the queerness of the baby is also bound, precipitously, to a queerness of relations stretching from the first car(ri)er to the transference between analyst and analysand.

This is just one symptom of bad writing: not only opaque prose (perhaps it’s comprehensible to other contributors, but certainly not to well-read academics like me), but also showing off by making puns.

And why was I angry? Because as a scientist all I see is a bunch of obscurantist theorizing with no way to test it, and the authors are getting both money and professional credit to write this stuff. And either a library or subscribers have to pay to read the stuff. Most of all, because although psychoanalysists and sociologists purport to be engaged in truth-seeking, there is no truth, and no way to find it, within this paper. It is empty theorizing. How appropriate that it draws on Freudian psychoanalysis, founded by perhaps the most famous fraud in academic history. Although throughout his life Freud claimed to be doing science, Fred Crews shows definitively that he was a grifter and a charlatan, making up many of his results and simply lying about many things. And yet Freud is still regarded by many academics as a great thinker, and analysts still use his methods—which will cost you a lot of time and money—to “address” people’s problems.

If you want an example of why the humanities are in trouble, simply read this paper or (God help you) the rest of the issue. I’ve written before about why the art—and by extension much of the humanities—can’t help us find propositional truth, but rather aim at helping us see how other people think and thereby prompting us to reflect on ourselves.  But the only light this paper sheds is on the convoluted thinking of a coterie of postmodern academics.

And for a purgative, read the book below, which is not only immensely revealing (it’s based on a ton of research) but superbly written. We live in a culture that, sadly, is still saturated with Freud’s ideas, and everyone who calls themselves educated needs to read Freud: The Making of an Illusion.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 28, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, June 28, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats and National Foodie Day. Here’s one chowing down on fried chicken at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah, George last April.

And here’s a terrific book of fiction I’m reading whose protagonist is a Japanese writer visiting Taiwan in the late thirties (Taiwan was Japanese land in that period). The writer is a foodie, each chapter is titled with the name of a Taiwanese dish, and the writer is always searching for new local food. Beyond that, the book is about love and colonialism, and it won the International Booker Prize for 2026.

It’s also INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY, National Ceviche Day, and National Tapioca Day.

This Google Doodle will give you all of yesterday’s footy scores if you click on it:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Footy news: Despite Ronaldo playing for Portugal, that team tied Ecuador (another heavyweight) 0-0 in the World Cup yesterday.

Colombia finished the World Cup’s opening round as the Group K winners after playing Portugal to a scoreless draw Saturday night.

Both teams had already secured spots in the knockout stage before the match, needing only to learn their opponents for the next round.

Colombia will play Ghana, which lost 2-1 to Croatia earlier Saturday. Portugal, who entered the expanded 48-team tournament as a favorite, will face Croatia as the Group K runners-up.

Despite the lack of goals, it was a lively affair. Bruno Fernandes came close to putting Portugal ahead in the first half but was denied by Camilo Vargas. Portugal’s Diogo Costa had six saves, more than in the team’s first two matches combined.

Portugal, looking for their first World Cup title, head to the knockout stage after an up-and-down group stage.

I really want Argentina to win as a sendoff to Messi, the best player ever. Yes, Ronaldo is great, but I don’t like his constant strutting and preening.

Here are the highlights:

*The Iran/U.S./Israel war continues as Iran has retaliated at the U.S. retaliation for Iran attacking a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has reportedly struck yet another tanker, as well as Bahrain.

Bahrain said it came under attack from Iranian drones, and a tanker was hit Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz, as fighting around the strategic waterway extended into a third day despite the agreement signed earlier this month to wind down the U.S.-Iran war.

Iran didn’t specifically claim responsibility for the attacks. But state media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had carried out strikes against American targets in the region and reasserted Iran’s claim of control over traffic in the strait.

The outbreak of violence began Thursday when the U.S. said Iran struck a ship that transited the strait via a path near the coast of Oman that Tehran had warned shippers not to use. President Trump called the attack a violation of the two sides’ ceasefire and ordered strikes on Iranian positions along the waterway.

A U.S. official said two Iranian drones were detected in the Saturday attack on Bahrain. One was shot down by a ground-based defense system and the other landed in a remote airfield area without hitting any target, the official said. Bahrain didn’t detail any damage from the attack.

An Iranian drone struck a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude near the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. official said. Two other drones targeting commercial shipping were shot down by U.S. forces. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Center, which is affiliated with the Royal Navy, said the ship struck Saturday was hit in the bridge by an unidentified projectile.

The Joint Maritime Information Center, a U.S.-U.K. navy body, raised its maritime security threat level in the Strait of Hormuz to “substantial” on Saturday, citing the new attacks on merchant vessels.

I suspect the U.S. will retaliate for the retaliation for the retaliation, and the loop will go on forever. I’m actually glad that things are happening this way, as the deal with Iran that Trump was making was a terrible deal (see Sam Harris’s video below), and would not only empower the new hard-line Iranian regime, but would do nothing to free the oppressed people of Iran. But that freedom is no longer a priority for Trump, and is too much to hope for.

*In the meantime, the “memorandum of understanding” that will supposedly end the war hands huge economuc bonuses to Iran, bonuses that will allow it to rebuilt. It’s ridiculous.

The preliminary peace agreement between the United States and Iran, a broad framework still taking shape in early rounds of talks, hands Iran’s leadership a major economic lifeline as Tehran looks to consolidate strategic gains after months of war with Israel and the United States.

Sanctions waivers that allow Iran to sell oil in U.S. dollars and commitments to unfreeze Iranian assets could grant Iran’s government access to billions of dollars in desperately needed hard currency. Having survived mostly intact despite devastating assassinations throughout its ranks, the Iranian system must now address widespread damage and destruction. Even before the war, the country’s spiraling economic crisis was the driving source of domestic discontent.

But critics of the deal argue the relief will ultimately allow Iran to rebuild its military and support allied armed groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Trump administration says it is requiring Iran spend some of its unfrozen assets buying food from U.S. farmers, but Tehran’s oil revenue are not similarly restricted.

In the wake of war with two of the most powerful militaries, the Iranian system entered peace talks with the United States emboldened and has used the negotiations to secure critical concessions from economic aid, formalization of Iran’s control over the crucial Strait of Hormuz and a say in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Trump administration officials say the deal is “performance based” and most of the economic incentives demand Iran comply with the terms of the initial agreement, including that it open the Strait of Hormuz and allow nuclear inspections.

“For Iran to benefit long-term, it has to achieve a final deal with the United States,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House. “We can simply rescind waivers and restore pressure if Iran fails to implement its commitments. The waiver does not diminish our leverage, it strengthens it,” the official said.

And what if Iran does not abide by a final deal. After all, it’s broken deals repeatedly, including nuclear deals, and it’s just broken its agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran can simply wait until we get a new President, and be it J. D. Vance or a Democrat, no President is going to have the stomach to attack Iran again.  As for the oil money, we can’t cut that off unless we do attack again.

*The Times of Israel reports an incipient deal between Israel, the U.S. and Lebanon, a deal that will supposedly disarm Hezbollah.

Israel, Lebanon and the United States on Friday signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at paving the way for an eventual peace deal between the two long-time Middle East adversaries.

The agreement — which includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of some small areas currently held by Israeli troops, as well as a process aimed at disarming the Hezbollah terror group — is the result of five rounds of talks in the US capital.

The deal “begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the signing ceremony, noting: “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead.”

The framework deal was reached on the fourth day of the fifth round of talks that the US has mediated between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, beginning in April. The latest round of fighting in the country kicked off when Hezbollah attacked Israel on March 2, in support of Iran. Several truces declared since then have unraveled.

The areas the IDF will withdraw from have already been cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure. In some cases, this has included Israel razing entire Lebanese villages to the ground on the border, with the IDF arguing that Hezbollah was using much of them to plan and carry out attacks against Israel.

Israel, Lebanon and the United States on Friday signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at paving the way for an eventual peace deal between the two long-time Middle East adversaries.

The agreement — which includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of some small areas currently held by Israeli troops, as well as a process aimed at disarming the Hezbollah terror group — is the result of five rounds of talks in the US capital.

The deal “begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the signing ceremony, noting: “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead.”

The framework deal was reached on the fourth day of the fifth round of talks that the US has mediated between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, beginning in April. The latest round of fighting in the country kicked off when Hezbollah attacked Israel on March 2, in support of Iran. Several truces declared since then have unraveled.

The areas the IDF will withdraw from have already been cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure. In some cases, this has included Israel razing entire Lebanese villages to the ground on the border, with the IDF arguing that Hezbollah was using much of them to plan and carry out attacks against Israel.

Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter said Israel will maintain its buffer zone in southern Lebanon until the Lebanese Armed Forces demonstrate that they can dismantle Hezbollah and assume responsibility for security.

Leiter stressed that the deal will not be based on a fixed timetable, but on measurable progress by the Lebanese army in disarming Hezbollah.

Additional “pilot” handovers from the IDF to the LAF will take place as benchmarks are met, he said.

Excuse me if I have little confidence that Lebanon and its own military will force Hezbollah to disarm.  Why would Hezbollah (or Iran) agree to that?  Rubio and Vance are good at putting a positive spin on these deals, but I don’t see how Lebanon can force Hezbollah to do anything, especially since the terrorist group is financed and supported by Iran, who wants continued attacks on Israel from the north

*Recently I lost a $500 check in the mail (the recipient never got it); it was probably stolen and I stopped payment. But the NYT tells us we should never send checks in the mail, period. (Article archived here.)

A practice that was common not so long ago has become increasingly risky — sending checks in the mail. But if you must send money this way, scour your account statements promptly.

Skipping that advice can leave you vulnerable to check fraud, and may also make it more difficult to recover the money if you lose it.

Joan K. Atchinson, 63, a retiree who lives in Washington, D.C., is dealing with that right now.

Ms. Atchinson said in a phone interview that she was trying to recover several thousand dollars stolen when someone intercepted a check she mailed last year. The check was altered to be payable to someone else before it was cashed. After months of trying, she said, she still has not recovered payment from either of the two banks involved — Charles Schwab, where she has an account that she used to write the check, and Chase, where the falsified check was cashed. “I’ve kind of lost hope.”

Checks sent through the Postal Service have become targets for criminals in recent years. While fewer people write checks, the checks haven’t disappeared. Two-thirds of adults say they rarely or never use paper checks, but more than a fifth either have experienced check fraud or know someone who has, according to a poll in 2025 by the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group.

In some cases, thieves may pilfer one or more checks from local mailboxes. Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said thieves sometimes “fish” for checks at free-standing drop boxes, using long tools with sticky pads on the ends to grab letters. In other cases, more sophisticated criminals may steal large batches of checks, copy them and then sell them on the internet.

Often, the purloined checks are chemically altered in what’s known as “check washing” to remove the name of the recipient. The thief replaces it with a fraudulent name, and often increases the amount of the check, before cashing or depositing it.

How can I avoid check fraud?

Try to break the check-mailing habit. “No one should ever mail a check,” Mr. Rust said.

If you must write a check, he said, try to deliver it in person or take it inside a post office to mail rather than relying on your own mailbox or public drop boxes.

The American Bankers Association recommends using permanent “gel” ink pens when you do write checks to reduce the risk of tampering. Promptly review your bank statements — including online check images — for anything that looks suspicious. And if you don’t already, consider using your bank’s online bill payment service.

All states now offer some type of electronic payment option for paying taxes, so look into using your state’s system if you owe money at tax time.

Chicago is notorious for stolen mail, so I mail checks only from the post office and have stopped mailing checks in mailboxes since I experience theft.  It’s a pain in the tuchas to go to the PO, but given the possibility of stolen checks, it’s worth it.

*Here’s a 20-minute video of Sam Harris expatiating on the cease-fire deal, which he calls a “betrayal”. He also has some choice words about Trump, and says that if the DSA takes over the Democratic Party, then the next Presidential election will be a “forced choice between lunatics of different flavors.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is having trouble seeing:

Andrzej: Hili, could you give me back my magnifying glass?
Hili: There’s no need. You just need to clean your glasses.

In Polish:

Ja: Hili, czy możesz mi oddać moje szkło powiększające?
Hili: Nie ma powodu, wystarczy umyć twoje okulary.

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

From Things With Faces:

From Terrible Maps; “popcorn” in different parts of South America:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

Masih retweeted this one from Kasparov:

From Luana.  This is, according to another tweet, “Leftist San Francisco lawmaker Scott Wiener, who supports all radical trans demands, showed up to the extremist Trans March on June 26 where he was accosted by the Trantifa he empowered. They surrounded him and kicked him out because he had supported Israel.”  Wiener is a California State Senator who fought hard for LGBTQ rights, and I’ve rarely seen such vociferous hatred over a pseudo-issue (the Gaza “genocide”), though I’ve watched a lot of demonstrations. Unfortunately, he’s very pro LGBTQ but his downfall was being Jewish. 

Van Jones on the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party:

Larry is very sensitive to the heat, but I bet #10 Downing Street has air-conditioning:

One from my feed. I hope it’s real but AI videos are proliferating these days:

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, centipedes do not have 100 legs!

The smallest centipedes have 30 legs, while the largest ever discovered had 382 👀🐛 Despite the name, no centipede with exactly 100 legs has ever been found. Surprising science explains why!

— Natural History Museum, London (@nhm-london.bsky.social) 2026-06-27T12:27:06.489Z

Here’s the famous Minneapolis Cat Tour that I’ve posted about before:

This is quite literally the best thing you will see today.

— Emily✨🇳🇱 (@emilyoram.bsky.social) 2026-06-27T10:33:16.689Z

Bill Maher on the World Cup and the good stuff about America

June 27, 2026 • 12:00 pm

Last night Bill Maher took up soccer and the World Cup, but that was an excuse to extol America—an exercise that seems to be a big sin these days.

He begins by dissing the sport because there is too little scoring, but that remark misses the point of the “beautiful game”, which is skill and tactics. After that he goes all pr0-U.S.A.,, admitting our problems but still proud to be an Americas. The connection with soccer is that many foreigners who come here to watch the World Cup wind up admiring things we take for granted (I love the Japanese guy tasting Texas BBQ for the first time). Unfortunately, most of the stuff Maher uses as evidence for America’s greatness is just that, stuff—consumer goods, air-conditioning, and food.  But Maher points out that we have more immigrants than the next four countries combined, and that says something.  I would tout the freedoms which we still enjoy, though some of them may have been temporarily interrupted.

Maher’s love of America won’t endear him to “progressives” who really hate the country, but I’m still glad I was born here compared to all the places where I could have been born. And, as usual, Maher is funny.

The guests this week included Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock (Georgia) and comedian and writer Larry Wilmore.