Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 21, 2026, and  National Junk Food Day.  Let me put in a word for occasional enjoyment of “bad for you” food. You could live a long time eating just vegetables and cheese, but is that a life? Here is some junk food: a multi-layer carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, which I ate two years ago in a restaurant. Is this junk food? It was terrific (note the candied carrot curls festooning the plate):

It’s also National Lamington Day, celebrating an Australian cake I’ve never had. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

A lamington is an Australian cake made from squares of butter cake or sponge cake coated in an outer layer of chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut. The thin mixture is absorbed into the outside of the sponge cake and left to set, giving the cake a distinctive texture. A common variation has a layer of cream or strawberry jam between two lamington halves.

Sounds excellent to me. Here’s a cream-filled Lamington from New Zealand; I never saw one when I was there. It looks like it needs a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news:  Spain won, that’s all she wrote, and the fat lady sang. This is from the NYT Times’s morning newsletter yesterday:

15

— That’s how many margherita pizzas Spain’s World Cup team ordered for delivery in New Jersey after the game. They also got 15 plain and 10 buffalo chicken pies, a specialty of the restaurant.

*Britain has a new Prime Minister: Labour member Andy Burnham. He promises change.  One thing that will not change is the Number Ten Cat, as he confirms below:

Happy to confirm: pic.twitter.com/5ehjCY8CTK

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 20, 2026

Larry is living with his seventh Prime Minister.

*The attacks on Iran by the U.S., and vice versa, continued yesterday even as some people intimated that peace talks are continuing. And now the Houthis (controlled by Iran) are involved as well:

The Houthis, the Iran-backed armed faction in Yemen, said they would impose a blockade on Saudi ships, threatening to open a new front in the Middle East conflict and raising the pressure on volatile global energy markets.

The announcement was made as many in the region were tensely watching to see if the rounds of bombardment between U.S. and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf would continue to escalate. The two countries traded new attacks on Monday, with Iran targeting countries that host U.S. military bases, despite efforts by mediators to calm tensions.

The latest hostilities initially focused on the Strait of Hormuz, but they have expanded into a cycle of attacks and counterattacks that have killed at least three American service members since Friday, hit Arab states across the Persian Gulf and damaged critical infrastructure in Iran and U.S.-allied Kuwait.

Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz has reduced global fuel supplies, pushing prices upward, but Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, has been able to reroute some of its exports through the Red Sea. If the Houthis follow through on their statement that they will not allow Saudi vessels to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the southern portal to the Red Sea, it would worsen the global fuel crisis.

While U.S. and Iranian officials said that they were open to a diplomatic offramp, there was little sign on Monday of significant progress since a cease-fire agreed last month collapsed.

. . .The top U.S. and Iranian diplomats signaled separately that they remained open to negotiating even as the two sides traded strikes on Monday, more than a week into a spiraling escalation in their war.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said the country had “emerged as a significant interactional actor” from the war, which began in February, and had demonstrated its “resilience.” His comments sought to portray Tehran as having gained from the conflict despite the heavy loss of life and damage inflicted by months of punishing U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“The right time to negotiate is exactly when you have achieved reliable battlefield and strategic gains,” Mr. Araghchi said, according to remarks published by IRNA, the state broadcaster. He also warned against taking “risks with people’s lives and the fate of the entire country.”

Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry’s spokesman, said at a news conference that Tehran had received proposals from mediators who were “trying to prevent an escalation of tensions,” though he declined to provide details.

All the issues seem to have devolved to the Strait of Hormuz now; as I said yesterday, nukes seem to have dropped out of sight.  No viable solution is in sight, but have a look at the next item:

*John Spencer is “a retired United States Army officer, researcher of urban warfare, and author. He currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast at West Point,” and on his Substack he has a new article called “What options does the United States have in Iran? Actually, many.”

The campaign imposed enormous costs, although those costs have not yet compelled the regime to accept American terms. Iran has continued to resist demands concerning its nuclear program and freedom of navigation. Iran’s conventional means have been badly damaged. Its will has survived. That is the problem the next phase must solve.

The next phase should place the regime under simultaneous military, economic, diplomatic, informational, and psychological isolation. Compellence is cumulative. Military action, economic pressure, diplomacy, intelligence, cyber operations, information operations, and support to internal resistance should reinforce one another until the regime concludes that continued resistance threatens what it values most: its power and survival. Iranian leaders should lose the ability to communicate securely, gather safely, move military forces freely, protect the coastline, observe the strait, generate military revenue, or assume that they can outlast American attention. Every day of resistance should leave the regime weaker, more divided, and less confident about its own survival.

There is no single operation that guarantees this result. The United States could select any of the following measures, combine several of them, employ nearly all of them over time, or reject those that do not fit the political and military circumstances. Their value lies in giving the president options and forcing Iran to defend against possibilities it cannot confidently exclude.

Possible actions against the regime’s wartime leadership include:

• Continue targeting senior regime and IRGC leaders. Military, intelligence, missile, naval, drone, nuclear, and command officials who direct or enable ongoing hostilities.
• Strike command posts, emergency headquarters, communications centers, and protected meeting locations used to direct the war.
• Force commanders to disperse, relocate constantly, restrict their communications, and abandon established headquarters.
• Use cyber, intelligence, information, and covert action to make senior leaders feel exposed wherever they operate.
• Publicize defections, internal disputes, corruption, failed operations, and leadership losses to deepen mistrust within the government.
• Make continued participation in the war personally costly for those directing attacks against American forces, regional partners, and international shipping.

The senior political and military leadership should not enjoy sanctuary while Iranian forces attack American personnel and attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz. Those directing the war should be hunted, isolated, and prevented from exercising effective command. Their military headquarters, communications systems, protective organizations, and operational networks should remain under constant pressure.

Spencer then gives further lists of possibilities: actions that go after Iran’s communications and transportation systems, and actions that physically isolate its regime, actions against military power and infrastructure, military industry and sources of wartime revenue, economic measures, restoration of freedom of navigation, and groundforce operations (these latter ones would cause an outcry).  His maritime operations include two I like:

• Seize Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export terminal, and suspend exports under regime control until Iran accepts negotiated terms.
• Destroy remaining military facilities supporting regime operations on Kharg and other strategic islands.

I don’t understand why Trump hasn’t yet threatened to take Kharg Island, though that would likely take “boots on the ground.” Spencer’s conclusion:

That pressure would still serve the limited objectives established at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury. The objective would remain a negotiated change in Iranian behavior, not the conquest or permanent occupation of Iran. The United States should bring overwhelming military, economic, diplomatic, and informational power to bear in an integrated campaign that leaves the regime with a single conclusion: accepting American terms offers the only realistic path to preserving the regime and their own survival.

The campaign should continue until Iran accepts those terms. Diplomacy may record the final agreement, but compellence will create the conditions that make agreement possible. The United States still has many options left in Iran. The question is no longer whether additional instruments of American power exist. It is whether Washington is willing to employ them in sufficient combination to convince Tehran that continued resistance is more dangerous than accepting American terms.

There’s the rub, for “Washington” is synonymous with “Trump,” who of course vacillates on a daily basis. I wish Trump would employ Spencer as a military advisor, for I haven’t seen any vacillation from Spencer.

*According to It’s Noon in Israel, there was a march by Israelis into Gaza yesterday, with their aim being to promote Israelis settling in Gaza. What a dumb idea! Fortunately, they are not in the majority of Israelis. (Bolding is Amit Segal’s).

Government ministers on Sunday joined thousands of settler activists in a march through a closed military zone to the Gaza border in a show of support for Jewish settlement of the territory.

The “March of Thousands,” marking 21 years since Israel’s evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement bloc inside the Gaza Strip, drew leading figures from the religious Zionist camp—National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich among them—alongside lawmakers from Netanyahu’s Likud.

The name isn’t mere aspiration. There is a real constituency of Israelis that holds settlement as the only durable path to security, and on Sunday they came out to say so. But there is also a reason they couldn’t call it a march of millions. They remain a minority: A majority of the public, Jews and Arabs alike, opposes Jewish settlement in Gaza, even as most of the right supports it in the abstract.

The more telling detail was the turnout of government officials: 28 ministers and coalition lawmakers, by the organizers’ count. Representatives of Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit were a given—resettling Gaza is written into their platforms. But the march also drew more than 10 Likud members, in open protest against their own leader’s emphatic decision not to reestablish settlements in the Strip.

One imagines these members are hedging their bets—in case a war doesn’t cancel the primaries after all.

This is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to stop terrorism. Yes, I agree that a two-state solution is not on right now, but settling Gaza, which Israel basically gave (as a “state”) to Palestinians in 2005, dismantling all Israeli “settlements” at that time. (I’m surprised that so few people know this).  What you give to the Gazans stays in Gaza.

*Republican pollster and writer Kristen Soltis Anderson has a NYT op-ed in which she lists what she sees as the eight American ” political tribes,” or subspecies of existing political parties. Which one do you belong to?:

Based on new research by my polling firm, I believe America is better described as having eight political “tribes” — groups organized not just around demographics, party affiliation or even issue positions, but also around their postures toward institutions and societal norms.

Close to 40 percent of Americans fall into one of two groups that look like our traditional right wing and left wing. We describe them as the Loyal Left and the Loyal Right.

But most voters fall into one of the six other tribes that take some of their views from the right and some from the left.

Here are the groups (bolding is Anderson’s):

1.) Let’s start with the political left, since that’s where the action seems to be in this year’s primaries. We find that 21 percent of voters — including 42 percent of self-identified Democrats — fall into the Loyal Left, a group that is progressive on most issues and especially outraged by what its members see as widespread political corruption.

2.) Their closest cousins are what we call Electability Democrats. Making up 10 percent of voters overall (and about 19 percent of the Democratic Party), these voters are also fired up to vote in the midterms and progressive on economic matters. However, this group is slightly more ethnically diverse than the Loyal Left, which is overwhelmingly white, and also diverges sharply on several key cultural questions. Electability Democrats generally oppose the idea of defunding the police, take more conservative views on the participation of transgender individuals in competitive sports and are more middle-of-the-road on immigration issues. Asked which group I’d sort James Carville into, I’d put him here.

3.) The American Institutionalists, who represent 11 percent of all voters, are the most likely to have a high income or a graduate degree. They are whiter and older; more than half were born before 1965. They tend to get their news from broadcast TV rather than social media

4.) The Young and Disillusioned are pretty much the opposite. They are 9 percent of the electorate but an even smaller share of the Democrats’ most reliable voters because they are, as the name says, young and disillusioned. Social media is their top source of news, and politics is not a major part of their identity.

5.) On the right, first, look to a tribe we call Middle American Optimists, making up 11 percent of voters this year. They’ve little love for Democrats, and two-thirds voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. So far, they think he is doing an OK job as president, but they’re less than thrilled about the state of the economy.

6.) Critical to Mr. Trump’s reinvention of the G.O.P. has been our next group, the New Republican Populists, who are about 6 percent of the 2026 electorate. They are quite religious, live in more rural areas and oppose abortion, while rejecting much of the traditional conservative economic orthodoxy — they’re unlikely to say that you can just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

7.) That brings us to the Moderate Right, who are 13 percent of voters and a group whose members are fairly pro-establishment in contrast with their more anti-establishment right-of-center peers. They still subscribe to a more traditional conservative view on economics and are fairly socially conservative. But perhaps by virtue of being a more female-heavy tribe, they’re also moderate on the issue of abortion and more open to the view that sexism remains a problem in society.

8.) The Loyal Right remains enthusiastic about Mr. Trump and ready to turn out for Republicans in this year’s midterms, but its size — 18 percent of the electorate — makes it insufficient, on its own, for retaining a Republican majority.

Put me in Carville’s group. Actually, I don’t see much of a difference between #2 and #3, so I’ll dub myself a 2½. I’m not quite sure what this kind of subdivision accomplishes save, as Anderson’s claim that we don’t have a two-party system but a system of  two coalitions.  But didn’t we already know that?

*Over at Reality’s Last Stand, Colin Wright tells us “Male Senate candidate Ashley Webb says he ovulates and menstruates through his colon.” Webb is a candidate for the State Senate in Maine.

Ashley Webb, a man who identifies as a woman and is running for the United States Senate in Maine in the wake of Graham Platner’s sudden withdrawal, went viral recently for promising that he would never lie to or deceive the public. The remark struck many viewers as ironic, given that Webb made it while wearing a dress, presenting himself as a woman, and expecting voters to address him as one.

. . .Webb identifies not only as transgender but also as intersex. Earlier this month, he announced his run for the Democratic nomination in a post titled “Running Openly as Trans Intersex candidate for Senate in Maine.”

The account’s comment history contains some truly extraordinary claims.

Webb claims to ovulate. Webb also claims to experience a monthly period that began when he was 25. However, because Webb was born with “external male parts” rather than “the proper hole,” the supposed menstrual blood cannot leave through a vagina. Instead, Webb believes that a hidden female reproductive tract formed an “exit connection” with his colon, causing monthly rectal bleeding.

“When you don’t have the proper hole, it finds one of two exits,” Webb wrote. “My exit connection was made with my colon. Cause when I get this monthly pain, that is where the blood comes out of.”

Webb has not given any anatomical evidence for this claim. According to his other posts, colonoscopies have not found any such connection, while repeated CT scans have failed to reveal a uterus or ovaries.

Webb does not view these negative findings as evidence against his hypothesis that he’s actually female. Instead, Webb claims that CT scans “can’t find a uterus and ovaries when they enter your gender as male” because doctors supposedly “use a different scanning process for females.”

But that’s not how abdominal and pelvic CT imaging works. A uterus does not become invisible on a CT scan because the patient is simply listed as male.

And rectal bleeding is not a form of menstruation. Menstruation occurs when the uterine lining breaks down and blood and tissue pass from the uterus through the cervix and vagina. Ovulation occurs when an ovary releases an egg. For the blood coming out of Webb’s anus to be menstrual blood, he would need functioning ovaries, a uterus capable of cycling and shedding, and some abnormal passage connecting the reproductive tract to his colon. Those are not conclusions that can be drawn from abdominal pain and rectal bleeding.

Here’s the CT scan that Webb posted with the comments. There are no ovaries.

Such claims are, frankly, insane.

Webb also posted an image that’s supposedly one of his CT scans. He falsely claimed to be a 5’6’’, 26-year-old female. He’s 6’1’’, 40, and male. He asked other Reddit users whether his “ovaries” looked normal, and simply marked objects on the scan that he believed to be his ovaries.

He said he “just want[ed] to make sure nothing was wrong” with his ovaries, because he “want[s] to be a mom.”

Webb also makes bizarre claims about his chromosomes. In multiple posts, Webb says that a karyotype test came back XY—that of a typical male. Webb also says he was recorded male at birth. Nevertheless, Webb has written, “Pretty positive I am the XX type.”

And Webb’s claim about his chromosomes:

Regardless of whether you buy into this type of delusion, nobody should vote for Webb simply because he’s lying on many fronts.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s being arrogant:

Hili: Between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the cat is the perfect central point.
Andrzej: I doubt it.
Hili: You always have to be skeptical.

Hili: Między mikro i makrokosmosem kot jest idealnym punktem centralnym.

Ja: Wątpię.

Hili: Ty zawsze musisz być sceptyczny.

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

From Meow Incorporated:

From The Grammar Police:

From It’s an Apostrophe (when will they ever learn?):

From Masih, who was forced to watch a public hanging when a child:

Today, the world celebrates a 19-year-old، Lamine Yamal lifting the World Cup trophy.

In Iran, a 19-year-old champion, Saleh Mohammadi was lifted to the gallows.

I was seven years old when I thought I was going on a school field trip. Instead, they took us to watch a public… pic.twitter.com/JxojXPIuXA

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 20, 2026

From Luana via Michael Shermer; you can read the Quillette article, written by the former head of Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal, here. (The fine in US dollars is a measly $530,000!)

What is the price for saying people cannot change sex?
In Canada it is $750,000.
Justification:
“Transpeople are, by definition, people ‘whose gender identity does not align with the sex assigned to them at birth.’ If a person elects not to ‘believe’ that gender identity is…

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) July 17, 2026

From Barry, an excellent tweet:

Hunting skills: 0% Accuracy: 0% Confidence: 100%#Cat #Caturday #Catsofbluesky #LifuX

— LifuX (@lifux.bsky.social) 2026-07-19T16:47:42.278Z

From Jeff Maurer. El-Sayed is running for the Senate from Michigan, and was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren. He’s a “progressive” Democrat, but

It’s easy to focus on how El-Sayed’s “people are sad in Dearborn today” comment is awful, but let’s focus on how it’s stupid: Assuming that Iranian-Americans were sad when the Ayatollah died is like assuming that Cuban-Americans were sad when Castro died. https://t.co/bAPy0tdv17

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) July 19, 2026

Two from my feed. I couldn’t resist the first d*g post:

This is the best video you’ll see all day❤️ pic.twitter.com/Ts77Rp90tD

— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) July 19, 2026

A lovely video (I hope it’s real). Her baby is ALIVE!

Mother chimp sadly goes to a towel to see her baby after two days which she thought was born dead. pic.twitter.com/fUZDu9WA0k

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 20, 2026

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/opinion/israel-gaza-palestinians-genocide.html

Finally, one from Doctor Cobb. I love this “tweet”:

Morning

— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-07-20T06:13:38.417Z

Welcome to another damn week as we move one day closer to The Big Nap. It’s Monday, July 20, 2026, and Spain is the World Cup champsion. Argentina disgraced itself not only with a lackluster performance, taking almost no shots on goal despite 30 minutes of extra time, but also by trying to fight the victorious Spanish players after the game.  National Fortune Cookie Day. These cookies did not originate in China; Wikipedia notes:

The exact origin of fortune cookies is unclear, though various immigrant groups in California claim to have popularized them in the early 20th century. They most likely originated from cookies made by Japanese immigrants to the United States in the late 19th or early 20th century. The Japanese version did not have the Chinese lucky numbers and were eaten with tea.

Bored Panda has a list of 86 funny cookies fortunes. Here are two:

It’s also Moon Day, celebrating the first human walk on the Moon on this day in 1969, Nap Day, National Lollipop Day, and Space Exploration Day,  Here’s a video of the first walk on the Moon, and I saw it live:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: Well, despite my hope, Spain won the World Cup in extra time, beating Argentina 1-0 in a game in which Spain controlled the ball but the superb Argentine goalkeeper Martinez kept turning away Spain’s shots on goal. And there was roughhousing after the game, with disgruntled Argentinian players attacking Spanish players.

The performance imbalance is seen in the report below from ESPN:

 Ferran Torres‘ goal early in the second period of extra time was enough as Spain secured their second World Cup with a 1-0 win at New York/New Jersey Stadium (MetLife Stadium) on Sunday.

The Barcelona forward had side-footed the ball home after Nico Williams‘ header fell to him following Pedro Porro‘s cross. Before that, it had been Spain with the better chances, controlling possession and forcing a number of choice saves from Argentina keeper Emiliano “Dibu” Martinez, including a superb stop from a Williams shot at the start of extra time.

The game itself followed the script many had predicted, with Spain possessing more of the ball and Argentina waiting for their moment to find Lionel Messi. Accommodating his 39-year-old legs had served them well during this World Cup as he proved decisive in late comebacks against Egypt and England. But Spain were simply fresher and more technically gifted than previous opponents, and the end result is that Argentina’s first shot of any kind came in the 115th minute, a record of futility for a World Cup.

The upshot was a physical game, with referee Slavko Vincic loathe to intervene and opting to let play run on. But Enzo Fernández left him little choice when he upended Pau Cubarsí in injury time, earning a second yellow card.

Messi had said this was his last World Cup, and he left the stage after a tournament that saw him record eight goals and four assists. It was the third time that Argentina reached the final in the last four World Cups, having lost to Germany in 2014 and beating France in 2022.

As for Spain, already the reigning European champions, they crown a tournament that saw them concede a single goal in eight matches, against Belgium in the quarterfinals. Coach Luis De La Fuente surprised many with some of his team selection, with Pedri again starting on the bench, but he was ultimately vindicated. — Gab Marcotti

It was a hard watch for much of the time, and arguably the worst World Cup final in living memory, but Spain held their nerve and beat Argentina through sheer persistence and belief that their superior quality would win in the end.

It did, and it was a victory for control over chaos. Spain dominated possession in every game they played and Argentina couldn’t get close to the European champions by fair means, so they attempted to drag the down by less savory methods. But Spain maintained their composure long enough for Torres to win the game with his goal deep into extra time.

By the end, Spain had registered 20 shots compared to two by Argentina, with 12 on target and none by the outgoing world champions.

Pathetic; Argentina was either completely incompetent or not hungry enough. Even Messi’s great corner kicks could not save them.

Here are the highlights.  The goal by Spain is at 16:32 on the video:

And the NYT republished this from The Atlantic. Enough, already!:

Apropos, here’s today’s Google Doodle; when you click on it you’ll get scores and fireworks. (I hate the drawn out ‘GOOOOOOOOOOL’ cry!)

*Fighting has increased between Iran and the U.S. as two American military were killed in Jordan.

Two U.S. servicemembers were killed and several were wounded in an Iranian attack on an air base in Jordan, further escalating a weeklong exchange of fire where both sides have been striking increasingly sensitive targets.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, confirmed the deaths and said another servicemember is missing as a result of the attack. Centcom later said the U.S. launched fresh strikes against Iran to punish the regime for targeting Americans and to degrade its ability to target shipping.

Four servicemembers were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals and have since been discharged, according to Centcom. Other personnel who were evaluated for minor injuries have been returned to duty, Centcom added.

Manned and unmanned aircraft were also hit in the attack, according to people familiar with the matter.

Iran has adapted to U.S. defenses, firing missiles that travel at extremely high speeds and can maneuver as they streak toward the earth, according to U.S. officials. Iran’s ability to hit sensitive targets also has raised concerns that the regime is getting targeting help from China or Russia, the officials said.

The American deaths are the first resulting from hostile fire since President Trump declared a ceasefire in early April. They will test the president’s restraint amid an escalating exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran that stretched through the past week. The president has previously said he would consider going back to war if Iran kills U.S. troops.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Saturday that the loss of the servicemembers would stiffen the U.S.’s resolve.

Lawmakers offered their condolences to the families in social-media posts, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Shaheen added that “the President must negotiate an end to this disastrous war.”

The Iranian attack took place at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which U.S. warplanes have used for operations against Iran, according to U.S. officials. The U.S. casualties came as American and partner forces were defending against missile and drone attacks, Centcom said.

Such is the half war we’re in.  It can’t go on indefininitely, but if I were in charge (and thank Ceiling Cat I’m not!), I’d tell Iran I’d bomb Kharg Island unless they surrendered indefinitely. That’s where nearly all of their oil is pumped onto taknkers.

*And, at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal analyzes the latest escalations.

For now, neither side wants full-scale war. Trump appears to be playing for time until after the midterm elections. Iran, for its part, is content to assert its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and knows that any new round of escalation would deposit its energy infrastructure in the U.S. target bank. Tehran has been happy to walk right up to the line without crossing it.

On Friday, it crossed it—whether by design or miscalculation is still unclear. Two U.S. servicemen were killed in an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan, the first American deaths in the conflict since April. Manned and unmanned aircraft on the ground were also hit, another break from the pattern of recent exchanges. The base has been struck before—an Iranian drone damaged a radar component of the THAAD antimissile system defending it in March, forcing the U.S. to replace it—but until Friday, no one stationed at the base had been killed.

The attack was not just an escalation. It was a show of strength. Iran is adapting to American missile defenses, firing high-speed, maneuverable missiles at U.S. bases across the region. Nor is it adapting alone: U.S. officials believe Beijing and Moscow are enabling Iranian targeting—China through a reconnaissance satellite sold to Iran in 2024, Russia by providing the locations of American warships and aircraft and sharing drone tactics.

Washington has already answered Friday’s attack, striking Iranian coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage sites, and the IRGC unit responsible for the attack. And more is coming: F-16s from Germany are being rushed to the region, with F-35s from England and aerial refueling tankers to keep them all flying close behind. The State Department has issued a travel warning for the region—a smaller signal, but one pointing in the same direction.

It is a bizarre state of affairs: This may be the first time in the region’s history that the entire Middle East is under fire while Israel alone stands untouched. That restraint is itself a signal of Iran’s reluctance to escalate further—to strike Israel now, on top of everything else in motion, would turn the current “ceasefire war” of tit-for-tat exchanges into a war with no modifier.

Meanwhile, whatever Trump’s occasional talk of returning to the table is worth, the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding still has no pulse. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared Trump’s signature “invalid,” and Tehran announced it is suspending its commitments, though some regime voices—Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf among them—still argue for negotiations. Trump does not seem especially bothered. Asked about Iran’s withdrawal from the deal, he replied: “I couldn’t care less.”

His solution?

That said, full-scale war is not necessarily the best means to that goal either. For now, the surest path to keeping Iran from the bomb remains something far less glamorous than either strikes or negotiations: a blockade. Until Iran is starved, Trump cannot safely dismount the tiger.

As someone once said, “All this is as plausible as anything else.” But aid can enter Iran from land, including from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Would those countries agree to a blockade?

*A WSJ op-ed reports a very high rate of hormone therapy given to Oregon kids who report gender dysphoria, and the kids are young.

If you live in Oregon and your child is confused about her sex, the state is ready to medicate her and perhaps even put her under the knife. The Beaver State has become a national leader in providing life-altering hormones to minors.

According to a new study published in Research Connections, at age 17, roughly 1 in every 240 girls and 1 in every 630 boys in Oregon received cross-sex hormones for “gender dysphoria” between 2016 and 2023. These figures are triple and double the national average for girls and boys, respectively. For younger children the disparity is even greater: Cross-sex hormone use in the study was four to five times the national rate among 14- and 15-year-olds, and puberty-blocker use was more than five times the national rate at age 14.

Oregon classifies hormones and surgery as “medically necessary” treatments for gender dysphoria, which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines as a mismatch between one’s sex and one’s subjective perception of “gender,” accompanied by distress or difficulty functioning.

According to the study, teens in Oregon are being diagnosed with gender dysphoria at alarming rates: 1.51% of girls and 0.46% of boys received a “transgender-related diagnosis,” almost always gender dysphoria, between 2016 and 2023. The figure for both sexes is 0.98%—10 times the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in this age group and only slightly lower than the share of teens who described themselves as transgender on state surveys in those years (1.18%). In Oregon, calling oneself transgender is a fast track to medical diagnosis, drugs and in some cases even surgery. About 1 in 4 diagnosed minors in Oregon received such interventions, the study finds.

“Gender transition” involves the disruption of an adolescent’s natural hormone production and regulation. The goal is to mimic the appearance of the opposite sex or attain a sexually ambiguous appearance, all at the expense of the body’s healthy functioning. The known and suspected harms of these interventions include infertility, sexual dysfunction, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular disease, bone health problems and cancer.

Health authorities in several European countries have banned or restricted access to hormonal interventions for minors following rigorous evidence reviews. In Oregon the trend has been one of reckless acceleration. The apparent ease with which distressed Oregon teens go from transgender identification to diagnosis and dangerous medical intervention is no accident. It flows from deliberate choices made by state health authorities a decade ago.

The part that bothers me are operations on minors. My impression is that most rational people think that hormones and surgery should not be given to minors until they’re of an age of maturity (I waffle between 18 and 21). This rules out puberty blockers, but those are still considered experimental in much of Europe. And surely not surgery or adult hormones before then! But that’s happening, too:

Among minors, transgender-related diagnoses in Oregon rose threefold between 2017 and 2023, according to a Manhattan Institute insurance database analysis. Hormone prescriptions soared, and surgery became more common. In 2019 alone, 33 minors had double mastectomies and two had hysterectomies, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority’s All Payer All Claims Reporting Program.

Oregon has slightly more than 1% of America’s teens, but between 2019 and 2023 its clinics accounted for at least 7% of all “gender” mastectomies on teen girls. During those years 26 minors had “bottom surgery”—23 hysterectomies and three castrations.

These are minors, mind you.  It’s Oregon, of course, but it’s unconscionable to do surgery on children that young. And there appear to be no lower age limits, even for Medicare payments.

*I haven’t seen the highly-touted movie The Odyssey yet, but already classical scholars are beefing about its accuracy.

For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has been gratifying in various ways. Her acclaimed 2017 edition of Homer’s epic has reached the top 5 on Amazon.com, leading a wave of similar books boosted by the movie. Nolan has even cited her translation, notably the opening line “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration.

. . . The divide between scholars and critics seems in part a matter of whether the balance should tilt toward Nolan or Homer. Wilson and fellow translator Daniel Mendelsohn both expressed admiration for Nolan’s cinematic flair and ambition, what Mendelsohn calls his “great visual panache.” Both speculated that his desire to make a “Christopher Nolan” movie led to unfortunate decisions.

Mendelsohn is an author, critic and translator and his assessment appeared Friday in The New York Review of Books, where he is an editor-at-large.[You can read Mendelsoh’s review for free here.]

Mendelsohn had previously defended Nolan’s controversial decision to cast a Black actor, Lupita Nyong’o, as Helen of Troy, calling it a worthy way to “provoke, challenge and discomfit how we think about beauty and identity.” But he faulted the director for giving us an Odysseus with “no cleverness, no humor, no wily charm.” One of the Western canon’s formative tricksters has been transformed, he contended, into the kind of haunted protagonist featured in such previous Nolan movies as “Oppenheimer” and “Memento.”

“This tormented, guilt-ridden Odysseus, stripped of humor and wit, seductiveness and cleverness, is a sibling of Memento’s anguished amnesiac, of Batman, of Oppenheimer, men tormented by pasts they wrestle with in different ways,” wrote Mendelsohn, whose “Odyssey” translation came out in 2025. “Nolan has merely remade Homer’s hero in his own image.”

Here’s Mendelsohn’s last paragraph in the NYRB:

But whatever his lifelong fascination with the epic, Nolan has merely remade Homer’s hero in his own image, just as he has imposed on Odysseus’s adventures values utterly foreign to Homer. Is his new vehicle for Odysseus’s tale impressive in its visual impact and distinctive in its structural ingenuity? Yes. But is its “essential” Homeric? On that I’ll let Penelope have the last word: “The structure is nothing without the people’s respect for its meaning.”

Back to the AP piece:

Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said she didn’t want to come across as a “snobby,” nitpicking expert at odds with any deviation from the original text. But she questioned a range of omissions and other choices, from the absence on screen of the Gods Zeus and Poseidon (Athena is played by Zendaya ) to the “incoherent” messaging that condemns both war and physical cowardice. She found Penelope’s role so thinned out that it endangered “any possibility of believing in this marriage.” Wilson also that thought parts of the movie, notably the scenes with Odysseus’ dog, Argos, “catered towards modern sentimentality.”

Of course scholars will nitpick, but I’m not yet sure I’ll see this movie anyway. First I’ll have to find an IMAX theater showing it, and hope that they give discounts to seniors. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is off in la-la land:

Hili: What did you say?
Andrzej: Nothing important. I find myself talking to myself more and more often.

In Polish:

Hili: Co powiedziałeś?
Ja: Nic ważnego, coraz częściej mówię sam do siebie.

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

From Addicted to Ducks:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih, a very rare video, showing cellphone video of a notorious Iranian prison smuggled out to her:

These are prisoners inside Qezel Hesar, one of Iran’s most notorious prisons, known for mass executions and brutal conditions.
One of them secretly got hold of a phone and risked everything to record this message for the outside world.
Executions are surging. They are asking for… pic.twitter.com/Q8vXLIoCIE

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 19, 2026

From Steve Stewart-Williams, who has a new book on sex differences. (BTW, in that book he takes for granted that there are two sexes.) I guess I would have been reported before I retired.

“Around a third of liberal students think professors should be reported for saying that biological sex is a scientific fact, and that there are two sexes.”https://t.co/mTTaEkcpI4 pic.twitter.com/v24mdjOrNg

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) July 18, 2026

From Luana, more on those plotting the destruction of Western values. (Can you tell me that this doesn’t concern you in the least?)

The West is going to allow itself to be destroyed because it can’t get over its own colonial guilt.

People like this should be deported. No sane nation would allow the growth of a cancerous political faction in their own borders whose stated goal is the destruction of the… https://t.co/CSueDYjSAy

— Corey Walker 🇺🇸 (@CoreyWriting) July 18, 2026

Two from my feed.  First, a fascinated tiny primate:

Watch a pygmy marmoset completely fascinated by an insect in this clip from “Tiny World”.pic.twitter.com/ql6FRuh1ch

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) July 19, 2026

And a protective eagle:

Nathalie Denolf from Germany is a professional Falconer and conservationist and she has very rare bird of preys, vultures and owls.
She is showing how Oropherion, male Martial eagle protective when he is of her. The huge eagle is glued to her since both hunt and spend time… pic.twitter.com/uJZ758pyED

— Frankie™️🦅 (@B7frankH) July 18, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

20 July 1922 | A Polish Jewish woman, Fanny Berger, was born in Brody. She emigrated to France.

In February 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz. She did not survive. pic.twitter.com/KNDBuVcSXI

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 20, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb, Ph.D.  The France/England game ended on a genial note, perhaps because it wasn’t for the championship, and it was a great and competitive game:

In an angry, divided world, this is a great image from last night's France-England game 👏

— Howard Goodall (@howardgoodall.bsky.social) 2026-07-19T06:19:15.848Z

Matthew calls this a “four-eyed fish”, and, indeed, that may be a false eyespot designed to mislead predators:

Sometimes even a bland composition can be exciting just because you so rarely capture a decent picture of a particular type of fish. The foureye butterfly fish is one of those that I struggle to capture at all, so I consider this a success! #MarineLife #scuba #photography

— Actual Ape (@anthroprof.bsky.social) 2026-07-19T05:08:13.220Z

Welcome to the Sabbath made for goyische cats: Sunday, July 19, 2026, and National Daiquiri Day.

Daiquiris were one of Hemingway’s favorite drinks. David Lebovitz says this:

Hemingway did love to drink and while he was a writer, “in moderation” wasn’t part of his vocabulary, especially when it came to rum. He was fond of daiquiris, a classic three-ingredient cocktail made with rum, lime juice, and sugar syrup. But apparently Hemingway didn’t like the sugar syrup component, and the Hemingway Daiquiri was born at El Floridita bar in Havana, which William Grimes called “a close contender with Harry’s New York Bar in Paris for the title of the most famous bar in the world,” where Hemingway liked to drink.

According to Grimes’ excellent book, Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail, Hemingway would drink up to a dozen of these daiquiris at one sitting, made with Bacardi white rum, fresh lime, and grapefruit juice, and six drops of maraschino liqueur blended with ice and served in large goblets.

And here’s Papa with what looks like a daiquiri in hand:

And here’s a classic daiquiri, though they come in frozen versions:

It’s also National Flitch Day (celebrating half the side of a pig made into bacon), National Ice Cream Day, and National Raspberry Cake Day.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the World Cup Final today; click to see where it goes:

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

Da Nooz:

*Footy news: Yesterday’s “bronze match” between France and England was wild; ESPN calls it an “instant classic”. England beat France 6-4 after France made up some of the difference after being down 4-0 at the half; see the report and video below.

First, he WSJ proclaims that holding the World Cup in the U.S. won over the world:

By the time Spain or Argentina lifts the World Cup trophy on Sunday, the U.S. men’s national team will have been out of the tournament for 13 days.

In that regard, the 2026 World Cup has been a head-shaking failure—especially to the fans in star-spangled jerseys who hopped on the bandwagon only to be violently thrown off a few days later. The Americans squandered a generous draw, a high-price coach and a golden opportunity to capture a new generation by blowing their shot at a first quarterfinal in 24 years.

But in every other respect, America’s World Cup can only be regarded as a triumph. Much more than an excuse to sneak off to the pub in the middle of the afternoon, the monthlong party stretching from Miami to Seattle showcased a side of the U.S. that the rest of the world rarely gets to glimpse. They fell in love with the hash browns at Waffle House. They discovered the brisket sandwich of Buc-ee’s. They lamented the lack of public transportation options, then marveled at Waymo. All of it was eye-opening. The scale of our shopping malls, the size of our highways and the cornucopia that is the Costco frozen-food aisle.

At a time when the Atlantic has never felt wider and U.S. foreign policy has sometimes put the country at odds with even its oldest allies, the World Cup was a pointed reminder that America still possesses a shine dazzling enough to entrance the rest of the world.

“On every single thing, the World Cup here has been amazing,” said Norway’s ponytailed striker Erling Haaland, who became so enamored with the States that he went home with several $750 taxidermied raccoons that he bought in Dallas.

“I like the Americans,” he added later. “I think they are kind of hilarious as well. I like the way they are.”

For sure! You can’t get taxidermied raccoons in Norway!

Yesterday’s summary from ESPN:

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Bukayo Saka‘s hat trick helped England survive a dramatic second-half comeback to beat France 6-4 in Saturday’s chaotic third-place playoff and secure their best finish at a World Cup since 1966.

England were up 4-0 at the break as a shambolic France side was dismantled through goals from Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa and two Saka strikes.

Both teams made seven changes following their semifinal defeats, but in his final match in charge after 14 years at the helm, France’s Didier Deschamps introduced four substitutes at halftime, including Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola, in an attempt to trigger a response.

It began just three minutes after the restart. Michael Olise found Kylian Mbappé in space and his first-time left-foot finish beat Dean Henderson.

Six minutes later, Mbappé turned provider, sending Barcola clear to finish inside Henderson’s near post, before Mbappé finished another France chance to score his 10th goal of the tournament.

Mbappé’s brace moved him ahead of Lionel Messi as the men’s all-time World Cup goal scorer at 22 goals. He also is two clear of Messi in the race for the Golden Boot at this tournament ahead of Argentina’s World Cup final against Spain on Sunday.

Olise, whose seven assists in a single World Cup is another record, missed a glorious chance to equalize, somehow side-footing wide from 12 yards out, before England finally steadied themselves.

Djed Spence burst into the box on the overlap and was brought down by Malo Gusto. Saka converted the 87th-minute penalty to become only the fourth men’s player to score a World Cup hat trick for England.

There was still time for France to respond again as Dembélé cut in on his left foot to finish, but substitute Jude Bellingham had the final say, driving into the box before finishing from close range to secure a memorable win.

Bellingham’s late strike made him the first Englishman to score seven goals in a single World Cup.

The combined 10 goals were the most scored in a World Cup match since Hungary beat El Salvador 10-1 in 1982.

Here are the highlights:

Today’s final, featuring Spain versus Argentina, kicks off at 3 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Chicago time).

*Trump has declared that the cease-fire with Iran is now over, and the U.S. struck the country, including its infrastructure. Iran struck at Bahrain and Kuwait.

The United States and Iran expanded the scope and intensity of their attacks on Saturday, striking critical infrastructure sites that included a power station and water facilities, with no sign of an off-ramp to end the fighting.

More than a week after President Trump said the cease-fire with Iran was effectively over, American forces stepped up their assault, targeting “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities,” according to U.S. Central Command.

The bombardment has failed to break the deadlock over the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments that Iran has blockaded. The United States has also reinstated its own blockade on Iranian ports. With no apparent negotiations taking place, the two sides appear to be sliding back toward a wider war.

Iranian state media reported on Saturday damage to bridges and roads in the south of Iran, and said that a water desalination plant in Jask was hit. It cited a local official as saying that about 10,000 people were facing water shortages. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.

Iran has responded with its own attacks on American allies in the Persian Gulf. Air-raid sirens continued to ring out in Bahrain on Saturday morning, warning of new Iranian strikes. And the Jordanian military said it had intercepted 10 Iranian ballistic missiles overnight, without reports of major damage.

On Saturday, Iranian missiles and drones pummeled the Gulf state of Kuwait, where the government said another power and water treatment plant had been attacked — the second in two days — sparking fires. An oil facility was also struck, leading to injuries and “severe material losses,” according to Kuwait’s state-run petroleum corporation.

Kuwait’s Army said late Friday night that several of its personnel had been wounded by Iranian drone strikes on military facilities. Iran’s military has said it is targeting U.S. bases in Kuwait and elsewhere in the region.

So much for the new regime which, as I recall, Trump said was composed of “reasonable people” who would negotiate. And the Fracas is all about the Strait of Hormuz; nobody has mentioned nuclear weapons lately.

*Now that New York State has passed a medical assistance in dying bill, the Free Press reports that a consortium of Catholics is suing the state for violating their faith, even though they don’t actually have to help anybody die.

A coalition of Catholic healthcare providers filed suit in federal court in Albany on Friday, arguing that New York’s new assisted dying law would force them to choose between their faith and their ability to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of New York, names 13 plaintiffs, including multiple congregations of nuns such as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Health, a network of five Long Island hospitals, are also named.

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act, signed into law in February and set to take effect August 5, allows terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to request drugs to end their lives. Governor Kathy Hochul called it a matter of bodily autonomy when she signed the bill. “New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths,” she said.

. . . The law works in tandem with an existing New York statute, the Palliative Care Information Act, which requires doctors and nurse practitioners to inform terminally ill patients of all their end-of-life options. Now that assisted dying is one of them, medical professionals must proactively raise it with patients—whether or not the patient asks.

For the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who care for those dying of incurable cancer at Rosary Hill Home, a small nursing facility about 35 miles north of New York City, compliance with the Medical Aid in Dying Act is not an option. The Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred and that deliberately ending it—or facilitating its ending—is gravely wrong. The sisters consider any participation in that process, however indirect, a violation of their faith.

. . . Mother Marie Edward, the superior of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, said it’s her duty to “support the person to the natural end of their life.”

“Everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, and there is a dignity about the human person,” she told The Free Press. “We are only the guardians of this body. We do not take the charge of whether or not we live or we die. That’s up to God.”

Up to God!  Not up to the patient!  But what if the patient wants to be relived of their suffering?

There’s more:

New York’s law includes a provision permitting religious facilities to opt out of prescribing or administering lethal drugs on their premises. But according to the sisters’ lawyers, the opt-out is among the narrowest in the nation, narrower than similar laws in California, Oregon, and Washington, where religious providers can opt out of all participation if their faith requires it.

Even facilities in New York that invoke the religious exemption must still require physicians to counsel patients about assisted dying, assess their mental fitness, and walk them through every step of the qualification process on that facility’s premises—everything short of writing the prescription and administering the drugs.

The whole thing reminds me of a story Hitchens tells in his indictment of Mother Teresa in his book The Missionary Position:

Mother Teresa apparently considered pain sacred – as long as it happens to somebody else, and as long as that person is poor. Hitchens mentions (p. 41) a filmed interview in which Mother Teresa says with a smile what she told a patient suffering unbearable pain from terminal cancer: “You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.” The patient’s response: “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.”

Apparently the Catholics, who have a responsibility under law to tell patients of their options, don’t want to tell suffers that they can choose to have God stop kissing them.  Note that the law does not require the Catholics to give drugs to patients or help them end their lives. They need only tell patients (or have a doctor tell patients) of their options—their rights.

*I have often thought that the UN should be abolished, but then I think of the good projects it sponsors, like UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. dedicated to giving humanitarian aid to children and fostering their development. How could that be a bad thing? Well, it is in one way: it helps foster hatred against the Jews.  I guess I’ve been paying attenching to UNRWA and not UNICEF, because the latter has been supporting Hamas and promoting Jew hatred for a long time. Have a look at this:

A Gazan religious school funded by U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) held a contest for children to illustrate “the suffering of our brave prisoners inside the occupation’s prisons,” just a month before the State Department awarded the embattled U.N. charity more than $200 million. This latest example of UNICEF’s ties to anti-Israel extremists could fuel fresh concerns about American investment in the troubled U.N. charity.

Al Itqan Educational School in Gaza, a religious school for children which boasted as recently as February about receiving “generous funding” from UNICEF, announced in late April that it was organizing a “drawing competition” around “the prisoners’ issue,” a reference to Palestinian militants in Israeli detention for terrorism and related crimes. Just several weeks later, the school hosted Musbah Abd Rabbuh, director of the Waeed Association for Prisoners and Released Prisoners, which had been designated just months earlier as a covert Hamas support network by the Trump administration. Previously public photos posted on Al Itqan’s Facebook page show Rabbuh speaking in a visibly marked UNICEF structure with several children’s drawings hanging on the wall. The post became inaccessible on Wednesday afternoon, after the Washington Free Beacon sent an inquiry to UNICEF that went unanswered.

“We will be collecting drawings related to the prisoners’ issue” on May 3, the school announced in an Arabic-language Facebook posting that was independently translated for the Free Beacon by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that monitors extremist rhetoric. “The best drawing that expresses the suffering of our brave prisoners inside the occupation’s prisons.”

“Don’t forget the issue of our prisoners,” the flyer added. “It is our issue too.”

. . .The school’s May competition, which awarded the winner “a prize by the school administration,” was held just over a month before the State Department announced a fresh injection of “more than $218 million in assistance to UNICEF” as part of a $1 billion “humanitarian and disaster response” funding package, fueling questions from watchdog groups about how America’s latest investment in the U.N. organization will be spent.

While the State Department maintained that the funds would be contingent on “rigorous performance standards” and “measurable results,” the research organization NGO Monitor expressed concern that UNICEF’s spending in Gaza will help pay for the radical programming most recently seen in Al Itqan’s classrooms.

“Open source evidence clearly shows that UNICEF, like UNRWA and other U.N. agencies that operate in Gaza, has cooperated with individuals and NGOs linked to terror groups,” said professor Gerald M. Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, a research organization that first unearthed evidence of the radical programming at Al Itqan. “As NGO Monitor reported last year, UNICEF coordinates distribution of cash payments and vouchers with a Hamas ministry in Gaza, likely resulting in significant diversion of donor funds. And this case provides another example of UNICEF’s failure to vet their partners.”

Here’s the poster announcing the drawing competion. Note that the boy is wearing a keffiyeh, and he’s drawing a Palestinian prisoner chafing in his cell:

The U.S. government gives about $218 million per year to UNICEF, The solution is simple: withhold all money from schools that participate in this kind of one-sided indoctrination (is that redundant?).  If you donate to UNICEF, make your feelings known. (I give no money to the UN but instead to humanitarian organizations that are ideologically neutral.)

*This may be the greatest thrift-store find of all time: a guy paid $3 at Goodwill for a jacket with “Chamberlain” stitched on the back. It turned out to be a genuine Wilt Chamberlain warm-up jacket that could be worth several hundred thousand dollars (we’ll find out tomorrow when the auction ends).

Ellie [Brown] was home from college. Quinn [hyer brother] was on the brink of something big. They roamed the aisles talking everything but business until Quinn spotted three graphic tees in near-mint condition.

“I think these are pretty good T-shirts,” he said. “And all from the same person!”

“How can you tell?” Ellie asked.

Quinn has sold nearly 10,000 items over the past four years, and he’s learned how to decode things. (The three T-shirts were black, extra-large and looked like they’d been owned by a meticulous heavy metal fan.) But the one mystery he hadn’t yet solved was the one everyone wanted to talk about. How had a Wilt Chamberlain warmup jacket from the 1972 NBA finals ended up in a suburban thrift store? And how had a teenager — a young man whose mom wasn’t even alive when Chamberlain wore it — snagged something so special?

. . . Even before he found the Wilt Chamberlain warmup jacket, that January morning was Quinn’s best day ever at the bins. He’d already found a vintage Carhartt Detroit jacket he figured was worth $150 or $200 when he saw a guy a few years older than him holding up what looked like a short-sleeved Los Angeles Lakers button-up shirt.

Quinn could tell the guy wasn’t sure about the jacket. It was a weird piece of clothing — longer than a lab coat, and skinny, the kind of cut only a man more than 7 feet tall could wear. The other guy examined the item for a moment, then tossed it back into a bin. Quinn grabbed it right away.

Quinn is not a sports guy. He didn’t know exactly what the Lakers jacket was, but he knew it was special. Someone had stitched “Chamberlain” across the back. Even Gen Z guys uninterested in hoops recognize that name. Chamberlain is a legend — the only player to score a hundred points in a single game, holder of 72 records, and winner of two NBA championships and four regular season Most Valuable Player awards.

. . .Usually, Quinn takes his haul to the family garage, scrunches the best pieces to give them a hint of movement, then photographs them to post on the reselling app Depop. His average sale price is $13.

This time, he posted the pictures on Instagram, and one of his favorite vintage sellers called it “the greatest thrift find potentially in history.” The head of collectibles for Sotheby’s commented, too, and asked Quinn to message him. Soon, he’d agreed to let the famed auction house handle the sale.

A few weeks later, the Sotheby’s collector sent Quinn a message: They’d authenticated his discovery. Chamberlain wore the warmup jacket during the 1972 finals run against the New York Knicks, the last championship Chamberlain ever won. It could be worth as much as a quarter-million dollars.

Anything that valuable is too precious to mail, so Sotheby’s sent an armored vehicle to Quinn’s house. He watched as the movers packed his jacket into a little parcel, then a box, then a blue bag and finally a safe in the back of the van. They scheduled the auction for July.

We’ll know tomorrow; stay tuned.

Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s hot and there are mosquitoes:

Hili: The shade of this hazel tree makes this heat bearable.
Andrzej: True. It’s just a shame it doesn’t kill mosquitoes.

In Polish:

Hili: Cień tego orzecha laskowego pozwala wytrzymać w tym upale.
Ja: To prawda, szkoda tylko, że nie zabija komarów.

Photo: Danuta Miłosz

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

From Things with Faces, a d*g in the floor (or is it a deer?):

From Terrible Maps:

From The Grammar Police:

From Masih, who vows to be the voice of the worst-off voiceless. Translation from Farsi:

Today, a message reached me from behind the tall walls of Ward 2 of Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. A message from those in the dungeon of oblivion, asking one thing of us: “Be our voice; do not forget us.”

Ward 2 of Vakilabad is a stark image of silent torture:

• A ward with a capacity of 300 people is today the living grave of 700 human beings! 15-person rooms that now hold more than 30 people.
• For 700 people, there are only 12 toilets and 14 shower stalls. 16 telephone booths for a population that burns for days with the longing to hear their family’s voices. –
• A ward infested with bedbugs, lice, and insects; without a shred of medical care. Worse still, the deliberate separation of crimes has been violated; political prisoners have been abandoned among dangerous criminals, leaving their physical and mental security at risk every moment.
• Their message was short, but earth-shattering: “Be our voice; especially the voice of the children who breathe under the ominous shadow of the death penalty.”
• The freedom-seekers of Ward 2 of Vakilabad have issued their ultimatum; if this inhumane situation does not change, they will turn their lives into a bulwark of hunger strike.
• With all my strength, I will be the echo of your voice. You who have paid the heaviest price for the freedom and human dignity of us all. We will not leave you alone.

امروز پیامی از پشت دیوارهای بلند بند ۲ زندان وکیل‌آباد مشهد به دستم رسید. پیام کسانی که در سیاه‌چال فراموشی، یک چیز از ما می‌خواهند:
«صدای ما باشید؛ ما را فراموش نکنید.»

​بند ۲ وکیل‌آباد، تصویری عریان از شکنجه خاموش است:

– ​بندی با ظرفیت ۳۰۰ نفر، امروز محل دفن زندهٔ ۷۰۰ انسان… pic.twitter.com/UZvHa5wcgu

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 16, 2026

From Luana, a Princeton anthropologist comments and Agustín Fuentes makes two minor corrections but agrees on the main point, that it’s harder to do classical scholarship in anthropology because it’s a “colonial discipline.” You can count poetry or fiction instead!

Umm, this notion, that there are many modes of dissemination of scholarship is widespread across disciplines. There is not a thing weird about it. Plus, she’s not chair of our dept, I am. And that’s not her “presidential address”. And that is not at all what she is saying.

— Agustín Fuentes (@Anthrofuentes) July 17, 2026

Number 10 Downing street is all gussied up for the England/France match. Larry reports, and you can finish the phrase:

England expects…
(Photo @PoliticalPics) pic.twitter.com/vK8esRzNrf

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 18, 2026

From Jeff Maurer, ’nuff said:

England expects…
(Photo @PoliticalPics) pic.twitter.com/vK8esRzNrf

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 18, 2026

One from my feed, and as far as I know this is true:

This is what the internet was invented for.

In 1996, a King Penguin called Lala became a local celebrity in Shibushi, Japan. After being rescued from a fishing net by the Nishimoto family, he refused to return to the wild.

He lived in an air-conditioned room in their home and… pic.twitter.com/NuBZlMlrws

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 18, 2026

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Austrial Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz. She was 11 years old. https://t.co/GUU7IxatXZ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 19, 2026

 

Two from Doctor Cobb. The first one is amazing, but surely adaptive, for meals are rare in the dark and briny deep:

Black swallower fish — swell dining in the deep!During a recent ROV dive near Trinidad & Tobago, the #DeepWonders science team — led by @divaamon.bsky.social — collected spectacular footage of a black swallower fish (Chiasmodon sp.) at a depth of 1259 meters.

— Schmidt Ocean Institute (@schmidtocean.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T18:02:42.271Z

Of course this isn’t real, but it’s funny:

I wasn’t ready for this. ☠️ 😭 Low T Pete will never live this down.

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2026-07-18T02:03:15.941Z