Welcome to Friday, May 8, 2026, and National Have a Coke Day. That link explains the date:
John Stith Pemberton invented a cola syrup at his Eagle Drug and Chemical house in Columbus, Georgia. He brought it to Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta and mixed it with carbonated water to make the first cola drink, and it was introduced to the world on May 8, 1886. Both Columbus and Atlanta have since laid claim to the creation of the drink. It was originally sold as a health drink or medicine, for getting rid of hangovers and headaches.
I believe it was M. F. K. Fisher who said that if Coke and onions were things that were very rare and precious, people would pay very high prices to get them.
Have a coupon, which Wikipedia labels, “Believed to be the first coupon ever, this ticket for a free glass of Coca-Cola was first distributed in 1888 to help promote the drink. By 1913, the company had redeemed 8.5 million tickets.”
The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 23.01 hours Central European time on 8 May 1945…
— German Instrument of Surrender, Article 2,
Here’s a two-minute video about VE Day:
Da Nooz:
*DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TURNS 100 TODAY! As reader Pyers emailed me, “Well, he made it! Probably the most influential person working in the natural history and biological fields since the war. Not a scientist himself, although IIRC his degree is in zoology, but so many current professors and academics in the UK and around the world acknowledge their debt to him in spawning their interest in the natural world through his pioneering and frankly astonishing TV shows.” There’s a celebratory article at the BBC, which includes this:
Sir David Attenborough has said he has been “completely overwhelmed” by the messages he has received ahead of his 100th birthday.
The veteran broadcaster and environmentalist celebrates the milestone on Friday, with a special concert planned in the evening at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
In an audio message released on Thursday, Sir David said: “I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas.
“I have been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings, from pre-school groups to care home residents, and countless individuals and families of all ages.”
He added: “I simply can’t reply to each of you separately, but I’d like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages, and wish those of you who have planned your own local events: Have a very happy day.”
Friday evening’s show at the Royal Albert Hall is the climax of a week of special events and broadcast programming in honour of Sir David, who was born in 1926 and joined the BBC in 1952.
Presenter Kirsty Young will host the special 90-minute concert celebrating Sir David’s life, which will air on BBC One and iPlayer from 20:30 BST on Friday.
Pyers says he’ll be raising a glass to Sir David, and so will I. As far as I can see, his life was an unalloyed good, and he simply inundated us with knowledge about the natural world. Happy Birthday, sir David!
*From the lead article in It’s Noon in Israel, “IDF vs. Mossad: how to defeat them.” The IDF’s goals differ from Mossad’s.
It’s Thursday, May 7, and a severe dispute has erupted—and still persists—between the army and the Mossad over the ultimate goal of the war in Iran. The IDF views the removal of uranium from Iranian territory as the ultimate achievement. The Mossad, however, believes the objective is toppling the regime. Even today, contrary to the retrospective cover-your-ass culture prevalent in our region, the Mossad insists on this. While the IDF settled for the amorphous definition of “creating the conditions to topple the regime,” the Mossad simply dropped the first four words.
From here, reality splits into two perspectives, sometimes entirely opposed. Senior IDF officials are intensely frustrated by the American decision not to seize the enriched uranium in a military operation. Thus, Operation Roaring Lion was halted with almost no improvement in the struggle against the Iranian nuclear program compared to Operation Rising Lion. Uranium, uranium, uranium, they chant. Take it, and you’ve erased the nuclear program.
The second approach argues: What good does it do to extract it via an operation or an agreement? If the regime stands, and even if tons of 3 percent enriched uranium remain, you’ve only set them back a few years—a blink of an eye in geopolitical terms. A regime without sanctions will be richer, more despicable, and will want to destroy Israel just as before. Only regime change will uproot the plans for Israel’s destruction from the source. This contrasts with senior defense establishment figures who would gladly welcome the liberation of tens of millions of Iranians from the yoke of dictatorship, but for whom the priority remains strictly Israel first.
The practical expression of this lies in a hypothetical question: What happens if President Trump tells Israel, “You have a green light for one operation”? Most of the defense establishment would say thank you and send the Air Force to raid the uranium stockpiles. The Mossad, one might guess, would support destroying energy plants and refineries, literally plunging Iran into total darkness. This would drastically accelerate the population’s rebellion process. Their anger threshold has already surpassed the levels recorded during the January riots, but simultaneously, the fear threshold has also spiked. When there is no electricity—and with starvation expected to begin in Iran in two months—that wall of fear will collapse.
Which goal is more ambitious? At first glance, toppling the regime seems like a monumental task, while destroying the uranium appears to be a localized, manageable event. But history suggests otherwise: regimes have fallen throughout history, but no country has ever willingly surrendered or lost its enriched nuclear material while the government survived. As the old Talmudic proverb goes, the dilemma is whether to take a “short path that is long”—a quick tactical strike that fails to solve the root problem—or a “long path that is short”—the arduous task of regime change that permanently removes the threat.
I’m for regime toppling, though that may require American “boots on the ground”, which won’t happen. The last paragraph above is telling: we won’t get permanent cessation of nuclear enrichment until there’s a new regime in Iran. If Trump is holding out for “no nukes,” he’s holding out for regime change (though he doesn’t seem to realize it).
*But if you’re feeling optimistic that Iran will be driven to its knees, read the WaPo exclusive, “U.S. intelligence says that Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months” (article archived here).
The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.
Iran retainsabout 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.Trump painted a rosier picture in Oval Office remarks on Wednesday, saying of Iran: “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had.”
Three current and one former U.S. official confirmed the outlines of the intelligence analysis, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Asked for comment, a senior U.S. intelligence official emphasized the blockade’s impact. “The President’s blockade is inflicting real, compounding damage — severing trade, crushing revenue, and accelerating systemic economic collapse. Iran’s military has been badly degraded, its navy destroyed, and its leaders are in hiding,” the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said in a statement. “What’s left is the regime’s appetite for civilian suffering — starving its own people to prolong a war it has already lost.”
It looks as if Trump wouldn’t be able to wait out the three to four months required to inflict severe damage on Iran, for Americans are getting more and more tired of the war and are beefing at the gas pump. I can wait it out, of course, but I don’t drive much and don’t make my living burning fossil fuels. If the report is accurate, we are in for a long war, which Niall Ferguson has been predicting in The Free Press, and reiterated today.
*Trump has waffled again, suspending U.S. defense of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This coincides with a new American peace proposal that is being evaluated by Iran, while Iran’s own proposal is being evaluated by the U.S.
Iran said on Wednesday that it was reviewing an American proposal to end the war, a day after President Trump abruptly paused a new U.S. military effort to protect ships in the Strait of Hormuz, citing “great progress” in talks with Tehran.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said that his government had not yet given its response to Pakistan, which has been acting as a mediator between Tehran and Washington. Neither he nor Mr. Trump said what the U.S. proposal contained.
“After finalizing its considerations, Iran will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Mr. Baghaei told the semiofficial Iranian news agency ISNA.
Mr. Trump, speaking at a Mother’s Day event at the White House, said the Iranians “want to make a deal; they want to negotiate.”
“We’re not going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and we’re not going to let that happen, and we won’t let that happen,” Mr. Trump said. “So we’re dealing with people that want to make a deal very much, and we’ll see whether or not they can make a deal that’s satisfactory to us.”
Though Mr. Trump said he was pausing the effort to safeguard ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military was continuing to enforce a blockade on Iranian ports aimed at strangling the Iranian economy.
From the second link:
The United States was waiting on Thursday for Iran to convey its response to the latest American proposal to end the war, after public messages from top-ranking officials on both sides suggested a burst of behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity.
Business leaders, consumers, politicians, shipping companies and many others around the world have also been watching closely for signs of a breakthrough. The conflict, which has dragged on into a third month and prompted Iran and the United States to implement rival blockades around the Strait of Hormuz, has choked off a major oil transit route, wreaking havoc on global supply chains and causing energy prices to spike.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said late Wednesday that his government was reviewing an American response to a 14-point Iranian proposal to end the war and would give its response to Pakistan, a key mediator. Neither Tehran nor Washington has said what the U.S. response entails.
“The exchange of messages through the Pakistani intermediary is ongoing, and reviews of the exchanged texts are continuing,” Mr. Baghaei told IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster.
Earlier in the day, another Iranian official had dismissed a reported proposal to end the war as a “list of American wishes.”
The NYT says that Trump’s reversal on escorting ships was attributable to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who considered the project unfeasible and likely to exacerbat the war, denying U.S. warplanes access to Saudi airspace. Meanwhile, more U.S. troops are in the Middle East: 50,000 of them. The soap opera goes on, with hard-line Islamists on one side and a possibly demented authoritarian on the other.
*The Free Press has an article about detransitioning. It will anger many, but it’s time air stories like this rather than just go along with the gender activists. The article’s called “I de-transitioned. My body will never be the same,” and the author is Joni Skinner, a natal male who transitioned and then went back to his birth sex, but not without permanent injury.
I’m a gay man who testified last month against what has been called a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-rights bill. I was there because I believe the proposed law could silence the one kind of help that could have saved me from years of anguish and a future permanently marked by what was done to me as a child.
. . . From my earliest awareness, I knew I was not like other kids—and certainly not like other boys. I moved and spoke in ways others called “girly.” I loved dress‑up games, butterflies, and anything pink. I was obsessed with The Princess and the Frog and looked up to Disney princesses more than any male character. I also knew, from a very young age, that I liked boys. I didn’t have words for it then, and in the world I grew up in, it was considered sinful and shameful. But the feeling existed long before I had any name for it.
. . .When I was 13, I told my mom I thought I might be transgender. Her reaction was one of confusion and fear. She had spent years working nonstop to keep us afloat and taking me to therapy appointments for my autism. She had watched me be bullied, and now my tutor, someone she trusted, told her there could be a medical explanation and treatment for me.
My tutor told us about the gender services program where she was receiving treatment and explained to my mom they were experts who could figure out what was really going on with me. It was four hours away, so my mom and I made the drive.
And this is what “affirmative therapy” does:
When we arrived, I sat down with the therapist who was the program manager for the hospital’s gender services program. She asked me to tell her everything, so I shared every worry I had about growing up gay in my community. I told her that I was afraid I would never make friends, because for as long as I could remember most kids wanted nothing to do with me. I told her I was terrified of God’s judgment and of spending my teenage years surrounded by people who hated who I was.
Rather than helping me work through any of it, she affirmed all of my fears. She said she could see why I was afraid of the discrimination I would face. She told me that nowhere would be a good place to be gay for someone like me, because I had a “feminine essence” and gay men wanted men, and that just wasn’t who I was. She said I could transition and fly under the radar as a woman in my hometown. And I could find a man to love me that way.
She then handed me a gender dysphoria checklist, which I filled out on my own. It asked me to rate how I felt about my body, gender expression, and puberty. One question asked about erections: I checked that I was “totally uncomfortable” with them, and then wrote in the margins “I don’t have any yet,” with a little smiley face. I felt embarrassed and out of my depth, pulled into a world of adult decisions I didn’t understand.y.
After that appointment, the therapist totaled my score. I got a 53 out of 60, which she described as an open-and-shut case. I was definitely transgender, she said.
She then told my mom that if I matured through male puberty, the prejudice and worsening mental health would be so crushing that around 60 percent of kids in my position would choose to kill themselves rather than live that way. Since then, my mom and I have discussed that appointment at length, and she still remembers that warning. It’s still so emotional for her that she rarely talks about it. My mom had watched me struggle for years—coming home from school in tears, and withdrawing more and more into myself. And here was a professional, in a clinical setting, telling her that the alternative to medical transition was her child’s death. My mom says she was so ultra-focused on the suicide risk that it became her top concern: She just wanted to keep me alive.
Yep, the suicide warning, which turns out to be completely erroneous. New studies show that there’s no more chance of someone in this state committing suicide than someone who doesn’t transition committing suicide. At any rate Joni got puberty blockers and then female hormones, and was apparently not told she’d lose her ability to have orgasms, which is almost always true in such cases. There were all kinds of debilitating side effects, and Joni decided to “detransition” to a male biology. Only then did he discover the doubts that doctors had about “affirmative care” (remember about 80+% of people with gender dysphoria who don’t “transition” turn out gay, with no medical side effects).
*How fast is the Universe expanding? We know that it is from several pieces of data, most notably the red shift of light, but a new paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics, discussed by the Wall Street Journal, details not only how fast it’s expanding, but how miniscule the expansion is. Don’t ask me to explain the paper, which is above my pay grade; I put a link above so those with the relevant expertise can read it. From the WSJ:
Scientists know our universe is expanding. Now they have a better idea how fast.
Cosmologists who study the universe know it began with the big bang and has been expanding from a single point ever since. Even about 14 billion years later, this expansion moves objects like galaxies in it farther away from us. Scientists try to determine the rate of expansion because it can help tell us how old the universe is.
An international gathering of experts last year in Switzerland confirmed that objects recede faster as they become more distant. For instance, a galaxy 3 million light-years away will move away from us by 46 miles per second, the scientists calculated. A galaxy at twice that distance would be moving away at about 90 miles per second.
I’ve seen this compared to blowing up a balloon. As it expands, the distance between two dots on the balloon will increase faster the farther they were apart initially, even at a constant rate of intlation. But look at this (bolding is mine):
The rate, detailed recently in a study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is the most precise ever calculated. It is also mind-bogglingly small: If you took an empty space the size of a football field, and it was expanding at the rate our universe is, it would take more than 1 million years to expand by a single centimeter, said study author Caroline Huang, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The calculation has called into question a major scientific theory. It is about 10% faster than what the standard model of cosmology—essentially our theory of how everything works in the universe—says the rate should be.
This means there is probably something missing from the standard model, or a force we don’t fully understand, said Stefano Casertano, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and study co-author. Dark matter, the invisible cosmic glue that holds galaxies together, and dark energy, which pushes them apart, are two likely culprits.
The discrepancy also raises questions about what experts thought they knew about the end times.
Currently, a prevailing theory is that the universe will keep expanding until it experiences “heat death”—stars will lose all their fuel and die in about 100 trillion years or so, leaving everything cold and dark, according to another study co-author, Dillon Brout, from Boston University.
“But now that we know there’s a crack in our theory of what is governing the universe at the largest scales, we can’t make any predictions at all for its fate,” Brout said. “It both keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning.”
I can’t quite wrap my head around the fat that distant galaxies are receding so quickly although the universe is expanding so slowly. It must be because the Universe is so big. As for what it’s expanding into, well, physicists say either that we don’t know, or the whole question is nonsensical.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is shy:
Sharon: A foreign car in the orchard.
Hili: I’m heading back home, I’m not up for talking to unfamiliar people today.
In Polish:
Szaron: Obcy samochód w sadzie.
Hili: Wracam do domu, nie jestem dziś w nastroju do rozmów z obcymi ludźmi.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From David; which diretion are you driving?
From Masih; another Iranian protestor executed, this time for “spying for Israel”:
“Don’t ignore this. I don’t want to be killed. Don’t pass by the word ‘execution’ so easily, this may be the last time you hear my voice.”
And it was. No one listened.
Naser was only 25-year-old. Last week, one morning, right after the call to prayer, the interrogator, called… pic.twitter.com/IEGz1Jof6A
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 5, 2026
Here’s the latest toll of deaths in Gaza, and you can get constant updates by clicking here. Maarten Boudry tells me that, as best we know, Aizenberg’s figures are reliable:
🧵Gaza Fatality Update Jan 2026. The chart below summarizes the latest fatality estimate based on Hamas’ most recent reported numbers. Key points: natural deaths are included in the total count and thousands of combatant losses are excluded. Full explanation below. 1/ pic.twitter.com/YFGuA6RYaC
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) January 26, 2026
The California arsonist admired Luigi Mangione, as many misguided blockheads do, and that may be why he set the fire. As Niall Ferguson wrote:
The militant left is on the march, with a shockingly high share (one in four) of young, “very liberal” voters saying political violence can sometimes be justified. Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, who is accused of intentionally starting the Pacific Palisades fire, killing 12 people and destroying thousands of homes, was inspired by slogans such as “free Luigi Mangione” and “lets take down all the billionaires.” As he told investigators, “We’re basically being enslaved by [the rich].”
Accused Palisades firestaryer idolized Luigi Mangione, prosecutors say. He allegedly resented the rich and his anger was made worse due a shitty love life that him a loner on New Yea’s Eve. He videoed a fire station two days before in seeming nod. https://t.co/dfoyp9lTyF
— Richard Winton (@LAcrimes) May 4, 2026
From Barry: a sly horse with a sense of humor:
This horse has a one-of-a-kind sense of humor. Watch as it teases the cat and then puts on an innocent face when caught in the act.
— Digital Brain (@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social) 2026-05-06T13:24:03.000Z
One from my feed; cats!
Perfect example of how life with cats is 😂 pic.twitter.com/LGqJjbQiP4
— Cats with Aura 😺 (@catwithaura) May 6, 2026
One I reposted at The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed along with her mother when both arrived at Auschwitz. She was one year old and would be 85 today had she lived. https://t.co/rdQncKTnkp
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 8, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, the plant is really attacking the galls that harbor wasps:
Botanical parasitism of an insect by a parasitic plant: Current Biology http://www.cell.com/current-biol…
— Scott P. Egan (@scottpegan.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T11:36:30.436Z
Look at all those satellites!
Incredible video made using images taken by the Artemis II crew shows satellites in orbit around Earth. This is at 30x speed x.com/i/status/205…
Yet another defeat for Trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/07/business/tariff-case-ten-percent-trump-court-international-trade
The UK is today counting votes from yesterday’s election for local councils. Early results and projections are:
Labour (currently in government) has lost over half the seats it held.
The Conservatives have also lost about half the seats it held. (Why is this, when the government is so unpopular? It’s because the last Conservative government under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak did the exact opposite of what they’d promised to do and what their voters wanted, in that they issued visas to over 3 million third-world migrants to come and live in the UK; third-world migrants tend to live on benefits in subsidised housing and cost the taxpayer about £10,000 per year each; why the Tories did this is baffling.)
The big winners are Reform (an upstart party opposed to mass immigration) who are winning most of the seats lost by the above two.
Also gaining seats are The Greens (a coalition of far-left activists who hate the West, hate capitalism and hate Israel, and are now the party of choice for Muslim immigrants).
Thank you, Coel. Like many Americans I feel a connection to the UK, though it’s been many long-lost generations.
I naively thought Brexit would allow the UK to refuse the boatloads of migrant men they are now welcoming. The men seem to add absolutely no value to the economy, and certainly not to the well-being of women and children.
It’s distressing to see the two-tier policing, and arrests for hurty words. But maybe my view is skewed? I appreciate your perspective.
I have a hypothesis regarding governments liking mass immigration. The math is actually pretty clear:
* Government needs money
* Tax income is related closely to GDP
* GDP is productivity times the working population
* Raising productivity is very hard for the government
* Raising working population is much easier in comparison
* Add the fact that the generation currently retiring had too few children and we are looking at many, many thousands of immigrants just to replace the current worker shortfall
The main issue is not, that most governments don’t consider the costs of immigration. It is that most voters refuse any alternative, such as taxing wealth instead of work. Immigrants work but have no wealth.
Another side benefit mainly in Europe is that axing social services is much more palatable to the native population if a good chunk of the spending goes to immigrants.
Thanks Coel! Trump is rarely right but he is when he says “If you don’t have borders you don’t have a country” and the boats crossing your Channel are evidence of this. Far greater threat though comes from your embassies who, for some reason, continue to issue visas to unskilled, cousin marrying Islamists.
I hope this rebuke to the terrible people in power at the moment can stay this and delay your descent into the Islamic Republic of the UK, which I see more evidence of all the time. Ask Lebanon how that kind of thing works out for a secular/Christian nation.
With great American affection,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
It was also a General Election in Scotland for the Holyrood parliament. Sadly Reform has picked up several regional seats but didn’t get any constituency seats (we have d’Hondt proportional representation). Scotland is generally more lift wing than England, but I think the failure of all the main parties has driven people to desperation for something new.
The SNP has the biggest number of seats, but not enough to win. We might have to relive the horror of the Scottish Greens working with the SNP on the condition that they continue to remove women’s rights, but maybe one of the other parties will offer a coalition.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c775r3nmp5gt
I stared at the Clarence picture for a while before I looked at the origin site. I couldn’t figure out how “Clarence” was a unifying principle for those items.
On the Israel front, I watched a 50-min video from ArkMedia on the Hilltop Youth and Israel’s moral crisis. This follows IDF Chief of Staff Zamir calling together all IDF officers of rank lt col and above to address three issues he has seen recently from IDF soldiers: 1. the smashing of a crucifix statue in Lebanon; 2. the wearing of small, non-regulation “identity” patches on IDF uniforms; and 3. looting of towns and property by IDF soldiers. Can some of our Israeli readers comment on these behaviors, which seem to be more than just a few bad apples…at least to me in the diaspora. Is there a split between the veterans of the 1948, 6-day, and yom kippur war and the IDF troops today?
Url for video should be
The hilltop youth are indeed a small percentage of the settlers. Estimates range from several hundred to a few thousand who could be classified as such. There is no membership, it is just people acting in a certain way. There are no leaders. These guys have no respect for law in any form, they are religious messianics.
And yes, some (we don’t know how many) attack Arab civilians in the West Bank. The purpose is to drive them off their village lands. This mostly happens near settlements (formerly illegal under Israeli law) that have been legitimized under the current government. The attacks are often violent. Many Palestinians have been injured. So far this year, there have been over a hundred attacks. Note that this number comes from the IDF, not any Palestinian propaganda source.
What is not widely known that these people have also attacked IDF, Border Police, Civil Authority, and other Israeli security forces personnel, injuring several.
Past Israeli governments did something about this phenomenon, but the current government severely weakened the legal and security forces who were dealing with them. Note that Netanyahu is not a natural sympathizer of these groups. But the National Security Minister (Ben-Gvir) and the Finance Minister (Smotrich) are messianics themselves. The former has been convicted in the past, and never did army service. and the investigation into the behavior of the latter, who served for a few months, was dropped for security reasons. But these two are driving government policy in the West Bank, and Bibi’s coalition government depends on them. Before this coalition, Ben-Gvir was considered beyond the pale, and even right wing parties like Bibi’s own Likud, would not give him or his followers the time of day: they were outside of normative politics here.
The professionals in the IDF and security services regard the hilltop youth as a danger to the country. And the three stooges (Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Bibi) appoint many of these religious messianics to senior positions in the government.
I apologize for the length of this post.
Thanks! Please…no apologies…content was exactly the type of view from the ground that I was hoping for. Frightening…like the Irgun or Stern gang but with a Ben Gurian hechtsher rather than eventual forced assimilation into mainstream Hagannah then IDF. I find the attacks (which I had read about) on the IDF to be most reprehensible, with the attacks on peaceable Arab villages also reprehensible. And for security authorities to stand by giving tacit approval makes a mockery of law and order on the West Bank under Israeli authority. Bibi certainly seems to be Israel’s trump in many ways.
Is there a counterforce to Ben-Gvir, Smotrich while Bibi is in place?
I so wish this hooliganism could be stopped. I know that it’s an internal Israeli matter, but the Israel-hating press is all over this stuff.
One thing I found very surprising about these problems with Israeli settler violence is the scale. Given the incident flux of media attention, you’d think it was not a major problem both in quality and quantity. However the scale is much smaller than you would think.
Total number of deaths related to settlers is an inclusive count (which includes Palestinians killed by settlers, Israeli settlers killed by Palestinians, deaths related to attacking IDF) and numbers ~ 25 over the past six months.
Not to be too glib, but that’s the same order as a bad weekend in Chicago.
So I think it is completely reasonable to be horrified at settler violence, Israel needs to get its act together, and so on, while also recognizing that it’s a drop in the bucket compared to more substantive problems in the area and elsewhere.
It would be unfortunate if Trump fails to finish the job due to public opinion. Not being able to sustain a blockade for four or five months would send the wrong message to China. This would be a good time for an address to the nation explaining why the war is important.
Congratulations indeed to Sir Dave.
As Jerry says. nobody has done more to popularise love of the natural world than he has, and Life On Earth is arguably still the best TV programe ever made.
I hope we will all raise a glass tonight.
Our universe is not expanding “into” anything. It is wrong to think of there being some external space that our Big-Bang-created universe is expanding into. There is only one type of space.
So what does it mean to say that that space is “expanding”? Well, if one attached a marker at one point in empty space, and another marker at some other point, and then measured the distance between them using a metre rule, then at some later time the distance would have increased. So space is expanding with respect to (internal) measures of distance. (There is no external reference for it to expand with respect to.)
This view of space as something that is not fixed, but is elastic and deformable, is a central insight of Einstein’s General Relativity.
Yes, that’s it. Let’s put some numbers in. A football field (= 100 metres long) expands by 1 cm in a million years.
But the distance of a distant galaxy could be 100 mega parsecs (= 3000 light years = 3 x 10^24 metres = 3 x 10^22 football fields).
So that distance expands by 3 x 10^22 cm in a million years (which is about 10,000 km in a second).
So think of there being 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 football fields between us and that galaxy, each of which expands by 1 cm, adding up to quite a lot.
To quote Douglas Adams: “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space”.
But Brooklyn’s not expanding! What should you care? I always think of the scene of Alvy Singer and Dr Flicker in Annie Hall. 40-second video should be at url
The kid is right. Brooklyn is expanding. Great scene from a great movie.
Interesting on how sloww…wwly the universe is expanding. The football field metaphor is very relatable. Now I feel much better that we’re not in imminent danger.
Trump talks too much! He is probably the most accessible President in modern history, but it would be better if he didn’t feel the urge to express every thought as soon as it comes to mind. Yes, Saudi Arabia probably objected to the U.S. using its territory to open the Strait of Hormuz. This caused Trump to announce a pause. Now (I read) the Saudis are OK with the operation, so it can start up again. (Don’t know if it will, and maybe the whole thing is moot now that shots are again going in both directions.) If Trump just held his tongue, the press wouldn’t be flapping their lips about Trump’s erratic actions. Sometimes it’s better just to let things marinate a bit before talking about them. Of course, it would have also been nice if Trump conferred with the Saudis in advance of the operation. They probably would have been on board, but were pi**ed that they weren’t consulted.
Hah! The Israelis disagree about whether regime change is a goal of the war. Of course they do! They are Israelis! It’s OK. They’ll figure it out.
But wouldn’t the press already know, through leaks from the Saudis, that they had denied their airspace to American planes? It would be peppering the President with questions about what this means for the conduct of this failing war and the price of gasoline is your fault, Mr. President. Who knows, maybe his name-shaming of the Saudis as the cause of the suspension prodded them into relenting. It doesn’t sound like “waffling” to me. If a semi-ally won’t let you fly over his territory, you have to listen….and then convince him otherwise.
Consolidating comments (not responding to you directly here, Norman): The WSJ headline is misleading. “U.S. intelligence says that Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months” “Outlast” implies that the U.S. Navy will have to abandon its blockade before Iran suffers severe economic damage. That’s not what the text says. It says that Iran can “last” four or five months without sea trade, which I don’t think is surprising. It doesn’t claim the Navy can’t maintain the blockade that long, or far longer, and indeed describes the severe effects the blockade is already having. It quotes a former Iranian official as saying nations have survived years of embargoes and sanctions….but a blockade is far more stringent than paper sanctions emanating from the Chamber of Hot Air known as the UN Security Council. Since it’s V-E Day, recall that Nazi Germany blockaded Britain rather loosely — most convoyed ships managed to reach England, evading the U-boats, pocket battleships, and maritime patrol bombers — but the blockade still came very close to bringing Britain (and the USSR) to their knees for all its being porous. It failed because the Allies were able to destroy and otherwise frustrate the blockade, which there is no sign that Iran will be able to do.
The consensus seems to be that we all want regime change (as the best way to end Iran’s nuclear ambition if for no other reason) but we don’t want to invade the country and we don’t want any measure that raises the price of petroleum products. Probably best then that “we” just stay out of it, because “we” don’t know what we want, and let President Trump (and the Israelis) do whatever they can, which they’re going to anyway. Mr. Trump doesn’t need to care about his polling numbers because he’s not a candidate in any election.
And now, the recipe has been replicated by a scientist. Apparently indistinguishable from the original.
Fans of David Attenborough (which I certainly am) should look for the new documentary “Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure.” It premiered in the U.S. two days ago on PBS. I really enjoyed it.
“How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers “ by statitician Abraham Wyner in The Tablet and also on a Dan Senor podcast carries out a simple, logical and easily understood qualitative analysis and an R-squared quantitative analysis that catches the Hamis in yet another big lie. Tablet article should be available at
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
I know i have over-posted today but thought this last one was important enough to risk getting yelled at.
Thank you for highlighting the case of detransitioners. The trans community tries to hide them under the carpet. Exulansic has documented many cases of kids committing suicide despite being ‘affirmed’. As you say, the trans mantra about suicide is a lie.
Children are not just being mutilated physically, they are being brain damaged. The hypothalamus needs puberty to mature. Without it a child is left intellectually, emotionally & sexually stunted for life. That’s child abuse.
Puberty is essential for “development of frontal cortical circuits, and hippocampal and amygdala connectivity.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.17150
If you miss the puberty window you don’t get one. The body is complex. Teenage girls are being put straight into menopause. I fear for their future health.
Jazz Jennings was put on blockers at Tanner Stage 2. He can’t feel sexual attraction or orgasm. At 22 he stated that he can’t even tell if he’s het, bi or gay.
How can a child give informed consent to something that they cannot comprehend? A child cannot give informed consent to making its adult self sterile.
Girls as young as 11 have had double mastectomies without understanding the impact. Parents are being failed too, when psychopathic doctors like Dr Crane of The Crane Center in Boulder are putting a videos on tik tok telling young girls that breasts can grow back ‘if you gain 30-40lb’.
These barbaric doctors should be in prison.