Welcome to Thursday, May 14, 2026 and International Dylan Thomas Day. (Curiously, the great poet was neither born nor expired on May 14, but Google tells me that “This date marks the anniversary of the first stage reading of his famous play, Under Milk Wood, at The Poetry Center in New York in 1953.) And it’s a very fine play, which you can read here.
Here’s a picture of Thomas’s house in Laugharne, Wales, with the preserved interior of his poetry-writing shack next door. Plus his only pair of cufflinks. I took these photos in June, 2010:
Where the poems were made:
Here’s Richard Burton reciting one of Thomas’s best poems, a childhood remembrance called “Fern Hill” (the recitation starts 15 seconds in):
It’s also “Stars and Stripes Forever” Day, honoring the John Philip Sousa march first performed on this day in 1897, National Brioche Day, and National Buttermilk Biscuit Day, celebrating the apotheosis of American baking.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Count on the NYT to give us only bad news about Iran; the latest is a piece called “U.S. Intelligence shows Iran retains substantial missile capabilities.”
The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.
Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.
People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations. In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities. Only three of the missile sites along the strait remain totally inaccessible, according to the assessments.
Iran still fields about 70 percent of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, according to the assessments. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles, which can target other nations in the region, and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which can be used against shorter-range targets on land or at sea.
Military intelligence agencies have also reported, based on information from multiple collection streams including satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies, that Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be “partially or fully operational,” the people with knowledge of the assessments said.
The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was “decimated” and “no longer” a threat.
*To the consternation (and perhaps glee) of Democrats, Trump has declared that American economic hardship is not a factor in how he conducts the war with Iran.
“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” Trump said. “I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
The president doubled down on the sentiment when asked to clarify whether the economic impact on Americans was a factor in his decision-making. The U.S. inflation rate has risen to its highest rate in nearly three years since the start of the Iran war in late February, with increased prices largely driven by higher energy costs. Gas prices rose 5.4 percent last month and were up about 30 percent over the past year. Still, the U.S. stock market has continued to hit a series of records.
“Every American understands,” Trump said of economic issues related to the war, referencing an unnamed poll he said showed an overwhelming majority of people “understand that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
“Now if the stock market goes up or down a little bit, the American people understand,” Trump continued. “When this war is over, oil is going to drop, the stock market is going to go through the roof, and truly, I think we’re in the golden age right now. You’re going to see a golden age like we’ve ever seen before.”
Trump’s approval on economic issues, which were critical to his political comeback in 2024, has fallen since he launched the Iran war.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that his approval rating on the economy has declined by seven points, to 34 percent, as gas prices have risen. Trump’s approval on inflation has fallen five points in that time to 27 percent, and his lowest rating comes on perceptions of his handling of the general cost of living, with 23 percent of Americans approving vs. 76 percent disapproving.
No, most Americans don’t understand why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But they should, and not just because they want Israel to survive. They should care because they want the Middle East to remain peaceful and for Iran to stop exporting terrorism to other countries. And they should care so that Iran can’t do whatever it wants because it has the capability to destroy other countries. Trump will suffer for this stand, but I am with the minority of Americans who want to have this war brought to a successful conclusion. But I’m also one of those who don’t know whether and how it can be.
*One way of avoiding having to deal with Hamas’s atrocities of 2023 is to avoid looking at documentaries about them. It’s not squeamishness, but outright refusal to be convinced. This is what Maarten Boudy argues in his new Substack post, “None so blind as those who refuse to see.”
A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one that is withheld from public release to protect the victims’ privacy. When the Israeli government invited European media to a private screening, several refused to attend, describing it as a “PR campaign” that “only serves to tilt the balance of proportionality” in the war. The Belgian parliament likewise refused to watch it, after protest from left-wing parties who dismissed it as Israeli propaganda. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear, one with his eye socket hanging out of his face, asking his brother if he thinks they’re going to die — while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade into their safe room helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter.
Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the terrorist coolly and methodically cutting off the head of an already dead victim, like a skilled butcher. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another “Zionist colonizer” getting what he deserved, right?
. . . But yes — there was rape. Not “rape” in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women’s rights NGO. The report, titled “Silenced No More”, is based on hundreds of formal and informal interviews with survivors and witnesses, more than 10,000 photographs and over 1,800 cumulative hours of video.
. . . As the Daily Mail reports, the “freedom fighters” from Hamas deliberately and systematically defiled female bodies: “the terrorists shot their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted their most intimate parts, to destroy their beauty and rob their loved ones of a final goodbye.” Genitals were stabbed with knives or riddled with bullets, breasts were severed, pelvises broken.
. . .And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like “take off your pants,” “lie down,” “spread your legs,” and “don’t make trouble.” I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases?
I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game.
But of course quite a few Europeans refused to watch it, not because it was gruesome but because it was considered “Israeli propaganda.”
*As I’ve argued (influenced by Luana, who thinks that AI will pretty much wreck higher education), honor codes will be among the things that will have to change now that the bots have taken over. And, sure enough, Princeton University has just changed theirs.
For more than a century, Princeton University prided itself on an honor code so revered that proctoring during exams was banned. Students’ pledge not to cheat was enough.
Those days are over—largely because of AI.
On Monday, faculty voted to require proctoring in all in-person exams starting this summer, reversing a policy set in place in 1893 when Princeton introduced its honor code. The change came after “significant numbers” of undergrads and faculty requested it, “given their perception that cheating on in-class exams has become widespread,” according to a letter from Michael Gordin, Princeton’s dean of the college.
AI has made it both easier for students to cheat and harder to spot, Gordin wrote. Students are loath to report cheating because they are afraid they’ll be called out on social media. Those who do make reports often file anonymously, making it difficult for the school to investigate.
Princeton had been among the few schools to use an honor code letting students take exams without a professor present. Students will still be required to attest: “I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination.”
The code is embedded in the university’s culture and has long been a point of pride. It goes back to the 19th century, when students petitioned to eliminate proctors during examinations, according to the student newspaper.
The new policy means instructors will be present during exams and will document any infractions they observe. They will report those to a student-run honor committee for adjudication.
Nadia Makuc, a Princeton senior, chaired that committee during the past year. She said she thinks most students support the new policy because it alleviates pressure to report classmates. The committee received about 60 cases in the past year, an uptick, but she thinks most go unreported.
The ease of cheating has created a growing temptation, she said.
“If the exam is on a laptop, someone can just flip to another window. Or if the exam is in a blue book, it’s just people using their phone under their desk or going to the bathroom and using it,” she said.
In a survey of over 500 seniors conducted by the student newspaper last year, 30% reported they had cheated on an assignment or exam. Nearly half reported knowledge of an honor code violation but less than 1% had made a report.
Oy vey! 30% of the students reported cheating, and you know that’s an underestimate. Gone are the days of take-home assignments or term papers; how could one permit them given that AI could write a very good one? What about labs? Can you fake them? (I don’t think that would be easy.) I always monitored exams, simply because I myself was monitored throughout college, and I wanted the students to be tested based on their own knowledge, not that of a bot. (They didn’t have bots when I was teaching.)
*On her Substack site Pens and Poison, Liza Libes beefs about Columbia University: “I thought I was going to study literature at Columbia. I was wrong.” The subtitle is “English departments teach ideology rather than literature.” Are you surprised?
I’d always been encouraged to chase my dreams.
For me, those were studying literature and becoming a famous writer.
. . .To me, then, the study of literature was by nature a traditionalpursuit—a discipline that believed in the preservation of beautiful things. It was a course of study that allowed us to probe the depths of our psyches and examine the questions that make us all human.
You can imagine my astonishment, then, when I learned that by some twisted perversion of fate, literature had become virtually synonymous with radical leftism in the contemporary literary academy.
. . .on the first day of my freshman English department seminar, we were given the writings of the so-called literary critic Edward Said.
The chapter in question—from his famous book Culture and Imperialism—was on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
That was strange, I thought. Why were we reading criticism of a book without first having read the book itself?
I had read Mansfield Park in high school, so I could at least follow Said’s entire argument: that Mansfield Park was a novel about colonialism and imperialism.
Had we read the same novel—or, like many of the other students here reading critique before primary source text, had Said simply made up an idea without once ever having touched the actual book?
That evening, we were asked to produce a paragraph response to the Said chapter to prepare for our discussion that coming Thursday.
“The argument that Mansfield Park can only be understood from a colonial standpoint seems entirely farfetched,” I wrote. “Fanny’s entrance into her home as a metaphor for some colonizing force at work is too great a stretch.”
The professor was not very impressed. I had not sufficiently understood Said’s argument, in her eyes, and besides—it didn’t matter whether Mansfield Park was about imperialism or not—what mattered was that Jane Austen was complicit in British imperialist expansion.
. . .With every seminar I took, the overall aim of the Columbia University English department became clearer and clearer: these professors collectively wished to use literature as a force of resistance against “illiberal forces” to make our society a more just world for all.
But to me—someone who grew up with parents who’d fled the Soviet Union—Marxism wasn’t synonymous with liberalismin the least.
Sure, there was nothing wrong with trying to make our world more just and equitable—and there were so many great writers who had worked toward that aim—Shelley, Ibsen, Orwell, to name a few. But the promotion of social justice was simply one possible outcome of engagement with literature—not its sole aim.
But if you asked anyone in my department, literature was inseparable from resistance and justice.
. . . With every seminar I took, the overall aim of the Columbia University English department became clearer and clearer: these professors collectively wished to use literature as a force of resistance against “illiberal forces” to make our society a more just world for all.
But to me—someone who grew up with parents who’d fled the Soviet Union—Marxism wasn’t synonymous with liberalismin the least.
Sure, there was nothing wrong with trying to make our world more just and equitable—and there were so many great writers who had worked toward that aim—Shelley, Ibsen, Orwell, to name a few. But the promotion of social justice was simply one possible outcome of engagement with literature—not its sole aim.
But if you asked anyone in my department, literature was inseparable from resistance and justice.
By the time Ms. Libes started grad school to get her master’s, the courses were all theory and no literature. Yet she still hopes others will join her in ” returning to aesthetics and beauty” thereby , ” [doing] our part in saving literature and restoring it to its rightful place in the humanistic tradition.” But that, I fear is a vain hope. The love of literature and beauty is an ex-tenet of English literature, and I do see it changing any time soon. Poor Liza! There are other good pieces at her site, many of them expressing disappointment with courses in English literature. Here’s a video of Libes on “100 books to read before you die”:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s going a-hunting:
Hili: I’m going hunting.
Andrzej: Be back before nightfall.
In Polish
Hili: Idę na łowy.
Ja: Wróć przed nocą.
*******************
From Funny and Strange Signs; they want you to pay the server’s hourly salary, too!:
From The Dodo Pet:
From Stacy:
Masih meets and hugs the Kurdish woman protestor blinded by the Iranian authorities. For some reason this video makes me tear up. They have a long hug and Masih puts a flower in the blind woman’s hair.
This is the moment I met one of my heroes for the first time.
For years, we wrote about brave Iranian protesters from far away. We spoke about a young woman who lost both eyes after the Islamic Republic shot her for demanding freedom in the streets of Iran. Then one day, I… pic.twitter.com/dQQMoiuCPn— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 13, 2026
From Steve Stewart-Williams via Luana. I don’t really understand this huge disparity except that women get a break simply because they’re women:
“Drivers who killed women received substantially longer sentences than those who killed men. As we see in the table below, the average sentence for killing a woman was 9.7 years, whereas the average sentence for killing a man was 4.4 years.”https://t.co/8hjFM0Nzr5 pic.twitter.com/CDJvnN5xb3
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) May 12, 2026
The Number Ten Cat shows an old tradition:
Before King Charles opened Parliament today the Yeoman of the Guard (his ceremonial bodyguards) searched the cellars of the Palace of Westminster to make sure there was no gunpowder, or mayors from Manchester. pic.twitter.com/nxCsA5EJzD
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 13, 2026
I love moles. One of the traumatic experiences of my youth was seeing a guy on a golf course force one out of its hole with water and then killing it by hitting it on the head with a pipe. I don’t care if it was on a golf course: it was alive!
Please Be Kind To Moles.
They are beneficial to soil health, acting as natural aerators and pest control by consuming lawn-damaging grubs, beetles, and larvae.
They do not eat plants, and their removal often leads to new moles occupying the vacant tunnel system, making it a… pic.twitter.com/MMoUgrmXev
— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) May 13, 2026
I hope they get fed, too:
Mini shelters made in Japan to protect cats during rainy weatherpic.twitter.com/dxK7f2TYcF
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) May 13, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about eight years old, and would be ninety today had she lived. https://t.co/iNT0CZXooH
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 14, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. He told me, about the first one, “Read the article—it’s a hoot, and terrifying!” I did and it was: the Neanderthals did root canals with stone tools and obviously no anesthesia. Oy, that must have hurt! They were tough indeed!
Tough bastards.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-05-13T18:16:19.154Z
And screwing up internationally:
My favourite phrases for when things go wrong…1. It’s a shitshow at the fuck factory (English)2. Now the turnips are cooked (Dutch)3. A donkey is inside another donkey (Persian)4. The Devil is loose in Salmonstreet (Danish)5. A finger in the ass and screaming everywhere (Brazilian Portuguese)
— Adam Sharp (@adamcsharp.bsky.social) 2026-05-13T16:12:33.034Z
As far as I’m concerned the finest of Dylan Thomas’s works is A Child’s Christmas in Wales. But a trigger warning for our host: it involves the desire (frustrated) to throw snowballs at cats.
I agree on the absolute need to finish the Iranian regime once and for all, along with their nuclear arsenal. The Iranian people deserve to live normal lives, and the rest of the world, especially the surrounding countries of the middle east, needs to be free of Iran’s evil support of terrorist groups. It was Iran who funded Hamas and provided the training for October 23, no doubt including the edict to inflict such horrific sexual abuse. Any suggestion that we walk away now and leave this government in place is baffling and quite frankly insane to me. As for those who refuse to believe what Hamas did to women or somehow excuse it, I honestly have no words.