Welcome to another damn work week: it’s Monday, May 18, 2026, and I Love Reese’s Day, celebrating one of America’s great candies: the Reese’s Peanut butter cup. They keep them in the office as treats for the department, and I have one now. See?
And here is my heartthrob Gal Gadot on Jimmy Fallon’s sho trying a Reese’s for the first time w. She likes it! (I’m told that the Trader Joe’s own version with dark chocolate is even better.
It’s also International Museum Day, Mother Whistler Day, celebrating the great painting, National Cheese Souffle Day, and No Dirty Dishes Day (I never have any; I wash up by hand as I cook, and deign to use my dishwasther as it’s lazy.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 18 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*A vaccine-and-treatment resistant strain of the deadly Ebola virus has emerged in Africa, killing dozens and leading the WHO to declare a “public health emergency of international concern.”
The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths.
The WHO said the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders.
The WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the patient had visited Ituri and that other suspected cases have also been reported in North Kivu province, which is one of Congo’s most populous and borders Ituri.
Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.
The WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to spur donor agencies and countries into action. By the WHO’s standards, it shows the event is serious, there is a risk of international spread and it requires a coordinated international response.
. . .Health authorities say the current outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines. Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, this is only the third time the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.
Congo accounts for all except two of the cases, both of which were reported in Uganda, the WHO said.
The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
. . .The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be transmitted to people from wild animals. It then spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing contaminated with these fluids.The disease it causes is a rare but severe and often fatal illness in people. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.
The virus was first discovered in 1976, near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The first outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests.
You can read about Ebola at Wikipedia, but it ain’t pretty. It’s thought to have been transmitted to humans by bats. Here’s a photo of the virion, the complete infective RNA virus particle, which does its damage by glomming onto and entering cells:
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal explains why he thinks the Iranian regime has endured. It’s the shadow economy, Jake!
It’s Sunday, May 17, and despite decades of crippling international sanctions, a collapsing domestic economy, and an ongoing blockade, the Iranian regime continues to function. The secret to its endurance, according to Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs researcher Ella Rosenberg, lies in a fundamental disconnect between the Iranian state and the ruling regime itself. While ordinary citizens face skyrocketing prices, severe infrastructural decay, and a genuine possibility of starvation, the regime relies entirely on a robust shadow economy to survive and bypass formal global banking systems.
To maintain this hold on power, the regime sustains itself through a sophisticated web of gray banking and illicit oil sales. Funds are systematically laundered through exchange houses and shell companies situated in free-trade zones in the UAE and Turkey before seamlessly reaching European markets. The problem is that a vessel or shell company can operate cleanly for months, passing basic sanctions screening, only to be officially designated by the Treasury Department long after the illicit funds have been moved and new shells have opened to replace them.
A critical vulnerability in the West’s current approach, Rosenberg argues, is weak enforcement. “Sanctions are like schoolyard bullying,” she explains. “If there is no real enforcement, it’s like a bully who cannot throw a punch. He loses effectiveness.” But things appear to be changing: The UAE has recently taken preliminary steps to close its secrecy banking loopholes, threatening to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets flowing through Dubai.
A critical node in this underground economy is the maritime “shadow fleet”—a covert armada of vessels systematically evading global maritime law. To smuggle oil undetected, the regime routinely executes ship-to-ship cargo transfers in open-ocean hotspots like the Gulf of Oman and the coast of Malaysia. Recently, monitoring agencies tracked a sudden, coordinated reappearance of these ships on Automatic Identification System (AIS) radars, only for them to vanish into the shadows mere hours later. This phantom-like behavior is part of a broader, highly sophisticated doctrine of maritime deception: to obscure the movement of sanctioned cargoes, the regime clones tracking numbers, simulates fake port calls, and even deploys “zombie tankers” using the stolen identities of scrapped ships.
Meanwhile, the regime is attempting to project an illusion of macroeconomic stability. After a three-month suspension, Iran will reopen its stock market on Tuesday. “The suspension of stock market activities from the start of the war was aimed at protecting shareholders’ assets, preventing panic-driven trading, and allowing for more transparent pricing conditions,” says Hamid Yari, deputy supervisor at the Securities and Exchange Organization. “Now, with the reopening of the stock market, we will see the full resumption of all capital market sectors.” Beneath this bureaucratic optimism, however, the market threatens to collapse the moment trading floors open. Key industries like petrochemicals and steel—already struggling before the war—have seen their facilities reduced to rubble.
Domestically, the regime has largely abandoned its populace. Decades of zero investment in civil projects have left the country facing severe, preventable water shortages—an ecological crisis the state absurdly blames on Israel using “atmospheric modifier weapons” to make Iranian clouds barren and steal the country’s snow.
While domestic anger is palpable across all demographics, Rosenberg cautions against expecting an imminent revolution. After enduring brutal, militarized crackdowns, Iranian citizens are unlikely to risk their lives again without guaranteed, active backing from the West. Ultimately, the West must understand that the Iranian state isn’t functioning normally; it is merely surviving, and the regime is singularly focused on protecting itself at the expense of its people.
Yep, the Jews are causing a drought, probably using their spaces lasers. Joshing aside, this isn’t good news unless the U.S. understands it. But since Trump seems to have abandoned the Iranian people, he doesn’t care that they’re suffering. We can hope only that his insistence that Iran not have nuclear weapons still holds. Leaving China, he told a reporter that he’d be satisfied if a 20-year prohibition was agreed on. All that means is that the death of Israel and nuclear turmoil in the Middle East will be delayed for a few decades.
*Sadly, Timmy the humpback whale didn’t make it. After being stranded in Germany and towed in a water-filled barge to the North Sea to be released, they found his carcass was found on Friday (h/t Jay). The Guardian reports:
Timmy the whale has been confirmed dead by Danish authorities two weeks after the beached humpback was transported to the North Sea in a rescue attempt criticised as “pure animal cruelty”.
Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near the small island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.
Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement: “It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts.”
She added that conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale’s back, and “the position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters”.
The 10-metre-long calf became a global sensation after it was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters off the coast of Germany, nearly two months ago.
As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.
But after a national outcry, two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the creature.
The rescue attempt – which is believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – involved floating Timmy away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of Lübeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.
It was criticised as “inadvisable” by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile, nicknamed Timmy after the beach where he was stranded, appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.
Well, the rescue may have been ‘inadvisable,” but I can’t impugn the two millionaires who funded the rescue. After all, Timmy might have lived.
*Theo Baker, a senior at Stanford University, explains how AI is destroying his well known school in a NYT op-ed called, “What A.I. did to my college class” (article archived here under another title).
Stanford already had a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (now serving a 10-year prison sentence), the crypto fraudster Do Kwon (now serving a 15-year prison sentence) and the founders of Juul (which was forced to pay billions for getting kids hooked on vapes). All of these scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life. Now A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.
Cheating has become omnipresent. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become. As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the “nuclear option” might be called for: allowing faculty to proctor in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate “confidence in the honor” of students.
In our tech-enabled, newly A.I.-powered world, students were increasingly fudging just about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the UberEats credits that the school offered to those in quarantine. Some kids I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. advancement. Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.
In junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail. A friend of mine captured the school’s ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors. It was all, I recall her saying, “just a little bit of fraud.”
About halfway through freshman year, some coding classes started requiring students to sign a declaration — “I did not utilize ChatGPT” — to submit each assignment. During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists. The incentive structures were not aligned toward honesty. One could get ahead, quickly, by cutting corners, by focusing on self-presentation.
The money is a big part of it. A.I. has merely accelerated a trend that was already underway at Stanford and has been reflected by many of the country’s most corporatized universities: Education itself can be seen as a secondary goal to enabling future success, frequently defined as a future windfall.
I like to think that AI can be licked with proctoring in-class exams, but as for term papers or take-home exams, fuhgedaboutit. And remember, the future leaders of American are not only fine with big-time cheating, but won’t learn to write or think. Oy!
Pro-Palestinian Mob Besieges Brooklyn Synagogue
Roughly 200 protesters organized by PAL-Awda surrounded Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn on Monday—the same group that targeted Park East Synagogue in Manhattan last week—chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” and waving a Hezbollah flag through the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Police arrested four people after clashes. Department of Justice civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon said federal officials were “working with colleagues in NYC to collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Leaves Democratic Party, Citing Antisemitism
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, who is Jewish and previously served as the state Democratic Party’s vice chair, announced Monday he was registering as an independent, saying “acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders, and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”
Kentucky PAC Ad Targets Jewish Donor with Rainbow Star of David
A political action committee supporting Representative Thomas Massie’s Kentucky primary campaign aired an ad depicting Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer—overlaid with a Star of David colored in rainbow Pride flag colors—claiming he would bring “trans madness to Kentucky.”
Rand Paul’s Son Goes on Antisemitic Tirade at D.C. Bar
William Paul, son of Senator Rand Paul, accosted New York representative Mike Lawler at a Washington bar Tuesday night, telling him that if Representative Massie loses his Kentucky primary, it will be because of “your people”—then launched into what Lawler described as a “roughly 10-minute diatribe about Israel, about Jews.” Lawler clarified he wasn’t Jewish, to which Paul apologized—“I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.” Paul issued an apology the next day, attributing the remarks to a drinking problem.
New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Ramming Chabad Headquarters
Dan Sohail pleaded guilty Wednesday to ramming his vehicle into Chabad’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. called it an intentional attack on “a globally significant Jewish religious institution,” citing the case as part of increasing violence aimed at Jewish institutions. Sohail faces up to three years in prison.
California Judge Removes Jewish DA from Case for Fighting Antisemitism
A Santa Clara County judge disqualified District Attorney Jeff Rosen—who is Jewish—and his entire office from retrying five pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for occupying the office of Stanford University’s president, ruling that Rosen had created a conflict of interest by calling the case an act of antisemitism on a campaign website. “This case is not a hate crime,” Judge Kelley Paul said. “The characterization of the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism runs afoul of case law.” The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the ruling “uniquely targets minority prosecutors.” The case now passes to California’s attorney general.
Swastika Flag Raised Above NYU Building During Graduation Week
As hundreds of students and families gathered for NYU’s annual Grad Alley block party Wednesday evening, a flag bearing two swastikas, a Star of David, and “NYU” was raised above the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development—named for Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy Steinhardt. Michael is the co-founder of the organization Taglit Birthright Israel. Campus Safety removed the flag after about 15 minutes, and the NYPD has announced its Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.
There are more from Europe, but you get the point.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is rebuking Andrzej and protecting the garden:
Hili: Don’t do it.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You take flowers for the vase first, and then you get upset with yourself for having done it.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie rób tego.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Najpierw bierzesz kwiaty do wazonu, a potem się złościsz, żeś to zrobił.
*******************
From Stephen, properly cited:
From The Dodo Pet:
From the Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society:
From Masih: two Iranian women shot in the eyes for protesting; one is completely blind. The caption is heartbreaking:
These two Iranian women were both shot in the eyes by the Islamic Republic for one simple “crime”: demanding freedom in the streets and refusing to hide their beautiful hair.
With the help of some German organization, we managed to help smuggle them out of Iran. Now they live in… pic.twitter.com/GihPReEzz4
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 17, 2026
From Luana, the Haidt saga continues as he’s booed during an NYU commencement speech. You can see some of the booing here, along with an analysis by Jonathan Turley.
Booing Jonathan Haidt is a “shame and a disgrace,” as my grandmother would say. pic.twitter.com/JXlxspp2GI
— Anthony Bradley (@drantbradley) May 16, 2026
From Jay, a cat/serval hybrid explains the fact to a domestic cat. Sound up!
Bro politely explained it instead of violence pic.twitter.com/sBlC6pfj7w
— cats with powerful impression 🐾 (@catshealdeprsn) May 15, 2026
From Keith, a cute, fluffy butterfly. You can see a video of it walking here.
From Luana; the gross exaggeration of indigenous children’s death in Kamloops, British Columbia. It’s driven some Canadians into a frenzy, but there are no more deaths than expected in the cohort: 11 total. (It’s a thread.)
Kamloops Residential School
Death of Pupils 1935-1945Lets look through them all, it won’t take long pic.twitter.com/9P39xqvq7d
— The Reclamare (@TheReclamare) May 9, 2026
Thats it –
Based on 300 students at Kamloops Residential School over 10 years– the expected mortality of the general population is 10 children
– the actual mortality of Indigenous students is 11 children
More facts conflicting with the narrative of ‘oral history’ /fin
— The Reclamare (@TheReclamare) May 9, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She was four years old and would be 88 today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T09:21:12.252Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the rarely observed larval stage of a fish:
This is the first ever video footage of the larval stage of an extremely rare Groenveld’s Stingfish (Minous groeneveldi).Shot on scuba, over very deep water, far offshore, while drifting with the plankton, at night. #groenveldsstingfish #blackwaterdiving #larvalfish #tulamben #stonefish
— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2026-05-15T15:52:56.516Z
Orphaned negatives (a thread):
We hope this post about orphaned negatives makes you gruntled.An ‘orphaned negative’ is a word that SHOULD feel like it has a related word, but doesn’t.‘Nonchalant’ is an orphaned negative because there is no ‘chalant.’
— Merriam-Webster (@merriam-webster.com) 2026-05-12T15:26:27.338Z
Here are some more unpaired words with the ‘word’ that one would think would be related.disgusting / gustingincognito / cognitoinnocent / nocentnonplussed / plussedoff-putting / puttingrepeat / peat
— Merriam-Webster (@merriam-webster.com) 2026-05-12T15:26:45.816Z
I’ve always thought that a neatly dressed person was heveled. (As opposed to disheveled.)
I caught a clip of Roger Penrose bringing “AI” down-to-Earth – he said it is more accurately “Artificial Cleverness” – the way some of his mathematics students are clever at repeating operations vs. understanding the operations.
Search for “Roger Penrose AI” on eXtwitter – there are a number of clips but I’m skeptical of them,.. so… any ideas where it came from appreciated…
… and I just learned Penrose has a book from 1989 – with a title I love :
The Emperor’s New Mind : Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics
1989
Swastikas over NYU – I’d expect nothing less of them.
Lately, randomly on the street I ran into a NYU graduate party/families, in their distinctive purple. I live not far away from their main campus and Washington Sq. Park – center of New Ghhaaaaza.
I was talking to them about their new degrees/fields, etc. Didn’t ask if they wanted to behead me for my Zionist crimes against the ummah but I expect they did.
Never mind… seems the shule attacks are in Brooklyn THIS week!
Oy veh.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
How many get the Boston reference in the Toblerone caption?
Did someone bite a road barrier in Boston? Do tell, please. I am discombobulated, and yearn to be combulated.
Aww, the Ebola outbreak makes me miss my Ebola tie (discontinued):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/167731266941
(Former S.O. thought it was ugly and tossed it, although the Giardia tie looked enough like paisleys to make the cut)
Certainly feel nothing but sympathy for the victims of the horrid disease. Just reminiscing about asking medical students to identify my tie’s image.
Via a quick comment on TWiV the other day, and then chased down, there is evidence that Ebola and other viruses persist in seminal fluids, among other places. No time to dig further into this right now but I wanted to at least get the paper noted.
What strikes me about both the article and Jerry’s response is that the conversation keeps drifting toward “AI is destroying education” rather than confronting the deeper issue: garbage in, garbage out still applies. AI does not magically replace intelligence, judgment, creativity, or expertise. It amplifies them — or exposes the lack of them.
I use AI constantly. I can write a detailed prompt, feed it a library of technical papers, reports, and datasets, and ask it to help outline research questions, identify gaps, compare methodologies, or suggest experimental approaches to a critical problem. That is enormously powerful. But the quality of the result still depends on whether the person asking the question understands the science, the mathematics, the assumptions, and the limitations well enough to recognize nonsense when it appears.
The same is true in software development. I once managed teams of engineers who would spend months writing and documenting code. Today, functional and documented code can often be generated in days — sometimes hours. That reality is not going away because people are uncomfortable with it. And unlike past technological shifts, AI capability is globally accessible. The centers of development are worldwide. Pretending this can be contained or ignored is simply naïve.
But here is the part people keep missing: writing effective prompts still requires the ability to write clearly and think critically. You still need enough mathematical literacy to verify the math. You still need scientific literacy to design a respectable experiment. You still need domain expertise to determine whether the answer is insightful, misleading, or completely fabricated.
The problem may not be AI itself. The problem may be that universities — and increasingly high schools — are producing students who struggle to write coherently, reason critically, or synthesize information independently. If students cannot formulate meaningful questions, they will not get meaningful answers from AI. They will simply generate polished-looking mediocrity faster.
AI is not removing the need for intelligence. It is increasing the penalty for not having it.
I’ve never doubted that AI has its useful aspects. But there is no doubt that it’s wrecking traditional education by REDUCING the penalty for not doing your own work. It is reducing the penalty for not being able to write. Universities will have a hard time overcoming this so long as students are supposed to show their learning by exercises performed outside of class.
Agreed. It is one thing to use AI if you already have the skills for doing your own work. But if you don’t have those skills already, how would you evaluate the success of the AI work? The reliance on AI will reduce, if not eliminate, a number of the critical thinking skills necessary for human progress. That frightens me.
I am sure that many of my colleagues have put much thought into designing projects involving worth outside of class that would reduce or eliminate use of AI. I would sure appreciate any suggestions. I can say this: that the AI issue further emphasizes the benefits of laboratory projects in scientific fields.
Reeses Peanut butter cups were available in Israel since the early 2000s. Of course, they were a huge hit, even though it is hot here for much of the year, and the time b Ethen buying and eating is limited. I like the dark chocolate Trader Joe’s more (higher cocoa content), but there are times when you just gotta have a Reese’s.
Jerry, I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. AI absolutely reduces the penalty for not doing your own work, and universities will struggle with that reality as long as learning is measured largely through unsupervised work outside the classroom.
I recall watching my lab director, a meteorologist from another era, writing entire manuscripts longhand on yellow line paper beside stacks of journals and hand-analyzed synoptic maps. I remember thinking I was witnessing the last vestiges of a style of scientific writing and thinking before the explosion of computing and numerical modeling changed everything. Work that once took months became possible in days. But the science still depended on people who understood the atmosphere, the math, the assumptions, and the limitations of the models.
I think AI is another transition. The danger is not simply cheating. It’s producing a generation capable of generating polished answers without developing the depth of thought needed to judge whether those answers are meaningful or even correct. I can’t even begin to imagine what the generations beyond the next will look like.
The problem is that AI is at least as capable at producing most coursework as most undergraduate students. So (outside those increasingly few subjects/courses that still have traditional exams) vast swathes of students are doing very little work and are using AI to produce the work they submit.
Hardly anyone seems to care, since (1) the students are still getting what they want, namely degrees, and (2) the universities are still getting what they want, namely tuition fees, and (3) few students actually use the stuff they learned at university in their careers.
I suppose (3) applies most accurately (and unfortunately) to the material of Humanities courses. It applies least accurately to STEM courses, at least for STEM majors. In the case of grievance studies, endless repetition of the course cliches constitutes the career path, so it doesn’t matter whether the copying is done by the students or by a robots.
When I was at UC, I took the late Mark Kishlansky’s course on the English Revolution. That would have been Winter Quarter ’85. For the final exam he gave us two or three essay questions to prepare. When I exam day came, we could bring out books and notes “and even have Lawrence Stone [a reknowed English historian] come and whisper” in our ear. I can’t remember if we got to choose two of three, or whether he chose the final two. We then had to compose our responses during the exam period. In either case, it was the most unconventional exam I ever took.
Another correction to the Covid numbers.
Comment by Greg Mayer
Re the paper on the Precambrian: “Fuck” is a surname in Brazil. My recollection is that it’s Dutch in origin. While doing field work in the Virgin Islands, I visited an island on which my host had constructed a building using lumber from Brazil. “Fuck Brazil” was stamped on some of the beams, and an inquiry revealed that that was the name of a large Brazilian lumber company from which the beams had been obtained.
GCM
Reinhardt Adolfo Fuck is most likely of southern German/Austrian origin.
Maybe his ancestors even came from Fucking in Upper Austria (which has been renamed to Fugging in 2021).
Very discouraged and disgusted at what’s happening at my two-time alma mater. Our famous Honor Code was held in such high regard in the 60s and 70s. Is there no self-respect? 😿
On the subject of orphaned negatives. Very interesting. It is possible that disgusting/gusting may not qualify .
According to Merriam Webster:
Gustatory
adjective
gus·ta·to·ry ˈgə-stə-ˌtȯr-ē
relating to or associated with eating or the sense of taste
Trump has said so many times that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” that he can’t back out now. (Can he? I hope he can’t.) But I still have this nagging worry that we’re in a race against time. Will Iran collapse before Trump eventually finds some excuse to pull out? Eventually, the regime may even find ways around the blockade and the economic boycott and recover enough to save the regime. Renewed U.S. and Israeli attacks will demonstrate that Trump is still serious. Are those attacks coming, or is Trump looking for the exit?
Pakistan appears to be keeping Iran afloat:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-196909445
I heard hints about that on the “What’s going on with shipping” YouTube channel. Apparently Pakistan is desperately needs LNG, and some has been delivered. The Iranians let a big LNG carrier out (possibly charging a toll, no one knows). It made it to Pakistan.
Thanks for the link.
Yes. Firstly thx for the reference Roger. And also… Pakistan has its own motivations which – though they pretend otherwise – aren’t always aligned with ours.
They’re pretty much bankrupt and have been all our lives. Since Zia Al Haq’s (Islamist, go figure) policies in the 80s.
Without a constant IV drip of Saudi, Emirati and WB help/money they’d be a Somali level failed state. They’re basically a sharia based suicide blackmail state.
And they are so not our friend. Keep all these thoughts in your head every time you hear “Pakistan”.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
I’ve no doubts about Pakistan’s motives or their Islamist goals. The linked article suggests there’s lots of cooperation with Iran going on.
What a mess! 🙁
On the deaths of Indigenous children in Kamloops, it’s notable that 10 of the 11 died at Royal Inland Hospital; only 1 died at the school itself (drowned in an accident while swimming). None were murdered in the night then secretly buried in a mass grave as claimed by the First Nation.
Honestly I blame the news media and the Indigenous activists about equally: the First Nation brought out a graduate student archaeologist from my cozy university to drag a ground-penetrating radar device over the old apple orchard at the residential school. [This does not, as was widely believed at the time by credulous or uninformed people (including me), generate a sort of x-ray image of buried objects.] Then the First Nation held a press conference to claim that remains of 215 children had been found. Any reporter with a working brain might have asked to see the evidence for that claim, but none did at the time. Instead we got this kind of thing from Ian Austen at the New York Times
“For decades, most Indigenous children in Canada were taken from their families and forced into boarding schools. A large number never returned home, their families given only vague explanations, or none at all.
Now an Indigenous community in British Columbia says it has found evidence of what happened to some of its missing children: a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said on Friday that ground-penetrating radar had discovered the remains near the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which operated from 1890 until the late 1970s.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mass-grave-residential-schools.html
Austen is Canadian and lives in Ottawa so he can’t be misconstrued as an out-of-touch American reporter. Canadian reporters were similarly uninterested in knowing whether any of this was true. Asking out loud is now called “denialism”, using a term borrowed from Holocaust history. And Austen has never corrected or retracted that story or the “mass grave” claim. Shameful and damaging.
The whole thing has reached insane proportions! My sister lives in Kamloops.
The orphaned word list omitted some favorites: disgruntled/gruntled, not to mention discern/cern.
Regarding orphaned words: Mobsters are part of a mob. Why then aren’t lobsters part of a lob?
Some context for the news item “Pro-Palestinian Mob Besieges Brooklyn Synagogue”:
At least some of the demonstrations have been outside the synagogues mentioned in the news item (Young Israel of Midwood and Park East Synagogue in Manhattan) while they were hosting the presentation “The Great Israel Real Estate Event”, which advertise properties for sale both in Israel and in Israeli-occupied settlements in the West Bank.
The New York Times has a lengthy report about this in the article “How Fights Over West Bank Settlements Are Unfolding at N.Y.C. Synagogues”, which was published online on May 15 and is in the National print edition (filling most of page A16) today.
The Times article says:
So, if someone is opposed to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, it makes sense that they would want to protest against events that promote the sale of real estate in those settlements to New Yorkers.
However, it’s clear that the pro-Palestinian demonstrations aren’t limited to the issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and in fact are opposed to the existence of Israel and are antisemetic.