Welcome to a Hump Day (“ਹੰਪ ਡੇ” in Punjabi): it’s Wednesday, May 20, 2026 and National Pick Strawberries Day. Here’s the world’s heaviest strawberry as certified by Guinness. It was grown in Israel and weighed over ten ounces:
Ariel Chahi (Israel) has grown a supersized strawberry that weighed 289 g (10.19 oz) on 12 February 2021. The fruit, which has been confirmed as the world’s heaviest strawberry, was 18 cm long, 4 cm thick and 34 cm in circumference.
Click to see the video (and turn on audio):
It’s also Flower Day, International Red Sneakers Day, National Quiche Lorraine Day, National Rescue Dog Day, World Flour Day, and World Bee Day. Here is what’s regarded as The World’s Cutest Bee, Australia’s “teddy bear bee”, Ambigilla bombiformus. It’s very stocky and fuzzy.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Five people died in a shooting in a mosque in San Diego; with two of the dead being teenage boys who attacked with guns, killed a security guard, and then committed suicide.
The frantic mother’s call came in at 9:42 a.m. on Monday: Her son was missing.
That wasn’t all, she told the San Diego police. Several guns were gone, and so was her car, and her 17-year-old might have a friend with him.
The police were alarmed and began a desperate hunt for the two teenagers. They were somewhere in California’s second largest city, a sprawling community of 1.4 million people nestled amid palms and purple jacarandas.
A license plate reader seemed to show them near a mall, and officers rushed there. Then, they converged on the high school one of the teenagers attended. Those turned out to be the wrong places.
The teens’ target was a mosque, the police said. They shot and killed three people there, including a security guard who worked for the mosque and whose actions, police said, likely saved lives. And then the teens killed themselves, the police said.
The grounds of the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County, include a school.
“I’ll tell you what got me,” Chief Scott Wahl of the San Diego Police Department said at a news conference. “Watching kids come running out, just thankful to be alive.”
The shooting came amid increased threats and acts of violence against religious institutions in America, fueled by the wars in the Middle East. In March, a man attacked a synagogue outside Detroit with a truck before he died in a confrontation with security guards. The growing threats have prompted increased security at mosques, synagogues and churches across America.
There’s evidence, too, that this is a hate crime, though specific motives haven’t yet been identified:
Investigators recovered anti-Islamic writing in the car where the suspects were found dead, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share details publicly. The words “hate speech” were written on one of the guns used in the attack.
Chief Wahl said investigators had not uncovered any threats toward a specific place. Still, “there was definitely hate rhetoric involved,” Chief Wahl said.
Finally, TRT World (and several other sources) reports that the Mayor of San Diego, Todd Gloria, was heckled, accused of responsibility for the attack:
Before Gloria delivered a public statement, a woman in the audience shouted at him and blamed him for the attack, saying it was a “direct result” of his leadership.
“You emboldened Zionist propaganda. And you’ll keep doing it as long as it lines with your f*cking pockets,” the woman said.
The security guard who was killed, Amin Abdullah, acted heroically, by all accounts saving a lot of lives in the mosque. It’s tragic that he was the father of eight children.
Last night on the NBC news they said it was clearly a “hate crime”, as there were manifestos, bottles labeled with an SS symbol, and various anti-Islam and anti-Semitic writings. I was taken aback by the “anti-Semitic” part, as that implies that the “hate” was general, not just limited to Muslims, and may have denoted mental illness or rage on the part of both shooters. . I haven’t heard more about this, but you probably won’t from the NYT or WaPo. The Anti-Defamation League does mention it:
A review by the ADL Center on Extremism of the killers’ respective manifestos reveals adherence to several ideologies, most prominently white supremacist accelerationism and inceldom, as well as virulent Islamophobia and antisemitism. Their writings, which have been shared on gore sites like WatchPeopleDie (WPD), also illustrate general misanthropy and an immersion in online nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) ecosystems.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal makes the dire prediction: “War is coming”; that is: Israel is about to resume attacking Iran:
t’s Tuesday, May 19, and for the past few days, the skies above Jerusalem have been echoing with the sound of fighter jets. The Air Force is on high alert, preparing for potential action as diplomatic avenues with Tehran close. According to Reuters, Iran’s latest counterproposal is a nonstarter that simply mirrors previously rejected terms. Sources speaking to Axios confirmed that Tehran still refuses to halt uranium enrichment or surrender its stockpile, leading the Trump administration to officially dismiss the offer as “insufficient.”
This impasse was echoed by IRGC-affiliated media, which noted deep-seated disagreements and affirmed that Iran will not trade nuclear concessions to end the conflict. Meanwhile, the United States stands firm on its baseline requirements: Iran must hand over its HEU, dismantle its nuclear infrastructure and accept a 20-year freeze on uranium enrichment.
Also yesterday, Donald Trump revealed he had called off a military strike against Iran that was slated for the following day. According to Trump, the pause was requested by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed, who urged a two-to-three-day suspension to allow ongoing negotiations to play out. Sources familiar with the matter told Axios that these Gulf leaders warned Washington they would “pay the price” if the U.S. proceeded, expressing deep concerns that Iran would retaliate by targeting their vital energy and oil infrastructure. Though I would take this claim with a grain of salt, the report may have been an attempt to confuse or threaten Iran, or perhaps artificially disassociate the Gulf countries from retaliation.
While Trump noted that the regional leaders remain optimistic about securing a mutually acceptable deal to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he emphasized that the U.S. military remains primed for a “full, large-scale assault” on short notice if talks collapse.
Meanwhile, Tehran is moving to institutionalize unilateral control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s newly formed Persian Gulf Strait Authority recently declared itself the sole legal manager of the waterway, warning that unauthorized transit is illegal and leaving 1,500 vessels backed up awaiting permission. IRGC-affiliated media are now targeting critical global digital infrastructure. Outlets now suggest that Iran’s “absolute sovereignty” allows it to impose fees and oversight on the major subsea fiber-optic cables running through the strait—including the networks connecting Asia, Europe and the Gulf. Crucially, state media warned that “deliberate actions” resulting in simultaneous damage to these cables could be used to inflict massive financial and communications disruptions worldwide.
Right before the last operation began, I actually bought a custom T-shirt that read: “I don’t know when the Iran strike will be.” It was the only way to preempt the endless barrage of questions I faced every time I walked out the door. Today, I find myself able to reuse what I thought would be a single-use shirt. I don’t know the precise timeline, but just like last time—it is coming.
Trump keeps delaying and delaying. At some point, unless he simply gives up on the war, he’s going to either accept Iran’s terms (which will of course allow it to make nuclear weapons), or resume the attack. (See the next item.)
*On the other hand, the WaPo reports that Trump called off a strike on Iran planned for yesterday to give more time for Iran to confect a peace proposal.
“Based on my respect for the above mentioned Leaders,” Trump wrote, he had instructed U.S. military leaders “that we will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow.”
Trump told reporters at a White House event a few hours after his post that the leaders had asked him to hold off on an attack for “two or three days — a short period of time.”
The move was the latest sudden turn by Trump in the 11 weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran on Feb. 28. In recent days, he had threatened renewed attacks. On Sunday, he wrote on Truth Social that Iran needed to move fast “or there won’t be anything left” and that “the Clock is Ticking.”
In his latest post, Trump insisted, however, that the U.S. military is prepared to launch a “full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if negotiations sour and that any deal has to include no new weapons for Iran.
“We’ve had periods of time where we … thought [we were] pretty close to making a deal and it didn’t work out,” he told reporters Monday afternoon. “But this is a little bit different.”
I have never seen a leader act like this in wartime. This repeated delaying doesn’t seem to be the actions of a President who fervently wants peace. Rather, it seems to be the actions of a mercurial President who is buffeted by whatever is the latest pronouncement that he hears.
*Four years ago Tyler Cowan, says the Free Press newsletter, “wrote an influential essay arguing that wokeness had peaked. At the time, it was a controversial claim. . . We asked Tyler to revisit his claim four years on. ” And so we have “Wokeness has peaked. What followed is worse.” Cowan means “direct action,” which includes violence:
So what has been happening? The forces behind wokeism no longer command so much public attention and respect when they argue about terms and pronouns. Instead, left-adjacent movements have arisen with a contrasting emphasis on action, and often action of a terrible sort. California is considering, for instance, an unworkable tax on billionaires in the state, one that even most left-leaning Democratic politicians do not support. It might nevertheless pass through via referendum.
Or, to take another example, Senator Bernie Sanders wants to halt the progress of AI, using the law if necessary, and in the meantime he and others from the progressive left are undercutting the construction of new data centers.
The ideology of “third worldism” is on the rise, and it takes the form of antisemitic demonstrations and concrete violent attacks on individual Jews or groups of Jews who appear in predictable locations, such as going to and from synagogues, or in Jewish neighborhoods. Such attacks have risen steadily.
. . .What’s more, it is possible we are entering an era with a new culture of assassinations. There have been assassinations of Charlie Kirk, of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and several attempts on the life of President Trump. It can be debated how many of these killers had direct connections to the political left, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that left-wing rhetoric about democracy destruction helped make such actions conceivable.
The social energies of the American left have moved away from the realm of speech and into plans for concrete action, whether in politics, through attempted wealth confiscations, or through organizing violence. In retrospect, wokeism, for all its problems, was a relatively harmless way of distracting activists and keeping them busy with wars over words—a less-bad allocation of social energies than what we are now seeing. So while I would not say I long for the return of high wokeism, I recognize it has been replaced by a left-adjacent movement that is worse.
To be clear, while this column is focused on the political left, the political right also has undergone an extremely problematic evolution, and I do not mean to let them off the hook. Increasingly open and blatant antisemitism on the right is but one manifestation of this phenomenon.
So perhaps wokeism was never the fundamental problem in the first place; rather, our own negativity was. Wokeism cloaked that negativity in wars of words, and because conservatives and classical liberals did not lose those wars of words, they felt a kind of temporary victory. But the victory was Pyrrhic. The negativity remains, and now it may end up channeled in yet more dangerous directions.
So I will give one cheer to the woke, if only because I fear what is going to follow.
Here are two plots from the More in Common US Newsletter Substack site. The first shows that most Americans are concerned that political violence is becoming more of a problem.
While this one shows that the approbation for political violence is too high (20% is too high!), but positively correlated, as spected, with the time people spend on social media, which is surely also negatively correlated with age:
*Based on a paper in PLOS ONE (click title below to read it), the NYT has a piece called “Neanderthal dentistry, and the scientist glad not to have experienced it.” The dentistry at issue is a prehistoric root canal done with stone tools! The NYT has an interview with an anthropologist:
A decade ago in southern Siberia’s Chagyrskaya Cave, archaeologists unearthed a 59,000-year-old Neanderthal molar with a curious, deep hole. A study published this month in the journal PLOS One proposed that the molar’s owner had suffered a severe toothache, prompting the patient, or a brave peer, to attempt an intervention.
The tooth’s hollow had been scooped out by a stone drill rather than by natural decay or wear, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences concluded. They replicated the bore marks in three modern human molars with fine-pointed drills fashioned from jasper, a tough quartz found in the area around the cave and used to make other tools discovered at the site.
The findings indicated that the prehistoric patient underwent a deliberate Stone Age root canal, a discovery that pushes back the earliest evidence of intentional dentistry by more than 40,000 years.
Treating the cavity was an act of neurological and mechanical sophistication, requiring the ancient hominins to diagnose the source of pain, select the appropriate stone tool and employ remarkable dexterity to scrape down to the pulp, the tooth’s inner tissue.
Enduring such a torturous, anesthesia-free root canal required staggering willpower. Yet the tooth shows continued wear after the drilling took place, meaning the patient survived and kept using the molar.
There follows a short interview with John Olsen, “an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.” Read these two Q&As and tell me that it doesn’t make you shiver:
The study proposes that a dental instrument made of jasper was likely used to ream the tooth. How would that have worked?
We have two different artifact types that could have been used. One is called a drill by archaeologists, because it presumably had that function in life. The other, a beak, is generally considered a simpler tool, made of a stone flake that comes to a sharp point.
Both would have been held between the thumb and the forefinger in a pinch grip, then twisted and rotated continuously against the surface of the infected tooth.
Recreating the procedure on modern human teeth showed the process would have taken around 35 to 50 minutes of continuous, high-pressure drilling to penetrate the dentin and expose the pulp chamber.
These days, the living pulp, which contains nerves and blood vessels, is completely removed from inside the tooth, then the empty pulp chamber and root canals are cleaned and filled to seal them and prevent future infections. Typically, the post-procedure discomfort fades within three to five days.
Going back 60,000 years or even 2,000 years, there were really no other alternatives other than trying to get as much of that rotted material out of the tooth as possible.
The “dentist” then probably filled the cavity with something that would seal it: perhaps beeswax or pitch. And presumably another solution—pulling out the tooth—wasn’t possible as the Neanderthals lacked forceps. It still amazes me that the Neanderthals knew what to do: kill the nerve and fill the hole: primitive periodontology. And it worked, as there was evidence for wear on the tooth after it was drilled. But oy, the pain!
The paper:
The tooth at issue with its caption from PLOS ONE:
From the abstract:
The tooth exhibits a large human-generated concavity on the occlusal surface, created during the lifetime of the individual. Traceological and microtomographic analyses of the observed modifications, combined with experimental verification, reveal that the concavity in Chagyrskaya 64 is indicative of the earliest documented instance of caries treatment involving the drilling/rotating with a lithic perforator, ca. 59 ka. Evidence of two distinct types of manipulations requiring different tools, in addition to the drilling/rotating technique, necessitating complex finger movements, indicates that the Chagyrskaya Cave Neanderthals possessed the cognitive capacity to intuit the source of pain, comprehend the feasibility of its elimination, and deliberately select the most efficacious dental intervention.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron affirms Hili’s skepticism:
Hili: Wherever you look, there are doubts.
Szaron: That’s because it’s in your nature.
In Polish:
Hili: Gdzie nie spojrzeć tam wątpliwości.
Szaron: To dlatego, że masz taki charakter.
*******************
From Dancing Cats:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs or Notices:
From CinEmma:
Here’s Masih chewing out Barak Obama’s “deal” that allowed Iran to proceed with enriching uranium.
Mr. President @BarackObama! Recently, you said the Iran nuclear deal “worked.”
Congratulation, sir .You’re right and here, I explain exactly how it worked for us, the Iranian people. The ones who weren’t at the negotiating table.
I think you’ll find it very… illuminating. pic.twitter.com/kit3fQ7MUv— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 18, 2026
From Luana. This is exactly what “affirmative care” should not be: surgery on an underage girl with mental health problems:
Tomorrow Genspect will publish an article I wrote describing my experience ‘doctor shopping’ in the EU for trans-affirming care for my minor ‘son’. In it, I name the private clinic in Madrid that agreed to carry out the mastectomy with parental consent on a 15 year-old girl with… https://t.co/PhhofST49j
— Róisín Michaux (@RoisinMichaux) May 18, 2026
From Ricky Gervais, rightfully proud at the reception of his “After Life” series. I still think it was magnificent, although many people seem to find it lame.
Best fans in the world ❤️ https://t.co/0ChfiKWJqm
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) December 26, 2024
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Emma tackles the classics:
1. No idea what that means.
2. No idea what that means.
3. I recognise two. One of them is not marbles by my understanding.
4. I know who Shakespeare is. He was quite funny.
5. Ha ha, huh?
6. Nope.
7. I use Latin, but no idea how much Greek I use.
8. Nope.
9. Old one in… pic.twitter.com/1nxQuRb5K9— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 17, 2026
Captain Ella recites a poem. First, the translation from the Arabic:
A poem by Nizar Qabbani stopped me in my tracks…
Oh lady of South Lebanon,
They did not love it, but rather loved the war within it,
And made it open to coffins.And the South that I know:
Fairuz, coffee, and the sound of shepherds at sunset
استوقفتني قصيدة نزار قباني…
يا سِتَّ جنوب لبنان،
لم يُحبّوه، بل أحبّوا الحرب فيه،
وجعلوه مفتوحًا للنُّعوش.والجنوب الذي أعرفه:
فيروز، القهوة، وصوت الرعاة عند الغروب pic.twitter.com/0zfhHfFUaL— Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya | إيلا واوية (@CaptainElla1) May 18, 2026
One from my feed. “Bird brains” my tuches!
Damn, this is peak bird intelligence.
These birds saw someone feeding a wounded bird, so they started pretending they were also injured. pic.twitter.com/mPNfl5Dh98
— Nature & Animals🌴 (@naturelife_ok) May 19, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was four years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-20T10:40:54.275Z
. . and one from Dr. Cobb, ripped from the depths of Wikipedia:
— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2026-05-19T05:31:45.596Z
It would be wonderful if we had, in the US, a leader that would actually lead, rather than ape an angry windsock while strongly giving the impression of manipulating the situation as a grift. But, unfortunately, we are no so anointed.
On the positive, today I added (via Jerry and Dr Cobb) another lovely non-english obscenity to my collection (numbering several hundred at this time, over at least 30 languages. Kinda lost track a long time ago. They find their way out on their own, usually) I don’t think I had any Cantonese in my collection previously, though several Mandarin due to an ex.
Yes. Startle factor made Tunemah laugh out loud funny for me this morning. Glad Matthew is focussed on serious research between his brilliant offerings. I wondered why this peak never was mentioned among my sierra backpacking friends, so I looked it up: not for the average weekend hiker according both to wikipedia and some specialized trail summaries: (from ai wikipedia summary)
Tunemah Peak (11,894 ft) in Kings Canyon National Park is considered the hardest west-side peak to reach in the Sierra Nevada. A typical backpacking trip spans 45+ miles with over 13,000 ft of elevation gain, featuring demanding cross-country routes, rough terrain, and steep scree.
Hike & Route Overview
Reaching the peak is generally an advanced multi-day expedition requiring wilderness navigation skills and off-trail travel.Starting Points: Most hikers approach from the west using trailheads like Rancheria or Hoffman.
Route Details: Hikers usually traverse via Crown Valley or Woodchuck Country before navigating toward Blue Canyon and the base of the peak.
The Final Ascent: The standard route to the summit is via the Northwest Ridge, which involves navigating steep talus and occasionally avoiding cliff bands.
Essential Tips
Duration: This is a formidable undertaking. Even experienced mountaineers often schedule 4 to 5 days to complete the loop to avoid dangerous exhaustion.
Navigation: You will need to travel “cross-country,” meaning a physical topographic map, compass, and strong route-finding skills are essential.
Permits: As this peak lies deep within Kings Canyon National Park and the John Muir Wilderness, you are required to secure an overnight wilderness permit from Recreation.gov.
Conditions: The summer months (July and August) are the only reliable climbing windows, but hikers must contend with harsh seasonal mosquitoes and typical high-altitude thunderstorms.
The intelligence of birds is a marvel. Consider spatial intelligence. Unlike humans, who navigate in 2 dimensions, birds are capable of navigating in 3 dimensions, often including synchronized flight with other birds. And they do this without the benefit of a cerebral cortex (neocortex)!
While the circuitry of bird brains shares many commonalities with those of mammalian brains, there are some very fundamental differences. Speaking for myself (and some of my colleagues), the comparative anatomy of bird and mammalian brains, and the behavioral correlations, is one of the most fascinating aspects of evolution. Especially since the cellular physiology within those circuits is quite similar, which has huge implications for the timeline of divergence of the cells and circuits of the vertebrate brain.
I read the President’s actions differently. I see him as a man who feels that war is just another way to apply pressure to an adversary (like tariffs). This got him where he wanted on Venezuela, but he seems to be misunderstanding Iran, which is odd, because I am sure there are any number of people telling him that. Trump may be governed by other considerations, including humanitarian and logistical, but that’s not clear.