The week has flown by fast, like a migrating mallard, and June is nearly on us; today is Friday, May 29, 2026, and International Everest Day, celebrating the first confirmed ascent of the world’s highest peak (8,848.86 meters or 29,031.7 ft) on this day in 1953. The summiteers were, of course, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. I have hiked to Everest twice, and have some lovely pictures of it, but they are 35mm Kodachrome slides that I can’t reproduce here. You’ll have to settle for a photo of the ice axe used by Hillary on the ascent, photographed by moi at the Auckland Memorial War Museum:
It’s also Paper Clip Day, International Coq au Vin Day, National Biscuit Day, World Digestive Health Day, and End of the Middle Ages Day. Why the latter? The link says this:
Many historians consider May 29, 1453, to be the date on which the Middle Ages ended. It was on this date that Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Empire, after being under siege for almost two months. With the fall of the capital, the Byzantine Empire ended as well. Following the fall, Byzantine scholars left Constantinople and Greek culture began being studied outside of the area of the old empire. Learning based on classical Greek sources was revived and it helped bring on the Renaissance.
Here are what is reputed to be the best biscuits in Amerca (ergo in the world), part of a fantastic Southern breakfast I had at the Loveless Motel and Cafe outside Nashville, Tennessee (Martha Stewart, eating there, said it “was the best breakfast I ever had”). They were certainly the best biscuits I ever had, and, combined with eggs, grits, country ham, and red-eye gravy, I can’t think of a better breakfast, either. The jams in the plastic cups are homemade.
The biscuits come as soon as you sit down, so if you eat there don’t scarf them all up, as you won’t have appetite for the feast to come. And don’t worry, the biscuits keep coming. (There is a “biscuit lady” in the kitchen whose sole task is to make them).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 29 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Breaking News, Ripped from the Headlines: Yesterday the NBC Evening News announced jubilantly that the U.S. and Iran are near a final deal on ending the war. Well, not so fast. What we have is “a draft plan on the table” (NYT) and “perhaps the makings of a deal” (WSJ). Here’s a rather lame proclamation from the WSJ:
The U.S. and Iran are within reach of an agreement to wind down the war, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Thursday, but President Trump has yet to sign off on it, and the White House wants a deal that satisfies several key conditions.
“We perhaps have the makings of a deal here,” Bessent said from the White House, noting both sides have been swapping proposals. “Everything depends on what the president wants to do, and President Trump is not going to make a bad deal.”
Bessent said Iran must agree to dispose of its highly enriched uranium, commit to never seek a nuclear weapon and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz—elements U.S. officials previously said would be in the so-called memorandum of understanding.
The statement came after a U.S. official said the two countries were closing in on a 60-day agreement, including a mutual unwinding of blocks in the strait over the first 30 days. Axios reported earlier on the details.
Stay tuned (in two months). Any promises from Iran about never seeking nuclear weapons, should that be in the agreement, will be arrant lies.
*The U.S. is continuing its strikes on Iran as Iran attacked Kuwait, possibly going after a miitary base there. This was from yesterday’s WaPo:
“We’ve been doing this for a few months. Vietnam lasted 19 years. Korea lasted eight years. Afghanistan lasted many years,” Trump said when asked what the time frame is for the war ending.
Iran, he said was “negotiating on fumes” and had made a mistake by thinking “they were going to outwait me” because he would be under political pressure from this year’s midterm elections.
“I don’t care about the midterms.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday morning that it had retaliated against a U.S. attack outside the airport in Bandar Abbas, a city on the Strait of Hormuz, by targeting a U.S. base in Kuwait where the strike originated. Further U.S. attacks would receive a “more decisive” response, it said, according to state media. U.S. Central Command said Kuwaiti forces had successfully intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile.
Hours earlier, U.S. forces struck an Iranian launch site in Bandar Abbas, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, after U.S. shot down five Iranian one-way attack drones that Centcom said “posed a clear threat in and near the Strait of Hormuz.”
The official described the U.S. action, first reported by Reuters, as “measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire.” It follows similar strikes on Monday, during a ceasefire between the two sides that has looked increasingly shaky.
As readers suspected, this war is going to continue, and each exchange of attacks makes it harder to confect an agreement, despite the crowing from the Trump administration. My plan, which is mine: the U.S. needs to go harder after Iran, and stop dilly-dallying around striking missile sites. If they can’t get an agreement to completely ruin Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons, and get the Strait of Hormuz open freely, then they should stop trying to get compromises on these issues. But I am no pundit!
*Trump’s stooges in the administration are pushing the government to start printing $250 bills in honor of the American anniversary. And guess who’s picture is supposed to be on them? Here’s a design for the bill, which, frankly, frightens me:
An excerpt:
The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
As part of the effort, Beach in August and September provided bureau staff with mock-up designs for the note, including one that shows President Donald Trump’s face in the center of the $250 bill between the signatures of the president and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to one of the employees and records reviewed by The Washington Post.
The artist who said he designed the mock-up told The Post that he had spoken with Trump about it.
British painter Iain Alexander said Trump endorsed changes to his original design, such as adding the colors of the American flag and a logo commemorating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“He likes to call me his favorite British artist,” said Alexander, a former competitive swimmer and DJ who describes himself as a royal portrait artist of Queen Elizabeth II and others.
No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat showed up on a 5-cent note. Legislation that would allow Trump to appear on a $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary but has languished.
In a statement, a Treasury Department spokesperson said the printing office “is conducting appropriate planning and due diligence” in response to the proposed legislation.
“Should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation,” the statement said.
The director of the printing bureau, Patricia “Patty” Solimene, and other staff repeatedly explained to Beach and Brown that there were legal and procedural obstacles to producing the note and that it would take years longer than they envisioned, the four employees said.
I wonder whether Congress will approve this bill about a bill (there’s of course no doubt that Trump would sign it). Right now a straight-up vote would pass it, assuming it’s a vote along party lines, but since it will take years to actually produce this infernal bill, it might be stopped after the midterms or when (fingers crossed) we get a reasonable President.
*The NYT has an interview with (Sir) Paul McCartney, who’s 83: “Paul McCartney doesn’t need to make music anymore. He just loves to.” He’s just put out a new album.
For Paul McCartney, songwriting isn’t only a job, a craft and an emotional outlet. It’s a compulsion and a craving.
“People say, ‘Well, why do you still write songs?’ And it’s just because I love it. I’m addicted,” he said in an interview at Boulevard Carroll, a warren of recording and rehearsal studios on Manhattan’s Far West Side, where McCartney, 83, had just wrapped up an afternoon of band practice for the season finale of “Saturday Night Live.” “Out of a black hole comes forth milk and honey. And it’s so great, the feeling.”
Prolific as he has been — through the Beatles, Wings and solo albums — McCartney doesn’t follow any songwriting discipline or routine. “I’ll just be somewhere, and with some time to spare, and my guitar will be there, or I’ll be near a piano. And the urge will take me,” he said. “Whenever I’ve hit something, it’s just like, ooh, wow. It’s a great feeling. You know, the whole creative thing is a great thing. I say it beats working.”
Even for a rehearsal, McCartney was nattily dressed. He sported a blue jacket, a black shirt with pink pin dots, black pants, white-soled shoes like karate slippers and socks with a psychedelic design of blue bubbles below a bright yellow stripe.
. . .In person, McCartney carries his six decades of fame with extraordinary grace. He’s genial and unpretentious, proud but not arrogant and still amazed and delighted at his life as a musician. “I wonder these days at how I ended up as a songwriter,” he mused. “Because, you know, I’m just some kid who went to school, went to the careers master who said to me, you know, ‘You haven’t got qualifications and, there’s not … I don’t see a great future for you.’
“So I had to take that and just sort of think, ‘Sod you — I’m gonna do something.’ And it made me work for success harder, because I wasn’t supposed to be successful. So writing songs was one of the great things about my growing up.”
. . .He added, “John had a much harder edge, which I liked a lot. When we were working together, it was very inspiring, very useful to have that kind of edge. And I think possibly it was good for him to have something less hard, something maybe a little bit more romantic. It’s just my way, you know. I’m that kind of person. I like certain things that some people might just sniff at and say, ‘Oh my God, that is so corny.’”
But at times, he has also felt misunderstood. “It’s funny how you get stereotyped,” he said. “Being called the cute one in the Beatles — that was like the worst insult you could give me. I really didn’t like that. It’s like, ‘No, no no, I’m more than that.’ But it also is true that if I’m writing a song, I do like it to have that sort of loving element. But to offset that, I often find that something a bit more realistic creeps in. I like the mix of the two.”
His melodic gift can hide his darker moments. When I asked which of his lesser-known songs he’s fond of, he cited “Daytime Nightime Suffering” and “Arrow Through Me,” two Wings songs from the 1970s that are not only full of musical twists, but also harbor troubled thoughts.
. . .McCartney is no longer concerned with making hits. “In attempting to be creative, it’s good if a lot of people like it,” he said. “But it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s nowhere near as important to me as it is to some people. I like freedom. And if the freedom leads to a hit, great. If the freedom leads to just me enjoying it, probably even greater.”
What matters for him now is simply making music. “It’s a magical world, music,” McCartney said. “Scientifically, even, it is just a bunch of frequencies. So how can these frequencies affect your heart? I get it, if it’s got a lyric, sometimes you go, oh yeah. But if it’s just a melody — how can that make you cry? That’s magic. I love it.”
Here is his song “Days We Left Behind” that he sang on SNL. Yes, his voice is gone and he knows it. I didn’t like this song the first time I heard it, but I have to agree with the readers who said it was okay. It’s not a classic, and I’d like to hear the Beatles do it, but so be it. It reminds me of George Harrison’s Beatles remembrance song “When We Was Fab,” except this is about an old man pondering his past, not the Beatles.
*The purported “NGO” of Euro-Med was one of the main sources of Nicholas Kristof’s column that accused Israel of having a policy of systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including dog rape. Over at Quillette, Gerald Steinberg shows that Euro-Med is a thinly disguised organization designed to promote Jew hatred and terrorism.
The NGO at the centre of Kristof’s essay calls itself the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med or EMHRM), which Kristof blandly describes as “often critical of Israel.” Registered in Switzerland in 2015, this Palestinian NGO has a mailing address in Geneva and an unknown number of staffers paid with funds from undisclosed donors. The publication of a 69-page Euro-Med report on 12 April was the source of Kristof’s accusation that Israel “employs systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.” The report was accompanied by an extensive public-relations campaign, which included promotion in Turkish-government-controlled news platform TRT, Qatar-linked propaganda platform Middle East Eye, and many other outlets that routinely promote invented or tendentious stories about Israel.
The April Euro-Med report was also the source of the most sensational allegation in Kristof’s essay—that Israel trains police dogs to “rape prisoners and detainees.” Anti-Zionist influencers and officials seized on this charge and were already energetically circulating it before Kristof’s essay appeared last week.
. . . Euro-Med adopted this model [of NGOs having terrorist goals], and Israel has long considered the NGO to be a Hamas propaganda front. In 2012, the organisation’s founder and chairman Ramy Abdu was photographed posing with the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (killed by Israel in Tehran in July 2024). And at a 2013 event he organised in Gaza (“Hamas Movement Within the International Context”), Abdu was pictured next to Hamas’s international-relations officer Osama Hamdan. Abdu also created and led a series of propaganda frameworks, including the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza and the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR). In 2013, Israel’s Ministry of Justice listed Abdu as one of Hamas’s “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. In November 2020, the Minister of Defence sanctioned him “in relation to his work with the designated terrorist organization ‘IPalestine—International Platform of NGOs Working for Palestine (aka ‘IPNGO’)’ that belongs to and acts on behalf of the designated terrorist organisation HAMAS.”
. . . Another important figure at Euro-Med is Muhammad Shehada, the organisation’s chief of programmes and communications, who posted a picture of himself with Ismail Haniyeh in November 2014 under the caption: “Talking a gently walk and a selfi with the ex-Prime Minister of#Gaza and the leader of #Hamas: #Ismail_Haniya.” Between February 2021 and August 2023, Shehada wrote twenty articles for Newsweek(which still describes him as a “writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip”),and from July 2017 to January 2024, he was a regular contributor to the Israeli left-wing newspaper, Haaretz. In addition to which, he has been quoted by the Washington Post and the New York Times, invited to address a Harvard human-rights centre (in February 2025), and been appointed as a visiting fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations think tank.
Richard Falk—a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and professor of international law at Princeton University—is chairman of Euro-Med’s Board of Trustees. In 2011, when Falk was serving as the Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on Palestine (the position now held by Francesca Albanese), his crankery became so egregious that it was even condemned by the office of then-UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon. That same year, Falk published a cartoon on his personal blog that depicted an American dog in a kippa urinating on lady justice while it feasts on the skeletal remains of a small human corpse.
Here’s the cartoon published by Falk (from Quillette):
And of course, the dog-rape charge:
In this context, the chronology of events related to Euro-Med’s promotion of this story bears examination. On 19 June 2024, Dr. Muneer Al Barash, director general of the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, was interviewed in Arabic by Al Jazeera. According to an unofficial English translation posted on X, Al Barash referred to “trained dogs used to perform vile [sexual] acts on detainees.” Eight days later, the Euro-Med story quoted Fadi Bakr, a Palestinian lawyer arrested after the 7 October atrocities, as the sole witness to the allegation of dog rape. “Throughout the entire ordeal I endured,” he told the NGO, “this was among the most awful things that I witnessed.” But four days earlier, Bakr had given an interview to the radical Israeli opposition NGO B’Tselem and made no mention of this incident, even though he detailed many other aspects of his ordeal. Bakr’s testimony is not included in Euro-Med’s April 2026 report either.
None of the MSM seems moved to let us know about Shehada’s background, or Abdu’s for that matter. Finally, Euro-Med certainly published antisemitic lies before:
Euro-Med’s dog-rape allegations and the wider claims of sexual violence are the most recent in a series of demonisation efforts engineered to elicit revulsion at alleged Israeli behaviour. In November 2023, the NGO published an article in which it alleged:
The Israeli army has been holding the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed during its genocide in the Gaza Strip beginning on 7 October, and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has called for the creation of an independent international investigation committee into organ theft suspicions.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends and comrades: this is the “NGO” on which Nicholas Kristof relied heavily. And the NYT is standing behind his allegations. He won’t get fired, and I doubt he was even reprimanded. It stinks.
*Finally, it’s become news (the AP’s odd news) when a tennis player has to take an unscheduled bathroom break during a major tournament. But he really had to go, and it was apparently not micturation!
Home player Arthur Gea ran off the court for an emergency bathroom break early in the first set of his French Open debut on Sunday.
“I need to go to the bathroom. I can’t move anymore. I’m going to (go) on the court,” Gea told the chair umpire in French before hastily running off Court Suzanne-Lenglen.
The 135th-ranked Gea was trailing 13th-seeded Karen Khachanov 4-2 when he made his move. Khachanov won 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-0.
Usually, bathroom breaks are only permitted between sets.
Khachanov protested to the chair umpire as three minutes passed between games at a point in the match that was not a changeover when players change ends.
Gea said the umpire allowed him the break because of “medical circumstances” and that he was given some medicine to settle his stomach pain.
After the match, Gea said he had not felt ill the night before but started feeling unwell when he woke up in the morning.
Here’s a video of Gea begging to empty his bowels:
@tntsports “I cannot wait… it’s not a joke” 🚽 A desperate Arthur Gea pleaded with the umpire for a toilet break during his first round match at Roland-Garros. #tennis #RolandGarros #FrenchOpen
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is banging away:
Hili: What are you writing?
Andrzej: A respectful letter to an idiot.
In Polish:
Hili: Co piszesz?
Ja: Uprzejmy list do idioty.
*******************
From TherionArms, another example of weird medieval calligraphy:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff (the cat would also be content without a peach or a lemon):
From Stacy:
From Masih. The English translation of the print is below, but her words are captioned in English:
Today, I appeared in a U.S. federal court to face off, for the fourth time, with one of the individuals that the IRGC had hired to kill me.
Jonathan Lodeholt, the criminal, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Rivera, who was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in the previous trial, had hired Lodeholt, who was an American citizen. Both were operating under the orders of Farhad Shakari, an IRGC agent.
The Iranian regime had offered them $100,000 to kill me.
In court, in front of the judge, I said that I am a journalist. My only weapon is my voice, and my work is to be the voice of the people of Iran. But the Islamic Republic, even here, on American soil, is trying to kill its opponents.
Shakari is still taking refuge in Iran. He is still free. This case is not over.
As long as the Iranian regime is in power, none of us—whether inside or outside Iran—will have any security.
امروز در دادگاه فدرال آمريكا حضور پيدا كردم تا براى چهارمين بار با يكى از افرادى كه سپاه پاسداران براى كشتنم استخدام كرده بود، روبه رو شوم.
جاناتان لودهولت مجرم و به ١٠ سال زندان محكوم شد.
ريورا كه در دادگاه قبلى مجرم و به ۱۵ سال حبس محكوم شد، لودهولت كه یک شهروند آمريكايي بود را… pic.twitter.com/SxWoFkpdON— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 27, 2026
*Speaking of Nicholas Kristof, his second unsubstantiated accusation of sexual assault, this time on captured members of a flotilla, philosopher Maarten Boudry canceled his NYT subscriptsion. See his two tweets below (the other two sources from his first tweet are in a thread, and the articles to which he refers are here and here).
The @nytimes “dog rape” story was so grotesquely bad and irresponsible — and the response from @nytimes so obtuse and deflective — that I’ve decided to cancel my subscription. I have no interest in funding this kind of antisemitic drivel. If you read these three damning pieces,…
— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) May 22, 2026
I wouldn’t have cancelled my subscription over one idiotic column. What clinched it was the fact that @NYTimes unequivocally “stands by” the story and considers its journalism as rigorous as any other news report. Fuck you, NYT.
“All published Opinion pieces must meet high… https://t.co/p5kMMADRml pic.twitter.com/PBW34Bijrr
— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) May 22, 2026
From Luana: more violence inspired by Luigi Mangione. You can read more about the case here.
Palisades Fire ends up being one of the most destructive acts of left wing terrorism in modern history.
The arsonist Rinderknecht searched “free Luigi Mangione,” “let’s take down all the billionaires” and “let’s kill all the billionaires” before setting the Lachman Fire which… pic.twitter.com/laUfBmy8fm
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) May 5, 2026
Larry the Cat of course isn’t down with the new $250 Trump banknote. (He means “Fascist Cash,” of course.
Fash cash https://t.co/TRRS1cpogY
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 28, 2026
One from my feed. Turtle rescue! (sound up)
🐢 बीच पर घूमने आये सैलानी ने इस भारी भरकम कछुए को सीधा करके फिर से ज़िंदा कर इंसानियत का परिचय दिया pic.twitter.com/18NreGn9ec
— Geeta Patel (@geetappoo) May 28, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Belgian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. Georges was eleven years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-29T09:29:50.575Z
And one from Dr. Cobb. He’s referring to “gasoline”, and the rest of the thread explains this post:
Yes, calling a liquid "gas" used to bug me no end. Then I discovered that it ought actually to be "caz," not "gas." It's based on a trade name.A thread… 1/6
— Duncan Eagleson (@duncaneagleson.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T17:37:42.822Z
The McCartney interview has something to it – reminds me of a Steve Jobs interview about when Apple fired him – he didn’t care because he realized he was still doing something he loved to do … or whatever…
I like how he (McCartney) said everything is just frequencies – … sin(100.000%)+cos(100.000%)! 😁
…..
Here’s the Jobs quote at some length :
“But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2005/06/youve-got-find-love-jobs-says
I’m pleased Paul mentions two songs from Wings’ Back to the Egg era, an album that both critics and Paul himself have denigrated since its release. It’s long been my favorite Wings album. Maybe it’s a hint that it will finally get the proper “deluxe” treatment that has eluded it for all these years.
A colleague muttered that we could reach a situation where it is possible to both print Trump’s $250 bill and also comply with the law.
I’m not holding my breath.
Even if that $250 gets approved, I doubt I’ll live long enough to see one. Just look at how long we’ve heard of a Harriet Tubman $20. Announced in 2016, last time I looked – maybe a couple yrs ago – it wasn’t expected till 2026. Now it’s 2030.
I can’t quite get over my preference for scones over biscuits. Assimilation has its limits.
Not in favor of a $250 bill. First of all, it’s a vanity project and too expensive. It costs a lot of money to implement a new currency design. Second, tradition and the law are against living people being on U.S. currency. Of course, Congress could change that, but it seems unnecessary. Personally, if I were Trump, I wouldn’t draw attention to the idea that prices might justify a new, larger denomination. Of course, it might just be Trump twisting his opponents’ tails. I have no issue with that.
If Trump really wants a new $250 bill, he will just nprtomise to give 4 of them to each American, and then he will see approval go through the roof.
Biscuits are one of the few food items that are just unavailable in Israel (or at least I have not found them). They are among my favorite foods. Why is it that you can get a bacon cheeseburger in the Jewish state, but not a biscuit? (FTR, I have nothing against the availability of bacon cheeseburgers). Chicken-fried steak is another example. We need more southerners moving over here and opening restaurants.
Regarding the NYT, it is notable that the scientist Scott Aaronson, author of the blog ShtetlOptimization and former NYT contributor, has posted that he will no longer contribute to the NYT (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9758). One could only hope that others of his stature will do the same.
Last but not least, Masih is an important moral voice for our times. May she live long and prosper.
“Morning Joe” on MS NOW played a supercut yesterday of the many times Trump has said Iran wants to make a deal, starting on Feb. 10 and running through this week. It’s comical and pathetic at the same time.
Richard Falk is the guy who wrote in the NYTimes that Ayatollah Khomeini would be a moderate and progressive figure.
Richard Falk, a prominent international law scholar and former UN Special Rapporteur, famously met with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in France in January 1979 on the eve of the Iranian Revolution. Shortly after, Falk published a highly controversial op-ed in The New York Times titled “Trusting Khomeini,” in which he portrayed the Ayatollah as a moderate and progressive figure who could establish a humane, democratic model of governance.