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.
I think his WINGS stuff was totally up to Beatles level and better than a much of his later stuff – which isn’t junk. Just that wings was so excellent.
best,
D.A.
NYC
It’s hard to believe that Paul (and Ringo and the Stones) are older now than George Burns was when he starred in “Oh God!” I thought he was ancient.
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’m not sure if this specific bill even has a purpose beyond his personal vanity. Does anyone really use cash any more? I’ve had the same two $10 bills in my wallet for months, and I only got those because there was something that specifically needed some cash. The previous one lasted more than a year before it got spent (or more likely purloined by her indoors!) Coins in the US have essentially no value, as compared to Europe or Canada where a pocketful of change might be enough to buy something. Cards and phone taps are just an easier form of transaction.
Convenience is great, Simon, I agree.
But the thing is we should keep cash, at least as a inconvenient Thing – because it is the last real refuge of privacy.
best,
D.A.
NYC
You might be surprised at how many people still use cash, though the messaging over the last ten years or so has leaned that there is no reason for cash if you aren’t committing a crime.
I tend to use mostly cash, as I don’t like getting hit with an upcharge just for paying (2% is what most credit card processors charge, but some businesses here go as high as 8%), it is easier to keep tabs on casual spending, I deal with a lot of farmers and small businesses, where cash is king (I prefer getting produce and meat from the grower when I can, and I generally can in my area), when traveling, especially for work in remote areas, cash is often needed, and a host of other reasons.
Maybe I’m just outdated, but, unlike so many of my coworkers and neighbors, I am not constantly in unreasonable debt.
As to whether THIS proposed bill has a purpose outside of vanity I will venture no. It is hard enough to break a $100 in the wild at this point, and many businesses will not accept them at all, even for large purchases.
Agree context is important. My daughter and son-in-law live in a rural small town and have the same cash relationship with several of their farm-based food suppliers. I, in contrast, deal regularly with places that don’t accept cash (a limited number thus far but apparently growing) and have not seen a “cash only” sign locally for many years.
Assuming that whatever the denomination (I would prefer $3), any new render-unto-Trump currency will not be printed before a new administration cancels it. So instead of wasting the design and engraving work, let’s have a denomination that might actually be needed in the near future: the 100,000,000,000,000
Papiermark¹ dollar bill.…………
¹ Put into circulation in 1923; see Wikipedia.
Barbara:
I think the old (as in, maybe 20 years ago) Zimbabwe notes might have gone as high as $100,000,000,000,000 – but I could easily be a factor of 1000 off.
I don’t understand what he meant.
PCC(E) there are places – and wild battles ending up in court in NYC – that “don’t accept cash” (which is illegal) – like the fru-fru icecreamery downstairs, other elite serving companies. And others who ONLY use cash – which can sometimes be sleazy b/c the assumption is that “privacy” is tax evasion.
This cash v tech battle plays out internationally. At one end is Sweden where cash is almost extinct, and China where they have their own computer based Big Brother system… to VERY cash rich societies in the 3rd world and … Japan where cash is the default and still king (a weird country in many ways).
D.A.
NYC
That if Trump happened to be dead, then he’d be eligible to be pictured on the bill. (I think he thought that was the brightest possibility, although under those conditions who’d push the idea of a new banknote?)
We are still waiting on cholesterol to do its work. As I said, not holding my breath.
I can’t quite get over my preference for scones over biscuits. Assimilation has its limits.
In general, yes but….there are biscuits and then there are biscuits. Loveless or one of the Nashville Biscuit Love locations might challenge your preferences.
They are different species!
But with a very recent common ancestor!
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.
As I tend to do, I think this is a minor attempt to distract from news stories about the Iran war and about other bad news.
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.
Very disappointing that the regime in Iran is hanging on so tenaciously. They fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and of course Hamas. IMHO, Trump should maintain the blockade. It might yet drive the regime out, although I’m losing hope. Also the other Gulf countries are no doubt pressing for an end to all blockades.
BTW, you can digitize slides these days. You can buy products to do it.
Maartin is a very cool guy PCC(E) introduced us to. I congratulated him on X for unsubscribing to the Jew Mashing NY Times (as I did some time ago). He has no dog in the fight but defends Israel (and civilization) admirably.
Oh goodness – the President’s $250 bill. (sigh)
Of course it is illegal, stupid and corrupt. Upside? … it pisses off the right people.
Also, I think only Singapore and Switzerland have such high denominations, and we DO need to beat them so… “meh”. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
One can still get 500 euro notes, and maybe even 1000 euro notes.
Has anyone else noticed how Trump’s picture on the bill resembles his mug shot? Have a look. The only difference is that the picture on the bill seems to have Boris Johnson’s hair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mug_shot_of_Donald_Trump
“He won’t get fired, and I doubt he was even reprimanded. It stinks.”
Why would a man get fired for spreading useful lies and propaganda, on this or any other topic? Incompetence has been redefined across many politicized organizations as “lacking the ability to concoct useful lies, spread helpful propaganda, or assent to those who do.”
Kristof is clearly competent.
I’m not surprised about the provenance of Kristof’s “information.” But for me the main takeaway from Kristof’s piece is what it says about the journalistic standards held by the New York Times. I just completed reading Israel’s Civil Commission’s 298 pp. report on the sexual atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 (and its aftermath), in which the documentation—in the form of footnotes—is more voluminous than the text of the report. (https://www.civilc.org/silenced-no-more)
Kristof’s documentation is the null set. As the New York Times published the salacious piece the day before the Civil Commission’s report came out, there was no way that the Civil Commission’s sober report could compete for eyeballs against visions of dogs committing rape. Was the timing mere coincidence?
Regarding the war in Iran, I understand the need for talk, but I don’t understand why the U.S. is not using its military leverage to greater effect. Report after report tells us that Iran is rebuilding its capacity to project power. If we know that to be true, we also know where those centers of activity are. Why are we not destroying them? Diplomacy is not just two sides sitting at a table talking over the fruit bowl. I’d like to understand why we are not using the capabilities we have at hand. When the history books are written by those in the know, I will be first in line to read them and to learn.
“Regarding the war in Iran, I understand the need for talk, but I don’t understand why the U.S. is not using its military leverage to greater effect.”
The longer the ceasefire continues, the more I might share this frustration. I’m not convinced there is a “need” for extended talk. (Admittedly, our diplomacy likely has targets beyond the Iranian leadership and its factions.) But I prefer Trump’s current posture of “I have all the time in the world, and I can strike you at will—now or later—as I choose” over his earlier “I already won.”
Yesterday we discussed possibilities for regime change, but that is not a US military objective. The chief concern remains the uranium stockpile in the near term and nuclear development in the long. Degrading Iranian conventional power projection that could threaten our forces in the region remains, I assume, a top priority. Toward that latter end, if target opportunities are high priority and fleeting, then strike now. If we can monitor them and they don’t present significant risk to future operations, then urgency isn’t as high. Reasonable minds can—and will—disagree on the urgency.
Yes. I agree that waiting is better than declaring victory and then pulling out. Waiting chokes the regime financially, which I’m sure the Trump administration understands.
I also accept that if we can simply monitor developments regarding projection of conventional power—the missiles—it’s OK to wait, so long as we will be able to respond if necessary. Perhaps if the current negotiation fails, the U.S. will then go after the sites where rebuilding is taking place. Eventually, when the U.S. draws down its forces in the region, it may be more difficult for us to do so. Surely the strategists are discussing all these things. Oh to be a fly on the wall.
Is Congress holding the President on a short leash, now that his sixty days are up? Congress has been making unsupportive mojo noises of late. The politicians seem (to me) to want Iran to win so that Donald Trump loses. They are waiting for him to give them an excuse to slide in the shiv.
I know I know, “Since when did Trump ever care about Congress or the law? Scoff Scoff!”, then follows a long list of his “many obvious crimes”, but facts are facts. He’s hitting Iran only in retaliation/defence of US troops, not as part of diplomacy being war carried on with other means, and he seems to be frustrating his own war aims. Is this his personality or is he hearing the “I”-word being whispered? Iran isn’t so much playing Trump as it is playing Congress and the American public.
OTOH it may be more economical of munitions and jet fuel to blockade the coast and sit back and wait than to go after “missile launchers”, which might turn out to be lengths of angle-iron and T-bar from Home Depot welded together into X’s and placed on the beach to cradle anti-ship missiles to point them in the right general direction. (Many Houthi missile launchers destroyed at great expense were of this type.) For a vertically launched ballistic missile with its own inertial guidance, the “launcher” is still pretty much a disposable slab of concrete after the shot. Liquid fueling requires more supporting structure. Solid fuel none at all. (Your Tridents and Minutemen are designed to find their way to their targets even if the submarines and silos are destroyed in the act of launching them.) The juice is perhaps in making it impossible for Iran to build missiles, not going after the launchers or even the caves the missiles are hidden in until rolled out for launching. It’s not like destroying an artillery emplacement above Omaha Beach to prevent it firing hundreds of rounds. (Which is a difficult target for other reasons.)
The exception is surface-to-air missiles which are deployed from sophisticated mobile vehicles with associated radar systems as part of an integrated air-defence network. If Iran is rebuilding those, (how? they come from Russia) they would need to be degraded in advance of any attack on Iran’s ability to project power….but do not themselves project power.
Many different national bank notes featuring the Dear Leader’s image (e.g., Saddam Hussein, both al-Assads, Idi Amin, Papa-Doc and Baby-Doc Duvalier, etc. ) can be savored at: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/leaders/
Thanks for that link Jon, always enjoy your posts.
I’m into banknote art/collection as well as dictatorships which I spend a lot of time researching because I’m a columnist but mainly a … ghoul. 🙂
All of Trump’s aesthetics and many interactions are so “Dear Leader” it is almost parody.
Keep well,
D.A.
NYC
You had mentioned having 35mm slides from a visit to Everest. It is easy to have such slides digitized. Services for that include area businesses with photographic services (Walmart, various video transfer stores nearby), and also they can be sent to online businesses. I would first try a small sample to see how they come out.
There is a really funny story now about an albino bull who was spared from sacrifice at the Muslim Eid holiday, because it resembles and is named after Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/28/blond-bangladeshi-buffalo-nicknamed-donald-trump-saved-from-eid-sacrifice
Ever at the edge of my roolz limits, I beg your indulgence for a fun celebration I think WEIT people will enjoy – of an atheist alternative to celebrating Iron Age nonsense:
Puppy and I are off to “Manhattanhenge” tonight.
Its when the sunset aligns (twice a year) along the E-W Manhattan grid of streets. Popularized over the last decade or so, it has become quite a Thing with throngs of mainly locals taking pics and selfies on the skyscraper lined streets in Midtown and other bidirectional, wider streets like 14th near me.
A good, secular time is had by all and every year the fun and crowds increase. No need for skygods, just enjoy a cool architecture enriched sunset! To take a bet, I see it becoming much bigger in future years (given current trends).
D.A.
NYC
“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.”
Anything left out? What kind of drawers did he wear?
“We proudly videoed raping and killing and other sundry war crimes,” said Hamas.
“How dare Israel!” Said an alarming number of people in response.
I rewatched “Blackhawk Down” last night, and I hadn’t watched it since the 90’s when it first came out. (I forgot how many future “stars” were in that film.) But it’s a bit of a harbinger of what’s going on in Iran in that America seems to get itself into conflicts without any understanding of the ground rules and realities and the fact we play nice: the psychology of those in the conflict, nothing to live for desperation, the history, customs, culture, esoteric internal tensions, the fact of honor society, etc. The Cuban cigar smoking weapons dealer illustrated this perfectly. When the Americans kidnapped him, he was talking to the regime “I’ll be late” knowing our rules of engagement held little risk for him.
But we do like to go in guns blazing, might is right, shock and awe, etc. Does it ever really work when the dust settles? There might be examples of short term success, but America is rarely consistent in its military endeavors, and any change we affect is usually temporary. Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, Vietnam, Korea…hell we’re still officially at war with North Korea. (Not saying some of those countries didn’t came out OK years later) I am still pondering what Ridley Scott’s ultimate message was other than the “band of brothers” motif. Maybe it was simply that; and for a war movie, perhaps that’s enough. It did give a good depiction of what “boots on the ground” really means, and I understand why Trump et. al. do not want to go there. Though I don’t see how any of Trump’s overarching ambitions in Iran will be met without serious confrontation. Once you engage in war, the only way through is much death. Trump isn’t willing to sacrifice the soldiers that will theoretically be needed to get the job done (which I understand). He says he doesn’t care about the politics, but that’s simply another lie for the man who lies for a living. He’s in a quagmire as far as I can see. But I’m sure a breakthrough is right around the corner, or the next corner, no this other corner, in 2 months or 2 years. Hell, what can $30+ billion even buy nowadays? Is paying for peace possible with Iran?
I enjoy reading WEIT readers’ opinions and analysis about this Iran war, but I think a lot of the readers give far too much credit to the Trump administration’s endeavors, as if there is some 4D chess playing going on. I’m not convinced. As always, we’ll see…