It’s JUNE!!! Welcome to the first day of that month, Monday, June 1, 2026, and here’s a depiction of the month in the illuminated manuscript the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, with the caption “June Palais de la Cité and the Sainte-Chapelle”. This scene must be right outside 15th-century Paris, as that’s where Cité and Sainte-Chapelle are (they still look the same). The barefooted peasants are cultivating the crops:
It’s also Dinosaur Day, Heimlich Maneuver Day (see instructions below), National Hazelnut Cake Day, National Nail Polish Day, National Olive Day, and World Milk Day.
Here’s an up-to-date video showing what you should do if someone is choking. Watch it, as we should all know how to do this. Remember to first give those five sharp blows to the back.
There’s a Google Doodle below celebrating Pride Month. The caption: “In celebration of Pride Month, today’s Doodle celebrates the art of disco by shining a light on the LGBTQ+ artists who helped create space for everyone on the dance floor.” Click on the icon to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page
Da Nooz:
*After six musical acts pulled out of Trump’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, Trump has now announced that HE, the GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER, will headline the celebration.
After Trump said on his Truth Social platform Saturday that he understood “Artists are getting ‘the yips’” about performing and suggested headlining the event himself, Danielle Alvarez, an adviser to Freedom 250, confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump will now kick off an opening event for the fair.
“As the visionary behind the Great American State Fair, we are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24 in an opening ceremony celebrating America’s 250th birthday,” Alvarez said in a statement first shared with The Post. She called the multiday event “a World’s Fair celebrating the people, traditions, innovations, and spirit that make America the greatest nation on Earth.”
Trump earlier Saturday said that he was “ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally.”
Two of Trump’s advisers told The Post on Saturday, on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly, that they were quickly working to make his suggestion of being the fair’s opening act a reality.While the president’s post suggested he wanted his speech to take place on Wednesday, the Great American State Fair was originally set to begin June 25 and run through July 10.
And get a load of this fulminating narcissism, written by the President:
Prior to Freedom 250 confirming the newly planned speech, Trump in his Truth Social post wrote that he was “thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”
What’s he going to do for his opening act: give another speech? Will the other acts go on? Of course given the politics of most popular musicians, I’m not sure that even if Trump hadn’t politicized the event, musicians would have declined simply because the government (aka Trump) is behind this celebration. It’s a shame, as there are many good things about America, and what do we get? A CAGE FIGHT, for crying out loud!
*The CBC reported that an autistic girl, 14 years of age, went missing in Toronto, and her family offered a $25,000 for her safe return and lots of posters were put up. Would you be able to guess what happened when it was known she was Jewish? The posters were torn down, of course.
Toronto police say they’ve received reports of multiple posters for a missing teen girl being torn down, while her family has announced a $25,000-reward for any information leading to her “safe return.”
The 14-year-old girl was last seen in the area of Bathurst Street and Hotspur Road, south of Highway 401, on Saturday at 12:01 a.m., police say.
On Sunday, Toronto Reddit users posted images of what appeared to be torn-down posters reporting the girl missing. The Jewish and wider community in Toronto are concerned about these actions and the motivations behind them.
Nadine Ramadan, spokesperson for Toronto police, said in an email that police “understand reports of these posters being torn down are upsetting for the community.”
“However, removing posters is not necessarily a criminal offence,” she said. “Our focus remains on the investigation.”
Maureen Leshem, a spokesperson for the family, said it was “disturbing and cruel” to see the posters being torn down.
“When a family is desperately trying to find their child, this kind of behaviour should concern every person in our city,” she said in an emailed statement.
“Right now, the only focus should be on finding [her]. Instead, volunteers who have spent days and nights searching, postering, and raising awareness are watching those efforts deliberately undermined.”
Leshem said a $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the girl’s safe return.
You have to have no moral compass to tear down posters advertising for the return of an autistic girl–simply because she’s Jewish. But this is what’s happening in Canada these days, and not just Canada. But, there’s good news about the missing girl:
- UPDATE: Toronto police say the missing 14-year-old was found safe on May 28. You can find the latest here. CBC News is no longer naming the girl to protect her privacy now that she has been found.
No thanks to the haters.
*The “inclusive” mayor of NYC, Zohran Mamdani, is breaking a long tradition of city Mayors who will march in the annual parade honoring Israel. Mamdani has announced he won’t march, but he’ll ensure that lots of cops are on hand.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will not attend an annual parade honoring Israel on Sunday, breaking with a decades-long political custom because of his support of Palestinian rights.
Though it has gone by different names over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors and other political leaders eager to win over the throngs of flag-waving revelers who congregate on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.
Not so for Mamdani. Two weeks ago the mayor’s office released a video commemorating the Nakba, an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mamdani said at a news conference Thursday.
This is the first time in 60 years that the Mayor hasn’t marched in the Israel parade.
And, in fact, the Nakba really refers to the disaster that occurred to five Arab armies when they Israel the day it announced independence. Israel did not expel Arabs who weren’t fighting against them, but encouraged peaceful Arabs to stay. Many, many Arab residents of then fled Israel on their own— at the request of the Arab states attacking it, who said that they could return when Israel lost. It didn’t lose. Ergo, Nakba, an embarrassment for the Arab states. It’s absurd that the mayor’s office would release a video commemorating it: a blatant ideological statement that has nothing to do with the governance of New York City. A bit more:
The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, told reporters she would attend.
“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she said as she stood alongside Mamdani at police headquarters.
The mayor’s absence, though long expected, has given fresh fuel to opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani’s decision to not attend the parade “a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers.”
AD“Do us a favor, stay home,” he said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
Nope, but, as Sam Harris said, Mamdani is either an Islamist or a promoter of Islamism, which is a government run along Muslim Islamic lines. And it’s clear he’s an antisemite. Jews who voted for him are getting exactly what they deserve, even if it’s unexpected.
*A WSJ op-ed by the Editorial Board reports what happened when the University of California System dropped standardized tests like the SATs as requirements for admission.
Six years ago, in the 2020 year of progressive pandemic madness, the University of California led the Ivory Tower movement to drop standardized tests as an admissions requirement in the name of equity. The experiment has been a failure, as more than 750 professors in STEM disciplines across the UC system now admit in a cri de coeur to reverse course.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the professors write in an open letter to the Board of Regents signed by seven of nine chairs of UC math departments.
The Board of Regents in May 2020 moved to scrap the university’s SAT/ACT requirement on the spurious rationale that tests discriminate against minorities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appoints most regents, had claimed the tests exacerbate “the inequities for underrepresented students,” even though a faculty senate report found otherwise.
Test scores “add substantially to UC’s ability to predict student success” beyond high school grades, especially for minority groups, the faculty report said. It stressed that the university “does not appear to use standardized test scores in a way that amplifies racial disparities.” Without test scores, admissions would hinge on inflated grades, extracurricular activities and essays.
Note that the regents went against the faculty and against data suggesting that submitting tests in fact help get in qualified minorities.
Those warnings have borne out. The new faculty letter says that “for three consecutive years, 20-30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.” Drop standards, and learning mastery declines. Imagine that.
The letter stresses that current admissions standards cannot “reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation and AI-assisted application essays.” Eliminating the test requirement has resulted in admitting students to STEM programs “without a reliable measure of whether they are prepared to succeed. This serves no one well.”
“Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome,” the professors write. “Obscuring preparation gaps harms both students individually and the University collectively. It offers the appearance of access while undermining the chance of success.”
AI won’t help you much (if at all) on SATs, and the Berkeley data shows that you can’t have equity and merit—not so long as you don’t accept standardized tests. Colleges are starting to use them again, though.
*I keep reading about “suicidal empathy,” in which empathic feelings lead one down paths of supporting odious causes (college students supporting Hamas is one example); and now Gad Saad has a new eponymous book on it. Sadly, Quillette gave it a damning review.
Homeowner Jane invites the homeless James to live with her. “I’d hate to be homeless,” she tells herself. James starts to exploit and abuse her. She accepts it. “I would not exploit and abuse someone unless something truly terrible had happened to me,” she thinks. This is what Gad Saad would call “suicidal empathy.” In his book of the same name, the Canadian commentator rails against “the orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, empathy.”
There is merit to Saad’s critique. He is correct that empathy is problematic when people exaggerate the similarities between individuals. In all likelihood, James is not exploiting and abusing Jane because he has been maddened by trauma. He is, fundamentally, a less conscientious person.
Saad is clear—and rightly so—that he has no inherent objection to empathy. He objects to empathy, and all other emotions, when they are not regulated by rationality. The extent to which we empathise with other people must be framed by a rational understanding of those people and their circumstances.
. . .So far, so good. But Saad, a marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal, is a terrible guide to his theme. If the concept of “suicidal empathy” can be compared to an interesting neighbourhood, Saad does the equivalent of leading the reader on an extensive tour of an entire metropolis—ranting and bragging as he does so.
Saad has form here. A man who has never missed an opportunity to congratulate himself, he soaked his previous book—The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense—in narcissism, with incessant references to his courage, dedication, and football skills in the introduction alone. Suicidal Empathy isn’t quite that bad but he still can’t seem to finish a page without referencing his books, podcasts, talks et cetera; recounting his Twitter feuds; and making irrelevant and pandering remarks about contemporary politics.
This makes Suicidal Empathy almost impossible to read. Saad rambles smugly between subjects and tends to conflate sarcasm with wit—and with thinking that what makes a joke really entertaining is to repeat it. This passage may give you a sense of the Saad experience:
Late into the pandemic, the Quebec government had instituted a nighttime curfew that forbade people to walk their dogs outside, which they eventually rescinded after a dogged backlash. I hope that Fido does not have diarrhea during the curfew. After all, to walk your dog at 10:00 p.m. in a deserted residential area during a Montreal winter is simply too dangerous. You might pass the COVID virus to the accumulated snow. Much of the snow had yet to be mandatorily vaccinated, so empathetically speaking it was important to be vigilant. Snow Lives Matter.
I fully agree that COVID restrictions had diminishing returns. But so do jokes.
. . . In addition to this unfocused and self-satisfied style, there are deeper analytical problems. Saad is capable of making effective arguments (for example, he makes a decent case against “single-issue optimization” in the context of the pandemic). But he often leaps between arguments before he has actually finished making them, sacrificing thoroughness and coherence.
. . . If the Left can suffer from suicidal empathy, which is true, then right-wingers can suffer from homicidal incuriosity. This is a kind of self-absorbed arrogance that makes people assume that they have total knowledge of the facts of complex circumstances, including other people’s motivations, abilities, opinions, etc., and the power to control and reshape them as they please.
It goes on, but I’m familiar with Saad’s style, which is truly self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing. On the other hand, the Amazon rating is below, and on that page are a lot of blurbs from well known people. And it’s #3 on the NYT list of print/e-book nonfiction works. So somebody likes it! If you’ve read it, weigh in.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s still distressed at the state of the world:
Hili: Oh God, you look like you’ve just finished going through the news.
Me: You guessed it.
In Polish:
Hili: O Boże, wyglądasz jakbyś właśnie skończył przegląd wiadomości.
Ja: Zgadłaś.
*******************
From TherionArms, another great medieval letter:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Now That’s Wild:
From Masih, who breaks down on the CBS news as she thinks about Iranian protestors who have been killed or imprisoned. I’ve never heard her lose it before, but she’s a tough woman and four assassination attempts are too many:
I broke down crying on live CBS television. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. Because it was the 4th time that I sat in a courtroom watching actual assassins, convicted murderers sent by the Islamic Republic to kill me, face charges on American soil.
You’d think that feels… pic.twitter.com/DdLlqEGjy7
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 29, 2026
From Luana, who doesn’t like Grokipedia. I haven’t tried it, but you can find it here, and the PNAS assessment here, which is not positive about the AI encyclopedia:
No, headline writers, no.
According to the study, Grokipedia doesn’t “lean right.” It’s just slightly less left-leaning than Wikipedia.
Let me give team Grokipedia some free advice… 👇 pic.twitter.com/jVRqdp5yfn— Larry Sanger (@lsanger) May 29, 2026
Posted by Emma; a commenter notes, in response to criticism, that there is no way to plot biological sex as a continuous distribution; these are traits connected with sex:
When people claim sex is bimodal, they never define the X-axis: what are they measuring exactly and how?
Luckily for them, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do just that. And we’ve discovered that sex is… not actually bimodal at all.@FondOfBeetles pic.twitter.com/5aXvQeOuKJ
— Zachary Elliott (@zaelefty) May 31, 2026
Two from my feed. The first one I retweeted:
Ah, sexual selection. https://t.co/lsELHwobut
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 1, 2026
I love it when kittens stot around like antelopes. Here’s a translations from the Turkish:
It’s giving the world’s most beautiful poses. Anyone who claims otherwise can cry about it.
Dünyanın en güzel pozlarını veriyor. Aksini iddia eden ağlayabilir. pic.twitter.com/ve4RfDr8gm
— sokak kedisi (@denizseckin0555) June 1, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed, together with his mother, when both arrived at Auschwitz. Manuel would be 89 today had he not been exterminated.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-06-01T10:26:38.121Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. He calls this first one “poorly spuds”:
Have you, like me, spent the last 26 years worrying if the Canadian Potato Museum STILL has the display of various potato diseases with potatoes in little coffins? Stop worrying. I checked today. Still there.
— Steve Hayman 🇨🇦 (@shayman.bsky.social) 2026-05-26T20:17:47.192Z
Shark navels!
About 60% of sharks are viviparous, meaning they use placental gestation like humans.Which means: SHARKS CAN HAVE BELLY BUTTONS.These small scars generally heal/disappear in a few months after live birth, making them a useful indicator of newborns in viviparous shark species.(📷:NOAA)
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T16:44:47.782Z
What a great picture of Hili.
Re: Suicidal Empathy. It’s a catchy title. I suspect the book appeals to all those passive aggressive people out there who feel exploited by others and who need to find a justification for asserting themselves, something akin to self-help books that purport to teach you how to take control of your life.