Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s back to work we go; after at three-day holiday weekend in America (“Juneteenth”), it’s back to the grind today: Monday, June 22, 2026 and World Rainforest Day. Here’s a flower and a stick insect I photographed in the Parque Amistad in Costa Rica in 2012. I know neither species:
Look at that camouflage!
It’s also National Chocolate Éclair Day, National Onion Rings Day (much preferable to french fries), and National Take Your Cat to Work Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 22 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
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Cape Verde score their first World Cup goal in a 2-2 draw with Uruguay – highlights
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Mohamed Salah leads Egypt to their first-ever win at the tournament, beating New Zealand 3-1 – highlights
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Belgium suffer another setback drawing 0-0 with Iran in Group G – highlights
Los Angeles, where the last game was played, is full of Iranian exiles. The crowd booed as the Iranian national anthem was played, but (contrary to FIFA rules), plenty of Iranian flags were displayed: the pre-revolution “lion flag”. Props for the dissidents and exiles.
From The Guardian:
There was simply no debate over the moment of the match and it is one that Iran will cherish, even more so if they are to progress to the World Cup knockout stages for the first time. Every angle of Alireza Beiranvand’s preposterous save to prevent Belgium taking the lead approaching the hour added to the miraculousness of it all. Perhaps the most ludicrous element was that Beiranvand appeared to have been eliminated from the game when the ball dropped at the feet of Maxim De Cuyper inside the six-yard box, the goal gaping. Yet, while scrambling on the turf after seesawing to his left in an attempt to intercept Kevin De Bruyne’s rolled cross, Beiranvand stuck out a strong left hand to shut the door in the face of De Cuyper, before smothering the ball.
Here are 15 minutes of highlights of the Belgium-Iran game. The “preposterous save” by Beiranvand is at 7:35.
Breaking news:
Facing widespread criticism, Britain’s Keir Starmer has resigned as Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain announced his resignation on Monday, bowing to a mutiny inside his party and a challenge to his leadership of the country.
Mr. Starmer said he would remain as prime minister until a new party leader is selected, by September, rather than fight to remain in the job he won almost two years ago. His decision clears the way for Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, extending a period of political turmoil for the country since it voted to leave the European Union in 2016.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” Mr. Starmer said in brief remarks in front of No. 10 Downing Street, his voice breaking with emotion at times.
“I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace,” he said. “That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party. I have spoken to His Majesty the King this morning to inform him of my decision.”
The most likely replacement for Mr. Starmer is Andy Burnham, whose resounding victory last week in a special election energized his bid to oust the prime minister. Mr. Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester and one of Labour’s most popular politicians, received almost 55 percent of the vote in the Makerfield district.
The UK has never recovered from the Brexit referendum. Also:
In the ceasefire negotiations, Iran took its ball and went home:
Talks between the US and Iran in Switzerland were abruptly called off on Friday, clouding prospects for a lasting truce as a major escalation in Lebanon sparked chaos in the Strait of Hormuz and threatened the tenuous agreement to end the war.
Switzerland’s foreign ministry told The Independent that talks at the mountaintop resort of Bürgenstock had been postponed, without further explanation. Insiders said Iran had refused to attend after Israel ramped up airstrikes in Lebanon, killing at least 47 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
*As Veep J. D. Vance is in Switzerland trying to lubricate the U.S./Iran talks, it still looks as if Trump is not only desperate to cut a deal (perhaps more desperate than is Iran), but the deal in the offing looks bad for the U.S.:
Ending the fighting addressed Trump’s immediate concerns about oil prices and the stock markets, but it left unresolved the question at the heart of the conflict: what limits, if any, Iran will accept on its nuclear program. Vice President JD Vance is meeting Sunday with senior Iranian leaders in hopes of keeping Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump may have less leverage than he did during talks in February before the war. Then, Iranian leaders feared a U.S. attack could topple the regime. Now the government has proved it can survive, even after the Feb. 28 killing of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump has made clear that a halt to oil shipping out of the Persian Gulf is a pressure point. And Tehran has shown that it can send shocks through global energy markets with just the threat of attacks on ships.
Vance and other senior U.S. officials seeking a breakthrough at the bargaining table must haggle over the many issues Trump deferred to halt the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz — restoring what amounted to the status quo before the initial U.S. strikes on Feb. 28. The concessions the White House has already offered to get back to the bargaining table have become a central line of attack for Trump’s critics.
Trump is no longer demanding regime change, despite promising Iranians that help was on the way. He says he understands why the country needs ballistic missiles, upsetting U.S. allies who feel threatened by those weapons. And he has made clear he wants to avoid anything that would derail the stock market’s upward trajectory.
“There’s not a lot of room now for him to maneuver to go back and punch back at the Iranians,” said Aaron David Miller, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations, who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations on Middle East policy.
Well, yes, there is room to go back and punch back; all Trump has to do is say that he didn’t get the deal he wanted (and touted in his announcement of the war), and therefore he had to continue attacking the Iranian military and the country’s oil facilities. He’s gone back and forth so often that I don’t understand how Aaron Miller can say that he’s now stuck in a position and can’t change it. In fact he has, as the next item shows:
*Now that the cease-fire talks are messed up because of Lebanon and other things, Trump has once again threatened to attack Iran. See? He can at least threaten to go back, even if he doesn’t mean it:
President Trump warned the U.S. could strike Iran over its support for Hezbollah, as fighting between the militant group and Israel threatened to upend the preliminary peace deal he signed last week and close the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Trump’s comments on social media came as Vice President JD Vance was in Switzerland for talks with Iran that had been diverted to focusing on last week’s flare-up in Lebanon instead of the discussion on Iran’s nuclear program that the administration had wanted.
Last week, Trump and Vance aired the administration’s frustration with Israel after what they called a heavy-handed retaliatory strike nearly derailed their deal with Iran. Israel has argued that it will keep fighting as long as Hezbollah does.
Trump’s new comments Sunday focused on Iran instead.
“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble,” Trump said on social media Sunday. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”
Iranian state media said Trump’s comments violated the preliminary peace deal signed Wednesday, which bars the two sides from attacking or threatening each other.
The deal also opens the Strait of Hormuz, sets up talks on Iran’s nuclear program and calls for an end to the fighting in Lebanon—a key Iranian demand—in its opening paragraph. But fighting over the past two days led Iran to announce Saturday it had closed the strategic waterway and to say it would focus the talks on resolving the situation in Lebanon.
Fox News reported that Trump said in an interview that he had spoken with Iranian officials Saturday night and warned them not to close the strait.
“You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Fox said, quoting Trump. “You won’t even make it back to your f—ing country.”
Well, it’s not clear to me who started the lastest dust-up between Israel and Hezbollah, but I still can’t understand why the U.S. is demanding that Israel tolerate a terrorist group who will continue to go after northern Israel after the so-called cease-fire. Do note that Israel has discovered a huge Hezbollah base that is in, yes, tunnels in southern Lebanon. Will Hezbollah vacate it voluntarily? Of course not. The ceasefire agreement should actually specify that Hezbollah should disband and disarm itself within a short period of time. Here’s a video:
*It’s been half a century since The Selfish Gene was published by Richard Dawkins, a book that brought the gene-centered view of evolution, and its implications for competition and cooperation, to the public view, but also influenced evolutionary biologists themselves. Now, at the UK’s Freethinker site, evolutionary biologist Jamie C. Weir celebrates this anniversary with an essay called “Crystallizing Darwinism” (access is free).
The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, marks the end, or culmination, of a long scientific revolution that began with Darwin’s own book, On the Origin of Species, more than a century earlier in 1859.
And it did mark the end of reasoning that prevailed throughout the early 20th century, including ideas about the prevalence of group selection, and forms of Lamarckian inheritance (the latter still persists among evolutionary miscreants and overzealous advocates of epigenetics).
Most conspicuously, if evolution selects the fittest individuals, how could we explain the occurrence of unselfish, altruistic behaviour in nature? Why do some animals share resources within a group—like wolves or wild dogs sharing meat with the rest of their pack—when it would make sense for an individual to monopolise a resource for their own benefit? Why should a bee sting a predator in defence of its hive, when that act means certain death?
If natural selection is all about survival, why sacrifice anything that could increase your chances in the high-stakes game of life?
Perhaps, through so-called ‘group selection’, bands of individuals within a species competed against one another, propagating the attributes of successful groups into the future. A co-operating, unselfish group might well defeat a group of treacherous, back-stabbing individuals. The question became one of what natural selection was actually selecting. The individual or the group? Or something else?
Group selectionists were in good company. Even Darwin himself occasionally drifted into group-based reasoning—the subtitle of the Origin talks not about the survival of the fittest individuals, but the ‘preservation of favoured races in the struggle for existence’. But even as a group-level framework seemed to solve some evolutionary problems, it raised others.
. . . . The vulnerability of co-operating groups to invasion by cheats posed a major challenge to early group selection explanations. It is not enough to say individuals work ‘for the good of the group’, let alone, as some of the more extreme group selectionists argued, that they regulate their own population size ‘for the good of the species’. There must be something more.
The key to solving the problem of altruism came from looking within individuals, at the genetic information that acts as the recipe for building every organism.
. . .Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection, then, acts not at the level of species or groups, nor even, in truth, at the level of individual organisms, but on the invisible genetic units that are the building blocks of all life. Genes work together to build bodies: automata in which they ride, do battle, and engineer their own proliferation. Genes endure—the ‘immortal replicators’—passed down from individual to individual through the generations, and we are merely their ‘survival machines’.
In The Selfish Gene, that vision—the gene-centric view of evolution—is painted in vivid prose, and with such clarity of reasoning that it has become far more than a classic of popular science. Just as evolution did not begin with Darwin, the gene’s-eye view did not begin with Richard Dawkins. One finds it being painfully pieced together throughout the mid-twentieth century, by R. A. Fisher (The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, 1930), W. D. Hamilton (‘The evolution of altruistic behavior’, 1963), G. C. Williams (Adaptation and Natural Selection, 1966), and many others. Indeed, these names are among those most frequently cited in Dawkins’s oeuvre, particularly in The Selfish Gene.
And yet, more than any other single work, The Selfish Gene crystallises the synthesis of natural selection and genetics, making the most coherent extended explanation of the fundamental, gene-based mechanics underlying evolution. With a gift for crafting a turn of phrase, Dawkins coined expressions and concepts in the book that have since proven highly successful replicators of their own, spreading vigorously in the public imagination. Through clarity of reasoning and metaphor, Dawkins not only popularised evolutionary theory but also solidified a genuine shift in the conceptual paradigm of the field.
Remember that natural selection and genetics were precisely what the “modern synthesis”, begun by Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1937, combined. So, by tying together how behaviors and other organismal traits not discussed in that era, The Selfish Gene didn’t really end the synthesis, but gave it a huge push forward. It’s a pity that this article didn’t mention the beginning of that synthesis, but it does call our attention to how well the gene-centered view of Dawkins’s book has held up in the last half-century. I should add that while that is probably Dawkins’s most influential book, and deservedly so, my favorite Dawkins book—because of its beautiful writing and more popular style (The Selfish Gene is not easy going!)—is The Blind Watchmaker. ˆRichard’s own favorite is The Extended Phenotype, probably because it introduces a point of view that was original with him.
*I’ve mentioned quite a few times how much I fear that Zohran Mamdani’s combination of “democratic socialism,” performative wokeness, and anti-semitism will overtake the Democratic Party, and I’m pretty sure that this Islamist has ambitions beyond being mayor of New York City. Other Democrats fear that, too, as Mamdani, once again neglecting his job as Mayor, is out on the hustings for others like himself.
A year ago this week, Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in the Democratic primary for mayor upended New York politics.
Now, in the closing days of another primary season, he has thrown himself back onto the campaign trail, this time risking his political capital in a high-stakes bid to catapult fellow leftists to primary victories against the old Democratic guard.
Mr. Mamdani and allies are attempting to unseat two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom they view as too friendly to corporate donors and Israel. They want to lay claim to a third House seat. And down the ballot, they have designs on expanding the democratic socialist bloc in Albany.
If he prevails on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani, 34, will go a long way toward establishing socialists as a major faction in New York City politics and himself as a kingmaker capable of vaulting relatively unknown candidates to victory and sidelining erstwhile power brokers.
But a string of losses could be disastrous, weakening the mayor’s political standing just six months into his term, empowering political opponents and creating new ones.
His involvement has already alienated Black and Latino progressives, powerful labor unions and the left-leaning Working Families Party, all of which helped him get to City Hall and partnered with him as mayor. Some, like Representative Nydia Velázquez, have taken the rare step of publicly declaring they have lost trust in him.
“I have a pit in my stomach because of secondhand anxiety,” said Michael Lange, an elections analyst and fellow democratic socialist who rose to prominence chronicling Mr. Mamdani’s ascent.
“This is a way to remake the Democratic Party,” he said. “But if he loses, the knives would be out. They would be really out. The risk is that they’ll say this is more man than movement.”
The mayor’s support goes further than mere endorsements. With his popularity never higher, Mr. Mamdani has personally involved himself in everything from candidate recruitment and fund-raising to ad shoots and private strategy sessions. A pair of his top political aides are helping run two of the campaigns. And the mayor attempted to push labor unions into backing at least one of his candidates.
I have a pit in my stomach, too, and it isn’t from eating cherries. I hope he has that string of losses, as I want to see Mamdani marginalized within the Democratic Party. Note the bit where he’s against candidates that “are too friendly to Israel”. That’s one symptom of his antisemitism, which of course he’d deny.
*The AP has more on the Reflecting Pool kerfuffle. Although people have been arrested for vandalism, which Trump claims is the reason the pool is full of algae and the new coat of blue paint is peeling off, details are sketchy. I think that the algal bloom and other problems are simply the result of lack of expertise and poor planning (there was some nepotism involved in the noncompetitive choice of a contractor), just like the algal bloom in Botany Pond. We’ll see what evidence emerges in court.
President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that federal authorities had made “multiple arrests” of people he said were vandalizing the Reflecting Pool as he struggled to explain why the $14-million-plus rehabilitation project he launched for the nation’s 250th anniversary seemingly backfired.
An algae bloom has turned the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool green days after the completion of President Donald Trump’s renovation project that aimed for the shade “American flag blue.” (AP Video: Nathan Ellgren)
Trump said his predecessors had let the pool turn an algae-stained green and that he’d line it with “American flag blue” so it better reflected the Washington Monument. But after the new pool was unveiled, its blue tinge quickly became a familiar green. Workers treated it with chemicals to kill the algae, but then the painted blue lining on the bottom began to peel.
. . . “We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool,” [Trump] posted on his social media site Friday night. “Just like three days ago, they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed.”
I suppose it’s possible, given the hatred that many harbor for Trump, that there was vandalism, but I also think that it would have been more obvious given that it involves the whole pool.
He offered no details to substantiate his claim.
Agencies responsible for law enforcement and upkeep on the National Mall — the U.S. Park Police, National Park Service and Interior Department — did not respond to requests for comment. Trump on Saturday followed up by posting that Park Police “have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll,” correcting his spelling to “Pool” later.
He went on: “Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail!”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili beefs that she has been overlooked:
Hili: I don’t want to meddle in your work, but there’s too little about me in that book.
Andrzej: Honey, don’t disturb us right now.
See more about the book later today.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie chcę się wtrącać do waszej pracy, ale w tej książce jest za mało o mnie.Ja: Kochanie, nie przeszkadzaj teraz.
(Photo: D.M.)
*******************
From Bill:
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From Meow Incorporated:
Masih is working terrifically hard trying to get people interested in the oppression of women by Islamist regimes:
I asked American students why they don’t protest when women are whipped and shot in Iran and Afghanistan.
The answers expose a contradiction nobody wants to talk about.
We must change the narrative so the younger generation stops lending cover to Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban and… pic.twitter.com/JOwFxSB3NM
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 18, 2026
Emma is puzzled by this thing. Go to the thread if you want to learn what it is:
What is this in my two-week old micropond?
It’s a few mm long, and darts around very quickly just under the surface, forward locomotion, short spurts in a zig zag. If you change the surface light, it dives down to the pebbles, then comes back up.
I just about managed to scoop… pic.twitter.com/dP8Pcbqjss
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) June 18, 2026
Two from my feed: This first one is so cool; it make me tear up. Translation from the Polish:
While the infertile owl was away from her nest, the caregivers replaced her dead eggs with orphaned chicks… the little owl nearly went mad with happiness… 
Podczas gdy bezpłodna sowa była poza swoim gniazdem, opiekunowie zamienili jej martwe jaja na osierocone pisklęta…
sówka niemal oszalała ze szczęścia… ❤️ pic.twitter.com/gZjX39TK8H
— Tomek Niewęgłowski (@tomek525) June 20, 2026
Only in Turkey! Translation from the Turkish:
“This student brought their cat along to the graduation ceremony as a gesture of gratitude and appreciation, because during exam days, they would stay up all night with it. I believe that people who possess such delicate sentiments are exemplary individuals with their conscience and compassion.”
“Bu öğrenci, mezuniyet törenine kedisini de yanında götürmüş, teşekkür ve minnettarlık olarak, çünkü sınav günlerinde onunla sabaha kadar uyanık kalıyormuş.
Ben bu ince duygulara sahip insanlar vicdan ve merhametleri ile örnek insanlardır.” pic.twitter.com/0qhK0GrY36— Haydar Özkan (@haydarozkan06) June 21, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was four years old, and would have been 86 today had she lived. https://t.co/umyYcoo6oC
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 22, 2026
And two food tweets from Dr. Cobb, now safely ensconced in Old Blighty:
Tonight we ate at the Gueule du Loup in Arles. The best meal we have eaten in ages. Simple entrées (raw veg and anchouiade, polenta and chickpea chips with fromage blanc aioli), exquisite pollock with a subtle ginger sauce, Camargue black rice and a vegetable paté, with champagne and a local red.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-20T20:33:00.581Z
Desserts – nougat glacé and millefeuilles – were equally surprising and subtle. Not sweet, full of complex tastes. Delightful and reasonably priced €110 for two, incl drinks. We chatted to the chef, David Prugne, and his équipe. If you are in Arles, go there! http://www.restaurant-lagueuleduloup.fr
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-20T20:33:00.582Z
The UK never recovered from Brexit? It’s not clear that Europe will survive the EU. I look forward to the post mortems on Starmer’s reign.
Andy Burnham isn’t popular with women and people with daughters. He believes that men who identify as women should be able to use women’s spaces. He said “the idea that single-sex spaces should be exclusively for the use of biological women was a “minority view”.”.
He doesn’t explain how he will keep out non trans identified men, or how women and girls can tell the difference between man in a dress with gender dysphoria and a man in a dress who just wants to perv on women and girls.
We really need a PM who will support the rights of all citizens, not just men.
I know this is your view too but wanted to add: there’s no difference between a “man in a dress with gender dysphoria and a man in a dress who just wants to perv on women and girls.” Women & girls aren’t human shields for men with mental illnesses or weird sexual fetishes, and they have a right to exclude males from female spaces.
Definitely agree, I ask that question to try and get the woke mob to understand that you can’t let a subset of men in without letting every single man in. They never answer when I ask. They rarely think logically.
They insist that TW are not a danger, but UK Gov stats say different. This is an extract from a submission to the Scottish Gov by Prof Alice Sullivan. Link below if anyone wants to read the whole thing.
“The issue of rapists identifying as women is not hypothetical. The ONS has published Crown Prosecution Service data for England and Wales. Rape is classified as a male crime in UK law, and females can only be charged with rape as an accomplice. Documented instances of females being charged with rape as an accomplice are rare. Yet, between 2012 and 2018, this data shows that the proportion of rape defendants classified as women varied between 1.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent. During this seven-year period, 436 individuals prosecuted for rape were recorded as women”.
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/committees/current-and-previous-committees/Session-6/session-6-citizen-participation-and-public-petitions-committee/correspondence/2021/pe1876_h-professor-alice-sullivan-submission-of-27-august-2021
The woke mobs are more delusional than even the usual religious mobs. At at least many of the bizarre assertions of the religious might just be possible (P > 0). The woke assertion that some males are women is blatantly self-contradictory.
Likewise Islam is the religion of peace, global warming will destroy the planet by 2012, diversity is our strength, free speech is hate speech, criminals are the real victims, etc. etc.
Hear, hear! No improvement on Starmer not being able to define a woman. A “minority view”? Yeah, Andy, one from very, very many of the 51% of the UK population. Some minority, huh?
Wasn’t he also a bit of a failure with the grooming gangs in his official capacity? He could have been an active leader in stopping it but he may have been too passive in his handling of the matter. Too concerned about offending his Muslim voters, perhaps.
He seems pretty sketchy in anything he has to do with women and girls safety.
Before he was PM, Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions for a lengthy period when officialdom was doing its best to ignore the Pakistani-Muslim rape gangs. There’s a claim that, in 19,000 cases, he just sent stern warning letters to accused men rather than prosecuting them (as with all aspects of this story, there is no overall official account, so we don’t know how true this is).
And yes, Labour won’t do anything to offend Muslims because they are afraid that they’ll all vote Green (a party that, these days, has rather little to do with environmentalism, and is just about deploring Western civilisation).
Starmer’s wokeness is the main reason for his unpopularity, and for the rise of Reform and Restore. It’s like in the US: the choice is between a narcissist who wants to invade Greenland and queers for Palestine. There is no longer a non-woke liberal alternative. And I notice that most traditional media don’t mention this. One thing Elon is right about is that the traditional media in many countries have been captured by the woke. While most are not as bad as the BBC (which used to have a really good reputation), they are almost always on the Israel-is-committing-genocide-and-trans-women-are-women side. Thus, the way it’s presented one gets the impression that it is something of a mystery why Starmer is unpopular.
While Burnham is also woke, at least in some respects, many in his party hope that Burnham will be more charismatic. In other words, the pressure on Starmer is not because he is woke, but because he can’t convince the majority of Brits that they should be woke. The real battle is between the woke and non-woke parties in the UK. However, since there are now several of the latter, the undemocratic non-PR electoral system will probably have Labour emerge as the victor in the next parliamentary election.
Yes, though the main reason for the rise of Reform and Restore is the collapse of the Conservatives, the previous governing party, who scored only 2.2% in the recent by-election at Makerfield despite the government being historically unpopular.
Why is this? Well, Brexit was primarily about immigration. Brexit voters wanted the British government (not the EU, with Merkel’s unilateral admission of 2 million Syrians, nor the unelected EU courts) to control immigration, presuming that they’d do what the people want, which is reduce immigration to levels of only 10,000 or so a year.
The Conservatives were in power for eight years after the Brexit vote, and they did the exact opposite of what their voters wanted, issuing 8 million visas to migrants, mostly third-world migrants. Why they did that is baffling.
The last time a Belgium player scored in a WC match was when Michy Batshuayi scored in their first game in 2022 WC. The only goal for Belgium since then is the own goal in the Egypt match. So they’ve gone played five games scoring just two goals, with only one of them by a Belgian player. Bad form! But they still have a chance of making it to the next round, the round of 32. That’s as many teams as there were in the last WC!
Was the Cape Verde goal the first from a free kick in this WC?
Belgium were ranked #1 in the world going into the 2018 World Cup. They were such a success story…following some very mediocre results in the late 90s/early 2000s, they completely revamped their youth training (to become more player-centered and skill-based) and produced a wonderful generation of players.
Alas, the conveyor belt seems to have sputtered a bit…perhaps their one true superstar (Jeremy Doku) will be enough to get them through to the knockouts.
Your comments about Mamdani are right on and perhaps not stated strongly enough. I think he is dangerous, and I am appalled by the level of support he receives. The people he is supporting for office are frightening. As a lifelong New Yorker, I can say that he personifies the worst that this city has to offer. It took the city decades to recover from John Lindsay, who was not nearly as insidious as Mamdani. Thankfully, there are now controls in place to prevent the worst excesses of that era, so whatever damage he does is likely to be temporary.
Saul, I am not a New Yorker. Would you please give some examples of Lindsay’s insidious excesses and controls that they engendered so that I can better understand.
I am a 79-year-old native New Yorker, so we are talking about events that happened many years ago. There are specifics that are better recounted by historians, but generally, Lindsay inherited a pattern of financial irresponsibility that kept carrying over deficits and kicking them down the road. This eventually led to the city becoming officially bankrupt in the 70s. He instituted numerous other policies that went nowhere and created municipal government superagencies, which took years to dismantle. He came in with the prospect of a handsome new leader with fresh hope. He never claimed to be a socialist, but his promise of fresh hope, which amounted to nothing, was what those of my generation experienced firsthand.
Thanks, Saul. I think I see the parallels….new face, new words, maybe a high activity metric, but nothing in the way of positive outputs or outcomes. I am a 78 y.o. Southern boy who has been to nyc but twice in my life….and even the latter time was many years ago.
Of course, I agree with Masih that the narrative regarding the treatment of women by extremist Islamic societies must be changed. I just don’t know how tom go about that. Masih’s heroic (and I mean that word sincerely) efforts tom bring this issue to light seems to have little influence on a young population that apparently believes that deliberate ignorance is the way to deal with such matters. After all, if any discussion of such things will lead to accusations of Islamophobia, as in the grooming gangs scandal in Britain, how much hope can we have?
The fault lies in the lack of Western willingness to stand up for our own culture, which, for all its faults, at least theoretically stands up for defending the rights of women to function in society in roles outside the home. Our unwillingness to proclaim that Western culture is superior precisely because, among other reasons, that women are full partners in society, will result in the destruction of Western society. And it seems to me that those on the extreme left and extreme right would welcome that destruction: they see it as a feature, not a bug of their political dreams.
I agree. Douglas Murray’s book The War on the West really helped open my eyes to this danger.
You and me both, Lady. For anyone here who hasn’t read it, do so. Oh, and his Death Cults and Democracies is also a must read. A succinct, clear eyed defence of Israel and why anyone with more than one brain cell should be supporting them. In fact, anything by Douglas is worth reading. He’s quickly become one of my heroes.
I guess the feature for them is that after The Revolution will come The New
SovietMan and paradise on earth. What other sane rationale could they have? If not sane, maybe they suffer from a virulent modern version of White Guilt, and a suicide pact seems the appropriate way to expiate it.Are there good historical parallels?
While I love The Selfish Gene—and our entire group of graduate students read it and debated it intensely when it came out—my favorite, too, is The Blind Watchmaker. The Selfish Gene was (and is) important for biology and biologists (and is of interest to the general reader), but The Blind Watchmaker was (and is) an argument for the power of natural selection and a robust rejection of creationism (which was much needed at the time it was published). It’s the most persuasive argument for the creative power of natural selection since Darwin.
One of the best chapters in TBW is “Doomed Rivals”, which completely obliterates any notions of Lamarckism. Not just in the empirical sense, but because of how genes actually function, there is no way Lamarckism can even work theoretically.
I still think many of us, even educated ones, have vague and mushy notions of Lamarckian thinking in our conception of evolution. This chapter should cure all of that.
Also, I don’t know if it was Dawkins who said this, but I once heard this pithy and derisive, but accurate, description of Lamarckism.
“Believing in Lamarckian evolution is like cutting out a piece of pie, and then running to the recipe book expecting to see some of the letters missing…”
Undergrad genetics class.
Prof: “how many of you guys (meaning male students) are Jewish?
Some students raised their hands.
Prof: “How many of you were born without foreskins”?
Obviously, no one raised their hands.
Prof: “After several generations of foreskin removal, no one was born with that acquired characteristic?”
Needless to say, for many reasons, that could not be said in a university classroom in this day and age. Back then, no one was offended, and the real point was made.
There is a quote from “Spencer” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) that has some bearing on this. “Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”.
I was Richard’s doctoral student when he was writing The Selfish Gene and afterward. We all ran out to Blackwell’s Bookstore and bought it the first day, so I have a signed first-day first edition. I love all of Richard’s books and used The Blind Watchmaker for years as a text in General Biology. During the time he was writing it, I asked him what his new book would be, and he said “a modern day Paley”, referring to the Rev. William Paley’s Natural Theology, which gave the theological “Divine Watchmaker” explanation for adaptations. My favorite is The Ancestor’s Tale; not as easy a read, but everything in modern biology is in there and it is full of examples of how Richard can help you see things in a very different perspective than you did before.
Loved The Ancestor’s Tale!
Yes, my favourite is The Ancestor’s Tale, largely because of the wonderful thought experiment of everyone having an individual time machine, going back through their ancestors’ line, and meeting their more and more distant cousins on the way. I used that in my biology classes, and the students were intrigued to realise that their classmates (and their teacher) were their distant cousins and they had a common ancestor somewhere. And every living human had a common ancestor somewhere. And, if you went back far enough, every living thing had a common ancestor somewhere. Mind blowing!
“Richard’s own favorite is The Extended Phenotype, probably because it introduces a point of view that was original with him.”
I have never looked at beaver dams and bird’s nests in the same way since…
This is a good brief and non-political video by a ‘pool guy’ explaining what probably has happened at the reflecting pond. In a nutshell, the cause of the large-scale delamination almost certainly isn’t vandalism of either the mechanical or chemical kind. (And the peroxide used to kill the algae probably didn’t play a role, either, per the video). Rather, the cause is almost certainly defective surface preparation.
Concrete has to be meticulously cleaned of all contaminants and sandblasted and allowed to dry before coating is applied. If it isn’t (and in this case, it almost certainly wasn’t), the coating can’t form a good bond. This then allows water from above and below to enter into the space between the concrete and the coating. The pressure of the water is sufficient on its own to entirely detach weakly bonded coating from the surface of the concrete. Then you get what we see on the videos – large sheets of patriotic blue coating waving on the surface of the pond like an American flag drowning in a fetid green swamp. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself there.
As for the possible or probable role of negative hydrostatic pressure: DC is famously built on a swamp. This has invited a lot of jokes to the effect that Trump not only hasn’t drained the swamp, he’s made it even bigger.
Yep, same reason you can’t apply a polymer coating to the inside of a basement wall and expect protect your basement from water infiltration – hydrostatic pressure. There is, however, a product called Thoroseal, that’s essentially reinforced cement that’s relatively effective because while it bonds to cinder block, it also breathes to some extent.
Best to “parge” the outside of the wall with mortar and then coat that with tar before backfilling the wall.
That’s probably because a bad contracting job done by people who didn’t know what they’re doing relates to people on a more personal level than the complexities involving a war in the Mideast. The average US citizen finds the latter, with its multiple players and agendas, confusing. But who hasn’t scoffed at either an unqualified contractor who screwed things up – or the dimwit who hired him without proper checking? If nepotism is involved, all the worse.
Since it seems as if at least one of the “vandals” just reached down and broke off a bit of paint which had already curled off the cement, folks are going to be kind of skeptical of Trump’s explanation. He’s in trouble here.
Great point about how relatable/understandable this algae problem is when compared to bigger issues. There’s also the huge cost override, as well as the apparent quid pro quo involved in giving this no-bid contract to a shady Trump donor.
The vandalism claim is absurd. It’s an extraordinary claim given the circumstances, and I thought such claims required extraordinary evidence.
I, too, have The Blind Watchmaker as my Dawkins favorite.
I’m sorry to learn that Andy Burnham is going to head Labour in UK — I’m strongly influenced by the determined and persuasive sex realists: e.g. “terfs” and allies — Emma Hilton, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, etc.
Not a resident of NYC, but on a general basis Mamdani influence in the Democratic Party would not be good for the Democrats or the country, I think.
I think that our host’s opinion about Mamdani is correct. This is the mayor of a city, and his major issues are supposedly (or should be) affordability, housing, transportation, crime, education etc. Yet, he cannot refrain from referring to a country approximately 6000 miles away. When campaigning for his fellow “progressive” candidates, he referees to a lobbying organization for Israel, as if that is a major issue for the residents of his city. Is it any wonder that Jews like myself see “progressive” as a glamour for antisemitism? Every one of the major candidates that he endorses has made accusations against Israel a major part of their platform.
It would not be a big deal if it were only NYC. But this “progressive” (what progress?) wing of the Democratic party seems to be taking over the party. Should that happen, liberal (in the original sense of the word) voters like myself will have very few if any choices. I will not vote for a candidate in the mold of Mamdani, AOC, or Bernie Sanders—even if they are running against someone like Trump. (That does not mean that I would cast my vote for a Trump-like candidate either.) The primaries in NYC will be well worth watching as an indicator. I may end up so far in the political wilderness that I will just spend Election Day trying to photograph wildlife so I can send the pictures to this website—which is a worthy thing to do were it not for the fact that I am a very bad photographer.
Oh, and just so no one thinks that I agree with all the opinions of host, The Selfish Gene is my favorite of Dawkins’ books. I like the others, but that book is …..wow.
In the UK it seems easy to replace an unpopular leader. In the USA more difficult. Which is preferable?
In the 1990’s my son was given the Selfish Gene to read as part of a Psychology degee and I read it. As an accountant with minimal science education it was a revelation and changed my whole way thinking about life.
Today the price of Brent crude is $75.34 a barrel. The market thinks that the Strait of Hormuz will not be a problem in the future. My guess is that the oil producers will build pipelines to bypass the Strait (they already have built some). However, that efforts will take years. The “Tapline” was started in 1947 and it was not the first pipeline in the region.