Welcome to Friday, June 26, 2026 and National Barcode Day, a great innovation that is now universally used.
Barcodes became commercially successful after they were adopted to automate supermarket checkout systems, a task for which they have become almost universal. The Uniform Grocery Product Code Council had chosen, in 1973, the barcode design developed by George Laurer. Laurer’s barcode, with vertical bars, printed better than the circular barcode developed by Woodland and Silver.
And the June 26 date comes from this:
The modern linear Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode (a refined, standardized version) was first used commercially when a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum was scanned at a supermarket in Ohio on June 26.
There are many other types of abstract codes shown on the Wikipedia page, but the barcode above is the most popular. Imagine how much it improved the lives of cashiers!
It’s also National Canoe Day (in Canada), National Chocolate Pudding Day, National Cream Tea Day, and National Coconut Day.
Speaking of coconuts, here is a Presidential candidate who brought “great joy” to Democrats a while back. How deluded they were!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: It was a bad day for Team U.S.A. soccer fans, as we lost 3-2 to Turkey in a squeaker:
Mauricio Pochettino said he was happy. He said it in English, he said it in his native Spanish. He swore he was happy.
He didn’t sound happy. And really, there wasn’t much of a reason to be.
A little more than an hour before his post-match press conference in the bowels of SoFi Stadium, Pochettino watched his USA team give up a last-second goal to Turkey that ensured a 3-2 defeat in this final match of the group stage. A weakened US side – nine changes were made from the team that faced Australia last week in Seattle – had scored quickly, gave up two first-half goals and then equalized in a strong second half.
But a goal from Kaan Ayhan, scored with the last kick of the game, handed the US its first defeat after two dominant victories to open the tournament. And with it, he may have ended the honeymoon for this USA team.
Pochettino’s surly mood after the game – brushing off questions about momentum, chastising American journalists for not congratulating him for winning Group D – was a marked change from the gregarious figure who sat in the same chair a little more than 24 hours before. The question now is if that mood was indicative of the vibes around this US team changing ahead of the knockout stages now that the bubble of invincibility has been popped.
U.S.A. is still in the knockout round, which means that the American team could still win the World Cup. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Here are the highlights, with goals on the video at 1:30, 2:37, 5:10, 8:27, and Turkey’s last-minute winning goal at 14:43:
*The death toll in two big earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday keeps rising, and now it’s over 160.
Rescue teams clawed through collapsed buildings across Venezuela on Thursday in a desperate hunt for survivors after two powerful earthquakes left at least 164 people dead, with thousands more feared dead.
The U.S. Geological Survey warned the earthquake had the potential to become one of the deadliest and costliest in the country’s history, projecting a death toll in the tens of thousands and billions of dollars in losses.
Felt as far away as Brazil and Colombia, the quakes were the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century, ripping through a country already battered by years of economic collapse and political turmoil just as Washington was trying to stabilize the South American nation. The quakes were measured at magnitude 7.2 and 7.5.
At least 100 buildings collapsed in the worst-hit coastal state of La Guaira, according to the United Nations, while at least 10 buildings were toppled in the capital Caracas some 20 miles south. Nearly 1,000 people were injured in the quakes, according to an initial estimate by Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez early Thursday.
The U.S., China and countries from Germany to Qatar rushed to pledge support, but damaged roads and bridges, power outages and the closure of the country’s main international airport have complicated early rescue efforts.
President Trump said the U.S. stood “ready, willing, and able to help” and had ordered federal agencies to prepare a rapid response. The reconstruction effort is also expected to create opportunities for Washington and U.S. companies to play a larger role in rebuilding Venezuela after years of Chinese influence. The Defense Department is expected to play a major part.
Venezuela has been in a fragile political transition since U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in January, leaving Rodríguez, who has worked with the Trump administration to reopen the country’s oil sector, now facing the daunting task of leading the disaster response.
I have no editorial comment on this save to say that it’s horrible. As of this morning, the death toll is 188 and the headline says “thousands feared dead.”
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal reports that Iran’s “Hacker in Chief” was killed in March.
For more than two years, a barefoot cartoon boy was the mascot of “Handala,” a self-described pro-Palestinian hacktivist collective that leaked the private photos of Israeli generals, wiped the servers of a Fortune 500 company, and broke into the personal inbox of the FBI director. The group insisted it was a grassroots resistance movement. It was not—and the IRGC has now confirmed that the man who actually ran it faced kinetic consequences for his digital warfare.
Here’s that mascot:
Seyed Yahya Hosseini Panjaki, who operated under the alias Yahya Hamidi, was killed in early March 2026 during the opening phase of Israel’s strikes on Iran. The Israeli military confirmed he died in a strike on the headquarters of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), part of a wave of precision operations against senior intelligence figures.
What was the leader of a grassroots hacktivist collective doing inside Iran’s intelligence nerve center? The answer is that he had never really been one. As Western intelligence had long suspected, “Handala” was a front for the MOIS. Cybersecurity firm Check Point named the underlying unit Void Manticore; others label it Banished Kitten, Storm-0842, Dune, Red Sandstorm, or TAG-145. The names differ, but they converge on the same entity: a state cyber-warfare unit embedded within Iran’s intelligence ministry.
Yesterday, for the first time, an IRGC-linked channel publicly tied Panjaki to the leadership of the hacking operation—a rare instance of Tehran acknowledging what Western intelligence had assessed for years. His death marks one of the most significant blows in years to Iran’s cyber-espionage apparatus and its overseas covert-operations network.
Handala surfaced in December 2023, just weeks after October 7, taking its name and imagery from the barefoot child drawn by Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1969, a symbol of the Palestinian national movement. Early posts cast the group as “a small fighter” aligned with Hamas before it pivoted to broader anti-Israel and anti-American messaging.
Its notoriety came from a relentless cadence of breaches and leaks designed to humiliate Iran’s enemies. In April 2026, it published what it said were more than 19,000 confidential images and videos pulled over years from the phone of former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—including imagery from undisclosed meetings abroad. Earlier leaks targeted former PM Naftali Bennett, former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Netanyahu’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman, and figures such as Benny Gantz and Natan Sharansky.
In March 2026, it claimed to have breached the personal Gmail of FBI Director Kash Patel. Washington, in response, offered up to $10 million for information on the group’s members. The most consequential operation, however, was a destructive wiper attack on Stryker Corporation, the Michigan-based Fortune 500 medical-device maker, which reportedly wiped devices across the company’s global footprint—described as the most significant wartime cyberattack ever carried out against the United States.
Panjaki’s reach went well beyond cyber, into the wider machinery of Iran’s “grey-zone” warfare; that murky space that is neither open war nor peace, where a state attacks its enemies but stays just below the line that would trigger a military or legal response.
In Iran’s case—and Panjaki’s specifically—that meant operations to assassinate Iranian dissidents living abroad, along with kidnappings and sabotage against regime opponents and Israeli targets around the world. His fingerprints are on a recent wave of Iranian plots that hire local criminal gangs to attack Jewish targets globally—schemes that have been broken up in Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Sweden. That outsourcing is a microcosm of the whole grey-zone game: by paying a hired crew to do the killing instead of using its own officers, Tehran can deny involvement, make the attack hard to trace back, and slow down any response.
As the article says, cyberwarfare is sometimes ambiguous under international law. As Grok told me, “Cyber operations that cause (or are reasonably likely to cause) physical damage to property, loss of life, or injury to persons — directly or indirectly — generally qualify as a prohibited use of force.” And operations to kill people in other countries or attempts to kill or kidnap “regime opponents” or non-combatants in other countries clearly violate that. The report that Punjaki faces “kinetic consequences” of his actions includes a euphemism I’ve not heard before.
*You may well have heard about the terrible heat wave that’s affecting Europe. At first I thought it was just warm-on-the-verge-of-hot, and that Europeans simply couldn’t tolerate high temperatures, but no, it’s worse than that: it’s really hot, and Europe, lacking extensive air-conditioning, is experiences deaths by both heat and water:
As Europe broiled under heat that is testing the continent’s ability to adapt to extreme weather, temperatures in Britain on Thursday broke records that were set just a day prior. In southwest England, temperatures of 36.4 degrees Celsius, or 97.5 Fahrenheit, were recorded in the early afternoon and were expected to rise.
The stifling heat wave — the second in two months — has disrupted education, transportation and other aspects of daily life for millions of people, with officials warning that older people or those who work outdoors, like on construction sites, are most vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat.
The heat has also proved deadly.
In Spain, where temperatures soared past 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, over several days, government statistical models suggest more than 200 deaths ultimately could be attributed to the heat wave. The institute cautioned that the figures were estimates but officials and experts say there is a clear correlation between extreme temperatures and serious health issues.
In Italy, five people have died from heat exposure this week, according to the country’s main news agency, ANSA. Several of the victims died while they were working outside, and a homeless man died in Naples, highlighting the vulnerability of those who had little choice but to be outside. In France, at least 40 people have drowned since the latest heat wave began in the middle of last week, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised areas.
Across much of Western Europe, temperatures remained in the high 30s to low 40s Celsius, or around 100 Fahrenheit, on Thursday afternoon. Paris reached 39.6 Celsius, or 103.3 Fahrenheit, and was forecast to reach 42 Celsius later in the day.
More than a dozen countries were under high-level heat warnings on Thursday, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Sweden.
Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and severe because of climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels, experts say.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent, including in countries that are some of the least accustomed to extreme heat. In Britain and France, for instance, many buildings don’t just lack air conditioning — they are also designed to retain heat.
Today is clearly a day to feel sorry for people in both Europe and South America who are victims of circumstances beyond their control (though of course global warming is anthropogenic). Here’s a temperature map for yesterday from Fox Weather. Look at those temperatures in France!
*In one of the first Supreme Court decisions that will soon come out on Trump’s actions, the Justices have voted along ideological lines to allow Trump to deport immigrants temporarily here for humanitarian reasons.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the conservative justices found that courts do not have authority to review determinations by DHS to end temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.Congress created temporary protected status (TPS) in 1990 to shield immigrants in the United States from being deported to countries engulfed in armed conflict, a natural disaster or another extraordinary crisis, allowing them to work legally in the U.S. for up to 18 months.
Applicants to the program cannot have serious criminal records, and they must pay fees and pass a background check.
The U.S. government can renew the protections — and it has, multiple times, for several countries. That has provoked criticism from Trump and his base for allowing the provisional status to last for years, even decades.
“Keep in mind, this is temporary protected status,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court during oral arguments in April. “The word temporary is used again and again in the statute, including its title.”
The cases tested a key part of Trump’s immigration agenda, which has not only sought to deport undocumented immigrants but also to narrow the legal pathways for immigrants to reside in the U.S.
. . . The justices also decidedThursday that migrants on the Mexican side of the southern border are not entitled to apply for asylum.
I presume that the migrants in the last sentence above also refer to those fleeing Haiti and Syria. I can understand why Haitians want to apply for asylum, as that country is lawless, poor, and dangerous, but unless you have a personal or political reason to fear recriminations, you don’t qualify for permanent asylum. Of course many migrants claiming asylum are immigrating for economic reasons, but it still seems coldhearted to, say, deport Haitians back to a moribund country that’s dangerous for everyone. On the other hand, these were legally temporary visas, and the government can do what it wants. Because of the Democrats’ total failure to do anything about immigration, I have mixed feelings about this decision. Other decisions coming up are clearer to me, like birthright citizenship, which Trump tried to ban but is clearly described as a right the Constitution.
*And more on the upcoming Congresswoman who is, according to National Review author Charles Cooke, nuts (this seems to be a consensus). The article: “Darializa Avila Chevalier is an enemy of the American creed.”
Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is now the Democratic Party’s candidate for New York’s 13th congressional district, has some rather ambitious goals. She wishes to prevent all deportations of illegal immigrants, irrespective of the severity of the crimes they have committed; she hopes to abolish prisons entirely, including for convicted murderers; and — oh yes, this one jumped out at me — she is “fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization.” “Our intifada,” she said two years ago, while at Columbia (where else?), “is an Internationalist one.”
I see. Question: Do I get a vote on that?
I ask because, all told, that seems somewhat extreme. Western civilization is me. It’s my wife and children. It’s my town, my state, my country. It’s the Constitution to which I have taken an oath. “Intifada,” in Arabic, means “to shake off.” Were Western civilization to be shaken off, all that I cherish would fall with it. I’m against that.
By and large, I am an ecumenical sort of chap. I have strong political views, but they are grounded in a classically liberal outlook and an understanding that pluralism is the fastest road to peace. “Intifada,” however, is not on my bingo card. Which leads me to wonder how I am supposed to react to this. In recent years, calls such as Chevalier’s have become common within the DSA set, and yet I have noticed that they engender far less outrage than other provocative views that seem comparatively innocuous. In the present era, at least, there seems to exist an assumption not only that the progressive movement will occasionally go completely crazy, but that when it does, it should be treated as if it were filled with impetuous children. Thus we are expected to ignore the fact that many current candidates for office embraced abolishing the police or suggested that white people are a virus or waved around a Hamas headband while insisting that 9/11 was America’s fault — and to ignore them on the grounds that those words were uttered in the past, as if the mere passage of time grants one immunity, provided that one is really left-wing.
Well, it doesn’t. Chevalier is seeking a federal position in the federal legislature that makes the federal laws by which I am bound. And she is crazy. For various reasons, a good number of our commentators seem to have become inured to this, so let me say it once again in slightly different words: Pretty much nobody who has lived in the United States during its 250-year history would ever, under any circumstances, have said or thought that they were “fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization.” I am not talking here about Congress, which is a much smaller subset. I am talking about the entire population of this country, from sea to shining sea, in every moment since the convention at Philadelphia. Chevalier’s declarations are the product of a diseased mind. They represent an unequivocal confirmation that the speaker is incapable of participating in society and of engaging with her fellow citizens on equal terms. So far as I can tell, she has never had a job outside of left-wing activism, which is appropriate, because her worldview ought to make her unemployable in every other arena. That her foray into the world of work may be as one of 435 U.S. representatives defies belief.
The literal answer to my question — “Do I get a vote?” — is that I do not. Thankfully, I do not live in New York’s 13th congressional district. But I do get to decide whether to tolerate this trend as if it were a curiosity or a foible or, instead, to use my voice to characterize it for what it is. I choose the latter. There is nothing charming or interesting or harmless about Darializa Avila Chevalier. She is not amusing. She is an enemy of the American creed. Those who wish to keep the sickness that she represents from spreading outside of New York ought to begin the process of repudiation posthaste.
Avila Chevalier is the most extreme Democratic candidate I’ve seen, but yes, the Democrats have a tendency to excuse lunatics like her because, after all, Trump is worse. That is likely true because, after all, she will probably be only a Representative while Trump as President has immense power. But I for one don’t want a less extreme “progressive” like AOC as President, and it’s likely that neither do other Americans, including many Democrats positioned more towards the center. It’s a Hobson’s choice, but at least we should have the guts to call out lunacy and irrationality when we see it in in our party. Or are the Democratic Socialists really our party (see third tweet below)?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Editor has lost patience with Andrzej’s parsing of words:
Hili: Don’t you have any other problems than arguing over whether the sentence should use the word “more quietly” or the phrase “less firmly”?
Andrzej: At the moment, no.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy wy nie macie innych problemów jak spierać się o to, czy w zdaniu ma być słowo „ciszej”, czy określenie „mniej stanowczo”?
Ja: Chwilowo, nie.
Photo by D. M.
*******************
From Funny and Strange Signs:
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From: CinEmma:
Masih is quiet today, but The Number Ten Cat, clad in fur, is beefing about the heat:
Feels like only yesterday that the record temperature for June in the UK was broken… https://t.co/fMLq5WN7Su
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 25, 2026
From Jeff Maurer, highlighted yesterday morning:
Damn…CAPTCHAs getting hard. pic.twitter.com/MhhEMryfDR
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) January 18, 2022
From the DSA co-chair. That party is no longer hiding its aims, so shouldn’t it count as a third party?
This is the DSA co-chair. Let me summarize what he says in this video:
We’re using the Democratic Party as a ballot-access vehicle, not because we share its goals. We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it’s useful,… pic.twitter.com/zYwsv4J8Bt
— The Undercurrent (@NotTheirScript) June 24, 2026
One I screwed up trying to repost yesterday:
Crickets from the Special Rapporteur. . . https://t.co/KQlsSd3NVW
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 24, 2026
Two from my feed. First, an elephant is born and the herd helps it to its feet:
The second the baby was born, the herd closed ranks without hesitation. 🐘❤️
No one told them what to do. Instinct, love, and protection took over. Moments like this remind us that family isn’t just a human thing. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/0ZtCGSIbRC
— JoySpark (@FakeJoySpark) June 25, 2026
This is a wonderful rescue, marred only by the fact that the rescuers were out to kill other animals. Still, they are heroes of a sort:
Hunters Drops Their Weapons to Help an Animal in Need pic.twitter.com/HXnUeDkue6
— 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 ✨🎵 (@Hoang_HQ) June 25, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A Jewish Slovak woman died in Auschwitz in 1942. She was 32 years old. https://t.co/da4p66tbR9
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 26, 2026
And one from Dr. Cobb; wonderful pipefish:
Two very different-looking ghost pipefish. Sometimes it can be very difficult to determine the exact species, as there’s a lot of visual overlap between halimeda, robust, and velvet.#ghostpipefish #tulamben #tulambenbali #muckdiving #scubadiving
— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2026-06-24T12:25:50.386Z
Re UPCs: “Imagine how much it improved the lives of cashiers” I’m trying…more leisure time for many, since fewer needed to be employed(?). Ditto people who put price stickers on each individual item – a job I had as a teenager in the 1970s. Seriously though the beneficiaries included the stores, and to some extent the consumers since lower employment in stores exerts a downward pressure on. prices. It also allowed them to have us all scan our own shopping now. Which must increase shrinkage but presumably pays for itself with further reduced employment costs.
Or am I just unduly cynical this morning.
On a separate issue the USA/Turkey game was at least entertaining, despite the result – which has no material effect on the team’s progression to the next round.
I would guess that the biggest effect is on logistics, not the time spent by the cashiers. Adding up prices is pretty quick too, but there are many different items which cost 2.99. Having barcodes means your computer knows exactly how many of every item your store has sold, every hour. That must let you optimize what you transport and put on the shelves, allowing competition down to lower prices, or keeping a larger variety of products in stock.
Yup. Warehousing and logistics get little respect, being largely invisible. But we sure notice when there’s a major failure.
“Of course many migrants claiming asylum are immigrating for economic reasons, but it still seems coldhearted to, say, deport Haitians back to a moribund country that’s dangerous for everyone. On the other hand, these were legally temporary visas, and the government can do what it wants. Because of the Democrats’ total failure to do anything about immigration, I have mixed feelings about this decision.”
In this case, not being cold-hearted is tantamount to open borders: people can stay, whether they have a legal right to or not. Whatever one thinks of the idea, it won’t work, at least not without destroying the reasons why those people would prefer to immigrate in the first place.
Yes, I know, and I don’t favor open borders.
Yes. Refugees are one thing. People seeking economic betterment are another. (And those opposing American values still another.)
And a major consideration is that those who do favor open borders also favor putting the immigrants into the funded medical system. Which would then collapse under the strain. And after all, which family would not immigrate to the US for government-paid medical treatment for their children? It really would be an impossible situation.
“And a major consideration is that those who do favor open borders also favor putting the immigrants into the funded medical system.”
I guess this falls under the eternal debate in America…those who need medical help will get it from any American hospital with an ER regardless of insurance. Tax payers still pay for it and loads more if insurance isn’t helping out. Denying doesn’t solve the problem since people get sick and despite efforts, there will always be millions in America who can’t get healthcare by any other means than the ER. So what is the answer? I guess, mass disease, suffering and death of both uninsured Americans and immigrants.
Hopefully anything communicable won’t be a problem. s/
The solution to this is a) enforce the border laws and deport illegals, and b) do not admit any potential new legal migrants who are likely to fall under the public charge law.
Coffee coming out of my nose this morning:
Top THIS Chicago: I give you representative Darializa Avila Chevalier.
I’ve no idea where NY’s 13th district is, uptown most likely, but is isn’t near me thankfully.
I have a little side eye pride that The Craziest new politician, an unemployable frothing, spastically jerking with commie rage leftist, is a hometown maniac. A New Yorker.
I look forward to financing her opposition – political donations have become a hobby of mine in the last few years. Plus they invite you to nice parties.
And it is good – I’m not a Democrat anymore, I’m homeless, but this young firebrand will ruin the party for a decade, her face will be on every Fox News broadcast. Good. Let them eat intifada.
The left eats its own like the Korean Workers’ Party or the Khmer Rouge or the Democrats.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my puppy has a post-castration, gender affirming cone on his head and is stuck between doors again….
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Every pet wears a cone, eventually. Good luck with him/her/they!*
*Just kidding about the pronouns.
The Cone of Shame!
Everyone seen the viral scary grizzly video? Link.
YikeS! That went on a lot longer than I was anticipating! And the dog didn’t react with barking, acting like it felt his owner was doing OK on her own.
I had the impression that the grizzly was just having a bit of fun!
I think blaming Trump for the Democrats shift to the left is an excuse. The ideology the DSA and others are promoting has been around a long time. And Democrats have always lusted for power. Trump is just a convenient excuse. If he didn’t exist, they’d have to invent him, and, in many ways—such as the Russia Collusion Hoax—they did. The thing that is different now is that the MSM is in the bag for the Dems on this to an extent that wasn’t true even twenty years ago.
That CAPCHA is hilarious. I’ve been plagued by them recently.
Yeah, non-trinitarian bishops can be a real nuisance.
Oddly, just a couple of days ago YouTube recommended to me a video on the Council of Nicaea.
Hilarious CAPTCHA!
Chevalier is a nut. Even though she will only be a junior congresswoman and have little power, the surge of nut-ism is startling. It feels like we’re slipping into an abyss and there’s no way to stop it. If more nutcases are elected and start amassing real power, I will still hold out hope that the American people will reject them in the end. But hope can only go so far.
Nut-jobs on the left of me, toadies on the right….
(Not of course that there aren’t both sorts on each side, but they do seem to be unequally distributed.)
Pipefish! Amazing!
The statement by the DSA guy is a rare example of honesty from those guys.
Regarding DIZ (DarialIZa), I read in the Free Press that, like many of her “student activist” colleagues, she is taking a very long time completing her degree. Now, many participants on this site have advanced degrees, and many of those are in STEM disciplines. In my experience, taking 7 years to complete a Ph.D. Requires a very good reason, such as difficulty in building new instrumentation, physical difficulty in obtaining results, etc. But in sociology? Gimme a break. And what are her means of support as a student in one of the most expensive cities in the US? As a regular student, she is entitled too privacy. As a candidate for political office, citizens are entitled to financial transparency.
There are several cases of these professional students among the activist community. DIZ is an American citizen, but many are not, and they are in the US because of student visas. Students using the status as cover for political activity should be scrutinized, and if they use student visas for the purpose, they should be thrown out of the US. And in any case, if their degrees take an inordinate amount of time, their universities should be paying attention.
Hope y’all have a good weekend. Shabbat Shalom, a sabbath of peace to humans, cats, ducks, dogs and others. Enjoy your favorite foods, drinks, music, books, and friends of all species.
And thanks to our host for doing the work and providing this space.
Shabbat Shalom!
This is very true. Long residency activism seems to be a Thing now.
See the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Algerian-Syrian Colombia University Palestine activist who recently lost his deportation case recently so (at long last) might hopefully be on a plane to Algiers soon.
He’d been in the PhD program there – and living in a student dorm – for 7+ years!
Shabbat Shalom to you Starwolf.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Can anyone read and translate the text on the medieval manuscript? I assume that is French? The musicology side of me is trying to track down the name of the original manuscript.
According to Google image search, it’s from the Chansonnier de Zeghere van Male, a songbook from Bruges in 1542: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chansonnier_de_Zeghere_van_Male (sorry, only available in French).
And the song in this image is apparently “Au fons d’enfer” (“To the depths of hell”) by Benedictus Appenzeller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictus_Appenzeller
It is outrageous that Reem Alsalem sat silently after that powerful statement. At first I assumed it was just that the translation was still going on in her headset, but that’s clearly not the case. I wish the video had continued so you could see what her next comment was. Did she change the topic?
I don’t know what followed, but I’m also guessing that she changed the topic, possibly to Yeah, But What Israel Did or a generic bothsiderism. It’s their modus operandi.
Well said and exactly what I was thinking; although there were much more colorful words to describe Alsalem swimming around in my brain. My heart aches for that beautiful Israeli woman.
On the rescued Elk— I’ve seen similar ones by hunters who gave up hunting entirely, after a rescue, because of it. There was no “sport” in taking advantage of a trapped animal fighting for it’s life. Harder to ignore when you’re face-to-face.
I wondered, as I watched the ending, whether the hunters would go down that path. Shoot with a camera, not with a gun.
Maybe the Franklin Effect (named after Ben, who wrote about it) was a factor for the ex-hunters: if you help someone in even a small matter you then are then more likely to help them in a larger matter.
(My inner cynic imagined the rescuers catching their breath and then gunning the elk down, maybe right away.)
So is anthropogenic climate change an extended phenotype? I was thinking about this after reading about readers’ reactions to Dawkins and the “Selfish Gene” anniversary, and their favorite Dawkins books, etc.
And yes, I suppose we can justify the word “delusion” when talking about the millions of Harris voters (I am one of them). But that in no way diminishes the fact that Trump voters were also deluded. Arguably more so, since they had a previous presidency in which to judge. I still feel less deluded than Trump voters. And this isn’t based on hindsight of his shitty job the 2nd time around.