Welcome to Sunday, June 28, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats and National Foodie Day. Here’s one chowing down on fried chicken at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah, George last April.
And here’s a terrific book of fiction I’m reading whose protagonist is a Japanese writer visiting Taiwan in the late thirties (Taiwan was Japanese land in that period). The writer is a foodie, each chapter is titled with the name of a Taiwanese dish, and the writer is always searching for new local food. Beyond that, the book is about love and colonialism, and it won the International Booker Prize for 2026.
It’s also INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY, National Ceviche Day, and National Tapioca Day.
This Google Doodle will give you all of yesterday’s footy scores if you click on it:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 28 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: Despite Ronaldo playing for Portugal, that team tied Ecuador (another heavyweight) 0-0 in the World Cup yesterday.
Colombia finished the World Cup’s opening round as the Group K winners after playing Portugal to a scoreless draw Saturday night.
Both teams had already secured spots in the knockout stage before the match, needing only to learn their opponents for the next round.
Colombia will play Ghana, which lost 2-1 to Croatia earlier Saturday. Portugal, who entered the expanded 48-team tournament as a favorite, will face Croatia as the Group K runners-up.
Despite the lack of goals, it was a lively affair. Bruno Fernandes came close to putting Portugal ahead in the first half but was denied by Camilo Vargas. Portugal’s Diogo Costa had six saves, more than in the team’s first two matches combined.
Portugal, looking for their first World Cup title, head to the knockout stage after an up-and-down group stage.
I really want Argentina to win as a sendoff to Messi, the best player ever. Yes, Ronaldo is great, but I don’t like his constant strutting and preening.
Here are the highlights:
*The Iran/U.S./Israel war continues as Iran has retaliated at the U.S. retaliation for Iran attacking a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has reportedly struck yet another tanker, as well as Bahrain.
Bahrain said it came under attack from Iranian drones, and a tanker was hit Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz, as fighting around the strategic waterway extended into a third day despite the agreement signed earlier this month to wind down the U.S.-Iran war.
Iran didn’t specifically claim responsibility for the attacks. But state media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had carried out strikes against American targets in the region and reasserted Iran’s claim of control over traffic in the strait.
The outbreak of violence began Thursday when the U.S. said Iran struck a ship that transited the strait via a path near the coast of Oman that Tehran had warned shippers not to use. President Trump called the attack a violation of the two sides’ ceasefire and ordered strikes on Iranian positions along the waterway.
A U.S. official said two Iranian drones were detected in the Saturday attack on Bahrain. One was shot down by a ground-based defense system and the other landed in a remote airfield area without hitting any target, the official said. Bahrain didn’t detail any damage from the attack.
An Iranian drone struck a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude near the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. official said. Two other drones targeting commercial shipping were shot down by U.S. forces. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Center, which is affiliated with the Royal Navy, said the ship struck Saturday was hit in the bridge by an unidentified projectile.
The Joint Maritime Information Center, a U.S.-U.K. navy body, raised its maritime security threat level in the Strait of Hormuz to “substantial” on Saturday, citing the new attacks on merchant vessels.
I suspect the U.S. will retaliate for the retaliation for the retaliation, and the loop will go on forever. I’m actually glad that things are happening this way, as the deal with Iran that Trump was making was a terrible deal (see Sam Harris’s video below), and would not only empower the new hard-line Iranian regime, but would do nothing to free the oppressed people of Iran. But that freedom is no longer a priority for Trump, and is too much to hope for.
*In the meantime, the “memorandum of understanding” that will supposedly end the war hands huge economuc bonuses to Iran, bonuses that will allow it to rebuilt. It’s ridiculous.
But critics of the deal argue the relief will ultimately allow Iran to rebuild its military and support allied armed groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Trump administration says it is requiring Iran spend some of its unfrozen assets buying food from U.S. farmers, but Tehran’s oil revenue are not similarly restricted.
In the wake of war with two of the most powerful militaries, the Iranian system entered peace talks with the United States emboldened and has used the negotiations to secure critical concessions from economic aid, formalization of Iran’s control over the crucial Strait of Hormuz and a say in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Trump administration officials say the deal is “performance based” and most of the economic incentives demand Iran comply with the terms of the initial agreement, including that it open the Strait of Hormuz and allow nuclear inspections.
“For Iran to benefit long-term, it has to achieve a final deal with the United States,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House. “We can simply rescind waivers and restore pressure if Iran fails to implement its commitments. The waiver does not diminish our leverage, it strengthens it,” the official said.
And what if Iran does not abide by a final deal. After all, it’s broken deals repeatedly, including nuclear deals, and it’s just broken its agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can simply wait until we get a new President, and be it J. D. Vance or a Democrat, no President is going to have the stomach to attack Iran again. As for the oil money, we can’t cut that off unless we do attack again.
*The Times of Israel reports an incipient deal between Israel, the U.S. and Lebanon, a deal that will supposedly disarm Hezbollah.
Israel, Lebanon and the United States on Friday signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at paving the way for an eventual peace deal between the two long-time Middle East adversaries.
The agreement — which includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of some small areas currently held by Israeli troops, as well as a process aimed at disarming the Hezbollah terror group — is the result of five rounds of talks in the US capital.
The deal “begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the signing ceremony, noting: “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead.”
The framework deal was reached on the fourth day of the fifth round of talks that the US has mediated between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, beginning in April. The latest round of fighting in the country kicked off when Hezbollah attacked Israel on March 2, in support of Iran. Several truces declared since then have unraveled.
The areas the IDF will withdraw from have already been cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure. In some cases, this has included Israel razing entire Lebanese villages to the ground on the border, with the IDF arguing that Hezbollah was using much of them to plan and carry out attacks against Israel.
Israel, Lebanon and the United States on Friday signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at paving the way for an eventual peace deal between the two long-time Middle East adversaries.
The agreement — which includes a pilot effort in which Lebanese soldiers take control of some small areas currently held by Israeli troops, as well as a process aimed at disarming the Hezbollah terror group — is the result of five rounds of talks in the US capital.
The deal “begins to put in place a framework for lasting peace and security,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the signing ceremony, noting: “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead.”
The framework deal was reached on the fourth day of the fifth round of talks that the US has mediated between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, beginning in April. The latest round of fighting in the country kicked off when Hezbollah attacked Israel on March 2, in support of Iran. Several truces declared since then have unraveled.
The areas the IDF will withdraw from have already been cleared of Hezbollah infrastructure. In some cases, this has included Israel razing entire Lebanese villages to the ground on the border, with the IDF arguing that Hezbollah was using much of them to plan and carry out attacks against Israel.
Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter said Israel will maintain its buffer zone in southern Lebanon until the Lebanese Armed Forces demonstrate that they can dismantle Hezbollah and assume responsibility for security.
Leiter stressed that the deal will not be based on a fixed timetable, but on measurable progress by the Lebanese army in disarming Hezbollah.
Additional “pilot” handovers from the IDF to the LAF will take place as benchmarks are met, he said.
Excuse me if I have little confidence that Lebanon and its own military will force Hezbollah to disarm. Why would Hezbollah (or Iran) agree to that? Rubio and Vance are good at putting a positive spin on these deals, but I don’t see how Lebanon can force Hezbollah to do anything, especially since the terrorist group is financed and supported by Iran, who wants continued attacks on Israel from the north
*Recently I lost a $500 check in the mail (the recipient never got it); it was probably stolen and I stopped payment. But the NYT tells us we should never send checks in the mail, period. (Article archived here.)
A practice that was common not so long ago has become increasingly risky — sending checks in the mail. But if you must send money this way, scour your account statements promptly.
Skipping that advice can leave you vulnerable to check fraud, and may also make it more difficult to recover the money if you lose it.
Joan K. Atchinson, 63, a retiree who lives in Washington, D.C., is dealing with that right now.
Ms. Atchinson said in a phone interview that she was trying to recover several thousand dollars stolen when someone intercepted a check she mailed last year. The check was altered to be payable to someone else before it was cashed. After months of trying, she said, she still has not recovered payment from either of the two banks involved — Charles Schwab, where she has an account that she used to write the check, and Chase, where the falsified check was cashed. “I’ve kind of lost hope.”
Checks sent through the Postal Service have become targets for criminals in recent years. While fewer people write checks, the checks haven’t disappeared. Two-thirds of adults say they rarely or never use paper checks, but more than a fifth either have experienced check fraud or know someone who has, according to a poll in 2025 by the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group.
In some cases, thieves may pilfer one or more checks from local mailboxes. Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said thieves sometimes “fish” for checks at free-standing drop boxes, using long tools with sticky pads on the ends to grab letters. In other cases, more sophisticated criminals may steal large batches of checks, copy them and then sell them on the internet.
Often, the purloined checks are chemically altered in what’s known as “check washing” to remove the name of the recipient. The thief replaces it with a fraudulent name, and often increases the amount of the check, before cashing or depositing it.
How can I avoid check fraud?
Try to break the check-mailing habit. “No one should ever mail a check,” Mr. Rust said.
If you must write a check, he said, try to deliver it in person or take it inside a post office to mail rather than relying on your own mailbox or public drop boxes.
The American Bankers Association recommends using permanent “gel” ink pens when you do write checks to reduce the risk of tampering. Promptly review your bank statements — including online check images — for anything that looks suspicious. And if you don’t already, consider using your bank’s online bill payment service.
All states now offer some type of electronic payment option for paying taxes, so look into using your state’s system if you owe money at tax time.
Chicago is notorious for stolen mail, so I mail checks only from the post office and have stopped mailing checks in mailboxes since I experience theft. It’s a pain in the tuchas to go to the PO, but given the possibility of stolen checks, it’s worth it.
*Here’s a 20-minute video of Sam Harris expatiating on the cease-fire deal, which he calls a “betrayal”. He also has some choice words about Trump, and says that if the DSA takes over the Democratic Party, then the next Presidential election will be a “forced choice between lunatics of different flavors.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is having trouble seeing:
Andrzej: Hili, could you give me back my magnifying glass?
Hili: There’s no need. You just need to clean your glasses.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, czy możesz mi oddać moje szkło powiększające?
Hili: Nie ma powodu, wystarczy umyć twoje okulary.
*******************
From Things With Faces:
From Terrible Maps; “popcorn” in different parts of South America:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
Masih retweeted this one from Kasparov:
🎯 And when Westerners travel to repressive Islamic countries, they’re told to respect Islamic traditions. When representatives from these nations come to the West, Westerners are told to discard their traditions and freedoms and respect Islam. https://t.co/CWIETNWnr0
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 26, 2026
From Luana. This is, according to another tweet, “Leftist San Francisco lawmaker Scott Wiener, who supports all radical trans demands, showed up to the extremist Trans March on June 26 where he was accosted by the Trantifa he empowered. They surrounded him and kicked him out because he had supported Israel.” Wiener is a California State Senator who fought hard for LGBTQ rights, and I’ve rarely seen such vociferous hatred over a pseudo-issue (the Gaza “genocide”), though I’ve watched a lot of demonstrations. Unfortunately, he’s very pro LGBTQ but his downfall was being Jewish.
This is why you don’t give psychopathic movements an inch. They can never be appeased. Give in to one demand, and you become the target of endless struggle sessions designed to humiliate you into total ideological submission.pic.twitter.com/7PgU01cBcc
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) June 27, 2026
Van Jones on the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party:
Larry is very sensitive to the heat, but I bet #10 Downing Street has air-conditioning:
Given the temperature I’d say you’re fine to finish work early and start the weekend. If the boss questions it, tell them Larry said it’s OK.
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 26, 2026
One from my feed. I hope it’s real but AI videos are proliferating these days:
You can’t add days to your life, but you can add life to your days.
So please enjoy your days.❤️ pic.twitter.com/yLo5fLwgu0
— CHAMBAL KESHARI (@HindutvaNerve) June 27, 2026
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old. https://t.co/rCyUZmclOo
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 28, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, centipedes do not have 100 legs!
The smallest centipedes have 30 legs, while the largest ever discovered had 382 👀🐛 Despite the name, no centipede with exactly 100 legs has ever been found. Surprising science explains why!
— Natural History Museum, London (@nhm-london.bsky.social) 2026-06-27T12:27:06.489Z
Here’s the famous Minneapolis Cat Tour that I’ve posted about before:
This is quite literally the best thing you will see today.
— Emily✨🇳🇱 (@emilyoram.bsky.social) 2026-06-27T10:33:16.689Z
I saw on What’s Going On With Shipping that there are 11000 merchant mariners and 100s of ships bottled up in Hormuz for months. There was an agreement between USA and Iran to allow them safe passage. Then this was halted by Iran firing on a ship. Could it be that we agreed to the terrible deal just to get these ships out, which would take away leverage Iran could use in future negotiations and Iran was not having it? They have a history of using hostages when it suits them.
Yours is an interesting thought: that Iran is holding the tankers hostage.
Thanks for the Taiwan book recommendation, I’ll have to check it out. I spent a couple of wonderful summers in Taiwan back in the 80s, one in Tainan, in the south, and one in Taipei, up north (side note: “nan” means south in Mandarin, “bei” means north). It’s a fascinating place with wonderful people, not to mention incredible food. That first summer in Tainan, I was struck by the fact that lots of elderly folks still spoke Japanese; I hadn’t been aware of the history at the time.
Taiwan is the only place in Asia where the Japanese aren’t wildly hated, Loretta. Their “colonialism” there wasn’t terrible.
I also encountered a couple of oldies there who spoke Japanese (as I do).
My travels in S.E. Asia were also in the 1980s and Taiwan was a pretty grim dictatorship. Later Taiwan became democratic and is a firm friend of Israel, Somaliland (which I write articles about) and the Western alliance.
I see the world in stark terms: the forces of civilization and the (often religious) forces of evil, backwardness, corruption.
It behooves us to support our friends like Taiwan, Israel and Somaliland (not Somalia).
best,
D.A.
NYC
When I was a research student in Japan in the early 1970s, there was a student from Taiwan living in the same dorm; and he said that there was a significant portion of the original Taiwanese population that was more sympathetic to the Japanese than to the Koumintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek, who had retreated to Taiwan after defeat by Mao’s communist forces and established a highly authoritarian rule, martial law for 38 years.
It’s interesting that now the Kuomintang, as a minority party in Taiwan, talks up rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China, while the governing coalition – though rejecting outright assertions of independence – maintains a more independent stand.
It is interesting and may seem paradoxical even, but it is quite logical when you consider that the pro-KMT older generation consider themselves Chinese, and that therefore finally admitting defeat in the Civil War to what they see as their fellow countrymen is preferable, for them, to losing their identity into a new, independent, Taiwanese nation. The newer generation, and the Pan-Green Coalition, of course see things very differently.
Also interesting is your dormmate’s choice of words –or perhaps yours– of “the original Taiwanese population” and its preference for the Japanese rule rather than the Chiang Kai-shek’s: I imagine he was talking about the benshengren and not the indigenous people of Taiwan, who were not exactly treated decently by the Japanese during the 50 years they ruled the island. It was definitely colonialism, with no need for scare quotes, and it absolutely was terrible, no matter what resident spammer D.A. seems to think he knows about the subject.
The elephant video looks like AI to me.
I believe it is as well.
I think so too.
Several clues. How can the baby so easily climb back up the slippery slope? When the mom slides down and retreats there are no gashes in the mud from her (very big!) feet?
The centipede with 48 pairs of legs sort of DOES have 100 legs. The “forcipules” are simply the first pair of legs, modified to be fangs. So… 100 legs!
Mel Brooks turned 100 today.
Oy gewalt! Now, that’s a biblical age.
+1
I will never forgive him for dropping one of those tablets.
The deal with Lebanon is interesting. Since Hezbollah is not a party to the deal, it amounts to an agreement with a government—Lebanon’s—that will not be able to disarm Hezbollah on its own, so will not be able to deliver.
That said, I do think it’s good that Israel and Lebanon are trying to work together. They certainly have a shared interest in getting rid of Hezbollah, and they have shared interests in normalizing relations more broadly.
Of course President Aoun of Lebanon is demanding that the IDF leave Lebanon. It’s part of his job to maintain the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon. And it’s part of his job to ensure that the Lebanese can live in peace near their shared border with Israel. Even if only for purposes of public relations, he has to call on Israel to leave. But I wonder if he has mixed feelings. After all, the IDF is helping him rid Lebanon of Hezbollah terrorists, something that will benefit Lebanon and strengthen Aoun’s own power and the power of his government.
At the risk of scooping tomorrow’s Hili Dialog, Amit Segal interprets the deal this way:
My guess is that Iran wants free movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC does not. This situation suggests a future conflict between the Iranian government and the IRGC. How this will shake out isn’t clear. Long term, the Strait of Hormuz won’t matter. But that is long tem.
I hope a DSA candidate doesn’t ever win the presidency. They sound like a caricature of the crazy left.
Things don’t look promising on the Iran ceasefire. My guess is that Iran is determined to treat the Strait of Hormuz like a manmade canal and charge fees. They see a new revenue stream. This should have been explicitly ruled out in the MOU.
Realistically, the likely post-Trump rebound after the crazy right will be the similarly crazy left. [Insert Yeats’ first line.]
Iran (the IRGC) has big/real enemies. Forget the USA/Israel (obviously they are hostile). Forget the nations of Europe (obviously they are hostile). Forget the Ukraine (obviously is it hostile). Iran/IRGC has managed to make enemies of China and the Arab states. Does Iran/IRGC have friends? Sure it does. Russia and N. Korea are friends. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I am surprised that Sam Harris is surprised that Trump actually feels no shame. As a neuroscientist he presumably has some exposure to academic psychology, which lays claim to neighbouring turf — what those neurons get up to when organised into brains — but he seems unaware of sociopathy and the hypotheses that neurobiological defects are involved in disabling sociopaths from perceiving any essential differences between people and things.
WEITers who are more familiar with his oeuvre may have some plausible explanations, which I would welcome.
Great quote from an opinion piece in today’s London Times:
“What sort of “feminist” outfit does not put the eradication of the world’s leading woman-hating organisation, Hamas, right at the top of its agenda?”
This quote came to mind when watching the clip of LGBTQ++ morons harassing Scott Weiner for being pro-Israel. Hamas would toss them off a tall building as soon as they got their hands on those idiots.
In my opinion, Iran is making yet another mistake. There is much broader global consensus that the Strait of Hormuz must be open, then there is supporting Israel attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.
For example, consider Arab public opinion (and here I am just guessing). My guess is that many/most Arabs are inclined to support Hezbollah. Conversely, they are probably very opposed to anything/anyone that would prevent them from selling oil.
One would think that most folks would see an Israel-Lebanon peace treaty as a good thing, even if difficult to attain. Hezbollah, which does not care for the interests of either country, of course does not—they represent Iranian interests, whose short term goal is the destruction of Israel, and long-term goal the establishment of an Islamic state encompassing Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. One would think that Americans of both political affiliations would understand that Iran’s goals in the region are Islamicist, nondemocratic and bad for the West.
Unfortunately, the young people organizing in the Democratic Party do not fit into these categories.Some of them are simply politically ignorant and naive. but the organizers are not naive. If this was just limited to stupid college kids whose brains are not fully interconnected, that would be one thing. But the education that they received from Marxist and Islamicist professors and instructors remained with them, and they are now politically active. And they get elected. Mamdani is one, and Darializa and Valdez, El Sayed and others, are open supporters of Hezbollah.They do not hide that they hate the ideas that the US stands for, and openly support a terrorist group doing all that they can to harm democracies. These are not people who are calling for peace—their goals is destruction of the system in which they live and thrive.
Obviously, such people are a problem for Israel. But they are a problem for the US and other Western democracies as well. they use the tools of liberal democracy to attempt to bring the system down. Hopefully, voters will come to their senses and realize this. In the long term, it is necessary for universities (faculties and administrations) to understand that the instructors “educating” the young need to be removed. Marxist indoctrination does not an education make, as Master Yoda would say. the fact that this indoctrination is happening in the humanities and social sciences departments of the universities considered to be the “elite”, those educating future political leaders, is catastrophic for the US and the West.
I do not advocate McCarthyism, just common sense. Just like medical schools should not hire anti-vax teachers, and biology departments should not hire anti-evolutionists, humanities and social sciences departments should not hire instructors who indoctrinate students with the ideas of destroying the very systems that allow free ideas.
The USA is the only country in the world where checks are still commonly used for payments. In most other countries, checks have long been replaced by more secure electronic payment systems. I cannot remember the last time I wrote a check – probably more than 20 years ago… Watching someone in a US supermarket writing a check for a small amount of groceries is amazing. In Australia, checks (cheques) have never been accepted at a supermarket…
Regarding checks.
We had a couple of bank accounts in the US that were inactive. The banks closed the accounts, and sent the money to some kind of state account (in a different state!), where, should we jump through some hoops, we could recover the money. Here’s the kicker: once we proved our bona fides, the only way that they would send us the money was by check via post office. No bank transfer, no sending the check by FEDEX or other service. One check got lost in the mail and had to be resent. As you can imagine, it took many months for us to get OUR money.