Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 30, 2026, and my sister Susan’s birthday. Happy birthday, Sis! (It’s also my half-birthday as I was born on December 30). Here’s my sibling:
It’s also International Asteroid Day, National Meteor Day, and National Organization for Women Day, founded on this day in 1966 by a group of people. Wikipedia names them:
The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1966 by 28 women at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in June (the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women), and another 21 women and men who became founders at the October 1966 NOW Organizing Conference, for a total of 49 founders. Both conferences were held in Washington, D.C.[17] The 28 women who became founders in June were: Ada Allness, Mary Evelyn Benbow, Gene Boyer, Shirley Chisholm, Analoyce Clapp, Kathryn F. Clarenbach, Catherine Conroy, Caroline Davis, Mary Eastwood, Edith Finlayson, Betty Friedan, Dorothy Haener, Anna Roosevelt Halstead, Lorene Harrington, Aileen Hernandez, Mary Lou Hill, Esther Johnson, Nancy Knaak, Min Matheson, Helen Moreland, Pauli Murray, Ruth Murray, Inka O’Hanrahan, Pauline A. Parish, Eve Purvis, Edna Schwartz, Mary-Jane Ryan Snyder, Gretchen Squires, Betty Talkington and Caroline Ware
I have a tee-shirt bearing their symbol:
Click on the Google Doodle below to see the footy scores and upcoming games:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 30 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: In the knockout round of 32 yesterday, Brazil beat Japan 2-1, so the South American team goes into the round of 16. This was expected, but Japan came very close. . .
Gabriel Martinelli scored five minutes into stoppage time to seal a 2-1 win for Brazil against Japan in Houston after the five-time FIFA World Cup winners fought back from potential humiliation following Kaishu Sano‘s first-half opening goal.
Sano’s 29th minute goal stunned Carlo Ancelotti’s team and raised the prospect of Brazil losing a competitive game against Asian opposition for the first time and leading to one of the World Cup’s biggest-ever shocks. But a Casemiro header on 56 minutes hauled Brazil level and set up a second-half onslaught as the Seleção chased a winning goal.
Japan held firm, though, with goalkeeper Zion Suzuki making a series of crucial saves to keep his team on level terms. But Brazil snatched victory and a place in the round of 16 in the final seconds when Arsenal forward Martinelli scored from close range after being released by Bruno Guimarães.
Brazil will now face the winners of Tuesday’s tie between Norway and Ivory Coast in New Jersey on Sunday.
Here are the highlights. Japan’s first scoring play is at 3:38 on the tape, and Brazil’s two goals are in plays starting at 8:30 (a header) and 14:00.
President Donald Trump said Monday that Iran had requested a meeting with U.S. counterparts, though one of Iran’s top negotiators said no further talks had been scheduled after attacks across the Persian Gulf over the weekend challenged negotiations to end the war.
The U.S. president has tried to preserve a fragile interim deal, but hostilities mounted in recent days in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil had been shipped before war began. After four days of trading strikes, both sides appeared to pause their attacks Monday.
Trump said on social media that a meeting with Iran would happen Tuesday in Doha, Qatar. Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, are flying to Qatar for the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
But Kazem Gharibabadi, a senior negotiator for Iran, denied any talks had been scheduled.
The U.S. and Iran agreed to an interim deal earlier this month that calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of enriched uranium. It also waives U.S.-backed sanctions on the country while opening the Strait of Hormuz and giving each side 60 days to hammer out broader agreements.
. . . .Pezeshkian offered praise for the interim deal in comments published Monday by the state-run IRNA news agency, calling it “a great victory for the Iranian people.”
“Based on the plans made, $6 billion out of the total $12 billion of Iranian resources in Qatar will be released and returned to the country, and necessary follow-ups are being carried out,” he said. He did not elaborate.
Pezeshkian, a reformist within Iran’s theocracy, is the highest-ranking official within Iran to reference the release of the funds held by Qatar, a key mediator along with Pakistan in the negotiations.
So far, U.S. officials say no frozen Iranian assets have been released. Qatar as well as has not acknowledged any such transfer.
Conflicting word on the negotiations, conflicting word on the release of Iranian assets: who can we believe—Trump or Iran? That’s like asking whether you believe Satan or the Devil?
*By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court gave Trump another blow, preventing bim from firing Lisa Cook, the governor of the Federal Reserve. But in a separate decision, it did allow him to fire officials in other government agencies, so on the whole they increased his power (and that of future Presidents).
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Trump’s bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook with little legal scrutiny.
In a second decision, the court gave Trump free rein to fire officials at other independent agencies for any reason. The pair of rulings effectively delivers a split verdict on Trump’s second-term effort to exert maximal control over the executive branch.
By a vote of 5-4, the court in the Cook case dealt a stinging blow to Trump’s mission to remake the Fed, which he has repeatedly criticized for not lowering interest rates more aggressively. In a separate case involving the Federal Trade Commission, the court in a 6-3 ruling gave the president broad latitude to oust leaders of regulatory agencies that Congress sought to insulate from political pressure.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote both decisions.
The court had repeatedly made clear in recent months that it was poised to expand presidential sway over the agencies that regulate areas like consumer protection, collective bargaining and nuclear reactors. At the same time, some justices had signaled that they believed the Fed was entitled to special protections from political interference.
“Under our precedents, Cook was entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond prior to her termination,” Roberts wrote.
Accepting Trump’s position “would allow the president to remove a member of the Federal Reserve at any time, for any reason, without any notice before, and without any judicial check after,” the chief justice said. “That would turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment.”
Roberts was explicit that something larger than Cook’s job was at stake. Allowing a president to fire governors at will would threaten the central bank’s ability to set policy free from political pressure, the core reason Congress made the Fed independent in the first place, he wrote.
Here we see the separation of powers at work in that the judiciary ruled what the executive branch can do. My only question—and I have not read the decisions, is whether appointing heads of agencies must have Congressional approval. I suspect it does not, for in that case the Supreme court would not have given Trump the power to unilaterally name them.
*Our miscreant Democratic candidate for Senator in Maine is polling slightly ahead of Republican Susan Collins. This race has the possibility to “flip” the Senate to majority Democratic.
Senator Susan Collins and Graham Platner are locked in a neck-and-neck Senate contest in Maine, according to a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll, as voters weigh a desire for Democratic control of the Senate against Ms. Collins’s record and controversy around Mr. Platner’s past conduct.
Mr. Platner leads the race by two percentage points among likely voters, capturing the support of 49 percent, compared to 47 percent for Ms. Collins. It is a slight advantage, but one that is considered too small for polls to measure reliably, and which could easily grow or shrink as campaigning ramps up.
An oysterman who has never held elected office, Mr. Platner, 41, rode a populist message to the Democratic nomination despite reports about offensive online posts, a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol and his treatment of women. But the poll found that he is failing to attract some voters who otherwise want to see Democrats take power in Washington.
Fifty-four percent of voters said they would like to see Democrats control the Senate next year, a notably higher percentage than the percent of respondents who said they supported Mr. Platner. In fact, Ms. Collins, the Republican, is winning 10 percent of voters who prefer Democratic control.
I doubt that I’d vote for Platner; I’d probably write in another Democrat, but fortunately I’m not a Mainer and don’t have to vote. However, for those who say that Collins talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk (i.e., doesn’t vote with Democrates in the Senate), well, Grok said this when I asked it if Collins ever votes with the Democrats in the Senate:
Yes, frequently on certain issues—more so than nearly any other current Republican senator. Her moderate profile and low party unity scores mean she regularly supports positions favored by Democrats or bipartisan coalitions, especially on appropriations, some social/moderate issues, and procedural or targeted matters. However, she still votes with Republicans on the large majority of high-stakes party-line votes (nominations, core fiscal/tax priorities, etc.).Notable examples of alignment with Democrats or against GOP majorities:
- Healthcare/ACA: Voted against the “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act in 2017 (one of only three Republicans to do so). She has supported elements of stabilization and opposed some aggressive repeal efforts, though she backed the 2017 tax bill that repealed the individual mandate.
- Guns: Supported the 2013 Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks (bipartisan but failed).
- Student loans/education: Backed some Democratic-backed refinancing proposals.
- Impeachment and Trump opposition: Voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment (Jan. 6-related). She has opposed certain Trump administration spending priorities and some judicial or policy moves in both terms.
- Other cross-aisle work: Frequent collaboration on appropriations bills, disaster relief, and targeted legislation (e.g., HAVANA Act, electoral count reform). She has cosponsored or supported bills with Democrats on health, education, and infrastructure-related matters.
- Recent examples: Occasional breaks on spending, foreign policy (e.g., Iran-related), and specific nominations or amendments where she sided with Democrats.
On many close or party-line votes, especially judicial confirmations and major conservative priorities, she aligns with Republicans. Critics on the left argue her breaks are often symbolic or on votes where her side already has the numbers; critics on the right say she is insufficiently conservative.
*This is a horrible story: two parents in Michigan have been charged with murder after their morbidly obsese, autistic, 7-year-old son died.
A Michigan couple have been charged with murder, child abuse and torture in connection with the death last year of their 7-year-old son, who at the time weighed 255 pounds, according to court filings.
The boy, Casper O’Brien, died on Nov. 4, 2025, after the authorities responded to a 911 call earlier that day that he was not breathing at the Flint Township home he shared with his parents, Damien and Jessica O’Brien, according to the authorities.
An autopsy report from the Genesee County medical examiner concluded that Casper had died of dilated cardiomyopathy — an enlarged and weakened heart — brought on by morbid obesity.
Casper was bedridden at the time of his death, and subsisted on little more than snack foods, the Genesee County prosecutor, David S. Leyton, said in an interview on Saturday.
The child was not enrolled in school and received little to no medical care despite having a history of nonverbal autism, according to prosecutors and the autopsy report from the medical examiner, John Bechinski.
“This was a sad and horrific case involving the wanton and willful neglect by two parents for the care, welfare and medical needs of their son,” Mr. Leyton said in an emailed statement. “Their neglect led to their child suffering severe bed sores, various rashes and other physical health disorders.”
Prosecutors charged the parents with second-degree murder and three counts of second-degree child abuse. They were also charged with torture.
If convicted of the murder and torture charges, they face the possibility of life in prison.
In a statement, Mr. O’Brien’s lawyer, Elias Fanous, said that it would be “premature to comment on the allegations and charges that Mr. O’Brien is facing.”
“As in all criminal matters, Mr. O’Brien is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” Mr. Fanous said.
Yes, the “presumed innocent” trope, which is true, is what defense attorneys always say when they don’t have a good case. In fact, how did a 7-year-old get to weigh 255 pounds and get no medical care unless his parents neglected him? I’d like to see what tactics the defense uses if the parents plead “not guilty”. It’s this kind of thing that further erodes my faith in humanity; how could somebody act like that, especially knowing that they’d get caught?
*From Williams; a short video about European young folk’s ignorance of the Holocaust. It’s appalling.
*And to palliate that, here’s an astronomy fact you probably didn’t know: there are some huge planets whose density is less than that of cotton candy.
Astronomers have uncovered a pair of giant planets that are lighter than cotton candy — super-puffs the size of Jupiter.
The featherweight pair — orbiting a star 1,110 light-years away — are the biggest exoplanets found to have less density than cotton candy.
That makes them the lightest known planets of their size, said the University of Oxford’s George Dransfield.
“These two planets have densities comparable to a nice blob of shaving foam, fresh from the can,” Dransfield said in an email. She and her team reported their findings Wednesday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Dransfield suspects these fluffy, wispy worlds are probably white or blue, depending on whether the skies there are cloudy — no shades of cotton-candy pink. The planets are probably mostly hydrogen and helium, although it will take follow-up observations by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope to confirm their chemical makeup.
ADDetected by NASA’s Tess satellite over the past decade, these two especially puffy-puffs orbit a star in the southern constellation Volans, known as the flying fish. The researchers studied the planets’ orbits using telescopes on Earth to determine their density, from 1,110 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).
Grok looked up the density of cotton candy for me and then calculated how much Jupiter would weigh if it were made of cotton candy, compared to what astronomers think it weighs now:
- Real Jupiter: ~1.898 × 10²⁷ kg (~318 Earth masses)
- Cotton-candy Jupiter: ~7.155 × 10²⁵ kg (~12 Earth masses)
- The real Jupiter is about 26.5 times more massive than the cotton-candy version.
- The cotton-candy version would have only about 3.8% of Jupiter’s actual mass.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the editor is not doing her job:
Hili: You were supposed to go shopping, but instead you’re back at the computer again.
Andrzej: I just have to check something real quick.
In Polish:
Hili: Miałeś pojechać na zakupy, a tymczasem znowu siadasz do komputera.
Ja: Muszę szybko coś sprawdzić.
*******************
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From CinEmma:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
Masih is peeved at Trump for the stupid Iran ceasefire deal. This is linked to Masih’s interview with Jake Tapper.
🎙️ Full interview: https://t.co/AqmfZTGeqs
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) June 29, 2026
From Luana, who think that Mamdani’s proposed rent controls in NYC will be counterproductive, leaving rent-controlled apartments purchased by rich people largely vacant:
I haven’t studied it in detail, but from what I have seen, the natural experiment that Buenos Aires ran over the past six years seems like yet more clear evidence that rent control limits supply and (ironically) raises rents. pic.twitter.com/CAWAdUFY85
— M. Nolan Gray 🥑 (@mnolangray) June 27, 2026
This is funny, but Rowling should know that jumping spiders are totally harmless. They should be coddled and appreciated.
What kind of maniac lists ‘often watches before it jumps’ as a mitigating circumstance? You think I find it cute that it might be peering at me from a dark hole, calculating the best moment to make its big entrance? pic.twitter.com/Bi8lbfG0hG
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 28, 2026
One from my feed, a lovely rescue story (my favorite type). Be sure to read the whole tweet.
A baby elephant named Ellie was discovered alone in the wild in South Africa, having been rejected by his herd due to a severe umbilical abscess and hernia.
Ellie remained lethargic and deeply depressed, showing no will to live. Recognizing that elephants are intensely social… pic.twitter.com/druq8eWDel
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 29, 2026
One I reposted fro The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13 years old. https://t.co/Owcs4Rg6TB
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 30, 2026
And two from Doctor Cobb. He assures us that the snail below is “not plastic or AI”:
A cute, not-so-little snail face for your feed: meet the Red Giant (Indrella ampulla), a stunning species native to the Western Ghats of India.
— iNaturalist (@inaturalist.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T15:07:15.068Z
A mosaic and a fish in the submerged part of the ancient Roman town of Baiae:
For #MosaicMonday this fantastic photo of a mosaic (and a lovely fish 🐟) that was discovered in the submerged ruins of #Roman Baiae.📷 Parco Archeologico Campi Flegrei
— Nina Willburger (@drnwillburger.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T08:22:07.131Z
Happy birthday Susan Coyne (little sis)! The years seem to be passing so quickly.
Is there a paper reference on the cotton candy exoplanet? I like your immediate response to bring the phenomenon into our solar system lexicon by doing a calculation for Jupiter…a curiosity exercise that I hope that a number of high school STEM students and teachers might have done. But Jupiter is already a gas giant of hydrogen and helium, so what physical characteristics are (might be) present on the exoplanet that it doesn’t contract as does our Jupiter? Shaving foam analogy seems weak because foamy stuff is solid. In any case an explanatory scientific paper would be nice…or maybe another reader can comment.
EDIT!: never mind. Found the paper publicly available in Monthly Notices of Royal Astrnomical Society at url
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/549/4/stag864/8715235?searchresult=1
I will (try to) read it but likely would still appreciate someone to explain it in simple language.
As you say, it’s a gas giant. As you know, gases expand if you heat them up (perfect gas law). So the short answer is that the interior of this planet will be hotter than Jupiter. The question then is where that energy comes from and why hasn’t it radiated away leading to the planet contracting.
One possible answer is that the planet has recently been in an eccentric orbit. The orbit of such a planet would circularise owing to tidal forces. The gravity of the host star would give rise to tidal bulges on the planet, and the dissipation of the energy of tidal bulges would both circularise the orbit and heat up the planet.
Very cool, Coel, thanks for the explaination.
Huge cotton candy planets on the edge of the universe made my day.
And nice to see the picture of PCC(E)’s sister: for people without kids* – like us – siblings and friends are all important. Plus pets. 🙂
I also have a younger sister Susan in Australia.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
*”and if our genes don’t like it they can jump in the lake” – Pinker.
From their selfish point of view, it would make little difference if we did jump. And what has posterity ever done for us anyway?
BTW David, I recently came across an apparently depressed pet adult dog. What are some useful enrichments for such cases?
Bones?
Thanks, Coel!
And I must add that these outside of our solar system data points are critical fundamental science toward understanding the nature of the universe. The loss of planning and funding for these extraordinarily complex missions…remember that observations are at the end of a long and expensive process of requirements, design, and fabrication of instrumentation and an appropriate platform for the instruments. Stupid ai-based doge/project 2025 defunding of basic science harms our growth in knowledge in so many unpredictable ways.
(Last comment of day for me)
For sure. But as above, what has posterity ever done for us anyway? (Not my attitude, but one entirely consistent with the currently political zeitgeist.)
I like the bit about Martinelli ‘being released by Bruno Guimarães’. Nice way of putting it. The other Arsenal player, Gabriel, assisted the first Brazil goal. When Havertz, also an Arsenal player, scored for Germany, my Arsenal friends were pleased. Then he missed his penalty.
In other footie news, Morocco defeated Netherlands on penalty kicks after the game was tied 1-1, and no scores during double overtime. This seems to be an upset, although Morocco is proving to be a real force to contend with.
The Dutch team has not lost a single match during World Cup finals since 2010. We have been eliminated three times by a penalty shootout: twice against Argentina and now against Morocco.
Not surprising for two reasons: Morocco is 7th on the FIFA rankings, The Netherlands 8th and we (the Dutch team that is) have now lost 8 of 10 penalty shootouts (World Cup and European Championships combined). It is becoming traumatic…
And we had to stay up all night. The game was played between 03.00 and 06.00 hours local Dutch time.
I did not recognize that Dutch team on the pitch last night, particularly as the game wore on. 5 defenders sitting deep, giving up possession by the bucketful, and a big lump up front to flick on headers to runners. It looked more like Stoke circa 2010 than the Oranje.
Especially galling was seeing a maestro like Frenkie de Jong stuck protecting the centerbacks instead of being fed the ball and dictating play. The Netherlands played like cowards under Koeman, a wonderful player in his day but a very limited manager.
Yes! I watched the whole match. It was a classic.
That’s a terribly sad story about the morbidly obese autistic boy. Frankly, I have sympathy for the parents too, as trying to parent a non-verbal autist is a huge challenge. It looks like they did what many parents choose these days, and took the path of least resistance: don’t try to make him do anything he refuses, feed him what he will eat etc, with the predictable outcome. A child like that requires a lot of outside support, but that is hard to come by these days. Even the prosecutor said “”None of these kids even existed in the eyes of the government,” the prosecutor continued, saying child protective services had “never” been out to the family’s home. “Nobody knew about these kids.” Yes, they should have fought for their son, fought hard to get him (and themselves) the help needed. But people are weak, and weaker after trying and losing every battle with an immovable (in attitude, not avoirdupois) autist, at which point the shame of your situation can make you keep it quiet. Children’s services are in disrepair, everywhere. It’s so sad.
That was my reaction too when reading the story. Being a parent involves a lot of slippery slopes that are very hard to climb back, which is why for example screen time gets so easily out of hand in many families. I don’t see a lot of free will in what led to this horrible outcome.
I just don’t understand the irrational fear of spiders, and the assumption that they have a kind of malevolence toward us. Every day now I am handling several jumping spiders as I am working on a little movie project with them. They are a delight, and also quite cute (although they don’t mean to be cute either).
Hello, Mark. For me, having grown up in a bushland suburb of Brisbane, Australia, fear of spiders was not irrational. It was a pragmatic fear more than likely inculcated by my parents’ fears and their rigidly enforced insistence that we knocked the heels of our boots, shoes, or slippers sharply on the floor before putting them on. There was the Redback, which wasn’t to be trifled with, the Huntsmen (which we called tarantulas) that were large, hairy and terrifying to a child, and sundry others which we were taught to avoid – just in case.
Even today, 70-odd years on, a dark eight-legged thingy skittering across the floor away from whatever it was that I’d just picked up can elicit a hasty jump backward with a fear-filled shout. Not that I kill them; they are very interesting and useful forms of life but a surprise close-up in a TV documentary can still send a shivering chill down my back and activate my sweat glands.
Yes, Ross. I agree. You Queenslanders have some tropical sci-fi monsters up there, but even down in Melbourne we had redbacks and my Dad from Sydney had tales of funnel web spiders. Its funny how it is universal Australian cultural law, generational, to knock the shoes together and give them a shake “in case”.
I’ve read an argument (Pinker maybe?) that our huge visual cortex evolved to distinguish snakes, spiders and (in color) berries. Ain’t evolution grand – somebody I know asserts it it “True”. 😉
I love spiders and “rescue” them to the balcony where there are some plants but I find them unsettling. Dainty, Manhattan spiders always, not the Aussie monsters I grew up with!
best,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
We have a some big spiders here in on the coast (BC, Canada). They are harmless but they’re huge and black.
Inland, where are winters are colder, you don’t see the huge ones.
I live in a rainforest setting and sometimes find Huntsman spiders in my house – including really big ones. They don’t bother me (though one bit me once when I rolled onto it in bed while sleeping – didn’t know it was there, of course!) so when I find one in the house I use a plastic container to catch it and put it back outside. They are good for pest control (e.g., cockroaches).
Many years ago, a pregnant woman in her 9th month was picking up the toys in her children’s’ room, in the nice apartment where they lived in Jerusalem. She picked up the dolls, the little fire truck, the puzzles, and the large black hairy “rubber” spider, which promptly ran up her arm and nuzzled her face (she was not bitten). Her screams woke up half of Jerusalem, and it’s a wonder that she didn’t give birth there and then. She called her husband, a professor of Neurobiology at Hebrew University, and he came home and collected the spider in a jar. He brought it to a colleague in the Zoology department, who identified it as a desert-dweller who had somehow ended up in the city. He said that the species preyed on animals from other insects to reptiles to small birds. The spider ended up in a large terrarium, and was an attraction for many students.
I once took the 14 year old of one of my friends to a movie, to give my friends a date night. the movie that she chose was Arachnophobia. Her parents were not pleased with the after-effects, which were indeed arachnophobia, and her mom yelled at me for taking her to that particular movie.
Re Spiders in movies, have a look at Arachnophobia (1990; IMDB 6.5/10) if you haven’t already had the “pleasure”.
In real life, when some friends and I were getting into childhood mischief in our leafy suburb, we encounters a HUGE (hand sized) dark spider at about eye level on a white wall. Not moving (it may have been dead for all we knew), but I had never been so frightened of anything.
These days I too value spiders, particularly the (dark) hunting spiders I see on the (white) ceiling, because the enemies of my insect enemies are my friends. And some of the local orb weavers do beautiful work, especially when seen shimmering with morning dew.
The Court did not say that the President couldn’t fire Cook, merely that he went about it the wrong way. Indeed, given their ruling the same day in Trump v. Slaughter, where the Court ruled that the President can fire the head of the FTC, it would have been bizarre for them to have said he couldn’t.
The Supreme Court decision that allows the president to fire members of independent agencies without cause but protected the chair of the Federal Reserve shows the legal and mental contortions the court undertook to hand Trump even more power. Instead of having competent career personnel of both parties working for the country, we are going to get more unqualified and incompetent lackeys, lickspittles, and loyalists. The guardrails have been removed piece by piece.
Heads of agencies are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Slaughter the FTC commissioner was confirmed by the Senate. So are Fed governors. The Supreme Court just is allowing the President to unilaterally fire agency heads confirmed by the Senate. Of course he already could fire cabinet officers confirmed by the Senate.
Happy birthday Susan! And happy half-birthday Jerry!
You mention NOW. My wife and I went to a small NOW meeting when I was a young professor, naive with my freshly minted Ph.D. When the leader started talking about their ongoing effort to support ”liberation theology,” I asked her why they would want to replace one sort of nonsense for another. Did I say something wrong? It was the last meeting we attended.
Planets lighter than cotton candy. I wonder if there are any even lighter than that. Cheese Doodles?
Amazing Red Giant Snail. Wow!
The video about Holocaust Remembrance Day is very misleading. The spokesperson implies that all Europeans know little about the Holocaust, especially young people. The sample of students shown in the video certainly illustrated that point–but it was not a representational sample since it only included a few students in Paris. Yes, they were quite ignorant, but what about students in other parts of France or Europe as a whole? He gives no examples from other places. I doubt he would get the same reaction if he asked students in Germany because they are taught that history in school and are quite aware of the role their country played in the Holocaust. How much people know about that period depends largely on what they have been taught in school. If they are taught nothing at all, that is appalling.
Yes, the ignorance of the Holocaust is appealing, but it is not surprising (to me, at least). The young are ignorant of almost everything else, so ancient history (the days before cell phones and the internet) would hardly interest them. And where would they learn (outside of special programs in schools)? They do not read books, and right now, the argument is whether they can read books. Their attention spans have been reduced by social media. And if anyone does bother to open a book these days, in most cases it would not be a book on “ancient” history.
I am sorry to generalize. Of course there are exceptions, but from what I can see, this seems to be a majority (and growing) trend.
I learned about the Holocaust before I learned anything in school. I watched the BBC documentary “World at War” when I was 7 or 8, a few years after it was released. I wasn’t expecting the episodes about the Holocaust, and I’m glad my parents let me watch it (our family watched the series together during one of its re-releases). Those b&w images, esp. the bulldozers moving mountains of dead, are indelible in my memory. I also remember my mother crying.
I’ve rewatched the series many times, most recently last Summer (I learn something new on each episode- or relearn something I forgot), but those particular episodes on the Holocaust never lose their haunting, terrifying power. I didn’t cry the first time I watched, I was too confused and horrified to cry, but I cry now. Perhaps it should be required watching for them youths!
Safety forbid! It would severely traumatise the little didumses.
and hasn’t neuroscience bolstered the idea/fact that the little didumses can handle a lot more mental stress than we give them credit for? Not fragile glass, that’s for sure.
As a control I’d like to see him ask questions about D-Day, WWI, and the Industrial Revolution. Is it general ignorance of the past, or specific blindness when it comes to the Jews?
The edit seems to hide the fact that he was either asking them in English (a bad idea, as shown by the example of the girl responding only in French), in a bad accent that renders the words hard to immediately recognize, and/or without any context, which easily creates confusion (remember Gary Johnson’s 2016 “What is Aleppo?”).
As of 2026/6/30 10:00 AM the price of Brent crude is $73.50. This is up from a $71.70 on 6/26 and down from prior highs. The market thinks Strait of Hormuz will remain open (or doesn’t care about the Strait of Hormuz). My guess is that the IRGC overplayed its hand.
It is Schrödinger’s Strait–it can be open and closed at the same time.
I’m glad to see Jerry revisit the voting record of Susan Collins; Grok could have expanded the list of cross-party voting. It’s interesting how John McCain became the Republican all Democrats want to like when he cast his melodramatic vote not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but if it weren’t for the earlier votes by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the McCain drama wouldn’t have mattered.
It’s rare for the vote of a single senator to determine the outcome of legislation. That simple fact of legislative math allows the partisans to claim, “Well, Collins votes with the Dems only when her vote won’t matter.” If the Dems would win the vote anyway, she’s safe to cast her lot with them and not hurt her party. If the Republicans would win the vote anyway, she’s still safe to cast a supposedly disingenuous vote with the Dems and not hurt her party.
The problem we have is that the partisans in our country truly cannot understand those who cross party lines on some issues—whether it be the voters or the few remaining elected officials. That’s why people like Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Fetterman, and former senators Mitt Romney, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema cause such anger and incomprehension—especially among the party faithful. They must all be disingenuous—unlike those who vote in party lockstep (despite shifting party platforms) and could be safely replaced by an AI algorithm.
Sadly, the National Organization for Women (NOW) doesn’t exist anymore. Yet again, another organisation for women is allowing men in. The organisation needs to be renamed the National Organization for Women and Men Who Want to be Women (NOWMWWW).
Why do some men want to stop women from having ANYTHING of their own? 😡
Campaigning for the ‘rights’ that the TQ+ want to access women’s bathrooms and changing rooms is directly campaigning to remove women’s human rights to safety and dignity. I wonder if the bold women who set up NOW would approve of removing women’s rights?
https://now.org/issues/lgbtq-rights/
“Why do some men want to stop women from having ANYTHING of their own?”
I would ask the same about the Boy Scouts (now “Scouting America”), who now allow girls. And there is a still a Girl Scouts, which does not allow boys.
I think this is less about the patriarchy holding down women, and more about how ideologues who are small in number but somehow very influential can infiltrate legitimate organizations as a parasite enters a healthy body.
Personally, I think that boy scouts should just be for boys, but if people want that, then they need to organise and fight to have single sex groups.
Girl scouts in the UK only stopped allowing boys this year, after a long campaign by people who objected to men and teenage boys sharing sleeping accommodation with young girls. I think, however, that they still allow girl scout leaders who are male transvestites, like this fetishist https://www.womenarehuman.com/girl-guiding-promoted-gun-toting-male-transgender-dominatrix-after-expelling-female-leaders-over-trans-policy/ . Hopefully that policy will be changed soon as the fight is still going on.
I don’t see any problem with also having a mixed scouting group, where appropriate arrangements are made for any overnight events.
I oppose the trans advocacy that has overtaken the Democratic Party. I firmly support organizations and activities for women and girls where they can be free of men—if they so choose. Yet I have to acknowledge chuckling a bit over the last few years when I hear questions like that posed by Joolz. For my entire life, one can invert the question and ask: Why do some women want to stop men from having ANYTHING of their own? Any argument for male-only spaces anywhere where people aren’t naked is met by many women with disdain, eye-rolling, or vitriol.
I see a role for single-sex organizations on both sides to allow those so inclined to retreat from the peculiarities and demands, the intrigues and the fascinations, of the opposite sex. Organizations dedicated to education and mentoring could benefit in select cases from single-sex approaches—for a subset of males, in particular. And I say all that even though I, like Starwolf mentions below, am not a joiner. (And I would have despised being in a boys’ school.)
But, like with much else, Americans seem incapable of moderation without first going to extremes.
If there were more Republicans like Collins, Murkowski, and Romney, it would be easy to decide how to vote in Maine. Many years ago, I contributed $$ to a Repub Senator of that sort (Rutland Vermont’s Jim Jeffords). A couple of years later, he
officially left the GOP—thus the last member of the liberal Republican species when it went extinct. Could George Church and Colossal Biosci perhaps bring it back?
The story of the O’Brien family in Flint is heart-breaking and appalling.
Your comment about Colossal bringing back liberal Republicans made my day!
The fact that there is such a tight race in Maine amazes me. Not because of Susan Collins—it could be any sane politician. But because of Platner. How could this guy be a representative of a major party running for national office? the is an official Crazyass (a diagnosis that should be in the next DSM).
I do not understand men who want to be part of women’s groups and organizations. Not being a joiner of organizations myself, I don’t get the appeal. If I were to join an organization, I would choose one that is based on a common ideal—a common denominator, as it were.
In the UK teaching of the Holocaust, the Nazis and Slavery have at times dominated the History syllabus.
I have just seen that in his first year in office of his second term Trump made 1 biilion. He has really achieved something lasting.
Letting your child be overweight is child abuse. I speak from experience.