Today’s posts may be truncated due to circumstances beyond my control (see below).
Welcome to Sunday, July 5, 2026, the Sabbath made for goyische cats and National Hawaii Day. Here’s Mauna Kea on the Big Island, Hawaii’s highest point at 13,803 feet (4,207.3 meters). (It’s also the second highest mountain on any island, behind Puncat Jaya on New Guinea (4,884 meters or 16,024 feet). Astronomical observatories sit on the mountaintop. I took the photo on June 30, 2019:
It’s also Bikini Day, National Apple Turnover Day, and National Graham Cracker Day, celebrating a food design to eliminate lust and carnal desires.
And it was the worst Fourth of July ever. On July 3, Chicago had the heaviest rain I’ve experienced in my forty years living in this city. It was like a bucket of water being dumped everywhere constantly, and it lasted a long time, accompanied by stiff winds. Even walking across the street to my car was sufficient to drench me. Some places in Chicago lost electrical power and, unfortunately, my flat was one of the few unlucky buildings (the wires were down). It was also hot, and since all electricity was off, we lost not only power, but water (there’s apparently a pump that gets it up to my crib). That meant that although it was hot, my source of cooling (a reliable fan that blows on my bed) was kaput. As was the water tap. No drinks or shower for me! It was a miserable night, but I hoped the power would soon be restored.
It was not. When I woke up on the morning of the Fourth, there was still no electricity. Further, the emergency lights in my building were also off. Since the elevators were down, I had to walk down ten flights of stairs in total darkness, feeling my way along. Fortunately, the University of Chicago had power, so I was able to do a bit of work on my writing project. What I was unable to do was make myself a planned celebratory dinner featuring a large t-bone steak and a good bottle of red wine. When your power’s off and your freezer is full, you have about 24 hours before the food starts thawing, and you cannot open the freezer door if you hope to save the food. Ergo my steak languished in darkness.
About 2 pm, roughly 24 hours after Friday’s power outage, I went home to recover the frozen food. (I had already moved my dairy products, which were few, to my lab’s food refrigerator.) I quickly opened the freezer door and shoveled all the frozen food into a doubled-up heavy garbage bag. There must have been fifty pounds of the stuff (including many steaks as well as sundry other meats and frozen vegetables), and, like Santa, I lugged my sack down ten floors to my car and drove it to the lab. Fortunately, the frozen food was still frozen save for a gooey carton of Breyer’s strawberry ice cream, which got tossed. My sack of frozen food fit into the lab’s food freezer, where it now reposes in anticipation of power restoration at home. We’re told the power will be on today, but I don’t believe it.
Since it was hot again, and I had no fan, I decided to spend the night in my air-conditioned office. I tried to think of it as “camping.” Spreading cushions and a sleeping bag on the floor, I essayed sleep. Unfortunately, hauling that heavy sack o’ food injured my right arm, which was already injured from tossing duck food too far. (Getting old is hard!) Ergo I got almost no sleep because of the pain, for I don’t have Tylenol or Advil in the lab). So here I sit, exhausted and typing with an aching arm steakless in Chicago. It was the worst Fourth of July in my life, mitigated only by the reappearance of heavy rain last night that cancelled the pyrotechnics and their attendant racket. But I saved my frozen food!
I hope American readers had a better Fourth. Tell is in the comments what you did.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Footy news: There were two World Cup games yesterday. Morocco beat Canada 3-1, knocking our northern neighbors out of the tournament, and France beat Paraguay 1-0. In the latter game Kylian Mbappé saved the day for France, tying Messi for two scoring records:
It wasn’t pretty and it took some time, but a 70th minute penalty from Kylian Mbappé broke the deadlock as France advanced to the round of 16 with a 1-0 win over Paraguay on Saturday.
It took some time for the game to really evolve in the sweltering summer heat, and both sides exchanged fouls and angry words throughout a first half with just five shots and a combined xG of 0.20 (Paraguay 0.05, France 0.15). In the end, France earned a penalty when Paraguay’s Diego Gomez felled sub Désiré Doué inside the area, and after a lengthy delay for VAR review, referee Ilgiz Tantashev pointed to the spot.
Up stepped Mbappe, sending goalkeeper Orlando Gill the wrong way and producing the winning margin. The goal, Mbappe’s seventh of the World Cup, ties Argentina’s Lionel Messi in the Golden Boot race. It also makes him just the second player (alongside Messi) to score seven or more times at two different World Cups, with both doing it in 2022 and 2026.
Up next for France is a date with Morocco in Boston on Thursday, while La Albirroja head home with heads held high.
The highlights. Mbappé’s goal on a penalty kick is at 10:15 the video, and there’s a big of a scuffle at 3:00 as Mbappé got fouled and the two teams threatened each other. There was another scrum at the game’s end; as the announced said, “Paraguay wanted to fight,” and were clearly targeting Mbappe.
Today Brazil plays Norway and Morocco plays England.
*Trump visited Mount Rushmore on Friday and gave a speech calling his opponents “communists,” both “godless” and “evil”. Meanwhile, spokespeople for the White House said that his face belongs up there with Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Lincoln, echoing statements he’s made before.
Four months before tough midterm elections, President Trump used the backdrop of Mount Rushmore one night before the nation’s 250th birthday to characterize his political opponents as “godless,” “evil” communists.
“We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish stupid and unwise,” he said on Friday, demanding that Congress pass his so-called SAVE America Act, which would impose stricter voter ID rules that would make it harder to vote. He called for terminating the filibuster.
The larger purpose of the speech was hard to miss. He was sharpening a line of attack that the White House has started to use to head off a newly insurgent progressive wing of the Democratic Party that appears to be resonating with liberal voters.
Mr. Trump read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln looked on. He said the word “communism” so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.
He was not subtle. Communism, he said, “is the enemy of July 4, 1776.” He called it a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and even 9/11. He name-checked Karl Marx.
. . . and from the second link:
Ahead of his visit to the national memorial on Friday, his White House said that adding Trump’s face would be a welcome development — even though officials at Mount Rushmore have long said the monument cannot be carved further.
“There would be no better addition to the iconic Mount Rushmore than the 45th and 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, in a statement to The Washington Post.
. . . As recently as five weeks ago, the president — twice in one evening — posted to Truth Social digital mock-ups of his face next to the mountainside carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
In fact, there’s no room to carve another face on the mountain, but here’s what Trump once posted on Truth Social:
I’m glad there’s no more room at the inn, because if there were Trump would do everything he could to get in there. But I don’t think even he could wheedle his way into a National Memorial.
*The Democratic Socialists of America have been on a roll, electing a number of their members, some deranged, in Democratic primaries. At the Free Press, Olivia Reingold describes the views of one of these victors, Melat Kiros, whom we’ve met before. She defeated Colorado incumbent Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who’s been elected five times,. Kiros, one of the loons and a rabid anti-Semite, will probably be elected come November.
Appearing onscreen next to far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, Darializa Avila Chevalier [JAC: another loon], who just clinched the Democratic nomination for a New York House seat, encouraged viewers to canvass for a 29-year-old democratic socialist with no prior political experience.
Melat Kiros, Avila Chevalier told them, is “just an incredible human being.”
Well, that depends on your construal of “incredible”; some of them are accurate. More:
Kiros is poised to be one of their most hard-line members yet.
. . . She studied law at Notre Dame before taking a job as a securities regulatory and enforcement associate in the New York office of Sidley Austin, helping defend major corporations against government regulators.
But she was fired from her plum law gig after publishing a letter on Medium addressed to U.S. law firms after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel. She said it was unfair for legal institutions to label “calls for the elimination of the Israeli state” as antisemitic. How else could students call for a solution that would force “Israel to reckon with its colonial role in Palestine,” she wrote.
. . .After being ousted, Kiros pivoted to pursue a PhD at the University of Colorado, where she is researching the “efficacy of reparations” and universal basic income.
For a political newcomer, Kiros has already accumulated a long list of scandals—or truth bombs, depending on the voter. In May, she justified October 7 as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid, of occupation, decades of occupation” while appearing on Piker’s livestream. Last week, a local TV news reporter asked Kiros if that same logic applied to the United States on 9/11.
She replied that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were “inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East.”
In interviews, Kiros has made it clear that if elected, she and the rest of the DSA delegation don’t intend to play nicely with the Democratic establishment. Earlier this month, when asked by a local TV news reporter if she and her DSA colleagues would hold their party hostage to extract concessions in Congress, she replied point-blank: “That’s the goal.”
Kiros added that her progressive platform represented the “ideals and the values” of most Democratic voters.
“We’re seeing this chasm between the policies that voters actually want to see and the legislation that our leadership is actually progressing,” she said.
I can’t believe that these DSA wackos will help the Democrats win, either the Congress or the Presidency. But a hatred of Israel appears to be a requirement for joining the DSA.
*The Trump administration is abandoning and weakening gun regulations. That is not a good thing unless you’re one of those misguided souls who think that
The Trump administration is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions.
The drastic retrenchment at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws, was not entirely unexpected: President Trump campaigned as a champion of gun rights.
In the view of critics and even some A.T.F. veterans, the agency, in closely mirroring the demands made by gun owners and manufacturers to lighten their regulatory burden, is enacting changes at the expense of public safety. The moves, they worry, come as the bureau has already been weakened, with hundreds of its officials diverted to immigration enforcement.
Proponents of the changes point out that some of the reversals would return regulations to what they were only a few years ago, before President Joseph R. Biden took office. After a series of deadly mass shootings, Mr. Biden signed into law gun control measures, ending nearly three decades of gridlock over whether and how to regulate firearms
. . . Already, the administration has done away with major policies, including a zero-tolerance approach toward gun dealers who repeatedly broke the law. The more than three dozen rules that it has moved to eliminate would raise the legal threshold for revoking a dealer’s license; extend gun rights to buyers who had faced restrictions because of mental illness or inability to manage their own finances; and end extra scrutiny of stabilizing braces, gun accessories that have been used in mass shootings to lethal effect.
The administration is now targeting gun regulations that Democrats have passed at the state and local levels. It has challenged bans on semiautomatic rifles in Colorado, the District of Columbia and Virginia. On Wednesday, it sued California for its restrictions on the sale of Glock and Glock-style handguns, and Virginia for limits on the sale of semiautomatic rifles, hours after both laws went into effect.
. . . A White House official said the administration’s policies reflected Mr. Trump’s commitment to ensuring that Americans could exercise their Second Amendment rights, accusing the Biden administration of bypassing Congress and using the regulatory process to restrict gun rights.
Let’s look at that Second Amendment again:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
How many of these changes are going to increase the chance of having a “well regulated Militia?” i urge you to read Garry Wills’s essay in the 1995 New York Review of Books, “To keep and bear arms.”
*Idiotic statement of the day: From a NYT op-ed b called “Israel is not invincible.” Her thesis is that Israel has to stop fighting so much. One para:
Israel is not only not invincible; it must seriously consider changing its strategy. There is not a military solution to every problem. The zero-sum understanding of what it means to be pro-Israel has gone so far that it is now alienating Israel’s staunchest supporters. Israel’s embrace of total war and permanent military force, without an achievable endgame, is backfiring, undermining its very effectiveness and utility.
The endgame is peace and only peace. Israel goes to war only when it is attacked or an attack is inevitable (as with Iran). What Zonszein apparently wants is for Israel to negotiate with Hamas, Iran, and Lebanon, making concessions to terrorists to gain a peace that can only be temporary. How like the NYT to find an Israel-dissing Jew!
*The National Review gives us a list of “Twenty-five movies to celebrate America at 250” (article archived here). Here’s the list, with the descriptions truncated. I’ve put asterisks next to the ones I’ve seen, and I’ve liked every one of them (two asterisks for especially good ones).
Drums Along the Mohawk (dir. John Ford, 1939) — Ford’s Revolution happens at the edge of the map, where a young couple builds a farm the war keeps burning down.
Glory(dir. Edward Zwick, 1989) — The 54th Massachusetts drills, argues, and finally charges Fort Wagner into the guns, knowing the odds.
**Lincoln (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2012) — Not the marble but the operator, twisting arms, trading patronage jobs for votes, telling a bawdy story while the 13th Amendment hangs by a thread. Daniel Day-Lewis plays him as a tired country lawyer who happens to carry the moral weight of a nation. . .
Once Upon a Time in the West (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968) — Sometimes it takes a foreigner to show us ourselves, and Leone’s outsider’s opera sees the American frontier more clearly than we tend to. It is not always pretty, the greed, the killing, the settling paid for in blood.
Rio Bravo (dir. Howard Hawks, 1959) — Hawks made it in open contempt of High Noon, whose sheriff spends the picture begging a cowardly town for help. John Wayne’s John T. Chance refuses to beg, and a drunk, a cripple, and a green kid sign on to hold the jail anyway
The Long Gray Line(dir. John Ford, 1955) — An Irish immigrant fumbles his way into West Point as a mess-hall waiter and stays 50 years, training the officers who will lead the country’s armies and burying more of them than any man should.
**Yankee Doodle Dandy(dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942) — James Cagney plays George M. Cohan as a strutting force of nature, born on the Fourth of July and writing the songs a nation marched off to war humming.
*A River Runs Through It (dir. Robert Redford, 1992) — Adapted from Norman Maclean’s luminous novella, the film follows two brothers coming of age in 1910s Montana under a Presbyterian minister who draws no line between religion and fly-fishing.
*Sergeant York (dir. Howard Hawks, 1941) — A Tennessee marksman who reads Scripture wrestles his conscience over killing, then single-handedly captures 132 Germans in the Argonne.
*Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (dir. Frank Capra, 1939) — Capra sends a bumpkin idealist to the Senate and lets the machine nearly grind him to paste.
A League of Their Own (dir. Penny Marshall, 1992) — With the men overseas and the major leagues fearing they might have to go dark, the owners hedged by filling the ballparks with women, and discovered they could play.
**Saving Private Ryan (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1998) — The Omaha Beach landing opens the film with 20 minutes of unsparing slaughter, the camera as concussed as the men wading into the guns.
**The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946) — Three veterans come home to a country that moved on without them, and Harold Russell, a real disabled vet playing a sailor with hooks for hands,
*The Right Stuff (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983) — Sam Shepard’s Chuck Yeager rides a horse out to the X-1 he will fly through the sound barrier, laconic to the point of insolence, and the film never quite stops preferring him to the celebrities who follow
The Iron Giant(dir. Brad Bird, 1999) — A boy and a fallen war machine meet in Cold War Maine, and the giant, built to kill and terrified of its own nature, refuses the purpose it was made for
*Lilies of the Field (dir. Ralph Nelson, 1963) — A black handyman driving through the Arizona desert stops for water at a farm of German refugee nuns and finds himself, half against his will, agreeing to build them a chapel.
*Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014) — The film opens with four girls descending a church staircase in their Sunday best, and then the blast at Birmingham tears them away. What follows is a claim upon America rather than a revolt against it.
*Ford v Ferrari(dir. James Mangold, 2019) — A Texan carmaker and a hot-tempered Englishman set out to build the machine that can finally beat Ferrari at Le Mans, while executives fret about marketing and image.
*Nashville(dir. Robert Altman, 1975) — Released on the eve of the Bicentennial, Altman’s great American panorama gathers politicians, dreamers, musicians, grifters, homemakers, and has-beens into one sprawling chorus, each convinced the microphone belongs to them.
Superman (dir. Richard Donner, 1978) — The story arrives from the stars but grows up in a Kansas wheat field, where the Kents raise a foundling from another world into a decent Midwestern boy before he ever learns to fly.
Miracle (dir. Gavin O’Connor, 2004) — Kurt Russell’s Herb Brooks skates his college kids half to death until they can match the Soviet machine, then turns them loose at Lake Placid in 1980.
Barcelona (dir. Whit Stillman, 1994) — Any American who has lived abroad will know the predicament: two cousins defend their homeland in a Spain where anti-Americanism passes for sophistication.
Minari (dir. Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) — A Korean family stakes everything on a patch of Arkansas dirt, the father convinced he can grow produce for a market that hasn’t yet realized it needs it.
*The Straight Story(dir. David Lynch, 1999) — An old man rides a lawnmower across the Midwest to reconcile with his estranged, dying brother, and Lynch, of all directors, films it with total earnestness.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is catting:
Andrzej: What are you staring at?
Hili: My empty bowl.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Mojej pustej miseczce.
*******************
Another great medieval letter from TherionArms:
From Terrible Maps:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Masih, Guess the answer to her question before you watch the video:
Someone in New York just sent their condolences to the Islamic Republic for the supreme killer Ali Khamenei’s funeral.
Guess who?
Drop your guess below before you watch. 👇 pic.twitter.com/ust5AH63iz— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 4, 2026
Emma calls out a spectum-ist:
This dude has spent weeks trying to tell women that “women” is what anyone makes of it, and it turns out his preferred use of “woman” is the use that captures him.
And his navel. https://t.co/OacHA6pnQa
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 4, 2026
The Number Ten Cat sends the UK Fourth-of-July sentiments:
Today the UK celebrates 250 years of independence from the tyranny of the United States of America. Imagine living in a society where the leader can repeatedly break the law and nobody stops them!
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 4, 2026
From Luana. I think the original tweeter is right: I can’t think of a Democrat who has bucked the party line:
This actually is completely nuts. https://t.co/cNDUoOYaKy
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) July 3, 2026
One from my feed; another heartwarming rescue:
This is what humanity is all about…..
🎦 Credit: Daily Mail. pic.twitter.com/p0AbeDcyJg
— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) July 4, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about three years old. https://t.co/sWz1v1N7My
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 5, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, giant earwigs!
Giant (or Tawny) Earwigs Labidura riparia on the wild dunes at La Coubre, France
— John Walters (@johnwalterswildife.bsky.social) 2026-06-14T08:20:58.259Z
Look at the eyes on this amphipod!
This deep sea creature is as sharp & clear as broken class, & can grow as long as your hand. This giant amphipod, (Cystisoma) only has two colored body parts: the dense orange stomach/egg pouch, & two MASSIVE eyes, which are a glittering holographic orange layer completely covering its head.📽️ MBARI
— Rebecca R Helm (@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social) 2026-04-10T13:54:53.771Z
Sorry about your misery. At least you have safe haven of your first-world lab. I spent yesterday in a/c hiding from heat (100F at 3pm…still mid-90’s at 6:00…low at 80 overnight). Luckily power held steady! Was reading Pluckrose’s Cynical Theories again trying to digest her chapter on post-modernism. I think that attending our city’s outdoor activities in the heat would have been less frustrating. Hope water and power are back at your crib today.
Staunch proponents of the 2nd Amendment usually couch their support for unlimited gun rights around the idea they will need guns to fight an oppressive government. I always ask them which oppressive arm of government they will use their guns against. The local or state police? The school board or city council? State or federal legislators and judges? The US Postal Service? The US military? I never get a good answer.
You never know, but it’s like any other type of insurance: Better to have it when you need it. With the rise of the DSA, who knows what we’ll see. In the meantime, here’s “the Battle of Athens” refering to Athens, TN in 1946.
More likely now a militia of idiots, who think that now is the time that they need it.
Wishing you a speedy recovery from your most unfortunate 4th.
We disembarked at the end of our Uncruise trip, watched the excellent Juneau 4th of July parade, then helicopter toured Herbert Glacier and dog sled camp. Not at all my typical Independence Day!
Sorry to hear about that ordeal! At least you have a gripping story to tell, that’s for sure! That the University was refuge is a silver lining – wondering how they accomplished it.
I bet power backup systems sales will be going up. I’m even thinking about it (got 80 V yard equipment batteries and an inverter … not sufficient for a fridge, but…).. over here, some sporadic water droplets and a big PM wind gust, but cooled off nicely to get a splendid bath in fireworks’ ash and smoke 😁
Let us know if the steak turns out OK!!
🥩🎅
So sorry to hear about your disastrous 4th. I assumed you were out there having fun, deep dish pizzas and stuff your people enjoy. 😉
I live in a high rise, I’m well familiar with the horrors of electricity problems (Hurricane Sandy, blackout of 2009) -not just the stairs, and as you say, the fridge but also the water goes out almost immediately.
We had it good here, unlivably hot – I mean even for summer NY, REAL hot, but a beautiful day.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
That is indeed a yucky way to spend the 4th, I’m sorry to hear it. Having to contend with frozen food in the face of no power is a nightmare. (If it’s any consolation, everyone I know, myself included, have been dealing with frustrating situations, snafus, etc, these last couple weeks. In my case I’m on week 3 of replacing all the windows in my house, and dealing with a company that’s so far made all the windows using the wrong glass (setback 1), then got windows in the wrong sizes (#2) and then AGAIN arrived with what was supposed to be the final window and lo & behold, that one was also the wrong size. I won’t even get into the other problems. I finally said the hell with it, put tarp up to protect the last empty window space, and joined my husband & pups at our WV hideaway yesterday.) So hang in there, this, too, shall pass. As for the Dems, I’ve largely given up on them in the last few years, and this DSA wave is the final nail in the coffin for me. I despair for our country. Try to enjoy the rest of your weekend…
Sorry to hear about your sucky 4th. As usual, we have later afternoon storms, which didn’t interfere too much with cooking out. Then we watched 1776, which should be on that list of films. I always think of this passage when I hear people bashing the founding. The passage in question refers to the paragraph relating to slavery in the draft of the Declaration:
I agree, 1776 is my must watch movie every July 4th. There are so many wonderful lines in this film/play.
I was thinking – another hazard of high rise living is… the explosions.
Last night long after the (official) fireworks, at 4am this morning we had the local, “freelance” illegal fireworks in Chelsea. RIGHT outside my window, actually. It was like my world exploded. hhahaha
Here’s the rub: I’m at about ignition/explosion altitude and they were blasting just across the road. Lit the place up.
Wild. Scared the hell out of puppy “David”.
That happened a lot during Covid – hahaha I even wrote an article about it. Never a dull moment in this open air mental hospital we call NYC
D.A.
NYC
Is your dog okay with fireworks, beyond momentary fright? As you probably know, many dogs are so terrified it reaches pathological levels. I have a friend whose dog is like that. Since they live in a place (Honolulu) where people are effing obsessed with shooting off their own fireworks (many pay thousands of dollars for illegal professional-level fireworks), the dog is in a state of unrelieved panic the entire holiday. It’s the most pitiful thing you’ve ever seen. Since it is impossible to soothe her, they now board her far out in the country every year from July 3 to 5, and on New years eve.
I’ve heard that some people try to prevent their dogs from developing fireworks phobia (or thunder phobia) by habituating them to loud sudden noises when they’re puppies–especially if they’re taught to associate the noises with good things, like treats.
Hunters acclimate gun dogs to tolerate shot noises. It’s a fairly straightforward process, but requires time, effort, and patience. I suspect that something similar would work for other noises such as fireworks.
It rained buckets for us as well, late in the afternoon. But that was a welcomed 2nd act to an earlier rain which together helped to cool things off considerably, so we could turn off the AC. We had our little barbecue with one son who was able to join our empty nest. Chicken and veggie kabobs with ginger/garlic/peanut sauce. Yum!
Later, the usual rather high-end fireworks from our neighbors. It’s rather amazing that some of these near-professional fireworks are legal here. Our current canine remains remarkably undisturbed by the bangs, while previous canine would hide at the least sign of pyrotechnics or thunder.
George III had a happier fourth of July. Glad the French did not do anything silly. A red card would have been bad for their future in the tournament. Spain versus Portugal and England versus Mexico are going to be very interesting.
Good news: Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban has been suspended!
News reports are saying the White House made a call to FIFA.
An interesting take on the second amendment is “Liar For Jesus … And Guns: A Debunking of David Barton’s Book on the Second Amendment” by Chris Rodda. She looks at the meaning of the phrase “bear arms” in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as well as the prevalence of accidental shootings at the time:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00J1R3L0O
Yikes, Jerry! Commiserations on your Fourth. Not much of a holiday. I am happy that you not ill have a lab to save the day from total disaster, but lugging stuff on many flights of stairs is no fun at all.
To the naive, torrential rain combined with extreme heat might not sound so bad, but having experienced such weather in Memphis, even in circumstances less extreme than you describe, I can say that I prefer a cold rain any day.
Commiserations on your lousy day, but at least it sounds like more fun than watching France-Paraguay. Paraguay played the worst sort of south american kick-and-dive football, and an incompetent ref let them get away with it. Argentina played the entire 1990 tournament like that.
Pretty much the only footie I watch is the World Cup. I’ve never seen such a dysfunctional game, although I know there has been much worse.
151 million Americans live in a household that has at least one gun and, on average, four. The percentage of those guns and owners who will do anything untoward against anyone else with a gun is a rounding error to zero.
How about we celebrate the responsible stewardship of American gun owners instead of painting them with broad brush as unfortunate violent idiots?
And before we dismiss the utility of guns against an oppressive government as foolishness, have a thought about Iran, which devolved from a modern cosmopolitan country to a theocratic nightmare overnight, after a single election. Whose people have been deprived of every right and slaughtered as they call out for the world to arm them.
Interestingly, mainstream publications associated with the DSA have argued that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to bear arms, but rather a mechanism for state militias, and that its modern interpretation often threatens public safety.
Distressed to learn that our household is still one gun short of double the natural average.
“National”
Kiros did not defeat Espaillat, that was the nut Chevalier. Kiros defeated the long-time progressive Congresswoman from Denver, DeGette. Both are nut cases.
Any day now, we Israelis are gonna put Mairav Zonszein in charge, and put daisies in the barrels of the IDF’s M4 rifles. Sounds like a great practical solution to the Mideast problem. Next we can all link hands while surrounding the Kirya Defense Ministry compound, chant “Ommmmmm” and see if we can levitate it for peace.
In a country where the names of many journalists are well-known, she is actually an exception. People here do not know who she is, nor does she represent any significant part of the society. She writes for an American/European audience—and those. Israelis who do know who she is regard her, correctly, as a ditz.
Her background is primarily in platforming “anti-Zionists” like “Jewish” Voice for Peace, Beinart, and other such telling us that we have no right to exist as a country. Of course this is the exact form of Israeli that the NYT wants to showcase.
Just noticed the publication of a new book, by Hussain Abdul-Hussain (research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies), entitled “The Arab Case for Israel: And Other Essays from a Distant Conflict.”
From the jacket blurb: “A more pragmatic path forward lies in recognizing Israel’s existence as an opportunity rather than a threat. Israel’s robust economy, technological innovation, and regional influence make it a valuable partner. Arab states that have embraced peace with Israel, such as those in the Abraham Accords, have unlocked significant economic benefits proportional to their level of normalization. These agreements demonstrate that cooperation can yield mutual prosperity, fostering stability and growth across the region.”
Sounds like it might be worth a read.
That giant earwig is really creepy🙀 Not sure why earwigsare creepier than most “bugs”?
Surely, the name of a body part with an accessible hollow, waiting for the right-sized insect!
🙀😂
I learned about earwigs when I was a high school kid. My source was the TV show Night Gallery. The episode was called “the Caterpillar”. I don ‘t know if it is available online, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but it scared the bejayzus out of me at the time.
I occasionally find them inmy bathtub🙀🙈
OMG! Frozen food saved. Could it have been worse? Of course it could (quipped the Jewish optimist)! The gooey ice cream could have spilled out all over the inside of the refrigerator or all over the frozen meat. Or, you could have fallen in the stairwell. Seriously, I hope that power comes back today. It’s hard to imagine being in the heat with no air conditioning or fan. This heat is dangerous!
Speeches on the Fourth: Were beginning to see the contours of upcoming Republican campaigns for the mid-terms and for the Presidency. It’s the Communists!
And as for that rescue of a Sperm Whale: Amazing!
It’s an El Niño year so we will be getting a hot summer I’m afraid.
Sorry about your awful 4th holiday .
“steakless in Chicago” gave me a chuckle.
Sorry for your ordeal yesterday. Especially the 10 flights of stairs in the heat. Oy!
But glad you were able to save your frozen food.
As I am in Canada, our big day was on Wednesday, which I spent watching my 2 great-nieces swim in the lake while my nephew enjoyed a beer and barbecued some sausages. There were some fireworks around the lake that evening, but not nearly as many as other years. People are toning it down a bit, which I appreciate on behalf of all the animals in the forest and my two kitties, who freak out at the noise and dive under the bed.
On Friday, the 3rd, my daughter, who lives in Calgary, went snowboarding in the mountains, as they had so much snow this year, that the ski hills opened up for Canada Day and the days after. Skiing in July!
Hope your power is back on now so you can use your fan tonight. The heat has subsided somewhat here in Eastern Ontario, making it much more pleasant than the 30+C temperatures we had all last week.
It was indeed a stormy 4th of July. My neighborhood lost power a few times yesterday. Just as I was about to get my trusty Honda generator out of the garage, the power came back and stayed on. We did lose Internet and cable television for 5 hours so I was glad I had some Raymond Chandler stories from the library to read.
“Farewell My Lovely” – the best Chandler IMHO, Greg, fantastic. Love that noir stuff.
We had an internet failure the other day, longest ever at about 9 hours.
I was surprised how mentally destabilizing it was for me!
That said, I took to the balcony, glass of wine and a new book about North Korea, an obsession of mine.
Spending 24/7 online cuts into one’s reading time.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Have you read “Korea” by Michael Pembroke? He gives North Korea a rather more sympathetic treatment – and unsympathetic treatment for the U.S. – than most other people. To the amazement of nobody, Noam Chomsky gave it a good rap😀. Although I’ve no sympathy for that regime, it’s worth a read to get the other side of the story.
One of the worst storms in the history of Northern Ohio occurred on July 4th, 1969: https://youtu.be/sAOMnId_ca4
Fourth of July in Saarbrücken, Germany: Bicycled in the afternoon to the local Gestapo prison. It was hot, and needless to say, there is no drinking water at a Gestapo prison, so we stopped on the way back to buy a bottle of water at a nearby gas station, where everybody spoke French—not by accident did the Gestapo build their prison on the French–German border.
In the evening, we walked to the Old City and had dinner at a local dive, Schnokeloch, which, as I understand it, is Alsatian for “local dive” (literally, “mosquito hole”). Anna and I both had traditional saarländisch salads, which are huge meals. Mine was a fried egg and fried potatoes on a bed of lettuce; Anna’s had a schnitzel instead of the egg and potatoes. Both were delicious. I ordered two beers and drank one. Anna ordered one beer and drank two. Do the math.
After dinner, we walked down to a quiet beer garden on the (Saar) river bank and drank some decent local wine: Anna, a crémant; me a graubergunder.
You and Anna Krylov have the most exciting lives.
I’m super jelly!
best,
D.A.
NYC
Amazing what just a little distance will do. I’m Wisconsin about 2 hours to the north of you and Friday’s rain came in several quick, passing spurts with temps in the low 80s. Our Fourth of July had fog lifting, low 70s, and then a clear night to watch the fireworks over Lake Michigan. Almost everyone brought sweatshirts or jackets, and when the sun went down some of the crowd wrapped themselves in their picnic blankets. My phone said it was 68, but no way the lakefront was that warm. It was still lovely.
I had no idea Chicago didn’t have more or less the same weather. It’s often just a few degrees off. Not this time.
My condolences for your crappy 4th. The next one’s bound to be better, though – a double celebration.
Comment by Greg Mayer
90 minutes north of Chicago, in Wisconsin, our experience was much like Jerry’s in Chicago. During the storm, a young oak in front of our house was bent over just about horizontal by the wind. Our power was out about 21 hours, but the water supply does not depend on electricity, so our water stayed on. We packed the refrigerator and freezer with commercial ice, moved the most perishable items to friends whose power stayed on, borrowed a couple of generators, ate dinner in an unaffected bar that was showing the Argentina-Cape Verde game, and slept in the basement, which remained cool; all of this on the night of the third. On the morning of the fourth, when our power returned, we took one of the generators to a tenant of a friend who still lacked power; the rest of the day was fine. Because our outage was shorter and the water stayed on, we had a much better experience than Jerry, but the weather in our bit of Wisconsin and Chicago was essentially identical.
GCM
This must have been the storm that killed 3 children on Geneva Lake, eh?
Comment by Greg Mayer
Yes, very sad; it was the same set of storms.That morning, my wife had planned to go kayaking, but didn’t, based on the weather forecast– it didn’t look like a good day to be on the water.
GCM
Sad indeed. One of my cousins has a home on the Lake and they were fortunate to get through the storm safely.
Regarding Luana’s link showing Democratic officials unanimously supporting policy that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose—to include a majority of their own party: What do we call it when a small group of elites uses state power to impose its preferred system and gives no heed to majority political opposition?
Steakless in Chicago was a sizzling line! But, honestly, Jerry, I’m not sure who had it worse: You, with your Monstrous Day on the Midway, or Jay, with his lived lesson in married math. I guess it would depend on the brew.
I gotta say, according to the dominant narrative in the Democratic Party, biological women don’t count for much.
Re: 100% Democratic candidates supporting biological boys playing against biological girls
Googled at random, here’s a year-old response from Pete Buttigieg that gives a shaded response that is not as clearcut as the above entry says. Newsom is also mentioned here speaking in a similar vein. Politically careful, of course, but not sounding nearly the same as “all Democratic candidates are whacko” on this issue.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pete-buttigieg-weighs-fairness-transgender-172706118.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Seth Moulton (D-MA) provides a data point. After the 2024 election he said “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”. The backlash was intense. His campaign manager resigned. There were public demonstrations against him. The mayor of Salem and the governor of Massachusetts denounced him. He was called (in writing) a ‘Nazi cooperator’ by the head of the local Democratic party.
He learned his lesson.
He is now running for the Senate against Ed Markey and decried the Supreme Court ruling that males can be barred from female sports. Quote from him “Releasing this decision on the last day of Pride is a deliberate act of cruelty toward transgender Americans”.
The Fourth here in Seattle was cool and dry– a typical Seattle summer day/night.
Seattle, of course, is famous for its rainy dark winters, but it’s summers are as good as it gets. If you visit Seattle in the summer, you will see how sunny it can be.
It appears that Russian surrender of Crimea, or at least the Russian troops in Crimea is imminent. The leprosy of Russian control continues!
Hi Mr. Hempenstein,
To follow the war closely, as you know, reveals some real phase changes lately regarding Crimea particularly.
One fly in the ointment is Russian people – mixed on the wider war – are pretty sold on the idea that Crimea is inherently, magically and providentially Russian.
Plus there’s 10+ years of Russians settling there, s/t like a million people. It is going to be difficult to “unwind” it all even if the K. Bridge collapses tomorrow.
best,
D.A.
NYC
I agree with you. Which I why (as stated before) I favor plebiscites in all parts of the Ukraine to end the war permanently. I would expect Crimea (and the far east) to vote for Russia. I would expect the rest of Ukraine to vote for Kyiv (and ultimately the EU). As for Russians in Crimea, blame Catherine the Great.
Yep, there are all those Russians, but when they find that P*tin is unable to do anything for them they may become less interested in being Russian or staying in Crimea. They’re apparently streaming out of there now.
I’m so sorry that your July 4th was ruined, and I certainly hope your power is back on and you can go back to normal life. It’s so fortunate that your lab has a fridge and a place to sleep (sort of). We had some rain throughout the day on the 4th and temperatures were bearable, so it ruined a lot of picnics but was otherwise OK.
Hang in there!
National Graham Cracker Day, celebrating a food design to eliminate lust and carnal desires
I had a good chuckle at that one. . .
Jerry – A bit surprised that you haven’t watched Glory. IMHO the best Civil War movie ever made. The movie is based in large measure on the letters of Colonel Shaw, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts regiment, to his parents, some of which are quoted in the movie. The use of music is also excellent. There are a couple of minor historical inaccuracies, but I won’t state them so as not to risk a spoiler. Here is a trailer:
Wow, that DOES look and sound fabulous.
It took a while, until I looked at it from a hire plane.
In my city, we had dire power problems a few years ago. Folks came over to my house (with their pets) just for the AC.
Bad news for liberal democracy – a big step towards autocracy in the US:
“The End of Independent Federal Agencies Will Change Your Business:
In a blockbuster case, Trump vs. Slaughter, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the president could, at will, dismiss appointees to independent regulatory agencies who had already been confirmed by Congress, overturning a nearly 100-year-old precedent that held the opposite. For business leaders, this watershed decision will likely lead to less certainty and consistency for the regulated aspects of their business, with federal rules and their enforcement increasingly determined by political expediency rather than expert analysis.
…
Under the Court’s reasoning, future presidents may now dismiss any commissioner from the other party (or their own) for any reason—or, indeed, no reason at all. That leaves many so-called “independent” agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board, far more directly subject to presidential control than at any time in nearly a century.”
Source: https://hbr.org/2026/06/the-end-of-independent-federal-agencies-will-change-your-business?ab=HP-latest-8
The “well-regulated militia” line would seem to allow for some……regulation?
“Kiros added that her progressive platform represented the “ideals and the values” of most Democratic voters.” I certainly hope that the “ideals and values” of the National, er, Democratic Socialists – i.e., Death to Israel, Death to America – are NOT even on the radar of most Democratic voters. But if they are, then I will vote Republican for the first time ever in 2028.
As for weather-related problems, last year my wife and I had to flee from the wrath of an oncoming hurricane with our valuables. Power was out for a week and when we returned home after power was restored, we thankfully found the house intact – but of course everything in the fridge was a rotten mess.