Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 14, 2026. It is of course Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when the French prison, holding only 7 prisoners, was stormed and opened. It’s a French National holiday, their equivalent of the Fourth of July. It’s also National Mac and Cheese Day, celebrating a uniquely American comestible that was invented in England.
It’s also National Nude Day, National Grand Marnier Day, Shark Awareness Day, and Cow Appreciation Day.
Wikipedia of course has an entry for macaroni and cheese, which includes this tempting photo:
And this warning:
Although high in carbohydrates, calories, fat, and salt, macaroni and cheese is a source of protein and certain variations of the dish can decrease the negative health aspects.
In the southern U.S., mac and cheese is often regarded as a vegetable, especially on the iconic “meat and three” plates.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Footy news: There’s a good game in the offing: France plays Spain today at 2 pm Chicago time (3 pm Eastern). This is a semifinal, so the winner goes to the final match.
*Iran now claims that it controls the Strait of Hormuz, while strikes have intensified between the U.S. and Iran. In the meantime, Trump reinstated the U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping.
After another night of attacks, the United States and Iran appeared to be reverting to the heightened conflict that existed before their cease-fire, as they exchanged incendiary rhetoric and President Trump said he was reinstating the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran, threatening to escalate the confrontation further, vowed revenge for the killing of its supreme leader, and appeared undeterred by nearly a week of U.S. strikes.
Mr. Trump said the United States would take control of the disputed Strait of Hormuz, charging a 20 percent fee on all goods passing through it. He had lifted the blockade last month after the two countries reached a truce, which has been threatened by repeated strikes by both sides.
Mr. Trump told Fox News that the United States would charge other countries for keeping the strait safe. “We are going to guard it and we’re going to get paid for guarding it,” he said. The suggestion, which would amount to an expansion of the military conflict, echoed previous threats that had not come to pass.
. . .Within Iran, conservative hard-liners have become increasingly vocal in their uncompromising stance toward the United States.
The upswell in rhetoric came after Iran’s military said early Monday that it launched another barrage of strikes aimed at American military assets in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Hours earlier, U.S. forces said they had launched more strikes on Iran aimed at stymying its ability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States and Iran reignited their war over the Strait of Hormuz, trading strikes as President Trump said he would resume a naval blockade Tuesday on Iranian ports and impose tolls on ships passing through the waterway.
The new attacks over control of the waterway, which is a crucial transit route for oil and gas shipments, raise the specter of an intensifying conflict that has already roiled the global economy and left many dead. Oil prices soared on Tuesday in one of the biggest daily jumps since the start of the war, as Mr. Trump’s preliminary cease-fire deal with Iran lay in tatters.
The latest hostilities follow weeks of strikes between the United States and Iran, as diplomatic efforts stalled to turn the truce into a permanent deal to end the war. Mr. Trump has formally notified Congress that the fighting had resumed, saying last week that the cease-fire was “over.”
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the blockade of Iranian ports, which had been in effect from April to June, would begin late Tuesday local time. It said that its latest strikes on Iran, which concluded early Tuesday morning, were intended to degrade the Iranian military’s ability to target commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
From the WSJ:
President Trump said Monday he is reimposing the U.S. blockade on Iranian shipping, escalating a standoff over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
His comments came after the U.S. launched additional strikes against Iran, which defied American demands that it publicly declare the strait open and instead closed the waterway. Oil prices jumped, with Brent crude trading 4.5% higher.
Trump asserted that the strait remains open under American protection and said the U.S. would charge 20% of every cargo as compensation for its costs. He didn’t detail how that would work but said procedures would be formulated immediately.
“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” the president said on social media.
Iran’s armed forces said, “We will under no circumstances allow the United States to interfere in the management of the Strait of Hormuz.”
The dueling comments herald the likelihood of a continued standoff over control of the strait that is undermining Trump’s deal and risking further pressure on global oil markets.
But the NYT notes that “The U.N. agency that regulates international shipping said it opposed any move to impose tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, after President Trump said the United States would charge a 20 percent fee on all goods passing through the strategic waterway.”
Remember when Trump proclaimed that there was a “new regime” in Iran, implying that one of the war aims—regime change—had been effected. Yeah, a change to an even harder-line regime than that at the beginning of the war. You can forget about the cease-fire, which was a bad deal to begin with.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, in a post called “The monster beneath the mountain,” Amit Segal describes a huge Hezbollah tunnel complex (now captured by the IDF) in a rock mountain beneath an ancient crusader castle, and brings us up to date about Israel’s negotiations with Lebanon.
The ancient Crusader fortress was once the linchpin of Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon: taken in a bloody and heroic assault in the opening hours of the 1982 war, then ringed for the rest of the occupation by IEDs and Hezbollah guerrillas until the outpost earned its nickname—the Monster on the Mountain. Forty-four years later, there is a new monster, and it dwells beneath the crumbling ruins.
Israel did not come back for the view. Since early March, the Beaufort and Wadi Saluki sector has served as one of Hezbollah’s principal firing platforms—more than 400 rockets launched toward northern Israel, most of them at the northern town of Metula, alongside drones and anti-tank fire at troops operating across southern Lebanon, with the ridge functioning as the command node directing the fighting.
The infrastructure sits in territory where the Lebanese army nominally operates. Israel submitted a request through U.N. channels for the LAF to address the site. The request met the fate of Lebanese politicians who oppose the terror group—quietly silenced.
Air power had been tried as well: the complex was struck from above several times, the rock absorbed it, and Hezbollah went back to work. What cannot be bombed from above must be taken from within. So the IDF planned a ground operation long in advance, waited for its moment, and on May 31 the Golani Brigade raised the flag over a fortress Israel had not held since 2000.
Last week, the IDF walked reporters into the mountain. The tunnel—one node in Hezbollah’s “Land of Tunnels” project, an underground construction effort across southern Lebanon supervised by IRGC officers alongside North Korean advisers—runs 1.3 kilometers from the cliff face into solid rock. Inside: water and electricity, living quarters with showers, toilets, and kitchenettes (stocked mini-fridges included, per the Daily Mail’s tour), even a fully equipped, completely sterile operating room. Operatives could live underground for months at a time. It is estimated that construction of the facility took 10 to 15 years and tens of millions of Iranian dollars. The purpose was dual, an officer explained: to fire directly at Israel—step out of the tunnel and Metula is visible on the horizon—and to defend the ridge against precisely the ground maneuver that eventually took it.
The complex functioned as a significant command-and-control center where hundreds of operatives were stationed, managing the fighting from inside the mountain—until the ground operation began, at which point they fled.
As of last Tuesday’s tour, the Beaufort tunnel is wired: charges laid through the rooms and passages, reporters warned not to light cigarettes. That is itself news. Through late June, tunnel demolitions across southern Lebanon were frozen at the American request, when negotiations with Iran had temporarily grabbed President Donald Trump’s attention. Gadi Eisenkot revealed that commanders had been given no authorization to detonate—until the Majdal Zoun complex was finally destroyed on June 28. The freeze, evidently, has thawed. Intelligence assessments reportedly point to something larger still beneath the Beaufort area—a four-story underground bunker, also built with Iranian assistance.
As for the diplomacy:
Above ground, meanwhile, diplomacy continues. On Thursday, an American official announced that Israel and Lebanon have entered the implementation stage of the framework signed in Washington on June 26—the first pilot zone to launch within days, with further zones being mapped. On Saturday, an American military delegation sat down with Lebanese army command in Beirut to work out the mechanics of the first zone: Israel withdraws, the Lebanese army deploys. On Wednesday and Thursday, delegations from both countries will meet in Rome—in a closed session, according to the American framing—to hand the framework off to technical teams. Beirut had conditioned its attendance on Israel first completing the pilot-zone withdrawal; on Saturday it confirmed it will attend anyway.
Later on the calendar, President Joseph Aoun is expected to fly to Washington on July 21 to ask Trump for military support, reconstruction funding, and backing for an international conference on the Lebanese army.
On Friday, he said something Lebanese presidents are often hesitant to say out loud: that despite the presidency’s efforts to avoid another war after the November 2024 ceasefire, Hezbollah refused to cooperate—and that the organization’s decisions are ultimately made in Iran. Aoun is stating the obvious, which in Lebanon is an act of considerable bravery. It is the admission that the real monster was never on the mountain, nor beneath it. In the twist everyone knew but no one dared say aloud, the monster sat in Parliament the entire time.
Yes, that is an act of considerable bravery, but it also cuts Hezbollah free from association with the Lebanese government. It will continue operating as a semi-independent terrorist group funded by Iran and bent on destroying Israel. This is important for the negotiations with the U.S. in which Iran demands that Lebanon be part of the agreement. If they’re talking about the Lebanese government, it won’t work. But they’re talking, I think about Hezbollah’s right to continue inflicting terror, in which case the U.S. cannot agree—even when relations are strained with Israel.
*A New Yorker in a studio apartment was evicted because his small flat was cluttered with ten thousand books (article with photos archived here.) He fought the eviction, but lost.
For a young Jewish scholar and writer named Mendel Uminer, books are the wellspring of enlightenment. So when he scored a studio apartment a block away from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side a year ago, he brought his books with him — all 10,000 of them. What followed, at least for a little while, was a charmed existence in his 600-square-foot temple of knowledge.
Towering stacks of Judaica lined the walls, heaps of film criticism and opera history filled the prewar bathroom, piles of plays and poems blocked a window, and Uminer slept on a floor mattress engulfed in dog-eared novels. Waking up around noon, he spent his afternoons on his sunlit chaise, devouring the works of Yiddish writers like Chaim Grade and critics like Edmund Wilson, nourishing his mind while the city churned outside.
“I’m always reading,” Uminer, 31, said. “I’m reading to extract knowledge. Every book I own, I need. My library is my manual for life.”
He worked as a freelance Hebrew translator and used the apartment as the headquarters for his fledgling literary journal, Notarikon Review, hosting parties that gained a reputation among quarters of New York’s literary underclass. Striving writers drank beer among the teetering stacks while arguing over foreign affairs and Greek poetry.
The stacks kept rising as Uminer added his hauls from thrift shops, book dealers and eBay deliveries. “I don’t think of myself as a hoarder,” he said, “but I guess my building did.”
This past winter, he received a notice from building management. “You are violating a substantial obligation of your tenancy,” it began. “You are maintaining the Premises in a severely overcluttered condition; permitting the over-accumulation of books in the Premises; creating a fire hazard by over-accumulating combustible books in the Premises.”
“I open this letter,” Uminer recalled, “and they’re telling me my books are a fire hazard, that I have to be out if I don’t get rid of them.”
After he did not heed the warning, eviction proceedings began. He decided to fight back in court.
Mendel lost, but I’m hoping that some rich bibliophile will help him find a big place to dwell among his beloved texts. Rumors are that he’s found a bigger place, but read about his tortuous background at the free link.
*This new paper (below) came out in Ecology Letters and it’s a great, short, and succinct summary of the sex binary and why it’s not made up but based on gametes. Full disclosure: I was one of four reviewers. Click to read for free, and send the link to your misguided friends who claim that sex is a spectrum.
Here’s a bit of the introduction, which makes clear the explicitly political nature of the “controversy”:
Researchers across disciplines have long been confronted with a societal debate about the concept of biological sex that has resurfaced with renewed intensity in recent years (Griffiths 2020; DiMarco et al. 2022; Coyne and Maroja 2023; McLaughlin et al. 2023; Rehmann-Sutter et al. 2023; Arnold et al. 2024; Velocci 2024; Eppley et al. 2026). This controversy stems largely from efforts to reconcile scientific insights and facts in biology with human societal values—an endeavour predestined to misunderstandings and cross-disciplinary tensions. Biology, as a scientific discipline, aims to describe the complexity of life and to understand the mechanisms that generate and govern this diversity. It is not designed to prescribe ethical norms or moral values in human societies, which fall within the domain of other disciplines. Conversely, contemporary societal values or political agendas should not guide the interpretation of empirical observations in biology or the conceptualisation of life’s complexity. Doing so constitutes a ‘reverse naturalistic fallacy’ (or ‘moralistic fallacy’): the illogical attempt to derive an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’, thereby conflating the empirical with the normative (Davis 1978). Based on these premises, we call for a more differentiated discourse on sex, one that separates the scientific conception of biological sex from societal discussions regarding the diversity of gender expressions and identities in humans.
The recognition that biological sex is rooted in anisogamy has been longstanding in biology (Minot 1888; Geddes and Thomson 1889), and there have been several recent accounts illuminating its foundations and explanatory power (e.g., Goymann et al. 2023; Hilton and Wright 2023; Griffiths and Spencer 2025; Wright 2025). Our aim here, without claiming novelty on this well-documented topic, is to (i) explain and support the gametic definition of sex, (ii) take a stand on its most prominent criticisms and (iii) elucidate the association between biological sex and sexual dimorphism beyond anisogamy, as this issue appears to lie at the heart of recent debates.
It goes through the familiar arguments, and then concludes with a warning , below, about extrapolating from sex to gender. As the authors explain above, the only real reason for the controversy is because some people think that if biological sex is binary, then all people have to be slotted into one of the two sexes. Biologically, that’s pretty much true: only about 1 in 5500 people can’t. But since some people argue that their gender (which is not sex) isn’t binary, or that their biological sex is different from their natal sex (this is a common argument by trans activists), sex isn’t binary. It is. I think the authors, anxious not to offend, give a little to much to claims of “gender identity” below, but overall it’s fine:
Up to this point, we have intentionally refrained from discussing the implications of biological sex for our understanding of sex in humans. Yet, within the outlined definitional framework, humans are not exceptional. Rather, like all other metazoans, we are anisogamous organisms, and it is this shared reproductive feature that makes the binary definition of biological sex directly applicable to humans. Because human individuals can produce only one of the two gamete types, biological sex can be mapped onto individuals, as in other species with separate sexes. Challenges can arise when applying the binary definition of biological sex in society under the assumption that biological sex is universally tied to other traits, such as karyotype, hormone levels, the morphology of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, or behaviour. This assumption, for instance, ignores the possibility that genetic variants or differences in sex development can result in a divergence between gametic sex and phenotypic correlates. Crucially, however, the definition of biological sex based on anisogamy neither relies on nor supports this assumption. Therefore, the binary definition of biological sex is fully compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes beyond anisogamy (Heitzmann et al. 2023; Mank 2023; Loveland et al. 2025) and provides a coherent explanation for a significant part of it. In the context of ongoing societal debates, we emphasise that defining biological sex places no constraints on the diverse spectrum of human gender identities and expressions. While biological insights can inform societal debates on sex, they do not prescribe which gender-related traits society should assign, permit, or encourage for different sexes. Conflating human gender identities and expressions with the binary nature of biological sex is therefore not a scientific inference, but amounts to two fallacies: first, not acknowledging the diversity of human gender identities and expressions because biological sex is considered binary (‘naturalistic’ fallacy), and second, denying that biological sex is binary because human gender identities and expressions are not strictly binary (‘reverse naturalistic’ or ‘moralistic’ fallacy).
*There’s a widespread claim going around that dolphins get high by passing around pufferfish, which have toxins (“tetrodotoxins”) that, in low dose, are supposed to intoxicate the dolphins, getting them high or even making them hallucinate. Here are two instantiations of the claim, with the second, from the BBC, being the one that popularized the claim. Be sure to watch the videos.
But I couldn’t find any scientific papers on the phenomenon (and it could be tested in large aquariums, though it would be hard). This made me dubious, and I found an article by Christie Wilcos in Discover magazine that casts doubt on the hypothesis. Christie Wilcox, a science writer with a Ph.D. in biology, says this:
It sounds too awesome to be true—which means it probably is.
I’m not convinced. Dolphins are curious and intelligent, so I have no doubt that they would investigate a strange animal like a puffer. They might see what happens, explore the texture, taste, or smell of this novel creature in their midst, as they do in this video:
But do they intentionally harass them to get high? I doubt it. I guess it’s possible—but if they do, they’re playing a very deadly game, and one that I doubt is much fun for anyone involved.
When harassed, pufferfish first are true to their names and enlarge their bodies to make themselves less palatable. But if that’s not enough, they have the ability to secrete tetrodotoxin (TTX) to ward off potential predators.
The argument being made by The Sunday Times (and the filmmakers, it seems) is that dolphins are intentionally using TTX to get “high”. I just don’t buy it. A curious bunch accidentally indulging in a little puffer poison? Sure. But I’m to believe that dolphins are using tetrodotoxin regularly to get baked? Or even worse, include these toxic treats as a part of their “diet“? No way. Not even dolphins are crazy enough to take that risk.
Tetrodotoxin simply doesn’t make sense as a drug (and let’s be honest—if it did, humans would be snorting it off bathroom counters already). In very, very, very low doses, tetrodotoxin causes numbness, tingling, and the slight lightheadedness that fugu, the Japanese preparation of raw pufferfish flesh, is known for. I guess it’s possible to see how one might relate these mild effects to the “high” feeling that comes from THC, the main ingredient in marijuana*, but it’s a stretch to say the least. Every illicit drug has one thing in common: they alter minds. It’s right there in the definition of narcotic. Tetrodotoxin, however, doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier; it doesn’t change perception or enhance sensation.
The part that’s dispositive is that tetrodotoxin does not cross the blood-brain barrier where it could exert psychoactive effects. In fact no recreational drugs are known to cross that barrier save poppers (amyl nitrate) whose effects are purely physiological. Nevertheless, it’s possible that tetrodotoxin has a purely physiological effect on the dolphins that makes them relaxed or blissed out. Look at the video above and tell me if you think they’re just playing with a pufferfish and are getting no effects from it!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, this is no surprise to me, as Andrzej is a workaholic:
Hili: You said that when you finished writing the book, you’d have more time.
Andrzej: I was hoping so.
In Polish:
Hili: Mówiłeś, że jak skończysz pisać książkę będziesz miał więcej czasu.
Ja: Miałem taką nadzieję.
*******************
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Things With Faces; “between a rock and a hard place”:
From Stacy; a response to the well-known woke sign:
x
x
Today’s Two Minutes of Hate, from Kasparian, of course, elated over Lindsey Graham’s death:
But she also said this (she always works genocide by Israel into things):
What kind of monster thinks gloating about dead people is ever okay? I guess apologists for ethnic cleansing.
— Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) November 2, 2020
The Number Ten Cat makes a jok (read about the baked d*g here):
Is he called Snoop? https://t.co/LyS2Q7Jr1t
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 12, 2026
Jeff Maurer touts his article in the Dispatch, which includes this:
Now, Democrats are going through something a lot like what happened to Republicans a decade ago. The left’s online id has taken corporeal form and scored a few primary wins. Now, the takeover is far from complete; it’s not guaranteed that the 2028 nominee will be either Lenin’s reanimated corpse or someone even worse. But for the first time, I’m contemplating the possibility of a Democratic Party that shares none of my values, which include empiricism, free speech, and being able to say words other than “oligarchy,” “Zionist,” and “don’t judge me by my old tweets.”
I may be politically homeless soon. So, I have a question for Dispatch readers: What’s that like? How does one mentally navigate having political views that are as in-the-zeitgeist as barbershop music? Many Dispatch readers have been clinging to wreckage in the Sea of Political Isolation for roughly a decade—any survival tips for someone whose ship might be about to plunge beneath the waves?
The DSA is trying to push out normie Dems, and that’s why I’m happy to be in @thedispatch today asking important questions (like below) just in case I become politically homeless.https://t.co/LjVbZiUKkQ pic.twitter.com/vdrQOlRLRM
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) July 13, 2026
From Luana; some good news, I suppose, but note that the U.N. won’t use the “H-word,” referring to Hamas as the “de facto authorities”:
BREAKING: In an unprecedented move, the UN has finally admitted that Hamas is blocking aid into Gaza.
They describe a system of arresting drivers, intimidating and threatening aid workers, and limiting aid.
Israel has been vindicated once again. pic.twitter.com/hYb7CeIEYW
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) July 13, 2026
Two from my feed. First TRUE FACTS ABOUT HEDGEHOGS:
Hedgehogs rub their smell on others who are familiar to them pic.twitter.com/3UOq7nW3Ea
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 13, 2026
I find this hilarious:
Trump attempting to open the Strait of Hormuz pic.twitter.com/jzDsHOTkSl
— badger (@badger69420) July 12, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Austro-Hungarian Jewish woman was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 50 years old. https://t.co/hQnDmat88g
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 14, 2026
And one from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb, which goes to a YouTube video.
— Tom Peyer (@tompeyer.bsky.social) 2026-07-11T04:35:59.999Z
A friend had also sent me the article on Mendel and his books yesterday. I do not find 10,000 books in 600 sq ft to be outrageous…less crowded than some bookstores, plus he evidently still has room for soirees with friends. I think landlord is a peckensniff, and was struck by the paragraph:
“It makes sense to me that Mendel, a Brooklyn yeshiva kid, would come to the Upper East Side and make this world for himself here, only to get rejected from it,” Cosma said. “There’s a New York now, keyed into professionalism and uniformity, that sees a guy like him and thinks something must be wrong. There’s an element to the city now that’s hostile to the life of the mind, to the eccentricity that might produce it.”
I am interested in our own D.A.’s reaction to Cosma’s new york assessment.
I’m surprised by the ruling too.
One easy solution would be to invest in ebooks, not for all but for some of them.
One area where ebooks fail to satisfy is that you cannot flip rapidly from page to page, say from text to a map, back to the text, back to the map, or text to a diagram until you understand what the author is saying about the map, etc.
Ebooks are good for displaying words.
My neighbour at one time was a surgeon and a real, live Dame of the Realm. She had been honoured for her work in cancer treatment for women. When she died over 80,000 books were removed from her home. The removalists received a bit of a fright when they finally cleared the bathroom and found a skeleton in the bathtub. Turns out the skeleton was a teaching aid. It was possibly a real human skeleton from India. India was the world’s leading supplier of skeletons and skulls for the teaching market until the mid 1980s.
Wow, interesting story.
‘This is a semifinal, so the winner goes to the final match.’ And the loser to the loser’s final: the third place playoff. Opta says France 43% and Spain 30%.
On France v Spain … I’m Andorra. 🙂
I’m not following the footy at all but I love the infestation of fun, friendly fans to NYC. Some Swiss girls dragooned me off to force feed me and my puppy European beers the other night.
Trump should invade the World Cup so we get it here forever!
D.A.
NYC
Which is more Catalonian than French, and hence soccerwise closer to Spain 🙂 And Spain won! I expected France to win. While I thought Spain was very good, in the event that they won, I did not expect them to win as convincingly. They were excellent.
The Ecology Letters paper looks excellent. Good summary of the science and the need to keep science and politics separate.
Plus, as I non-biologist I just now learned that I’m a “metazoan”. Much classier than “animal”.
Marco Rubio on June 23, 2026: “That’s the law. It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world and that’s the way we’ll expect it’ll be here.”
Donald Trump on July 13, 2026: “We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”
The sheer incompetence of this administration is astounding, dangerous, and expensive.
This is, unfortunately, no surprise to me. I figured months ago that they’d find another grift here. Now, the question is HOW they will channel the money.
I see several methods, here, and, without doubt, do not see what they will actually do.
edit: Whoops: wrote too soon. WHile I was writing this< https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07/14/world/iran-war-trump-hormuz
Utterly refreshing and settling to read the Ecology Letters article. The Davis 1978 Nature article sounds intriguing.
Bear in mind that postmodern activist scholarship relies on the principle of charity to practice its Motte and Bailey strategy of advancement.
That means every word can and will be used in a kooky-yet-solemn postmodern way. So, wild guess, in a future “rebuttal” article the word “political” could be turned inside out so as to give it an empirical, scientific valence.
I think they can do this so easily because they read all this intoxicating goony literature that real scientists cannot be bothered with, because real scientists have a reading list of hard stuff a mile long.
Also math.
This should be interesting!
Then Janicke paper is excellent, and it strikes just the right tone. Mazal Tov to the authors and reviewers.
It’s nice to see that Israel has been vindicated regarding Hamas and food relief. Of course, none of our accusers will notice, because of the former landslide of accusations, and even more by the “genocide” narrative. The latter accusation seems to be a litmus test for many Democratic candidates for election these days, as well as the usual woke morons who do not know what the word means, nor identify the river or the sea, nor know the difference between their collective anal orifices and their cubiti.
I like how WEIT directs to/copies the smartest people. Like Amit. A great writer (a thrill in itself) he’s right about Beauford Castle Lebanon being almost stone’s throw distance to N. Israel and, since the beginning of IDF operations in Israel it is proven Sth Lebanon is Swiss cheese, Gaza style tunneled. There is an above ground and below ground Lebanon and both must have their lawns mowed.
D.A.
NYC
Love the Upper East Side bibliophile. One must tame one’s book collection as PCC(E) has noted or it can get out of control.
I’m just surprised he lost considering landlord tenant law here, which I have a bit of experience in. You’d think somebody not paying rent in decades would be an easier eviction than a nerd with a book hoarding hobby!
D.A.
NYC
Sad about Mendel Uminer and his incendiary books, but everyone knows that books can be dangerous! When I first started reading the story, I thought that the motivation for the eviction might have been the excess weight. Buildings in Mandami’s New York City seem to be prone to collapse, you know.
Actually, what really drew me to the story is the young reader’s first name: Mendel. My maternal grandfather’s brother—who moved from Odessa to Palestine (later to become the State of Israel) when my grandfather moved to the United States—had the same first name. Uncle Mendel. I met him a couple of times when he visited my grandparents.
The article on the sex binary looks good, although I have only read your excerpts. I saved the link. I have a small collection of links on Israel and Judaism for the same reason: I can’t defend everything on my own.
I like the “In this house we believe” sign. To that list, I’d add “Time flies like an eagle. Fruit flies like a banana.”
You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish
“Time flies like an eagle.”
Yes, the line also triggered in me thoughts of REO Speedwagon just a split second before the Steve Miller Band.
Midwest roots either way.
I’ve always heard the quote as “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana”.
It’s been my test for the quality, or lack thereof, of electronic translation for a long time – though Google Translate, as an example, deals with it OK.
Google (and Bing) translate it satisfactorily into French. A friend is a professional interpreter, but the translation software on which she tried it got it wrong.
Yes. My mistake. Oy.
I learned the quote in Dick Lewontin’s population genetics class.
Books are dangerous. After all, knowledge = power. Since power can be used as a weapon, a guy with that many books is armed to the teeth!
Glad to see that Ecology Letters article, but I thought it went far too easy on some of the cited authors whose distortions of biology are only implicitly criticized.
In the first round of reviewers, reviewer 4 wrote: “[T]he authors frame the debate as stemming from (L27, L46-48, L260-265) “conflation of biological concepts with discussions of human gender diversity”. This implies that proponents of the multivariate (McLaughlin et al. 2023) or other approaches (Eppley et al. 2026) to defining sex are motivated by gender ideology rather than scientific rigor.”
What’s not said is that many of the authors of McLaughlin et al. (2023) and Eppley et al. (2026) are “trans”, “nonbinary”, and “queer”, and have well-known roles as activists and policy advocates (not just biology researchers). They/their biology research is obviously motivated by personal identity and gender ideology (I’m agnostic about their devotion to scientific rigour).
Did Janicke et al. push back against this? Did the original manuscript take a softer or harder line on this well-earned criticism of McLaughlin, Eppley, and their coauthors? The published reviews and decision letters don’t include the author response letters or the original manuscript. Maybe our host can tell us about how the manuscript changed in response to reviews?
The use of language in the UN letter is fascinating. I asked Google, “Is Hamas still in control of Gaza?”, and the response was, “Yes, Hamas remains the de facto authority in the parts of the territory not occupied by Israeli forces.” Google used the exact “de facto authority” wording.
The UN letter fails to directly mention Hamas but does explicitly state that “the expansion of areas under Israeli control is further reducing space available to civilians.” One not knowledgeable of the situation could be led to believe that Israel is the de facto authority as they are the only party mentioned by name, especially after all of the previous false reports of them blocking aid. Also, the use of “at the same time” is not used in a clear enough fashion to differentiate Israel’s actions vs those of Hamas.
The other aspect of it I find interesting is that they’re “strongly condemning” an entity that they won’t name. Talk about linguistic gymnastics!
Re the tetrodotoxin story:
In fact no recreational drugs are known to cross that barrier save poppers (amyl nitrate) whose effects are purely physiological.
I’m not sure what you mean by that statement. Ethanol, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, heroin, etc., all readily cross the blood-brain barrier. Amyl nitrite also readily crosses, but you are correct that its primary physiologic effects occur outside that barrier.
I’m sure it is just a typo, i.e. “no recreational drugs are known to cross that barrier” should read “no recreational drugs are known that do NOT cross that barrier”.
From what I understand, Pufferfish toxin is not psychoactive, so the dolphins cannot get high from it. I’ve seen footage of dolphins playing with sponges in the same way shown in the video.
I have worked with TTX for many years, using it as a tool to measure its function on sodium channels in many types of nerve and other cells. The primary mechanism of action of TTX is blocking voltage-dependent sodium channels, which are the primary mechanism of cells generating action potentials. And no, it does not cross the BBB. However, it is theoretically possible to get it across, either by momentarily opening the barrier, or by some sort of active transport. While I do not know of either of these mechanisms being present in dolphins, I cannot discard the possibility of one or the other being present. I would, however, believe that it is highly unlikely. What would be the evolutionary advantage of such a system developing?
If a small amount of TTX crossed the BBB, it would affect all the neurons in the CNS. While some of those neurons may be in the neocortex, hypothalamus, or other systems involving pleasure, other neurons, such as those controlling breathing, would also be affected. Not to mention the cells outside the CNS, including the muscles controlling breathing etc. None of this story seems likely to me. I would have to see scientific papers on the subject to be a believer. (It is not outside the realm of probability that I would be asked to review such a paper.)