Welcome to a Hump Day (“Ghjornu di a Gobba” in Corsican): Wednesday, July 22, 2026, and National Mango Day, celebrating my favorite fruit. I have visited India quite a few times, but my biggest regret is that I’ve never gone in the summer, which is mango season (the photo below shows a small selection of the varieities available). It’s bloody hot then, and I haven’t been willing to trade off eating mangos for being broiled.
It’s mango season in Pakistan, which is said to produce the world’s best mangos. This man is trying the King of Mangos (note that they’re expensive!):
It’s also National BLT Sandwich Day, National Penuche Fudge Day, and Pi Approximation Day (The date written the European way is 22/7, which is an approximation of pi: 3.1428. . .)
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 22 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Ripped from today’s headlines:
*The Trump administration is now going to allow Saudi Arabia to make nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration plans to announce Wednesday that it has reached a broad nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that could lead to the country enriching its own fuel for nuclear reactors, U.S. officials said.
The accord is intended to further bind the United States with the Saudi government as the war with Iran strains the relationship. The Trump administration, according to officials, estimates it will provide billions of dollars for the U.S. nuclear industry — starting with Westinghouse, which designs many of the reactors sold abroad.
The Trump administration plans to formally sign and announce the agreement with the Saudis on Wednesday, said two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It would announce the details to Congress soon afterward.
Although the agreement likely would have support among many Republicans, some U.S. lawmakers from both parties along with Israeli officials have expressed opposition to such a plan, fearing that the kingdom could use a civilian nuclear project to eventually develop nuclear weapons.
What’s the point? To keep Iran at bay? I don’t think so.
*And the Houthis are threatening to block the Red Sea passage.
If the Houthis make good on their threat to blockade ships traveling to and from Saudi Arabia via the Red Sea, it would yet again upend global oil markets by compromising a crucial fallback for the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the early weeks of the war with Iran, Saudi Arabia has been relying on a pipeline that bisects the country to reroute millions of barrels of oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.
Most of that oil gets to market via the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen and near territory controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia. A smaller portion goes north to the Mediterranean Sea, via a pipeline that crosses Egypt or, in the case of oil-derived fuel, via the Suez Canal.
Any disruption to those alternatives would further restrict the supply of oil and fuels to a market rattled by renewed attacks on vessels in the Persian Gulf. The threats already appear to be having an impact. Two oil tankers, the Rodos and the Xin Long Yang, that were headed toward the Bab al-Mandab made U-turns on Tuesday, according to the maritime data firm Kpler.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia showing the chokepoint. The article adds, “The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 26 kilometres (14 nautical miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments.”
*The NYT has finally published an op-ed (by Omar Bartov) declaring the Israeli attack on Gaza a “genocide.”
In the earlier case of genocides that “succeeded” because of impunity at the time or the absence of subsequent accountability, the perpetrator state went on to benefit from its criminal actions. The invention and codification of the concept of genocide after World War II was meant to prevent the persistence of this dynamic of impunity and profit.
What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.
It is a future in which other nations or leaders may have an incentive to pursue genocidal policies knowing they will not only get away with murder but may even benefit from it. It is a future in which the countries and international organizations that had been committed to stopping and punishing genocide may give license to its recurrence.
Since the current cease-fire in Gaza went into effect on Oct. 10, and President Trump’s 20-point plan was endorsed by the Security Council on Nov. 17, more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli attacks. The military now controls nearly 70 percent of the Strip. Two million Palestinians, who had previously lived in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, are now confined to a third of it, trying to survive in devastated spaces lacking the most basic humanitarian infrastructure.
. . . Israel is unlikely to face a reckoning for its actions. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as for a Hamas official, who turned out to have been killed. The United States has tried to undermine the court, and Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly visited the White House to, among other things, try to reportedly persuade Mr. Trump to launch his attack on Iran. Israel may eventually be found guilty of genocide by the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has lodged a separate case against Israel, but the implications of such a ruling are unclear as long as Israel retains U.S. support on the U.N. Security Council, which acts as the enforcement arm of the I.C.J.
. . . Some may argue that the case of Gaza is singular because Israel enjoys a unique international position thanks to its tight alliance with the United States and its reliance on the legacy of the Holocaust. Perhaps other states cannot expect to be rewarded and may even be punished for genocide. Yet what we are seeing today sets an extraordinary precedent, one that has the potential of undermining the entire premise of genocide as a crime punishable under post-World War II international law.
Two points here. Bartov mentions Hamas only twice, one in the third sentence of this extract (and in the whole article). There is no criticism of Hamas, nor any recognition that its attack on October 7 was intended to begin a real genocide. The original Hamas Charter of 1988 explicitly calls for the killing of Jews, and while the later 2017 charter has effaced the antsemitism, it’s still antizionist, calls for a Palestinian state from the “river to the sea” and does not recognize the state of Israel. It now uses the words “Zionist” and “Zionism”, but nobody’s fooled by that. Palestinian children are still taught to kill Jews and become martyrs, and the PA still has its “Martyr’s Fund” to reward Palestinians jailed for killing or attacking Jews. Does Bartov not recognize the explicit genocidal intent of Hamas?
Second, what did Bartov want Israel to do in the face of repeated terrorist attacks on Israel culimating on the October 7 massacre? Did he expect the Israeli army to go into Gaza, shoot a few bullets at Hamas without harming the populace in which they were embedded, and then withdraw? What would he have done to stop the terrorism?
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal says that Iran’s nuclear program is “buried but not dead.” And the WSJ has an exclusive called “Israel believes Iran moved nuclear centrifuges into PickAxe Mountain“.
t’s Tuesday, July 21, and buried at least 100 meters deep beneath a mountain near the city of Natanz lies a critical piece of Tehran’s nuclear program. But it isn’t enriched uranium that makes Pickaxe Mountain the stuff of Israeli nightmares.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Israeli intelligence has determined that Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep within the mountain last fall, following the 12-day war in June. If accurate, this represents a significant acceleration of Iran’s path to reviving its nuclear program—one that both the U.S. and Israel believed was effectively dead and buried.
Pickaxe Mountain has been under construction since the fall of 2020. At the time, Iran claimed the underground halls would replace the destroyed above-ground centrifuge assembly facility at Natanz’s main site, which was severely damaged in an explosion widely suspected to have been an act of sabotage. Iran describes the facility publicly as a centrifuge assembly plant. Israeli intelligence, however, indicates the purpose is far more ambitious: The site is believed capable of supporting not just assembly operations but limited uranium enrichment.
Over the past 15 months, satellite imagery has documented steady activity: truck traffic, tunnel reinforcements, and expanding security perimeters. The assumption had been that U.S. overflights and the implicit threat of precision strikes would deter Iran from restarting its nuclear program—but that calculation appears to have been wrong. The facility was not targeted during last year’s Israel-Iran war, nor has it been struck during the current round of U.S.-Iran fighting, either because operators assessed that bombs would have minimal effect or because the site remained under construction. But that calculus may now be shifting.
Last week, Donald Trump broke his public silence on Pickaxe Mountain. “Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” Trump said.
. . . and from the WSJ’s similar report:
Known as Mount Kolang in Iran, Pickaxe has been under surveillance by the U.S. and Israel for years, and what little is known about Iran’s activities at the site suggests it would present challenges to any airstrikes. Located near one of Iran’s main nuclear installations, Pickaxe was commissioned as an underground replacement for an Iranian centrifuge-assembly facility that was badly damaged after a 2020 explosion, which might have been an act of sabotage.
Activity has continued there steadily for the past 15 months, with truck traffic, tunnel reinforcements and a security perimeter springing up, said the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank on nuclear and nonproliferation issues. There was also work around an older tunnel network that dates from 2007, which Iran has since sealed up.
“It is plausible that Iran moved centrifuges into the tunnels” in Pickaxe, said David Albright, the institute’s president.
Experts estimate that the subterranean complex reaches 300 to 450 feet deep beneath solid rock, with enough room to accommodate several nuclear-related facilities.
It still amazes me that any sentient being thinks that Iran will obey an agreement to not construct nuclear weapons. That is its overweening task, and if it agrees to abandon the drive for nukes, it is lying. And, of all people, Trump seems to believe it, too. If he was serious in saying that no agreement to end hostilities can be made without Iran promising to never make nuclear weapons, he was deluded. Besides, we’ll have a new President in 2029, and all bets are off.
*Jake Altman tells all in the Free Press: “I was in the DSA. Here’s what they really believe.” (DSA is the party Democratic Socialists of America.) I’ll bite:
I was a member of the DSA from the 2010s until 2022. During that time, I witnessed a rise in extremism, ranging from an eagerness to collaborate with Leninist groups to a growing animosity toward the U.S. and the West. My final departure was prompted by a DSA statement that attributed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to American “imperialist expansionism.”
So what does the DSA stand for? An answer to that question arrived last week in the form of a new platform. Among the DSA’s core aims are ending the presidency and Supreme Court. Abolishing prisons. Universal free housing. The elimination of all debt. Closing all U.S. military bases overseas. Lifting all sanctions from Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. And so much more.
“Workers Deserve More!”—the title of the new platform—is meant to present a friendlier face to the world and overcome the radical reputation the organization has developed in many corners of the public. That makes it even more remarkable that the document is still so radical on its face. It advocates the elimination of capitalism, not a thick layer of redistribution on top of the current economy. It prompts readers to imagine a world where the profit motive has been squelched out of existence. “You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded.” It goes on to promise open borders, the abolition of the police, “free” everything, and guaranteed jobs, all with less effort from the individual. This is the stuff of fairy tales, but instead of a fairy godmother, the reader is greeted by an agent of the secret police.
. . .Crucially, DSA’s foreign policy positions ignore America’s enemies: While DSA targets U.S. and Israeli leadership for prosecution, the platform is silent on the actual atrocities committed by the Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan, and Chinese regimes. In early 2019, when I argued that the DSA should denounce the Nicolàs Maduro regime for mass persecution, abuse, torture, and murder, a local leader told me that to advocate against the Maduro administration would be to play into U.S. war propaganda.
It is always the U.S.—so-called American imperialism—that comes in for the harshest criticism while America’s authoritarian enemies get apologia. For the DSA, the world’s most authoritarian regimes deserve political cover. DSA blamed NATO and Western “imperialist expansionism” for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. October 7, 2023, the DSA first expressed its solidarity with Palestine and then laid the blame for Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel. After the Maduro regime brutalized and murdered its opponents, DSA members were happy to visit him and celebrate his regime. Meanwhile, the West is expected to dismantle its military capabilities.
Part of the DSA program is an attack on the forces of law and order. The DSA continues to push for police and ICE abolition while simultaneously establishing what sounds like a paramilitary wing. The DSA has formed a group called the Red Rabbits to prepare for a “national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.” So it’s a paramilitary force for the DSA, but no protection for the rest of us.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and dare I say comrades?: this is what the mayor of NYC wants, along with AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders (the former two card-carrying DSA Congresswomen, and Bernie a running dog. Some day, when AOC tries to realize her ambition of becoming a Senator, or even President, this will come back to haunt her. Well, it should.
Read the platform for yourself (it’s short) and see if you want to live in an America like that.
*More ideological corruption in publishing: the Times of Israel reports that a U.S. publisher refused to publish a book, Cartoonists Against the Holocaust, containing 150 political cartoons published in the U.S. during the Nazi era, unless the author let the publisher add an anti-Israel statement. This is unbelievable.
A US publisher canceled a book about the Holocaust because the author refused to add text denouncing Israel to the book, the StandWithUS advocacy group said this week.
Dark Horse Comics was scheduled to publish the book, “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust,” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, this summer, but informed the author’s team last month that publication had been canceled.
The book uses 150 editorial cartoons that had been printed in US newspapers in the Nazi era, alongside commentary from Medoff, to show what Americans knew about the Holocaust at the time.
An editor at Dark Horse last year told Medoff that he would add a statement to the book accusing US President Donald Trump of “attempting to create concentration camp-style prisons,” among other offenses, according to correspondence shared by StandWithUs.
The proposed addition also included a paragraph condemning Israel.
Get a load of this “addition”:
In a response emailed to the editor, Medoff pushed back against “politicizing our book” and called the claims “factually inaccurate.”
The email also said that, during a phone conversation, the editor had demanded Medoff accuse Israel of genocide in the book’s introduction to prevent people from getting “mad.”
Medoff said the editor’s proposals amounted to minimizing the Nazi genocide and Holocaust inversion.
“What you are saying, in plain English, is that the Jews were victims of the Holocaust and now the Jews are committing another Holocaust,” Medoff wrote. “I understand it has become fashionable in certain circles today to accuse Israel of mass murder. But being fashionable is not the same as being right.”
More of the same—every damn day. Here the publisher wanted to establish purity by damning Israel, in a book that was about the Holocaust in WWII. Relevant? No. Shameful? Certainly.
*On Saturday a Scottish runner, Josh Kerr, broke the men’s record for running the mile; the old record had stood for 27 years (the mile is not an international event, but is still an iconic distance).
Scottish middle-distance runner Josh Kerr became the fastest man in world history over four laps on Saturday, clocking 3:42.66 to break a world record set 27 years ago by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.
The historic run at the London Diamond League fulfilled Kerr’s season-long Project 222 quest, so named for the number of seconds required to break 3:43.13, the standard set by El Guerrouj in 1999 at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, the site of his still-standing world record of 3:26.00 in the 1500 meters set a year prior. Prior to this race, Kerr was the sixth-fastest man in world history with a personal best of 3:45.34.
Kerr’s Brooks Beast teammate Brannon Kidder of the United States and Zan Rudolf of Slovenia paced the attempt with splits of 54.75 and 1:50.63. With a lap and a half to go, Rudolf stepped off the track and it was up to Kerr, who led American Yared Nuguse and Germany’s Robert Farken through 1200 meters in 2:46.39 with a quarter-mile split of 55.76. The final result was never in contest as the Brit powered home in a new world record. Nuguse finished a well-beaten second in 3:45.69, a season’s best.
. , ,Kerr has built a reputation as one of the most confident middle-distance runners in the world. On Saturday, he said he relied on the pacemakers to carry him through.
“The best analogy we worked with today was that my two pacemakers set the tone, the river,” Kerr said to FloTrack. “They set the stream and all I had to do sit in that water for as long as I could, follow it, and not fight it. I said I wasn’t on a chase today. I was flowing with the conditions that were set and I just needed to not slow down.”
It took year to shave off half a second from the previous record. Of course there is a physiological limit to how fast it can be run: humans cannot run a mile in ten seconds but they can in 3:43. And the time is reaching an asymptote, though we don’t know what it is. .
Here’s the record run:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is lording it over Kulka (Hili hates Kulka but Szaron doesn’t mind her):
Szaron: Kulka is right below you.
Hili: Everyone ought to know their place.
In Polish:
Szaron: Pod tobą siedzi Kulka.
Hili: Każdy powinien znać swoje miejsce.
*******************
From Addicted to Ducks. And this is true, too! In French, for example, duck noises are “kwan kwan” (IPA: /kwɛ̃/), with the vowel nasal.
From Beth:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From the Free Press via Masih: two young Iranians just executed for sheltering protestors. The regime continues to kill left and right, but “regime change” is not on Trump’s agenda:
Two Iranian teenagers were just executed for opening their doors to fleeing protesters. They are only the latest victims of a regime that uses the world’s distractions to carry out mass killing, writes Masih Alinejad. https://t.co/2OabCNqUqL
— The Free Press (@TheFP) July 21, 2026
Larry caught a mouse! But after all, he is the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. I think this is his second mouse ever.
No harm in showing the new boy that I’m an asset https://t.co/TynFehhv1E
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 21, 2026
And Larry’s catch made big news!
Photo du Jour: Members of the press photograph a dead mouse caught by Larry the Downing St cat (left). By Stefan Rousseau/PA pic.twitter.com/2TrY1OFJh8
— Stefan Rousseau (@StefanRousseau) July 21, 2026
From Luana; disproportionality in a “studies” department:
Penn State has 42,000 undergrads. Exactly 10 graduated in women’s, gender & sexuality studies (WGSS) in 2023–24. The department lists 28 professors.
The “studies” department racket is real: every department combined—area, cultural, gender, black, Asian, Native American,…
— Brandon Fuller (@fuller_brandon) July 20, 2026
One from my feed; a lovely baby otter and its mom:
The embrace between Sea Otters and their babies is one of the most tender behaviours in the animal kingdom.
The mothers hug them against their bellies to keep them warm, groom them, and prevent the current from carrying them away.#WildlifePhotography #Otters 🦦
🎦 Credit:… pic.twitter.com/6ESIjciwf6
— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) July 21, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was eight years old. https://t.co/VTHrFrj4AK
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 22, 2026
Two from Doc Cobb. He posted this one about a man part of whose job is to remove knobs from the Tour de France course. He’s been doing it for 15 years!
The guy who artfully removes the knobs from the Tour de France roads so TV viewers will not be shocked by infantile graffiti.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T11:39:44.961Z
And a “fossilized” keyboard. Proof that the Earth is less than 50 years old!
The famous fossilised keyboard in Norwich
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T08:08:55.375Z
We have a new Cabinet in the UK. None of them has any background in science or technology (only 1 studied science as an undergraduate). None of them has any real experience in business or wealth generation.
Typically they studied arts/humanities degrees as undergrads, got involved in student politics, became assistants to MPs, then became MPs, and now cabinet ministers. Where they do have any wider experience, it’s usually with charities or NGOs (that is, spending money and activism, not creating things or generating wealth). There’s more or less nobody who has had any notable track record or success outside politics.
I read ‘only 1 studied science as an undergraduate’ as ‘only I studied science as an undergraduate’ and thought for a few seconds that you were in the cabinet. Smart people who want to serve in government don’t waste their time studying science!
😀 So, for example, the new Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Science studied politics as an undergrad, then trained as a solicitor for a while, before becoming an assistant to an MP and then an MP. So no background at all in any of Business, Innovation or Science. 🫨
Sal Mercogiano has a good 20-minute video summary of the current situation for shipping in both straits this morning. He has had an inside joke for some time about taking a drink every time he mentions the Bab al Mandab, so do not be distracted by an occasional “cheers”. But I think he lays out the confusing and dire situation for cargo and in particular the merchant mariners that are on these ships. His “whats going on with shipping?”, Guardians of the Strait of Hormuz edition should be at url
Yes, letting Saudi Arabia have nukes is not a good idea. On the other hand, it’s about time they used their army and dealt with the Houthis.