Welcome to the end of another week, for it’s Friday, July 24, 2026. All four ducklings are still here and thriving. It is also National Amelia Earhart Day, her birthday. As Wikipedia notes:
Amelia Mary Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑːrt/ AIR-hart; born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviator and aviation pioneer who became one of the most celebrated figures of early flight.
In 1928, she was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for her achievement. She was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.
On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Since her disappearance, Earhart has become a global cultural figure and numerous films, documentaries, and books have recounted her life.
Here’s a short video biography of Earhart:
And here’s a photo of Earhart from Wikipedia with the caption, “Amelia Earhart standing in front of the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in July 1937.”
Every couple of years I hear news that Earhart’s plane or crash site has finally been found, but it always comes to nothing. I no longer pay attention to those stories. When they come up with the wreckage of her plane, I’ll pay attention.
It’s also National Tequila Day and National Tell an Old Joke Day. Here’s one from Rodney Dangerfield:
“My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said, “Okay, you’re ugly too’.”
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 24 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Breaking news ripped from the headlines. The U.S. struck Iran yet again this morning (Friday) as Iran rejected a cease-fire proposal. From the NYT:
The United States and Iran traded more attacks across the Middle East after Tehran was said to have rejected a U.S. cease-fire proposal delivered by the leader of Iraq.
American forces targeted Iranian military assets and facilities, including drone storage sites, to reduce the threat to commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said. The attacks began at 2:15 a.m. local time and ended just over two hours later, according to the command, which oversees operations in the Middle East.
The Iranian military said it had launched drone attacks on Friday morning against U.S. military targets at bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
Iranian and Iraqi officials said on Thursday that Iran had rejected a cease-fire proposal from President Trump that was presented by Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi of Iraq. Iran’s top negotiator, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told local news outlets that there was no need for another mediator and that “the problem is America’s outlook.”
*Three angry people write letters to the NYT about Mamdani’s explanation that he was unable to arrest Israeli PM Netanyahu, who will be visiting the UN headquarter in NYT chis fall. Link is archives so you can read it.
*The U.S. strike on Iran yesterday came after the Houthis in Yemen attacked Saudi tankers in the Red Sea (note: not the Strait of Hormuz):
As for the Senate vote:
Senators voted against taking up another war powers resolution seeking to challenge the president’s authority to continue the conflict in Iran. Senators voted 49 to 47 to block the measure from coming to the floor for a final vote, with one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voting in favor, and one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voting against.
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who had supported past resolutions, changed his vote, saying he had received adequate information from senior administration officials to oppose the measure. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republicans who had backed similar efforts, did not vote.
Just for once I’d like to read a story in the MSM about the war that doesn’t begin by mentioning the price of oil (this one did, too, but I left that out). Yes, it is a consideration, but to many not the consideration. What about the 30,000+ people killed by the theocracy, its oppression of women, its never-ending attempt to make nuclear weapons, and its sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East—and elsewhere (viz., Alinejad, Maish).
*Yesterday we learned that Trump decided to help Saudi Arabia get nuclear weapons, and Amit Segal opined that this was largely due to Trump’s trying to get business for American defense companies. Well, that may be true (I was doubtful), but the Washington Post says there’s a big condition for that nuclear aid: the Saudis must join the 2020 Abraham Accords, designed to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries.
The deal to allow the Saudis to build nuclear power plants using U.S. technology, creating a pathway to a Saudi nuclear enrichment program, has set off debate in Congress. Many lawmakers fear that allowing more countries to develop enrichment programs could eventually lead to more possessing nuclear weapons.
Israel hotly opposes Saudi Arabia’s developing a nuclear enrichment program, fearful it could lead to a regional arms race. Israeli leaders welcomed Trump’s new statement.
The Saudis have long sought to build nuclear power plants on their territory — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, has declared that they would work to develop nuclear weapons if Iran develops its own.
The Biden administration also explored a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but it ultimately foundered because normalizing relations with Israel was the main condition the United States placed on the agreement. The deal the Trump administration signed Wednesday would have imposed no such requirement.
Trump’s new condition on Thursday would appear to attach a major string to the deal. Saudi leaders were nearing a normalization agreement with Israel in 2023, just before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, however, talks have been paused. Saudi leaders have said they would want guarantees of an eventual Palestinian state, and Saudi public opinion has soured toward Israel because of its handling of Gaza. Any nuclear deal tied to Saudi-Israel diplomatic breakthroughs has seemed remote.
This is somewhat of a mess because Trump, trying to normalize relations between Israel and the Saudis, is asking for Israel to accept something they violently oppose: a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia might accept it (that’s doubtful), but Israel never would. At least the motive for the nuke deal is better than simply enriching the American military-industrial complex.
*Douglas Murray has a new column in the Free Press, “Why Mamdani is targeting Netanyahu.” The bolding is mine.
Sometimes you wonder why a person went into politics. Other times, you know exactly why they did. For Zohran Mamdani, yesterday was a case of the latter.
On Tuesday evening he released a two-minute video of himself, seated behind a desk, flanked by the flags of the United States and New York. He had arranged this posture—for posture it was—to announce a development in the case of Zohran Mamdani vs. Benjamin Netanyahu, otherwise known as Mamdani vs. the State of Israel. Attacks on Israel have been central to Mamdani’s political rise. He has spent his life marinating in postcolonial politics, Third Worldism, and anti-Zionism, and brings agitation, certainty, and ignorance to debates about the Middle East.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani repeatedly promised that if he were elected mayor, he would have Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he ever set foot in the city.
Several things were obvious to any casual observer. The first is that the United Nations General Assembly occurs each September in New York. Therefore, there was always going to be an opportunity for a showdown. The second is that the mayor of New York does not have any right to run U.S. foreign policy out of Gracie Mansion.
The third obvious fact was that Mamdani was going to justify his call for the arrest of Netanyahu on the basis of the existing warrant against the Israeli leader from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Of course, the U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC, nor in any way bound to its decisions. In fact, consecutive Democratic and Republican administrations refused to sign the Rome Statute on which the ICC is based because it would give foreign powers a say over American law and let them stand in judgment over American soldiers and statesmen.
. . .Mamdani’s statement was a tightly packed set of casuistry and lies. He started by saying: “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. The architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people. He is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people. For the maiming of tens of thousands of children, as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia. For the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live. For the countless people he starved as he blocked food and humanitarian aid from reaching them. For the gunning down of hundreds of aid workers and journalists.”
There are many things to note here. But the first is the opening line, that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Mamdani did not say that Netanyahu has been accused of war crimes. He did not say that a prosecutor at the ICC, Karim Khan, issued a hastily written arrest warrant for Netanyahu and others in November 2024, which was quite possibly meant to deflect from his own imminent exposure for his alleged sexual harassment of a colleague at the court. Rather, Mamdani said that Netanyahu is a war criminal. That does not make it sound as though the mayor is willing to let justice play its course.
Mamdani presents his claims as fact, which they are very far from being. He cites the famous number of 73,000 deaths in Gaza, which was produced by Hamas. Even if this figure is accurate, who are these casualties? Are any of them Hamas fighters? Did Israel manage to kill any Hamas soldiers during the conflict, or must every death be regarded as a civilian death?
. .Mamdani is very clearly unbothered by facts. What he wants is the ability to make an accusation. So it is with the accusation of “genocide.” There is nothing more preposterous than the idea that what the Israel Defense Forces have done since October 7 has been a “genocide” of the Palestinians. If Netanyahu had wanted to eradicate every Palestinian from Gaza he could have done so on October 8. But obviously he didn’t. If the IDF had sought to kill as many Palestinians as possible, they would have not gone to such extraordinary lengths—lengths I have seen with my own eyes—to separate civilians from combatants, even when the line between the two has been deliberately blurred by Hamas.
Mamdani knows what he is doing here. He is not a stupid man. He is not an ignorant man. He is simply a highly ideological man who is pursuing a political and sectarian campaign against the world’s only Jewish state. Aside from personal advancement it is obvious what his real motivation is. Like other democratic socialists, Mamdani would like to shift the Overton window on Israel policy and vet candidates for future primaries over whether or not they condemn the “genocide” in Gaza. By presenting as fact the farcical claim that there has been such a thing, Mamdani and co. can then make anyone who refuses to condemn it look like an utter monster. After all, who can’t bring himself to condemn a genocide?
The push to arrest Netanyahu in New York was always going to fail. Its only purpose was to be another stepping stone in Mamdani’s and his fellow travelers’ efforts to destroy the moral legitimacy of the world’s one Jewish state, in the hope of eventually destroying the ability of that state to exist. Why they wish so fervently to achieve this goal is, of course, impossible to comprehend.
I repeat that Mamdani’s election baffles me, particularly because many of those who voted for him were Jews. Murray, who is not Jewish, sees what NYC’s Jews (or Democrats) don’t see, or do see and don’t want to admit: Mamdani is both an antisemite and a liar. Good luck, New York, New York!
*Portland’s Reed College, also known as Che Guevara University (no kidding: I have a Reed College tee-shirt with the college logo surrounded by the words “atheism,” “communism”, and “free love”), has settled a federal complaint about pervasive antisemitism on campus. (You can read the formal agreement here.)
Reed College has agreed to a host of far-reaching institutional changes, including asserting that targeting Jewish Zionists will be considered discriminatory, in order to settle multiple US federal antisemitism investigations, parties to the complaint announced Wednesday.
The settlement was announced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which jointly filed the complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at any institution receiving federal funds. It comes as campuses across the country, facing threats of losing federal funding under the Trump administration, have demonstrated willingness to negotiate new antisemitism protections.
As part of the agreement, the private Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school says it will insert language into its discrimination policy asserting that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is integral to their religious, ancestral and/or ethnic Jewish identity,” and that “targeting Jews on the basis of their Zionist identity” will be considered discriminatory.
The school will also contract a third-party consultant to monitor and report on its effectiveness in adhering to antisemitism protections, role that is unusual in similar Title VI agreements. The agreement says Reed will “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel, and implement antisemitism training for faculty and staff.
. . . The resolution stems from two anonymous Title VI antisemitism complaints from Jewish former Reed students, both filed in 2024 under the Biden administration. One of those cases related to a student whose dorm-room mezuzah was vandalized, and who herself was later pelted with rocks, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in spring 2024. The student later left the school out of concern for her safety.
The Free Press has a little more information:
On November 9, 2023, protesters on the Reed campus marched behind a banner that said “INTIFADA EVERYWHERE” and chanted an anti-Israel slogan. The protest was led by Reed’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and occurred on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Jews by the Nazi regime. The SJP chapter claimed that it did not schedule the protest to coincide with the anniversary, according to The Reed College Quest, Reed’s student newspaper. Four students were arrested after the protest spread to downtown Portland.
Reed president Audrey Bilger and other senior administrators had vowed that the college would “not tolerate” antisemitism or anti-Muslim sentiment and would stay in close contact with law enforcement about potential threats. But the complaints accused Reed of failing to intervene after being notified about antisemitic incidents. The failure allegedly allowed the harassment to worsen.
For example, the Jewish student who was struck in the head in May 2024 said she was also the target of an attempted break-in at her dorm room less than 48 hours earlier. The incidents were part of a monthslong campaign of harassment tied to her Jewish identity, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in September 2024. The day after the rock-throwing attack, Reed emailed the campus, thanking the pro-Palestinian student group for the “peaceful nature” of its protests that week, according to the complaint. The second complaint was filed in May 2024 by a graduate student who was pursuing a master of arts degree in liberal studies.
I don’t favor governmental threats to withhold grant money if schools don’t adhere to civil rights laws, but they can be punished if they fail to adhere. Given that Reed asserts that it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism, that’s a bit unbelievable given that they thanked the SJP for a peaceful demonstration after a student was attacked (perhaps they didn’t know, but no group I know of here has been thanked for being peaceful—it’s expected. Violence is contrary to any school’s rules.
*Finally, in conservation news, Japan has released eight individuals of a species previously extinct in that country and endangered everywhere, the crested ibis (Nipponia nippon; extinct countrywide since 2003). First, Wikipedia says this:
In the 1980s, the birds were decimated by overhunting, the use of pesticides, ongoing habitat loss, their already small population size, their limited range, winter starvation and persecution, which together brought the endangered species to the brink of extinction. The crested ibis has been listed in Appendix I of the conservation treaty CITES.
Here’s a photo:
From the Associated Press:
Eight crested ibises were released into the wild in a north-central Japanese town, decades after the birds went extinct in the country.
The endangered birds took off from each of their wooden cages at a ceremony Sunday in Hakui city in the Noto region, where they were last seen in the wild.
Residents cheered when the birds soared into the sky the moment Crown Prince Akishino, his wife Kiko and other officials cut a ribbon around the cages.
The eight birds have been raised at a conservation center on Sado Island in the neighboring prefecture of Niigata following a successful captive-breeding program. Ten more birds are waiting to be released.
The white birds, called Toki in Japan, are native to East Asia and admired for their orange-pink hues under their wings and bright red marks around their eyes.
The birds went extinct on the Honshu main island in the 1970s, threatened by overhunting and environmental degradation. The last remaining Japanese native ibis died in 2003 on Sado Island.
But the birds came back to life thanks to China’s support for breeding. In 1999, artificial breeding by a pair donated from China successfully led to the first Japanese crested ibis chick born in captivity, according to the Environment Ministry.
The breeding and conservation efforts have since helped the recovery of the birds’ population. In 2008, 10 of the birds raised at the Sado conservation center were released into the wild on the island, where their population has increased to around 500, the ministry says.
Here’s a video of the release; this being Japan, it was ceremonial in nature. I’m glad they celebrated what they were doing, though perhaps it would have been better to release them more gently, and in a more wild area.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej clarifies matters for Hili.
Hili: I read that God is mathematics.
Andrzej: It’s an elegant expression, but it doesn’t tell us anything.
In Polish:
Hili: Czytałam, że Bóg jest matematyką.
Ja: Zgrabne powiedzenie, z którego nic nie wynika.
*******************
From TherionArms:
From Kitty Litterposting; this is a real woman named Sara Jane Ibister, and, indeed, a petty criminal, but I don’t find the “crimes” below described in the Irish Sun article describing the “mugshot beauty”.
From Terrible Maps:
From Masih, making common cause for both Right and Left. English translation of tweet:
This is my response to Trump’s extremist fans.
Unfortunately, both Trump is a red line for some Iranians abroad, where he can never be criticized, and Mamdani, the mayor of New York!
The moment I make the slightest criticism—whether of Trump or Mamdani—I come under attack from extremist Iranians close to two completely opposing camps.
We are here to fight for the people of Iran, to negotiate and demand accountability, not to become cheerleaders and fans of right-wing and left-wing currents, especially in their most extreme forms.
این پاسخ من به طرفداران افراطی ترامپ
متاسفانه هم ترامپ خط قرمز برای برخی از ایرانیان خارج کشور محسوب میشود و هرگز نمیشود به او نقد کرد و هم ممدانی شهردار نیویورک!
به محض آنکه کوچکترین نقدی چه به ترامپ و چه به ممدانی میکنم از سوی ایرانیان افراطی نزدیک به دو طیف کاملا متضاد مورد… pic.twitter.com/nlsEPJwwOp— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 23, 2026
From Luana; a longish list of tweets giving examples of professors fired for having conservative views:
I was recently challenged to produce examples of profs who faced significant punishment for having views (or were perceived to have views) critics associated with conservatism. The implication was that these examples don’t exist.
I’ll give you an incomplete list in a sec, but…
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) July 22, 2026
From Jesse Singal via Jeff Maurer. It’s not even close to what you think:
know there’s a lot going on but this is an important short videohttps://t.co/91UI7zCBlq
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 22, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a tool-using but polite elephant:
A female elephant in Thailand stole a rake to scratch herself
She skillfully grabbed the tool from a farmer, used it to scratch an itch, and then politely returned it to the worker.
The elephant’s name is Khamphong — she is a local star and often appears in videos because of… pic.twitter.com/DC8CInzBjb
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) July 22, 2026
Sound up for this one:
Close encounter with a snow leopard.
📽: Philippe Matteinipic.twitter.com/kto8tdlHWF
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) July 23, 2026
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial
This Czech Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 12 years old. https://t.co/hV3TbyrQGi
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 24, 2026
And two from Doctor Cobb. First, moggies!
New neighbors#Cat #Caturday
— Free Cats 😻 (@seelyfree.bsky.social) 2026-07-22T17:17:24.186Z
Predation in the deep sea:
They were looking at a hole on the Schmidt dive and it reminded me of this moment from years ago during a #OkeanosExplorer dive when a fish ambushed prey from a hole in the seafloor youtu.be/faeLyGD7A2M?…
I’ve just been reading this rather excellent essay by Helen Pluckrose, defending Enlightenment values and liberalism and explaining the difference between science and post-modernism.