Welcome to Thursday, July 30, 2026; August is right around the corner, and today is National Cheesecake Day. Here’s a photo of a slice proffered as dessert on my first trip to Antarctica in 2019. I miss those free cruises to one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but Hurtigruten no longer sees the need for outside lecturers.
This is of course only one of several desserts I had at this meal; the slice is quite thin:
It’s also International Day of Friendship, National Chili Dog Day, and World Snorkeling Day. Of course Wikipedia has an entry on the Chili Dog, and
There are several versions of this dog, with the first created about 1918. Here’s a chili dog with cheese (probably Cheez Whiz) and a side of fries taken that article. It’s good for you, even if Cheez Whiz is not legally cheese.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 30 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Breaking news ripped from the headlines: The U.S. struck back at Iran this morning in response for their breaking a “pause” in fighting by firing missiles at U.S. assets in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia joined us to a limited extent:
U.S. Central Command announced new strikes on Iran in response to Iranian forces targeting U.S. military assets in the Middle East, after a day in which fighting reignited across the region.
Central Command, which directs the U.S. military in the region, said early Thursday local time that it had completed a “heavy wave” of strikes on Iran, targeting military command centers, missile and drone facilities and coastal surveillance sites, among other targets.
“The strikes aimed to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighboring Gulf countries,” it said on social media.
On Wednesday, American and Saudi fighter jets had attacked Iran-allied militias in Iraq, Iran fired missiles at bases in Jordan used by U.S. forces and an American-owned tanker in an Egyptian port was set on fire in an apparent drone strike.
*Yesterday hostilities resumed between Iran and the U.S. (and Israel, though lately Israel has been immune to attack), with Iranian missiles fired at U.S. troops in the Middle East:
Iran’s surprise missile attack on U.S. forces in Jordan shows Tehran’s military leaders would rather risk ramping up the war than play defense or accept a peace deal that would expose them to greater domestic political pressures.
Iran fired ballistic missiles on U.S. troops early Wednesday local time, demonstrating a willingness by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which exerts more power than ever in Tehran, to escalate during a relative lull in the conflict and attempt to seize the initiative after weeks in which Iran has mostly reacted to U.S. and Israeli attacks.
President Trump was cited by Fox News as saying the U.S. would hit Iran hard in response to the attack. “They’re going to get a beating,” chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst early Wednesday quoted Trump as telling him. The White House didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
A senior Jordanian government official said five missiles were intercepted in Jordan’s eastern desert and caused no injuries or material damage. The official declined to comment on the specific targets of the missiles. U.S. troops are posted to a Jordanian base near the Syrian border and at a separate air base in the desert where an Iranian missile strike killed two American servicemembers earlier this month.
Trump keeps saying stuff like “they’re going to get a beating”, but he doesn’t ever seem to deal out any beatings. At any rate, if you want Amit Segal’s take on why Israel is suddenly immune to attack by Iran, read the second item at Amit Segal’s “It’s noon in Israel“. An excerpt:
For the past few weeks Iran has been hammering Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain for the apparent crime of aiding operations against the Islamic Republic. Israel was spared the chaos—seemingly because it kept its hands clean. Katz just revealed it hasn’t. Turns out Iran is simply too scared.
That is a complete inversion of the classic American role in the region. For decades the U.S. presence in the Gulf was the deterrent—the thing that made striking Riyadh or Abu Dhabi unwise. Now the American presence draws fire onto its allies, while Israel’s presence shields the Americans.
It is also a repudiation of Washington’s classic approach to the region. For years the instinct was to restrain Israel—to reassure the hostile regimes that they were firmly on the leash. Brandishing Israel as a threat was thought to antagonize the very governments America wanted to court, and to alienate everyone else. Turns out the opposite is true: a bad cop frothing at the mouth gives the good cop room to work. Israel wants to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure; Washington won’t allow it. Iran takes the good cop’s strikes without responding directly—because it knows who waits behind him, eager to join.
Few things could better advertise stronger U.S. cooperation with Israel than Iran’s hesitancy. During the war Israel invited the United States to relocate some of its regional bases onto Israeli soil. Israel offers the region’s best air defense and a military that can help the U.S. repel threats rather than watch them from the runway. Washington has been pulling squadrons and tankers out of the exposed Gulf bases and into Ben Gurion and Ramon, and is reportedly weighing whether to move its Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi operations into the Negev outright.
*Yesterday’s NYT morning newsletter by Sam Stifton, which came in email, says this:
The fires threatening central Spain and southwestern France over the past two weeks may be small by American standards. In Europe, though, they are tremendous. Some are the largest in their countries’ modern histories, raging in places not accustomed to fires of this scale: on the outskirts of Madrid, for instance, or near the ancient vineyards of Bordeaux.
Firefighters have been struggling to contain the fires before another heat wave descends on the region today, with temperatures soaring to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Last month was the hottest June on record in Western Europe, and climate experts say the continent can expect even higher temperatures in the future. The heat dries vegetation, making it more susceptible to fire. (It also exhausts firefighters.)
And more destruction may lie ahead. Last year had a record-breaking fire season across Europe, my colleagues report, with more than 2.5 million acres burned, about 60 percent of them in August. The fires of the last two weeks have put 2026 ahead of last year at the same time.
These charts tell the terrible story:
Source: European Forest Fire Information System, as of July 28, 2026. The New York Times “A wake-up call”
The fires have been particularly hard on Madrid, which in recent years has become a booming European capital. Residents can’t recall a time when such a large fire advanced so close to the city, reports Jason Horowitz, our bureau chief there:
In a country led by a government that has defined itself by the seriousness with which it takes climate change, the flames have come unsettlingly close to the capital. The fires around Madrid have brought to tears the region’s president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Experts say they are a harbinger for the damage to come on the world’s fastest warming continent.
“These are difficult hours,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Monday afternoon during a news conference in Castellón, on Spain’s eastern coast, where a new fire raged and forced thousands of new evacuations.
“This is a wake-up call,” one Madrileño told Jason. Another said that even before the fires, weeks of record-breaking heat had exhausted her. “It just keeps spreading,” she said, looking at a sunset ruined by smoke. “Just don’t let it reach here.”
It’s hard to imagine smoke surrounding Madrid and devastating Bordeaux, but so it is. I’m starting to think that anthropogenic climate change is what’s causing this (I of course accept the data, but can’t pin specific weather incidents on it.)
*Bret Stephens is not a total rah-rah fan of Israel, as seen in his NYT column yesterday, “A blunt warning for Israel” (archived here):
Because Israel is routinely the victim of double standards — Will Zohran Mamdani ever make a personal cause of denouncing his native Uganda for criminalizing homosexuality? Or tell a human-rights malefactor like Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he, too, isn’t welcome in New York? — it’s tempting for the Jewish state’s stalwart defenders, including me, to downplay its failings.
That goes especially when we see the country having to defend its legitimacy against scoundrels. Or when allegations made against it later prove sloppily reported or entirely unfounded. Or when the chorus of condemnation is loud enough already without lending our voices to it.
But anyone who cares about Israel’s well-being shouldn’t be silent about anti-Palestinian settler terrorism in the West Bank and the nothing-much-to-see-here policy of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. That’s not only because the terrorism is a menace to Palestinian lives and property, or an affront to Jewish ethics, or a stain on Israel’s reputation — though it’s all those things. It’s also a direct threat to Israel’s security and statehood, and thus to Zionism itself.
That’s the point of a public letter to President Trump, issued Sunday by Matan Vilnai, a retired deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, on behalf of an organization that includes hundreds of retired senior Israeli officers.
“Whereas our security agencies excel in dealing with Hamas and other West Bank Palestinian terror groups, they are severely constrained when it comes to Jewish terrorists,” the letter notes. “It is no secret that certain members of our current government orchestrate much of this chaos, including by shielding their followers — who are armed and driven by messianic impulses — from the law and its enforcement.”
“Unless arrested swiftly and decisively,” the letter bluntly warns, “escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and U.S. regional interests.”
That reality was again brought home last week, when extremist settlers went on a rampage in several Palestinian villages, reportedly setting fire to a home and two mosques, attacking a stonecutting factory and committing other acts of outright terrorism. That followed an incident in which four Palestinians and two Israelis were killed after a confrontation involving a group of Israelis who, without prior coordination, had trespassed into an area under Palestinian civil control.
This sort of episode has become routine. As The Times of Israel reports, “the I.D.F. recorded 867 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence in 2025.” That’s up from 682 the previous year.
Netanyahu’s answer to all this, as he told CNN’s Dana Bash, is that the violence is the work of about 150 “juvenile delinquents” and that he doesn’t accept “vigilantism.” But it’s preposterous to think that a government that can assassinate a Hamas leader in a Tehran guesthouse finds itself unable to contain a wave of Jewish thuggery. If the prime minister wanted to end the problem, he could. Like Bartleby, he would prefer not to.
. . . I’ve written before that the purpose of Zionism — for which I’m a lifelong advocate — is Jewish self-rule: “Neither rule by others nor rule over others.” It’s why I still believe in a Palestinian state, even if the conditions for it are probably far off. It’s why I more fervently believe in a Jewish state, governed by law and recognizing limits. Under this Israeli government, that’s slipping away.
As I said, I haven’t paid much attention to the West Bank, and didn’t even know of this letter. But, having read it, and knowing its source (Stephens writes, “Vilnai is no peacenik: He served in a previous Netanyahu government as the minister of home front defense and was one of the commandos who, 50 years ago this month, liberated Jewish hostages in the Entebbe raid), the situation sounds dire, and yet another reason to call for Netanyahu’s removal through the political process.
*Anthony Fauci—”director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 and Chief Medical Advisor to the President from 2021 to 2022″.—took the Fifth before Congress many times yesterday. His behavior has not been absolutely impeccable with respect to the origin of the Covid virus, but now he’s worried about being incriminated. As a NYT op-ed noted:
Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden took the remarkable step of providing Dr. Fauci with a blanket pardon covering all of his activities from 2014 to early 2025. This pardon would not protect against new accusations of perjury if Dr. Fauci were found to have lied during sworn testimony after Mr. Biden left office in 2025. On the advice of his lawyers, the 85-year-old Dr. Fauci made the extraordinary choice during Wednesday’s hearing to plead the Fifth Amendment. As Republican senators peppered him with often hostile questions, he repeated over and over again that he respectfully declined to answer.
By doing so, Dr. Fauci became the speechless cipher to whom committee Republicans and Democrats argued their irreconcilable stories — about the pandemic, but also more broadly about science and public health in America. The effect was a useless drama that offered zero insights to a public desperate for them.
This is from the WSJ:
“Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said.
He subsequently declined to answer questions from Paul — who began the hearing by asking Fauci about the pandemic response and whether there was a folder in front of him on the table — and other lawmakers, invoking the Fifth dozens of times.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) peppered Fauci with basic questions, such as the day of the week and what color tie he was wearing. Fauci declined to answer those questions, too.
“This isn’t about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people,” Hawley said, repeatedly referring to Fauci as “Doc.”
The committee’s Republicans are planning to hold a vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, a Senate aide told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Democrats, meanwhile, praised Fauci as a hero and thanked him for his work fighting infectious diseases.
. . .Ahead of the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal records, including a diary that contained his unvarnished thoughts on President Donald Trump and other officials, saying that Fauci’s private comments conflicted with his public statements and testimony.
The 85-year-old Fauci, who last faced the Senate in September 2022 and retired from government later that year, has persistently denied Paul’s allegations and on Wednesday said that Paul’s decision to release his personal diary was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me” before the hearing. He also said that he has already spent days “answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing,” referring to past appearances before Congress.
The full three hours of the hearing are here; and Fauci was treated abysmally. I was an absolute defender of Fauci until I found that he pressured scientists to not implicate the Wuhan Institute of Virology in a “lab leak” scandal, and pressuring someone that way is unconscionable, but he’s been pardoned for any laws he broke. About the origins of Covid, well, I go back and forth, moving from thinking the lab-leak theory has merit to the view that it has no merit. Most of my colleagues, though, seem to have made up their minds. The kind of roughhousing Facui got is not limited to Republican questioners, though, for we have a fractious and politically sundered country. Here’s a shorter excerpt:
In the end, I’d be very surprised if anything happened to him as a result of this confrontation.
*Remember Punch the monkey with his plushie? Well, the Japanese macaque just turned one and is getting plenty of birthday wishes:
Punch, the orphaned monkey at a Japanese zoo that stole many people’s hearts by clinging to an orangutan plushie, is marking his first birthday with a flood of well-wishing messages from his fans around the world — even though he now has friends and is no longer holding on to the toy.
Punch was abandoned by his mother after his birth a year ago Sunday, presumably because of exhaustion. Zookeepers nursed him and gave him the toy to develop his gripping ability, something newborn macaques need to survive.
Punch is no longer a plump baby with the plushie and he’s hard to distinguish from other monkeys as he mingles and plays with them at an enclosure at the Ichikawa City Zoological and Botanical Garden.
ADHe still attracts big crowds, and has received some 2,500 birthday cards from inside and outside Japan, said Takashi Yasunaga, head of the zoo. Many of the cards and other messages fill the walls at an indoor Punch birthday exhibit where visitors can also view video chronicling Punch from his earliest days.
Here’s a video of Punch young and older. He even has a boo!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej joins the No Kings movement:
Hili: How many monarchies are there around the world?
Andrzej: No idea, but I haven’t seen any enlightened monarchies.
In Polish:
Hili: Ile jest na świecie monarchii?
Ja: Nie mam pojęcia, ale oświeconych monarchii nie zauważyłem.
*******************
From Kitty Litterposting:
From Stacy:
Another from Stacy:
From Masih; they’re going to execute the young man who didn’t understand that they were sentencing him to death:
He will be executed tomorrow he will be hanged. He’s just a child. Please help me to get the leaders to call the Islamic Republic to stop the execution.
My heart broke when I just watched the forced confession of this young boy on Iran’s state TV.
They tell him: “You are… pic.twitter.com/NQxUrhdi23— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 28, 2026
From Luana; more oppression of women by the tenets of extremist Islam:
The treatment of women and girls in Muslim communities is the single biggest human rights issue on the planet. Any woman who supports this misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, pedophilic death cult has absolutely no right to call herself a feminist, or even a decent human being.… pic.twitter.com/7n1UGK8vz7
— Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ (@sappholives83) July 28, 2026
The Number Ten Cat says he likes to eat mice, but Larry has caught almost nine in his 15 years at Downing Street:
I love mice. On toast. https://t.co/NH56SL72Yn
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 29, 2026
Two from my feed. First, feline love:
The female cheetah calls the male cheetah to come to her side, and the result… pic.twitter.com/w1HRfHHBSQ
— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) July 28, 2026
And another cheetah:
Fun fact: cheetahs are probably friendlier than your average house cat. pic.twitter.com/pF2zSRtcuE
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 29, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about 11 years old. https://t.co/uu5M81lwN9
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 30, 2026
And two from Doctor Cobb. First, the coiner of two neologisms:
Matthew’s comment on this baby prehensile-tailed porcupine was “Awww!”:
Announcing the birth of this spike-tacular porcupette 🦔
— San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (@sandiegozoo.bsky.social) 2026-07-28T16:50:20.738Z
If you go in front of Congress and take the Fifth over 100 times, expect to be treated roughly. My lawyer’s opinion, reinforced by some articles I’ve read, is that since Fauci had a blanket pardon, he had no grounds for pleading the Fifth, since nothing he had done would be considered liable to prosecution. It appears that Fauci was protecting his reputation. As we know from his diary, he rates that very high and has been quite interested in how he is perceived. It appears now, as was suspected then, that he lied about everything: mortality, masking, distancing, the lab-leak, isolation, and ties to the Wuhan lab. The man has things to answer for, since the nightmare of Covid seems to be largely of his making. That’s not to mention the million he made from his memoirs and prizes.
“It appears now, as was suspected then, that he lied about everything: mortality, masking, distancing, the lab-leak, isolation, and ties to the Wuhan lab. The man has things to answer for, since the nightmare of Covid seems to be largely of his making.”
What an absurd statement.
A pandemic that involved a novel pathogen that mutated quickly, which infected 3/4 of a billion people world-wide and killed 7 million people is primarily due to Fauci ?!?
And these things you so confidently accuse him of “lying about” are not grounded in science. Proper masks when used properly are demonstrably quite effective. Unfortunately for the US, one side of the political aisle made it their sworn duty to use proper masks improperly with the consequence that the US had the 14th highest mortality rate among all nations, and the highest among large Westernized industrialized states with advanced health care technology. All thanks to conspiracists like Rand Paul.
Distancing and isolation are SOP during epidemics. Again, compromised by idiots who refused to do their due diligence because of politics. I’ll remind you that in the early days of the pandemic, multiple outbreaks were traced to mass gatherings of improperly masked groups.
And the fact that you perseverate conspiracy theories about the Wuhan lab only highlights the sources you misjudge as reliable. Actual virologists with experience with these pathogens and vectors have been pointing out for years that the pathogenic covid strains themselves prove the lab leak hypothesis is not consistent with the facts and that the wet market hypothesis is completely consistent.
About the only thing that is a fair criticism of Fauci, imho, is that at the start of the crisis, when we needed proper N95 masks for hospital personnel as there was a legitimate shortage, he recommended homemade masks to the public until mask production caught up to demand. But, what else was he to do?
Right on Roger. I had not the energy to address these tired old saws this morning; thank you for doing so. In the style of Dr Fauci, I just have grown wearyofall of this and I took the fifth. People also seem to be confusing what they call ego and arrogance with the thick skin and confidence required of public servants so often under public attack by those of private ideological and/or financial interests.
Conspiracy theory or open question or hiding the truth?
WHO 2025 report” “While a zoonotic origin with spillover from animals to humans is currently considered the best supported hypothesis by the available scientific data, until requests for further information are met or more scientific data becomes available, the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how it entered the human population will remain inconclusive,” https://www.npr.org/2026/07/29/g-s1-136142/rand-paul-anthony-fauci-lab-leak-spillover-pandemic-origin
CIA supported a lab leak hypothesis: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/may/13/cia-suppressed-conclusion-covid-came-chinese-lab-whistleblower/?srsltid=AfmBOornJ9RHa1lmy6Gmu2Xixh2-WBujKVIDdEgUgpCfLeJrkYQ1DGxJ
DARPA: “SARS-CoV-2 is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, or its precursor virus. It was created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as suggested by the reporting
surrounding the lab leak hypothesis.” https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Fauci-Intel-Release-2026.06.11.pdf
1/26/2020: Fauci diary states that “Now we know that the market was not the source, it was the amplifier”. Also in his diary entry 2/1/2020, only 2 of 10 scientists thought it was natural, the rest thought that “deliberate insertion was possible”.
I lost my faith in “the science” when the same people telling us that we couldn’t go to the beach said that it was OK to have big demonstrations in the street to combat racism. Note that this letter was signed by virology researchers and infectious disease doctors.
This shouldn’t be a my side vs. your side argument. Everything I read til recently pointed my belief toward the market, and I’ve argued that point with others, sometimes forcefully. Now I tend to believe that it was from the lab and that it was covered up. Why? To cover up a mistake and save face would be my best guess. I’m not sure if Fauci’s actions were Straussian or selfish, but I can’t figure out a Straussian angle.
My biggest disappointment is that if it was a lab leak, then science would say to examine the cause and make sure it can’t happen again, and to do it quickly. By stifling all discussion around this I fear that we lost the opportunity to eliminate future risk.
Occam’s Razor points to a lab leak. Otherwise it would be quite a remarkable coincidence for a modified bat virus to infect humans so near the one lab in the world that was modifying a bat virus to infect humans. But remarkable coincidences do sometimes occur, albeit rarely.
Not when you realize that Wuhan was located where it was precisely because of it’s proximity to the source of dangerous viruses which all had natural origins. This is about bats and caves and natural vectors, not some B movie plot.
No, Occam’s Razor points to zoonotic origin. Did you miss everything about the wet market, viral DNA being found at the very stalls (which had than been cleaned out) where likely vectors (raccoon dogs etc) had been sold. That’s where the cases were centered, NOT the lab some (IIRC) 7km distant.
Roger, China has more caves than any other country in the world due to its massive karst region which begins hundreds of miles southwest of Wuhan. (I’ve travelled all over China and explored some of the caves in the southern karst region and they are magnificent.) In other words, Wuhan is nowhere near the cave region.
True story: I was vacationing in the Philippines a couple years ago and my wife and I befriended a couple from China who were also vacationing there (Coron Island). The topic of Covid came up and I asked them if they thought it came from nature or from a lab leak. The husband laughed and said “everyone in China knows it was a lab leak!” Now that doesn’t make it true, but most evidence does point in that direction. And I would not trust the Chinese authoritarian government when it comes to reports of viral DNA in cages.
Right. Trump’s CIA comes up with exactly the conclusion Trump wanted (blame China) and you believe it. Because the CIA is known for its scientists??
Fauci’s diary entries are from very early days, and do not prove that the lab leak theory had any merit.
Look, there have been multiple links to discussions by the world’s best-informed virologists right here in the comments section of this website. I listened to them – did you? If you had, you wouldn’t be weaving conspiracy theories – the evidence is overwhelming that covid had natural origins, and had nothing to do with the specific research going on at Wuhan.
I agree that Fauci was treated abysmally yesterday, it was a pathetic spectacle. But my former high regard for him has waned considerably. The now obvious degree to which US authorities, led by Fauci and the White House (& aided by social media companies), to squelch any debate or questioning of covid origins or policies was not only appalling, it was slanderous towards otherwise respectable scientists and policymakers. The fact that it contributed to the ongoing split in the country makes it that much worse. I say all this as someone who was all in on getting my covid shots and following all the rules. And then I started seeing the vilification and silencing of respectable people (including friends) for daring to even question the wet market theory, or for criticizing the shutdown of schools. One friend, a global medical policy expert, started looking into some research a colleague of hers in Scandinavia was doing on covid rates for teachers and students between school systems that shut down and those that didn’t, that showed that neither kids nor teachers were at greater risk if kids stayed in the classroom. My friend posted the study on Facebook, and it was removed within hours. This is just one of thousands of similar stories that have left me wondering how much propaganda from public authorities I’ve swallowed hook, line & sinker over years. Two good writers that are covering this topic are Sharyl Attkisson (https://sharylattkisson.substack.com/ ) and Alex Berenson (https://alexberenson.substack.com/ ). I’d highly recommend both of them.
I largely agree. Fauci was basically on the right side, in supporting vaccines, but he very much “curated” the message and told people what he thought it was good for them to hear. He unreasonably downplayed the uncertainties, and he unreasonably disparaged people making good-faith arguments for different policies. He also contributed to the rampant social-media censorship of that era. As a result he has increased scepticism of science and scepticism of vaccines.
Wouldn’t full candour and openness be a fair exchange for the presidential pardon?
The pardon is no longer in effect for anything he says now, so he is clamming up.
I read that he’s following the advice of his lawyer.
Beyond the lab leak vs zoonotic origin, let’s not forget the shutting down of schools, masking of children (including two year olds!), etc, well into 2022! All of these were highly visible, consequential, and politically motivated failures.
The enduring lesson to me from the pandemic was that Fauci and a substantial fraction of public health types are closer to being politicians than to being scientists.
Do you mean that Larry has caught almost NONE (mice), rather than almost nine?
I didn’t know he caught (almost) nine. That’s nearly one every two years–for the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.
Well, hey! What do you expect? Does anyone think that just any mouse is suitable for the Chief Mouser of That Sceptered Isle? I bet a lot of work was involved in selecting the precise mice suitable for gracing His Catjesty’s palate.
And like all good hunters, he never takes more than he needs.
Related to wildfires: Hungary is preparing to completely shut down its nuclear power plant, that gives about half the electricity production of the country, because the Danube is so low that the cooling water pumps cannot take out enough water from it.
During the planning of the plant they studied historical water levels, and planned the pump system to work even with water levels somewhat lower than the lowest ever measured before. Except they literally could not imagine a water level as low as it is expected for the upcoming days (weeks?).
The country is not only already well into a severe drought, but apparently there was not much rainfall in the Alps (the source of most of the water in the Danube) either. And another heat dome is about to move above us right now.
We do not have big forest fires (yet?), but we have much less forest than France to begin with.
That’s terrible. I read that Ukraine, looking for a safe from Russia way to transport this year’s grain crop, cannot use the Danube because the water levels are too low. ☹️
For those adept at gene editing, how about giving a domestic cat the same fur pattern as a cheetah? I’d love to see that!
Bret Stephens is right. The crimes committed by West Bank settlers are acts of intimidation that aim to force Palestinians to leave the disputed territory and to create the conditions for eventual annexation. Their actions give legitimacy to some of the charges of “settler colonialism” and “apartheid” that are meted out against Israel (although the charges apply only to the disputed territory, which is not part of Israel itself).
I don’t expect the Netanyahu government—which depends on the support of several far-right Knesset members—to do much more than charge the most egregious actors. But the surge of settler violence is enough to demand new leadership that is not beholden to the far right. We’ll see what the upcoming elections will bring, who will become Prime Minister, and what kinds of alliances will emerge in the next government. Something needs to be done.
I urge caution buying into the entire issue of settler violence. Another essay looking at the data was published just yesterday and is worth a review:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-209062731
Thank you for sharing that interesting article on the scale and scope of the problem. Given the rarity of incidents, it may not even be practical to push the numbers lower. Unfortunately, even small numbers are magnified in the public mind to great effect.
I’d have more respect for Hawley and Rand Paul if they abandoned the revenge campaign against an 85 year old fool and concentrated instead on the regulation of gain-of-function research that we export to countries like China.
Rand Paul has been consistently fighting against GOF research exported to other countries for the past few years. I don’t know how successful he’s been, but that has been one of his main causes.
I don’t think Hawley has though. He’s seems like he’s opportunistically jumping on the bandwagon.
Regarding the COVID-19 epidemic, I would like to see a Space Shuttle Challenger-style independent commission set up to examine the entire epidemic from start to finish, including mistakes made, lives saved and lost, good moves and bad. I’m not at all happy about the nature of the Fauci interrogation, which seems to be portraying him as the symbolic face of the epidemic. It seems entirely unfair to me for the Senate committee to go after individuals piecemeal in the aftermath of one of the biggest global upheavals since the pandemic of 1918. That venue may be a good way to humiliate someone in public, but I don’t think it’s a good way to investigate the pandemic or to help us prepare for the next one.
There were plenty of issues with the challenger investigation, but, in the end, due to a couple of members, it worked out and identified root causes, though the lessons learned document seems to have been lost in the organization within about fifteen years, though. The political end nearly hamstrung the investigation in the first place.
More recently, the World trade Center investigation was significantly better, but, despite crystal clear findings, evidence backed eight ways from Sunday, people still go tin foil hat about it.
On this one, the tin foil hats are on several sides, and the several ‘investigations’ we have already seen were loaded with them, as well as the reality be damned political aspects of the current hearings. (sorry for the scare quotes, but if the result of the ‘investigation’ is predetermined, they kinda become necessary)
Fauci is pleading the fifth, probably, since he has testified before. Paul, and several others, are fishing for an inconsistency to use for an indictment. Say nothing, no inconsistency.
In the end, remember that masks didn’t work for the same the same reason that condoms don’t work…
Yes!
Re “settler violence” here’s another article that suggests the problem is not nearly as bad as it seems :
https://honestreporting.com/how-disproportionate-coverage-shapes-the-settler-narrative-in-the-west-bank/
It also mentions Pal. attacks on Jews (never Israeli Arabs) but of course the MSM never talks about that because it doesn’t fit the narrative of Israelis as the eternally black hat wearing Dick Dastardlys and the Pals. as the eternally white hat wearing Tom Truehearts.
The problem of settler violence may be relatively minor but the bad publicity is major.
True ergo my point about how one sided is the MSM’s portrayal of this issue. In fact, it’s much worse – with malice and aforethought do they smear Israel. Here’s some more reading (I found this essay via WEIT) by Matti Friedman from 12 years ago and nothing has changed.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guide
Of course the heat waves in Europe are being blamed on global warming, however I recall how some global warming models had predicted a deep freeze for Europe due to the collapse of the Gulf Stream and its moderating influence. There was even a big-budget Hollywood disaster movie based on that premise.
I travelled with Hurtigruten up the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle. It was fun, but there were a lot of stops as it was also a cargo ship.
Send your résumé round all the cruise lines. There are 4 astronomers and an award winning photographer on my upcoming trip. There’s also a ukulele teacher and bridge teacher, but I’m going to give them a pass 😁