Category: Hili Dialogue

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 30, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last day of June: Monday, June 30, 2025, which is my sister’s birthday (happy birthday, Sis!) and my half-birthday, since I was born on December 30. Here’s Mom, Susan, and I in our passport picture taken before we moved to Greece (kids had to be pictured with a parent). This would be about 1954 or 1955.  I just noticed how big my ears were in proportion to my head. I think I’ve grown into them now.

It’s also International Asteroid Day, National Meteor Day, and National Organization for Women Day NOW was founded on this day in 1966 by a group of women, and Wikipedia lists them:

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1966 by 28 women at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in June (the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women), and another 21 women and men who became founders at the October 1966 NOW Organizing Conference, for a total of 49 founders.  Both conferences were held in Washington, D.C.[18] The 28 women who became founders in June were: Ada Allness, Mary Evelyn Benbow, Gene Boyer, Shirley Chisholm, Analoyce Clapp, Kathryn F. Clarenbach, Catherine Conroy, Caroline Davis, Mary Eastwood, Edith Finlayson, Betty Friedan, Dorothy Haener, Anna Roosevelt Halstead, Lorene Harrington, Aileen Hernandez, Mary Lou Hill, Esther Johnson, Nancy Knaak, Min Matheson, Helen Moreland, Pauli Murray, Ruth Murray, Inka O’Hanrahan, Pauline A. Parish, Eve Purvis, Edna Schwartz, Mary-Jane Ryan Snyder, Gretchen Squires, Betty Talkington and Caroline Ware.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Stymied by their inability to stop Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget Bill, Senate Democrate did the only thing they could to stall its progress: demand that the 940-page bill be read out aloud in the Senate chamber.

. . .Unable to stop the march toward passage of the 940-page bill, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress is using the tools at its disposal to delay and drag out the process.

Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took some 16 hours. Then senators took over the debate, filling the chamber with speeches, while Republicans largely stood aside.

. . . Using a congressional process called budget reconciliation, the Republicans can rely on a simple majority vote in the Senate, rather than the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome objections.

Without the filibuster, Democrats have latched on to other tools to mount their objections.

One is the full reading of the bill text, which has been done in past situations. Democrats also intended to use their full 10 hours of available debate time, which was underway.

And then Democrats are prepared to propose dozens of amendments to the package, a process called vote-a-rama. But Republicans late Sunday postponed that expected overnight session to early Monday.

“Reckless and irresponsible,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. “A gift to the billionaire class,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Debate has been underway in the Senate late into [Friday] night, with Republicans wrestling President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts over mounting Democratic opposition — and even some brake-pumping over the budget slashing by the president himself.

The outcome from the weekend of work in the Senate remains uncertain and highly volatile, and overnight voting has been pushed off until Monday. GOP leaders are rushing to meet Trump’s Fourth of July deadline to pass the package, but they barely secured enough support to muscle it past a procedural Saturday night hurdle in a tense scene. A handful of Republican holdouts revolted, and it took phone calls from Trump and a visit from Vice President JD Vance to keep it on track.

. . . All told, the Senate bill includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.

The Senate package would roll back billions in green energy tax credits that Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide, and impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements and making sign-up eligibility more stringent.

The Republicans spent all night with the vote-a-rama tactic, but according to the NYT, debate is still going on. Trump has given Congress until July 4 to pass the bill . . and then what?  And a GOP Senator, pressured by Trump, said he wasn’t going to run for re-election:

In a stark display of the political peril for Republicans around the bill, Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, suddenly announced Sunday that he would not run for re-election next year after voting against bringing the bill to the floor. His opposition had drawn a harsh rebuke from Mr. Trump, who threatened to recruit a primary opponent to challenge him.

Later, in a scathing speech on the Senate floor, Mr. Tillis assailed the bill and Mr. Trump, saying the measure was a betrayal of the president’s promise to protect Medicaid and warning that his party was “about to make a mistake.”

Trump’s bullying has come to threatening to “primary” one of his own party’s Senator if that Senator doesn’t vote the Trump Way.  That’s a good way to impose your will on the country, but a bad way to foster democracy.

*We have another Trump-induced capitulation, and this is a big one in academia. The President of the University of Virginia resigned after Trump asked him to step down over a Federal civil rights investigation. President James E. Ryan, accused of heading a university that was too deep into DEI, voluntarily resigned, though he says he was going to leave next year anyway. (Article is archived here.)

The Trump administration on Friday secured perhaps the most significant victory in its pressure campaign on higher education, forcing the resignation of the University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, over the college’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The extraordinary wielding of federal power to oust the 58-year-old college president showed the unusual lengths the administration would go to pursue President Trump’s political agenda and shift the ideological tilt of academia, which he views as hostile to conservatives.

Mr. Ryan’s resignation also presents new challenges for other colleges negotiating with the government, including Harvard, whose officials have been repeatedly attacked by Mr. Trump and his allies. While the administration has stripped billions of dollars from universities in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s policy goals, Mr. Ryan’s departure marks the first time a university has been coerced into removing its leader.

The reaction to Mr. Ryan’s resignation was immediate and emotional on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. Faculty leadership held an emergency meeting to adopt a resolution opposing the change, and hundreds of students and faculty members gathered for an impromptu march to Carr’s Hill, the college president’s residence.

The DEI angle:

The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that the Justice Department had demanded Mr. Ryan’s resignation as a condition to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices.

In a letter sent on Thursday to the head of the board overseeing the university, Mr. Ryan said that he had planned to step down at the end of the next academic year. But “given the circumstances and today’s conversations,” he wrote, he had decided “with deep sadness” to tender his resignation now, according to one of the people familiar with the matter who was briefed on the letter’s contents.

. . . The Justice Department had targeted the University of Virginia for at least the past month. But 10 days ago, government lawyers tasked with enforcing federal laws issued a stern warning to the board overseeing the University of Virginia that the school needed to act quickly. The department informed the college of multiple complaints of race-based treatment on campus, and of the government’s conclusion that the use of race in admissions and other student benefits were “widespread practices throughout every component and facet of the institution.”

“Time is running short, and the department’s patience is wearing thin,” the letter, dated June 17, said.

More despotism. The administrations files a complaint against a university, and then tells the school that if its President doesn’t resign, all hell will break loose (i.e., Trump will pull a Harvard on U. Va., stripping it of funding). No wonder Ryan didn’t want to fight any more!

*According to David French at the NYT, Trump has made his worst nomination yet for a federal judge: Emil Bove. French calls the nomination “reckless.” (Article is archived here.)

On Wednesday, when the eyes of the nation were still fixed on the Middle East, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.

Emil Bove, however, would be a problem for a very long time. At 44 years old, he’s been nominated for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. That means he’d long outlast Trump in the halls of American power, and if past performance is any measure of future results, we should prepare for a judge who would do what he deems necessary to accomplish his political objectives — law and morality be damned.

. . . At the start of his second term, Trump named Bove the acting deputy attorney general, and Bove immediately made himself an instrument of Trump’s vengeance. He ordered F.B.I. officials to compile lists of agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He fired Justice Department prosecutors who were hired to work on Jan. 6 cases without any evidence of wrongdoing.

He ordered prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop criminal charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, seemingly on the ground that prosecuting Adams could interfere with Trump’s immigration agenda, an action which triggered a revolt in the Southern District.

Danielle Sassoon, a former law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia who was then the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District, resigned, declaring that she did not see “any good faith basis” for Bove’s legal position. Another attorney with impeccable conservative credentials, Hagan Scotten, wrote perhaps the most scathing resignation letter I’ve ever read.

“No system of ordered liberty,” he wrote, “can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”

*On his website, lawyer Jonathan Turley beefs about the proliferation of “hate speech” prosecutions in Germany and the attendant legal crackdown on what Americans would consider free speech. The result is no apparent decrease in hate speech but chilling of political speech in general (h/t Bill).

This month, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) conducted a nationwide search for citizens accused of committing speech crimes.  The annual crackdown is part of Germany’s robust censorship and speech criminalization policies. As European Union censors seek to expand the reach of laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA), all Americans need see the existential threat to our most “Indispensable Right.”

We have discussed how Germany is extending its criminalization of speech to the Internet.  Germany imposed a legal regime that would allow fining social networks such as Facebook up to 500,000 euros ($522,000) for each day the platform leaves a “fake news” story up without deleting it. The country fined YouTube to force the company to remove views that the government considers disinformation on COVID-19.

Germany has also targeted Elon Musk with threatened prosecution if he does not reestablish censorship systems at X.

None of this, mind you, has put a dent in the ranks of actual fascists and haters. Neo-Nazis are holding massive rallies by adopting new symbols and coded words, while Germany arrested a man on a train because he had a Hitler ringtone on his phone.

Last year, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was upset that civil libertarians were calling her anti-free speech, so she tried to shut down a publication for a satirical meme.

That “new world order” is based on an aggressive anti-free speech platform that has been enforced for years by the European Union. It is vividly evident in the latest crackdown in Germany.

According to the BKA, there were 10,732 crimes related to online hate speech committed last year—a record number and four times the crimes from 2021. It is an example of the insatiable appetite created by censorship as people seek to silence their critics or those with opposing views.

Stefan Niehoff,  a 64-year-old former Bundeswehr sergeant was convicted for posting satirical images involving Nazi imagery. While the criminal case was eventually dropped, he was fined because the judge failed to find his actions sufficiently satirical.

Not sufficiently satirical!  And yes, it’s chilled the speech of Germans:

According to a poll of German citizens. Only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. 59% of Germans did not even feel free to express themselves in private among friends. And just 17% felt free to express themselves online.

When nearly one in five Germans is too cowed to express their opinions in public, and nearly 60% won’t even do it in private, we have a problem, Bonn.  But this suppression of hate speech is going on all over Europe (viz., the UK), not just Germany. It’s a worrying trend, as are the many punitive actions against Europeans for criticizing their government. These are democracies?

*Finally, from the AP’s reliable “oddities” page, we learn that a veterinary dentist (I didn’t know there were such people) saved the canine tooth of an Alaskan brown bear (aka grizzly) by making a giant titanium crown for it. This is after the dentist previously did a root canal on the tooth, but had to do more work after the tooth was re-injured.

An Alaska brown bear at the Lake Superior Zoo in northeastern Minnesota has a gleaming new silver-colored canine tooth in a first-of-its-kind procedure for a bear.

The 800-pound (360-kilogram) Tundra was put under sedation Monday and fitted with a new crown — the largest dental crown ever created, according to the zoo.

“He’s got a little glint in his smile now,” zoo marketing manager Caroline Routley said Wednesday.

The hour-long procedure was done by Dr. Grace Brown, a board-certified veterinary dentist who helped perform a root canal on the same tooth two years ago. When Tundra reinjured the tooth, the decision was made to give him a new, stronger crown. The titanium alloy crown, made by Creature Crowns of Post Falls, Idaho, was created for Tundra from a wax caste of the tooth.

Brown plans to publish a paper on the procedure in the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry later this year.

“This is the largest crown ever created in the world,” she said. “It has to be published.

Tundra is now 6 years old and, at his full height on his hind legs, stands about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall. The sheer size of the bear required a member of the zoo’s trained armed response team to be present in the room — a gun within arm’s reach — in case the animal awoke during the procedure, Routley said. But the procedure went without a hitch, and Tundra is now back in his habitat, behaving and eating normally.

Below is a video showing the shiny new tooth. Tundra has a grill!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is finally being helpful:

Andrzej: Do you know where my glasses are?
Hili: In the kitchen, next to the kettle.

In Polish:

Ja: Czy wiesz gdzie sa moje okulary.
Hili: W kuchni,  koło czajnika.

*******************

From CinEmma:

From David:

From Now That’s Wild:

Masih is quiet today, but here’s JKR responding to a critic in her inimitable way:

From Luana. If I ever get cancer, I’m going to have my chemotherapy early in the morning. We need to find out the reason for this disparity:

Andrzej posted this on his public Facebook page.  Here’s the English translation with my notes in brackets. Malgorzata’s “collapse” was a heart attack she had on the London Underground; fortunately, Andrzej carried her out and got her to the hospital, where they restarted her heart.  She survived until her death on June 13 of this year.

The day before Malgorzata’s death, we sat as usual (plus minus) every hour and smoked a cigarette. Yes, a cigarette, because since her heart attack in 1995, we’ve always smoked one cigarette per episode, (friends laughed that we treat them like “weed”). [JAC: as in Poland, they’d go outside and share a single cigarette.] After her collapse, I couldn’t stop and ran from the apartment to the emergency stairs in our London apartment. After half a year she started following me, sitting next to me and saying “let me be pulled” [JAC: i.e., “let me have a puff”] and it stayed like that. After my three strokes and throat cancer, the story kept repeating itself in the same way.
So, the Monday before Tuesday, we were sitting on our porch steps, smoking a cigarette and Malgorzata said, “do you see the first lily?” ” . At the end of the garden, by the gate to the garden the first lily actually bloomed. There are a few more now.
Having witnessed this many times and asking them why they still smoked, I learned that for both of them life would be considerably less enjoyable without their sharing of cigarettes, probably at least ten per day. So it goes.

From Malcolm: one minute of moggy cuddles:

From my feed: I’d like to know the trick as well:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was thirteen.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-30T12:15:41.303Z

Two form Dr. Cobb. First, he’s correcting the drafts of his Crick biography again.  The text is 485 pages long, the rest is other stuff (photos, index, and so on):

Tfw you finish going through 575 pages of proofs for the fifth time and you think “finally nailed it, picked up all the misteaks”. Just like you thought the previous four times.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T16:00:42.462Z

. . . . and a gorgeous flatworm:

A Turbellarian flatworm! Loving the colour that just had to be seen in darkfield. 🦑 #plankton

— Elizabeth Beston (@elizabethbeston.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T18:24:17.683Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 29, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, June 29, 2025, and National Waffle Iron Day.

It’s also National Almond Buttercrunch Day, National Camera Day, and Log Cabin Day..

When one thinks of log cabins, one thinks of Abe Lincoln, who actually wasn’t born in one, but there is a historic Lincoln-related site near Charleston, Illinois:

Abraham Lincoln never lived here and only occasionally visited, but he provided financial help to the household and, after [his father] Thomas died in 1851, Abraham owned and maintained the farm for his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln. The farmstead is operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

UPDATE: Reader Elsie sent me this correction, so I clearly didn’t dig deep enough:

Abraham Lincoln was apparently born in a log cabin.  Here is what Wikipedia says:
In the late fall of 1808, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln settled on Sinking Spring Farm. Two months later on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born there in a one-room log cabin. Today this site bears the address of 2995 Lincoln Farm Road, Hodgenville, Kentucky. A cabin, symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born, is preserved within a 1911 neoclassical memorial building at the site. On the site is a Visitor Center and the First Lincoln Memorial.

Sadly, even the Charleston cabin met a grim fate:

In 1893, the original Thomas Lincoln log cabin was disassembled and shipped northward to serve as an exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. The original cabin was lost after the Exposition, and may have been used as firewood. However, the cabin had been photographed many times, and an exact replica was built from the photographs and from contemporary descriptions.

In 1907, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage purchased the cabin for $25,000 ($740,000 in 2021) and intended to place it in a glass case to be preserved forever. [JAC: They don’t say where it is.]

The current Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site includes three houses on two sites:

  • A reconstruction of the Thomas Lincoln log cabin, completed in 1934 as a project of the Civilian Conservation Corps. It is surrounded by a subsistence farmstead similar to the senior Lincoln’s actual farm, is the central feature of the main site. The farm includes heirloom crops and cattle breeds similar or identical to those used at the time.

FIREWOOD!

Here’s the reconstruction:

Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 29 Wikipedia page. And remember, posting will be light this week as I prepare for my Arctic journey.

Da Nooz:

*Trump’s “Big Beautiful Budget Bill” was narrowly passed by the Senate,(archived here), but it still has to pass the House before it goes to Trump’s desk, and several House Republicans are waffling on their support.

The GOP-controlled Senate voted late Saturday to advance President Trump’s tax-and-spending megabill despite two Republican defections, narrowly clearing one procedural hurdle and offering a stark preview of the difficulties party leaders face in passing the sprawling measure.

The initial vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was 51-49, with most Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed, putting the Senate potentially on track to pass the bill by Monday after a day of debate and amendments. GOP Sens. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) broke with their party to vote against advancing the bill. The revised text of the 940-page Senate bill was released late Friday night and is likely to keep changing.

Trump wants the bill passed by the Senate and the House and on his desk by a self-imposed deadline of July 4.

Senators have been discussing the megabill for months, but the tense vote was the first real test of support. Republicans required more than three hours to wrangle all the votes to keep moving forward with the legislation, which carries the core of Trump’s agenda but also has provisions that irritate centrist and conservative GOP lawmakers.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), who has called for protecting clean-energy tax credits, negotiated on the Senate floor with Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) before voting yes. The final holdouts were Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who want deeper spending cuts.

Johnson, who had earlier voted against advancing the bill, switched his vote and joined the others in voting “yes” at about 11 p.m. ET.

He said afterward that GOP leaders and Trump will back Scott’s proposal to cut off new enrollment for the Medicaid expansion that was part of Obamacare, where the federal government pays 90% of the cost of health insurance for some adults. The idea has drawn opposition from GOP moderates, however, and may not pass.

If two Republican Senators had changed their minds, the bill would have died.  And note the strict bipartisan nature of the vote.  If five Republican House members change their minds, the bill is dead, but that seems unlikely, as I believe only two or three are waffling. The bill will pass.

*Speaking of the Big Beautiful Budget Bill, the NYT has an op-ed by Jacob S. Hacker and Patrick Sullivan laying out “Four of the worst parts.” (Archived here.)

To understand why the G.O.P. initiative is so upwardly skewed, it helps to think of it as combining the two most unpopular major bills since 1990 — both of which were pushed by Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans in 2017. Bill 1 (which passed) was the Trump tax cuts, which showered most of their largess on the superaffluent. Bill 2 (which failed) was Republicans’ Affordable Care Act “repeal and replace” drive, which would have slashed health care benefits received mostly by middle- and lower-income Americans.

The current bill is basically a mix tape of these 2017 tracks, with some bonus material thrown in, including the biggest retrenchment of SNAP, also known as food stamps, in its history, and big cuts to loans and Pell grants for nonaffluent college students. (In the Senate last week, the parliamentarian rejected the SNAP cuts.)

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When you combine those two epically unpopular bills you get an epically regressive result — the only such bill since at least the mid-1980s (when distributional analyses became available) that reduces disposable income among the bottom 20 percent by the same magnitude as it raises it among the top 20 percent (by on average 4 percent of after-tax income, according to our colleagues at the Budget Lab at Yale University).

You might think Americans know that the tax cuts in the Republican bill are targeted at the top. But that’s not what our survey found. Voters had heard a lot about Mr. Trump’s “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” ideas — provisions that Vice President JD Vance recently pointed to as proof of the party’s populist priorities.

But those tax cuts are a rounding error compared with the big-ticket tax cuts focused on the rich, about which voters have heard almost nothing.

In parallel with targeted tax cuts for the rich, Republicans, led by Mr. Trump, have promised to gut the Internal Revenue Service. If they succeed, the deficits caused by the bill, as well as its tilt to the affluent, would dramatically increase.

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that if I.R.S. staffing is halved, as the president is seeking, the amount of unpaid taxes could increase by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. If that number sounds familiar, it’s how much the Republican bill is already estimated to increase the national debt (not counting interest) over the same period.

Voters have heard about the regressive spending cuts in the bill — particularly those to Medicaid. But Republicans have cloaked those cuts in so much duplicitous rhetoric about “deserving” beneficiaries that what they’re actually doing remains murky.

What they are not doing is encouraging people to work to get benefits. Congress’s own budget scorekeeper says the Medicaid provisions of the bill will have no effect on employment. Based on past experience with the types of work rules in the bill, two of three Americans denied Medicaid because of these new administrative burdens will, in fact, be working or would have a qualified exemption, such as having a disability.

Meanwhile, the bill will reduce the number of Americans with health insurance by 11 million — and 16 million if you take into account the fact that Republicans refuse to extend expanded tax credits for private health insurance in the Obamacare marketplaces.

I have heard several of these (there is much more in the article), but I’m no financial pundit. Still, the increase in the national debt alone is enough to make me oppose this bill, combined with the apparent desire to punish the poor by making them work to get medicaid and deprive them of healthcare, which are heinous provisions.

*An op-ed in the WaPo by military experts Dan Caldwell and Jennifer Kavanagh argues that “The Iran strike shows that we don’t need bases in the Middle East.”

Look closely, and you’ll notice something peculiar: Many of the aircraft involved in the operation do not appear to have taken off from the large U.S. air bases in the Middle East — or, if they did, that fact has been carefully concealed. Whether this reflects a choice made to spare gulf state partners’ ties with Iran or because these states denied the United States permission to use bases on their territory, the implication is the same. When the president decided it was time for the United States to act against Iran, the 40,000 troops and billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware that Washington keeps parked in the Middle East were of limited use.

Worse, these forces ultimately proved to be a vulnerability when, 36 hours later, Iran retaliated by launching missiles at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. While the incoming missiles were intercepted and no soldiers were harmed, most of the aircraft were moved out of al-Udeid, and ships stationed at the U.S. naval station in Bahrain were sent out to sea to keep them safe.

For the White House and the Pentagon, this reality should be a wake-up call. U.S. military forces in the Middle East bring more risks than benefits, and it’s time to get most of them out for good.

For decades, the United States has kept tens of thousands of military personnel in the Middle East, spread across bases in the Persian Gulf region and the Levant. The size of the U.S. military footprint has changed over time, swelling during the 1991 Gulf War and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There has never been a serious attempt to draw down, however. U.S. soldiers, aircraft and warships have become a regional fixture.

Proponents of keeping these forces in the Middle East argue that their presence provides the United States significant benefits in suppressing regional crises and bolstering our allies’ security. But realizing these benefits requires that the United States has liberal permissions from host countries to use bases on their territory to conduct offensive operations.

. . .Sustaining U.S. forces in the Middle East is costly, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year during peacetime. Some of these costs would be incurred even if the same forces were located in the United States. But not all. U.S. personnel in the Middle East require more extensive defenses than do those based at home, including hardened facilities and advanced air defenses, to protect them from drone and missile attacks.

Indeed, the biggest downside to having 40,000 U.S. forces in the region is that they end up being vulnerable targets for state and non-state adversaries. This was true well before the events of the past week. Both the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut or the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia left Americans dead.

I think they have a point.  And here’s another advantage: we could cripple and then destroy Hamas if we threatened to pull the U.S.’s Al Udeid Air Base out of Qatar. As I’ve said, Qatar regards this base as crucial to protect its oil from incursions by countries like Saudi Arabia, and if we threatened to pull it out unless Qatar stopped housing Hamas officials and funneling money to their organization in Gaza, they might well fold. But we’d have to be serious about that threat, and willing to remove the base. I doubt this will ever happen, but Caldwell and Kavanaugh argue that we don’t really need that base, or others. Here’s a map from the Council of Foreign Relations showing all the bases or sites with a military presence; I bet you didn’t know we had so many!

*Another WSJ article describes how pro-Israeli hackers crippled Iran’s financial system and its pecuniary ties to the rest of the world. And it probably didn’t even involve Mossad!

While Israel and the U.S. were bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, another battlefield emerged behind the scenes: the financial infrastructure that keeps Tehran connected to the world.

Israeli authorities, and a pro-Israeli hacking group called Predatory Sparrow, targeted financial organizations that Iranians use to move money and sidestep the U.S.-led economic blockade, according to Israeli officials and other people familiar with the efforts. U.S. sanctions, imposed off-and-on for decades due to Tehran’s nuclear program and support for Islamist groups, have aimed to cut Iran off from the international financial system.

Predatory Sparrow, which operates anonymously and posts updates of its activities on X, said this past week that it crippled Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah, which services Iran’s armed forces and helps them pay suppliers abroad, knocking out its online banking services and cash machines. Iranian state media acknowledged the damage.

The group also breached Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, popular with locals for transferring money overseas. The hackers extracted about $100 million in funds and forced the platform to shut down, according to the exchange.

Iran’s government pulled the plug on much of the country’s online activities to prevent further attacks and keep a lid on dissent. Non-Iranian websites were blocked. Citizens were warned against using foreign phones or messaging platforms that it claimed could collect audio and location data for Israeli spies. Government officials were banned from using laptops and smartwatches.

Predatory Sparrow said the two hacks were directed against the “financial lifelines” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful faction of Iran’s military that also controls swaths of the economy. “Noble people of Iran! Withdraw your funds before it is too late,” it tweeted.

Both targeted companies remain hobbled. Nobitex said it faced serious challenges in restoring services and was aiming to relaunch trading this coming week. Some Bank Sepah users say online they still aren’t receiving deposits.

I love this sentence: “Noble people of Iran! Withdraw your funds before it is too late.” But the NBC evening news last night showed a big demonstration in Iran against both Israel and the U.S. I am worried that the bombing will turn Iranians who wanted regime change back towards the regime again. The Administration says it doesn’t want regime change, but in truth that’s the only thing that will guarantee a measure of peace in the Middle East.

*On top of his other narcissism, now we learn (or already knew) that Trump wants his visage carved on Mount Rushmore.

President Trump has made no secret of his fondness for Mount Rushmore and his desire to join its rock-star lineup.

During his first term, Mr. Trump told Kristi Noem — then a U.S. representative from South Dakota, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security — that his “dream” was to be on Mount Rushmore. She later gave Mr. Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face on it.

The idea has resurfaced since Mr. Trump returned to office. A congresswoman from Florida sponsored a bill in January to “direct the Secretary of the Interior to arrange for the carving of the figure of President Donald J. Trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.” It was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has yet to act on it.

In March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in an interview with Lara Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, that “they definitely have room” for Mr. Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore.

Wait. Is this possible?

As with all things Trump, it can be hard to decipher the difference between everyday rhetoric and future action. But those in charge of the memorial are taking such overtures seriously.

The National Park Service, which oversees Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and which is currently led by Mr. Burgum, has cited two reasons that more faces cannot be added. First, it considers Mount Rushmore to be a completed work of art. Second, there is no room. “The carved portion of Mount Rushmore

As you probably know, the four Presidents on Mount Rushmore now are Jefferson, Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln.  And doubt that Trump can issue an Executive Order demanding that his scowling visage be carved up there. Anyway, there is no space, and the sculptor,  Gutzon Borglum, has been dead since 1941.

Here it is now. Where would you put Trump?

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: Thomas Wolf, http://www.foto-tw.de

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again frustrated by her ignorance.

Hili: Look, a plane.
Andrzej: I see it.
Hili: But we don’t know where it’s going.
Andrzej: Right, and we’re aware of our ignorance.

In Polish:

Hili: Patrz, samolot.
Ja: Widzę.
Hili: Ale my nie wiemy dokąd leci.
Ja: Tak i jesteśmy świadomi naszej ignorancji.

*******************

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things With Faces:

Anna Krylov sent me this from her Chemistry conference in Japan; it was apparently a slide in one of the talks. She couldn’t make the HxA conference but won its leadership award.  Cats!:

From Masih: Iranian terrorists, each now with 72 virgins:

Yes, it’s the demonized Rufo, but I believe this is accurate, showing absolute race-based hiring at Cornell, done knowing that it was illegal but trying to get around the rules.  They should be sued (enlarge and read the text):

From Malcolm; behavioral compensation for a partly maladaptive product of natural selection:

Three from my feed. The first was the only thing I could find on my Bluesky feed that wasn’t either trite or “progressive”. I follow animal sites but there is a dearth of animals. But here are WOOD DUCKLINGS!

Ducklings! And lots of good summer stuff like milkweed, a muskrat and more!#birds 🌿 #mammals

— Get To Know Nature (@gettoknownature.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T13:12:30.289Z

Two from my X (Twitter) feed, which has a lot more good stuff. (I don’t follow anybody on X, either):

One I reposted form the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish boy was gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was just six, and would be 89 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T10:02:20.341Z

And one reposted by Dr. Cobb, which I couldn’t embed:

Friday: Hili dialogue

June 27, 2025 • 8:00 am

I am just back, and after a few hours of restive sleep have dragged myself to the office to produce a Hili.  So don’t expect much today as I am, as the Brits say, “knackered.”

Welcome to Friday, June 27, 2025, and National Indian Pudding Day, the finest indigenous American dessert, especially when served warm with vanilla ice cream. Good luck getting, it, though, as you have to make it yourself (laborious, see recipe here) or get it at the Union Oyster House in Boston. (I used to get it at Boston’s finest restaurant, Durgin-Park, but that closed (and broke my heart.)  Here’s a nice dish, though the portion seems small to me:

“Indian pudding” by theturquoisetable is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

It’s also National Food Truck Day, National Ice Cream Cake Day, Helen Keller Day (she was born on this date in 1880) and National Cream Tea Day.  Here’s a short video of Helen Keller taken in 1954 (she died in 1968), with the caption, “Helen Keller explains That her Greatest Disappointment in life is that she can not speak normally.”

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Washington Post tells us that the Supreme Court is going to rule on several important cases this morning (article archived here):

1.) LOUISIANA VOTING MAP

What to know: In response to a lawsuit from civil rights groups, the Louisiana legislature redrew its congressional map to create a second majority-Black district out of six districts inthe state. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the map violates the Constitution. The ruling could affect the balance of power in Congress, the landmark Voting Rights Act and how states consider race in drawing electoral maps.

Key takeaways: At oral argument March 24, several conservative justices expressed skepticism that the Voting Rights Act’s attempts to redress past discrimination can coexist with the Equal Protection Clause. . .

2.) NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS FOR BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

What to know: The Supreme Court added a special session late in the term to review a case involving President Donald Trump’s effort to ban automatic U.S. citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors. Trump has asked the justices to lift or narrow three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his policy from taking effect while its legality is tested in court.

Key takeaways: At oral argument May 15, the justices expressed concern about the proliferation of nationwide injunctions in general, but several appeared sympathetic to states challenging Trump’s executive order and open to a middle ground that would permit judges to issue universal orders in limited circumstances.

3.) AGE VERIFICATION FOR ONLINE PORN

What to know: The case tests the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring people to prove they are over 18 to access online pornography.

Key takeaways: A majority of the justices seemed open to allowing age verification for these sites during oral argument on April 15.

4.) OPTING OUT OF BOOKS ON GENDER, SEXUALITY

What to know: The justices heard a challenge by a group of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who objected to rules barring them from taking their children out of lessons that used storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. The parents said the themes of the stories conflicted with their religious beliefs.

Key takeaways: At oral argument April 22, the justices appeared poised to side with the religiousparents in what would be a significant expansion of the long-standing practice of allowing opt-outs for reproductive-health classes.

5.) PREVENTIVE HEALTHCARE COVERAGE

What to know: A Christian-owned business and others are challenging a provision of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, that requires health plans to provide no-cost preventive care, such as cancer screenings, immunizations and contraception, to millions of Americans. The challengers say having to cover pre-exposure medications intended to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, encourages risky homosexual behavior thatconflicts with their religious beliefs.

Key takeaways: At oral argument April 21, the justices seemed skeptical that members of the expert committee that set the preventive-care mandates were not properly appointed.

*The AP discusses the bunker-buster bombs dropped by US B-2 bombers on Iranian uranium-enrichment sites. It turns out that they were designed to attack such sites.

The deep penetrating bombs that the U.S. dropped into two Iranian nuclear facilities were designed specifically for those sites and were the result of more than 15 years of intelligence and weapons design work, the Pentagon’s top leaders said Thursday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing that they are confident the weapons struck exactly as planned.

. . .The bombs, called the GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, have their roots in a decades-old classified briefing “of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran,” Caine said.

That turned out to be the Fordo fuel enrichment plant, with construction believed to have started around 2006. It became operational in 2009, the same year Tehran publicly acknowledged its existence.

The classified briefing was shown in 2009 to a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer, who with a colleague “lived and breathed” Fordo for the next 15 years, studying the geology, construction dig, the earth moved and “every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out,” Caine said.

. . . The 30,000-pound bomb is comprised of steel, explosive and a fuse programmed to a specific detonation time. The longer the fuse, the deeper the weapon will penetrate before exploding.

Over the years, the military tested and retested it hundreds of times on mock facilities, Caine said. Crews fine-tuned the bombs to detonate in the mock enrichment rooms, delaying detonation until they had reached a position to send a pressure blast through open tunnels to destroy equipment underground.

What they concluded: The U.S. didn’t have a bomb that could destroy those sites. So the Pentagon got to work, Caine said.

“We had so many Ph.D.s working on the mock program — doing modeling and simulation — that we were quietly and in a secret way the biggest users of supercomputer hours within the United States of America,” he said.

And some tactics:

Fordo had two main ventilation routes into the underground facility — and officials carefully eyed these entry points as a way to target the site.

Each route had three shafts — a main shaft and a smaller shaft on either side, which looked almost like a pitchfork in graphics provided by the Pentagon. In the days preceding the U.S. attack, Iran placed large concrete slabs on top of both ventilation routes to try to protect them, Caine said.

In response, the U.S. crafted an attack plan where six bunker-buster bombs would be used against each ventilation route, using the main shaft as a way down into the enrichment facility.

Seven B-2 stealth bombers were used, carrying two of the massive munitions apiece. The first bomb was used to eliminate the concrete slab, Caine said.

The next four bombs were dropped down the main shaft and into the complex at a speed of more than 1,000 feet per second before exploding, he said. A sixth bomb was dropped as a backup, in case anything went wrong.

Well, we still don’t know the extent of the damage, but pictures of the holes created by the bombs show an amazingly accurate targeting. Do see the photos at the site given by DrBrydon in the second comment.

We’ll know (I hope) within a couple of months.  And there are rumors that Iran had removed its already-enriched uranium (not yet to bomb grade) from the site.

*Today’s TGIF at the Free Press is not by Nellie (she keeps going on vacaion! An infant is no excuse!), but by Will Rahm. But I will take a few items for your delectation. The column is called, “TGIF: The People’s Republic of Manhattan.” Here’s what Rahm says about himself:

My name is Will Rahn, and I’m a senior editor at The Free Press by benefit of my gilded journalistic lineage. Nellie Bowles is on vacation this week. So is her blood boy and TGIF workhorse Sean Fischer. So I have the unenviable task of writing this damn thing after a bunker busting week of a shock mayoral race and more movement in the Mideast than we’ve seen in decades. Thankfully, I have Suzy Weiss and Sascha Seinfeld here to save my bacon. Let’s do the news! 

→ Comrade Mayor: We’ll get to Iran in a moment, but we’re talking about New York City first because I live here and not Tehran. And it appears we New Yorkers are on the brink of electing a socialist in Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state legislator who just became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor. His signature piece of legislation thus far in politics—there have been exactly three that he’s gotten passed—was an amendment to state liquor license laws that allow visitors to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria to have a drink on the premises.

Zohran—he has just one name now, like Madonna or Trump or Beyoncé—ran a brilliant campaign on a totally crackpot platform that includes arresting Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to New York. And free buses and rent freezes, which will be made possible because of reasons and plans. But if you put his ideas aside for a moment, you can see the campaign itself was pretty darn Trumpy.

Remember when Trump went on all those podcasts and got the Joe Rogan crowd to vote for him? Zohran did that at the local level. He was all over Instagram and TikTok, appearing with local microinfluencers. He was funny, smiling, optimistic. And the implicit promise of his campaign was that he’d drop a bunker buster on the political status quo. Remind you of anyone?

The Trump/Mamdani comparisons are unavoidable. . .

. . . . Moderate Democrats in the New York suburbs already are distancing themselves from Zohran, in large part because of his nutty anti-Israel stuff—read his message from October 8 and shudder—but he’s the only member of his party this decade who has shown the fingertip feel for politics we associate with the president. He’s running to Make New York Great Again,

Here’s Mamdani’s tweet from October 8.  It’s not reassuring; I think I should have called the title “TGIF: The Caliphate of Manhattan”:

→ Real impeachment has never been tried: You may remember that Trump has already been impeached twice: once for January 6, and once for some convoluted Ukraine thing. And you may also recall that these impeachments didn’t stop Trump from winning the White House again in 2024, and with substantially more support than he had in 2016. I wouldn’t say he’s unimpeachable, but the man is certainly peach-proof.

And yet some House Democrats, to the immense chagrin of their more sober-minded colleagues, tried to impeach him again this week over the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities that he ordered. The ringleader for the move was Texas Rep. Al Green, and it’s important to note here that he’s not the Reveremd Al Green, who wrote “Let’s Stay Together.” Rather, he’s the guy who was escorted out of Trump’s address to Congress earlier this year after he stood up and shook his cane at the president, which is an awesome old guy move that we don’t see enough of. It’s very “get off my lawn / why I oughta” energy.

Green’s impeachment resolution was swiftly defeated on Tuesday, with 128 House Democrats voting with Republicans to squash it. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voted no. So did former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who I guess still works there.

→ Robots versus drunken frat boys: Grubhub is testing food delivery robots on dozens of college campuses, and so far the results appear underwhelming. The company is unleashing them on college campuses because they’re in a sense the perfect place to try these things out: not that many cars, massive clusters of hungover people willing to refinance their cars if it means they can get a breakfast burrito without having to put on pants. But the delivery companies didn’t anticipate the most fearsome foe of all: a drunk frat guy doing something on a dare.

“At Notre Dame, some complain that the robots clog the sidewalks,” TheWall Street Journal reports. “Students trip over them, especially when they’re drunk, and mischief makers sometimes sit on them.” In defense of Notre Dame undergraduates: It is very tempting to kick a robot. They are not our friends. They are coming for our jobs. Their little beeps and lights and the fact that they’re always scooting around give the impression of a teacher’s pet. . .

Rahn’s pieces are too long, and he’s not nearly as snarky nor as funny as Nellie.  There is simply no substitute for Nellie at writing the TGIFs.

*Bhutan, a place I’d dearly like to visit (but you can’t do so without paying a hefty daily fee and using a tour operator, is now getting rich on—wait for it—bitcoins.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is best known for its stunning landscapes and national happiness index. Lately it has earned a new reputation: crypto pioneer.

Bhutan now boasts a stash of bitcoins worth $1.3 billion, or roughly 40% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to cryptocurrency platform Arkham. It is the third-largest such stockpile held by governments, according to Arkham.

Unlike the U.S. or U.K, which also have vast crypto holdings, Bhutan’s fortune wasn’t seized from criminal activity or purchased in the open market. Instead, the secluded Buddhist nation began quietly setting up bitcoin mines in 2020, harnessing its abundant hydropower to dig for digital gold.

“For Bhutan, it was quite obvious in a lot of ways,” said Ujjwal Deep Dahal, chief executive of Bhutan’s sovereign-wealth fund, Druk Holding and Investments, which implemented the project. “We kind of look at bitcoin as a store of value, similar to gold.”

. . .By 2022, Bhutan had broken ground on all four of its government-owned mines, officials said. Moreover, it came just ahead of a run-up in the price of bitcoin, which has gone from under $10,000 in 2020 to around $100,000 today.

Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said the bitcoin haul has more than made up for a drop in hydropower exports, which typically fund about 40% of the government budget. Hydropower exports have fallen as bitcoin mines use up more electricity.

In 2023, the government decided to sell off $100 million of its cache to finance pay rises for civil servants for two years.

“That increase has been financed totally with bitcoins,” Tobgay said. If you just sold electricity, “you wouldn’t get anywhere near the amount that’s required.”

I don’t trust bitcoin and would never invest in it as it’s arcane and, I think, risky. But Bhutan doesn’t think so, and so far it’s been right.

*Finally, RFK Jr.’s panel on vaccines has decided not to recommend flu vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimoseral, touted as causing autism (arcticle is archived here).. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT, and the amount of thimoseral in flu vaccines is tiny (one source says the amount of thimoseral in a flu shot “is less than the amount of mercury in a 6-ounce can of chunk white albacore tuna; see http://www.pbs.org/now/science/mercuryinfish.html for details.” But you can ask for a flu shot without it, and kids less than 6 years old are given thimoseral-free flu shots as a precaution. But RFK Jr. has always touted the bogus connection with autism:

On Thursday, the new members of the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, hand-selected by Mr. Kennedy after he fired all 17 members of the previous panel, decided it would no longer recommend annual flu shots that contain it. Thimerosal’s appearance on the committee’s agenda in the first place shocked public health leaders, who have long considered the matter settled.

But it was not a surprise to people who have followed Mr. Kennedy closely. Thimerosal started Mr. Kennedy down a path of questioning vaccine safety, and Thursday’s vote was the culmination of a long personal journey. It offers a window into how, as secretary, he is pursuing his own passions and installing old allies in positions of influence.

“He’s got a big passion for this subject, and he knows this probably better than anybody,” said Eric Gladen, who featured Mr. Kennedy in his 2014 film, “Trace Amounts,” which espoused a link between thimerosal and autism.

Critics say that in resurrecting an old controversy, Mr. Kennedy could brew mistrust rather than ease it. Numerous studies, including a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine and a 2010 review of the medical literature, have rejected a link between the preservative and autism. Dr. Oz, who now runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted on his 2014 show that any link had been “ultimately discredited.”

. . . But the panel on Thursday did not hear from the C.D.C. The agency posted a document on the advisory committee’s website on Tuesday that concluded “the evidence does not support an association” between the preservative and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

But the document was taken down the next day. A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy, Andrew Nixon, said that it had not gone through the proper vetting, but that committee members had been given copies of the document.

The panel voted 5 to 1 on Thursday to stop recommending flu vaccines that contain the preservative. It was unclear how manufacturers would respond, and how the recommendation might affect access to flu vaccines. Some flu vaccines are already available without thimerosal.

I’ve asked my doctor, but I suspect he’s with the CDC.  After all, I have an occasional can of tuna and don’t seem to have autism.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, we have a lovely picture of The Princess, who is once again musing:

Hili: The past lives in the present, and the present turns into the past.
Andrzej: And our thoughts are rarely original.

In Polish:

Hili Przeszłość jest w teraźniejszości, teraźniejszość zmienia się w przeszłość.
Ja: A nasze myśli rzadko są odkrywcze.

*******************

From Wholesome Memes:

From Jesus of the Day. Is this true?

From Now That’s Wild:

Masih shows a video of an Iranian woman who masks her identity (a wise move) to publicly criticize the theocracy:

From Malcolm: the real size of the world’s countries after removing the Mercator distortion:

There are more tweets about earthquakes in this thread (from my feed), but this one is chilling:

One I posted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz, probably dead within two hours of the selection. She was ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-27T12:55:15.313Z

And one tweet from Matthew showing an important letter from Francis Crick:

A letter to Crick from his pal Georg Kreisel, on hearing about the existence of introns in eukaryotic genes, which Crick described in a Science article "Split genes and RNA splicing".

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-27T10:33:48.819Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 26, 2025 • 7:00 am

Today may be a truncated Hili dialogue as I’m leaving Brooklyn for Chicago. I will do what I can. Bear with me: I do my best.

Welcome to Thursday, June 26, 2025, and National Onion Day. Someone (perhaps it was Nora Ephron) once said that onions and Coca-Cola are similar in that they are really tasty and we’d pay any price to get them, but fortunately they are common and cheap.

Here’s how they grow the big onions they use in restaurants, including the famous “Blooming Onion” at Outback Steakhouse. I’ve never been there, but I would love such a battered and fried onion:

Here’s a blooming onion: Wikipedia has an article on it!

No machine-readable author provided. Waptaff assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Forgiveness Day, National Chocolate Pudding Day, and National Coconut Day. (Don’t forget to put the lime in the coconut.)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After yesterday’s U.S. assessment that the strike on Fordo and other strikes didn’t set back Iran’s nuclear program by that much, the government has changed its tune. Damage was more severe than first thought.

Classified intelligence about the damage to Iran’s nuclear program from U.S. strikes was at the center of a political tempest on Wednesday as spy chiefs pushed out new assessments and President Trump continued to defend his assertion that Iran’s key facilities had been “obliterated.”

The C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, said the strikes had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program, and the administration suggested that the initial report, by the Defense Intelligence Agency, was based on preliminary assessments and was already outdated.

The damage was also being assessed by other U.S. spy agencies. No information that has become public from those assessments has supported Mr. Trump’s description of the level of destruction from the U.S. attack, though they all confirmed that the damage had been substantial.

The D.I.A. report was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the American attacks on three of Iran’s nuclear sites.

It described the level of damage as ranging from moderate to severe, according to people briefed on or familiar with its contents.

The report said that if the D.I.A.’s assumption that Fordo, the deepest underground of the sites, sustained a moderate level of damage is correct, then the facility would be inoperable and Iran would not try to rebuild its enrichment capabilities there, one of those people said. If the assumption proved incorrect, the report said, Iran could build a quick version of a nuclear weapon in months.

. . .The National Security Agency, which focuses on intercepted phone and internet communications, has been examining what Iranians have been saying about the strikes and the fate of their uranium stockpiles. And officials said the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which studies satellite imagery, has been looking at movements around the nuclear sites in the days before the American strikes.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, posted on social media about new intelligence that showed that it would take years if Iran chose to rebuild the three sites the American attack hit.

Officials said her comment was also based on new U.S. intelligence collected since the D.I.A. report was written Sunday. The new intelligence relates to the existing facilities hit by the U.S. strikes, not whether Iran could use other secret facilities to advance its work on nuclear weapon capability.

Gabbard, who didn’t want to attack Iran, appears to have changed her tune. Pressure from Trump?

Stay tuned; things will change again!

*From the Wall Street Journal on the same topic:

The head of the U.N. atomic energy agency said U.S. and Israeli strikes caused “enormous damage” to Iran’s nuclear sites and warned of a new crisis if Iran refused to allow his agency to inspect the facilities.

The extent of the damage done to Tehran’s nuclear capabilities has been at issue since the U.S. joined Israel in attacking them. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is due to hold a briefing at the Pentagon Thursday morning to address a U.S. intelligence report that said the strikes had merely delayed Iran’s nuclear efforts by a few months, President Trump said.

Trump said he doesn’t think a nuclear deal with Iran is necessary after the strikes and said he believed the cease-fire between Israel and Iran would hold. Of new nuclear talks, he said the U.S. would be asking the Iranians for the same thing before Israel launched its attack. “We want no nuclear,” the president said, adding: “We destroyed the nuclear.”

The president has pushed back on the leaked report on the extent of the damage, saying Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated.” Hegseth said Wednesday the FBI has started a probe into how the preliminary assessment became public.

What else to know:

The Defense Intelligence Agency, which produced the classified report, said it was “a preliminary, low-confidence assessment—not a final conclusion.”

. . . The U.S. is making a fresh push to negotiate an end to the fighting in Gaza, hoping to build on the momentum of a cease-fire between Israel and Iran.

“We want no nuclear. We destroyed the nuclear.” Oy! At least he didn’t say “Nuc-u-lar”!

*Speaking of Tulsi, she was ignored again by the administration as it’s sending a delegation to Congress, with Trump concerned about the “leaks” in assessing the damage to Iran (my bolding):

The White House plans to limit classified intelligence sharing with Congress after leaks to the press of an early assessment undermined President Donald Trump’s claim that U.S. airstrikes obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities, a senior Trump administration official said, setting the stage for a contentious classified briefing before senators Thursday.

Amid a political battle over what the intelligence shows, the White House is expected to send four of its top national security officials to brief lawmakers: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, administration officials said.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, will be notably absent.

“Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community,” the senior Trump administration official said of Gabbard’s absence, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet made public. “The media is turning this into something it’s not.”

Poor Tulsi. She’s the Director of National Intelligence but doesn’t even get to go to Congress! What’s worse is the administration’s decision to limit what it tells Congress about sensitive issues that are, after all, things that Congress has a right to know.

*This is a nice gesture, but I have no idea how it could be implemented. According to the Times of Israel, Israel has offered medical care to Iranians injured in the recent attacks on the country by Israel and the U.S. Note the sentence I’ve put in bold:

In a post on its Persian-language X account, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency offers medical assistance to Iranian citizens hurt in the recent conflict, encouraging them to reach out via WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal.

“The ceasefire has been implemented. Now, the extent of the damage is becoming apparent. At this moment, the regime is focused on its higher education, not on taking care of its citizens,” the post reads.

According to the statement, the Mossad is offering a range of services — from access to specialist doctors to basic first aid — aimed at helping those affected by the recent conflict. It is not clear how such services would be provided.

Here’s the post if you can read Farsi:

How in hell is Mossad going to give medical aid to Iranians? Is Mossad going to come to Israel? That won’t work. Nor can Iranians go to Israel for treatment? This seems like a performative offer on the part of Mossad.

*Invoking Title IX, the government says that California cannot allow trans-identified men to compete in women’s sports. But California is ignoring that, despite the governor’s agreement with the administration on this issue.

The Trump administration said Wednesday that California must change its policies allowing transgender girls to compete on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

The U.S. Department of Education said it determined California’s education department and governing body for high school sports are violating Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education. The federal government said California must agree to change its policies in 10 days or “risk imminent enforcement action.” The administration could otherwise refer the state to the U.S. Justice Department, the Education Department said.

California, though, said it has no plans to change its policies.

“The California Department of Education believes all students should have the opportunity to learn and play at school, and we have consistently applied existing law in support of students’ rights to do so,” agency spokesperson Liz Sanders said in a statement.

. . . The announcement comes weeks after a trans student athlete garnered national attention over her participation in the California high school state track and field championship. The student, AB Hernandez, placed first in the girls high jump and triple jump, and second in the long jump. The California Interscholastic Federation, which ran the meet, awarded gold and silver medals to both Hernandez and other competitors who would have placed had she not participated. It was the first time the federation made such a rule change.

. . . U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon invoked Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s remarks on his podcast in March questioning the fairness of trans girls competing in girls sports.

In this case the government is right and California, supporting a policy unfair to women, is wrong.  Saying that does not make one either transphobic or pro-Trump.  But fairness is fairness.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron pretend they are in in postwar Poland:

Andrzej: what are you waiting for here?
Hili: We are queuing for meat..
In Polish:

Ja: A wy na co tu czekacie?
Hili: Siedzimy w kolejce po mięso.

*******************

From Apollo Kitty Kat:

From Lynne:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih; some Iranian propaganda:

From Luana; a message for “progressives” from Van Jones:

From Malcolm: a cat ready for holiday:

One I found.  Jew haters pretend that “Zionist” is not the same thing as Jew, but it has in effect become a euphemism for “Jew” This thread by a Canadian physician (i give only the first post) explains why:

Two from my feed. The first one is very sweet:

The Democrats refuse to call out some odious views of the new Democratic candidate for Mayor of NYC.  Dems are just so happy to win that they ignore his anti-Semitism:

One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was three years old. And she would be 85 today if they hadn't murdered her.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T11:49:30.842Z

One from Dr. Cobb:

Stahl died, but Meselson is still alive at 95. And their 1958 experiment showing how DNA replicates is indeed “the most beautiful experiment in biology,” as Horace Judson put it.

Just learned that Frank Stahl (of the Meselson and Stahl DNA replication experiment ("the most beautiful experiment in biology") died at the beginning of April, to no fanfare. Here's a lovely video of them reminiscing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tn…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T10:01:55.570Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 25, 2025 • 7:00 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“こぶの日” in Japanese): Wednesday, June 25, 2025;  and the month (with its brutal heat) is slipping by.

It’s Color TV Day, celebrating the first “official” color broadcast:

On today’s date in 1951, at 4:35 p.m. Eastern Time, CBS made what is regarded as the first color television broadcast. It was an hour-long variety show called Premiere, which featured Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, Garry Moore, Robert Alda, and Faye Emerson. The chairman of the FCC and both the president and board chairman of CBS also appeared on it. The program was transmitted from CBS’s New York City studio to the city, as well as to Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Only televisions built for color could pick up the transmission, so most people—those with black-and-white sets—who were tuned to CBS just saw a blank screen. Most of those who were able to view the program saw it at a hotel, in department stores, or in an auditorium. Because of this groundbreaking broadcast, today is known as Color TV Day.

It is also National Strawberry Parfait Day, National Catfish Day, Global Beatles Day (celebrating the first satellite broadcast of the Fab Four, which took place on this day in 1967), and, finally, Bourdain Day, honoring the birthday in 1956 of the famous chef, writer, and television documentarian. I was a huge fan, and was distraught when he killed himself at 61.

Here are some of Bourdain’s fellow chefs celebrating his birthday:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 25 Wikipedia page.

Posting will be light today as I have the HxA meetings and my panel this afternoon. Tomorrow evening I’ll be back in Chicago and will be glad to see my ducks. (There’s a lovely phot-and-video duck post in the offing.)

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday the Heterodox Academy gave out its annual awards for courage and speaking out. Here are the winners, with the presenters (in parenthesis) all having won in that category in previous years,  You can read about the winners’ accomplishments here.

Courage:  Joseph Yi (Alice Dreger)

Leadership: Anna Krylov (Alexandra Lydia)

Community excellence: Western Michigan University (Craig Gibson)

Teaching:Abigail C. Saguy (Matt Burgess)

Exceptional scholarship: Musa al-Gharbi   (Keith Whittington)

Special kudos to my friend Anna, who works tirelessly to enforce academic freedom and freedom of speech, and to point out the infestation of science with ideology.

*In a stunning upset, Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, beat the predicted winner, former state governor Andrew Cuomo, to win the Democratic primary for NYC Mayor.  Here’s the vote as of 7 a.m. in NYC:

From the NYT:

Zohran Mamdani, a little-known state lawmaker whose progressive platform and campaign trail charisma electrified younger voters, stunned former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City on Tuesday night, building a lead so commanding that Mr. Cuomo conceded.

Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens, tapped into a current of anxiety around New York City’s growing affordability crisis. His joyful campaign brought new voters into the fold who rejected the scandal-scarred Mr. Cuomo’s ominous characterizations of the city and embraced an economic platform that included everything from free bus service and child care to publicly owned grocery stores.

The outcome was not official, and even assuming Mr. Mamdani gains the nomination, he faces an unusually competitive general election in November.

Still, Mr. Mamdani declared victory at a rally early Wednesday in Queens, pledging to be a “mayor for every New Yorker” and framing his win as part of a movement powered by volunteers.

“Tonight we made history,” he said. “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done. My friends, we have done it.”

The decisiveness of New Yorkers’ swing toward Mr. Mamdani reverberated across the party and the country, at a time when Democrats nationally are searching for an answer to President Trump and are disillusioned with their own leaders.

. . . . “This is the biggest upset in modern New York City history,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist.

From The Free Press:

[Mamdani’s] proposals include government-run grocery stores, a rent freeze for more than two million New Yorkers, and free bus rides. Mamdani’s housing plan alone would cost $100 billion—only slightly less than the entire size of this year’s city budget.

“Everyone who can tell you about basic economics can tell you that a rent freeze just doesn’t work,” said one strategist at a firm employed by the Cuomo campaign.

It is rare to find a single area of agreement between the editorial boards of the New York Post and The New York Times. But both urged readers, before the primary, not to vote for Mamdani.

. . . In much of this, Mamdani’s campaign reminded many people of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed him. Seven years ago, she defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary race for a House seat in Queens and the Bronx.

. . . and from The Free Press‘s morning newsletter:

Then there are Mamdani’s views on the police (“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” he posted on X in 2020); Israel (“apartheid”); Benjamin Netanyahu (“As Mayor I would have Netanyahu arrested if he came to New York”); and Islamist radicalism (he refuses to condemn the phrase globalize the intifada).

I don’t know much about this candidate, but we’ll see, as he still has to beat a Republican in November (not much of a task, I’d think). Still the victory of a Democratic Socialist with these views, celebrated by many Democrats as the way we should go, may be a bellwether for more Democratic defeats come the midterms or 2028. I was no fan of Cuomo, but I’m wary of a candidate who wants to defund the NYC police and refuses to condemn a phrase whose mening we all know: “Globalize the intifada.”  In NYC?

*According to the Washington Post, the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear program set that program back only by months and not longer.

An initial U.S. intelligence report assesses that airstrikes ordered by President Donald Trump against Iran’s nuclear facilities set Tehran’s program back by months but did not eliminate it, contradicting claims by Trump and his top aides about the mission’s success, according to three people familiar with the report.

The classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency is based on the Pentagon’s early bomb damage assessment of the strikes on nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan using earth-penetrating munitions carried by B-2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles.

It assesses that the strikes did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program and probably set it back by several months, not years, one of the people said.

U.S. intelligence reports also indicate that Iran moved multiple batches of its highly enriched uranium out of the nuclear sites before the strikes occurred and that the uranium stockpiles were unaffected, said the person, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

According to the Times of Israel, the IDF disagrees:

Israel’s military thinks the recent war with Iran has set the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program back by years, but the assessment is preliminary, and it is too early to know for sure, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Effi Defrin said Wednesday.

“We met all the objectives of the operation as defined for us, and even did so better than we had optimally expected,” Defrin said, but he cautioned: “I say this with humility, because it’s still too early to determine.”

“We are investigating and reviewing the results of our strikes on every part of this puzzle, as I’ve previously called it, the various components of the nuclear program and more,” he said.

“Now, I trust our intelligence analysts in the Intelligence Directorate and in the Air Force. I believe they have proven themselves to be accurate in recent weeks, and I can say here that the assessment is that we significantly damaged the nuclear program, and I can also say that we set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

Defrin’s comments echoed those of IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Tuesday night that, “We have set Iran’s nuclear project back by years, and the same goes for its missile program.”

Well, all we can do is wait and see, and even then we may not know the answer. I suspect that if the IDF finds that the damage was not that substantial, they will continue their bombing campaign, probably without American bunker-busters and B-2s. But. . .

*Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is peeved that the U.S. damage-assessment report was leaked.

The Trump administration pushed back on a leaked intelligence report that said the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities only set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by a few months, while the cease-fire brokered by President Trump appeared to hold for another day.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at the NATO summit Wednesday, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation has started a probe into how the preliminary assessment became public. President Trump, also at the summit in The Hague, said reports minimizing the impact of the operation were disrespectful. “This was an unbelievable success,” Trump said.

Meanwhile, Israel said its military and intelligence services are still investigating the extent of the damage. Trump, also speaking at the summit, said Iran shouldn’t try to rebuild its nuclear program, suggesting the U.S. would strike Iran again it did.

President Trump reiterated his view that U.S. strikes on Iran caused a massive blow to Tehran’s nuclear program, downplaying a preliminary intelligence report that indicated the strikes merely set the country back by a few months.

“This was an unbelievable success,” Trump said. Reports minimizing the impact of the operation, he said, are disrespectful. “The thing that hurts me is it’s really demeaning to the pilots and the people that put that whole thing together, the generals—that was a perfect operation.”

If the IDF and U.S. reports coincide in lowering the assessment of damage, then I’ll believe that the operation was not as big a success as we were led to believe. But what upsets me as much is that there is not sign of any impending regime change in Iran, a false hope that I had entertained. And I am tired of Trump using the word “perfect.”

*The AP tallies up the number of Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Here are details on the hostages:

Total hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023: 251

Hostages taken before the Oct. 7 attack: 4, including 2 who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015 and the bodies of 2 soldiers killed in the 2014 war

Hostages released in exchanges or other deals: 148, of whom 8 were dead

Bodies of hostages retrieved by Israeli forces: 49

Hostages rescued alive: 8

Hostages still in captivity: 50, of whom Israel believes 27 are dead. Netanyahu has said there are “doubts” about the fate of several more.

The hostages in captivity include four non-Israelis: 2 Thais and 1 Tanzanian who have been confirmed dead, and a Nepalese captive.

They don’t mention the hundreds of Palestinian terrorists and prisoners released in exchange for the 140 live hostages, and, as usual, and AP quotes the number of dead Gazans according to Hamas:

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages in the Oct. 7 attack. More than 55,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed in the ensuing conflict, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

I’m betting that the “mostly women and children” claim is bogus.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron have a chinwag:

Hili: Where are you going?
Szaron: To hunt.
Hili: Happy hunting.

In Polish:

Hili: Gdzie się wybierasz?
Szaron: Na polowanie.
Hili: Szczęśliwych łowów.

*******************

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Things With Faces, taken at a health facility:

From Mash: Iran is ramping up its execution of opponents of the regime:

From Luana; this makes me ineffably sad and bodes ill for academia:

From Malcolm a pissed off cat mom:

From my feed; two cases of one animal helping another (one case is conspecific):

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl died at Auschwitz. She was fifteen.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-25T11:47:57.474Z

Two posts from Matthew. His comment on the first one: “Duck! Mongoose!”

A 2,000 year old ‘face-off’ between a mean-eyed mongoose and a rearing cobra!My money’s on the mongoose! Detail from a Roman mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. Now on display at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. 📷 by me#MosaicMonday#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-06-23T09:22:53.072Z

. . . and a wondering duck:

4am…

— Moose Allain (@mooseallain.bsky.social) 2025-06-24T14:11:51.779Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 24, 2025 • 6:45 am

The Hili dialogue will be truncated today, and posting will be light, for the Heterodox Academy Meeting is going on all day, leaving me little time to write. Bear with me; I do my best. Please excuse any infelicities of writing (or typos) as I’m banging this out fast, like a journalist on deadline.

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 24, 2025, and National Pralines Day, celebrating one candy that is almost too sweet for me. But I’ll eat ’em!

Here are some from Wikipedia captioned, “American pralines cooling on a marble slab. Unlike European pralines, American pralines are made with cream.”

Katescm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also World UFO Day, explained this way:

June 24 marks the anniversary of one of the first UFO sightings in the United States, when Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine high-speed crescent-shaped objects near Mt. Rainier in Washington, in 1947. July 2 marks the anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident, which also happened in 1947.

You can see a copyrighted photo of “Eight objects similar to those reported by Arnold photographed over Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 12, 1947 (from Tulsa Daily World)” at this site. Skeptics believe that Arnold saw either jet planes or a mirage.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 25 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

A quick scan of the news reveals a few items of interest:

*The U.S.+ Israel apparently arrived at a truce and ceasefire with Iran, but one that was quickly broken (Israel accuses Iran of breaking it).

The fate of a truce announced by President Trump that went into effect early Tuesday hung in the balance, as the Israeli military said Iran had fired another missile barrage and vowed to retaliate.

The claim from Israel’s military came just hours after the country had joined Iran in agreeing to the truce, spurring cautious hopes for an end to 12 days of unprecedented warfare between the adversaries, and as both sides seemingly claimed victory in the conflict. Iran’s military denied firing missiles after the cease-fire went into effect, according to Iranian state news outlets — adding to the uncertainty.

Mr. Trump’s announcement, on the eve of the NATO summit, could give the president a chance to take a victory lap at the gathering — if the truce holds. The timing of it had caught some of his own officials by surprise, and both sides continued to trade fire in the last moments before confirming a truce was in effect.

The Israeli military said it had struck missile launchers in western Iran that were poised to fire at Israel. Iran launched at least four barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel, setting off sirens that sent millions of Israelis rushing in and out of shelters. At least four people were killed when a missile hit an apartment building in the southern city of Beersheba.

But by around 7.30 a.m. in Israel, a tentative calm appeared to have taken hold as the military issued an all-clear, allowing people to exit bomb shelters. Soon after, President Trump announced the truce was in force. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” he added.

There was initially silence from the Israeli government, which has in the past often waited in the first, delicate hours to see whether quiet is being answered with quiet before declaring conflicts over. Just after 9 a.m. local time, Israel’s government issued a statement saying it had agreed to a mutual cease-fire, having achieved its goals in its campaign in Iran, “and in full coordination with President Trump.” Iran, similarly, cast the truce as a sign its military had prevailed.

But underscoring the fragility of the situation, more sirens wailed in northern Israel nearly two hours later, warning of missiles launched from Iran. The Israeli military accused Iran of breaking the cease-fire — saying in a statement that it would “respond with force.”

This kind of back and forth will, I predict, keep happening in the next few weeks as these countries sort out how they are supposed to act in the face of world opinion (which favors a truce). And Trump is mad at both sides:

President Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran on Tuesday over concerns that both sides had violated an hours-old cease-fire, intensifying the uncertainty over the fragile deal that he had helped broker to end the deadly conflict.

In expletive-laced remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump accused both sides of launching attacks, pledging to “see if I can stop it.” In a Truth Social post, the president warned Israel not to “drop those bombs” and demanded the country “bring your pilots home now.”

*The Free Press claims “The Democrats go AWOL on Iran,” remaining remarkably silent on the war. Well, I know that the “Squad,” including Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, have spoken out in opposition, so let’s see what the FP says:

By last weekend, Israel’s Operation Rising Lion had already changed the Middle East profoundly. And America’s oldest political party was AWOL. Normally, Democrats would stake out a position on such a consequential issue. Instead, in the lead-up to Operation Midnight Hammer, they were more interested in ICE raids and performative civil disobedience than in the future of nonproliferation. They had plenty to say about Medicaid work requirements and Juneteenth celebrations. On Iran? Silence.

Naturally, press coverage dwelled on supposed rifts within the MAGA coalition, not only because prominent Trump supporters opposed American involvement, but because Democrats had rendered themselves irrelevant. Hence an anti-war Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, received notice only when she agreed with anti-war Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

. . . As the GOP consolidated, the Democrats went from bystanders to hecklers. They called for votes on congressional war powers. They fumed, threatened, and demanded consequences—not against Iran, but against President Trump. The Democrats became louder, for sure. But no more effective.

The Iran crisis doesn’t just reveal the Democrats’ irrelevance. It exposes a fundamental unseriousness that makes their other problems worse. The DNC is a mess. Their party has no leader. It’s deeply unpopular and on the wrong side of illegal immigration, trans activism, and the Green New Deal.

Just when the Democrats need to return to the center, they’re in danger of being captured by antisemitic socialists. Ilhan Omar calls her adopted land one of the worst countries in the world. AOC greets pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil upon his release from ICE detention. Thirty-three-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who wants the government to run grocery stores, surges ahead in the New York City mayoral primary.

The Democrats have had plenty of time to prepare for this moment. For over 20 years, four presidents of both parties declared they wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. America tried diplomacy, negotiations, and sanctions. The centrifuges kept spinning.

. . .Jeffries and Schumer may not be for impeachment—yet. But they stand closer to Ocasio-Cortez than to the few Democrats who dared applaud Trump’s command. No surprise that Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman was the most adulatory in his praise. Reps. Ritchie Torres and Josh Gottheimer offered more measured support. And Rep. Steny Hoyer, who once held Jeffries’ job, wrote that Operation Midnight Hammer was “in keeping with our stated position against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

These exceptions only prove the rule, however. Single-mindedly devoted to diplomacy and paper treaties, obsessed with Donald Trump, and fearful of crossing a radicalized base, Democrats have cut themselves out of serious foreign-policy discourse at a historic hinge point. By attacking Trump for doing what they once promised, Democrats have marginalized themselves precisely when their voices might matter most.

*I have been struck by the Democrats’ lack of statements about foreign policy (are we supposed to start negotiating with Iran again?) and especially with the lack of leadership of our party. The NYT had an op-ed yesterday by Galen Druke called “Why Democrats need their own Trump,” calling for Democrats to adopt these Trumplike tactics:

Running against your own party from both the left and the right, and more broadly against both parties, allows you to frustrate voters’ perceptions of you. For Mr. Trump, this approach had the long-term effect of not just giving him distance from an unpopular Republican Party. Over time, perceptions of the G.O.P. shifted and allowed the party to win over voters that even 2013-era immigration-reform-supporting Sean Hannity could never have imagined.

In theory, this could work for a Democrat. Democratic primary voters have shown more deference to the party establishment over the past decade, but patience may be wearing thin. In 2024, the party stood by a deeply unpopular president despite clear signs that Democratic voters did not think he was suited to another term. Now only about two-thirds of self-described Democrats have a favorable view of their party.

Likewise, Democrats will need to appeal to voters in states currently written off by the party if they hope to actually legislate while in power. Redefining what it means to be a Democrat will give those voters a chance to reconsider how they vote.

. . . The point is that any ambitious Democrats positioning themselves for 2028 shouldn’t think about picking between moderate and progressive lanes. They should pick both. They should also feel comfortable attacking the Democratic Party for its recent failures.

What’s especially striking about about this op-ed is that Druke doesn’t name one likely Democratic candidate—someone who could fulfill this mission.  Why not? Was his a purely theoretical exercise, or do we simply lack candidates who can do this? I’m guessing the latter, and we need credible candidates who can face off in 2028 with the likely candidate Vance.  Who can it be? For sure not AOC or any progressive; America rejected that viewpoint when Harris moved farther left in 2024 (she was also incoherent on many issues).  Mayor Pete? Not well enough known, and he’s keeping a low profile. Don’t ask me; I’m not a pundit.

Meanwhile, the WaPo weighs in with Karen Tumulty’s op-ed, “There’s turmoil at the DNC—which isn’t a bad thing.” She offers some good news, but no candidate:

None of the intramural turbulence at the DNC should overshadow the fact that there is plenty of promising news these days for Democrats. The party has been consistently overperforming in special elections this year. In April, it delivered a double-digit victory in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election, in which billionaire Elon Musk had spent $25 million on the other side, making it a referendum on Trump’s agenda.

And then there was the massive turnout this month at the rallies in more than 2,000 cities that were dubbed the “No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance.” It was unmistakable evidence of how much energy there is to be tapped by Democrats as they prepare for the midterm elections.

None of which, however, is a sure sign that the Democrats have found their footing. The harder job of resurrecting the party must be done by its congressional leadership, which has not been sounding a clear and certain message. And, moving forward, its direction will be set by the presidential candidates who begin to step forward in the midterm elections and in the days after.

Who are the candidates? Can you name some potentially good ones?  I can’t.

*More bad news from the WSJ for progressive leftists: “Supreme Court allows Trump administration to swiftly deport migrants to third countries.” As expected, the vote was 6-3:

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to swiftly deport certain migrants to countries they aren’t from.

The court’s conservative majority stayed a lower-court order that said individuals set to be deported to third countries must be given meaningful notice of their intended destination, allowing them time to raise objections.

The Trump administration, which asked the Supreme Court to intervene, argued a trial judge had improperly interfered with the president’s authority over foreign affairs.

As is typical in emergency orders from the high court, the majority didn’t explain its reasoning. The court’s three liberals dissented and accused the majority of ignoring due-process requirements for migrants who may be sent to unfamiliar countries.

“Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The case involved a class of migrants who were facing final orders that allowed them to be removed from the U.S. The Supreme Court’s order doesn’t resolve questions about the Trump administration’s legal obligations to the migrants, which continues to be litigated in the lower courts. But practically speaking, it could have an immediate impact, with the administration signaling it plans to move quickly.

This does not allow proper time for adjudication of migrants’ claims by immigration courts. I can only imagine what someone feels about to be deported a country that they didn’t come from. What do you do? Where do yu go? The Trump administration has shown a notable lack of empathy about these issues; they merely want to get rid of immigrants, and it doesn’t much matter where they go.

*Finally, a federal judge indefinitely blocked Trump’s order banning Harvard’s ability to accept foreign students.

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to host international students and scholars while legal challenges continue.

The preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Allison Burroughs extends a temporary block the judge had issued last month against the administration after it revoked the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which allows it to host foreign students and scholars. International students make up roughly a quarter of the school’s student body.

Harvard’s legal battle against the administration took a turn in recent weeks after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation that suspends international visas for new students. The judge similarly stepped in on an emergency basis to halt that order in early June, and she heard arguments on Monday over whether she should also indefinitely block the edict. She has not yet issued a ruling on Trump’s proclamation.

Friday’s ruling represents a key win for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, which Trump targeted earlier this year over allegations that it hadn’t adequately addressed antisemitism on campus. Administration officials also demanded that the private school eliminate what it calls “racist ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ practices.”

Again, this is a temporary order, and in the end Trump may prevail. That would be bad, as Harvard—and other schools—need to consider foreign applicants. Some of our finest students, including many who stay in the U.S. to enrich our culture and bolster America’s reputation for excellence, come from outside America. This is part of Trump’s continuing reprisals against Harvard.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej were out on a walk when Hili wants to return home:

Hili: Let’s return home.
A: Why? It was you who wanted to go out.
Hili: Yes, but now I have to check whether somebody has eaten from my bowl.
In Polish:
Hili: Wracamy do domu.
Ja: Dlaczego, przecież to ty chciałaś wyjść?
Hili: Tak, ale teraz muszę sprawdzić, czy ktoś nie wyjadł karmy z mojej miseczki.

*******************

From The Dodo Pet:

From Stacy:

From Things With Faces: A quesadilla that looks like either a pony or a hedgehog.

From Masih. I worried about Israel’s bombing of Evin Prison, where political prisoners are sequestered, tortured, and killed. Wouldn’t the bombs kill the people Israel wanted to release. I can guess only that the strike was targeted, designed to allow prisoners to escape. That apparently failed.

From Luana; a tweet relevant to some of the news above:

From Michael, two of our favorite animals: cats and capybaras:

From Malcolm: Cat (at bottom) introduces her kitten to a friendly d*g:

From my feed; one that will make you tear up. The thread has other lovely tweets:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish boy was gassed upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was fifteen.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-24T11:09:42.769Z

Two posts from Matthew. First, superstar Mary Pickford and her moggy:

#OnThisDay, 24 June 1916, Mary Pickford becomes the first Hollywood star to sign a million-dollar contract.#ReclaimTheFrame #HollywoodHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️1/2

— Carve Her Name (@carvehername.bsky.social) 2025-06-24T08:00:03.000Z

. . . and the Vera Rubin Observatory is online in Chile. Here’s a great image (note the spiral nebulas):

We're celebrating today with the release of the first images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory). This one, of part of the Virgo cluster, is my favourite.

— Chris Lintott (@chrislintott.bsky.social) 2025-06-23T06:16:00.939Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 23, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to what may well be a truncated version of the Hili dialogue, as I’m starting this on Sunday night and have no idea when I’ll get up tomorrow. (Note: I got up at 4 am local time, but got 7 hours of sleep, and have written most of it this morning.)

So good morning on Monday, June 23, 2025, and National Detroit-Style Pizza Day.

What in tarnation is that? Outside of Italy, there is is only Chicago pizza and New York pizza (and white clam pizza in New Haven(, and Chicago wins. Well, Wikipedia tells us this about Detroit-style “pizza”: it’s. . .

. . .a rectangular pan pizza with a thick, crisp, chewy crust. It is traditionally topped to the edges with mozzarella or Wisconsin brick cheese, which caramelizes against the high-sided heavyweight rectangular pan. Detroit-style pizza was originally baked in rectangular steel trays designed for use as automotive drip pans or to hold small industrial parts in factories. It was developed during the mid-20th century in Detroit, Michigan, before spreading to other parts of the United States in the 2010s. It is one of Detroit’s most famous local foods.

Here is is, and for crying out loud it’s just a rectangular pizza with local cheese. Give me a stuffed pizza over this any day:

CarbertWiki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Pecan Sandies Day (a cookie), Pink Flamingo Day, and National Hydration Day.

It’s gonna be a hot one in the next few days, with a predicted high temperature in NYC of 96° today and 98° tomorrow, and that’s leaving out the humidity, which will make it feel several degrees above 100°F.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The war between Israel and Iran continues, with the U.S. stepping aside after its bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities while Israel continues to attack:

Israel fired a new round of strikes at Tehran and other Iranian cities early on Monday, and the Israeli military said it had identified missiles launched from Iran, hours after President Trump raised the prospect of regime change in the Islamic Republic.

. . . The new attacks came a day after U.S. bombers and submarines unleashed heavy strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities, and as the state of Tehran’s nuclear program remained unclear. Top U.S. officials said it was too soon to say whether Iran still retained the ability to make a nuclear weapon and the location of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium was unknown, even as Mr. Trump doubled down on his claim that Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities had been “obliterated.”

, , , Israel’s Air Force is attacking “military infrastructure sites” in the Iranian province of Kermanshah, the Israeli military said in a statement. The province, in western Iran, borders Iraq and lies hundreds of miles from Tehran and the three nuclear sites that the U.S. attacked on Sunday.

Israeli fighter jets attacked surface-to-surface missile launchers and storage sites in Kermanshah, the military later said, calling it part of Israel’s broader aim of degrading Iran’s military capabilities.

The Times of Israel reports Iranian missile attacks on Israel, but they were limited:

Just six or seven missiles were launched from Iran in four waves in the attack a short while ago, according to updated IDF assessments.

The missiles were fired over a 40-minute period.

There are no reports of injuries. Several impacts were reported in open areas.

One impact next to a power station in southern Israel has caused outages in nearby towns, according to the Israel Electric Corporation.

The NYT published a map of where the U.S. attacked Iran; I’ve reproduced the NYT’s caption (click to enlarge):

Sources: New York Times analysis of satellite imagery from Airbus, Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs; local news reports; and verified social photos and videos. Note: Map shows confirmed locations of strikes and is not comprehensive. The New York Times

What impresses me is how close to each other the six bomb entry points are at Fordo: there are two groups of three. The U.S. appears to have been targeting the ventilation shafts at the enrichment plant, which, if true, is a clever move since the already-dug shafts would obviate the need for the bunker busters to penetrate hundreds of feet of rock. This video shows some of the entry points:

*Meanwhile, the NYT reports that Trump’s waffling about whether he’d take two weeks before deciding to strike Iran appears to have been an elaborate ruse.  The decision had already been made when Carolin Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, announced the “two week decision period” bit (article archived here):

Mr. Trump had been under pressure from the noninterventionist wing of his party to stay out of the conflict, and was having lunch that day with one of the most outspoken opponents of a bombing campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, fueling speculation that he might hold off.

It was almost entirely a deception. Mr. Trump had all but made up his mind to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the military preparations were well underway for the complex attack. Less than 30 hours after Ms. Leavitt relayed his statement, he would give the order for an assault that put the United States in the middle of the latest conflict to break out in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Mr. Trump’s “two weeks” statement was just one aspect of a broader effort at political and military misdirection that took place over eight chaotic days, from the first Israeli strikes against Iran to the moment when a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers took off from Missouri for the first American military strikes inside Iran since that country’s theocratic revolution in 1979.

. . .The strike plan was largely in place when Mr. Trump issued his Thursday statement about how he might take up to two weeks to decide to go to war with Iran. Refueling tankers and fighter jets had been moved into position, and the military was working on providing additional protection for American forces stationed in the region.

While the “two weeks” statement bought the president more time for last-minute diplomacy, military officials said that ruse and the head fake with the B-2s also had the effect of cleaning up a mess — the telegraphing of the attack — that was partly of the president’s making.

The “head fake” was that the U.S. had, as part of the deception, sent a strike force of B-2 bombers from another direction, across the Pacific (the bombers that actually struck Fordo came from Missouri and traveled west):

These public pronouncements [Trump’s public waffling] generated angst at the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, where military planners began to worry that Mr. Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike.

They built their own deception into the attack plan: a second group of B-2 bombers that would leave Missouri and head west over the Pacific Ocean in a way that flight trackers would be able to monitor on Saturday. That left a misimpression, for many observers and presumably Iran, about the timing and path of the attack, which would come from another direction entirely.

Now it’s not clear whether Trump was resolved to give the order to bomb when he made the “two weeks” statement, but what is certain is that the military, under his orders, had already prepared an elaborate attack plan,  The extent of the damage is unknown, and there are some reports (see photos here) that a fleet of trucks had removed enriched uranium from Fordo before the bombing:

There was also evidence, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days. And there was growing evidence that the Iranians, attuned to Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to take military action, had removed 400 kilograms, or roughly 880 pounds, of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. That is just below the 90 percent that is usually used in nuclear weapons.

Finally, there have been protests in America against by bombings, but according to the NYT they are more limited than I predicted:

Protesters in more than a dozen U.S. cities demonstrated on Sunday against the Trump administration’s airstrikes on Iran.

Some rallies attracted hundreds, while others drew dozens. The overall turnout was far less than last weekend’s “No Kings” protests against the president that were held in all 50 states. Many of Sunday’s demonstrations, held in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, were arranged late Saturday and had been described by organizers as “emergency mobilizations.”

*The international opprobrium against the U.S. for striking Iran has been widespread, with UK PM Kier Starmer being an exception, but still calling for restraint. I found three op-ed pieces that were pretty praiseworthy, and one (by Tom “I am Dumb” Friedman) being deeply confused.

At the NYT Bret Stephens, whose writing on the war I admire, had an op-ed called “Trump’s courageous and correct decision” (archived here). A short excerpt:

For decades, a succession of American presidents pledged that they were willing to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But it was President Trump who, by bombing three of Iran’s key nuclear sites on Sunday morning, was willing to demonstrate that those pledges were not hollow and that Tehran could not simply tunnel its way to a bomb because no country other than Israel dared confront it.

That’s a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect, no matter how one feels about this president and the rest of his policies. Politically, the easier course would have been to delay a strike to appease his party’s isolationist voices, whose views about the Middle East (and antipathies toward the Jewish state) increasingly resemble those of the progressive left. In the meantime, Trump could have continued to outsource the dirty work of hitting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to Israel, hoping that it could at least buy the West some diplomatic leverage and breathing room.

. . .one set of risks must be weighed against another, and there are few greater risks to American security than a nuclear Iran.

The regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is ideologically committed to the annihilation of Israel and is currently attacking it with indiscriminate missile fire on civilian targets. It is an ally of North Korea, China and Russia — and supplies many of the drones Russia uses to attack Ukraine. It is developing and fielding thousands of ballistic missiles of increasingly greater reach. Its acquisition of a bomb would set off an arms race in the Middle East. And it has sought to assassinate American citizens on American soil. If all this is not intolerable, what is?

Apparently it is tolerable to those who, determined to criticize everything that Trump does, cannot force themselves to admit that the U.S. strike was timely, clever, and well executed. This mindset does not allow Trump to do anything positive, even if it’s by accident.

The second positive op-ed is in by the editorial board of the Free Press: “Trump keeps his promise on Iran. The world is safer for it” (archived here).

In a moment of political decisiveness and courage, Trump deployed those bombs, despite strenuous objections from the “restrainers” in his administration and parts of the MAGA coalition.

“There’s no military that could’ve done what we did,” Trump said during a brief speech to the nation Saturday night. He is correct. As Niall Ferguson and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant recently noted in these pages, Fordow was essentially impervious to assault. There was one bomb that could cut through its defenses: America’s GBU 57A/B Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP). And there was only one plane built to deliver that bomb: the American B-2 Spirit.

“With a single exertion of its unmatched military strength,” Ferguson and Gallant wrote, “the United States can shorten the war, prevent wider escalation, and end the principal threat to Middle Eastern stability. It can also send a signal to those other authoritarian powers who have been Iran’s enablers that American deterrence is back.”

That is exactly what this White House has done.

Well, the Free Press‘s enthusiasm may be premature, but I share their approbation. And that does not make me an unalloyed fan of Trump, which of course I am not.

Finally, Sam Harris has a piece called “The right war,” which I can’t access though I have a subscription. Here’s part of what’s visible:

For all his faults, President Trump is now the first U.S. president to take decisive action against the terror state of Iran. Of course, there is a risk that he could exploit this war to justify further authoritarian measures at home, but I believe that the decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was both necessary and courageous.

No doubt, the President drew most of his courage from the success of Israel’s recent military operations—both within Iran and against its proxies throughout the region. Without these astonishing achievements, it is hard to imagine him choosing to attack Iran on his own. Unsurprisingly, President Trump declared our attempt to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability a complete success, long before anyone could know the actual result. Still, bombing these sites seemed like the right thing to do.

*Finally, Tom Friedman, who has been lame throughout this crisis, proposes his “solution”, which is, as usual, untenable (op-ed archived here).

The real knockout blow to Iran and all the resisters — and the keystone that would make it easy as pie for Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to normalize relations with Israel and consolidate the victory for the forces of inclusion — is for Trump to tell Netanyahu: “Get out of Gaza in return for a cease-fire from Hamas and the return of all Israeli hostages. Let an Arab peacekeeping force move in there, blessed by a reformed Palestinian Authority, and then begin what will have to be a long process of Palestinians building a credible governing structure in return for a halt to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. That would create the best conditions to birth a Palestinian state there.”

I don’t think Israel wants to permanently occupy Gaza, but the idea that there could be an immediate cease-fire, with Hamas relinquishing power and returning all the hostages, is totally stupid and ignorant. Hamas does not want to give up either power or hostages, and Israel will not stop fighting in Gaza until Hamas does (the hostages might of course have been killed).

And Friedman unaccountably still trusts the Palestinian Authority—another pro-terror organization sworn to destroy Israel—to be part of a joint peacekeeping force with other Arab states, who themselves want no part of policing Gaza.

Friedman simply mouths pious words but seems to have no idea of the passions that inflame both Hamas and Israel (the latter wants no part of a “two state” solution right now). The man is delusional, and should not be writing for the NYT.

*The pro-Isael Elder of Ziyon has a nice memorial for Malgorzata, who translated the site’s articles into Polish:

Here is the Polish Rationalist Society’s obituary for Malgorzata, which Google can translate into English (click to read):

An excerpt:

   It was Małgorzata Koraszewska who translated and searched for texts showing us all the situation of atheists and freethinkers in the world. It was mainly thanks to her that many of us had a chance to move from the provincial world of anticlericals criticizing the local church to the real world full of dangerous secular and religious ideologies. It was Małgorzata who was one of the main builders of a truly rational and humanistic awareness of what is really happening in the world understood as a global village in which we live, and not distant fairy-tale lands that are indifferent to us.

Andrzej and Małgorzata Koraszewski were awarded the title of Rationalists of the Year by PSR, due to their enormous contribution to rational thought, to the fight against dogmas that build various ideologies in defenseless human minds. You have probably noticed that we have not been awarding this prize for some time. This is no coincidence. It is currently difficult to find people in Poland who would match the scale of their activities and achievements of Małgorzata and Andrzej Koraszewski.

Małgorzata was and is my heroine! If you want to honor her, follow in her footsteps! Be distrustful and skeptical of media and political witch hunts. When learning about difficult topics, look for sources and think independently. Be like investigative journalists, without this you will drown in a sea of ​​propaganda. Finding the truth, or a more true picture of a given event or phenomenon, is a very exhausting challenge. And when you possess this truth, you will often be stigmatized, like Małgorzata and Andrzej defending a cause as “unfashionable” as the case of Israel. So you will face hardship and there will most likely be no reward from the circles you associate with. On the contrary, there will be criticism, often stupid and unfair. However, deep inside, in your hearts, you will be winners. You will have a chance to become wiser, just as the repeaters of propaganda and dogmas do not become better. So if you want sometimes painful wisdom, instead of blissful stagnation that drowns in indolence, do not forget about Małgorzata. Reach for the texts she translated and go further, to the sources, to the truth, to justice.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is puzzled:

Hili: What did I come here for?
A: And where have you been?
Hili: By the well.
A: Go back there, you may remember.

In Polish:

Hili: Po co ja tu przyszłam?
Ja: A gdzie byłaś?
Hili: Koło studni.
Ja: Wróć tam, może sobie przypomnisz.

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From Stacy; Day-O!

From Now That’s Wild:

From CinEmma:

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Yes, Americans are already extolling the wonderfulness of the Iranian regime, like the woman on the right below. Masih has a message for them:

From Barry. I have no idea what it’s about, but it’s funny:

From Luana. These are the people like the woman on the right in the first tweet above:

I found two tweets, but the one I want to emphasize, and which I used to post about, is the second one:

From Malcolm: a polite d*g:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish boy was sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was nine.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-23T08:23:53.599Z

Two posts from Matthew. First, an ancient cat:

I love this photo from my collection that was correctly framed to cut off the dude's head but catch the photobombing cat.

— Cats of Yore (@catsofyore.bsky.social) 2025-06-22T17:44:36.496Z

And birds who know what they want:

Hace mucha calor.Definición gráfica.Besitos

— Carla B™ (@carlab.bsky.social) 2025-06-21T15:57:48.946Z