Category: Hili Dialogue

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 19, 2025 • 6:45 am

We are back with a new Hili dialogue sent by Andrzej!

Welcome to Thursday, June 19, 2026 and World Albatross Day. In honor of these amazing birds, here’s a short video about Wisdom, a Laysan Albatross who is a record holder. She is at at least 70 years old:

Wisdom (officially designated #Z333) is a wild female Laysan albatross, the oldest confirmed wild bird in the world and the oldest banded bird in the world.  First tagged in 1956 at Midway Atoll by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), she was still incubating eggs as late as 2024 and has received international media coverage in her lifetime. She was spotted alive and apparently healthy as recently as February 2025.

. . . The USGS has tracked Wisdom since she was first tagged and estimated that Wisdom has flown over 3,000,000 miles (4,800,000 km) since 1956 (approximately 120 times the circumference of the Earth). To accommodate her longevity, the USGS has replaced her tag a total of six times

. . .  Albatrosses lay one egg per year, and usually have monogamous mates for life. Smithsonian speculated that, due to Wisdom’s unusual longevity, she has had to find several successive mates in order to continue breeding.  Biologists estimated that Wisdom has laid some 30–40 eggs in her lifetime and that she has at least 30–36 chicks.

Here is her latest chick from February 2 of this year. Isn’t it cute? That is Wisdom’s mate looking after it.

Here is Wisdom and a chick from 2011. She sure doesn’t look old, does she?

John Klavitter/U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Corpus Christi, National Eat an Oreo Day, National Martini Day, World Tapas Day, and the federal U.S. holiday of Juneteenth, marking the day in 1865 when “Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War”.  Slavery and the war had of course ended by then (the war was over on April 9 of that year), but the news got to Texas last. There’s a Google Doodle on the holiday today; click picture below to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Times of Israel reports that Iran will mount a strong response if the U.S. joins Israel’s strikes, while the IDF says that it’s hit 1,100 Iranian targets since bombing started on Friday.  Meanwhile, the odious President of Turkey is defending Iran and saying that Netanyahu is worse than Hitler. Turkey should be booted out of NATO:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Iran has the “legitimate” right to defend itself in the face of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign against military and nuclear targets, now in its sixth day.

“It is a very natural, legitimate and legal right for Iran to defend itself against Israel’s thuggery and state terrorism,” the Turkish leader says, a day after he referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the biggest threat to the security of the region.”

He also says Netanyahu had surpassed Adolf Hitler in committing crimes of “genocide” in Gaza. It is not the first time Erdogan has compared Netanyahu to the Nazi leader.

More war news:

Apparently many centrifuges used to enrich uranium have been knocked out of action, but the big underground facilities have not yet been touched (Israel may want to just seal the entrance tunnels, but that would be a temporary measure:

Israel hit two centrifuge production sites in Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms.

The IAEA identifies the facilities as the TESA complex in Karaj and the Tehran Research Center.

“At the Tehran site, one building was hit where advanced centrifuge rotors were manufactured and tested,” says the IAEA on X. “At Karaj, two buildings were destroyed where different centrifuge components were manufactured.”

Both sites had been under IAEA monitoring as part of the 2015 JCPOA agreement.

The TESA complex, near the capital Tehran, hosted a workshop to build components for centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium. In 2021, Iran said cameras at the site were damaged during what it called an Israeli “sabotage” operation.

And from the WSJ:

Germany’s chancellor said what many countries are thinking, but of course French President Macron would never say anything like that. The difference in sentiments of Germany vs. France towards Israel is striking

*From the WaPo: more internecine squabbling among Democrats is outlined in a piece called “Democrats want to fight Trump, but they can’t stop fighting each other” (article archived here):

Many Democratic leaders and activists have grown frustrated with the state of their national party operation, worrying that a spate of internal divisions and unflattering feuds threatens to hinder their fight against President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

The Democratic National Committee, typically the domain of nuts and bolts political activity, has been rocked by clashes that reflect broader generational and ideological strains in the party. Now, some prominent Democrats are openly questioning the direction of the DNC under the leadership of Chair Ken Martin, with some suggesting it is stifling input from dissenting voices and refusing to change in a way that is risky for future elections. Others are blaming rival factions for adding to the party’s challenges by intervening in primaries and embracing personal vendettas. And many are simply fed up with all the rancor.

The criticism is still flying.

The DNC has “got to do a better of job of communicating with members and Democratic electeds and other members of our coalition,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) said Tuesday. She added that the problem is “contributing to significant tension right now” and that Martin “needs to be pulling people together.”

. . . . . While the task of rebuilding for 2026 and 2028 will fall to many entities and leaders beyond the DNC, which tends to have a narrower mission, the committee’s challenges highlight a party struggling to find its way after a crushing political defeat shut them out of power in Washington. Widespread anger with Trump’s agenda has presented Democrats with an opportunity to regain lost ground, but they disagree on the best ways to accomplish that.

The two choices are a) become more centrist become aware of what issues most concern voters, and try to cater to Trump voters who aren’t fond of Trump, or b) go Full Progressive and lose the elections for sure.

For other Democrats, the timing of the latest party drama was especially infuriating. They were eager to seize momentum coming out of a weekend of nationwide anti-Trump protests — and focused on grieving a tragedy in Martin’s home state of Minnesota. As news of the labor union departures broke this weekend, Martin — the former chair of the Minnesota Democratic—Farmer—Labor Party — was mourning the murder of his close friend Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota lawmaker, and her husband, Mark Hortman. Authorities said the attack was politically motivated.

. . . . “Every minute we’re not talking about Donald Trump overstepping his authority, and we’re having to talk about David Hogg and the DNC, we’re losing,” said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha. “This is just fodder to show people that the poor Democratic Party can’t even govern itself.”

I am not a pundit, but I would suggest that Democrats take a view of Trump in which they call him out for the bad things he does (most of them), but be a bit more bipartisan and admit it when he does something decent (like helping Israel). But of course that’s not the way that politics works: one must totally demonize the opponent. I understand that.

*Jonathan Haidt, Will Johnson, and Zach Raush have a joint op-ed in the NYT called “There is a way to bring back childhood“, with the subtitle, “The smartphones haven’t defeated us. Yet” (archived here). It involves cellphones, something that Haidt has criticized for years as a thief of childhood. A few excerpts from a long piece:

Since the dawn of the television age, parents have struggled to limit or guide their children’s screen time.

But with the arrival of smartphones that can — and do — go everywhere and with social media apps that teenagers now use for an average of five hours every day, many parents feel a sense of resignation. The struggle has been lost. Parents who try to delay giving a smartphone until high school or social media until 16 know that they’ll face the plaintive cry from their children: “But I’m the only one!”

To better understand the tensions over technology playing out in American families, we worked with the Harris Poll to conduct two surveys. As we reported last year, our survey of 1,006 members of Gen Z found that many young people feel trapped — tethered to digital products like TikTok and Snapchat. Nearly half of all participants expressed regret about having access to many of the most popular social media platforms.

Here we present the second part of our investigation: a nationally representative survey of 1,013 parents who have children under 18. The overall picture isn’t any better. We find widespread feelings of entrapment and regret. Many parents gave their children smartphones and social media access early in their lives — yet many wish that social media had never been invented, and overwhelmingly they support new social norms and policies that would protect kids from online harms.

. . .Almost a third of parents whose children have social media believe they gave their child access to social media too young, and 22 percent feel similarly for smartphones. Notably, for both technologies, only 1 percent of parents thought they had waited too long to introduce them. In other words, parents regret the technologies they gave, not the technologies they withheld.

Why did so many parents make decisions that they regret? One major reason is that in the brief period when flip phones and other basic phones were replaced by smartphones, roughly from 2010 to 2015, there was a pervasive sense of techno-optimism. Most people were amazed by the new technology and its beneficial applications — from the mundane like hailing a car service to the profound like bringing down a dictatorship.

Here’s a figure from the article:

And the solution, which Haidt has proposed before, is to ban the use of smartphones in schools, comme ça:

Every school in Brazil has gone phone-free bell-to-bell. Australia has raised the age for opening social media accounts to 16; other countries are quite likely to follow suit. The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, recently announced his intention to enact a minimum age of 15 for social media use in France if the European Union does not enact a similar restriction first.

With tech companies eagerly filling our children’s lives — and their classrooms — with more new and untested technologies (A.I. “friends,” tutors and other forms of virtual reality), it is becoming that much more urgent for parents to speak up and for legislators to act.

The goal of these reforms isn’t just to limit screens. It’s much bigger than that. The goal is to restore childhood.

All I can say is that I agree.  Not only do smartphones they steal childhood, but they steal education and they shorten people’s attention spans. Articles are getting shorter, and it’s not uncommon to see a “reading time” appended to an article, the object being to allow you to reject those articles which are too long.

*The WaPo discusses why many people who were in favor of Trump’s anti-immigration policies are now alarmed by how they’re being enforced.

“They said only criminals, and now they’re saying, ‘Well, they did come in illegally, so they are criminals,’” [Jesus Martinez] added. “Hispanics or Latinos that voted for Trump, they didn’t think he was going to go after kids.”

Trump’s promises to crack down on illegal immigration helped him win back the White House in 2024 and increase his voting share among young voters, working-class people and Latinos. But interviews with more than four dozen people in the Antelope Valley, a closely divided region of the state about an hour north of Los Angeles, show that tactics very much matter.

In this working-class and heavily Latino area known for its wildflower blooms, a region that moved toward Trump in the 2024 election, voters from both parties voiced support for Trump’s promises to deport immigrants who are here illegally, especially those with criminal records.But they drew lines — some over the scope of those deportations and, to a lesser extent, over his decision to crack down on immigration protesters with the military.

. . .The interviews reflect what public polls increasingly show: that many Americans are uncomfortable with Trump’s recent moves. Nearly half of American adults, 49 percent, said Trump went too far with arrests of immigrants, while 40 percent said he had not, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week. Eleven percent said they were unsure

That gives Democrats a potential opening on an issue that helped propel Trump to victory in 2024, when many voters blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a surge of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has tried in recent days to highlight immigration raids at worksites that have separated children from their parents. That has drawn attention on social media.

But Democrats have yet to coalesce around a message amid debates over whether past attempts to counter Trump have pushed the party too far left.

Yes, this gives Democrats an opening, but they do need their own policy, and one that does NOT appear to party’s stand favoring open borders. That has been people’s impression of Democrats for too long. And yes, criminal undocumented immigrants should be dealt with first, before we decide to do anything about the rest. But undocumented or not, every immigrant facing deportation needs a court hearing, even if the case is open and shut.  A Democratic call for anything that looks like open borders will be the kiss of death in future elections.

*The AP reports something very cool: a pair of precisely aligned satellites can create for the satellite nearest to Earth a total solar eclipse, which can be photographed, allowing us to look at the Sun’s corona for hours at a time rather than just very briefly during a normal solar eclipse. Of course we can’t see this eclipse on Earth, but the observation of the corona in space is important, and the methodology is precise and amazing:

A pair of European satellites have created the first artificial solar eclipses by flying in precise and fancy formation, providing hours of on-demand totality for scientists.

The European Space Agency released the eclipse pictures at the Paris Air Show on Monday. Launched late last year, the orbiting duo have churned out simulated solar eclipses since March while zooming tens of thousands of miles (kilometers) above Earth.

Flying 492 feet (150 meters) apart, one satellite blocks the sun like the moon does during a natural total solar eclipse as the other aims its telescope at the corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere that forms a crown or halo of light.

It’s an intricate, prolonged dance requiring extreme precision by the cube-shaped spacecraft, less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) in size. Their flying accuracy needs to be within a mere millimeter, the thickness of a fingernail. This meticulous positioning is achieved autonomously through GPS navigation, star trackers, lasers and radio links.

Dubbed Proba-3, the $210 million mission has generated 10 successful solar eclipses so far during the ongoing checkout phase. The longest eclipse lasted five hours, said the Royal Observatory of Belgium’s Andrei Zhukov, the lead scientist for the orbiting corona-observing telescope. He and his team are aiming for a wondrous six hours of totality per eclipse once scientific observations begin in July.

Scientists already are thrilled by the preliminary results that show the corona without the need for any special image processing, said Zhukov.

“We almost couldn’t believe our eyes,” Zhukov said in an email. “This was the first try, and it worked. It was so incredible.”

. . . . While previous satellites have generated imitation solar eclipses — including the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar Orbiter and Soho observatory — the sun-blocking disk was always on the same spacecraft as the corona-observing telescope. What makes this mission unique, Zhukov said, is that the sun-shrouding disk and telescope are on two different satellites and therefore far apart.

The distance between these two satellites will give scientists a better look at the part of the corona closest to the limb of the sun.

And of course you want to see a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gives a political answer to Hili’s question:

Hili: So many yellow flowers.
Andrzej: Don’t worry, we will mow them and people against mowing the grass will shout.

In Polish:

Hili: Strasznie dużo tych żółtych kwiatków.
Ja: Nic się nie martw, skosimy i znów przeciwnicy koszenia trawy będą krzyczeć.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From CinEmma:

From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!! But this is a good optical illusion:

Masih rebukes the Israeli government for evacuation warnings that were not issued at an appropriate time:

From Luana: Woke Pecksniffery:

From Simon: Our Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs serving as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq> She knows whereof she speaks!

damn — Duckworth to Hegseth: "If you want to be the DHS secretary, maybe you can apply for that job when you're fired from this one due to your incompetence."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-06-18T15:47:40.707Z

From Malcolm, a dog “Learning to drive”. No, they can’t drive on public roads, but they do a pretty good job!

From my feed; the players apparently beat up on Caitlin Clark because she’s so damn good. That’s reprehensible:

One that I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A German Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was eight years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-19T09:04:02.622Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. The first one was a good idea in principle, but the history of the red handprints made it a very bad idea:

Thank you to my son and his day care for this terrifying Father’s Day gift.

— Dan McQuade (@dhm.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T12:58:11.656Z

We now have a skull from a new hominin find (we only had finger bones and mandibles before), and it’s clearly a Denisovan. I’m glad that Matthew agrees that Denisovans were members of Homo sapiens rather than some other species; after all, they interbred with H. sapiens in nature and produced fertile hybrids).

Look upon a Denisovan! “Dragon man”, as most suspected, is indeed a Denisovan. But I hope we don’t adopt the Homo longi name that was given to the skull. These ppl, like Neanderthals, were clearly the same biological species as us, irrespective of their lumps and bumps!

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-18T17:00:15.859Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 18, 2025 • 6:15 am

There will be no Hili dialogue today, as those required the collaboration of Andrzej, who took the pictures and made up the dialogues, and Malgorzata, who translated Andrzej’s Polish into English. In honor of Malgorzata, who passed away yesterday, I will continue to call the morning posts “Hili dialogues.”  I do not know if we’ll have any more.

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Горб көнө” in Bashkir), Wednesday, June 18, 2025, and International Picnic Day. (Picnics on a weekday?)  Here’s a picnic-themed Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson:

Posting will be light for a week or so as I’m preparing for the Heterodox Academy conference in NYC, where I’m on a panel, and Malgorzata’s death has hit me pretty hard.

It’s also International Sushi Day, and (blessed be the) National Cheesemakers Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Iran/Israel war is continuing, with Israel controlling the skies over Iran and gaining the upper hand in the war. They just killed the replacement for the commander of the Iranian military, a man who had been killed four days ago. Meanwhile, Iran continues to fire missiles into Israel, though most are shot down. Several Israelis were injured yesterday:

Israel claimed it killed another senior Iranian military official on Tuesday, as President Trump returned to Washington to deal with the war between Iran and Israel.

Since Israel began striking Iran on Friday, it has dealt a major blow to Iran’s military chain of command, killing at least 11 senior generals. On Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said it had killed Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, describing him as the most senior military commander in Iran. He had been appointed to his post just four days ago, replacing a general who was killed by Israel on the first day of hostilities.

Iran did not immediately comment on Israel’s claim about General Shadmani. If confirmed, the killing could further destabilize what remains of Iran’s besieged military leadership.

As the two sides continued to exchange deadly fire, and Israeli officials pressed the United States to join its military campaign against Tehran, Mr. Trump departed early from a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Alberta, Canada. On the flight home, he told reporters that he was looking for something “better than a cease-fire” between Israel and Iran.

“A real end, not a cease-fire,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force 1, saying he wanted Iran to give up while insisting that Tehran abandon any effort to develop nuclear weapons. “I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate,” he added.

I wonder if he’s thinking about bunker-buster bombs (see below). Meanwhile, Iranian missiles struck several places in central Israel, injuring five, Israel continues to bomb oil refineries, Tehran is subject to continual Israeli attacks on strategic targets, And although Trump had vetoed Israel’s plans to take out Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Israel is still contemplating that anyway, for Khamenei is dictating Iranian military strategy:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday did not rule out plans to target Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Instead, he suggested that it would be a surefire way to “end the conflict” with the Islamic Republic.

Asked during an ABC News interview about reports that US President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the Iranian supreme leader out of concern that it would escalate the fighting between the two countries further, Netanyahu was dismissive.

“It’s not going to escalate the conflict, it’s going to end the conflict,” he said.

“We’ve had half a century of conflict spread by this regime that terrorizes everyone in the Middle East,” said the premier. “The ‘forever war’ is what Iran wants, and they’re bringing us to the brink of nuclear war.”

“In fact, what Israel is doing is preventing this, bringing an end to this aggression, and we can only do so by standing up to the forces of evil,” he added.

Netanyahu did not reveal whether or not Israel would target Khamenei, saying only: “We’re doing what we need to do.”

Finally, an ambiguous statement by Trump:

US President Donald Trump said late Monday that the US is “not looking for a ceasefire,” but rather a “real end” to the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, and that, after two months of talks in which Iran refused to dismantle its program, he is “not in the mood to negotiate.”

“We’re looking for better than a ceasefire,” he told reporters on Air Force One during his overnight flight back to Washington. Asked what would entail, he said, “An end. A real end. Not a ceasefire. An end… Or giving up entirely. That’s okay too.”

“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, it’s very simple,” Trump said.

If there was one thing that Israel could do to bring on an Iranian revolution with an overthrow of the regime by the people (who by and large detest the theocracy), it would be taking out Khameni. Iran is full of lovely and ambitious people whose ambitions and ideas have been ruthlessly suppressed, and it has a great potential as a country. But not as a medieval theocracy in which women have no opportunities. Trump’s statement makes me believe he’s thinking of taking further U.S. action beyond brokering a phony “cease fire”.

*Now the U.S., or rather Trump as Commander-in-Chief, faces a hard choice, “Last-chance diplomacy or a bunker-busting bomb” (article archived here).

President Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America’s biggest “bunker buster,” dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach.

If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing.

Mr. Trump had at one point encouraged his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and possibly Vice President JD Vance, to offer to meet the Iranians, according to a U.S. official. But on Monday Mr. Trump posted on social media that “everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran,” hardly a sign of diplomatic progress.

Mr. Trump also said on Monday that “I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.”

The urgency appeared to be rising. The White House announced late on Monday that Mr. Trump was leaving the Group of 7 summit early because of the situation in the Middle East.

“As soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something,” Mr. Trump said. “But I have to leave here.”

What he intended to do remained unclear.

And this morning, “Trump suggests that U.S. is open to action against Iran.”:

Fears of a wider war were growing on Tuesday after President Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” cited the possibility of killing its supreme leader and referred to Israel’s war efforts with the word “we” — all apparent suggestions that the United States could enter the conflict against Iran.

As the Trump administration contemplates next steps, in Israel and Iran, the conflict continues unabated into its sixth day. Past midnight, on Wednesday, sirens sounded in areas of Israel and the Israeli military said it had detected Iranian missile launches, on two occasions in short succession.

Around the same time, the Israeli military published an evacuation warning for an industrial area in Tehran, the Iranian capital, saying it would be taking action in the coming hours to attack military infrastructure there, and shortly afterward said its Air Force was conducting a series of strikes in the area of Tehran.

I think it that Trump’s “doing something” refers to Iran. This is the way I see it: if we and the West are serious in the determination to not letting Iran build nuclear weapons, then there is no kind of “deal” to be struck that will prevent that. Iran has always lied and cheated about its ambitions, and it has just been caught again. The only thing to prevent that will be to destroy its nuclear capabilities.  An overthrow of the government would also ensure that, because the Iranian people don’t want the endless warring that comes with their country threatening the Middle East with nukes. My guess

*It looks as if the news will be mostly about Iran/Israel today. The WSJ just reported that “Trump calls for unconditional surrender as he loses patience with Iran.”

President Trump warned he is losing patience with Iran, calling for unconditional surrender and saying he wouldn’t target the country’s leader “for now,” as he escalated his rhetoric toward Tehran.

Trump, in a series of social-media posts on Tuesday afternoon, said the U.S. knows where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is hiding. “He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “Our patience is wearing thin.”

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he wrote in a separate post.

Trump also said Tehran had lost control of Iran’s airspace. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump wrote. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

In his posts, Trump used the word “we,” but it wasn’t immediately clear if that meant that the U.S. is taking a more active role in Israel’s unfolding attacks on Iran. The U.S. has said it hasn’t joined Israel’s strikes.

Trump returned to Washington early Tuesday morning, leaving a Group of Seven leaders summit in Canada a day early to focus on the crisis in the Middle East. Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters he was looking for a “real end” to the conflict, not a cease-fire.

Yes, that “we” is ambiguous, but I doubt that the U.S. is going to engage is discussions about nukes in the near future.  Yes, even Trump has to know that Iran can’t be trusted, though Biden, Obama, and other Democratic Presidents didn’t seem to realize it.

*The Hill reports that a federal judge has walked back Trump’s orders to halt grants with a DEI or gender-ideology slant.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration’s canceling of federal health grants over their connections to “gender ideology” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” was unlawful and void.

U.S. District Court Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, ruled on Monday that targeting research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) based on certain topics was unlawful and arbitrary. The federal government has been directed to immediately make the funds available to grant recipients again.

In February, the NIH issued directives terminating grants relating to LGBTQ issues; gender identity; and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

In response, several organizations including the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Civil Liberties Union, Ibis Reproductive Health and others sued to reverse the directives.

“The ideologically motivated directives to terminate grants alleged to constitute DEI, ‘gender ideology,’ or other forbidden topics were, in fact, arbitrary and capricious, and have now been ruled unlawful,” said Peter G. Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a plaintiff in the case.

“We’re certainly very pleased with the judge’s decision, and actually the way he portrayed it as, you know, discrimination. I think that’s pure and simple, that the administration was trying to undermine the health and well-being of these populations,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the APHA, told The Hill.

The federal government plans to appeal or halt Young’s ruling.

“HHS stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people,” Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

“Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy and the Trump administration, HHS is committed to ensuring that taxpayer dollars support programs rooted in evidence-based practices and gold standard science— not driven by divisive DEI mandates or gender ideology,” he added.

I have mixed feelings about what the government did. On one hand we shouldn’t be spending taxpayer money on ideologically motivated projects whose outcomes are all but predetermined. On the other hand, these grants were apparently sussed out by the government simply by looking at keyword searches in grant titles. That’s not a fair way to judge the value of a proposal, for some of these could have indeed have had a salubrious effect on public health. And it should be scientists who judge the grants, not the government. But of course the grants were already awarded, so they had been vetted and approved by panels of scientists. If there are indeed garbage grants being funded by the NIH, then scientists need to clean up their act. But I have no ideas about how to do that.

*The male boxer Imane Khelif, raised as a female, won a gold medal in the Paris Olympics in the women’s welterweight boxing competition, causing considerable controversy.  Doubt has swirled around his biological sex, as there was evidence he had an XY chromosome constitution, but he refused further testing, Now Khelif has withdrawn from a women’s boxing tournament in the Netherlands after it implemented a new sex testing policy (h/t Ginger K.)

The Algerian boxer who has caused significant controversy after taking home an Olympic gold medal in the women’s category last summer has now decided to exit a women’s tournament following the implementation of a new sex testing policy. Imane Khelif had previously been disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from competing against women, when, in 2023, a genetic test revealed that Khelif has a male karyotype.

In May, Khelif had been announced as a participant in the upcoming Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands, set to take place between June 5 – 10. According to a celebratory announcement from the Eindhoven event officials, now deleted from the organization’s social media, Khelif intended to defend his previous win at the 2024 iteration of the event.

However, on May 30 the sport authority World Boxing announced a new policy that would require mandatory sex testing for all boxers, in order to “ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women.”

World Boxing clarified in their statement that the new regulation was implemented in direct response to Khelif’s highly controversial bouts at the Paris Olympics – which saw multiple female athletes protest against his participation and generated international outcry.

“In light of plans to introduce this policy and the particular circumstances surrounding some boxers that competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing,” read the authority’s statement.

. . .Multiple international news outlets report that Khelif has failed to complete the registration process by the deadline for the Eindhoven Cup, effectively unofficially withdrawing from the match due to a refusal to undergo the sex test, which would have been conducted via a simple cheek swab. Despite the fact that he will not enter the tournament, social media for the Eindhoven Box Cup has been posting articles supportive of Khelif as the news of his absence there breaks.

Spokesperson for the Box Cup in Eindhoven, Dirk Renders, announced Khelif’s withdrawal to Dutch media while referring to him with feminine pronouns and emphasizing that this was not the decision of the organization. “She officially missed the deadline for registration for the tournament. Imane’s decision not to participate was not made by us. We are very sorry.”

But the mayor of the town apoparently wants biological males to box against women:

The Mayor of Eindhoven, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, expressed his opposition to the new sex screening policy by way of a letter to the World Boxing association. “All athletes are welcome in Eindhoven. Exclusion of athletes based on controversial ‘gender tests’ certainly does not fit in. We let our disapproval of this decision today and call on the organization to allow Imane Khelif to be admitted,” Dijsselbloem said.

Not likely!  Over at Reality’s Last Stand, Colin Wright explains that Khelif almost surely has a disorder (or “difference”) of sex determination that, while producing ambiguous genitalia at birth, also allowed him to go through male puberty, androgenizing his body and giving him the physique and musculature that got him the gold in Paris. In terms of the biological (gametic) definition of sex, Khelif was a male. While Khelif may have thought he was a female back then, since he was raised as one, he now has no excuse to refuse sex testing. And given World Boxing’s new policy, Khelif will likely have to box in male leagues or not at all.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is silent. This is a picture I took on a visit to Dobrzyn last November:

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

A flower I photographed on the way home yesterday:

From Cat Lovers:

From The Dodo Pet:

Like the U.S., Masih is telling Iran to surrender unconditionally. Do watch her video:

From a University of Chicago professor (one whom I can’t bear to call a “colleague”), Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion. It appears that his family shares an ideology, at least judging by the conviction of his brother. From the Department of Jutice in 2020:

Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, 39, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, 60, an Iranian citizen and resident of California, have been sentenced to prison terms of 38 months and 30 months, respectively, for their criminal convictions relating to their conduct conducting surveillance of and collecting identifying information about American citizens and U.S. nationals who are members of the group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

On Jan. 15, 2020, the Honorable Paul L. Friedman sentenced Doostdar to a prison term of 38 months, 36 months of supervised release, and a fine of $14,153. Ghorbani was sentenced to a prison term of 30 months and 36 months of supervised release.

On Oct. 8, 2019, Doostdar entered guilty pleas to one count of acting as an agent of the government of Iran without notifying the Attorney General, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 951, and one count of conspiring to violate that statute, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.  On Nov. 4, 2019, Ghorbani entered a guilty plea to one count of willfully violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. § 1705, and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations 31 C.F.R. Parts 560.204 and 560.206.

“This case illustrates Iran’s targeting of Americans in the United States in order to silence those who oppose the Iranian regime or otherwise further its goals,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers.  “The defendants, working for Iran, gathered information on Americans that could then be used by the Iranian intelligence services to intimidate or harm them or their families.  These prosecutions should serve as a reminder to anyone here working covertly for Iran that the American law enforcement will pursue you to protect this country, its citizens and the First Amendment principles upon which it was founded.”

More “anti-Zio” hatred:

From Bryan; a bizarre post about Ozzy Ozbourne:

From Malcolm, there’s finally a good use of AI:

One from my feed: a food-thieving moggy:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was twelve. Had she lived, she'd be 95 today.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-18T09:02:01.434Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Nature red in claw and mandible:

I did not enjoy learning this!

— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2025-06-17T05:30:39.686Z

Crabs eating together and then heading for their burrows. What scared them?

— (@sunnygate.bsky.social) 2025-06-16T00:13:07.238Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 17, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 17, 2025, and National Apple Strudel Day.  Here is an apple strudel and an Einspänner (coffee) I consumed at one of the great coffee shops in Vienna, the pink-themed Aida chain, Home of Strudel (photo taken in October, 2012). From Wikipedia:

Einspänner Coffee: A Viennese specialty. It is a strong black coffee served in a glass topped with whipped cream. It comes with powder sugar served separately.

It’s also World Croc Day (the reptile, not the shoe), National Cherry Tart Day, and National Eat Your Vegetables Day.  Here’s a famous bridge in western Costa Rica under which lurk dozens of American crocodiles, Crocodylus acutus (I think the tourists feed them):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The war between Iran and Israel goes on, with some Iranian missiles getting through Israeli defenses, with a total of 24 Israelis killed and over 600 injured. On the other side, the toll of Iranians has been 224 killed and over 1400 injured.  On Monday, Israel claims to have struck the headquarters of Iran’s Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, now decapitated. (According to several sources, though, Trump nixed Israel’s plain to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Here are some excerpts:

Israel expanded its attacks on Iran on Monday, striking the headquarters of state television after ordering residents to leave part of Tehran, as the fiercest and deadliest confrontation in the history of the Israeli-Iranian conflict entered its fourth day.

With civilian casualties climbing on both sides, the war, in its fourth day, now seems likely to last for more than a week. Israel appears to be acting with increasing confidence as it tries to destroy Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, while attacking a broader range of targets including energy installations and command centers.

Broadcasting stations are legal targets in wartime as they are organs of propaganda. Here’s some live broadcasting during the missile strike:

. . . The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is leaving Southeast Asia for the Middle East as part of a planned deployment, a Defense Department official said. The Nimitz sailed west through the Singapore Strait on Monday. It had been operating in the South China Sea last week, the official said.

The war shows no sign of ending, and in parts of Tehran the IDF has warned Iranians to evacuate. (Note: has Iran warned any citizens of Tel Aviv to evacuate?)  And Iran, now knowing it can’t come out of this in one piece, is literally begging for peace talks:

Iran is signaling through Arab intermediaries that it seeks an end to hostilities and resumption of talks over its nuclear programs, sending oil prices down.

President Trump nixed Israel’s plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a U.S. official. Calling Iran’s leadership weak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in a Fox News interview on Sunday that the conflict could prompt a regime change.

From the AP:

The Israeli military has warned residents in part of Iran’s capital to evacuate ahead of Israeli strikes.

The latest salvo comes after a weekend of escalating tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran that raised fears of a wider, more dangerous regional war. Israel launched the attacks on Iran amid simmering tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

*Like me, you may be wondering how Israel managed to set up both drone bases and vehicles carrying rocket interceptors—over 1000 km from the Jewish state. It’s Mossad, Jake, and it’s explained in two articles, one in the Wall Street Journal (archived here) and the other in the Times of Israel.

From the WSJ:

Israel had spent months smuggling in parts for hundreds of quadcopter drones rigged with explosives—in suitcases, trucks and shipping containers—as well as munitions that could be fired from unmanned platforms, people familiar with the operation said.

Small teams armed with the equipment set up near Iran’s air-defense emplacements and missile launch sites, the people said. When Israel’s attack began, some of the teams took out air defenses, while others hit missile launchers as they rolled out of their shelters and set up to fire, one of the people said.

The operation helps explain the limited nature of Iran’s response thus far to Israel’s attacks. It also offers further evidence of how off-the-shelf technology is changing the battlefield and creating dangerous new security challenges for governments.

. . .The spy agency began preparing for the current drone operation years ago, the people said. It knew where Iran kept missiles to be ready for launch but needed to be in a position to attack them given the country’s size and distance from Israel.

Mossad brought the quadcopters in through commercial channels using often unwitting business partners. Agents on the ground would collect the munitions and distribute them to the teams. Israel trained the team leaders in third countries, and they in turn trained the teams.

The teams watched as Iran rolled out missiles, then hit them before they could be erected for launch, the person said. Mossad knew the trucks that move the missiles from storage to the launch site were a bottleneck for Iran, which had four times as many missiles as trucks.

The teams took out dozens of trucks

And from the ToI:, which pretty much reprises the above:

It was previously reported that Israel spent years preparing for the operation against Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, including building a drone base inside Iran and smuggling precision weapons systems and commandos into the country.

Unnamed sources revealed more details in the Journal report, saying Israel spent months smuggling bomb-laden quadcopter drone parts into Iran via suitcases, trucks, and shipping containers. In some cases, business transactions were made with partners who were unaware of the cargo being shipped. Mossad agents inside Iran then gathered the equipment and handed it out to teams who prepared the drones for use. Team leaders were trained outside Iran and then returned to pass on the skills to the teams on the ground.

When the airstrikes began, the teams used the weapons to take out air defense systems while also hitting surface-to-surface missile launchers as they emerged from shelters and were being set up to fire in retaliation at Israel, the sources said.

You have to be pretty brave to be a Mossad agent spending any time at all in Iran, for if you’re caught it’s instant death. Israel screwed up on October 7, but the performance of Mossad, killing Iranian nuclear scientists, diabling Hezbollah fighters with beepers and walkie-talkies, and now the operation in Iran, well, that’s pretty amazing.

*Most of Canada has resoundingly rejected Trump’s argument that the country should become the U.S.’s 51st state, but there’s one area that shares more of that sentiment. (article archived here). No, it’s not Quebec, which tried to secede in 1980, but Alberta!

As President Donald Trump visits western Canada for this week’s Group of Seven economic summit, a passionate minority is thrilled by his talk of making them part of a 51st state.

Across most of Canada, Trump’s annexation talk has caused outrage. His antagonism has stirred displays of flag-waving patriotism that are unusual here. In downtown Calgary, shops that sell maple syrup and other Canadian souvenirs have seen a surge in purchases of Canadian-flag lapel pins. Abookstore says “Proudly Canadian” in its window.

But the U.S. president’s expansionist designs have also galvanized a “Make Alberta Great Again” movement, which has gained traction among some in western Canada long frustrated by a Liberal government that they say stifles the oil and gas industry that drives their economy.For them, Trump’s 51st-state talk is not a provocation, but a chance for lower taxes, Second Amendment gun rights and a shot at the American Dream.

At the Red Deer Curling Center, about 90 miles north of Calgary, hundreds of Albertans gathered Saturday to discuss their frustrations with Ottawa at an event hosted by the right-wing media company Rebel News. Several in the crowd wore black or red Make Alberta Great Again caps, and provincial flags flew from their trucks in the packed parking lot. Most cheered as a speaker standing in front of a black curtain that partially covered the rink’s scoreboard made the case for forming a 51st state.

Jacob Fraser, selling bags of Resistance Coffee at the event, said he was “excited” when Trump began talking about annexing all or part of Canada. The 37-year-old sees joining the United States as an opportunity to gain more freedom of speech, more gun rights and more opportunities to pursue his own businesses.

“We’re very much intertwined with the States, and as Albertans, especially, we’re very much more compatible with the American perspectives than the current Canadian perspective,” he said. “For me and a lot of my social groups, it’s a hopeful moment and an exciting time in history.”

Nationwide, that’s clearly a minority view. Backlash to Trump, who was set to arrive here Sunday night, helped fuel Prime Minister Mark Carney’s victory in late April — a stunning comeback by his Liberal Party over the Conservatives, who had a healthy lead before Trump’s taunts.

About 15 percent of all Canadians supported joining the United States as of a January poll by YouGov. That percentage was slightly larger in the prairie provinces, including Alberta — “Canada’s Texas” — where some say they have more in common with Republicans in the U.S. than with their compatriots in the rest of the country.

Albertans who support joining the U.S. are a faction of a broader group of western Canadians who are alienated by Canada’s government. They have made their presence visible with billboards and blue-rubber bracelets that say “AB USA.”

Well, despite Trump’s blustering, this ain’t gonna happen. Nor would I want it to happen. Canadians are proud, friendly, and do not want to be part of the U.S. Why would they.  But if they did join uis, the politeness quotient of America would shoot up drastically.

*Yesterday I noted how the residents of Barcelona are fighting back against overtourism, even squirting visitors with water guns. Now kvetching about overtourism has spread to France, as in this AP story, “The world’s most-visited museum shuts down, sounding the alarm on overtourism.” Yep, workers on the Louvre, who can’t handle the crowds, are on strike.

The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum and a global symbol of art, beauty and endurance, has withstood war, terror, and pandemic — but on Monday, it was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who say the institution is crumbling under the weight of mass tourism.

It was an almost unthinkable sight: the home to works by Leonardo da Vinci and millennia of civilization’s greatest treasures — paralyzed by the very people tasked with welcoming the world to its galleries.

Thousands of stranded and confused visitors, tickets in hand, were corralled into unmoving lines by I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid.

“It’s the Mona Lisa moan out here,” said Kevin Ward, 62, from Milwaukee. “Thousands of people waiting, no communication, no explanation. I guess even she needs a day off.”

The Louvre has become a symbol of tourism pushed to its limits. As hotspots from Venice to the Acropolis race to curb crowds, the world’s most iconic museum, visited by millions, is hitting a breaking point of its own.

Just a day earlier, coordinated anti-tourism protests swept across southern Europe. Thousands rallied in Mallorca, Venice, Lisbon and beyond, denouncing an economic model they say displaces locals and erodes city life. In Barcelona, activists sprayed tourists with water pistols — a theatrical bid to “cool down” runaway tourism.

The Louvre’s spontaneous strike erupted during a routine internal meeting, as gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel refused to take up their posts in protest over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called “untenable” working conditions.

It’s rare for the Louvre to close its doors. It has happened during war, during the pandemic, and in a handful of strikes — including spontaneous walkouts over overcrowding in 2019 and safety fears in 2013. But seldom has it happened so suddenly, without warning, and in full view of the crowds.

I’m really glad I’ve seen these big tourist sights earlier in my life, when they weren’t so crowded.  When I was a kid, I used to play soldier with a wooden sword inside the ruins of the Parthenon.  You couldn’t do that now, and your really shouldn’t, but that was about 1955 and there were few tourists in a country still recovering from the war.  I’ve been to the Louvre many times (the last time, to see the Leonardo exhibit, was impossibly crowded), and I won’t be devastated if I don’t see Barcelona again. But what about the people who haven’t yet?

*Joon Lee, who previously covered sports for ESPN, beefs in the NYT that it’s getting costly to be a sports fan: “$4.785. That’s how much it costs to be a sports fan now.” (The article is archived here.)

For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America. You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed — with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community.

This community is dying, because some of its shared moments are disappearing. Take the N.B.A. playoffs. Wanted to watch the Denver Nuggets? You needed to shell out at least $8.99 a month for NBA TV — unless you happened to live in Denver, in which case you had to spend an additional $20 a month for a regional basketball streaming subscription.

It’s not just basketball. I subscribe to nearly every service there is with live sports — YouTube TV, MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, Peacock, Apple TV+, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount — for $2,634 a year. But to watch the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees earlier this month, I would have had to fork over an additional $19.99 a month for some obscure baseball-focused service that has that slice of one of the most iconic rivalries in America’s national pastime.

For decades, our national sports leagues — the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League — operated more like civic institutions. These organizations may have always chased the mighty dollar, but they also wanted their sports to last. And as such, they cared about strengthening such powerful intangibles as local pride, generational fandom and public ritual. Tradition was good business. Community built loyalty. Loyalty built value.

Then came the streaming wars. Starting in the early 2010s, live sports events were one of the last types of programming that guaranteed hundreds of thousands if not millions of real-time viewers, and the leagues began to be flooded with requests from streamers, such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and Max, begging for a piece of the pie. At the same time, the leagues were looking for a way to raise the cash required to invest in the lucrative opportunities offered by overseas expansion. And that’s when the business of sustaining sports in America took a back seat, and our country’s sports leagues stopped acting like caretakers and started thinking like asset managers.

The result is that dozens if not hundreds of games that make up America’s national pastimes are being sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder — be that a cable giant, or a streaming upstart, or a regional sports network or a subscription app. Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what’s available where.

Going to a game is similarly growing out of reach: From 1999 to 2020, the average price of a seat across all sports rose roughly twice as fast as overall consumer prices. It increased 19.5 percent between May 2023 and May 2025 alone, one of the biggest jumps of any category tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some solutions:

For our national games, it’s time for Congress to amend the antitrust exemption with a ban on blackouts, a cap on what streaming services can charge fans and a requirement that media companies offer affordable bundles. For local games, state legislators can force teams vying for taxpayer dollars to help pay for their gleaming new stadiums to offer affordable local streams, guaranteed public simulcasts and, similarly, no blackouts. Some teams already do this. The Dallas Stars of the N.H.L. stream their regional games free with ads — proving that it’s possible.

Congress could also take inspiration from Britain’s “Crown Jewel” rule and designate key sporting events — perhaps the World Series, the Super Bowl, the N.B.A. Finals — as nationally significant and require that they air on free, widely accessible platforms.

Crikey, I remember when you could watch all sports on the major t.v. stations: CBS, NBC, and ABC, and all FOR FREE.  Hell, I was sick at home, staying out of school, when in 1960 the Pirates’s Bill Mazeroski hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth that gave the Pirates the world championship. I can still remember that: lying in bed but cheering (I was a Pirates fan after I was a Cardinals fan). I couldn’t have done that if we had to pay! I’m gonna put that video up to jog my memory:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is peeved! When I asked Malgorzata what Hili was made about, the reply was “I don’t know. She is just a cat.”

Hili: I’m so outraged I can’t find words.
A: Look for synonyms in a dictionary.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie znajduję słów oburzenia.
Ja: Poszukaj w słowniku synonimów.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild:

From CinEmma:

And meet a reader’s cat, Sparkle, who is staffed by reader Tom. Here’s Sparkle in an apple tree making a blep:

Here Masih excoriates the Iranian regime, which is doing bupkes to protect its citizens:

Retweeted by JKR, these burqa-clad women are, of course, forbidden to sing. But they do it anyway, and make a video. At least they can’t be identified.

While Greta Thunberg and her “Freedom Flotilla” were getting turned back from Gaza, a bunch of activists were approaching Gaza from the Egyptian side, heading to Palestine in buses.  I figured the Egyptians would turn them back, and they did. Luana sent this tweet of a tearful, thwarted pro-Palestinian activist:

From Malgorzata; the AP, along with other MSM organizations, has gone easy on Hamas for years. Here a former AP reporter gives some details:

From Malcolm: a deaf taxi driver picks up a deaf passenger.

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz, this Jewish girl was only thirteen.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-17T09:55:51.913Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb, almost completely over his illness. First, an optical illusion that many people (including me) cannot see. I won’t tell you what it is, but see if you can make it out. Scroll it up or down quickly for the best results.

Scroll slowly and then think about where the image you will recognise is contained in this apparently uniform set of stripes, and the amazing processing that goes on, instantaneously, in your brain.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-16T06:17:36.479Z

Look at the size of this instrument!

Here’s the massive, magnificent but very rare Octobasse, invented in 1850. To play it, the musician must stand on a platform. You can hear its rather alarming deep bass tone, and see it being played, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12X-…

— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety.bsky.social) 2025-06-16T06:05:31.869Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 16, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the top o’ the week again: Monday, June 16, 2025, and National Fudge Day, a confection good in nearly all its forms.  Here’s how it’s made at the Jersey shore, and it’s a bit tricky:

It’s also Bloomsday, celebrating the Dublin wanderings of Leopold Bloom on this day in 1906, related in Ulysses, Fresh Veggies Day, World Sea Turtle Day, National Vinegar Day, National Tortilla Day, National Take Your Cat to Work Day (good luck!), and National Cannoli Day, which reminds me of this scene from The Godfather:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The suspect in the murder of two Minnesota lawmakers and wounding of two other people has been apprehended:

A man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota state lawmaker and shooting another was arrested on Sunday, officials said, ending a two-day manhunt that rattled the state.

Investigators had pursued the suspect, identified as Vance Boelter, 57, throughout the weekend, as Minnesotans reeled from the killings of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman. In a separate attack, the gunman also wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs.

“One man’s unthinkable actions have altered the state of Minnesota,” Gov. Tim Walz said at a news conference on Sunday night.

The suspect was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The New York Times.

*I hadn’t heard this, but a gaffe by a Republican Senator has now become a rallying cry: “We are all going to die.” (Sounds like Country Joe and the Fish). I’ve put her gaffe in bold:

A one-sentence gaffe from Iowa’s junior senator has become a line of attack against Republicans nationally, with Democratic fundraising solicitations, political ads, social media and T-shirts now highlighting her words heading into the midterm elections.

Sen. Joni Ernst’s response of “we all are going to die” to a constituent who was complaining about proposed Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” has also helped produce a 2026 GOP primary challenger for her and prompted several Iowa Democrats to announce bids for her seat.

The incident has shone a fresh spotlight on the Republican Party’s political vulnerabilities as well as Ernst’s uncertain political future, with some Iowa watchers wondering whether she will stand for re-election. She angered Trump’s MAGA allies last year, delayed her trademark summer motorcycle ride until the fall, and now has become the face of what Democrats paint as Republican cruelty toward poor people.

. . . Democrats accuse Republicans of cutting Medicaid spending to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) playfully calling the GOP bill the “Well, We’re All Going to Die Act.” ‘

. . . .Ernst’s utterance at a May 30 town hall was prompted by a Democrat in the audience who was yelling that people would die if the Medicaid cuts become law.

The senator doubled down on her original comment a day after she made it with a sarcastic apology video that appeared to be filmed in a cemetery. She said she assumed everyone knows “we are all going to perish from this Earth” and added that she was glad she didn’t have to bring up “the tooth fairy as well.”

Well, it’s as good a rallying cry as any, and Medicaid cuts will certainly lead to some people dying, but not all of us.  In my view, “No Kings” is far better. (The anti-Trump protest rallies on Saturday, by the way, far exceeded the size of groups who voluntarily came out to cheer Trump.)

*While Nicholas Kristof and Tom “I am dumb” Friedman are wringing their hands over the new war between Israel and Iran, Bret Stephens, always the most sensible NYT op-ed writer on the war, has a piece called “Israel had the courage to do what needed to be done.”

In plain English, Iran has been deceiving the world for years while gathering the means to build multiple nuclear weapons. In a better world, diplomacy would have forestalled and perhaps eliminated the need for Israeli military action.

But President Trump, who tried to dissuade Israel from striking, failed to get a deal after five rounds of negotiations and noted this week that Tehran had become “much more aggressive” in the talks. Make of his testimony what you will, but it’s worth recalling that a much more pliant and patient Biden administration spent years trying to reach an agreement, and also gave up in frustration with Iran’s repeated prevarications.

As for other alternatives, the clandestine means of sabotage and targeted assassinations that Israel had long used, and which probably delayed Iran’s nuclear breakout moment by years, had plainly run their course — otherwise, Israel would have continued to use them rather than risk Iranian retaliatory strikes using drones and missiles that could overwhelm Israel’s defenses.

Those strikes have begun. But they underscore, from an Israeli point of view, how crucial it is that Iran be prevented from being able to mount any of those missiles with a nuclear warhead. Academic theorists in, say, Chicago may be convinced that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons would merely help create a stable balance against a nuclear-armed Israel.

Yet that fails to take into account the millenarian mind-set of some of Iran’s theocratic leaders, for whom the ideological objective of destroying Israel may be worth the price of mass martyrdom in a nuclear exchange. It also ignores the prospect that an Iranian nuclear bomb would lead Saudi Arabia, and perhaps Turkey and Egypt, to seek nukes of their own. How stable is a balance of terror if there are three, four or five nuclear powers in the world’s most volatile region, operating in uncertain diplomatic combinations, each at daggers drawn with the others?

. . . Also worth noting is that Hezbollah has been quiet since Israel’s attack. That could always change, but it’s a result of its swift decimation at Israeli hands last September. That, too, was denounced by Israel’s critics as dangerously escalatory. But now it’s paying dividends in the form of constricted Iranian retaliatory options, the end of the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the first possibility in two generations for the Lebanese people finally to govern themselves.

. . .It also matters that Iran’s leadership has again been bested on its home turf, not by the “Great Satan” of the United States but, much more humiliatingly, by the “Little Satan” of Israel. The weaker and more uncertain the regime looks in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, the likelier it will spark the kinds of mass protests that nearly brought it down in 2022. An end to the regime that has inflicted so much misery on so many people for so many years offers the only sure route to ending the nuclear crisis for good.

I’m writing in the first hours of a conflict that surely still has many surprises in store. It’s far too soon to say how it will end. But for those who worry about a future in which one of the world’s most awful regimes takes advantage of international irresolution to gain possession of the most dangerous weapons, Israel’s strike is a display of clarity and courage for which we may all one day be grateful.

Yay for Stephens!  He doesn’t know what will happen, and neither do we, but while many Democrats are beefing, criticizing Israel for what it did, Stephens is one person who says, correctly, that it needed to be done.

*And the Times of Israel tells us “How an Israeli-American deception campaign lulled Iran into a false sense of security.”

Israel and the US carried out a multi-faceted misinformation campaign in recent days to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Friday.

The official asserted that US President Donald Trump was an active participant in the ruse, and knew about the military operation since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to move forward with the strike on Monday.

Some parts of the ruse:

Netanyahu and Trump spoke by phone for 40 minutes that same day. At the time, unnamed officials leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 that Trump had told Netanyahu in a “dramatic” conversation to remove an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites from the agenda as negotiations continue. According to the TV report, Trump stressed that there would be no discussions on a military strike until the president concluded that nuclear talks with Iran had failed.

This, the Israeli official argued on Friday, had all been untrue.

. . .At the same time, Israel had to sell Iran a believable story, and not ignore the nuclear issue. Instead, Israel wanted Tehran to think it was still debating the matter of a potential strike with the White House.

It thus announced that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad Chief David Barnea would take off for talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff ahead of the next round of talks between Tehran and Washington, set for Sunday, claiming the trip was meant to “clarify Israel’s position.”

The Prime Minister’s Office wouldn’t even answer a direct question from The Times of Israel as to where the purported meeting was to take place. It is now clear that the meeting was never on the schedule.

. . .Israel clearly hoped the Iranians would believe there was no way it would attack before the Sunday talks.

On all fronts, Israel sought to put forth an air of business as usual. Netanyahu’s office put out a statement on Thursday stressing that despite some media reports to the contrary amid the rising regional tensions, he would not be canceling his weekend vacation in the north.

. . . Trump contributed to the effort. “He played the game together with Israel,” said the Israeli official. “It was a whole coordination.”

Trump said Thursday that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites “could very well happen” but advised against it, saying the possibility of a deal was “fairly close” if Tehran compromised on its atomic ambitions in ongoing talks with the US.

There is more, but the important parts are that the Trump administration was part of the ruse, and is collaborating with Israel, and Israel, after the security disaster of October 7, is back on the beam, taking out Hezbollah (with Beepergate!), much of Hamas, and now this surprise attack on Iran. I’m not quite as pessimistic about Israel’s future as I used to be.

BTW, Iran is committing war crimes by attacking civilians in Israeli, while the IDF warns Iranian citizens before an attack.  Will there be publicity about Iran’s crimes? Of course not!

Here are two headlines from yesterday’s NYT:

and….

*You may note that I put up relatively few posts from Bluesky as opposed to Twitter, as the former is a “nice” site that avoids political discussion and, above all, heterodox opinions. This “bubble” is described by Josh Barro on his Very Serious site; the post is called, “Bluesky isn’t a bubble. It’s a containment dome.”

My friend Megan McArdle warns in a column that the social media platform Bluesky is a harmful bubble for liberals. By decamping together for Bluesky, she writes, liberals have cloistered themselves in a place where their views won’t be challenged. And because the conversational norms on Bluesky are so hostile and obnoxious — do you ever use AI? Former “Reply All” host Alex Goldman wants you to know you should be thrown into a volcano — the platform fails to appeal beyond its niche political audience, is losing users, and is unlikely to become a place where posting is a good way to influence public opinion.

Megan correctly describes these dynamics, but she’s wrong about them being harmful. In fact, these dynamics are why Bluesky is an important harm reduction tool for liberals. Twitter used to be a place where the most neurotic and censorious liberal influencers were highly effective at influencing events within media organizations and the Democratic Party. But was that actually ever good for liberal causes?

. . . A lot of the blame for the self-inflicted wounds of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary should go to The Groups: it was the ACLU that got Kamala Harris to commit to taxpayer-funded sex changes for criminals and detained migrants. But one of the reasons Democrats didn’t realize it was a big mistake to make promises and statements that made them sound wacky was that they were constantly being yelled at on Twitter by people whose unpopular viewpoints they mistook for broad public opinion.1 The screamers won the battle but they lost the war: they pressured their own candidates into manufacturing attack ad fodder for Republicans, and as a result, Donald Trump is president again.

The “screamers” are presumably loud “progressive” liberals.

. . . There is much to regret about the ways Elon Musk has changed Twitter. But there’s been one obvious change for the better: By rupturing the Twitter user base, he (accidentally?) created a firewall between the most maladjusted liberal posters on the internet and the reporters, Democratic politicians and operatives who used to pay an excessive amount of attention to their harangues. (Media reporter Max Tani wrote about this for Semafor last month: “I spoke with a few congressional staffers who said that they had tried using Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk, but they gave up after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.”) I believe the emergence of this firewall is one reason for the renaissance that we were seeing at WelcomeFest last week: Democrats are becoming more cognizant of public opinion and less fearful of breaking with the activist base because they are no longer receiving so much activist messaging in the form of aggrieved Twitter push alerts on their phones.

. . . The problem with a “bubble” is that it prevents the people inside from accessing the information on the outside. But the core functionality of Bluesky is not that it keeps information out; it’s that it keeps information in. Like the containment dome over a nuclear reactor, Bluesky serves the important safety purpose of ensuring that whatever meltdowns occur within produce minimal fallout. So while I’m not on Bluesky, I value the platform, and I encourage its users to continue screaming at each other about how much the rest of us all suck. Please do not leave.

So his thesis is that liberals on Bluesky are insulated from the progressive Left and thus will confect a moderate Democratic party. Would it were so! I find Bluesky curiously anodyne as well as censorious: very critical of “heterodox” people like Jesse Singal. But the Bluesky dictum is to protect moderate liberals from hearing anything outside their bubble, but there’s a lot going on outside that bubble, including AOC and Bernie Sanders’s propaganda tour. And some of that stuff is going to hurt Democrats in general.  Does Bluesky really think its liberal base needs to be protected from free speech?

*You’ve surely heard that residents of Barcelona are really peeved at the number of tourists in their beautiful city, a number that’s causing severe problems. And now some of those residents are packing guns to attack the tourists—water guns.

Protesters used water pistols against unsuspecting tourists in Barcelona on Sunday as demonstrators marched to demand a re-think of an economic model they believe is fueling a housing crunch and erasing the character of the Spanish city.

“The squirt guns are to bother the tourists a bit,” Andreu Martínez said with a chuckle after spritzing a couple seated at an outdoor cafe. “Barcelona has been handed to the tourists. This is a fight to give Barcelona back to its residents.”

Martínez, a 42-year-old administrative assistant, is one of a growing number of residents who are convinced that tourism has gone too far in the city of 1.7 people. Barcelona hosted 15.5 visitors last year eager to see Antoni Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia basilica and the Las Ramblas promenade.

That’s 9.1 tourists to every resident!

Martínez says his rent has risen over 30% as more apartments in his neighborhood are rented to tourists for short-term stays. He said there is a knock-on effect of traditional stores being replaced by businesses catering to tourists, like souvenir shops, burger joints and “bubble tea” spots.

“Our lives, as lifelong residents of Barcelona, is coming to an end,” he said. “We are being pushed out systematically.”

Similar demonstrations against tourism are slated in several other Spanish cities on Sunday, including on the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza, as well as in the Italian postcard city of Venice, Portugal’s capital Lisbon and other cities across southern Europe — marking the first time a protest against tourism has been coordinated across the region.

In Barcelona, protesters blew whistles and chanted, “Everywhere you look, all you see are tourists.” They held up homemade signs saying “One more tourist, one less resident” and “Your Airbnb was my home.” They stuck stickers saying “Citizen Self-Defense,” in Catalan, and “Tourist Go Home,” in English, with a drawing of a water pistol on the doors of hotels and hostels.

. . . There was tension when the march stopped in front of a large hostel, where a group emptied their water guns at two workers positioned in the entrance. They also set off firecrackers next to the hostel and opened a can of pink smoke. One worker spat at the protestors as he slammed the hostel’s doors.

. . .Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters first took to firing squirt guns at tourists during a protest last summer.

Spaniards have also staged several large protests in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities in recent years to demand lower rents. There has also been a confluence of the pro-housing and anti-tourism struggles: When thousands marched through the streets of Spain’s capital in April, some held homemade signs saying “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods.”

Can you blame the residents? (Overall in Spain last year, there were two tourists for every resident.) For sure Barcelona is one of the world’s loveliest cities, but when I walked down the Ramblas some years ago, it was already mostly tourists and way too crowded. Still, I would urge people to visit it for its beauties, which include some of the world’s finest architecture, including Gaudi’s now-completed cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, which I found stunning despite the Guardia Civil having detained me in the church strip-searching me. (I was falsely accused by two British tourists of having pickpocketed their money and passports, a story I’ve already told.)  But don’t stay long, and there are less crowded parts of Spain that have their own allure (try Galicia).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s question is answered with a double response. When I asked Malgorzata what it meant, she said, “Anything you want:  Viruses are mico. human bodies are macro. Viruses can destroy human bodies. Israel is micro, Iran is macro. It seems that Israel is destroying Iran.

Hili: What is the difference between micro and macro?
Andrzej: Huge, but micro often destroys macro.
In Polish:
Hili: Jaka jest różnica między mikro i makro?
Ja: Ogromna, ale mikro często niszczy makro.=

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

From Now That’s Wild:

From Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Richard:

The Coyne building from Amy, who writes: “Never noticed this before. The Coyne building at Pico and Crenshaw blvd. In Los Angeles. ( was on my way to a lecture at center for inquiry in LA).”

Now that a war with Israel is on, the Iranian Masih is back tweeting—and rooting for Israel, which threatens to bring down the theocracy that she hates.

Here’s the Google translation of the tweet below:

The Islamic Republic’s insistence on continuing confrontation with Israel is based on illusions, ideological slogans, and unrealistic calculations, and it has no result other than the destruction of our Iran. A disaster whose costs will not only be political, but also human and security. And what’s even more bitter is that these costs will be paid with the lives of people who have no role or authority in these decision-making. How long will the Iranian people have to pay the price for a war that was neither their choice nor their benefit?

From Barry; geese don’t want no stinking kings, either!

Even Mother Nature is done with Felon47’s bullshit.

— Jason (@gizmosspace.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T15:11:45.451Z

From Simon: Trump trolled by Russians in a spoof video:

the video:

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T16:05:36.644Z

I can’t remember who sent me the first one below, but the second one that I saw below it is the one I really love:

From Malcolm, a human transformer:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A 58-year-old Dutch Jewish woman was gassed to death immediately up arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-16T09:30:29.080Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb, who’s nearly recovered form his respiratory ills. First, a live cowrie, a mollusc whose shells are often collected. They’re much nicer alive

Hello ₍₍⁽⁽🐚₎₎⁾⁾ Hello

— でんか (@k-hermit.com) 2025-06-14T03:47:58.910Z

And Matthew calls this siphonophore video “Amazing”:

Stunning #siphonophore video by @mbarinews.bsky.social ! youtu.be/lp4UNEvxoWo?…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T15:01:35.321Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 15, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, June 15, 2025, and National Big Boy Day, celebrating the restaurant and its eponymous hamburger. There are 61 locations, and here’s how a Big Boy burger is assembled. First, the caption:

An illustration showing how Big Boy hamburgers are assembled. The original version developed by Bob Wian (left) has mayonnaise and red relish (a combination of pickle relish, ketchup and chili sauce). Frisch’s version (right) replaces them with tartar sauce and dill pickles, and applies them in a different order. The worldwide Big Boy system version (center) instead uses a thousand island-type dressing advertised as “Big Boy special sauce”.

They are much of a muchness:

Robert M. Thomas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Turkey Lovers’ Day (note that the apostrophe is in the right place), National Lobster Day, Magna Carta Day, (it was signed by King John on this day in 1215), Nature Photography Day, Global Wind Day, and Father’s Day. If your dad is still with you, let him know how much you appreciate him.  Here’s one of four copies from Wikipedia with the caption:

The Magna Carta (originally known as the Charter of Liberties) of 1215, written in iron gall ink on parchment in medieval Latin, using standard abbreviations of the period, authenticated with the Great Seal of King John. The original wax seal was lost over the centuries. This document is held at the British Library and is identified as “British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106“.

Google has a special Doodle today for Father’s Day; click on the screenshot to see where it goes (big trees produce little sprouts . . .):

Click to enlarge.  Wikipedia also adds this: “Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons’ War.”

Wikimedia commons from the British Library

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Here’s a depressing NYT headline (click to read, or see it archived here):

Excerpt:

A person pretending to be a police officer assassinated a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota and killed the lawmaker’s husband in “an act of targeted political violence,” Gov. Tim Walz said Saturday. The assailant also shot and injured another Democratic lawmaker and his wife, officials said.

State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, died in the attack at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs. State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot multiple times at their house in a nearby suburb, but remained alive as of Saturday morning.

The authorities were searching for the assailant, who shot at officers as they arrived at one of the lawmakers’ homes. Chief Mark Bruley of the Brooklyn Park, Minn., police said the gunman’s vehicle contained a manifesto and a target list with names of individuals, including the two lawmakers who were shot.

“We must all, Minnesota and across the country, stand against all forms of political violence,” Mr. Walz said.

F.B.I. officials said they had joined the investigation.

Ms. Hortman, a lawyer by training and a legislator for about 20 years, served as the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives for a six-year period ending earlier this year. A resident of Brooklyn Park, just outside Minneapolis, she represented a safely Democratic district and routinely won re-election by more than 20 percentage points. Ms. Hortman was married with two children, according to her state legislative bio.

Ms. Hortman helped Democrats pass several key policies on abortion rights, marijuana and medical leave and other issues in 2023 and 2024, when her party briefly held full control of the state government. After last year’s elections, when Republicans made gains in legislative races and Mr. Walz lost his bid for vice president, Ms. Hortman defended Democrats’ record leading the state.

Mr. Hoffman, a fourth-term state senator from Champlin, another Minneapolis suburb, chairs the Senate’s Human Services Committee. His home address was published on his bio page on the Senate’s website. He won his most recent election by 10 percentage points.

And from the Wall Street Journal:

Authorities said they found a list in the suspect’s vehicle that named other public officials. Those officials were alerted and have received additional security, police said.

Yep, the politically-moptivated violence is spreading, and this time it’s almost certainly a disaffected MAGA type going after Democrats who espouse Democratic policies. This has to stop, but it won’t because guns are so freely available in America (if we had the kind of gun regulation they have in the UK, this wouldn’t happen so often. (Yes, I know, you’re saying the bad guys will still get guns, but I don’t think that a disaffected average Joe with murder in his eyes would even know how to get a gun. I remain firmly opposed to any laxity in gun laws.)

*Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan takes out after Trump in a piece called “The American Caudillo.” His topic is the increasing militarization of America promoted by the Trump Administration. He starts with some tweets by Kristi Noem:

And this was how the cabinet secretary who literally doesn’t know what habeas corpus is described sending Marines into Los Angeles:

We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.

She intends to liberate Los Angeles … from its duly elected officials. She might be talking about Baghdad or Fallujah, rather than an American city. And here’s the full summary of our current situation through the eyes and ears of Miller — a rare, unashamed, bona fide fascist in an American administration:

America was invaded by illegal aliens.

Americans voted to end the invasion.

Democrat rioters are now waging violent insurrection to overturn the election result and continue the invasion.

This is a description, it’s vital to note, of a country already in a civil war. And a country in such a war needs a president with wartime powers. That was the logic of using the Alien Enemies Act to grab illegal immigrants and random brown people and swiftly send them to a foreign gulag, without even the due process we accorded to Nazis in the Second World War. That is why Miller has openly mused about suspending habeas corpus — because wartime emergencies allow it. And it is the obvious rationale behind Trump’s eagerness to deploy the National Guard in California, against the governor’s wishes, and to get the Marines involved in domestic crowd-policing. The president will use the military against this foreign invasion and internal insurrection because, well, that’s who we use to fight wars.

And how they love the word “insurrection”. They get a particular frisson of course from the fact that this very word was previously used — accurately — to describe a mob that violently tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in January 2021. That attempt to “overturn the election result” was, however, not an insurrection in Miller’s eyes because it was in favor of Trump — the rightful landslide winner of the election. It was the Congress’ certification of that election that was the insurrection. This “insurrection” in Los Angeles? The same logic applies. It’s not pro-Trump, so we need the Marines. There is only one legitimate political party in America, and it can use the military to keep the other one in check.

And tomorrow, we are going to witness a military parade in DC that just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday and the Army’s 250th. It’s set to brandish 26 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 27 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, eight CH-47 helicopters, and 16 UH-60 Black Hawks. The last parade of this scale was almost 35 years ago, to celebrate the US victory in the First Gulf War. No such victory is now being hailed. Trump’s parade is simply another sign of his preference for the British monarchical system over the American republic. In honor of the British sovereign’s official birthday, after all, a ceremonial Trooping the Colour has been held since the 17th century. In this sense, Trump can be seen as the final denouement of the American experiment — a bookend, as it were, to the first King George III.

And this was echoed in Trump’s speech to the troops assembled this week at Fort Bragg. The soldiers were vetted so they were all Trump fans; Trump merchandise was openly sold at the military base (including faux credit cards labeled “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything”); the speech was crudely partisan; and the president encouraged boos from the uniformed crowd as he lambasted his usual targets — behavior that violates Pentagon rules. If disgrace were a word Trump even understood, it wouldn’t adequately capture the despicably un-American spectacle. But this, in the president’s mind, is not America’s military, but his own.

. . . So what the fuck is all this about really? Like the tariffs that gyrate, and the spending cuts that don’t cut spending, and the great deals that turn out to be surrenders to China, and the end to wars that never end, and the executive orders that collapse at the first judicial review, so much of this is just theater. The real goal is to find illegal immigrants who can be associated with the left and the Democrats, to gin up a conflict, and to use it to smash and intimidate domestic opposition. That’s what this is about. It’s about state terror in the pursuit of ever greater executive power.

I won’t disagree with that. Still, Sullivan calls for Democrats to enforce immigration law, for (and I agree with him) and stop acting like they want open borders. For that’s a sure way to lose the midterm and the next Presidential elections.

So expose the departure from American norms and values, spread the word about the abuse, defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and keep arguing for American values against this deeply anti-American president. But don’t defend illegal immigrants. And don’t give Trump a way to distract from his flailing on the debt, tariffs, and foreign policy. And if the Democrats really want to beat him, unveil your own program of legal, humane, expeditious, and constitutional mass deportation as a foil to this authoritarian mess. Show you can deport millions the right way.

And never, ever forget again that if liberals and conservatives don’t enforce borders, fascists will. Which is why fascists like Miller now are doing exactly that — and may do far, far worse in the near future.

*The war between Iran and Israel continues, with Iran firing missiles at Tel Aviv, killing three Israeli civilians on Saturday, ten more on Sunday; over 200 are injured. Israel’s air force continuing to strike Iran.

Iran launched fresh missile barrages at Israel early Saturday, while Israel continued airstrikes on Iran, in the most sustained, direct attacks ever between the two regional rivals. Strikes were reported in Rishon LeZion in central Israel and Tel Aviv, while Iranian media reported explosions in eastern Tehran and in the vicinity of Mehrabad International Airport. Though nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran were set to take place Sunday in Oman, the foreign minister of Oman announced Saturday that they would be delayed. The latest fighting began when Israel launched an attack that killed senior Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists.

. . .President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Israel’s conflict with Iran in a phone conversation Saturday, according to Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov.

Ushakov told Russian media that both Trump and Putin expressed an interest in returning to peaceful negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

. . . Talks between the United States and Iran that were scheduled to take place in Oman on Sunday have been called off, said Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi. He cautioned that “diplomacy and dialogue remain the only pathway to lasting peace” in a post on X.

It’s too late, I think. Israel is not going to stop trying to finish off Iran’s nuclear program.  Meanwhile Israel is continuing to strike, but it’ll take a while, if ever, to do serious damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities:

Israel’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites have damaged some aboveground research facilities and infrastructure but do not appear to have eliminated the thousands of centrifuges, buried deep underground, that enrich near-weapons-grade uranium or the hundreds of pounds of material they have already produced, according to a wide range of nonproliferation and Iranian experts.

In launching the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranian program poses an existential threat that Israel intends to destroy. “We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program,” he said in an address to the nation early Friday.

But judging by reports and statements from both countries, as well as videos and overhead imagery of the sites hit so far — and those as yet unscathed — no irreversible damage has been done, experts said.

“Until I know that Fordow is gone and until I know where that … highly-enriched uranium is and know whether it’s usable, I consider us on the clock,” said Richard Nephew, a lead U.S. negotiator with Iran under the Obama administration and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That’s all that matters now.”

Fordow and especially Nantanz are the two biggest uranium-enrichment facilities in Iran, and Fordow is a mile underground, almost impervious to Israeli bombs. The Post notes that “The only conventional munition believed capable of damaging their subterranean enrichment bunkers is the United States’ Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000 pound precision-guided bomb that Israel does not possess.”  My guess is that if talks between the U.S. and Iran reach a total impasse, Israel will somehow get hold of the Massive Ornance Penetrator, but that’s just a guess. And does Israel have bombers that can deliver these explosive behemoths?

*The WSJ reports that the U.S. is helping Israel ward of Iranian missiles, though for now that’s as far as the help is likely to go:

The U.S. military is operating in the air, on land and at sea to shoot down Iranian missiles fired at Israel in response to its attacks on Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership, tilting Washington toward more direct involvement in the widening conflict.

Iran has fired about 200 ballistic missiles in four barrages and more than 200 drones toward Israeli territory so far in response to multiple waves of Israeli strikes, an Israeli military official said. Before the retaliatory strikes even began, U.S. jet fighters, Navy destroyers and ground-based air-defense systems had positioned to help counter any attack, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. played a central role in defending Israel from Iranian attacks last year, when the Biden administration assembled forces to contain Iran’s attacks as the longtime foes traded blows on two occasions. In the second of those attacks, Iran fired around 200 missiles targeting Israeli military and intelligence sites. Some penetrated Israel’s antimissile defenses, raising fears that another attack could inflict serious damage, particularly if it targeted civilian areas.

This time, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about how involved the U.S. is willing to become in a protracted Israeli war with Iran.

President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to hold off on attacking Iran and give diplomacy a chance. When Netanyahu raised the issue of a strike again on Thursday, Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way but wouldn’t help in the attack, officials familiar with the call said. Once it was under way, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement distancing the U.S. from the attack.

It didn’t take long for the U.S. to get pulled in as the fighting escalated. Trump endorsed the strikes Friday, saying they created better conditions for talks on dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. hasn’t openly joined offensive action against Iran.

How about a few bunker-buster bombs as lagniappe, America?

*The Jewish Post and News breaks down how American representatives reacted to Israel’s bombing of Iran. Sadly, my own Democratic Party was far less enthusiastic than the Republicans, but of course much of the progressive American left is both pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.

US lawmakers offered mixed reactions to Israel’s strikes on Iran overnight on Friday, with responses largely falling along ideological lines: Republicans broadly defended Israel’s right to act unilaterally, while many progressive Democrats expressed concern over the potential for regional escalation and what they viewed as the lack of prior US coordination.

“Today, Israel has determined that it must take decisive action to defend the Israeli people,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, (R-SD) said on X/Twitter. “The United States Senate stands ready to work with President [Donald] Trump and with our allies in Israel to restore peace in the region and, first and foremost, to defend the American people from Iranian aggression, especially our troops and civilians serving overseas.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) also defended Israel’s preemptive strikes against Iran, arguing that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are unacceptable.

; . . in contrast, here are some Democrats:

Meanwhile, while many more centrist, moderate Democrats offered support for Israel, some were much more critical of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, urging the White House and Jerusalem to seek a diplomatic resolution.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed Israel’s military operations as “reckless.”

“Israel’s alarming decision to launch airstrikes on Iran is a reckless escalation that risks igniting regional violence,” Reed said in a statement.

Progressive Democrats lambasted Israel for its military operation.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most anti-Israel voices in Congress, repudiated Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites, warning that Jerusalem could lead the US into a hot war with Tehran.

Here’s Tlaib’s tweet:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), another staunch critic of the Jewish state, lambasted Jerusalem’s preemptive actions against Iran, suggesting that Israel behaves with impunity.

“Regardless of what Trump thinks, Israel knows America will do whatever they want and feels confident about their ability to get into war and have the American government back them up. Israel also knows they can always rely on getting America to protect and serve its needs. Everyone in America should prepare themselves to either see their tax dollars being spent on weapon supplies to Israel or be dragged into war with Iran if this escalates,” Omar said.

I swear, both Tlaib and Omar seem to want Iran to have nukes, for that would lead to the destruction of Israel that they seem to desire (I think both Congresswomen yearn for an American caliphate. But at least Chuck Schumer refused to criticize Israel and affirmed that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.  It’s very sad to see my own party going after Israel while the Republicans defend it.  The same association of liberalism with Jew hatred (and no, it’s not just Netanyahu hatred) can be seen in the UK, which refuses for the time to help Israel bring down Iranian missiles.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili learns some astronomy, but given the situation in the Middle East, her question also has a double meaning:

Hili: Are we in the same place as yesterday?
Andrzej: No, it’s an illusion. We flew through quite a bit of the Universe.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy jesteśmy w tym samym miejscu co wczoraj?
Ja: O, nie, to złudzenie, przelecieliśmy kawał wszechświata.

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

From Things With Faces, a miracle!

From Meow. Can you spot the furry loaf?

From Stacy; the final lesson of a teacher:

With Israel warring with Iran, Masih is tweeting again:

Ramy’s tweet came from Luana, and I simply commented on it and reposted it:

From Bryan. I know my Beatles songs, but I could never do what this guy does!

From Malcolm. I haven’t checked on this but hope it’s true:

From my feed. This is hilarious:

One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A German Jewish man and his wife Clara were both gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T09:43:00.029Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Neither he nor I have watched the first documentary, but it certainly looks worthwhile, despite the misspelling of “Web” by Snyder.

Awesome new documentary about the James Web Telescope with some never before seen footage.-www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSMG…-#astronomy #NASA #telescope

— Will Snyder (@wlsnyder.williamlsnyder.net) 2025-06-13T04:53:07.905Z

Matthew reposted this; I can’t embed the “skeet” directly, but click on it to go to the original post. FYI, a pacarana (Dinomys branickii) is a South American rodent, described as “rare” and “slow moving.” It looks like a groundhog front welded to the rear of a baby tapir.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 14, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 14, 2024, and National Cucumber Day, a vegetable best instantiated in the half-sour pickle.  Here’s where you get the best one: The Pickle Guys in NYC (my fave used to be Gus’s Pickles, but that place has gone downhill). I like the garlic half-sours. This is one of several stop on Coyne’s  Famous Lower East Side Tour, which also includes a visit to Yonah Schimmel’s for knishes and, of course, Katz’s Deli for pastrami.  Oh, and Russ and Daughters for a bagel with lox and a schmear.

It’s also National Bath Day, National Bourbon Day (I favor Maker’s Mark for the inexpensive stuff), International Drink Chenin Blanc Day (good advice: it’s an underrated wine), International Feta Day, International Rosé Day, National Strawberry Shortcake Day, and World Blood Donor Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A federal judge has ruled that Trump’s calling out the California National Guard to tame the anti-immigration protests in Los Angeles was illegal (article archived here).

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles. He ruled that the Trump administration had illegally taken control of the state’s troops and ordered them to return to taking orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In an extraordinary 36-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco severed Mr. Trump’s control of up to 4,000 National Guard troops, hundreds of whom are already deployed in the streets of Los Angeles on his orders. The judge said the administration’s seizure of them violated required procedures in a federal statute.

President Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the governor of the state of California forthwith.”

The directive would have taken effect at noon Pacific time on Friday. But the Trump administration immediately filed a notice that it was appealing Judge Breyer’s decision. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to stay the ruling while it reviews the case, temporarily blocking it from taking effect.

The ruling, which accused Mr. Trump of setting a “dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of wartime or emergency powers over matters ranging from deporting people without due process to unilaterally imposing widespread tariffs. Court rulings blocking his actions as likely illegal have enraged the White House.

Judge Breyer’s ruling on the National Guard went beyond what California had asked for. While the state’s lawsuit had contended that Mr. Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was illegal, its specific motion was for a temporary restraining order limiting military forces under federal control to guarding federal buildings in the city and no other law enforcement tasks.

Judge Breyer blocked Mr. Trump from using California’s National Guard at all. But he also rejected a request by the state and Governor Newsom to restrain a separate group of active-duty Marines, which the administration has also mobilized to counter the protesters.

I guess this means that the National Guard will keep its presence in L.A. until a court lifts the stay. But the Marines aren’t banned, though they don’t seem to be doing anything:

Judge Breyer blocked Mr. Trump from using California’s National Guard at all. But he also rejected a request by the state and Governor Newsom to restrain a separate group of active-duty Marines, which the administration has also mobilized to counter the protesters.

*Over at the Liberal Patriot site, Ruy Teixiera argues, in a piece called “Riot On!: Democrats still don’t get it”, that the demonstrations and rioting in L.A. might have been designed to make the Democrats looks bad (h/t Enrico).

The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder. Yet their most visible response to the anti-deportation riots in Los Angeles has been to denounce President Trump for sending National Guard troops to quell the riots. The situation, they insist, is under control—or at least it was, until Trump intervened.

This view is not shared by some in charge of actually doing the quelling. As Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell admitted at a Sunday evening press conference:

We are overwhelmed…Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers…that can kill you…They’ll take backpacks filled with cinder blocks and hammers, break the blocks, and pass the pieces around to throw at officers and cars, and even at other people.

Meanwhile, California governor Gavin Newsom waved the bloody shirt of January 6, arguing that that was when the National Guard was needed and that therefore Trump is a hypocrite to call them in now. The state is now suing to stop the deployment while Newsom exchanges insults with Trump and White House “border czar” Tom Homan.

. . .In lonely contrast to these voices, John Fetterman, the maverick Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania channeled the normie voter reaction to violent street demonstrations:

My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement…I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that…This is anarchy and true chaos.

The Democrats’ own goals on the L.A. disorder are the mirror image of the mistakes made by the president himself in recent months. Just as Trump has overread his electoral mandate—going further and faster than many of his voters wanted and pursuing many unpopular policies—now the Democrats have assumed they have an “anti-mandate” to oppose more or less everything the president does.

Democrats do not have to cheer on every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality on the ground of violent protests.

Missing from their calculus is how popular many of the president’s policies remain. And that’s especially true on the two issues in question on the streets of L.A.: law and order, and illegal immigration.

I have to admit that if the L.A. cops can’t stop demonstrators from burning cars, shooting dangerous fireworks at The Law, looting, and vandalizing, then some other solution needs to be found. The L.A. police chief himself admits they needed help, and I can’t find myself blaming the crowd’s violence on Trump. (Granted, most demonstrators in LA. and elsewhere seem to be peaceful.) But the National Guard isn’t trained to control demonstrating crowds, and neither are the Marines. I hope they are given some emergency crowd-control advice if they’re used again.

A quote from renegade Democrat John Fetterman:

“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement. … I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration — but this is not that. … This is anarchy and true chaos,”

*We have more details from the Times of Israel about the Jewish state’s attack on Iran yesterday. ]

Decades of Israeli warnings against Iran’s nuclear program and preparations for military action to thwart it culminated early Friday morning with the Jewish state launching a major offensive against the Islamic Republic, striking nuclear sites, military facilities, missile bases and senior leadership.

Jerusalem said it had engaged in a “precise, preemptive strike” against Iran, declaring an imminent threat from its nuclear program and announcing a domestic state of emergency as citizens braced for retaliation. Top officials warned of a potential prolonged conflict, noting that Tehran had the power to inflict significant pain upon Israel.

Multiple waves of Israeli strikes were reported throughout Iran for several hours, starting at around 3 a.m. and into the morning. Over 200 Israeli Air Force aircraft were involved in the opening strikes, and fighter jets dropped over 330 munitions on some 100 targets, the IDF said.

The operation, dubbed “Rising Lion,” was directed at Iran’s nuclear program — the military assessed Iran currently has enough enriched uranium to build 15 nuclear bombs — as well as its ballistic missile factories and its military capabilities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the military said.

Israel said it had no choice but to attack Iran, adding that it had gathered intelligence that Tehran was approaching “the point of no return” in its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

“The Iranian regime has been working for decades to obtain a nuclear weapon. The world has attempted every possible diplomatic path to stop it, but the regime has refused to stop,” the military said in a statement.

Confirmed killed in the strikes was Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that the chief of Iran’s military, Mohammad Bagheri, was also dead. Jerusalem assessed that other top brass and senior nuclear scientists were killed as well.

Blasts were reported in Natanz, the site of a key nuclear facility, as well as in and around the capital Tehran.

All Israeli Air Force pilots and aircrews who participated in the strikes returned to their bases unharmed, the military said late on Friday morning.

The Israeli operation was expected to last days, according to military officials, who added that the IDF was preparing for heavy fire from Iran, but asserted that “at the end of the operation, there will be no nuclear threat” from the Islamic Republic.

. . . Netanyahu and Iranian state TV confirmed that one target of the strikes was the Natanz enrichment facility, one of two underground nuclear sites in the country, the other being at Fordo.

The “Natanz enrichment facility has been hit several times,” state TV reported Friday morning, showing footage of heavy smoke billowing from the site.

Two tweets:

I’m stunned that Israel could build an entire secret drone base in Iran, 1000 km from Israel. They even moved vehicles to Iran, which means that there were a bunch of brave Mossad commandos, who would be instantly killed if they were caught.

I’m still amazed that the operation went off as well as it did, though I am unsure about whether Israel did take out Iran’s ability to make a deliverable nuclear warhead.  And I think Iran realizes its impotence to damage Israel using the weapons it has now. This is going to go on for a long time, and Israel, if it’s to do serious damage, must somehow get bombs to the underground facility at Natanz.

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from the incomparable Nellie Bowles’s weekly news and snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: ICE raid on Aisle 4.” Sadly, because nobody can replace Nellie, this column (and next week’s) will be written by her vacation replacement, Will Rahn.  Actually, his column isn’t bad, but I do want Nellie back ASAP.

→ Don’t go to Home Depot like that: At the heart of the protests is a genuinely nasty little change in deportation practices. The Trump admin is doing big, high-profile snatches of immigrants as they’re trying to get work. Here’s a great Wall Street Journal story on the new strategy designed by Trump adviser and Bond villain Stephen Miller: “Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.” Super chill bet, Stephen. So ICE agents are going to Home Depots and just grabbing guys who are there trying to get some work that day, i.e., literally the most productive illegal immigrants you could find. It’s the shock and awe method. The panic is the point. The car burners are right on cue.

It’s important to note that a majority of Americans now disapprove of how Trump’s doing this. If the optics of burning cars and waving Mexican flags aren’t great, so too are the bad optics of masked, anonymous ICE guys tackling hardworking day laborers. They ought to do violence like how I do violence: quietly, at my computer, over Slack. With my eyes, when a driver rushes through a yellow light and I’m walking. With my grip on the stroller. Silent. But smoldering. Our current immigration policy feels wild, schizophrenic. On the one hand, we constantly read about illegal immigrants with long records of violent crime getting just one more chance in Berkeley (he killed the last wife, but let’s try one more before prison, okay? It takes two to do a murder), then you have Stephen Miller sending SEAL Team Six to grab a woman as she picks strawberries.

Even Trump is now saying that deportations have gotten out of control and his employees must be stopped.

→ David Hogg is out: It’s done. The Hoggster (Hoggmeister? Skinny-armed legend? Nevermind) is out as DNC vice chair, ousted because his election violated the gender-balance rules, and he pissed everyone off. He says he won’t run for it again. Well done, guys! And DNC chair Ken Martin has said privately that he doesn’t even want to keep doing his own job these days: “I’ll be very honest with you, for the first time in my 100 days on this job. . . the other night I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore.”

What’s shocking is that it took him 100 days. Can you imagine wanting the job of DNC chair? How psychotic you must be to desire that? That’s like wanting to be the beverage director on the Titanic. To be DNC chair, you need to be on so many psychiatric medications that your mind is like a placid, gentle lake. Your phone rings and it’s James Carville calling you a dumb loser trash traitor creek scum and you need to say, “Okay, James, my love to your wife.” Your assistant position can only, by DNC bylaw, be filled by a blind, autistic, nonbinary Guatemalan. Those are the rules and you ratified them. And what if you can’t find that person? Maybe they don’t exist. So you need to be able to blind a Guatemalan with your own hands, using only your thumbs, and then make them stay on as your assistant. And they’re bad at getting back on email, but how can you blame them since they’re blind? That would be ableist, and would get you fired. Unless?

Here’s a Nate Silver quote given by Andrew Sullivan in his latest column:  “This is Olympic-level DNC’ing. You can’t DNC any harder than this,” – Nate Silver on the woke logic that ousted David Hogg.

→ A little dramatic, Christiane: British CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour recently relayed the fear she felt traveling to Massachusetts to deliver a speech:

When I went to Harvard to give this speech, and it was just a few days ago, last week, I must say I was afraid. I’m a foreigner. I don’t have a green card. I’m not an American citizen. I’m fairly prominent. And I literally prepared to go to America as if I was going to North Korea. I took a burner phone, imagine that. . . . and I had nothing on the burner phone except a few numbers. . . . I was really afraid.

It’s Massachusetts, not Mosul, Christiane! You’re traveling to Harvard and you’re not Jewish—you’ll be fine. What, are you going to run into a cappella kids who demand to see your Social Security card? I actually think what’s happening is that people are freaking themselves out on Bluesky. Just like how X/Twitter is convincing me that the entire world is full of guys who think Hitler is misunderstood, Bluesky is convincing Christiane Amanpour that she needs a burner phone to visit Harvard Yard.

→Elsewhere in Gaza: Four weeks ago, Imad al-Hout, the director of the European Gaza Hospital, told reporters at The New York Times that he believed there were no tunnels under his hospital. This past weekend, Israel announced it had recovered the body of Muhammad Sinwar, Hamas’s military chief, from a tunnel directly under the hospital. A Times article begrudgingly admitted that there does seem to be a Hamas tunnel under the hospital. It goes on to suggest that letting the Hamas chief die by possibly suffocating him in said tunnel might be a war crime, calling up a war crimes expert. But, you see, blowing up the whole tunnel would have blown up the hospital, which sits above it. It’s a catch-22, and the only answer is for Jews in the Middle East to let themselves be killed off (have they considered it, asks the NYT).

Some of the news media who reported the absence of tunnels have yet to correct themselves; they can’t bear to!

*The WSJ reports on how the Trump administration is now trying to control scientific journals as part of its plan to take “progressive” ideology out of journals (and presumably replace it with conservative ideology:

The Trump administration’s attack on scientific institutions has been characteristically audacious: Eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded healthcare interventions and research worldwide. Removing all the members of the vaccine advisory panel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cutting healthcare research funding by $1.8 billion and overall funding for the National Institutes of Health by $3 billion.

It has also homed in on what might seem like a small-bore opponent: the highly specialized world of science and medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In April, the Justice Department sent letters to 15 of the country’s top science and medical journals inquiring about “fraud,” “political bias” and “censorship.” “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” read a letter addressed to the journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The letters were signed by Ed Martin, then the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and now President Trump’s pardon attorney.

Neil McCabe, a spokesperson for Martin, said the list of journals came directly from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the letters were a response to legitimate public grievances. “You have a bunch of leftists who are sitting on big pots of money from pharma, and they all entertain each other and publish their friends,” McCabe said. “They were basically publishing lies.”

“I think it was an intimidation tactic,” said Eric Rubin, the editor of NEJM, which responded to the letter with a statement citing its “rigorous peer review” process, editorial independence and First Amendment rights. The Lancet, which did not receive a letter, posted an editorial denouncing the government’s letter as an “obvious ruse to strike fear into journals and impinge on their right to independent editorial oversight.”

Now I’m the first person to admit that quite a few scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and The Lancet, have become ideologically captured, pushing a “progressive” agenda in their op-eds and summary articles. Crikey, I’ve written about this quite a few times.  But we cannot allow the government to impose restrictions on this stuff. For one thing, journals only hurt themselves when they hew to a political line (Nature lost credibility when it endorsed Biden), and, importantly, the meat of journals—the scientific research itself—seems by and large to remain politically neutral. It is  scientists should police their journals, which is customary under academic freedom, but that freedom is violated when journals are bullied by the government to change their political leanings. Plus, of course, the journals are run as for-profit operations.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a fog has settled on the land and Hili wants a change in the weather:

Andrzej: What are you waiting for?
Hili: For fog to lift.
In Polish:
Ja: Na co czekasz?
Hili: Aż mgła się podniesie.

 

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

From Stephen, and the Sayers quote is correct:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things with Faces: a mean backpack

Masih reacts to the Israeli attack on Iran:

Not a tweet but a good video. Click below to hear a BBC tribute to Brian Wilson:

From Luana: Greta Thumberg has a sister who sings, and more or less how you’d expect Greta’s sister to sing:

From Malcolm. I can’t embed this tweet, but click on the screenshot to go to the video tweet, as it’s really nice:

One from my feed, and yes, it’s sad (explanation in following tweet):

One I posted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-14T09:54:26.336Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. About this first one he asks, “How else can one interpret this statement?”:

Kristi Noem: "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."Sen. Alex Padilla is then forcibly removed!

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T18:06:08.896Z

Look at this assortment of weird fish!  The eyes of the last one freak me out:

A lot of really fantastic fish images @mbarinews.bsky.social put in this video! It's on their IG & tiktok pages . #MarineLife

— Lisa (@tuexplorer1.bsky.social) 2025-06-13T04:48:36.425Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

June 13, 2025 • 7:00 am

The big news today is Israel’s attack on Iran; see the previous post (and below) for details.

Welcome to the tail end of the week; it’s Friday, June 13, 2025 and National Cupcake Lover’s Day, implying that only a single lover of cupcakes is being honored. Here are some fancy ones:

Katjaskupcakes katja Seaton, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

It’s also Weed Your Garden Day, Skeptics Day International, and Sewing Machine Day, observed because:

Thomas Saint of England took out the first patent for a complete sewing machine. He was given patent #1764 in 1790. Some sources say that he received his patent on June 13, explaining why Sewing Machine Day takes when it does. The machine was to have an awl that punched a hole, and then a needle that would go through the hole. It is unknown if Saint created a prototype of his sewing machine, and only the drawings of it survive.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

NOTE:  The articles below were posted yesterday afternoon, and some of the first ones are a bit obsolete:

**Two NYT headlines: “UN Watchdog rules that Iran is not complying with nuclear obligations,” right next to “Israel appears ready to attack Iran, officials in U.S. and Europe say.”  The archived versions are, respectively, here and here.)

From the first story:

Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe, a step that could further inflame the Middle East and derail or delay efforts by the Trump administration to broker a deal to cut off Iran’s path to building a nuclear bomb.

The concern about a potential Israeli strike and the prospect of retaliation by Iran led the United States on Wednesday to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and authorize the voluntary departure of U.S. military family members from the Middle East.

It is unclear how extensive an attack Israel might be preparing. But the rising tensions come after months in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has pressed President Trump to seize on what Israel sees as a moment of Iranian vulnerability to a strike.

Mr. Trump waved off another plan by Israel several months ago to attack Iran, insisting that he wanted a chance to negotiate a deal with Tehran that would choke off Iran’s ability to produce more nuclear fuel for a bomb. Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump said he had warned Mr. Netanyahu about launching a strike while U.S. negotiations with Iran were underway.

It is not clear how much effort Mr. Trump made to block Mr. Netanyahu again this time, but the president has appeared less optimistic in recent days about the prospects for a diplomatic settlement after Iran’s supreme leader rejected an administration proposal that would have effectively phased out Iran’s ability to enrich uranium on its soil. Mr. Netanyahu has walked up to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities in the past, only to back off at the last minute.

Word of the U.S. decisions to withdraw personnel from the region, along with a warning from Britain about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after Mr. Trump told The New York Post in a podcast released on Wednesday that he had grown “less confident” about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons.

. . . and from the second:

The International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Thursday that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the first time the U.N. watchdog has passed a resolution against the country in 20 years.

The long-anticipated vote by the agency’s board of governors in Vienna came at a time of high tension over Tehran’s nuclear program, with American and European officials saying they believe that Israel may be preparing an imminent military strike against Iran.

The I.A.E.A. said that Iran had consistently failed to provide information about undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple locations.

The resolution was put forward by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, and passed easily, with 19 votes of the 35-nation board. Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against, and 11 other countries abstained, while two did not vote at all.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry and national atomic energy agency issued a joint statement condemning the vote, calling it political and saying the resolution had “completely called into question the credibility and prestige” of the nuclear watchdog.

The statement added that Iran would now “launch a new enrichment center in a secure location and replace the first-generation machines” at another site with more modern equipment.

Iran had reacted angrily to the prospect of the vote and had threatened to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970. Iran is a signatory but has not ratified a section that would allow inspectors to search areas of the country where they suspect nuclear activity. But the vote was also seen as part of the diplomacy around the fraught negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program between Washington and Tehran.

From the Times of Israel:

US officials believe Israel is ready to carry out an attack on Iran and could launch military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming days, reports suggested early Thursday, even as high-level talks aimed at a diplomatic deal over Tehran’s nuclear activity remained on track for Sunday.

The reports, from US networks NBC and CBS, that Israel was moving toward a long-threatened military strike came hours after the US announced it would evacuate some personnel from the region amid fears they could be targeted by Iran in reprisal actions.

. . . . According to the report, Israel was weighing the option of striking the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure, fearing that Washington could agree to a deal that falls short of its demands regarding Iran ending all nuclear enrichment.

Sources told the news network that they were not aware of any plans in the US to aid Israel in its endeavor to strike Iran, directly or indirectly, in the form of aerial refueling or intelligence sharing.

But the sources said US officials were on alert.

CBS News, citing multiple sources, said US officials have been told Israel is “fully ready to launch an operation into Iran.”

Both reports cited worries that Iran could retaliate against US personnel stationed in neighboring Iraq as the reason the State Department and Pentagon authorized some US officials and their families to leave the region on Wednesday.

I have mixed feeling about this. While I’ve already said that there’s no doubt that Iran is pursuing a bomb, and that Israel, preferably in combination with the U.S., should destroy the bomb-making and uranium-refining facilities, this could well trigger a wider war in the Middle East. There is no way that Iran would not retaliate after such a strike, and then all hell will break loose.

NOTE: The attack, years in the planning, took place, doing considerable damage to Iranian facilities (and officials), and Iran’s attempt to retaliate, by sending 100 drones towards Israel, was unsuccessful (Jordan helped take them down).

*The NYT also reports that five Palestinian workers with a humanitarian aid organization were killed—by Hamas. I feel immensely sad that workers dispensing humanitarian aid were killed, no matter who killed them. But it is unusual that the NYT put Hamas in the headline as the perp (article archived here):

An aid group in Gaza backed by Israel and the United States said that on Wednesday night a bus carrying some of its Palestinian workers was attacked by Hamas, leaving at least five people dead and others injured.

At the time of the attack, the bus was carrying about two dozen of the group’s workers and was en route to an aid distribution site in southern Gaza, according to a statement from the group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some of the workers “may have been taken hostage,” it said, adding that it was still gathering information.

“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” said the foundation, which is run by American contractors. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons, and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others.”

The New York Times could not independently verify the attack. Hamas did not comment on the accusation that it had attacked workers from the group, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The foundation said it held the militant group “fully responsible” for the deaths of “dedicated workers who have been distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.” The group called on the international community to condemn Hamas for the attack.

The aid organization has repeatedly criticized Hamas, saying that for days it had “openly” threatened workers and civilians. On Saturday, the foundation said it was “impossible to proceed” with aid distribution because Hamas had menaced its staff.

Hamas has denied those accusations and has accused the aid group of lacking neutrality.

Of course Israel will be blamed for this, as it has been for distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza:

The United Nations and many humanitarian organizations have accused Israel of “militarizing” aid distribution in Gaza, and have said the group was violating the international organizations’ principles of independence. They have warned that residents could face danger from the Israeli military as they sought food and other aid.

Israel does not want the UN to participate in distributing aid because of its connections to Hamas, particularly through the odious UNRWA, and the UN

*RFK Jr. named eight replacement for the 17 people he fired on the vaccine advisory panel that makes recommendation to the Center for Disease Control. Several of the replacements are known vaccine skeptics.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced eight new picks for a key immunization committee, including vaccine opponents.

Kennedy’s move came two days after abruptly removing all 17 of the prior members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The panel makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including when and how often children and adults should get them.

Kennedy said the new panel would review not just new vaccine recommendations, but existing ones as well.

“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” he wrote in a post on X. “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”

Kennedy earlier this week promised not to pick “ideological antivaxers” for the committee.

Among his picks are Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a public-health doctorate, who is a board member of the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization that advocates against vaccines. She has said that she became interested in vaccine safety because her child suffered long-term health effects after receiving immunizations.

“Most vaccine injuries are not recognized, acknowledged, treated or compensated,” she said in a 2011 video for NVIC. Many scientists have said vaccine injuries are real but rare and that the benefits of the federally recommended shots outweigh the risks.

Kennedy has also tapped Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who worked on research into several mRNA Covid-19 vaccines before he grew skeptical of the shots. Malone has voiced fears that Covid vaccines come with dangerous, unknown risks. His 2021 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” prompted musicians and podcasters to leave Spotify for allowing Rogan’s podcast to spread what they decried as dangerous coronavirus misinformation.

Retsef Levi, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Kennedy tapped for the panel, called for Covid vaccines to be withdrawn from the market in a 2023 video.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, another Kennedy pick and a former professor of medicine at Harvard University, became known during the pandemic as a critic of coronavirus mitigation measures, such as lockdowns. He has said he was fired from the school for his opposition to vaccine mandates. He has studied vaccine safety monitoring systems.

The other appointees include former ACIP member Dr. Cody Meissner, a pediatrician and infectious-disease specialist respected by other vaccine experts; psychiatrist Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln; emergency physician Dr. James Pagano; and Dr. Michael Ross, a gynecologist.

“This committee as a whole does not deserve public or expert trust,” said Dorit Reiss, a University of California San Francisco law professor who has studied the antivaccine movement. “Most of these people have no scientific expertise related to vaccines.”

The White House was involved in vetting the new members, a White House official said.

Four of the eight are therefore dubious since they’ve come out against vaccines or mandates (granted, some mandates, like closing schools for a long time, were misguided). But this sounds like a panel loaded with members that have an antivax agenda. As I’ve said, I think RFK Jr. may have been Trump’s most dangerous appointment.  This mass firing and reappointment supports that supposition.

*An Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London crashed soon after takeoff yesterday, killing most of the people on board:

An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, leaving at least 204 people dead.

The flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew, including 53 British nationals, when it came down in the western Indian city.

Ahmedabad’s police chief told the BBC that 204 bodies had been recovered, while 41 people were being treated for injuries.

GS Malik earlier told news agencies there appeared to be no survivors from the crash, and that some local people would also have died given where the plane came down.

He later said one passenger survived the crash, with Indian media reporting that it was a British national.

Details are still emerging from the scene.

. . . . Air India flight AI171 left Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 13:39 local time (08:09 GMT), Air India said.

It was scheduled to land at London Gatwick at 18:25 BST.

The plane crashed on departure from Ahmedabad – where all operations have since been suspended.

According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, the signal from the aircraft was lost “less than a minute after take-off”.

Flight tracking data ends with the plane at an altitude of 625ft (190m).

The plane gave a mayday call to air traffic control, India’s aviation regulator said. No response was given by the aircraft after that.

It crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar. Police told ANI news agency that it had crashed into a doctors’ hostel.

Some of the people on the ground in the doctors’ hostel were also killed.  For some reason, the BBC has a whole article on where one surviving British passenger (born in India) was sitting: seat 11A. Will that now become peoples’ lucky seat number?  Now I read in the NYT that the lucky guy may have been the only person to survive that crash. On the news last night, it was reported that video of the plane as it was heading to ground showed that the tail flaps were in the wrong position for getting lift, and the landing gear was out, though it should have been retracted. U.S. and British investigators are on the site helping the Indian investigation.

*Finally, from the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we have a rivalry between two Madrid restaurants which both claim to be the world’s oldest. I have eaten in one of them, the first one described below.

In the heart of Spain’s capital, Sobrino de Botín holds a coveted Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest restaurant. Exactly three hundred years after it opened its doors, Botín welcomes droves of daily visitors hungry for Castilian fare with a side of history.

But on the outskirts of Madrid, far from the souvenir shops and tourist sites, a rustic tavern named Casa Pedro makes a bold claim. Its owners assert the establishment endured not just the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the Napoleonic invasion in the early 1800s, but even the War of Spanish Succession at the start of the 18th century — a lineage that would make Casa Pedro older than Botín and a strong contender for the title.

“It’s really frustrating when you say, ‘Yes, we’ve been around since 1702,’ but … you can’t prove it,” said manager and eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales. “If you look at the restaurant’s logo, it says ‘Casa Pedro, since 1702,’ so we said, ‘Damn it, let’s try to prove it.’”

Guiñales, 51, remembers her grandfather swearing by Casa Pedro’s age, but she was aware that decades-old hearsay from a proud old-timer wouldn’t be enough to prove it. Her family hired a historian and has so far turned up documents dating the restaurant’s operations to at least 1750.

That puts them within striking distance of Botín’s record.

Both taverns are family-owned. Both offer Castilian classics like stewed tripe and roast suckling pig. They are decorated with charming Spanish tiles, feature ceilings with exposed wooden beams and underground wine cellars. And both enjoy a rich, star-studded history.

Botín’s celebrated past includes a roster of literary patrons like Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene. In his book “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway described it as “one of the best restaurants in the world.” While Casa Pedro may not have boasted the same artistic pedigree, it boasts its own VIPs. Its walls are adorned with decades-old photographs of former Spanish King Juan Carlos I dining in one of its many rooms. The current Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI dines there, too, albeit more inconspicuously than his father.

Well, there’s empirical evidence to support Botin’s claim, but Casa Pedro’s claim rests on shaky ground.  I remember going to Botin when my girlfriend and I hitchhiked around Europe for 5.5 months, starting in Athens and working our way to Crete (where we lived for a month), then back to Greece, up to Istanbul, through Europe and eastern Spain down to Morocco, and then back to Spain, where we returned to the U.S. from Madrid. That was a great trip, and we celebrated in Madrid with a dinner in Botin that blew most of our remaining dosh.  As Hemingway would say, “we had suckling pig, and it was good.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is superstitious:

Hili: A bad sign.
Andrzej: What bad sign?
Hili: A black insect crossed my path.
In Polish:
Hili: Zły znak.
Ja: Jaki?
Hili: Czarny owad przeleciał mi przed nosem.

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

From Lynne, a grammatical point:

From Jesus of the Day:

From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored 2.  Is this real?

Masih is quiet again. This is from JKR, who has a sharp tongue, but a well-aimed one:

From Bryan, a cool old machine. You can see a video here.

From Malcolm, a d* insists that the cat join the family photo:

Two from my feed. First, a good catch:

. . . and a mini forest:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-13T09:45:39.638Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. This photo seems to be real (and a giant sequoia in California), based on a postcard I found on eBay via Google Images.

The incredible 3 inch tall Betty Smith, her specially made car, and a normal size tree 🌲

— The English Oak Project (@thekentacorn.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T15:48:34.290Z

A three-minute video on scale worms:

A classic @mbarinews.bsky.social video about SCALE WORMS! #wormwednesday youtu.be/yrlSmxG5yZY?…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T14:49:51.259Z