Welcome to Thursday, September 17, 2026 and National Monte Cristo Day. No, it’s not honoring the small Italian island or its fictional count, but rather the bizarre Monte Cristo sandwich, a ham-and-cheese sandwich dipped in egg and fried—sometimes topped with jam and powdered sugar. I’ve never had one, though I’d try it. Here’s a specimen from Wikipedia; look at all the sugar!:

It’s also Constitution Day, marking the signing of this document on September 17, 1787, Free Queso Day (at all Moe’s Southwest Grill restaurants), and National Apple Dumpling Day.

Here’s the first page of the Constitution, which you can see at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The caption is, “Page one of Jacob Shallus‘ officially engrossed copy of the Constitution signed in Philadelphia by delegates of the Constitutional Convention in 1787″

Posting will be light as I prepare for my cataract surgery (one eye next week, the next two weeks after). Wish me luck!

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

Da Nooz:

*In the face of Trump’s dumb tariff war on Canada, the EU has offered Canada the first “associate membership” in its organization (article archived here).

Locked in a trade war with President Donald Trump and pivoting away from the United States, Canada is seeking stronger ties in Europe and Asia as a shield against Washington’s volatility.

On Wednesday, sitting as a guest of honor inside the European Parliament, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney received an unprecedented offer: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she wants to make Canada the first “associate member” of the 27-nation bloc.

“We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible,” she said in her annual State of the Union address.

The declaration at the Parliament in Strasbourg, France, received a standing ovation from European lawmakers and from Carney.

The offer, which would see two longtime U.S. partners expand their alliance from trade to security, highlights the extent to which Trump is redefining alliances.

The president’s foreign policy gyrations, including threats to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, have triggered a reckoning among Washington’s traditional friends about their relationship with the United States.

Amid the standoff with Trump on tariffs, Canada has pursued a thaw in ties with China including new trade deals. Beijing has praised Ottawa for walking away from talks rather than caving to Trump’s demands, and this month, China and Canada revived a dialogue on military issues after an eight-year break.

Ahead of his trip to Europe this week, Carney said he wanted a “unique alliance” with the E.U., including on energy and critical minerals, to help safeguard Canada against economic coercion. “The world’s more dangerous and divided, and friends need to stick together in these times,” he said.

Trump’s stupidity not only alienates our friends directly, but also weakens the U.S. as a superpower by forcing our erstwhile friends to ally with others, and even strengthen ties with America’s biggest nemesis: China. It will take a long time, if ever, to repair the damage Trump has done.

*The NYT reports that Trump has approved the sale of $2.8 billion in armaments to Israel, which includes 40,000 one-ton bombs. As you might expect, the progressives are up in arms (forgive the pun) about this.

The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, according to a U.S. official, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions there even as American public support for the country declines.

The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.

Human rights groups and some foreign governments have condemned Israel for dropping the giant munitions in densely populated areas, sometimes killing dozens of civilians in strikes targeting just one individual.

The package would include 20,000 each of America’s 2,000-pound MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs. It would also provide Israel with 20,000 bunker-busting I-2000 penetrator warheads, which explode on delay after smashing through an outer surface like soil, rock or concrete. The plan was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

The blast from a 2,000-pound bomb can be lethal at more than 1,000 feet and leave a crater as deep as 50 feet. Israel provoked a fierce outcry after it dropped hundreds of the heavy bombs on Gaza.

The State Department recently sent the proposed deal to two congressional committees to get informal approval, the U.S. official said.

Production and delivery of the munitions usually takes months or years, but there are ways to expedite the process.

In mid-2024, the Biden administration paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because of concern about their use in crowded civilian areas. President Trump allowed the shipment to proceed days after taking office last January.

Then in February, the Trump administration agreed to sell roughly $2.7 billion in munitions to Israel, a package that included 35,000 of the one-ton MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs.

While congressional leaders can tell the Trump administration that they oppose the deal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio can exercise emergency powers to proceed with the sale regardless, as he has done repeatedly, or just say he is moving forward with it. The administration would then bypass getting informal approval from Congress and formally announce the sale is happening.

I can’t say that I oppose this sale, especially because the bombs are more likely to be used in Iran, where they can be used against large military facilities, nuclear sites, and so on. I largely trust the IDF’s decision, but not entirely, nor am I party to how the IDF makes its decisions weighing military advantange against civilian casualties.  Given this, I will not say this is a deal that shouldn’t be done, though you can be sure that most Democrats will say no, and every “progressive” will say no.

*I have always opposed capital punishment, and, in a Free Press article, Douglas Murray generally agrees/. But he finds an exception in a piece called “The death penalty is cruel. Hamas terrorists deserve it.” And just the other day I hit on the same reason he did for changing his mind, a reason based on the Israeli psyche.

Israelis must soon make serious decisions about the issue. Though Israel prohibits the death penalty for most offenses, the Knesset voted unanimously in May to allow it for terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023, attacks. Now the Israeli justice system must determine whether capital punishment will go forward, and exactly who it will be allowed to ensnare.

Since this is a question of conscience, perhaps it is worth outlining my own moral views from the outset. I have always been deeply opposed to the death penalty. Rather than explain every reason I have for opposing it, I’ll just say that I agree with the argument Albert Camus makes in his 1957 essay “Reflections on the Guillotine.” The problem is not only the possibility of wrongful convictions, and not just the taking of a life, but something perhaps even more cruel: putting a human mind in the position of knowing the place and time of its ending. A change comes upon a society when it permits this ultimate sanction.

. . .Yet despite my deep, instinctive opposition to the practice, I still believe that there are times when it may be legitimate. Few people would deny that the Allies had the right after World War II not just to try and convict but also to hang the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. The world needed to demonstrate this ultimate expression of revulsion for the crimes of the Nazi high command. And the new world that was to follow, which was being built by Allied victors and Holocaust survivors, could not afford to remain haunted by living Nazi leaders, who would have sustained a glimmer of faith in their movement despite living in captivity.

The same justification may rightly stand in the case of the only hanging to have taken place in the State of Israel since its reestablishment. That is the hanging in 1962—after capture, trial, and judgment—of the architect of the Shoah, Adolf Eichmann.

The same principle may well be applied to the several hundred terrorists belonging to Hamas’s most gruesome fighting unit, the Nukhba Force, who were captured alive after breaking into Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023. Each of these men invaded Israel in order to murder, rape, torture, and kidnap. They represent a special type of evil.

To me these aren’t valid reasons for the state engaging in killing. Better life without the possibility of parole (I’ve discussed my reasons before). The problem is that the way Israel deals with terrorist prisoners means that “life without parole” may not be an irrevocable sentence, and there’s the rub:

But there is an additional justification for the execution of these terrorists which too few people outside of Israel appreciate. It is the fact that Israel will someday face the temptation to use the several hundred terrorists currently held in its maximum-security prisons as bargaining chips.

The architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar, was himself a terrorist detained in Israeli prisons. He was released early from his sentence and returned to Gaza in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other terrorists, in exchange for a single Israeli soldier who had been captured by Hamas and held in Gaza. Sinwar himself once said that the best news that a Palestinian prisoner could receive in jail was the news that an Israeli had been kidnapped. That is because the prisoners then knew that a thousand-to-one prisoner swap might be in the offing, and they had a good chance of being spared even from a life sentence.

Despite my deep, instinctive opposition to the practice, I still believe that there are times when it may be legitimate.

In recent decades, including the years since October 7, thousands of terrorists who should have spent the rest of their lives in prison have been released in exchange for Israeli hostages. It is the best leverage that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups have. This has led to some of the most painful scenes imaginable in which, for instance, people convicted of murdering Israelis have been released from prison after serving just a few years and receive a hero’s welcome from enraptured crowds in Gaza. It is a wretched, appalling system, which Hamas and others exploit well.

It is because Israel values life so highly, particularly the life of a kidnapped soldier or POW, that this problem comes up.  Despite that, Murray says that the incentive to kidnap Israelis has to be broken. The problem is that even prisoners scheduled for execution, or get life without parole, could still get money for their families via the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” program, so there’s still an incentive to take Israelis hostage. And Murray mentions the criticism that would come down on Israel were it to engage in mass executions. That would be unfair he says, but he’s still in favor of mass executions of some terrorists. As for me, I am undecided, but am still leaning towards the banning of capital punishment.

*I always thought that airline pilots made decent salaries, but not as much as the Wall Street Journal describes in a new article, “The volatile finances of airline pilots, America’s unpredictable millionaires” (subtitle, “They can earn fortunes in a single month, but are often dependent on one airline for their entire careers.”

Jeff Barath never had a need for a financial adviser. Then he retired last year at 65, and it threatened to unleash a tidal wave of taxable income.

Like many of his fellow airline pilots, Barath spent much of his career bound by a rigid seniority structure that came with similarly rigid compensation and retirement benefits. When he left United Airlines after 35 years, he was inundated by more financial decisions than he ever expected upon entering the profession.

He has a partial pension, a brokerage account and a $3.5 million 401(k). Once he starts taking his required minimum distributions, his income will be well over $300,000 a year, including Social Security, which is more than he earned most years while working. He needed to know how much to take out, where to pull from first and how the decision would affect his taxes and his Medicare premium.

“It’s a high-class problem,” Barath said.

. . . Many pilots leave the workforce as millionaires thanks to generous pay and 401(k) contributions from their employers. But they face lots of pitfalls, too. They typically work for the same carrier their entire careers, and in a volatile industry, working for the wrong airline at the wrong time can take a major toll on earnings.

Pilots with seniority can make as much as $100,000 in a month if they live near a hub, fly the biggest planes and can pick up a lot of flights that pay overtime rates due to weather-related events, according to Timothy Pope of wealth manager 360 Aviation Advisors.

. . .Barath, who is still single and now lives in Bronxville, N.Y., has remained conservative with his investments. On the advice of a financial-services executive, he avoided high-cost mutual funds with a spotty performance history. Instead, he put about 75% of his plan into an S&P 500 index fund. The remainder he spread across a value fund, a small-cap fund and a money-market account.

He left it there until a couple years before retirement, when he moved more into the money-market account. A Charles Schwab adviser who took over managing his money a few months after his retirement helped Barath create a budget to determine how much he would need each month. The upside is that he has plenty to live on. The downside is that almost all of it will be taxable.

Barath’s adviser recommended he put 60% in stocks and 40% in fixed-income investments.

This is pretty much what I did, and relied entirely on Vanguard funds. My allocation is still 60% equities andf 40% stocks, but I’m set for life, and will give the vast majority of my savings to charity when I did. As for the pilots, they have a very important job, flying hundreds of people at least once a day, and they can’t afford to make a mistake. I don’t begrudge them their high salaries at all.

*A Kiwi named Jamie Beaton may be on the way to becoming world’s most educated person, already having 12 advanced degrees from top-ranked universities, and more on the way. (Article archived here.)

Early in the fall semester of the 2025-26 academic year, Lisa Belkin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s journalism school, realized that one of her students, Jamie Beaton, had yet to show up for class.

Belkin, who avoids combing the internet for information about her students, knew nothing about Beaton. She was curious about his absence, though, so she reached out to a dean, who sent an email.

Beaton was apologetic in his reply, saying he had mixed up his schedule. He was in New Zealand, teaching a course in entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland, but would be back in New York the next week.

That was when Belkin decided to break her rule. Who was this guy?

Beaton, she learned, had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2016, picking up a master’s degree in applied mathematics along the way. He had gone on to collect an M.B.A. from Stanford. Then a law degree from Yale. That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar — all before age 28.

Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master’s degrees from — deep breath — the University of Pennsylvania (education entrepreneurship), Stanford (education technology), Princeton (finance), Cornell (health care policy and economics), Dartmouth (implementation science), King’s College London (war studies) and Tsinghua University in Beijing (global affairs).

Still, there was more: Beaton, who was born and raised in New Zealand, was a founder and the chief executive of Crimson Education, a college admissions counseling service that has been valued at more than $600 million.

. . . If he continues collecting advanced degrees at such a swift pace, he will surpass Benjamin B. Bolger, who has racked up 16 at age 50. He might even beat Michael Nicholson, an octogenarian forever scholar with more than 30 degrees to his name.

Away from his studies, Beaton, 31, has become a player in the field of college admissions counseling. His clients pay between $30,000 and $200,000 for a multiyear program designed to enhance their children’s chances of getting into top universities.

Why is Belkin doing it? Well, he clearly likes to both learn and to work hard—to the extent that he abjures vacations. Will he get more degrees? His friends say he might go into politics, though they’re just guessing. But one thing’s clear: this guy is wickedly diligent and also extremely rich.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron wants out:

Szaron: Could I go out too?
Hili: What for?

In Polish:

Szaron: Czy ja też mógłbym wyjść z domu?
Hili: A po co?

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Masih; translation from the Farsi:

Reza Rashedpour, do you remember that teenage girl you humiliated just because she wasn’t wearing a hijab? Now your own daughter produces content without a hijab! That means she’s enjoying a freedom that Iranian women were beaten for, arrested for, and humiliated for—so, keep your hands off Iranian women and girls. The morality police inside you is still running rampant!

رضا رشیدپور، این دختر نوجوانی را که فقط به‌خاطر نداشتن حجاب تحقیرش کردی یادت هست؟
حالا دختر خودت بدون حجاب تولید محتوا می‌کند! یعنی از آزادی‌ای بهره می‌برد که زنان ایران برایش کتک خوردند، بازداشت شدند و تحقیر شدند، پس، دست از سر زنان و دختران ایران بردار. گشت ارشاد درونت هنوز… pic.twitter.com/fdOaHCSfeI

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 15, 2026

From Luana; more mishigas about sex:

The 179 mins of HR training I’m forcing myself thru in 5 min increments casually denigrates physicians thus:

“Sex Assigned at Birth​​: Typically, health professionals label infants as male or female after a cursory examination of their external physical characteristics.”

I love…

— Jake 🇺🇸 (@omni_american) September 14, 2026

From Malcolm; six minutes of information from the BBC about an unusual job: a steeplejack. This guy is taking down the entire chimney singlehanded! Why not wear safety gear?

“I’ve never fell off a big chimney. You only fall off one of them once.”#OnThisDay 1979: Extraordinary steeplejack Fred Dibnah was introduced to the nation. pic.twitter.com/07PPc6um4D

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) September 6, 2023

From Jeff Maurer:

“I find the idea of a national conversation on AI regulation inherently funny. A national conversation? With this nation, whose current conversations include: 1) Whether the Jews snuck letters into math, and 2) Whether Sydney Sweeney’s side-boob means we’re living in The… pic.twitter.com/wHwxoWIz6w

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) September 16, 2026

One from my feed. Remember this? (You can see an alternate version here.)

I know this is real. I know this is part of the world in which we all live. And yet I remain in a state of cognitive dissonance in which I can’t integrate this fact that I know to be true into my picture of the world. I know that 1.) this was a video that had to be made to… pic.twitter.com/Lp9Ell3YLx

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) September 16, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T09:59:26.575Z

And two from Doc Cobb. This first one is plenty weird, and I’ve printed it out to read:

The soul is real and can be tied with a rope according to this graphical abstract. The paper is even weirder!"Quantum evidence of nonlocal consciousness during clinical death" http://www.cell.com/the-innovati… This is a Cell Press journal…via @pubpeer.com @forbetterscience.bsky.social

— Neuroskeptic (@neuroskeptic.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T09:11:12.060Z

Two wonderful people rescue a stuck bald eagle. Would you do this?

@adam_franks shares 2 good Samaritans rescuing a stuck eagle: #AGoodPlace

— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T11:22:10.906Z

My, how the week has flown!  We had bad storms on Thursday—part of the tornado/storm system that hit the Midwest. Luckily we didn’t lose power, though I had to drive the wrong way down a one-way street on my way to work: a large tree had fallen, locking off the legal route.

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 13, shabbos for Jewish cats, and also National Golf Cart Day.  Here’s an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” with the irascible Larry David, showing the sequelae of his using the famous “drop and tug” strategy in golf.  As usual, David is in a golf cart when on the links.

It’s also International Drink Chenin Blanc Day (not bad advice), National Cupcake Lover’s Day (who is the person singled out here?), National Rosé Day (for wine), and World Gin Day.

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

There’s a Google Doodle today about the up-and-coming players on the U.S. World Cup team. Click the screenshot below to see what’s up:

Da Nooz:

*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal presents Part II of why proposed U.S. ceasefire agreements with Iran are “bad deals.”

This week saw multiple cases of the trope. On Sunday, we were supposedly so close to a deal that Trump demanded Israel take a direct Iranian attack on the cheek. Then, at the last moment, a U.S. helicopter was downed by Iranian fire, and the president declared they’d been “playing us for suckers.” Deal’s off.

What followed was a night of strikes, plans for another, even a declaration that “in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island.” Then, at the last moment—crash. “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved,” according to the White House, and Trump called off the strikes.

Charlie Brown isn’t the only one with a headache, and no one—except the Iranians—is laughing.

But much like the devil, the fate of this deal is in the details—and so far, the details look familiar. This MOU [Memorandum of Understanding]  appears nearly identical to the disastrous deal floated in late May, the one Trump abandoned after Republicans had an allergic reaction to it, while Iran reportedly concluded e was simply too desperate for a deal and they could wait him out.

Rather than a full agreement, what’s on the table is an MOU extending the ceasefire for 60 days while nuclear negotiations continue—and, despite the steep costs Israel recently paid to sever the two fronts, this one appears to fold Lebanon back in as well. On the nuclear file, the text lays out a framework for addressing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, though any actual action would wait on a second, more detailed accord.

Worse is the financial relief: according to the report, after reopening the strait, Iran would be given temporary sanctions waivers allowing it to sell oil for 60 days, generating precious revenue for Tehran. That relief would expand if Iran complies with the initial agreement and shows “good faith” in subsequent negotiations—though, as one diplomat put it, “there is no set date for sanctions relief, and it will be tied to the implementation of the deal.”

Less clear is what happens to the billions in Iranian funds frozen overseas. Iran has insisted it must receive some money immediately upon signing any initial deal, while the U.S. has said release would come in tranches based on compliance. Separately, the U.S., Iran and Qatar have reportedly discussed a mechanism letting Iran access some of its frozen funds in Qatar for humanitarian purchases. I’m not sure if Qatar is simply trying to make its terrorism support tax-deductible, but these payments are humanitarian in name only—just ask Hamas. Money is fungible, and the regime still controls imports, so it can either redirect funds from what little it gives its own population now that it is being covered by Qatar, or simply sell the humanitarian goods to its own population and pocket the revenue.

This deal can be judged by a simple test: does it merely pause the regime—leaving Iran roughly where it’s been since the blockade began—or does it rewind the clock, leaving Tehran better off than before? If sanctions are eased and frozen assets unlocked, it’s definitely the latter.

As one very senior Israeli official put it to me this morning, the deal is “shit.”

. . . The good news is that nothing’s locked in—the gaps between the parties remain huge—and given how fond Trump has grown of yanking the football away at the last second, maybe this time it’s the Ayatollah who ends up flat on his back.

Every day things go back and forth here, but if Trump is going to make a deal, it has to be one that allows him to claim that the U.S. “won”.  And now the negotiations are extended for another two months, so Trump can’t really claim he “won” until the end of August at the earliest—and that’s getting close to the midterms.

*This NYT op-ed is clickbait for me, though when you click on the screenshot, you’ll see that the title has changed—whoops, it changed back again. (Thearticle is archived here). But of course the “winning issue” turns out to be screwy: it’s DATA CENTERS, Jake!

An excerpt (article is archived here):

Americans hate data centers. They really, really hate them.

A Gallup poll from May found that 71 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built in their area. In rural communities in Utah and North Carolina, regular people are organizing to stop data center construction, speaking out at public hearings and pressuring politicians for bans. They are passionate enough to attend political education sessions about water rights, land use and thermodynamics. Cities like Tulsa, Okla.; Birmingham, Ala.; and New Orleans have recently passed temporary moratoriums on data center construction. Last week, lawmakers in New York passed a statewide pause on large-scale data centers; other states, including Maryland and Michigan, could be next.

According to polling by Heatmap News, more than half of all Americans support a national ban on data centers. The public seems to agree that data centers are giant, ugly, noisy, smelly altars to industrial-scale hostile architecture. In our virulently partisan country, this constitutes a rare show of consensus.

What Ms. Cottom doesn’t realize is that most Americans couldn’t even tell you what a data center is, that data centers are vitally important in today’s computer-infused world, and their impact could be minimized by putting them in remote areas. Yes, they have problems, but as far as I can see, we’re better off with them than without them. However, given the widespread ignorance about these matters, Cottom tells us Dems, “Hop on the issue pronto!”:

Democrats need organized voters. The political mobilization that the civil rights movement built and that has propelled Democrats to victories across the country is aging. The G.O.P. is racing to disorganize and dilute Black electoral power across the South and the Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Your guess about the Democratic Party’s plan to fill the gaps is as good as mine. The party seems to want some kind of economic populist message without embracing the demographic reality that a member of the working class is just as likely to be Black or a woman as a white dude in a Carhartt. Whether the data center resistance is a blip or a beginning of a new political imagination, it refutes the idea that you cannot have it all: populist energy, an economic message and a multiracial coalition that crosses class divides, in the South and beyond. Why aren’t Democrats jumping at the chance to get into the fight?

You know why. It’s not an important issue to most Americans, and data centers are not going to be pivotal in electing Democrats.

. . . . To win the future, Democrats have to survive the midterms. We have lived in Trump’s America for a decade now. Almost none of us are better off for it. The voters showing up to fight data centers demonstrate that a lot of us want something different. If the Democrats want to convince us that they are the party to get us there, they need a plan to rebuild institutions, rebalance the branches of power and restore faith in the system. They also need a national message equal to the righteous rage driving millions of Americans to look up from their enemy and finally see, instead, a neighbor and future worth fighting for. In the end, it’s simple.

We can win. That’s it. That’s the message.

There’s another message: Cotton has wasted 1,728 words conveying a message that, to me, is trivial and useless for winning elections. You be the judge.

*Yesrterday’s NYT’s morning newsletter announced that SpaceX was going public, and the sale of shares may make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: that is one thousand billion dollars. Here are the details:

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-building, satellite-launching and artificial intelligence company, is set to go public today at $135 a share. The company plans to sell 555 million of them. That means SpaceX would raise around $75 billion, putting its valuation at $1.77 trillion, the largest I.P.O. in history.

It could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Or it could tank. Some analysts have argued that SpaceX is significantly overvalued. The market could decide that Musk’s an overpromiser and pass on the stock’s high price. (Remember his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022? The company, now known as X, saw its ad revenue decline by 65 percent last year. Musk folded it into his A.I. company, xAI. Which is now part of SpaceX.)

“It really does feel very much a ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ situation,” one career investor told The Times.

Plenty of people will get rich anyway. One launch engineer who worked at the company for 12 years told The Times he’d earned more than 100,000 shares during his tenure. At $135 a pop, his SpaceX stock would be worth at least $13.5 million at some point today. Even if the price drops by half, he’d still have millions on paper. “The magnitude of this has been ridiculous,” he said.

Or look to Antonio Gracias, one of Musk’s staunchest friends and business allies. He and his private equity firm, Valor Equity Partners, have a $65 billion stake in SpaceX at its target I.P.O. valuation. If the stock soars, Gracias will instantly become one of the world’s richest human beings.

The NYT tells us what we should know before investing in SpaceX, though by now it’s a bit too late. Here’s how you can buy it—even if you don’t intend to.

I ain’t buying any. One thing I’ve learned in investing (and I’ve been doing it for years, limiting myself largely to Vanguard mutual funds), is not to try to time the market, and not to buy individual stocks.  Following those rules has given me a comfortable retirement, and I ain’t about to change them now.

*Well, writing this on Friday afternoon, I see that Musk has indeed become the world’s first trillionaire, as SpaceX stock went sky-high. From the WSJ:

The stock opened trading at $150, 11% above the IPO price of $135. The initial climb gave it a market cap above $2.2 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed company.

Elon Musk officially became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX—trading under the ticker SPCX— went public. His stake in the rocket maker was valued at around $690 billion at the IPO price, while his Tesla stake makes up around $279 billion of his net worth.

Lead banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will take home the biggest share of the IPO fees, getting a combined 40% or around $100 million apiece.

Some users reported issues with Robinhood’s platform in the half hour or so after shares of SpaceX started trading, with reports dropping off after noon.

Some skeptics think SpaceX’s sky-high valuation is much too high.

And here’s how the stock jumped (from the WSJ):

Non, je ne regrette rien.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “We economists have done the maths.”

→ Insane amounts of money are about to be made: With the SpaceX IPO, it’s estimated that more than 4,000 people are about to become millionaires, with 400 projected to have fortunes over $100 million. And then there’s the upcoming Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. Between space and LLMs, we’re looking at a new generation of wealth. And if I can climb back on my California soapbox for a moment, it’s always amazing to me that the East Coast produces none of this. The East Coast is the Europe of America. You go to New York when you decide it’s time to hire a dozen ADHD-identified individuals in Brooklyn who will sue you, not like, build stuff. For that, it’s all still the Bay Area or, thanks to SpaceX, Texas! And in the boom times, one group that’s thriving is (of course) prostitutes. Forbes has an amazing story about the nerdy escort boom. These ladies are charging upward of $2,000 an hour, even as much as $6,000 an hour—and you know they’re spending most of that hour talking about Moravec’s Paradox. One reports charging $23,000 a day. The absolute weirdest people in America have created artificial consciousness (probably Satanic) and despite all their efforts, they still exist in these pesky bodies that demand stupid things like [redacted], which the computer can’t quite do yet. Good for the prosties.

In other signs of new financial realities, women are hiring witches to help protect their weddings, or so Bloomberg tells us this week. Is it just me, or is heterosexuality getting weirder than being gay? Prostitutes and witches? Maybe you guys should take Pride this year, I think you need it.

→ Finally, data on how many girls were given testosterone: At the height of the movement to medically transition gender-dysphoric kids, it was always a little unclear how many kids were affected. Like, how riled up should we all get, really? Now we have data and a great write-up thanks to the brave journalist Benjamin Ryan. In Oregon, from 2016 to 2023, about 1 in 250 girls were taking testosterone by age 17. And that number was likely increasing every year in that time frame, so by 2023 it was probably a lot more than 1 in 250. That is objectively wild. That is a huge number of girls being put on testosterone, which alters them permanently, for life. Their voices, their bone structure. In retrospect, the reactions to this over the past few years were probably too muted! Here’s the chart Benjamin Ryan put together, based on a recent study of insurance data for 2016–2023:

Rarely do I look back on a moral panic and think, wow, we did exactly the right thing in response to it. Rarely do you say, it’s a good thing we panicked there or things could’ve gotten really bad! But in this case, it’s the truth. Doctors were drugging every gender-nonconforming girl they could get their paws on. Any girl going through puberty and feeling a little weird was offered. . . testosterone! An army of desexed girls was created. It’s really so dark. There is no way in hell I would have survived this maw. If I’d been born just a few years later, I would have been puberty-blocked and T’ed so fast, and then I’d never have children and have to shave my face forever. Equally terrible.

→ Now some good news: A number of pro-Hamas conspirators accused of haunting University of Michigan leaders have been indicted by a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors say the conspirators, who were “associated with the University of Michigan,” did things like throwing “glass jars filled with butyric acid and dye into the homes” of their targets. Here’s a nice little excerpt from our activists’ messages (you bet one was a medical student!):

These are cries for liberation, don’t you see! Sweet poetry for stolen lands. If you think there’s not medical torture happening right now by this guy’s fellow ideologues, you’re fooling yourself. Stay healthy out there! Don’t end up in an emergency room! If Bari ever does, I’ll just say goodbye at the door because we all know she ain’t comin’ out.

Meanwhile, the Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of Colorado Boulder issued a statement honoring a local terrorist for his murder of a local elderly Jewish woman. Remember the guy who firebombed that group who had gathered in honor of the Hamas hostages? That guy, who killed 82-year-old Karen Diamond and burned a bunch of other folks? “One year ago today, on June 1st, 2025, Mohamed Sabry Soliman took direct action against one manifestation of the Zionist death cult that we have allowed to fester in our city,” the student group posted, adding that the killer “chose the only sane response available to a rational human being.” Totally open blood lust. And to think, Colorado is so beautiful! They could be hiking and enjoying themselves, having a nice beer brewed right in town paired with some bison jerky and a burrito. Instead, they’re celebrating the death of an old Jewish woman. Odd.

They’re also celebrating the injuries sustained by more than a dozen other people in Soliman’s firebombing; see the NYT article here. And do look at the archived Students for Justice in Palestine site’s response to see how horrific that organization is.  Here’s a screenshot of part of it. Oy!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is hiding from Hili:

Szaron: I know you’re coming this way.
Hili: How do you know?
Sharon: The stones told me.

In Polish:

Szaron: Wiem, że tu idziesz.
Hili: Skąd wiesz?
Szaron: Kamienie mi powiedziały.

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

From Stacy:

From Addicted to Ducks, showing how they’re superior to chickens:

From Things With Faces: a horrifying and ghoulish yogurt:

I’ll give only two tweets today as yesterday I engaged in three duckling rescues yesterday (total of eight ducklings saved) and was busy much of the day. Photos follow, including one of a bald eagle taken to rehab (no, I did not find that one!).

Here is a video tweet from Masih showing a Taliban truck running over four women who dared to go to a seminar on education. For some reason they’ve made it un-embeddable, but if you click on the screenshot you’ll see it. (WARNING: women getting hit by a truck):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he got to Auschwitz. He was one year old, and would be 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/4a2MKehu2r

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 13, 2026

Welcome to Thursday, June 4, 2026, and it’s National Cheese Day.  My two favorite cheeses are, first, a well-aged Comté (preferably three years or more), and a ripe Saint-Marcellin, oozing in its bowl.  Here’s a Saint-Marcellin approaching ooziness:

It’s also National Cognac Day, Global Running Day, and Hug Your Cat Day. Here’s me hugging my late beloved Teddy, the best cat ever:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Breaking nooz, ripped from the headlines.  Trump has been told to end the war with Iran, and by a “bipartisan” vote in Congress that, to me, has no force but shows how Republicans are beginning to break with Trump:

*The “cease-fire” between the U.S. and Iran is being breached continually, as it was over the last two days when the two sides exchanged fire. And the airport in Kuwait, also attacked, was shut down:

The Gulf kingdom of Kuwait came under a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones on Wednesday that shut its international airport, killed one person and injured dozens more, as Iran launched its largest salvo of the near two-month ceasefire.

The U.S. and Iran had exchanged heavy fire the evening before, after the U.S. struck an empty oil tanker it said was attempting to breach its blockade. That set off a string of attacks by both sides, with Iran firing ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Kuwait said it had dealt with 13 ballistic missiles, 17 drones and that civilian infrastructure and diplomatic missions had been damaged during an attack it said began at dawn local time Wednesday.

The latest skirmish between the U.S. and Iran marked one of the most intense bouts of fighting between the two sides since they entered a ceasefire in April and came as diplomatic efforts have stalled.

Despite the heavy fire, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday night that the tenuous truce was “ongoing.” The two sides have repeatedly clashed since the truce, while refraining from a broad resumption of the war.

The fighting escalated after the U.S. disabled an empty oil tanker that it said was attempting to breach its blockade and load oil at Iran’s Kharg Island.

Iran then launched one-way attack drones at civilian mariners who were trying to transit the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said. The U.S. shot down three of the drones and conducted what it said were “self-defense strikes” on Iranian military ground control stations on Qeshm Island. The island sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and gives Tehran control over ships’ movement through the crucial waterway.

Iran responded to the strikes by firing ballistic missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, which host U.S. military bases. Two missiles fired at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in the air, and three missiles launched at Bahrain were intercepted by the U.S. and Bahrain air defenses, Centcom said. None of the missiles hit their targets.

On Wednesday, one Indian national was killed and 63 other people were injured, according to Indian authorities and Kuwaiti state media, during a dawn attack on Kuwait by Iran. Air traffic at the international airport was temporarily suspended and flights were diverted.

The only upside to this is that Kuwait and Bahrain not going to be happy with Iran. And there’s really not a truce, but a half-assed ceasefire.  Firing on ships that try to block the U.S. blockade doesn’t bother me; the U.S. gives warning, goes for the engine room, and announced in advance that that was part of the “ceasefire”.

The NYT reports that Israel is willing to make a deal with Lebanon so long as Hezbollah withdraws from southern Lebanon (leaving the Lebanese army in control, LOL) and promises to stop attacking Israel. If you believe they’ll do that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses what he calls “The Disarmament Delusion,” the Lebanese government’s endless waffling about ending terrorism and taking control of the military in their country, which means disarming Hezbollah.

A Lebanese official told Reuters they were proposing a phased approach to perpetuate the ceasefire based on “pilot zones”—specific geographic areas where hostilities would stop, Israeli troops would withdraw, and Lebanese soldiers would deploy, gradually building up to a nationwide truce. It appears the Lebanese have fallen for the same misapprehension common in the West: assuming that the goal of any ceasefire is the ceasefire itself, rather than the objectives of the war it is halting. The objective hasn’t changed and will certainly not be achieved through “pilot zones”: destroy Hezbollah.

This paralysis is not new for the Lebanese government. Despite voting three times to disarm Hezbollah since the summer of 2025, little has actually changed on the ground. The cornerstone of these efforts—the August 2025 “Homeland Shield Plan”—promised to progressively bring all weapons under state control by the end of the year. But, as evidenced by the fact that it is now June, enforcement has remained entirely superficial. While the Lebanese Armed Forces proclaimed the area south of the Litani River clear of Hezbollah infrastructure in January, they deliberately bypassed the group’s massive tunnel networks and drone facilities to avoid confrontation.

. . .This facade is maintained by LAF Commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal’s extreme risk aversion and Hezbollah’s deep institutional influence over the military; the group has held an effective veto over the army for decades and still maintains critical alliances within it. The breaking point arrived in March when Hezbollah dragged the country back into war. The civilian cabinet formally ordered the LAF to halt the militia’s military operations. Instead, Haykal effectively went rogue, issuing a directive that mirrored Hezbollah’s own rhetoric by prioritizing “national unity” and resisting Israeli aggression over dismantling the group’s infrastructure. Despite numerous calls from the U.S., France, and Saudi Arabia to fire the rogue commander, no disciplinary action has been forthcoming, with the cabinet fearing military mutiny and the perennial ghost of civil war.

Haykal is not Hezbollah’s only friend on the inside. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri acts as their political enabler, effectively functioning as the organization’s diplomatic wing—it was Berri, after all, who brokered this current ceasefire. Through his political maneuvering, Hezbollah maintains a stranglehold on vital state sectors like the Ministry of Finance and the General Security Directorate. This institutional capture provides the necessary levers to allow $1 billion in Iranian funding to successfully slip through in the past year, while also sustaining the terror group’s flourishing $18 billion shadow economy.

The chasm between Lebanon’s official decrees and the reality on the ground is enormous. While the Lebanese Cabinet issued formal orders in March to hunt down and deport Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives, the organization has only become more entrenched. To sustain their proxy after Israel decapitated most of its leadership, Iranian forces have essentially assumed direct control of Hezbollah, deploying hundreds of their own officers alongside Syrian and Iraqi fighters to rebuild the shattered militia. Under this direct Iranian command, the strategy is straightforward: ensure Hezbollah’s survival by outright refusing disarmament, exploit the paralysis of the Lebanese state to regain its arsenal, and maintain a baseline of confrontation that prioritizes escalating aggression against domestic Lebanese rivals over full-scale war with Israel.

The upshot is, like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is and will remain in military power in Lebanon, despite the UN decree that they disarm.  For sure Lebanon and its army ar in a hard place, but I doubt that Israel is going to agree to a permanent peace with Hezbollah, which, as noted above, is effectively controlled by Iran. Any demand by Iran that Hezbollah be allowed to remain in power is a demand for the perpetuation of terrorism against Israel. I feel sorry for the Lebanese people caught in the middle here.

*Bret Stephen has a mock letter to Trump in the NYT called “Dear President Ozymandias” (archived here), referring to Shelley’s famous poem, “Ozymandias”, about the fading of a ruler’s glory once thought to be permanent.. You can read the poem here, and it’s also in the op-ed, which is in fact signed by Shelley (or rather by a trio of people named “Percy,” Bysshe,” and “Shelly). The column is, of course, sarcastic, reassuring Trump that he will be the exception:

I think Stephens is better at real op-eds than satire like this, but perhaps it will placate those who think Stephens is some kind of alt-righter.

*Demonstrations are erupting in the UK over the death of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, who died after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, a young Sikh.  As Nowak lay dying, the police handcuffed him because the murderer claimed that he had been the victim of a racist slur by Nowak (this wasn’t true). This is one of the more horrifying stories I’ve heard about British enforcement of “hate speech”, and the officer should be fired for incompetence.

The British home secretary told Parliament on Tuesday that she fully supported the country’s police watchdog in investigating why several officers handcuffed a college student while he lay dying, in a murder case that shocked the country.

Henry Nowak, 18, was stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, 23, in December 2025, after the two men had a brief interaction in Southampton, a city in southern England. Mr. Digwa, who is Sikh and stabbed Mr. Nowak with a religious knife he was carrying, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 21 years, on Monday.

Mr. Digwa lied to the police at the scene of the murder repeatedly, falsely claiming that he had been the victim of a racist attack. Police officers arrested and handcuffed Mr. Nowak for about a minute, according to the judge who sentenced Mr. Digwa, before they realized he was severely injured and began administering first aid.

Police body camera footage released on Monday after the sentencing showed Mr. Nowak lying on the ground, saying “I can’t breathe” and telling officers repeatedly that he had been stabbed. One police officer can be heard saying, “I don’t think you have, mate.”

The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which examines reports of police wrongdoing, confirmed it is investigating the police officers’ actions.

The case has been increasingly politicized online, with the right-wing populist lawmaker Nigel Farage claiming the police’s initial response was evidence of “anti-white prejudice.” He encouraged his social media followers on Tuesday to “respond with pure cold rage.” Elon Musk has posted multiple times in recent weeks about the case.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, whose office oversees law enforcement, told Parliament that the murder was a “vile and violent crime” and said that Mr. Nowak’s family deserved answers “about what happened on that awful night and the actions of the police officers who arrived on the scene.” She described the body camera footage as “disturbing and tragic.”

But she also warned that “misinformation and inflammatory commentary is making a dreadful situation worse.” After one police officer unrelated to the case had been misidentified online, she said, he had received death threats and had to be relocated for his safety.

“We cannot allow this murder to turn communities against one another,” she said, adding: “We must condemn those who seek personal political profit from tragedy.”

Mahmood doesn’t see what’s going on here. It’s not racism, but anger at the sacralization of immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, by law enforcement. Remember how the police largely ignored the “grooming gangs” composed largely of South Asians (Pakistanis).  And this is combined with draconian laws against “hate speech,” which, in this case, prompted the cops to put a dying man in cops when he was falsely accused of attacking Digwa on racial grounds.  I’m not sure why Digwa stabbed Nowak, but it’s terribly sad, and a horrible indictment of the ideological climate pervading much of Britain.

Here is a video showing Nowak in cuffs right before he died (WARNING: you may find this news report disturbing):

Quillette has a wobbly piece, “The murder of Henry Nowak and the politics of certainty”  which tries to be judicious but comes off as anodyne:

The case is unbearable, in part because the bodycam footage appears to show an innocent man dying while he is treated as a suspect. Nowak told police that he had been stabbed and could not breathe. An attending officer expressed disbelief. Nowak was handcuffed and arrested before the severity of his injuries became apparent. His father later described that treatment as “inhumane and degrading.” But he also made it clear that Vickrum Digwa, his son’s 22-year-old assailant, bears complete responsibility for the murder. That distinction should not be difficult to hold in mind. The killer is responsible for the killing. The police response was still gravely inept.

*CBS fired veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley just one day after he criticized the new producer as well as the new CBS News Editor. Bari Weiss:

CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.

Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.

“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.

CBS News declined to comment. In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been “terminated for cause effective immediately.”

Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly after he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to “60 Minutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”

The firing of Mr. Pelley is among the most consequential moves of Ms. Weiss’s rocky tenure at CBS. And it is almost certain to spike tensions that have coursed through the network for months.

It also raises the stakes of Ms. Weiss’s surprising decision to replace the entire leadership team at “60 Minutes,” CBS News’s most successful franchise, and hire Mr. Bilton, who has no experience in broadcast TV, to oversee the show. The program’s viewership was up 9 percent this past season from a year prior, and the show is routinely among the nation’s highest-rated weekly broadcasts, according to Nielsen.

It looks as if Bari Weiss is using a heavy hand at CBS news. “60 Minutes” is perhaps their best-known show, and replacing the entire leadership team, with the new head having no broadcast TV experience, seems to me a ham-handed move. What, exactly, was wrong with the previous show?  I predict that Weiss will use it to slant more right in a show that, as far as I could see, had no political slant. We shall see, so watch a few episodes.  The more I hear about Weiss, the less I like her.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili prefers to take an empirical rather than a theoretical approach to finding truth:

Szaron: Might there be something delicious hidden in this jungle?
Hili: Find out for yourself. Academic discussions don’t get you anywhere.

In Polish:

Szaron: Czy w tej dżungli może ukrywać się coś smacznego?
Hili: Sprawdź, akademickie dyskusje do niczego nie prowadzą.

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

From TherionArms (I love these letters and their descriptions):

From Meow, Incorporated:

From The Language Nerds:

A two-for-one tweet from Masih, still enraged that Iran keeps executing protestors:

Today, they hanged him in Iran for protesting.❤️

Now you understand why I showed a graphic image of a hanged man in front of 2,000 people in Washington DC.

If that image was too sensitive for people in the West، this is Iran’s daily reality. 4 to 5 people hanged. Every. Single.… https://t.co/fUCQplPzHv pic.twitter.com/F6TxcS3533

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 3, 2026

An owl “raises” a duckling. I have many questions. What did the duckling eat? Did it finally get to water? And did it survive. Sure, this is cute as shown, but the sequelae could be dire:

A duckling was raised by an owl after hatching in the wrong nest

Photographer Laurie Wolf captured the rare scene after a wood duck egg ended up in an eastern screech owl’s nest. The owl incubated the egg and cared for the hatchling until it eventually left on its own pic.twitter.com/gCdkOl0YrJ

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 1, 2026

From Luana: the increasing and insupportable importance of grades over standardized test in college admissions. The Y-axis is the percentage of admissions officers who think that grades or standardized tests are “of considerable importantce.”

“Admissions offices have fallen victim to ideological capture”

I often hear people say both grades & tests should matter. In the early 2010s, admissions officers seemed to agree

But over time, many believed grades alone were superior, casting aside the valuable info from… https://t.co/88efDiro0W pic.twitter.com/pIthQF4Rfd

— Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) June 3, 2026

Two from my feed. First, these abilities (especially the camouflage) are amazing:

Octopus, the Alien of the Ocean pic.twitter.com/F9WjwhfiAy

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 3, 2026

From the late great Andreas Kay; more amazing camouflage:

This caterpillar found in Ecuador mimics the appearance of a feather to avoid detection by predators.

📽: Andreas Kaypic.twitter.com/4NzuixskVj

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) June 3, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Belgian Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was only a year old, and would have been 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/4HqtXfYWyC

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 4, 2026

And two from Herr Professor Doktor Cobb.  First, a great wild cat fighting extinction (figuratively, of course):

The world's smallest wild cat and her kitten were recently found in a scrubland on the urban edge of Delhi, India. The rusty-spotted cat is the smallest extant wild cat in the world, but is extremely resilient as we observe this wild cat in a small section of fragmented habitat.

— Felidae Conservation Fund (@felidaefund.org) 2026-06-03T13:33:27.897Z

Sound up to hear calling from inside the eggs!

*Turn your sound up for this one*You can watch live here: buff.ly/5ALnVcB

— National Trust (@nationaltrust.org.uk) 2026-06-03T15:29:40.233Z

We have made it through the work week intact: it’s Friday, May 22, 2026 and World Paloma Day, celebrating a cocktail that I haven’t had, much less heard of.  It sounds good: a mixture of tequila, lime, and either grapefruit soda like Squirt, or grapefruit juice.  Here’s one from Wikipedia:

It’s also Canadian Immigrants Day, Harvey Milk Day (Milk was born on this day in 1930 and assassinated in 1978; he was the first openly gay man to hold public office in California), International Day for Biological Diversity, National Vanilla Pudding Day, World Goth Day (do they even exist any more?) and the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. It is of course celebrated with food:

Special meals are eaten, consisting of dairy products. Common foods include cheese blintzes, quiches, and casseroles. Jews do not work on the day, although Jewish custom says that cooking, baking, carrying objects and equipment, and transporting fire are permitted. Jewish confirmations sometimes take place around the same time as the holiday.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first, and this time, sadly, for Barney Frank, who died on Tuesday. The NYT has a long memoriam and celebration of his life.

Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86.

His friend James Segel confirmed the death. Mr. Frank said last month that he had entered hospice care with congestive heart failure.

Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat who represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981, was the first gay member of the House to come out voluntarily; others had been outed in scandals. His public declaration of his sexual orientation in 1987 — spurred by a fear of being outed, by the death of a closeted colleague and by his own determination to show that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of — helped normalize being openly gay in public life.

“Prejudice is based on ignorance,” Mr. Frank told The Boston Globe in 2011, as he prepared to retire. “And the best way to counterbalance it is with a living example, with reality.”

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank bristled with intellectual firepower, acidic turns of phrase and a zest for verbal combat.

His shivs were often cloaked in wit. Referring to the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian organization that opposed abortion but also opposed child nutrition programs and day care, Mr. Frank said in 1981: “From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Of the flawed intelligence behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a decade of combat, he said the problem “is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”

In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, he was frequently voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.

Here’s a two-minute memorial to Frank showing some of his own words:

*Two votes involving were canceled or questioned  in Congress. First, the vote to force Trump to go to Congress if he wished to continue the war in Iran:

*The Department of Justice has indicted Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former President, charging him with murder.

The Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba, accusing him of murder and a conspiracy to kill American citizens stemming from the fatal downing 30 years ago of two planes over waters off the coast of his country.

The indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, was an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s multifaceted pressure campaign against Cuba’s Communist government at a moment when President Trump has been seeking to topple it.

The charges brought to bear on Mr. Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, the vast powers of the U.S. criminal justice system, saddling him with a possible maximum penalty of life in prison. They also raised the possibility that the United States could be paving the way for its military to remove him from the country through a means similar to how U.S. Special Operations forces used an indictment against Nicolás Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela, to swoop into Caracas in a brazen operation in January and capture him.

The indictment, which also accused five fighter pilots involved in the attack on the planes, was secretly returned last month by a federal grand jury and built on earlier charges, first filed in 2003, against one of them.

At a news conference in Miami, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, and Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, accused Mr. Castro and the pilots of killing four people when the Cuban military shot down the planes on the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1996. The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that often scoured the seas for Cubans fleeing the country.

Fidel Castro took responsibility for downing the planes shortly after they were brought from the sky, claiming that the organization had been dropping anti-regime leaflets over Havana in earlier flights. The indictment said that Raúl Castro was also responsible because he and his brother were “the final decision makers” in the Cuban military chain of command.

The wife of one of the men killed in the February 24, 1996 attack was on the news last night, saying that her husband was an American citizen (her point was that this supported the murder indictment against Castro). I don’t think the U.S. should be invading other countries and removing their leaders, as they did with Maduro, but if I were Raúl Castro, I would go into hiding.  Given the ability of U.S. intelligence to use precise intelligence to capture people, as they did with Maduro, though, perhaps there is no safe place to hide. Whether you think attacking Cuba to apprehend a 94-year-old man is worthwhile is another question. There are other cases in which Americans unjustly executed on foreign soil have not been avenged in this way.

*I knew that Israel went after all the Israeli-killing Black September terrorists involved in the Munich Olympic shooting in 1972, but I didn’t know (but should have guessed) that Israel is now trying to take out the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre of Israelis. The details of this campaign are given in a new WSJ article, “Inside Israel’s high-tech campaign to kill or capture every Oct. 7 attacker.” And apparently the list of targets is very long:

Noa Argamani, who was seized less than a week before her 26th birthday, spent 245 days captive in Gaza. After she was freed in a rescue mission, two men seen in the video holding back Argamani’s boyfriend were tracked down by Israeli intelligence officials and killed in separate airstrikes.

The men were crossed off a list of thousands of names kept by an Israeli task force created for one job—to kill or capture all who planned or joined in the Oct. 7 attack, said current and former Israeli officials. Hundreds have been struck from the list, in one of the most personal and highly technical targeting campaigns in the history of warfare. The campaign continues amid the demands of the war with Iran and a cease-fire agreement in Gaza.

No participant is deemed too insignificant—down to the man who drove a tractor through a border fence that day. Nearly two years after he breached the border, the tractor driver was identified, located and blown up in an airstrike as he walked a narrow urban street in Gaza, according to footage released by Israel’s military.

The campaign spans the rank-and-file to Hamas’s top leaders. On Friday, Israel killed Ezzedin al-Haddad, one of the last living senior militants from the group’s military leadership that planned the Oct. 7 attacks. He had been Hamas’s military commander in Gaza since 2025.

“The IDF will continue to pursue our enemies, strike them and hold accountable everyone who took part in the October 7th massacre,” Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir said Saturday after Haddad’s killing was confirmed.

Militants who videotaped their Oct. 7 exploits on phones or GoPro cameras to share on social media, or those who phoned home to brag, learned too late the degree of Israel’s surveillance acumen and desire for retribution.

Security forces mark men for death without trial if they find at least two pieces of evidence showing they took part in crimes during the Oct. 7 attacks, according to current and former Israeli security officials. Agents from military intelligence and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, pore over militants’ videos posted on social media, these officials said.

Agents run the images through facial recognition programs to sift for names, the officials said, and comb through intercepted phone calls. They view location data from cell tower logs and interrogate Gazan detainees to uncover who did what.

Despite the October cease-fire with Hamas and release of the last surviving hostages, names continue to be crossed off the list. Israel says it kills targets who allegedly pose a threat, such as approaching the front lines or planning an attack.

. . .Israeli agents, after failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, approached the head of Shin Bet to set up a task force they named NILI. It is a Hebrew acronym for the words, “The Eternal One of Israel Doesn’t Lie.” The name, first used by a band of World War I-era Jewish spies, signified that no one identified in the attack would be forgotten.

The campaign is centered in Gaza but has struck Hamas leaders in Lebanon and Iran. It echoes Israel’s assassinations of a dozen or so Palestinians responsible for killing 11 of its athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

“The clear message to all future enemies is to think again about the price of a terrorist operation like that,” said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior official in Shin Bet.

The issue, of course, is whether this is a deterrent given that many jihadis apparently want to be martyrs, and may not be deterred by such Israeli revenge.  (It’s another issue whether Israel should be killing these people instead of capturing them and trying them; one problem with that is that prisoner swaps often dramatically shorten long sentences.)

*Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” finishes up this week, ending 33 years of the show’s run. This, says the WaPo, portends a general decline on the late night multi-guest format.

While the show’s cancellation carries the stench of suspected political interference for many fans and viewers, its conclusion also comes at a moment of seismic changes for the classic television format.

“Like all broadcast television, it was cultural glue. We all fed from the same cultural trough at the same time,” said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of television and popular culture. “That is gone and only remains in a few pockets, and those pockets are falling one by one. When Colbert leaves, another one of those important pockets will have fallen.”

. . .We no longer choose from a handful of late-night hosts to get our fix of breezy celebrity interviews; there’s a seemingly endless supply of video podcasts for that. And airing in Colbert’s place starting Friday? A decidedly non-topical comedy show, “Comics Unleashed,” that CBS isn’t even paying to make. In fact, CBS is being paid to air it.

It’s quite the conclusion for “The Late Show,” a program that debuted in an era when late night was so important to network television that the ratings rivalry was dubbed a “war.” The program premiered in 1993, born out of a beef between Letterman and Jay Leno over who would inherit Johnny Carson’s vaunted perch as host of “The Tonight Show.” Letterman got passed over, went to CBS and started a rival program with a hefty contract.

When Colbert took over from Letterman in 2015, the late-night show still reigned supreme — in part because of renewed cultural relevance after Jon Stewart began hosting “The Daily Show” and turned late-night into urgent political satire. (He also introduced most of America to one particularly deadpan correspondent: Colbert.) A rash of similar shows premiered across networks and streaming services.

A host “getting up, telling a bunch of jokes, sitting down at a desk and interviewing people is the fussiest, most old-fashioned thing in the world,” Thompson said. “The paradox is that, starting in 2000, the late-night talk show completely transformed itself.”

Hosts’ monologues and jokes were constant internet fodder, and celebrities still needed to go on the talk-show circuit to promote new movies. Colbert, on “The Late Show,” found his footing with funny and unexpectedly profound interviews, but also by getting political. It was the first Trump administration, and there was no shortage of material in skewering the first reality TV star turned president.

But as the years went on, people increasingly turned to the internet for entertainment and away from linear television. Broadcast audiences declined, including for late night. Colbert would top the ratings among his peers, but the overall pie was much smaller. Meanwhile, video podcasts have boomed. This is the new late night: stars sitting for multiple celebrity-hosted podcasts during the same press tour, and on each show, having the whole episode to themselves.

I have to admit that when I want to watch celebrity interviews and the like, as when I’m going down rabbit holes on YouTube, I wind up listening to Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and regular late-night t.v. hosts rather than podcasts. The interviews are shorter and sharper, and the hosts were simply damn tood at their jobs. And, frankly, since I spend a lot of the day reading the news (which includes mockery of politicians), that’s the last thing I want to hear to relax.  This is the kind of stuff I prefer to podcasts:

*Speaking of podcasts, readers know, I’m not a fan and hardly ever listen to them (I can read much faster than listen).  Over at the Free Press, Liel Leibovitz likens them to a faith in “The strange religion of the American podcast.” (Maybe that’s why I’ve avoided them!)

As you read these lines, the single greatest event in American history has already unfolded: Candace Owens has interviewed Hunter Biden on her podcast, in an episode that will drop on Thursday. Hookers, blow, shady deals with Ukraine—there’s no telling what we’re going to learn.

All right, so perhaps the interview isn’t exactly the single greatest event in American history—the Battle of Yorktown is a slightly better fit for the title—but many of us no longer live in America. We live in the People’s Republic of Podcastistan, where Candace is queen and every new revelation is just the greatest, the wackier the better.

In case you’re new to our fantasyland, here, in no obvious order, are a few gems shared recently by our most popular podcast hosts: Charlie Kirk was a literal time traveler who predicted his own death (Owens); Joseph Stalin was a great man whose birthday we should all be celebrating (Nick Fuentes); Israel manipulated America into fighting the war in Iran (Dave Smith); officers at the highest ranks of the military are telling their soldiers that the ultimate goal of the war in Iran is to usher in the return of Jesus Christ (Joe Rogan).

I could go on. After all, these hosts frequently sit down to bounce their outlandish theories off each other. Just this Monday, we were gifted with a three-hour conversation between Dave Smith and Nick Fuentes himself.

What ought we to make of this torrent of mind-bendingly, earth-shatteringly stupid pronouncements? Ask the medium’s many critics, and you’ll hear one of two prognostications.

The first is that the Era of the Podcast is over, done with, finished. Media malignancies metastasize rapidly these days, this argument goes, and podcasting as a medium spread so quickly and aggressively that it eventually killed its host body. Now, podcasting has become just a bunch of hotheads chatting with one another and competing to see who can come up with the most outrageous conspiracy theories—so people have simply stopped taking the medium seriously.

Not so fast, argues theory No. 2: Podcasts are still popular.

. . . . So, which of these theories is true? Is Podcastistan growing stronger, or is it collapsing in on itself?

The answer, sadly, is both.

Pay close attention, and you’ll see that your average superstar podcast host is busy building a theological universe for the social media age.

They borrowed the cadences and clout of religious fervor to deliver something new and intoxicating—a hermetically sealed universe where nothing is true and everything is permitted.

No one, alas, does it better than Owens. Her insistence that Charlie Kirk was actually, literally, and physically a time traveler was met with much derision—look at that nutjob Candace!—but it was actually extraordinarily sophisticated. People, Owens realizes, are innate believers. Tear down their churches and their synagogues, tell them the faiths of their fathers are bad and oppressive and passé, and they’ll merely look for something else to believe. In telling her listeners that Kirk was a time traveler, that he always knew he would die young, that he was “marked since he was a child,” Owens turns Kirk into that “something,” cloaking his life and death in the kind of religious language that inspires rabid devotion. Call it the law of spiritual thermodynamics: Spiritual energy never dissipates, it just searches for a different form.

Other examples of religiously tinged performances abound. Theo Von, for example, has transformed himself from a dudebro par excellence into something like a St. Augustine with a mullet, regularly engaging in teary on-air confessions about faith, shame, and trauma. And after Joe Rogan riffed on Von’s mental health on a recent episode, saying Von’s use of antidepressants “freaks” him out, Von responded, “Sad to see this kind of stuff”—compelling Rogan to apologize publicly with an earnest, lengthy mea culpa exploring friendship, loyalty, and love.

The religious element of this second interaction is evident less in the language than in the collaboration itself. That Rogan spends so much time talking about—and to—Von is no coincidence. The principals of Podcastistan love having each other on their shows not because theirs is a tiny and airless bubble, but because they realize that there’s nothing more appealing to an audience than feeling you’re being let into a small and persecuted circle of courageous truth-tellers. . . .

This is all Greek to me, as I don’t watch these things. I can’t see any reason to watch Owens save to marvel at her insanity, canny or not, and I can take only about a minute of Rogan.  Perhaps, when it comes to podcasts, I’m an atheist.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has no time for persiflage:

Sharon: I need to tell you something.
Hili: Not now, I’m thinking about serious matters.

In Polish:

Szaron: Muszę ci coś powiedzieć.
Hili: Nie teraz, myślę o poważnych sprawach.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Things With Faces:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Emma, who disdains the muscular beefcakes:

No. Just no.

Big muscles wrapped in too-low body fat is uncomfortable to cuddle, and means the fella is gonna be counting not just his but your calories/macros, obsessively.

No thanks. A strong, squishy man is cool. https://t.co/Uf8cAuVJuC

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 20, 2026

From Captain Ella (really a Lt. Col.), the official Arabic spokesperson for the IDF (yes, she’s a Muslim).   The translation from the Arabic is below:

On the eve of the blessed Eid al-Adha, I toured the various fronts to listen to the latest field assessments, and there I met the sons of the Israeli community—Muslims, Druze, Christians, and Jews—standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of humanity and the home.

From the south of #Lebanon to the #Gaza Strip, I saw our youth in the field… the guardians of this country, and the watchful eye that never sleeps.

May this Eid bring with it goodness, security, and peace of mind for all.

Wishing you all a happy Eid

قبيل عيد الأضحى المبارك، تجولتُ في مختلف الجبهات لأستمع إلى آخر التقييمات الميدانية، وهناك التقيتُ بأبناء المجتمع الإسرائيلي، من المسلمين والدروز والمسيحيين واليهود، يقفون جنبًا إلى جنب دفاعًا عن الإنسان وعن البيت.

من جنوب #لبنان إلى قطاع #غزة، رأيتُ شبابنا في الميدان…حماة هذا… pic.twitter.com/HlQeABwvWc

— Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya | إيلا واوية (@CaptainElla1) May 21, 2026

From Luana. Remember that correlation is not causation, but it may be in this case:

The impact of AI in four charts pic.twitter.com/rmiRkGG9Ql

— Marc Porter Magee 🎓 (@marcportermagee) May 20, 2026

Larry the Cat follows footie. The PM’s team is clearly Arsenal, and the Prince of Wales favors Aston Villa, which won the Europa League final.

Yesterday the Prime Minister’s team won the Premier League for the first time in two decades, today the Prince of Wales’ team won a trophy for the first time in three decades; anyone know who King Charles supports? https://t.co/yvHA8FvWFO

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 20, 2026

One from my feed; such trust!

😺: could you please look after my babies while i go and take a nap? pic.twitter.com/oJzkEZUmSY

— Kitty Cat Empire (@KittyCatEmpire) May 21, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Italian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was six years old and would be 89 today has she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-22T09:30:07.241Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. Look at this M.C. Hammer bee!

Hooray, it’s happy #worldbeeday !For 10 points can anyone tell me why these bees are called Pantaloon bees 😂😂😂😂Canon R5 and Sigma 150mm SS1/2000 F8. ISO8000Natural light handheld while laying down 👌🏿#bee #bees #macro

— @macro_action (@birdzandbees.bsky.social) 2026-05-20T19:41:00.263Z

Matthew says, “This and linked post have a vid of 3 tradesmen from around Manchester in a van cooking spaghetti carbonara.”

Saving this as reference for the next time the Brits get frisky about accurate assessments of the dire state of British “food”. (1/2)

— George Pearkes (@peark.es) 2026-05-18T01:48:59.455Z

Part 2/2

— George Pearkes (@peark.es) 2026-05-18T01:48:59.456Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“ਹੰਪ ਡੇ” in Punjabi): it’s Wednesday, May 20, 2026 and National Pick Strawberries Day. Here’s the world’s heaviest strawberry as certified by Guinness. It was grown in Israel and weighed over ten ounces:

Ariel Chahi (Israel) has grown a supersized strawberry that weighed 289 g (10.19 oz) on 12 February 2021. The fruit, which has been confirmed as the world’s heaviest strawberry, was 18 cm long, 4 cm thick and 34 cm in circumference.

Click to see the video (and turn on audio):

It’s also Flower Day, International Red Sneakers Day, National Quiche Lorraine Day, National Rescue Dog Day, World Flour Day, and World Bee Day. Here is what’s regarded as The World’s Cutest Bee, Australia’s “teddy bear bee”, Ambigilla bombiformus. It’s very stocky and fuzzy.

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

Da Nooz:

*Five people died in a shooting in a mosque in San Diego; with two of the dead being teenage boys who attacked with guns, killed a security guard, and then committed suicide.

The frantic mother’s call came in at 9:42 a.m. on Monday: Her son was missing.

That wasn’t all, she told the San Diego police. Several guns were gone, and so was her car, and her 17-year-old might have a friend with him.

The police were alarmed and began a desperate hunt for the two teenagers. They were somewhere in California’s second largest city, a sprawling community of 1.4 million people nestled amid palms and purple jacarandas.

A license plate reader seemed to show them near a mall, and officers rushed there. Then, they converged on the high school one of the teenagers attended. Those turned out to be the wrong places.

The teens’ target was a mosque, the police said. They shot and killed three people there, including a security guard who worked for the mosque and whose actions, police said, likely saved lives. And then the teens killed themselves, the police said.

The grounds of the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County, include a school.

“I’ll tell you what got me,” Chief Scott Wahl of the San Diego Police Department said at a news conference. “Watching kids come running out, just thankful to be alive.”

The shooting came amid increased threats and acts of violence against religious institutions in America, fueled by the wars in the Middle East. In March, a man attacked a synagogue outside Detroit with a truck before he died in a confrontation with security guards. The growing threats have prompted increased security at mosques, synagogues and churches across America.

There’s evidence, too, that this is a hate crime, though specific motives haven’t yet been identified:

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal makes the dire prediction: “War is coming”; that is: Israel is about to resume attacking Iran:

t’s Tuesday, May 19, and for the past few days, the skies above Jerusalem have been echoing with the sound of fighter jets. The Air Force is on high alert, preparing for potential action as diplomatic avenues with Tehran close. According to Reuters, Iran’s latest counterproposal is a nonstarter that simply mirrors previously rejected terms. Sources speaking to Axios confirmed that Tehran still refuses to halt uranium enrichment or surrender its stockpile, leading the Trump administration to officially dismiss the offer as “insufficient.”

This impasse was echoed by IRGC-affiliated media, which noted deep-seated disagreements and affirmed that Iran will not trade nuclear concessions to end the conflict. Meanwhile, the United States stands firm on its baseline requirements: Iran must hand over its HEU, dismantle its nuclear infrastructure and accept a 20-year freeze on uranium enrichment.

Also yesterday, Donald Trump revealed he had called off a military strike against Iran that was slated for the following day. According to Trump, the pause was requested by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed, who urged a two-to-three-day suspension to allow ongoing negotiations to play out. Sources familiar with the matter told Axios that these Gulf leaders warned Washington they would “pay the price” if the U.S. proceeded, expressing deep concerns that Iran would retaliate by targeting their vital energy and oil infrastructure. Though I would take this claim with a grain of salt, the report may have been an attempt to confuse or threaten Iran, or perhaps artificially disassociate the Gulf countries from retaliation.

While Trump noted that the regional leaders remain optimistic about securing a mutually acceptable deal to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he emphasized that the U.S. military remains primed for a “full, large-scale assault” on short notice if talks collapse.

Meanwhile, Tehran is moving to institutionalize unilateral control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s newly formed Persian Gulf Strait Authority recently declared itself the sole legal manager of the waterway, warning that unauthorized transit is illegal and leaving 1,500 vessels backed up awaiting permission. IRGC-affiliated media are now targeting critical global digital infrastructure. Outlets now suggest that Iran’s “absolute sovereignty” allows it to impose fees and oversight on the major subsea fiber-optic cables running through the strait—including the networks connecting Asia, Europe and the Gulf. Crucially, state media warned that “deliberate actions” resulting in simultaneous damage to these cables could be used to inflict massive financial and communications disruptions worldwide.

Right before the last operation began, I actually bought a custom T-shirt that read: “I don’t know when the Iran strike will be.” It was the only way to preempt the endless barrage of questions I faced every time I walked out the door. Today, I find myself able to reuse what I thought would be a single-use shirt. I don’t know the precise timeline, but just like last time—it is coming.

Trump keeps delaying and delaying. At some point, unless he simply gives up on the war, he’s going to either accept Iran’s terms (which will of course allow it to make nuclear weapons), or resume the attack. (See the next item.)

*On the other hand, the WaPo reports that Trump called off a strike on Iran planned for yesterday to give more time for Iran to confect a peace proposal.

President Donald Trump said Monday that he had tentatively called off plans for the United States military to attack Iran after the heads of three countries in the Middle East asked him to give negotiations more time.

In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump said Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan had asked him to “hold off” on a planned military strike on Iran — originally scheduled for Tuesday — in light of “serious negotiations” on a peace deal.

“Based on my respect for the above mentioned Leaders,” Trump wrote, he had instructed U.S. military leaders “that we will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow.”

Trump told reporters at a White House event a few hours after his post that the leaders had asked him to hold off on an attack for “two or three days — a short period of time.”

The move was the latest sudden turn by Trump in the 11 weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran on Feb. 28. In recent days, he had threatened renewed attacks. On Sunday, he wrote on Truth Social that Iran needed to move fast “or there won’t be anything left” and that “the Clock is Ticking.”

In his latest post, Trump insisted, however, that the U.S. military is prepared to launch a “full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if negotiations sour and that any deal has to include no new weapons for Iran.

“We’ve had periods of time where we … thought [we were] pretty close to making a deal and it didn’t work out,” he told reporters Monday afternoon. “But this is a little bit different.”

I have never seen a leader act like this in wartime. This repeated delaying doesn’t seem to be the actions of a President who fervently wants peace. Rather, it seems to be the actions of a mercurial President who is buffeted by whatever is the latest pronouncement that he hears.

*Four years ago Tyler Cowan, says the Free Press newsletter, “wrote an influential essay arguing that wokeness had peaked. At the time, it was a controversial claim. . . We asked Tyler to revisit his claim four years on. ” And so we have “Wokeness has peaked. What followed is worse.” Cowan means “direct action,” which includes violence:

So what has been happening? The forces behind wokeism no longer command so much public attention and respect when they argue about terms and pronouns. Instead, left-adjacent movements have arisen with a contrasting emphasis on action, and often action of a terrible sort. California is considering, for instance, an unworkable tax on billionaires in the state, one that even most left-leaning Democratic politicians do not support. It might nevertheless pass through via referendum.

Or, to take another example, Senator Bernie Sanders wants to halt the progress of AI, using the law if necessary, and in the meantime he and others from the progressive left are undercutting the construction of new data centers.

The ideology of “third worldism” is on the rise, and it takes the form of antisemitic demonstrations and concrete violent attacks on individual Jews or groups of Jews who appear in predictable locations, such as going to and from synagogues, or in Jewish neighborhoods. Such attacks have risen steadily.

. . .What’s more, it is possible we are entering an era with a new culture of assassinations. There have been assassinations of Charlie Kirk, of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and several attempts on the life of President Trump. It can be debated how many of these killers had direct connections to the political left, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that left-wing rhetoric about democracy destruction helped make such actions conceivable.

The social energies of the American left have moved away from the realm of speech and into plans for concrete action, whether in politics, through attempted wealth confiscations, or through organizing violence. In retrospect, wokeism, for all its problems, was a relatively harmless way of distracting activists and keeping them busy with wars over words—a less-bad allocation of social energies than what we are now seeing. So while I would not say I long for the return of high wokeism, I recognize it has been replaced by a left-adjacent movement that is worse.

To be clear, while this column is focused on the political left, the political right also has undergone an extremely problematic evolution, and I do not mean to let them off the hook. Increasingly open and blatant antisemitism on the right is but one manifestation of this phenomenon.

So perhaps wokeism was never the fundamental problem in the first place; rather, our own negativity was. Wokeism cloaked that negativity in wars of words, and because conservatives and classical liberals did not lose those wars of words, they felt a kind of temporary victory. But the victory was Pyrrhic. The negativity remains, and now it may end up channeled in yet more dangerous directions.

So I will give one cheer to the woke, if only because I fear what is going to follow.

Here are two plots from the More in Common US Newsletter Substack site.  The first shows that most Americans are concerned that political violence is becoming more of a problem.

While this one shows that the approbation for political violence is too high (20% is too high!), but positively correlated, as spected, with the time people spend on social media, which is surely also negatively correlated with age:

*Based on a paper in PLOS ONE (click title below to read it), the NYT has a piece called “Neanderthal dentistry, and the scientist glad not to have experienced it.” The dentistry at issue is a prehistoric root canal done with stone tools! The NYT has an interview with an anthropologist:

There follows a short interview with John Olsen, “an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.” Read these two Q&As and tell me that it doesn’t make you shiver:

Recreating the procedure on modern human teeth showed the process would have taken around 35 to 50 minutes of continuous, high-pressure drilling to penetrate the dentin and expose the pulp chamber.

The “dentist” then probably filled the cavity with something that would seal it: perhaps beeswax or pitch. And presumably another solution—pulling out the tooth—wasn’t possible as the Neanderthals lacked forceps.  It still amazes me that the Neanderthals knew what to do: kill the nerve and fill the hole: primitive periodontology. And it worked, as there was evidence for wear on the tooth after it was drilled. But oy, the pain!

The paper:

The tooth at issue with its caption from PLOS ONE:

From the abstract:

 The tooth exhibits a large human-generated concavity on the occlusal surface, created during the lifetime of the individual. Traceological and microtomographic analyses of the observed modifications, combined with experimental verification, reveal that the concavity in Chagyrskaya 64 is indicative of the earliest documented instance of caries treatment involving the drilling/rotating with a lithic perforator, ca. 59 ka. Evidence of two distinct types of manipulations requiring different tools, in addition to the drilling/rotating technique, necessitating complex finger movements, indicates that the Chagyrskaya Cave Neanderthals possessed the cognitive capacity to intuit the source of pain, comprehend the feasibility of its elimination, and deliberately select the most efficacious dental intervention.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron affirms Hili’s skepticism:

Hili: Wherever you look, there are doubts.
Szaron: That’s because it’s in your nature.

In Polish:

Hili: Gdzie nie spojrzeć tam wątpliwości.
Szaron: To dlatego, że masz taki charakter.

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

From Dancing Cats:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs or Notices:

From CinEmma:

Here’s Masih chewing out Barak Obama’s “deal” that allowed Iran to proceed with enriching uranium.

Mr. President @BarackObama! Recently, you said the Iran nuclear deal “worked.”

Congratulation, sir .You’re right and here, I explain exactly how it worked for us, the Iranian people. The ones who weren’t at the negotiating table.
I think you’ll find it very… illuminating. pic.twitter.com/kit3fQ7MUv

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 18, 2026

From Luana. This is exactly what “affirmative care” should not be: surgery on an underage girl with mental health problems:

Tomorrow Genspect will publish an article I wrote describing my experience ‘doctor shopping’ in the EU for trans-affirming care for my minor ‘son’. In it, I name the private clinic in Madrid that agreed to carry out the mastectomy with parental consent on a 15 year-old girl with… https://t.co/PhhofST49j

— Róisín Michaux (@RoisinMichaux) May 18, 2026

From Ricky Gervais, rightfully proud at the reception of his “After Life” series. I still think it was magnificent, although many people seem to find it lame.

Best fans in the world ❤️ https://t.co/0ChfiKWJqm

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) December 26, 2024

x

Emma tackles the classics:

1. No idea what that means.
2. No idea what that means.
3. I recognise two. One of them is not marbles by my understanding.
4. I know who Shakespeare is. He was quite funny.
5. Ha ha, huh?
6. Nope.
7. I use Latin, but no idea how much Greek I use.
8. Nope.
9. Old one in… pic.twitter.com/1nxQuRb5K9

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 17, 2026

Captain Ella recites a poem. First, the translation from the Arabic:

A poem by Nizar Qabbani stopped me in my tracks…

Oh lady of South Lebanon,
They did not love it, but rather loved the war within it,
And made it open to coffins.

And the South that I know:
Fairuz, coffee, and the sound of shepherds at sunset

استوقفتني قصيدة نزار قباني…

يا سِتَّ جنوب لبنان،
لم يُحبّوه، بل أحبّوا الحرب فيه،
وجعلوه مفتوحًا للنُّعوش.

والجنوب الذي أعرفه:
فيروز، القهوة، وصوت الرعاة عند الغروب pic.twitter.com/0zfhHfFUaL

— Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya | إيلا واوية (@CaptainElla1) May 18, 2026

One from my feed. “Bird brains” my tuches!

Damn, this is peak bird intelligence.

These birds saw someone feeding a wounded bird, so they started pretending they were also injured. pic.twitter.com/mPNfl5Dh98

— Nature & Animals🌴 (@naturelife_ok) May 19, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was four years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-20T10:40:54.275Z

. . and one from Dr. Cobb, ripped from the depths of Wikipedia:

— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2026-05-19T05:31:45.596Z

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 12, 2026, and National Odometer Day. My 2000 Honda Civic, now 26 years old, has only about 83,000 miles on it, as I’m a little old man who drives it only on weekends. Feel free to give us your own odometer reading, especially if it shows your car has been intrepid (give the year and model).

It’s also International Nurses Day and National Nutty Fudge Day. Here’s a short but mouthwatering video about how chocolate-walnut fudge is made in one store on the Jersey Shore:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Iran has publicized Trump’s demands for ending the war—demands that the Islamic Republic deems unacceptable (article archived here).

Iran defended its demands in negotiations to end the war with the United States and Israel on Monday, hours after President Trump had denounced the latest Iranian position as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” on social media.

Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters that Iran did not “demand any concessions” but rather asserted the country’s “legitimate rights.” He added that Iran’s proposal would have ensured safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded since the U.S.-Israeli attacked Iran in late February.

Mr. Baghaei’s said that Iran had made “generous” and “reasonable and responsible” requests. But Iran’s own state broadcaster recounted a series of uncompromising conditions on Monday.

According to Iranian state media, Iran had called for the U.S. to pay “war damages” to Tehran and recognize Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Both are likely non-starters for the United States, which has called for an end to Iran’s grip over the strait, a critical passage for oil and gas.

Mr. Trump had initially conditioned the ongoing temporary cease-fire with Iran, which began last month, on free transit for ships through the strait. But Iran still insists that any ships that traverse the Persian Gulf waterway do so in coordination with its forces, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly pulled back from his threats to attack Iran in protest.

Last week, Mr. Trump announced a U.S. military effort to free ships trapped in the maritime bottleneck by the war, dubbed “Project Freedom.” But roughly a day later, the effort was abruptly suspended to allow for further negotiations and has not resumed.

The Iranian counterproposal also demanded that the U.S. end its punishing economic sanctions against Iran, Iranian state media said. Analysts said that it was unlikely unless U.S. officials received major concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange, compromises which Iran has so far ruled out.

The U.S. will not pay reparations to Iran, nor will they recognize Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz—sovereignty it didn’t have before. As for the U.S. offering major concession on Iran’s nukes, I don’t see that happening, either, despite Americans’ lack of support for the war. In the meantime, Iran is suffering big time inflation and other economic damage, so we’re seeing a game of political chicken going on. And, as usual, I’m not going to prognosticate about this one.

*Will Rahn at the Free Press analyzes Trump’s latest dump of UFO data, and finds it a big nothingburger.

Will the Trump administration’s release of secret UFO documents prove more soap opera than space opera?

The first tranche of materials landed with a thud on Friday, with UFO believers and skeptics alike claiming to find support for their respective positions. True believers, underwhelmed though they were by the actual contents, called Friday’s files an important first step on the road to full disclosure. That road, however, appears to be a long one, stretching beyond the horizon and perhaps, as skeptics argue, leading nowhere.

The 162 released files are housed on a Defense Department website with a minimalist and vaguely cyberpunk aesthetic reminiscent of The X-Files. They include dozens of testimonials from civilians, federal agents, diplomats, and astronauts who reported seeing UFOs. Much of the material comprises redacted information. But there is some interesting stuff: What, for example, was the “bogey” Gemini VII astronaut Frank Borman reported seeing during his space flight? Or the “Eye of Sauron” witnessed by several federal agents in 2023 somewhere in the Western U.S.? (The files offer no conclusive answer.)

Well, was there anything in them? Nothing substantial, as far as I can see:

. . .Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, one of the leading lawmakers pushing for disclosure, said the release proved that Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), is “a documented liar” because he has said he never found proof of aliens. Kirkpatrick, who many UFO believers see as an agent of a massive cover-up, responded by telling reporter and UFO skeptic Steven Greenstreet that Luna should “stop inflicting her willful ignorance on the rest of us.”

We’ll see if future disclosures give us the long-promised hard evidence that we are not alone. But for now, we are where we’ve been all along: just guessing and groping for answers in the dark of the cosmos. The aliens may very well be out there. They might even come here on occasion. But for the time being, anyway, the ongoing saga of mainstream governmental UFO intrigue remains a distinctly human drama characterized by sweeping claims and few hard facts.

. . .If there’s one person holding this ragtag band of UFO boosters together, it’s probably the Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. When he isn’t teaching science in Cambridge, Loeb searches for alien technology through the sensors and telescopes of his Harvard-sanctioned Galileo Project.

The project’s list of affiliates includes everyone from Gallaudet, a sincere believer in extraterrestrial visitation, to Michael Shermer, the country’s leading UFO skeptic. He counts Luna, of whom he always speaks highly, as a comrade of sorts, but has also co-written a paper with her nemesis, Dr. Kirkpatrick, on the need for hard evidence before we believe UFOs are visitors from somewhere else.

So what did Loeb find in this latest release? He told me he and his team took Trump’s advice and had fun with it. Always an optimist, he said, “The best is yet to come, because higher quality data will take more vetting by layers of government bureaucracy before it is released.”

“The biggest impact of today’s release is psychological: This topic deserves to be within the mainstream of public or scientific discourse,” he told me. “Like any detective story, the mystery can be resolved with high-quality evidence.”

But of course we’re still waiting for that high-quality evidence to emerge, as Loeb freely admits.

There’s a Yiddish word for the contents of this report: bupkes. And supposedly the “high-quality evidence” already exists, in the form of wrecked UFOs and even bodies of aliens, sequestered somewhere secret in the northwest U.S. Or so the conspiracy theorists say.

*I’m quoting at length below from Amit Segal’s new post on It’s Noon in Israel, as I haven’t posted much on the West Bank. Here Segal talks about “the myth of settler violence,” which isn’t really a myth but, according to Segal, an exaggeration:

Ask 100 people to name the primary accusation leveled against Israel, and “genocide” would likely top the list, with “settler violence” a close second. Much like the first, it is a shame that an issue of such weight is so often defined by mistruths and exaggerations.

Before proceeding, it is important to state clearly: settler violence does exist, it is a serious problem, and it must be dealt with accordingly. However, as with much in the region, the reality and the narrative are simply miles apart.

Let’s begin with the data. The most often cited number comes from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which recorded 2,047 incidents of violence against Israelis and 6,285 against Palestinians between April 2023 and January 2026. A closer examination of these numbers reveals that the majority of the latter do not actually involve violence, and many don’t even include settlers.

Of the 6,285 alleged incidents against Palestinians, 1,704 occurred in Jerusalem, not in settlements. Another 1,361 relate either to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount or to clashes there between security forces and rioting Muslim worshipers. Neither settlers nor violence feature in these instances. Yet, in the UN’s ledger, a Jewish visit to Judaism’s holiest site is automatically classified as settler violence.

Of the remaining 3,220 reported incidents in Judea and Samaria, many consist of generalized complaints—such as “trespassing” during tours or hikes—involving no assault or damage to persons or property. Another 96 cases relate to state projects, like road and infrastructure construction, which involve neither violence nor settlers. 2,039 of the complaints allege property damage or assault without bodily harm; while unacceptable, this hardly aligns with the violent image frequently depicted in the media.

Beyond these questionable classifications, there is a fundamental problem with how data on these incidents is collected. This was highlighted in a 2024 defamation case involving the left-wing NGO B’Tselem. According to the testimony of a B’Tselem field researcher with 20 years of experience, the organization operates under a protocol where Palestinian accounts are not independently verified beyond a site visit and discussions with additional “eyewitnesses” (who may or may not have actually seen the event). In the specific episode at the center of the case, the “facts” published by B’Tselem were directly refuted by the victim’s medical files and contemporaneous IDF reports.

In this regard, B’Tselem is not unique. Most NGOs and UN agencies claiming to perform fact-finding in the Arab-Israeli conflict operate similarly. They frequently base their publications on hearsay and second-hand accounts without properly verifying the allegations. (Even if they intended to, these NGOs generally lack the tools, expertise, and access required for rigorous verification.)

Israel Police data shows that between 2014 and 2024, approximately 1,356 complaints of “Jewish violence” in Judea and Samaria were filed. Only about 40 percent (roughly 537 cases) met the threshold to open an investigation. Furthermore, a substantial share of these cases involved property offenses, vehicle theft, drug possession, and other criminal incidents entirely unrelated to nationalist violence.

A clear example of a false complaint generating headlines occurred in February 2026 regarding a fire in a sheep pen. The media widely reported that “settlers burned a sheep pen, killing dozens of animals,” and politicians leveraged these reports to make serious accusations that were amplified internationally. Within a day, Israel Police released its findings: the fire was actually caused by an illegal electrical connection installed by the owner himself.

Similarly, in 2024, the central investigator for Judea and Samaria testified that in the South Hebron Hills, roughly 90 out of 191 cases filed since the start of the October 7 war (nearly 50 percent) were found to be false complaints. In the Jordan Valley, a comparable half of all complaints proved to be false.

When exaggerations eclipse the facts, we sacrifice truth for impact. This does not solve the issue; it merely weaponizes it. It alienates those in the middle seeking practical change, while handing extremists on the fringes the perfect excuse to further entrench themselves. Ultimately, we cannot address a problem if we are fighting a narrative instead of reality.

As I always say, I don’t keep up with West Bank stuff, simply because I don’t have time. Unprovoked attacks against Palestinians are unconscionable, and clearly some occur. Segal above says they’re exaggerated, and the figures can be looked up.  All I can say is that some Israelis are behaving abhorrently, and I am not sure how much of this, if any, is promoted by the government.

*On the debit site, the Times of Israel reports that a mother of one of the three Jewish hostages shot by the IDF while carrying white flags said this: the IDF was ordered to “open fire on sight.” This is in contrast to what the IDF itself says, calling the deaths a “tragic accident.”

When three Israeli hostages were killed in Gaza by Israel Defense Forces gunfire in December 2023, the military described it as a “tragic accident.” But in a recent interview, the mother of one of the hostages said the troops involved were given orders to shoot on sight, which ultimately resulted in her son’s death.

Speaking to Channel 13, Iris Haim, mother of Yotam, 28 — who was killed alongside Alon Shamriz, 26, and Samar Talalka, 25, during “intense fighting” in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood — recounted conversations she had with soldiers involved in the incident. She was interviewed for Channel 13’s investigative program HaMakor (The Source), which broadcast an hour-long documentary, “The truth behind the shooting of the hostages,” on Thursday.

“I heard this from every soldier who spoke to me… They received an unequivocal order: Everything you see — and you will not hesitate, even if they’re civilians — you shoot to kill,” she told the television station.

According to one of those soldiers, Talalka, an Arab hostage from the Bedouin town of Hura, had led the group of three in approaching Israeli forces.

“The moment you recognize an Arab face in Gaza, the first intuition is that these are Hamas terrorists trying to carry out an attack,” the soldier said in a recording published by the news outlet.

The soldiers then opened fire on the three, despite the fact that they were shirtless and one was waving a makeshift white flag.

Haim recounted a conversation with another soldier, in which he said he shot and wounded Yotam after Talalka and Shamriz had already been killed by gunfire from other troops, before his gun jammed. At that point another soldier shot and killed her son.

The soldier who spoke with Haim told her that he suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident.

This is clearly a “tragic error,” almost certainly reflecting the IDF’s experience that apparent Israelis might be either Hamas people under cover or real Israelis being used as bait by Hamas. Still, given the white flag, and the hostages speaking Hebrew, the soldiers should have held their fire. I think we can understand why they were scared, but it was a tragic mistake and certainly not an order by IDF to kill hostages, which would be something the IDF would never order. Saying “these things happen” will provide no consolation for the families and loved ones of the Israeli hostages, but yes, show me a war in which nobody is killed by friendly fire.

*Did you wonder, like I did, what happened to Spirit Airlines’ airplanes after the company went belly-up? I thought they’d be sold to other airlines, but the WSJ says that REPO MEN took them!

The first call came to Bob Allen’s phone at 6 p.m. ET on a Friday. The message: Get the repo men ready.

Spirit Airlines was still in operation and planes were in the air. But the aircraft leasing firms that own dozens of its bright yellow jets were getting anxious as Spirit barreled toward liquidation. They wanted their planes back.

“I had six hours to find 20 pilots,” Allen said.

Nomadic Aviation Group, his company, had been standing by for months as Spirit teetered closer to the brink. Allen and co-founder Steve Giordano quickly assembled a roster of pilots, most of whom had worked for Spirit. They made a WhatsApp group, which swelled to 40 pilots. One had just landed.

“He said, ‘can I fly in shorts?’” Giordano recalled. Not a problem. “We generally go khakis and polos, but you know, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he told him.

By 9 a.m. the next day, with Spirit’s death now official, they were ready to go. Pilots had fanned out to airports in South Florida, Charlotte, Houston and Columbus, Ohio, to go pick up the stranded jets. Some were still at the gates where they’d parked after their final flights.

. . . . Nomadic operates like a miniature airline that ferries jets around the world for aircraft lessors, so it’s in high demand when airlines are both expanding and shrinking their fleets. In 2024 Giordano flew to Harbin, China—known for its ice festival—to collect a plane for a client who wanted its engines. The trip took over 24 hours on commercial flights. Their route to deliver the plane in Wales included stops in Calcutta, Muscat and Cairo.

“When things are bad we’re extremely busy,” Giordano said. “When things are good we’re extremely busy.”

ChatGPT says that even major airlines lease some planes (the bot’s bolding):

Major airlines like United Airlines and American Airlines use a mix of owned aircraft and leased aircraft. Most large airlines do both.

Here’s the basic picture:

• Owned planes: The airline buys the aircraft outright (usually financed with debt). These become assets on the airline’s balance sheet.
• Leased planes: The airline rents the aircraft from a leasing company for a long period, often 6–12 years or more.

Today, leasing is extremely common. Globally, roughly half of commercial airliners are leased rather than directly owned by the airline. Large leasing firms such as AerCap, Air Lease Corporation, and SMBC Aviation Capital own huge fleets and rent them to airlines.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, neither Hili nor Szaron have any use for the upstairs d*g:

Hili: Beautiful day, and there’s a dog in the garden.
Szaron: Maybe someone will finally take pity and shut him in a cage.

In Polish:

Hili: Piękna pogoda, a w ogrodzie pies.
Szaron: Może ktoś się zlituje i go wreszcie zamknie w klatce.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

Masih talks about her mom on Mother’s Day. She hasn’t seen her mom in ages, but there’s some video of them together here:

My illiterate mother has been my role model. The regime forced her to disown me on state TV. She refused.
I haven’t seen her in more than a decade. Not because I committed a crime. Because I spoke.
Happy Mother’s Day 🌻💔

https://t.co/8ogwaqMwpG

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 11, 2026

From Luana; two examples of the moral arc bending upwards. Be sure to watch the video in the first tweet:

Arguably the 2nd most pic.twitter.com/XdeT2o7VwJ

— Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban) May 10, 2026

From Bryan: I read this easily, but I don’t understand why the younger folk can’t:

fun fact nobody born past 1995 can read this
it’s basically cryptography to them pic.twitter.com/EDYtZOIhin

— Heart (@heart_) May 9, 2026

Larry the cat disses America, and he should, at least where holidays are concerned. The standard American two-week vacation is simply ludicrous.

A good question for all Europeans to ponder at some stage during five weeks of paid holiday https://t.co/iaUrAGpxRb

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 6, 2026

Ricky Gervais posted about a white donkey foal in Israel named after him:

Beautiful foal Gervais, named after comedian Ricky Gervais, says hello from our sanctuary in Israel where she was born to Deborah, rescued when heavily pregnant. Thank you for helping our donkeys have a safe home for life! pic.twitter.com/Bm0hZkSsFs

— Safe Haven for Donkeys (@safehaven4donks) May 11, 2026

From my feed; I particularly love this one:

💙 pic.twitter.com/XqV4w6drSA

— VixenInTheCity (@NikitaCatSpeaks) May 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was fourteen years old. https://t.co/pjuCmFPw57

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 12, 2026

. . and one from Doctor Cobb; note that there’s no audible sound here but see the seismograph recording below. This was taken by a drone.

Wait for it …. 11 seconds and BOOM! Some breathtaking footage from Fuego 🇬🇹 and @boisestate.bsky.social scientists in this great science update on infrasound sensors. eos.org/science-upda…

— Eos (@eos.org) 2026-05-10T17:59:38.341Z

And buy request of the first commenter below: