Welcome to Thursday, June 18, 2026, and National Cheesemakers Day. Bless them all! Here is a picture of the cheese platter in one of my erstwhile favorite restaurants in Paris (Astier), where you could have as much and as many cheeses as you wanted after dinner.

And one of my favorite cheese stores in Paris. This is a but a small part of the selection, with the goat cheeses on the bottom shelf. Choose three of these, a baguette, and a bottle of wine, and you’ll have the makings of a fine picnic:

It’s also, coincidentally, International Picnic Day, International Sushi Day, and World Tapas Day.

There’s a World Cup Google Doodle today; click on the icon below to see where it goes:

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

Da Nooz:

Footie news: England beat Croatia 4-2. From the BBC:

England made a winning start to their World Cup campaign as they overpowered Croatia in a thriller in Dallas.

Thomas Tuchel’s side demonstrated strength in attack and frailty in defence, but possessed the firepower to finally overcome Croatia and set the platform for progress in Group L.

Harry Kane put England ahead on 12 minutes with a twice taken spot-kick after Luka Modric fouled Noni Madueke, Croatia keeper Dominik Livakovic saving his first attempt but penalised for encroaching off his goalline.

Croatia, always dangerous opponents, were level after 36 minutes when Martin Baturina sent a powerful drive high past Jordan Pickford, who got a touch but could not keep the ball out.

Kane, inevitably, restored England’s lead three minutes before the break with a powerful header from Declan Rice’s corner, bringing him level with Gary Lineker on 10 World Cup goals, his 81st in 115 England appearances.

England, however, never looked at ease defensively, Croatia equalising again with a well-worked goal seconds before half-time, Petar Musa steering Ivan Perisic’s header beyond Pickford.

A video of the highlights (shorter videos aren’t available in the U.S.:

*The NYT has two views of the war, one from the U.S. side and the other from the Iranian.  The U.S. article reports that Trump is in a bind because, to look good, he has to make a better deal with  nukes than Obama did (article archived here).

Only minutes into a phone call to a New York Times reporter to explain the deal he had just agreed to with Iran, President Trump turned to an issue that clearly grates on him: the comparisons to the deal that President Barack Obama struck with Tehran in 2015.

The Obama deal, he said on Sunday evening, repeating a well-worn line, was “a disaster.”

“It was a road to a nuclear weapon and ours is a wall against a nuclear weapon in the truest sense of the word,” Mr. Trump said. “So let’s start there.”

Mr. Trump’s sensitivity is easy to understand. He campaigned against the Obama-era deal as far back as 2015, and ultimately killed it during his first term over the objections of many of his top national security aides. At the time, he had a long list of complaints about its failings. The 2015 accord “lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity,” Mr. Trump said in a 2018 speech, and “no limits at all on its other malign behavior,” especially its support of terror activities around the Middle East.

. . .Now the moment of reckoning has come for Mr. Trump. He is caught in what could best be described as the Obama-deal bind.

The accord he described on Sunday is simply a cease-fire and an agreement to fully open the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days. It commits both sides to begin negotiating on the future of the nuclear program. So for now, there is no way to compare the old and new deals; they are completely different in nature.

Yet Mr. Trump clearly knows he must significantly improve upon Mr. Obama’s results in order to justify the huge human and economic cost of taking the United States to war over the past three months.

The 2015 deal resulted in shipping about 97 percent of Iran’s nuclear stockpile at the time out of the country. The fate of the current stockpile, a far more dangerous one, is undetermined, and Mr. Trump sounded on Tuesday as if he was in no rush to get the nuclear material out of Iranian territory. There is no resolution about how to deal with future nuclear research and enrichment activities inside Iran, or whether all of its major nuclear sites will be shut down. There is no discussion yet about limits on its missiles or of resumed support for what is left of militias it supports, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Trump is out of his depth here, and so am I.  All I can say is that if Trump stops military activity now to negotiate for two months, it will be very hard for him to start military action again. Also, Iran always lies about its nuclear ambitions, and whatever deal is forged has to take that into account.

*And, on the other side, the NYT reports that (as expected), “Iran will enter nuclear talks feeling emboldened” (article archived here).

In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement to pause their war, Iranian politicians, generals, and clerics from a range of political factions described the deal as a victory that showed Tehran’s resilience against a far more powerful enemy.

That is the position Iran’s leaders are pushing even though the country lost a slew of its top political and military figures, suffered a battering to its stock of ballistic missiles and was left with an economy strained even further by a naval blockade.

“Iran has taken a major step toward final victory,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has played a major role in negotiating the deal, wrote on social media on Monday.

As negotiators were nearing an agreement, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, chairman of a powerful appointed council that supervises the work of the government, wrote on social media on Saturday that Iranians had shown a “renewed spirit of resistance” and defeated U.S.-Israeli plans to overthrow the Islamic republic.

. . . . The style of Iran’s leadership has also changed as a result of the war. Some pragmatic figures, such as the national security official Ali Larijani, were killed, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — the military force that defends Iran’s system of clerical rule — has consolidated power. The long-term impact of those changes is still to be seen, but the shifts raise the question of how willing the military, now even more powerful, will be to make serious concessions at the negotiating table.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric also appears to be adding to Iranian leaders’ confident tone. The American president has publicly excoriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for mounting attacks on Lebanon that nearly derailed the U.S.-Iran deal, and he has described Iran’s current leadership, including the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatists.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said Iran’s leadership was now “rational,” compared to, in his view, the leaders who were killed at the outset of the war.

According to Mr. Trump’s account of the deal, Iran is to allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a return to the status quo before the war. But in what is perhaps an indication of the leverage Iran feels it has, Tehran has indicated that it intends to charge ships for passing through the strait, which it did not do before the war.

“Iran is certain to be emboldened by this deal,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “I cannot recall another instance in which Iran suffered such serious military setbacks yet emerged with what could be considered a diplomatic victory.”

What the deuce does Trump mean by saying that Iran’s leadership is “rational”?  Of course it is; it’s getting what it wants. But it’s not rational in Trump’s sense, which means “seeing reason about nukes and terrorism.”  I always entertained the hope that Trump was playing some kind of clever game, but now it’s clear that he didn’t know what he was doing.

*The WSJ has an item-by-item explication and analysis of the “memorandum of understanding” that’s serving as a framework for the U.S./Iran ceasefire. I’ll give a few items.

1. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles.

WSJ analysis
The inclusion of Lebanon is highly controversial in Israel, which is fighting a war there with Hezbollah.

2. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.

WSJ analysis
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the war calling on Iranians to overthrow the regime, a goal that faded in Washington as the government in Tehran held firm.

4. Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States Lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.

WSJ analysis
This is the meat of the initial deal, reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz and winding down the war.

10. The United States undertakes that immediately after the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and until the date of the lifting of sanctions, the United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.

WSJ analysis
A major upfront American concession freeing Iran to sell oil as it likes and reap the financial benefits.

13. Following the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this Memorandum of Understanding, and the continued implementation of these steps, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.

WSJ analysis
Limits the scope of discussion in the second phase, leaving out Iran’s ballistic missile program and its network of regional militias.

*Here’s Jonathan Conricus, who used to be the main spokesperson for the IDF but is now a non-IDF commenter, describing why the sentiment of the entire political spectrum in Israel is “bitterness towards Trump” and a feeling that the “evilian Iranian regime” has won at the negotiation table.

All I can say is to echo Bret Stephens:

I write this as someone who supported the war from the outset and hoped to see Trump carry it through to a decisive result: if not regime change, then at least a deal in which Iran would be forced to relinquish all of its enrichment capabilities and access to the Strait was unfettered. Those goals were well within the president’s reach, particularly if he had continued to attack Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure until it agreed to terms, rather than conducting most of the negotiations after the fighting had mostly stopped.

Iran is surely happy that it seems to have driven a wedge between the U.S. and Israel. And it’s not just Netanyahu, either: any Israeli PM who tries to defend Israel against terrorism can expect little help from Trump, and even less help from any future Democratic President.

*The Babbling Beaver, the spoof magazine of MIT, has highlighted Luana’s Heterodox STEM post which I wrote about the other day (she attended two lectures on “fat studies” that purveyed a lot of harmful misinformation). The Beaver’s piece is called “Williams College: Where the belly of the beast comes to weaponize fatties.” (Luana teaches at Williams.)

Williams College has developed a robust curriculum in what its more outspoken social justice warriors call Fat Studies. Regular offerings over the years have included a seminar titled Don’t Tell Me to Love My Body, a workshop on Fatphobia and Body Liberation, and sundry other learning opportunities where undergraduates could expand their consciousness to match their waistlines. A Williams biology professor, troubled by the assault on empirical science these events represent when it comes to health problems caused by obesity, recently published a careful and restrained account in Heterodox STEM, declining to name names out of professional courtesy.

The Babbling Beaver labors under no such compunctions.

The 2026 Michael A. Dively ’61 Lecture on LGBTQ+ Life and Cultures — endowed by a formerly closeted Republican Michigan state legislator who found his true calling funding queer theory at his alma mater — presents this year’s adipose luminary: , self-described “Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist,” and author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.

Harrison’s thesis, stated without embarrassment, is that observing a person’s obesity is an act of racism; that medicine’s interest in weight loss is rooted in white supremacy; and that the entire edifice of nutritional science is a racial project dressed up in a lab coat. Cornell’s gender studies department arrived at similar conclusions and responded with pole dancing therapy.

Harrison made it clear: your scale is racist, your doctor is a Klansman, and the Cheetos are innocent. Corpulent Williams students in attendance, each paying $84,000 a year for the privilege, nodded gravely. One was overheard whispering that the buffet table at the reception was, itself, a form of reparations.

Williams is paying for this. We all may be laughing but Williams’ STEM professoriate is not.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is being the Jon Haidt of Poland:

Hili: Schools should bring back calligraphy lessons.
Andrzej: Why do you think that?
Hili:So children’s brains can take a break from clicking.

In Polish

Hili: Powinni w szkołach przywrócić lekcje kaligrafii.
Ja: Czemu tak sądzisz?
Hili: Żeby mózgi dzieci mogły odpocząć od klikania. So children’s brains can take a break from clicking.

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

Here’s the final iteration of a caricature of myself I made on ChatGPT. There are at least five changes from the previous version; can you spot them without looking back?

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff: the fortune says, “You will take a chance in the near future.”

Masih is very quiet about what’s happening with Iran; I imagine she’s distraught.

From Larry, who notes (and it’s true) that some bars in Boston ran out of beer because of the thirst of Scottish soccer fans:

As I was saying: https://t.co/vaiXAKBJfl

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 17, 2026

One I found about the ceasefire framework:

pic.twitter.com/cE05oqfDhK

— Evan Kirstel #B2B #TechFluencer (@EvanKirstel) June 15, 2026

From Luana, a 216-page report of “grooming gangs” and “rape gangs” in the UK (report is here).

The Rape Gang Inquiry Report.https://t.co/EuKgGWBRhS pic.twitter.com/SD5G9HPVtV

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) June 16, 2026

Two from my feed.  I think this first experiment needs a control: a man making noise and calling the horses but not making music:

A man was singing out in a field when something truly beautiful happened. This is why music will always feel like a universal language of love for humans and animals 🥹 Via jumesofficial, Things You Didn’t Know, Axel Vasa
pic.twitter.com/mdp82xZKdY

— Enezator (@Enezator) June 17, 2026

Styling a hijab, which is not illegal:

Iranian hairstylist Ami Moghaddam got death threats from the Islamic regime simply for posting haircut videos.

She then responded with this hilarious troll video that’s going viral.😂 pic.twitter.com/mdlHZWDig8

— Neo (@Realneo101) June 17, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death shortly after arriving at Auschwitz. She was 12 years old. https://t.co/5SHnhAhNOs

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 18, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, stabilizing sexual selection: a male changing his courtship won’t appeal to females. But female preferences may change more easily:

These dune flies perform 41 courtship moves, but isolated populations still kept nearly identical routines. Only the timing of one wing movement showed a hint of divergence. doi.org/cmdm6b

— Science X / Phys.org (@sciencex.bsky.social) 2026-06-15T15:20:21-04:00

Matthew and the Matterhorn. He’s now spent a day in Lyon and is on his way to Arles, famous for being Van Gogh’s village:

Me below Sunnegga

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-15T13:32:30.285Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dies Gibbosus” in Latin): June 17, 2026, and National Apple Strudel Day. Here’s a great snack: an apple strudel and an Einspänner (coffee) at a famous cafe in Vienna. Eaten and photographed in October, 2012.  Lots of Schlag here!

It’s also the Islamic New Year, National Eat Your Vegetables Day (no, thank you), and World Croc Day. Here’s a giant crocodile I photographed in 2016 at a field station in eastern India. We were not allowed to leave our huts at night because these things roamed the grounds.

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

Da Nooz:

*Footie News.  Argentina defeated Algeria 3-0 in the World Cup, with all three goals scored by perhaps the greatest soccer player ever, Lionel Messi. He also tied the record for goals by an individual in a World Cup:  16.

Lionel Messi made history Tuesday night by tying Miroslav Klose’s record for most men’s World Cup goals at 16 after scoring a hat trick to lead Argentina to a 3-0 win over Algeria.

The hat trick was the 11th of Messi’s international career but first at the World Cup. At 38, he became the oldest player to score three goals in a game at the tournament. He came off late in the second half to a rousing ovation from the partisan Argentina crowd at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

“It’s an honor being up there for what it means, being alongside Klose and [Brazil’s] Ronaldo, who is there also. But it doesn’t mean anything,” Messi said after the game. “[Kylian] Mbappé is there, too, he scored twice today. At the end of the day, they are stats and nothing more.

“It’s an honor to compete with them, but it doesn’t mean anything. For me, Ronaldo, who I watched and is one of the greats, is not at the top. So, it’s just stats.”

When Messi took the field for defending champion Argentina’s first group stage match — his 200th with the national team — he also became the first player to feature in six World Cups.

Messi broke the record of five World Cups held by Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal); Antonio Carbajal, Andrés Guardado and Rafael Márquez (all Mexico); and Lothar Matthäus (Germany). (Ronaldo should equal the mark in Portugal’s opener against Congo on Wednesday.)

Messi’s comment about Ronaldo is quite uncivil, and I have no idea what he’s on about. Anyway, here are the highlights with Messi’s three goals. At 38, he’s still got it, and he’ll undoubtedly score at least one more goal to set the record. I note, however, that some observers are saying that Messi should have been given a red card and sent out of the game for stomping on an Algerian player’s calf—a foul for which he didn’t even get a yellow card (see photos here).

*The NYT reports that further talks between the U.S. and Iran on their peace deal will begin Friday when the “permanent agreement” is signed. Trump also gave assurances that the preliminary agreement (which none of us have seen) prevents Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon. For more on the memorandum of agreement, which seems to be circulating in various versions, see the next post. 

Iran said on Tuesday that talks on a permanent peace deal with the United States would begin immediately after the countries signed a preliminary agreement on Friday, as President Trump reiterated his claim that it prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. It says it loud and clear,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday at the Group of 7 summit in France.

Under the preliminary agreement, the United States and Iran agreed to a new 60-day cease-fire and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But the text has not been publicly released and the thorniest differences between the two sides, including the future of Iran’s nuclear program, have been deferred to the next round of negotiations.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Tuesday that he also expected Israeli forces to immediately withdraw from Lebanon and halt their attacks in the country. Israel has said its military would remain in Lebanon, where they have been targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, and it has continued to launch strikes since the U.S.-Iran deal was announced over the weekend.

Mr. Trump urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday to “be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” and suggested that Syria would be more effective at dealing with the threat from Hezbollah. There is no indication that Syria is willing to involve itself militarily in that long-running conflict.

Mr. Trump has said that the Strait of Hormuz would fully reopen starting Friday. But shipping companies have responded cautiously to the preliminary agreement, and traffic through the waterway, a crucial transit route for oil and gas supplies, remained minimal on Tuesday. Some companies have warned that they would need more details and security guarantees before resuming operations there.

*From It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal gives another pessimistic assessment of the sketchy peace deal:

It’s Tuesday, June 16, and “what we know is this agreement is going to make Israel safer, it’s going to make the entire region safer,” Vice President JD Vance told NBC News, adding that he “feels confident” Israel will join the U.S.-Iran deal “further down the road.” It is difficult to share Vance’s confidence when the rest of the cabinet has remained entirely silent on the matter.

Though that isn’t entirely true. According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Donald Trump and other senior officials that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal. He was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, both of whom expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding—while Vance and the White House’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, advocated for it.

I’ll try to sprinkle in some optimism and sweeten this bitter pill. But first, we should go through the details as they appear so far. Vance says the deal runs “about a page and a half.” That’s not a lot of room for an American victory—especially once you fit in all those Iranian concessions. Let’s look at what has been conceded so far:

Just a week ago, Trump declared there was absolutely no way he would release frozen assets before a comprehensive peace deal was signed. Yet by Iran’s account, the regime gets a significant signing bonus the moment the ink is dry. “The agreement says they are not getting a single dime of American money,” Vance insisted on Fox—reassuring, I’m sure, for American taxpayers, but a strange thing to stress, since he’s calming a concern no one raised. The money in question was never America’s; it’s Iran’s own frozen assets. The administration insists they’ll be released only as Iran complies with the deal, but given how compliant the U.S. has been to Tehran’s demands so far, I don’t see it holding the line on a few billion the moment Iran threatens to walk.

Trump also stated he would not agree to any arrangement that doesn’t include dismantling Iran’s proxies and halting their terrorism. No such language seems to appear anywhere in the MOU. In place of any written commitment to dismember the Axis of Resistance, the Americans simply claim the funds headed to the regime will be kept strictly out of terrorist hands. After all, the White House assured everyone, the bulk of the money is expected “to go into spending that improves the economy” they are under “intense pressure to deliver results at home”—whoops, that was Obama in 2015. Silly me. But we needn’t reach back that far: this is the oldest trick in the Hamas playbook—insisting Qatari or humanitarian aid serves purely legitimate, benevolent civilian needs, when in reality it just frees up other capital for far more nefarious ends.

Trump also once insisted on the destruction of all Iranian nuclear facilities and zero uranium enrichment. Now he has told The New York Times that Iran would be permitted low-level enrichment—meaning “zero enrichment” won’t even make it to the negotiating table.

The agreement reportedly requires Iran to “open” the strait. Vice President JD Vance asserts this means open and “toll-free” for the long term. Iranian officials and state media, however, claim they will merely pause fees for sixty days, but plan to resume charging “service fees” after that period, and maintain that keeping the strait “open” implies keeping it under Iranian and Omani management.

Israel is far from thrilled with this deal—just ask the markets. On Wall Street, the signs of peace sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite up about 795 points, a three percent jump and its best day in months. In Tel Aviv, the mood was the opposite: as global markets rallied, the benchmark TA-35 slid roughly 1.3 percent, with banks and insurers falling harder still—local investors reading the agreement as more likely to bring war than peace.

*And, finally, the NYT editorial board’s op-ed is definitive: “President Trump lost this war.” I agree, but they also said that he never should have started this war, and I’m not so sure I agree there—as that judgement comes from the benefit of hindsight (op-ed archived here).

The preliminary deal ending President Trump’s four-month war with Iran is welcome but brings with it hard truths. Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake starting this war. He prosecuted it recklessly and in open defiance of the law. The United States is emerging weaker — militarily, diplomatically and economically — and will pay strategic costs for years to come.

The details of the deal are unclear, but the announced framework suggests that Mr. Trump has won few of the terms he insisted that he would. It is a humiliating comedown for him and the nation he leads.

Since the war began, he has said the United States would achieve “total and complete victory” and that Iran must agree to “unconditional surrender.” He suggested that regime change would occur. He said that Iran would be permitted “no enrichment” of uranium and that “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried” near-bomb-grade nuclear material that it already holds.

None of this appears to be true. Iran’s hard-line government remains in place. The specifics of the nuclear agreement will apparently be negotiated over the next two months, but the terms seem likely to resemble those of a 2015 deal that President Barack Obama negotiated and that Mr. Trump canceled in 2018. He described the Obama agreement as the “worst deal ever” and said it put Iran on “a route to a nuclear weapon.” He criticized it for failing to force Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and for loosening economic sanctions. Yet his destructive war seems likely to leave him with a similar deal.

His biggest achievement in the cease-fire framework is the expected reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping traffic, which will eventually reduce the prices of energy and other goods. That, of course, is merely a reversion to the prewar status quo.

Yep, yep, yep, and yep.  If you ask me what he could have done differently, well, I wouldn’t accept all of these conditions, and would keep attacking until Iran cries “uncle” about nuclear weapon cessation, getting rid of its enriched uranium, opening the Strait of Hormuz, and leaving Lebanon out of the deal. Of course Iran wouldn’t agree to that now, but perhaps it would had if we’d  bombed its oil-delivery facilities on Kharg Island. I don’t think that Obama’s nuclear agreement was so great: how else would Iran have so much uranium enriched to 60%—far above what is needed for peaceful uses? Iran has lied about its goals and amount of enriched uranium, and it will lie again.

*Reader Frau Katze pointed out in a comment yesterday that Nicholas Kristof is behaving badly again, this time breaking a promise he made to his readers.

When The New York Times announced that columnist Nick Kristof would return following a scuttled 2021 bid for governor of Oregon, the paper made a promise to readers.

In a response to questions about Kristof’s return from Rolling Stone in 2022, the Times said that Kristof would refrain from writing about the financial supporters of his campaign, or would disclose those connections in his journalism.

But in at least a dozen instances since then, Kristof failed to make those disclosures. And after an inquiry from Semafor, the Times is reviewing his work.

“Previous political donations made by some people Nick Kristof mentioned in his columns should have been made more clear to readers,” Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said in an email. “Editors from Times Opinion are reviewing these articles to determine further clarifications for readers.”

In a series of pieces between 2022 and 2025, Kristof wrote favorably about Bill Gates and his nonprofit. In one case, he touted Gates’ plan for fighting global hunger. In others he cited statistics from Gates’ foundation, as well as his predictions on gene editing and his recommendation of an author. Kristof made no mention of the fact that Bill and Melinda French Gates had donated a combined $100,000 to his campaign for governor.

When Kristof mentioned Council on Foreign Relations member Deborah Fikes in a 2024 column about North Korea, he did not say that she had donated $10,000 to his political campaign.

In a 2023 column about India’s economic growth, Kristof quoted McKinsey Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels without noting that Sternfels and his wife both donated a combined $5,000 to his campaign. And when he quoted the late Harvard professor Joseph Nye in two separate columns, in 2023 and 2024, he failed to note that Nye had donated $1,000.

When he decided to run for governor in 2021, Kristof put the Times in a somewhat unique position. It was uncommon, but not unheard of, for writers to leave mainstream journalism to pursue politics. It was more unusual for someone to try and return to the paper.

But Kristof’s path is an increasingly common one, as news media continues to polarize into political and ideological camps and as modern campaigns favor candidates skilled in capturing and maintaining attention.

But the site, Semafor, which looks pretty good vis-à-vis journalistic rigor, also looked for dissent and has editorial comments after it:

In an email to Semafor, Patrick Lee Plaisance, a professor in ethics at Penn State, told Semafor that Kristof’s quotes of various campaign donors did not necessitate disclosure, noting that there was no quid pro quo for coverage, regardless of the Times’ disclosure promise. He noted that in many of the examples reported here, Kristof was quoting high-profile public figures or subject matter experts who were “simply allowed to comment on the topic that [Kristof] is addressing.”

“While quoting a donor five years after your campaign ended may be grist for the conspiracy-minded, it is hard for me to see the substantive interests that are in conflict here,” Plaisance said. “Unless there is other evidence … that would revive a conflict concern.”

Still, if this was no big deal, why did the NYT spokesperson say that the paper should have admitted the connections and why is it reviewing his other articles? Anyway, I still think they should dump the guy, for his transgressions were far more serious than those of, say, James Bennet.

*Although I have a love/hate relationship with The Free Press (too little news, and a slight right-wing slant), it does seem to be getting better in that it’s covering the important stories more regularly.  And it’s improving more now as they’ve just taken on Douglas Murray as a regular columnist (he’s previously published the “Things Worth Remembering” column from time to time.  Murray is a conservative, but he’s also smart, well-read, eloquent and pro-Israel (his Munk debate with Natasha Hausdorff is a classic), and one of the few journalists willing to publicly bring up the possibility of high immigration to Europe eroding Western culture. At any rate, I look forward to reading him and here’s some of his self-introduction:

. . . four years ago I was already writing several political columns a week for other publications and wasn’t sure I had another one in me. Bari suggested I write one on topics far afield of politics. She proposed the idea of the Things Worth Remembering column—a series of short essays, each on a single text, that capture eternal values and insights.

Of all the columns I have written in the past 25 years, few have given me greater pleasure to write. The response of Free Press readers moved me deeply and—not for the first time—proved that Bari was onto something. For the two years that I wrote that column, I felt like I was in a wonderful, enthusiastic, deep dialogue with readers.

But then other things—principally wars—got in the way. I remained a very occasional contributor to The Free Press. Yet I remained an avid reader and admirer of this amazing, growing publication. And I never drifted far from the FP family. One of the highlights of my past year was coming onstage in New York at a live event to introduce Coleman Hughes (who was on the trombone) and Justice Amy Coney Barrett (who was not).

Now I find myself in the very happy position of being asked to return to The Free Press as a regular columnist on the broadest possible range of topics. Nothing could excite me more.

That’s because the assault on Western values has become even more withering in the past several years. Internal critics in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and across Europe threaten to dismantle the systems that created mass prosperity, and suppress the teaching of history in favor of new ideological fashions. External enemies in the Middle East, Asia, and around the world seek to wear down opposition to their oppressive social systems, and expand their own influence throughout the free world.

The breadth and depth of issues that The Free Press covers is something that most writers dream of being a part of. And so I am thrilled to rejoin the growing bank of writers who include many—even most—of the writers that I most admire. Back here, I hope to inform readers about world events and stay in the fight for the values we share.

A lot is going to happen in the coming years. I couldn’t be happier to be back at The Free Press and am ready to go through them with all of you.

Yep, he’s a conservative, but where would we be if we read only those writerad and those arguments were already congenial to our views and those of our tribe?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are lost in memory, for it was a year ago today that Malgorzata died.

Hili: The roses were blooming a year ago, too.
Andrzej: Yes, I was thinking about that today as well.

In Polish:

Hili: Rok temu też kwitły róże.
Ja: Tak też o tym dziś myślałem.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices, with the caption that Yoda must have written this sign:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Stacy:

Masih is quiet; I expect she’s stunned at the U.S. peace deal with Iran, which leaves the Iranian people out in the cold.  So here’s one from Luana:

“I’m gonna be the dirtiest doctor ever. I’m gonna poison them slowly.” – Ahmet Kerem Korkaya, a Turkish medical student who researched breast cancer and immunology.

Korkaya is one of the 8 indicted last week by the Feds for terrorizing the University of Michigan & surrounding… https://t.co/X0mUxbsQKr pic.twitter.com/3kBnVhGZLY

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) June 15, 2026

From the Number Ten Cat, no fan of Trump (he’s right in this tweet, too):

How Iran sees Trump: pic.twitter.com/4O8HjoB3BD

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 14, 2026

Ricky Gervais has a new comedy:

Picture a sitcom about cats written by a comedy legend and starring some of funniest people in entertainment.

That’s @rickygervais‘ ALLEY CATS! 😸

Set to premiere on Netflix on Friday, August 7, 2026. pic.twitter.com/Epr7wOVOJe

— After Life 🐕‍🦺 (@ForAntilly) June 15, 2026

Two from my feed.  First, “Beat it” played on medieval instruments. I’ll give the English translation:

🇫🇷🎻🏰 INSOLITE | Ce groupe normand de musique médiévale reprend « Beat It » de Michael Jackson avec des instruments d’époque. Le résultat est bluffant : on a l’impression d’entendre un tube joué dans une taverne du XIVe siècle. 😂

(Insta : @coursevalbardcore) pic.twitter.com/rrsBLAkdmB

— Cerfia (@CerfiaFR) June 16, 2026

The English translation: “A bird that skillfully strips the main veins from leaves needed for nest-building and stores them in its tail to carry them back.”  I love the tail tucking!

巣作りに必要な葉の主脈を上手に剥ぎ取り、持ち帰るために尻尾に収納する鳥 pic.twitter.com/7CqC2PYdDN

— まだ面白い (@madaomoshiroi) June 16, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Italian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old. https://t.co/y8PSTjFzsz

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 17, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb, heading to France from Switzerland. First, his pics from Zermatt:

More Matterhorn and adjacent pics

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-13T14:01:13.756Z

And a walk down the mountain (there are three other posts linked to this one):

We got the funicular up to Sunnegga from Zermatt then walked for around 4 hours and eventually descended to Riffelalp railway station. Here are the trains, with pics of walk in linked posts.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-15T13:32:30.282Z

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, a Tuesday, and June 16 to be exact. It’s also National Cannoli Day, which brings to mind this scene from “The Godfather”. The original script called for Clemenza (Richard Castellano) to say just, “Leave the gun.” But Castellano ad-libbed an addition, “Take the cannoli,” which Coppola decided to keep. It’s one of the most famous lines in the trio of movies.

And it’s Bloomsday, commemorating the day in 1904, when, in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom wanders around Dublin, Ireland, emitting his inner monologue. Why this day? As Wikipedia notes, “Joyce chose to set his novel on this date as it was the date of his first sexual encounter with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle.”  Since October 7 I’ve been surprised at how antisemitic Ireland has become (or, I guess, always was); my impression is that it’s the most antisemitic country in Western Europe. The WSJ, in an op-ed inspired by Bloomsday, “Ireland’s spiral of antisemitism,” calls this to our notice (h/t Bat):

Ireland is preparing for Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and the day—June 16, 1904—that the novel’s hero, Leopold Bloom, spends wandering Dublin.

Published in 1922, “Ulysses” is celebrated for its revolutionary stream-of-consciousness style and its portrait of modern alienation. For years I thought Joyce had made an oddly prosaic choice in Bloom: a lower-middle-class Dubliner stalled in his career and trapped in an unhappy marriage.

But Joyce chose perfectly. Bloom is an Irish Jew. As he moves through the city, he endures not only the private pain of his wife’s unfaithfulness but the casual, corrosive antisemitism of his fellow citizens.

Growing up in late-20th-century Ireland, I saw no such prejudice and assumed Joyce had exaggerated the past for dramatic effect. But recent events have shown how well Joyce understood his country—and how prescient he was about its future. The Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, lifted the veil. Ireland, once famed as the land of a thousand welcomes, has become, almost overnight, a cold house for Jews.

. . .Meanwhile Ireland’s political class has grown incandescent at the prospect of the Irish national soccer team playing Israel in Dublin in October. Amid threats of protests and concerns about violence, there were calls to cancel the match—even though it would harm the Irish team’s international standing. Such was the anger about the possibility of Israelis and their fans being in Dublin that the game will be moved to a different country and played without spectators.

Ireland hasn’t progressed since Joyce wrote “Ulysses.” It has regressed. In the conservative deeply Catholic Ireland of 100 years ago, Leopold Bloom was insulted and threatened, but Jews could at least still freely wander the streets of Dublin. In the Ireland of 2026, he would be advised not to try.

I’ve pointed this out several times, got pushback from at least one Irish person, but I think that I (and Irish author Phelim McAleer) am right.

It’s also Fresh Veggies Day, National Cherry Tart Day, National Fudge Day, National Tortilla Day, and World Sea Turtle Day. Here’s a sea turtle (readers are invited to tell me the species) I photographed in Hawaii in June of 2019. It was basking.

I have a time-consuming podcast today that won’t be broadcast until next year, but that means that my preparations for Hili tomorrow will be thin, as will ancillary posts today. Bear with me; I do my best.

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

Da Nooz:

Breaking news ripped from the headlines: Netanyahu has said that Israel is not going to abide by any peace deal that makes it withdraw from Lebanon and allow Hezbollah to continue attacking northern Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a defiant address to Israelis, suggested on Monday that he did not feel bound by the newly reached cease-fire agreement between the United States and Iran.

“The struggle has not ended,” Mr. Netanyahu declared.

Foreshadowing potential trouble for the peace deal, he said he had no intention of withdrawing his forces from neighboring Lebanon — a key demand of the Iranians during negotiations with the United States. Israeli soldiers there are fighting Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran.

In March, soon after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began, Hezbollah began firing on Israel in a show of solidarity with the Iranians.

Trump cannot force Israel to stop defending itself just so he can have his peace deal. This is an existential crisis for those in Lebanon (Hezbollah’s rockets can hit Tel Aviv), and if there is to be a peace deal involving Israel, it would involve an unbreakable stipulation that Hezbollah disarm and disband.  The NYT morning newsletter adds this:

If [the war with Iran] is ending, it will be without any of the results President Trump was looking for when he started it: the destruction of Iran’s ability to wage war; the crushing of its nuclear ambitions; the end of its theocratic leadership; and the liberation of its people.

*Footy: In another upset, the tiny island nation of Cape Verde (population ∼530,000) forced Spain, a favorite (and population about 50 million), to a 0-0 draw in the World Cup. The 40-year-old goalkeeper was terrific, making save after save in a game that was largely defensive for Cape Verde.

Wow, just wow. At 1.57pm Atlanta time, 3,291 miles from home, the final whistle went on Cape Verde’s first game in a World Cup finals tournament – and they had only gone and done it.

What they had done was madness: a tiny nation, a debutant, had held one of the favourites, Spain, the European champions, to a 0-0 draw. Bubista, the coach who had led them here, had said he wanted the world to see who and what they are – and, boy, did they see. Qualification, he had insisted, was more than football, it was music, it was culture, it was everything. So what was this? This was wonderful. What a moment and what a noise greeted the moment when the impossible had become real.

An Atlantic archipelago of 600,000 people. A Shamrock Rovers centre back from Crumlin, Dublin, learning Creole and found on LinkedIn. A 40-year-old goalkeeper from Portugal’s second division, another Josimar leaving his mark on the history of this competition and a million minds, left in tears at the end and to be talked about for generations. All of them, each and every one. They had come to the US, faced Spain, and resisted them, their bodies on the line and their hearts on their sleeves. Even the introduction of Lamine Yamal, the teenaged icon cast as Spain’s saviour, couldn’t defeat them.

Here are the highlights:

*Here are the sketchy details of the Iran-Israel peace deal from the NYT; bolding is mine.

The United States and Iran signed a framework agreement for peace on Monday, as oil prices tumbled, fighting in Lebanon appeared to ease and Iranians expressed wary relief that a conflict that has killed thousands could soon end.

The actual text of the agreement was not published by either side. Since the war’s start on Feb. 28, it has not produced the results President Trump vowed to achieve: destroying Iran’s military capabilities, abolishing its nuclear ambitions, toppling its theocratic leadership or liberating its people.

President Trump said the deal would restart safe passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for world’s energy supplies, solving one problem created by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Returning to the prewar status, when the strait was open to shipping, could relieve Americans of soaring gas prices, a political liability for Mr. Trump, but experts say it will take months. A similarly long process could begin of healing for Iran’s economy.

Mr. Trump previously said the deal meant the strait would be “permanently toll-free.” But the Iranian foreign ministry’s spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, suggested on Monday that Iran could charge fees “in exchange for the services that are provided” on ships transiting the strait.

Pakistan, which has been mediating talks between Washington and Tehran, said a ceremonial in-person signing of the agreement would take place in Geneva on Friday. After that, a 60-day period of negotiations toward a more comprehensive peace agreement would begin.

The deal could still come apart, and the talks are likely to be complex.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Monday that negotiations will grapple with two issues on which neither side has shown much willingness to compromise: easing American economic sanctions against Iran and limiting Tehran’s nuclear program. And they will be made more difficult, he said, by “a history of broken promises.”

. . .It was also unclear what the deal would mean for Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been attacking the Iran-backed militant group, Hezbollah. Iran and Pakistan, a mediator in the negotiations, said the agreement called for an immediate end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah appeared to scale back their fighting in southern Lebanon on Monday. In a statement, Hezbollah congratulated Iran for what it described as the “major achievement” of securing a “comprehensive cease-fire on all fronts, including Lebanon.”

Yet Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed withdrawing Israeli troops from Lebanon. Israel was not directly involved in the U.S.-Iran talks.

I’ve put the key sentence in bold.  Can anyone disagree with that?  It’s dispiriting (see next item)

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal calls the agreement between the U.S. and Iran “Total surrender“:

It begins with an immediate, multi-front ceasefire—including Lebanon—and the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports in exchange for Iran “opening” the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is demanding an initial payment of $12 billion before the strait is opened, and is unlikely to be denied, judging by the hunger for a deal in Trump’s eyes.

A significant ambiguity remains over the strait, however. While Trump claims the opening will be “toll-free,” Iranian officials have previously indicated they may still impose fees or retain regulatory control—effectively securing a major Iranian war aim, with American assent lending it legitimacy. The deal also stipulates that within 60 days of its scheduled June 19 signing in Geneva, the two nations will begin follow-on talks addressing the termination of all U.S. sanctions, the nuclear issue and Iran’s economic reconstruction.

The framework appears to diverge significantly from earlier U.S. positions. Trump, who once insisted on the destruction of all Iranian nuclear facilities and zero uranium enrichment, told The New York Times that Iran would now be permitted low-level enrichment—meaning “zero enrichment” will not even be making it to the negotiating table. The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, for its part, framed the deal as a “tactical pause in the war rather than a final settlement,” warning that “many more concessions would be needed” for any future agreement and that Iran’s experience with U.S. bad faith makes one “unlikely.” Tehran is giving little ground elsewhere too: against the U.S. demand for a 20-year enrichment ban, it is countering with a mere five-year pause, and it is maneuvering to unlock at least some of its frozen assets early in the MOU process—easing U.S. leverage and securing vital economic relief before the core nuclear negotiations even begin.

Trump has declared that should those negotiations fail, the U.S. would return to war—which deserves to be taken as seriously as every other time he’s said it in the last 68 days.

So, to summarize: Iran gets its ports unblocked, sanctions relief and de facto recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz—in exchange for complying with the original ceasefire, restoring freedom of commerce and ceasing its random acts of violence. In the nuclear negotiations to follow, it will not be required to halt its program completely; only lower its enrichment, and only for somewhere between five years and, at the very most, twenty.

The American position in a word: surrender.

Yep.  We’ll see about Hezbollah and Iran later, but now that Trump is proclaiming peace, I can’t see him restarting attacks on Iran. Here’s the Washington Post‘s headline:

*I saw this on Facebook, and, checking it out, found out it’s true (“SJP is the odious organization Students for Justice in Palestine”). Smith College is a tony, high-class women’s college in Massachusetts.  (Click screenshot to go to the post if you want, but there’s nothing save comments.)

From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

A monthslong push by Students for Justice in Palestine to persuade Smith College to divest from weapons manufacturers tied to Israel ended last week when a trustee advisory committee voted to reject the proposal.

The proposal, titled “Ethical Investment Policy & Procedure Request,” was put forth by SJP and its sister organization, Alumni for Justice in Palestine (AJP), and called for the college to cut financial ties with weapons companies, military contractors and other corporations that aid in the assault on Gaza.

“I can’t think why a liberal arts institution like Smith College, founded on lofty ideas and now committed to such noble aims as equity, inclusion, diversity and excellence, would want to be invested in weapons or technologies of war, genocide and environmental devastation,” said Katherine Sullivan, a member of the Class of 1975. “Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s invest in green technologies, innovative health and medical initiatives and other activities that benefit humankind. Let’s be a light in this dark world.”

SJP argued that its proposal is meant to align the college’s financial investments with its historic track record for standing with human rights, comparing the proposed divestment from Israel to the college’s 1986 divestment from the South African apartheid. However, the college’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR), in its written response to the student activist organizations, cites a misalignment between the proposal and the college’s mission statement as a reason for the proposal’s rejection.

“After careful and exhaustive review, the ACIR concluded that the proposal does not fully satisfy the criteria required to recommend further consideration or action by the Investment Committee,” the committee wrote. “Specifically, the proposal lacks mission alignment, societal impact, and community consensus. There is also concern that it would have a negative financial impact, limiting the ability of the endowment to support the college’s mission and conflicting with the trustees’ fiduciary responsibility.”

The first comment on the post is “A Women’s college with balls.”  Note that SJP is also associated with the walkout below. Note, too, that they’re citing the “assault on Gaza,” which was actually a defense of Israel against an assault on Israel by Hamas.  But nobody seems to remember that, and they still throw around the word “genocide,” which characterizes not Israel, but Hamas.

A similar proposal, also by SJP, was submitted to Smith in late 2023 and was rejected by Smith for similar reasons in Spring, 2024.  Divestment is one of the only weapons remaining for SJP (who I suspect is funded by terrorist-linked organizations), for they surely did not fulfill their from-the-river-to-the-sea mantra.

*The daily antisemitic news (h/t Luana): Stanford students walked out of their graduation when Google’s CEO got up to speak. Why? Because of Google’s ties to Israel, and also to ICE. And again behind the walkout is Students for Justice in Palestine, who have accomplished nothing politically except rile up a bunch of college students.

Numerous Stanford University students reportedly walked out of their graduation ceremony as Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to deliver a keynote address.

Around 200 students walked out as Pichai took the stage during Sunday’s event, SFGate reported.

The walkout was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups to protest Google’s ties to Israel, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other companies. Videos posted on social media showed some of the students walking out were carrying Palestinian flags, while others displayed banners reading “Genocide Runs on Google” and “ICE spies with Google AI.”

“Pichai was met with the sight of hundreds of students who showed they could not be allured anymore with the talk of a dollar or rapidly expanding AI. We know about the crimes of Google in collaborating with Israel, ICE, and companies like Palantir,” the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian student organization. said on Instagram, alongside clips of the walkout.

“Nothing that was done today could have been done without the students, faculty, and community members who spread the word and who showed up. We congratulate the graduates as they continue on to their next step beyond Stanford. To the graduates of today who joined us. May your future steps to the future continue to be guided towards doing whats right.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters have criticized the deal Google has with the Israeli government and military, under “Project Nimbus,” to provide cloud computing and AI services.

The $1.2 billion contract was signed in 2021, when Israel first tested out its in-house AI-powered targeting systems.

Google has repeatedly denied that its technology would play a role in Israel’s war in Gaza, saying in a statement that the contract “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

That doesn’t matter, for what the students really object to is any partnership with Israel.  And did Pichai say anything about Israel? Nope. Again, that doesn’t matter:

Pichai’s remarks drew from his own life experiences as he urged students to focus on optimism, tackling difficult challenges, and pursuing what excites them.

“You have thousands of moments ahead of you. The important thing isn’t to get them all right; it’s to find a way to keep moving forward,” he said.

“You already have the California optimism to see life’s golden hills, and a Stanford diploma proving you can do hard things. Now, go out and set your heart ablaze!”

As you can see above and in the video below (you need only watch the first two minutes), it’s an anodyne rah-rah-go-get-them address. He said nothing about Israel or ICE.

*According to the AP, a “whale necropolis” has been discovered in the Indian Ocean, containing dozens of whale skeletons both new and ancient, going back over five million years.

Scientists have unearthed communities of marine life — including jellyfish, tubeworms and brittle stars — thriving on a millions-year-old whale graveyard.

These graveyards form when whale carcasses fall to the sea floor, becoming a sustaining snack for nearby critters. This one, located up to 23,000 feet (7 kilometers) below the surface of the southeastern Indian Ocean, spans the largest area and is so far the deepest and oldest found.

A whale’s sheer size and the unique chemistry of its bones are the keys to forming these unique underwater neighborhoods, said Xikun Song, a biologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering.

“At the same time, the very nature of the deep ocean makes these sites exceptionally difficult for scientists to locate,” Song, who was involved with the latest find, wrote in an email.

Researchers explored the remains during multiple deep-sea submersible trips in 2023, collecting samples and mapping the extent of the necropolis. They found five carcass sites and fossils, including skulls belonging to beaked and baleen whales. The oldest bones date back 5.3 million years.

Feeding and living on the carcasses were myriad creatures, large and small, including sea cucumbers, squat lobsters and saltwater clams. Many of them are likely species that have never been documented, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“The potential number of specimens is just astounding,” said paleontologist Stephen Godfrey with the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Many factors likely conspired to preserve the bones for millions of years, according to the study authors. They’re dense enough to outlast attacks from bone-eating worms, and located deep enough in the ocean to avoid getting buried by dust and loose particles. The bones also were coated with a light layer of minerals from the surrounding seawater, which may have prevented them from degrading.

Why did so many whales die here? Maybe they were already living in the area and died of natural causes. A few could have perished from exhaustion or illness caused by deep-sea diving. The area’s shape, akin to the letter V, could also have funneled the remains to their resting spot, the authors wrote.

Here’s a video:

I sometimes wonder about the death of large marine mammals. Does a whale die while swimming, and suddenly sink to the bottom? Or, moribund, does it go to the bottom first, and then die?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej again evinces wisdom:

Hili: The past doesn’t come back.
Andrzej: It returns in our memories, sometimes with pain, sometimes with a smile.

In Polish:

Hili: Przeszłość nie wraca.
Ja: Wraca w pamięci, czasem boli, czasem przywołuje uśmiech.

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

A duck has become Mexico’s symbol for its World Cup team:

Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez may have scored the goals, but a duck stole the show.

As Mexico celebrated its World Cup-opening victory over South Africa on Thursday, Merlin, a 2-year-old duck dressed in the national team’s colors, became an unlikely internet sensation and the tournament’s first unofficial mascot.

Images of Merlin parading through Mexico City, wearing a Mexican national team jersey — and socks — as thousands of fans celebrated, quickly went viral, racking up millions of views across social media. Overnight, and as if by the magic of the famous wizard who inspired his name, Merlin had captivated the internet.

Here’s Merlin!

From Stacy, a story that appears to be true:

From CinEmma:

From Give Me a Sign:

Masih is quiet, probably distressed at the so-called peace deal, but we have Emma Hilton talking about SRY, a condition in which a person has a 46 + XY  karyotype or somehow has acquired in an XX background the SRY gene that kicks off the male-characteristic determining pathway—but that SRY gene isn’t active. This results in a female appearance but usually an inability to reproduce because of gonadal dysgenesis.  Emma is working on developing a quick lab test to detect whether there’s an SRY gene, which is nearly always an indication of biological maleness, and such a test would be useful in, say, the Olympics:

I’m going to unpack some of this.

1. The premise that women are unknowingly carting around a Y (with SRY) is massively over exaggerated. The risk of Surprise SRY is minimal.

2. The risk of Surprise SRY is, however, non-zero. But in reproductively healthy women who have had… https://t.co/SGYIYdClrL

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) June 15, 2026

This game finished with a 0-0 tie! I suppose if you bet on a team to win, you lose if they tie. Larry gives us the deets:

Someone’s just learned an expensive lesson https://t.co/GTmKhL8Wxi

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 15, 2026

From Luana. As the tweet says, the minimum wage in California was raised; it went up 25% from $16 per hour to $20 per hour.

McDonald’s announced they’re replacing cashiers with kiosks in California just after the $20 minimum wage kicked in. Shocking to absolutely no one who understands basic economics. When you artificially price labor above its market value, employers find substitutes. Machines,… pic.twitter.com/Hia8p8Tzj4

— Handre (@Handre) June 15, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a rock medley of bird songs; very good:

Nature just dropped the best beat of the year pic.twitter.com/ciNbRNWTdo

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) June 15, 2026

And a Muslim explains why women can’t wear backpacks outside their abayas.  Get a load of this explanation!

Women in Muslim countries can’t wear backpacks now….but hey, it’s no big deal, because they can’t go to school anyway. pic.twitter.com/XURFypnM0V

— Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ (@sappholives83) June 15, 2026

. . . and one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish woman was taken to Auschwitz at age eighteen. “She did not survive.” https://t.co/HkW9ulVIxu

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 16, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb, about to head to Lyon from Switzerland. Two tweets he made from Switzerland:

It’s not all massive summits here in the Alps. Fabulous alpine flowers and rocks.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-13T13:59:39.905Z

Cool goats, taken to pasture each morning and brought home in the evening:

Valais blackneck goats in Zermatt, safe in their night quarters by the station. sound up

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-14T16:09:02.604Z