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

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

They are much of a muchness:

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

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

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And from the Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

America was invaded by illegal aliens.

Americans voted to end the invasion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

; . . in contrast, here are some Democrats:

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

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

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

Progressive Democrats lambasted Israel for its military operation.

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

Here’s Tlaib’s tweet:

The Israeli government bombing Iran is a dangerous escalation that could lead to regional war. War Criminal Netanyahu will do anything to maintain his grip on power. We cannot let him drag our country into a war with Iran. Our government must stop funding and supporting this…

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) June 13, 2025

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

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

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

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

Hili: Are we in the same place as yesterday?

Andrzej: No, it’s an illusion. We flew through quite a bit of the Universe.

Hili: Czy jesteśmy w tym samym miejscu co wczoraj?

Ja: O, nie, to złudzenie, przelecieliśmy kawał wszechświata.

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

From Things With Faces, a miracle!

From Meow. Can you spot the furry loaf?

From Stacy; the final lesson of a teacher:

With Israel warring with Iran, Masih is tweeting again:

Iranians are worried because people didn’t choose war.
But listen closely… that’s not silence, that’s laughter.
Laughter at the faces of IRGC commanders who once ruled by fear, now reduced to billboards.

I’ve received thousands of messages from inside Iran showing young women… pic.twitter.com/TrMuoWde6k

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 14, 2025

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

This person is an idiot. The only Israelis killed in this attack were not by Iron Dome missiles or shrapnel from Iranian missiles shot down, but from Iranian missiles themselves. Projection, much? https://t.co/zYBNRdV8Ru

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 14, 2025

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

Jack White claims he can name any Beatles song in just one second.

And then he starts to name them. pic.twitter.com/6kjs4KmH3L

— Rock’n Roll of All (@rocknrollofall) June 13, 2025

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

Japanese scientists have created artificial blood that works for any blood type.

It’s made from expired donor blood and can last up to 5 years in the fridge or 2 years on a shelf, unlike regular blood that spoils in just 42 days.

This discovery could be a major breakthrough in… pic.twitter.com/sli4KSh9DI

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 3, 2025

From my feed. This is hilarious:

I’m crying 😭😭
The funniest thing you will see today, guaranteed 👇 pic.twitter.com/37uOKo2MeL

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) June 13, 2025

One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A quote from renegade Democrat John Fetterman:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two tweets:

Footage shared on social media shows the Israeli strikes on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier today. pic.twitter.com/yBcUxs23As

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) June 13, 2025

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

The Mossad spy agency reveals footage showing its actions against Iranian air defenses and ballistic missile launchers in Iran this morning.

According to an Israeli official, the Mossad built a secret explosive drone base in Iran for this morning’s operation.

The drones were… pic.twitter.com/JYJWBV82fg

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) June 13, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrzej: What are you waiting for?

Hili: For fog to lift.

Ja: Na co czekasz?

Hili: Aż mgła się podniesie.

 

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

From Stephen, and the Sayers quote is correct:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things with Faces: a mean backpack

Masih reacts to the Israeli attack on Iran:

Strange feeling…
Alive.
Watching the same IRGC commanders who sent assassins to kill me in the U.S. reportedly killed themselves.

If the FBI hadn’t arrested their agents outside my home in New York, I might not be here to write this.

The Islamic Republic failed.
Its thugs are… https://t.co/ZQx0GCickC

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 13, 2025

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

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

Greta Thunberg’s sister goes viral for bizarre vocals while performing at an LGBTQI+ event.

Beata Thunberg, who goes by the name Beata Mona Lisa, posted a singing video showing off her bizarre voice on Instagram at the same time her sister, Greta, was being detained in Israel. pic.twitter.com/4taOuUWXgG

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 13, 2025

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

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

@grok was this photo from the India plane crash today?

— Prolific (@prolificalpha) June 12, 2025

The photo likely depicts a family on Air India flight AI171, which crashed on June 12, 2025, in Ahmedabad, India, shortly after takeoff. Sources, including news reports, identify the family as Dr. Komi Vyas, Dr. Prateek Joshi, and their three children, relocating to London. The…

— Grok (@grok) June 12, 2025

One I posted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

From the first story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Details are still emerging from the scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AD

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

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

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is superstitious:

Hili: A bad sign.

Andrzej: What bad sign?

Hili: A black insect crossed my path.

Hili: Zły znak.

Ja: Jaki?

Hili: Czarny owad przeleciał mi przed nosem.

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

From Lynne, a grammatical point:

From Jesus of the Day:

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

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

My opinion on magic is the same as my opinion on women with dicks: neither are real. However, if you want to prove me wrong, by all means jump off a roof on a broomstick. pic.twitter.com/jyiFxKJ2Cr

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 11, 2025

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

Made with 6,000 moving parts, The Writer is a 240-year-old machine created by watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot around 1770-1772.

It can be programmed up to 40 letters or signs.

[📹BBC]pic.twitter.com/HkN1sNd1HN

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 12, 2025

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

Golden retriever picks up cat for family photopic.twitter.com/HYK071k88l

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 29, 2025

Two from my feed. First, a good catch:

This is the moment during a live baseball game where a baseball is heading directly towards a reporter, but camera man intercepts it just in time

pic.twitter.com/HZCpVCO7Xt

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) June 12, 2025

. . . and a mini forest:

A gardener from Canada has dedicated his life to bonsai and has grown his own mini forest in 50 years. pic.twitter.com/MdMo39TOVs

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 11, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

A three-minute video on scale worms:

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

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

 

Welcome to Wednesday, June 11, 2025, and a Hump Day (“Siku ra Hump” in Tsonga). It’s also National German Chocolate Cake Day, a great dessert named after its inventor, Samuel German,—so it’s not a cake from Germany. From Wikipedia:

German chocolate cake, originally German’s chocolate cake, is a layered chocolate cake filled and topped with a coconut-pecan frosting. Originating in the United States, it was named after English-American chocolate maker Samuel German, who developed a formulation of dark baking chocolate that came to be used in the cake recipe.

Here’s one; a slice would be very good with coffee for breakfast:

It’s also Corn on the Cob Day and Pizza Margherita Day, celebrating the pie topped with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella cheese.

Here’s some unusual corncobs: glass gem corn, a heirloom variety. These specimens were sent to me by a friend.  The stuff is edible, and can be popped, but I save it because it’s lovely:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Marines have arrived—in Los Angeles.  Fortunately, the violence seems to have abated there. While protests have spread to other cities, fortunately they’re (mostly) peaceful:

After a night of small and mostly peaceful protests in Los Angeles, 700 Marines deployed by the Trump administration arrived in the Los Angeles area alongside about 4,000 National Guard troops. The moves enraged Democratic leaders in California, who say city and state law enforcement departments have been able to handle the unrest, which has resulted in some property damage and injuries.

On Capitol Hill, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, a top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, sharply criticized the decision to deploy troops, calling it “premature” and “downright escalatory.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the deployments, saying in his testimony to the committee that “we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country.”

On Tuesday morning, streets in downtown Los Angeles were quiet. Some of the protests in Los Angeles over the last four days, including a rally on Monday afternoon, centered on a group of federal buildings downtown. National Guard troops have been stationed there but have largely stayed in the background of the protests.

The Marines would protect federal law enforcement officers and property in greater Los Angeles, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.

The use of military force on domestic soil is rare and is usually reserved for the most extreme situations. The state of California sued to block the use of National Guard troops on Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that he would sue to prevent the Marines’ deployment.

. . . Protests have spread to other cities, including San Francisco, where Mayor Daniel Lurie said a protest on Monday involving thousands of people was larger and “significantly calmer” than the demonstrations a day earlier, when violent clashes took place. In Santa Ana, Calif., officials said that federal agents used tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets against protesters who threw bottles and rocks.

*Speaking of the above, we now know that some undocumented immigrants picked up in L.A. have already been deported, and in pretty dire ways. I’ve put the scary part in bold:

On Sunday, federal authorities dropped him off at an international bridge and told him to cross back to Mexico, his family recounted in an interview with The Washington Post. He told them he thought he had signed a consent to a coronavirus test but may have inadvertently signed off on his deportation instead.

*This is rich (and dangerous): RFK Jr. has removed every member of a CDC panel charged with giving advice on vaccines:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all the members of a key committee that recommends vaccines, and when and how often adults and children should get them.

Kennedy wrote Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that he would do a “clean sweep” of the panel’s 17 members, all of whom were appointed during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

The panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director about which vaccines children and adults should get. Current members include infectious-disease doctors, pediatricians and epidemiologists.

“The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” Kennedy said in a subsequent statement, arguing that the change would help restore public trust in science.

Kennedy had earlier been collecting names for potential new members of the panel.

Public-health leaders, and Democrats, decried the move.

“Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful,” said Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

ACIP members undergo conflict-of-interest screening and are required to recuse themselves from decisions that could present a conflict.

“It isn’t a rubber stamp,” said Kathy Edwards, a vaccine researcher who previously served on the ACIP. “All of these things are meticulously evaluated.”

I believe Edwards.  Vaccination is too serious a matter to make the accusation that these people, who have been vetted, are just giving advice to Big Pharma.

*Greta Thunberg and her companions refused to watch the video of the October 7 massacre (described by the BBC in quotations as a “massacre”), a viewing prescribed by the IDF. I guess they just don’t want to know what happened.  (I’m told they simply closed their eyes during the presentation, which I find odious and reprehensible.) Four of the crew, including Greta, voluntarily left Israel on a plane, while eight others refuse to leave and will be deported:

Activists of the protest flotilla were brought to Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday morning, ready to depart from Israel. According to the Foreign Ministry, some of the activists will be deported in the coming hours.

“Anyone who refuses to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial body in accordance with Israeli law, in order to approve the deportation,” the Foreign Ministry clarified.

Four of the activists are departing the country, including Greta Thunberg. However, eight have refused to leave and will be transferred to Givon detention facility.

The activists were given the option to sign a voluntary departure form or face arrest after 96 hours. Among those refusing to leave is French MEP Rima Hassan

Hassan has previously drawn wide criticism for her denial that the Bibas family, excluding Yarden Bibas, were murdered, her claim that the October 7 massacre was “legitimate”  and her insistence that Palestinians in Europe should be allowed to join the “resistance.”

The German ambassador to Israel confirmed that a representative spoke with Yasemin Acar, a German national, ahead of the deportation. The German activist has previously made headlines for celebrating Iran’s attacks against Israel and for expressing solidarity with Hamas, according to KAN

French officials said that six French nationals were aboard the vessel, and one has voluntarily agreed to leave the country, while the remaining will be deported following a judge’s order in the coming days.

Israeli authorities screened footage of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and other pro-Palestinian flotilla participants upon their arrival in Ashdod on Monday, shortly after the IDF intercepted their ship, the Madleen, in international waters.

According to Defense Minister Israel Katz, the activists refused to continue watching the film after seeing the brutality of the attacks.

“These antisemitic flotilla activists closed their eyes to the truth and once again proved they prefer the murderers over the victims,” Katz said. “They continue to ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas against Jewish and Israeli women, the elderly, and children.”

From the Times of Israel:

“I do more good outside of Israel than if I am forced to stay here for a few weeks,” Thunberg told her lawyers, according to Zedan. “If we choose to stay here against the will of the Israeli authorities and are arrested for a few weeks, it will harm our cause.”

A photo of Greta on the plane, waiting to go home:

Greta Thunberg just departed Israel on a flight to Sweden (via France). pic.twitter.com/kWrI9KVoqX

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 10, 2025

*From the AP’s reliable “oddities” section: an endangered loggerhead turtle, rehabbed after one of her flippers was amputated, was released back into the ocean:

An adolescent loggerhead sea turtle named Dilly Dally crawled into the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday morning, months after having a front flipper amputated at a Florida turtle hospital.

The turtle was brought to Loggerhead Marinelife Center in January suffering from predator wounds to the front flipper. The veterinary crew at the Juno Beach facility assisted in Dilly Dally’s rehabilitation and care.

“Every time we can release a turtle back into the wild is special and not just for us but for all the interns and volunteers and everyone that puts an effort to getting these turtles back out there. It’s always a really special day,” said Marika Weber, a veterinary technician at the center.

Stormy weather on Wednesday almost caused Dilly Dally’s release to be postponed. But they packed the turtle up and drove the short distance to the beach. A crowd of beachgoers cheered as the turtle made its way to the ocean.

A satellite tracking device attached to Dilly Dally’s shell will allow the center and the public to follow her journey.

The center partnered with the Smithsonian to get the satellite tag, which was attached on Tuesday.

Here’s a video of the release. The turtle doesn’t look as if can get around very well. I guess someone made the decision that the turtle would have a better life as a tripod in the ocean than in an aquarium. I hope so, but the satellite tag will tell if Dilly behaves normally.  Remember, when she lays eggs she has to haul herself up on the beach and dig an egg-hole with her flippers:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s doing entomology again:

Hili: There are ants coming out of this tree stump.

A: And what are they doing?

Hili: They are sunbathing.

Hili: Z tego pnia wychodzą mrówki.

Ja: I co robią?

Hili: Opalają się.

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

From Things With Faces, cut up lotus root:

From Meow, a special cattuccino:

From CinEmma, an essential item:

Cunk on Islam (30 seconds; h/t Phil):

Masih and Titania are quiet today, but here’s a trans-identified man explaining why he took selfies in the bathroom at Disney world (retweeted by JKR):

He said ‘it’s just a selfie’—as if the women in the background didn’t matter.

Now he claims he’s trying to ‘normalize’ men in the women’s restroom. No. You’re not a civil rights hero. You’re a man violating boundaries and calling it progress. pic.twitter.com/qOgrl0C7b6

— Mattie Watkins (@thepeaklady) June 9, 2025

Apparently a lot of Jews in the UK are contemplating “Aliyah“: the immigration of Jews of the diaspora to Israel (h/t Malgorzata):

Today, I saw the most vivid sign of how bad things have become for Jews in the UK — and most Brits have no idea.

I was invited to an Aliyah Day event in London — a day for British Jews considering a move to Israel to meet Israeli officials and ask questions.

The organizers…

— Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) June 8, 2025

From Malcolm; this kid made $10K by sinking 4 shots, and the last one is a corker:

This kid had 25 seconds to hit 4 shots for $10K… And he delivered.pic.twitter.com/5Elg0tHFXh

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 29, 2025

Two from my feed. A Greta meme, and yes, I think the Israelis gave her a pastrami sandwich!

Post your best Greta memes!
Do it! pic.twitter.com/KPqHO6B5Gx

— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) June 9, 2025

This must have been taken with a drone:

The summit of Everest,

the highest point on Earth above sea level
pic.twitter.com/eOrNENHYRT

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) June 10, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz memorial:

An Italian Jewish boy, only two years old, was gassed together with his brother and mother upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T09:42:27.835Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, via Tori Herridge. There’s a thread of five posts:

Bubble rings blown by whales in an apparent attempt to interact or communicate with humans (as just heard on Radio 4 Today) (a thread with thoughts) 1/5

— Rowan Hooper (@rowhoop.bsky.social) 2025-06-10T06:54:09.860Z

. . .  and a groaner of a science joke:

#booksky

— Bookshelfie (@bookshelfie.bsky.social) 2025-06-09T16:21:25.344Z

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 10, 2025, and National Black Cow Day, celebrating the root beer float. In lieu of the drink, you can have this Steely Dan song. “It’s over now/Drink your big black cow/and get out of here.”

It’s also National Egg Roll Day, National Frosted Cookie Day, National Herb and Spice Day, and National Iced Tea Day, celebrating the “table wine of the South.”

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Sly Stone (not the actor but the musician) died yesterday at 82.  From the NYT:

Here’s my favorite of their songs, “Hot Fun in the Summertime” from 1969 (it sounds a bit like the Fifth Dimension):

*Today on tap is another day of L.A. residents’ battle against the apprehension of immigrants thought to be in the U.S. illegally. This time, the National Guard is around, and, as of last night, they called out 700 Marines!

The city geared up for another day of protests Monday after anti-ICE demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles escalated over the weekend.

The California chapter of the Service Employees International Union planned for a rally before the arraignment of its president, David Huerta, who was arrested on Friday while protesting a raid by ICE agents in Los Angeles.

U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal “Bill” Essayli said that agents were executing a warrant at a work site in Los Angeles when Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle.”

Videos captured people surrounding vans, shouting and chanting. As word spread, more people showed up, and the protests grew and lasted into the night.

President Trump deployed the National Guard on Saturday night over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with the president saying that local leaders didn’t move quickly enough to address the clashes.

Newsom called on the Trump administration to rescind the deployment of the National Guard, saying the move was a breach of state sovereignty. In a social-media post Monday, Newsom threatened to sue Trump, saying the deployment was illegal and had inflamed tensions in the city.

Trump sent the troops “to manufacture chaos and violence,” the Democratic governor said earlier in a post on X. “Now things are destabilized and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.”

On Sunday, protesters gathered outside the detention facility where Huerta was detained and stood off against National Guard troops.

Newsom says that California will sue Trump over the deployment of the state National Guard.

Finally, there’s one long thread (31 tweets) in which “Wokal Distance” claims that the protests against the arrest of undocumented immigrants were highly organized by outside forces. For some reason I can’t embed the first tweet, but click on the screenshot to see the allegations:

*I’ve seen the anti-ICE (or whoever’s doing the arresting) protests characterized as “peaceful”, but that’s not the impression I get. Just a few quotes from the WaPo:

At least 27 people were arrested in Los Angeles Sunday on the third day of protests against immigration raids, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol. Authorities used tear gas and less lethal munitions to disperse protesters who gathered near an immigration detention center downtown. Police said people in the crowd threw objects and that other protesters set fire to vehicles.

. . .Waymo has cut off taxi service to parts of Los Angeles after five of its self-driving vehicles were torched during weekend protests about immigration raids.

Images Sunday of downtown show Waymo vehicles covered with graffiti. One photo shows protesters waving Mexican and Guatemalan flags while standing atop a Waymo vehicle, while another appears to show a protester hitting the vehicle with a skateboard. The Los Angeles Times reported that some Lime e-scooters also were tossed into the blaze. [The Waymo cars were set on fire.]

Protestors are also firing dangerous fireworks, like Roman candles and M-80s, at law enforcement. Cars are on fire and the protestors are wearing masks. Why would you wear masks if you are protesting peacefully? On the other hand, law enforcement is also wearing masks, and why are they doing that? This is what’s known as a “shitshow”, or, more accurately, a dumpster fire.

*The “Freedom Flotilla, otherwise known as the “selfie yacht” (see below), has met an ignominious end, captured without incident by the IDF. (See also NYT article here.)

Shayetet 13, the elite IDF naval unit, intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla early on Monday morning at around 3 a.m., according to the ship’s operators and military officials. 

The IDF boarded the Madleen, and took the crew and the ship to the Port of Ashdod, where they would be sent back to their respective countries, with Defense Minister Israel Katz instructing that the passengers view footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

The IDF had previously estimated that the flotilla would arrive in Israeli territory an hour earlier.

The Israeli Navy had also reportedly made contact with the Madleen prior to Israeli forces boarding, and had instructed it to change its course.

Katz had also instructed the IDF to show Thunberg and the rest of the Madleen passengers footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

“It is appropriate that antisemitic Greta and her fellow Hamas supporters see exactly who this terrorist organization they came to support and whom they are working for is, what atrocities they committed against women, the elderly, and children, and against whom Israel is fighting to defend itself,” he said.

I love that they’re making them watch the October 7 attacks. But of course these are hard-core activists and that will have no effect on their thinking.

A statement from the Israeli foreign ministry:

With recent reports of a “celebrities yacht” heading to Gaza, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to clarify the following:

The maritime zone off the coast of Gaza is closed to unauthorized vessels under a legal naval blockade, consistent with international law.

The yacht is claiming that it is delivering humanitarian aid. In fact, it is a media gimmick for publicity (which includes less than a single truckload of aid) – a “selfie yacht”.

Humanitarian aid is delivered regularly and effectively via different channels and routes, and is transferred through established distribution mechanisms. Over the past two weeks, more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.

The Gaza maritime zone remains an active conflict area, and Hamas has previously exploited sea routes for terrorist attacks, including the October 7th massacre.

Unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts.

We call on all actors to act responsibly and to channel humanitarian aid through legitimate, coordinated mechanisms, not through provocation.

. . . and two tweets from the Ministry:

All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over. pic.twitter.com/tLZZYcspJO

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 9, 2025

🚨 Israeli forces have boarded the #Madleen vessel pic.twitter.com/PXIHh3WQlw

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) June 9, 2025

And a (critical) video from Talk TV:

*New York is pondering passing an assisted-dying bill, and the Free Press has objections: “Will New York soon make it too easy to die?”

 [In New York] assisted dying is not yet legal. That’s why, for the past decade, Nancy has been part of a movement to change the law in her home state.

Now, they’re closer than they ever have been. In April, New York’s “Medical Aid in Dying Act” passed the state assembly by a vote of 81 to 67. It has until the end of the legislative session—June 12—to face a vote in the Senate. On Thursday, June 5, Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said she believed there were enough votes for the legislation to pass and “it is likely that it will come to the floor.” Perhaps as soon as Monday, June 9.

If the legislation passes, New York would join the 11 other states that have legalized assisted dying in various forms. (It is also legal in the District of Columbia.) For those who have seen difficult deaths or are daunted by the prospect, the kind of death Nancy describes—peaceful and pain-free—is what they are hoping the law will all but guarantee.

But those opposed to assisted suicide—their preferred term—warn that such laws endanger the vulnerable by reshaping social norms so that, for some, the right to die becomes a duty to die. Moreover, New York’s legislation, they argue, is on the “outer edge” of liberalization, eliminating safeguards that exist in other states where medical aid in dying (MAID) is legal.

I spoke to people on both sides to better understand their concerns. To both proponents and opponents, New York’s assisted suicide bill is not only a matter of individual rights. To put it bluntly, the people who would be eligible to end their lives are already capable of doing so without help from doctors or lawmakers.  [JAC: What does that mean? That they can commit suicide on their own?] But this bill would signal medical and societal approval for that choice and, in doing so, have ethical implications that reach far beyond the patients it is designed for.

, , , Far from offering “peace and comfort,” said Michelle Uzeta, interim executive director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, legalizing assisted suicide will only endanger “vulnerable communities—poor, disabled, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ folk” since these are the groups “most at risk of being denied or unable to access care, being steered toward death, and having their lives devalued.”

And one of the objections:

, , , Richard Doerflinger is a bioethicist in Washington State who has been tracking assisted suicide laws for nearly 40 years. In his estimation, the New York bill may be the worst law of its kind in the United States.

“There is no waiting period in the New York bill. That’s the first time I’ve seen this,” he said, noting that most states with MAID laws have a minimum waiting period. In Oregon, it is 15 days, though a 2023 law allows this to be waived when the patient is expected to die before the waiting period ends.

“In New York, any patient could decide “in a moment of despair at first getting his or her diagnosis, ‘Oh my God, I just want to die,’ and sign off, and that’s the end of the process,” Doerflinger said. The patient could request the prescription, have it approved, and be dead within 24 hours.

And another:

“Why does it matter if depressed people inadvertently get assisted suicide?” Dugdale asks. “Well, as a society, we have always said that we treat depression and we prevent depressed people from killing themselves.” Some people fear that legalizing MAID will create a world in which suicide is seen as a treatment option even if a disease could be effectively managed.

. . . The assisted-suicide advocates I spoke with have many admirable qualities. Chief among them is their strong will and clear-mindedness. But they risk assuming that everyone facing a devastating diagnosis is of a similar disposition. What they might not appreciate is that in insisting on control at the end of life, they are chipping away at the agency of those who have so little to begin with and whose motivations may be compromised by depression, uncertainty, loneliness, ambivalence, grief, poverty, or despair.

Well, it’s advisable to have doctors and psychiatrists judge whether a disease can be “effectively managed” so that the patient doesn’t wish to end their life if there’s hope. In countries and states that have similar bills (with medical advice), I haven’t heard of widespread dissatisfaction with how they’re implemented.  And I think it’s a bit of an imposition for someone to tell a patient who wishes to die that they can’t—they have to live, even in unbearable circumstances. Well, do what you can to give them hope, but if that hope can’t be restored, I say that the state should allow them to die.

*The runaway zebra in Tennessee has been recovered and is back in his reserve again.

A runaway pet zebra that was on the loose for more than a week in Tennessee was captured on Sunday, his owners and authorities said.

Ed the zebra, who became an internet sensation, was captured safely after being located in a pasture near a subdivision in the Christiana community in central Tennessee, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

“Ed was airlifted and flown by helicopter back to a waiting animal trailer,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Ed’s owner, Laura Ford, told CBS News that a team from Texas helped capture him and he is “safe and 100% healthy.”

“This has been a long, stressful week and I am so happy that it ended the way it did and no one got hurt,” she said.

Video posted by the sheriff’s office shows Ed wrapped in a net with his head sticking out as he is carried by the helicopter to the trailer.

Ed arrived in Christiana on May 30, the sheriff’s office said. His owner reported him missing the next day.

The zebra was spotted and filmed running along Interstate 24, forcing deputies to shut the roadway. But Ed escaped into a wooded area.

There were several sightings posted to social media. Ed was filmed trotting through a neighborhood.

The zebra quickly became the subject of internet memes. One fake posting showed Ed dining at a Waffle House, a southern staple. Others had him visiting other Tennessee cities or panhandling on the side of the road.

Here’s Ed being airlifted to a truck. Poor Zebra! Ed was just trying to find the grassy plains!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making Lamarckian jokes:

Hili: I ate a know-it-all mouse.

Andrzej: And?

Hili: I do not feel any wiser.

Hili: Zjadłam mysz, która zjadła wszystkie rozumy na świecie.

Ja: I co?

Hili: Nie czuję się mądrzejsza.

 

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

All kitty memes today. Here’s one from The Dodo Pet:

From CinEmma:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

Masih is quiet again, but here’s JKR (and Martina) standing up for women:

Me neither https://t.co/xumdzz0lYp

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) June 9, 2025

Amnesty International, which has really gone down the drain, predictably defends Greta and her Gaza flotilla.  Malgorzata commented, “The text is predictably horrible. But I had a look at some comments. Quite a lot of them give hope that some humans are still thinking beings. Not all are indoctrinated drones like Amnesty.”  I put the first two comments below:

By forcibly intercepting and blocking the Madleen, Israel has once again ignored its legal obligations towards civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip. The crew were unarmed activists and human rights defenders on a humanitarian mission.

They must be released immediately and… pic.twitter.com/Altw7M4ghF

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) June 9, 2025

From Malcolm, a music-loving d*g:

Do animals like music?

Studies found they enjoy specially designed sounds using pitches, tones and tempos that are familiar to a particular animal’s species.

This dog, for example, is really sensitive to percussions.pic.twitter.com/yHXhcRxErT

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 21, 2025

From Barry. I wonder if this really is mimicking a mouth with teeth:

#PsakibriefingScience break.The Malaysian Dead Leaf Mantis mimicking a mouth with teeth to scare off predators.

— Fire Captain 🔥 (@rescuecaptain.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T01:24:28.965Z

One from my feed; Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices:

Looney Tunes’ original voice actor Mel Blanc doing his greatest characters. Legend. pic.twitter.com/cs04M2rRSP

— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) June 8, 2025

 

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was six years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-10T10:24:32.623Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. This woman has tamed a wild roadrunner:

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stop for a moment and watch this little roadrunner utterly ecstatic to show his mama the treasure he found 🥹🥹🥹

— Claire Zagorski, MSc, EMT-P (@clairezagorski.bsky.social) 2025-06-08T18:17:20.296Z

Welcome to Monday, June 9, 2025, and, sadly, National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day. I am baffled why people not only ruin a good strawberry pie (one of my favorites) by loading it down with not only vegetables, but vegetables that are bitter, hard, and gritty. Well, to each their own. Here is a rhubarb pie shown in Wikipedia, and it’s one of the few desserts I’d refuse:

It’s also Donald Duck Day, marking this: “Donald Duck’s first appearance on screen was in the animated short film ‘The Wise Hen’, on June 9, 1934”;  and International Dark ‘n’ Stormy Day, honoring a great drink made with dark rum and ginger beer over ice, sometimes with syrup added.

Here’s Donald’s first appearance; note that the cartoon is called “The Wise Little Hen.” You can see Donald’s first appearance at 2:06; he’s dancing a hornpipe sans pants:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has ordered the National Guard to California to stave off crowds of demonstrators who are mobbing ICE agents trying to arrest undocumented immigrants. The WSJ says that the Guard has already arrived in Los Angeles. From the NYT:

Further protests against immigration raids were scheduled to take place in the Los Angeles area on Sunday, hours after President Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering at least 2,000 National Guard members to assist immigration agents clashing with demonstrators.

The announcement late Saturday by Mr. Trump — who said that any protest or act of violence that impeded officials would be considered a “form of rebellion” — was an escalation that put Los Angeles squarely at the center of tensions over his administration’s immigration crackdown and made rare use of federal powers to bypass the authority of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Mr. Trump praised the National Guard for their work in Los Angeles overnight, but Mayor Karen Bass reminded residents that the troops had not arrived. As of around 7 a.m. on Sunday, the streets were quiet. Protests against immigration raids were expected to continue for a third day, with one event at City Hall set for 2 p.m. local time.

On Saturday, law enforcement officers faced off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day in the Los Angeles area, in some cases using rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Mr. Newsom described Mr. Trump’s order as “purposefully inflammatory,” saying that the federal government was mobilizing the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle.”

Bill Essayli, the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official in Southern California, said in an interview on Saturday night that National Guard troops would arrive in Los Angeles County within 24 hours. At least 20 people were arrested on Saturday, mostly in the largely Latino and working-class suburb of Paramount, in addition to the more than 100 people arrested at the protests on Friday, Mr. Essayli said.

Protests had broken out in the L.A. area on Friday and Saturday as federal agents mounted raids on workplaces in search of undocumented immigrants. The Los Angeles Police Department detained a number of protesters near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, but said demonstrations in the city were peaceful. Some of the protests that broke out in other areas, including Compton and Paramount, south of downtown Los Angeles, were more confrontational.

Here’s a video posted by a conservative turned progressive (h/t Luana)

What do these ICE agents tell themselves about what they’re doing? How do they justify it to themselves? https://t.co/s1EIDOi5v4

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) June 8, 2025

While I admire the protestors willing to put themselves on the line for their views, I wouldn’t get in the way of the law like they do. But I do feel that anybody who gets deported deserves to have a legal hearing first.

*I thought the feud between Trump and Musk was cooling off, but it seems that it hasn’t. True to form, Trump is threatening Musk with “consequences” if Elon donates some money, as he said he might, to Democrats.

President Trump warned former right-hand-man Elon Musk to stay out of the midterm elections, threatening “very serious consequences” if he backed Democrats in the campaign.

Musk, who crossed Trump by staunchly opposing his “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill over deficit concerns, said last week that anyone who votes for this bill should be fired. Some Democrats have suggested that they try to win Musk over to their side, despite his being villainized by the party for his sweeping cuts to government staff. The billionaire spent about $300 million backing Trump and Republican candidates in the 2024 elections.

Asked by NBC News on Saturday if Trump was concerned that Musk could start funding Democratic candidates, Trump said “he’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” but declined to provide specifics.

In the NBC interview Trump said he had “no reason to” repair his relationship with Musk, after their breakup played out in real time on Thursday. Asked whether his relationship with the billionaire businessman was over, Trump said, “I would assume so.”

Musk deleted social-media posts in which he attempted to connect the president with convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. As the men’s relationship imploded on Thursday, Musk wrote on X that Trump’s name appeared in documents stemming from a federal investigation of Epstein, insinuating that he was in some way linked to the late disgraced financier’s criminal behavior.

On Friday, Musk wrote, “I will apologize profusely as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.” Both posts have been removed from Musk’s X feed.

One more example of Trump’s ineradicable tendency to take revenge on those who, he thinks, have crossed him. But Musk is now a private citizen and can do what he wants.  Just one more mess that Trump could prevent if he were rational (not that Musk is, either; he shouldn’t have brought up the Epstein matter unless he had evidence).

*The Guardian has taken out after Steve Pinker big time, implying that he’s a racist,   (h/t Barry, Luke) It’s all guilt by association:

The Guardian emailed Pinker for comment using his Harvard email address but received no response. Nor did he reply when approached through his university press office or his publishers.

In the hour-long recording published this week, Pinker engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about economic progress, artificial intelligence and social policy with host Noah Carl.

During the podcast, Pinker expressed agreement with claims made by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a prominent figure in the “human biodiversity” movement that seeks to promote race-based theories of intelligence, and like Pinker a one-time participant in a human biodiversity email list convened by Steve Sailer.

When Carl cited “evidence collected by sociologists like Charles Murray suggesting that part of the family breakdown in some communities in America seems to be attributable to the state taking over the traditional function of the father”, Pinker responded: “I think that is a problem.” He added: “It is a huge class-differentiated phenomenon, as Murray and others write it out.”

I haven’t heard the podcast, nor do I read Aporia, though I am a bit aware of Noah Carl. But what the Guardian is doing here is really smearing Pinker, trying to make him out to be a racist because of who he’s associated with.  The relevant question is this, though:  Has Pinker expressed any sentiments that would brand him as a racist? I’ve read nearly all of Pinker’s books and essays, and talked to him a fair bit, and never have I heard a single word that would make me think him racist.  The guilty-by-association trope is a lazy strategy used by people who don’t want to do the work of adjudicating the science or parsing the arguments, and is a speciality of one of the worst sites on the internet, called Pinkerite (I won’t link to it).  The writer knows nothing about heredity or the genetics of differences between groups, but simply dismisses the whole endeavor as “race pseudoscience.”  Her latest endeavor involves not just calling Pinker a racist explicitly, but also adding both Adam Rutherford and Michael Shermer to that class.

Finally, I still fail to understand why so many people have it in for Pinker, and this was well before the Aporia magazine podcast.

*As I wrote yesterday, The Freedom Flotilla, a single boat bringing not only Greta Thunberg, but a bunch of her activist pals and a a small bit of  aid (apparently for about a dozen Gazans), is approaching Israel. You can track it live here, and as I write this on Sunday afternoon, this is where the boat is. It may be nearly at Gaza now, in which case I’ll update this.

UPDATE: The boat and Greta have been intercepted by the IDF; the Jerusalem Post reports:

Shayetet 13, the elite IDF naval unit, intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla early on Monday morning at around 3 a.m., according to the ship’s operators and military officials.

The IDF boarded the Madleen, and took the crew and the ship to the Port of Ashdod, where they would be sent back to their respective countries, with Defense Minister Israel Katz instructing that the passengers view footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

If you read the link, you’ll find a clever twist on what the “crew” will make Mary Ann and the crew do before they’ll be sent back.

Israel has said it will stop the boat, for it’s trying to run a sea blockade that Israel has imposed around Gaza.  This is not just a decision by Israel: it’s in accordance with the UN’s own Palmer Report, enacted in 2011 after another seies of ships, the Mavi Marmara Gaza Freedom Flotilla, clashed with Israeli commandos trying to board it. Nine members of the flotilla were killed, In response, a UN panel enacted the following (from Camera.org):

Concerning Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, the Palmer Report determined:

Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.

Concerning the actions of the flotilla participants, the report found:

the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade. The majority of the flotilla participants had no violent intentions, but there exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.

On the justification for Israel’s resort to force:

Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection.

The report was critical of how the Israeli commandos reacted, accusing them of using excessive force. It recommended that

An appropriate statement of regret should be made by Israel in respect of the incident in light of its consequences. Israel should offer payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families, to be administered by the two governments through a joint trust fund of a sufficient amount to be decided by them.

Israel, as I reported yesterday, has vowed to stop Greta and her compadres:

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has vowed to block an aid vessel carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching Gaza, by “any means necessary.”

The Madleen departed Sicily last Sunday, aiming to breach Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza, deliver humanitarian aid, and draw attention to the worsening humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

According to a live tracker on board the vessel, it was sailing north of the Egyptian coastal city of Rosetta on Sunday morning, roughly 160 nautical miles from Gaza.

Katz said Sunday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to “prevent the ‘Madelaine’ hate flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza.”

“To the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propaganda spokespeople, I say clearly: You should turn back — because you will not reach Gaza,” he posted on Telegram.

*On Saturday, NBC News reported revelation that the price of tickets to concerts of pop icons is becoming stratospheric. This is also the subject of a recent article in the NYT.

On Feb. 11, Mr. [Ignacio] Vasquez got on Ticketmaster’s online queue for the BeyHive presale, offered exclusively to those who signed up on Beyoncé’s website. After waiting his turn, Mr. Vasquez was surprised to see tickets listed at a minimum of $600 each and many at more than $1,000.

“The prices were just outrageous by the time I got in there,” Mr. Vasquez said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is not going to work — I’m not going to do that,’ so I just quit it.”

In recent years, concertgoers have paid eye-popping prices for tickets to see popular artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Oasis on tour. But Gen Z fans — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are paying much more for concert tickets than previous generations did when they were young adults. In 1996, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $25.81, or about $52 adjusted for inflation, according to data compiled by Pollstar, a trade publication that covers the live music industry. By 2024, average ticket prices had risen to $135.92. The live music industry has put today’s young adults in an impossibly expensive position.

For Gen Z, spending on concerts can be budget busters. In a survey of 1,000 Gen Z respondents published last year by Merge, a marketing agency, 86 percent admitted to overspending on live events. Fear of missing out, or FOMO, was cited as a top reason. Another survey by AAA, the automobile owners group, and Bread Financial, a financial services company, found that Gen Z and millennials were willing to spend more and travel farther to attend live events than older generations are.

The increase has been more than twice the rate of inflation:

Call me a geezer, but I can’t bear large concerts in stadiums or halls. You can’t really get near the artist and are forced to crane your neck to look over the heads of everyone standing up, or watch big video screens, which is a waste of money. The three best concerts I’ve ever been to involved seeing the Band, the Rolling Thunder Review (with Dylan and Joan Baez), and the Allman Brothers.  They were all in small theaters or even bars, and the Band played in a small gym-like space at the University of Maryland.  In the first and last concerts mentioned I was only a few feet from the stage, and really could absorb the music. I’d never pay $500 to see anyone, especially Taylor Swift, in a huge venue.  NBC also reportered that a few artists like Neil Young are striving mightily to keep their ticket prices down, which is admirable.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a good suggestion:

Hili: Start immediately with repairing the world.

Andrzej: How?

Hili: Pet me.

Hili: Natychmiast zabierz się za naprawianie świata.

Ja: Jak?

Hili: Pogłaszcz mnie.

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

From Meow: a cat whose marking spell “Meow”!

From The Dodo Pet, a happy rescue story:

From CinEmma, a mighty cat:

 

From Masih, more details of an Iranian woman stabbed to death, apparently because she was “shameless” (did she not wear a hijab?).  The cops aren’t doing anything about this guy who admists to murdering her (read the whole tweet).

“She was shameless,” he said and stabbed her.
Police nodded: “She deserved it.”

When 22-year-old Elaha Hosseinnejad was murdered in Iran, the regime rushed to tell us it was a robbery. They said the man who killed her just wanted her phone.

But then the video surfaced.

In it,… https://t.co/afQlYlGXDl pic.twitter.com/BNOvRAE1NO

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 8, 2025

Here is a post by Simone Biles excoriating Riley Gaines for opposing the participation of trans-identified men (“trans women”) in women’s sports.  Biles’s enmity is the subject of a column by Colin Wright on his Substack, “Simone Biles owes her legacy to the rules Riley Gaines is defending.”

From Luana, whose school (Williams College) is the first in the country to announce that it won’t process any new NSF or NIH grants because Williams doesn’t comply with the granting agencies’ stictures against DEI programs. Williams apparently prefers to have DEI rather than grants.  I don’t know how Luana, who has federal grants, feels about this, but I’ll ask her.

DEI OVER SCIENCE: Williams College has informed its faculty that it won’t accept any new NSF or NIH funding because of the agencies’ anti-DEI requirements.

From an email sent to faculty:

We are writing with deeply discouraging news about changes to federal grant policy that…

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) June 7, 2025

From Bryan; a man demonstrates how nylon was discovered (you can read more about its composition and discovery at this site):

George Porter shows how nylon was discovered by chemists, and gives a demonstration of how we can spin nylon threads.

[📹 The Royal Institution]pic.twitter.com/9NvOnlKvFK

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 6, 2025

From Malcolm, a compilation of skills:

A compilation of stunning skillspic.twitter.com/7l6LvGAJWa

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 24, 2025

One from Simon:

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T23:53:56.546Z

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death the day he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-09T09:07:04.922Z

And one from Dr. Cobb, whose biography of Francis Crick should be out in the fall:

Crick wrote a children’s book about scale/size of things in the universe for DK in the mid-70s. It was never published, despite including a rather good poem he wrote about people living on the moon, and some great artwork being commissioned.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T08:34:11.676Z