Clearly Clouded

 

On this day:
1673
French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course
1775
American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.This was a significant encounter, a planned battle, and the British famously bayonetted the American wounded. It became a focal point and rallying cry. The important Patriot leader, Dr. Joseph Warren, was also killed.
1930
U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1939
Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison
1940
The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
1944
Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.
1972
Watergate scandal: five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.
1994
Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

***
What, then, should be the primary-liberal rule in the footrace of life?
It should be – for natural justice to the individual and for the consequent flourishing of the individual’s family and fellows and trading partners and society through loving care and peaceful exchange and liberal conversation – an equality of permission, or allowance, or approval for a general right to do, to venture. Let no obstacles of human design be placed in your path. It is to be permitted to enter the race as an adult, and to accord to others the same permission. It is [Adam] Smith’s “obvious and simple system of natural liberty.”--mcclosky

***

In 2025, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Singapore, and the UAE are "traditionally popular destinations for migrating millionaires, especially for those operating in the financial services sector," due to their absence of capital gains tax.

***

Chick-fil-A, which topped the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) in 2025, fell to second place this year. Jersey Mike's claimed first place.

***

Clearly Clouded

A modifier is described in the Cambridge Dictionary as "a word or phrase that is used with another word or phrase to limit or add to its meaning." "The tall girl" distinguishes one girl from the others based on height.

Sometimes the effect is not clarifying, it's funny. George Carlin made a living on contradictory modifying phrases, oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, acting naturally, and civil war. Sometimes it's a great literary device: with “Oh, brawling love, O loving hate,” Shakespeare describes the feuding families in Romeo and Juliet.

And sometimes it's purposely obfuscating.

What are we to think of "mostly peaceful demonstrations?" Is it like almost warm, generally bloodless, sort of clean, pretty honest, usually safe, generally accurate, nearly won, mostly pasteurized? Unlike "the tall girl," a phrasing meant to refine meaning, these phrases are meant to diffuse meaning and detract from the word's specificity.

Now, that said, what are the implications of a modifier applied to a virtue?

Like a battle cry on a screaming field or a whispered password in the quiet dark, words arise filled with meaning, expressing the unexpressible. A tight, gravid couplet. Often articles or even books emerge to refine a complex notion, surround an idea and herd it into some more understandable--or imaginable--form, sometimes paring it down, explaining, at least, what it is not. The Holy Trinity. Entangled Particles.

And sometimes the task is accepted as just too much, and we are left with recognizable words cobbled together into an unrecognizable whole — social justice, minority rights — tantalizingly close, but not quite right.

Owners and Squatters

On this day:
363
Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal, Roman forces suffered several attacks from the Persians. Did anybody ever beat these guys?
1755
French and Indian War: The French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.
1816
Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
1858
Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
1871
The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).
1904
Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”. Barnacle. She must have been quite a woman to overcome that name with a word guy like him.
1940
World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français).
1963
Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

***

"Some hold that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by him, but by another fellow of the same name."--Mamet

***

The SpaceX IPO has resurrected the zero-sum argument of wealth, the only redistribution claim that has no mythology to enshroud its baselessness.

***

The first three AI IPOs will have a value greater than the GDP of France.

***

Platner's defense seems to be he is "anti-establishment," of the Obamian "fundamental change" school. Being "anti" is a lot less demanding a position.

***

The story about the White House Attack Conspiracy is a frightening look into the future of rising technology available to smaller and smaller groups. And 22 conspirators are too many for them all to be crazy.

***

Owners and Squatters


Israel and its enemies is more complex than simple jealousy, although it plays a part. It is the worst of tribalism, expansionism, greed, unforgiving historical resentment--the Hatfields and the McCoys writ large, armed to the teeth and blinded by righteous fury over something most can't remember.


The West, horrified by the murderous WWII, tried to set aside a self-contained political and cultural entity where Jews could enrich and protect themselves. They chose a desert occupied by ill-defined, wandering nomads who had just lost a war. Losing a war has consequences, usually a lot worse than losing some desert.


But drawing borders and appointing kings have a lot to overcome. See Korea, Vietnam, the Ottoman Empire, the 100 Years' War, and much of Africa. And while the Jewish claim to the area is well documented, everything in history has a precedent. Jewish claims in the Middle East are more literate than the Irishman's claim to London, but no more valid. And how old is national sovereignty anyway? The Treaty of Westphalia? So, all borders start from 1648?


There should be a statute of limitations on national sovereignty. Everyone has some claim or other if you go back far enough. Right now, publicity and PR trump everything. But, as time goes by, big weapons in the hands of a few will trump everything. If the world thinks Gaza is a problem now, imagine what will happen when Iran has a nuclear weapon. When every basement revolutionary group has drones. How will these problems be resolved?


Israel was created out of whole cloth by a sympathetic Britain--ratified by the UN--in a land they conquered, for the benefit of a culture that had suffered horribly. Tough but historically common. (minus the kindness) And the conquered people were displaced. (unsympathically) So, which injustices will we right? Greece-Turkey? The Falklands? The defeat of the Anglo-Saxons? The defeat of a Stone Age people without the wheel or alphabet by the European People of Steam?


Do the Picts want Edinburgh back? The Chiricahua want Austin? It was said seriously by a commentator about the LA riots that California was originally Mexico's. That is, they stole it first.


Putin is a metaphor for this world: cynical, virtueless, grasping, homicidal, self-absorbed ambition. He and people like him will destroy the house to evict the squatters. But in Israel, the squatter is similarly armed. And if Israel can't keep what they were given, they will respond Sampson-like and reduce the Middle East to a smoldering, lifeless radioactive trinitite.


"If everyone lights just one little candle," also starts a zillion small fires. Not seeing the realities here and ignoring the risks is childish. And, on a global scale, life-threatening.


Even extension-level.

Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

On this day:

763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1215
King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.
1389
Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752
Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775
American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1785
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1896
The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.
1919
John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1985
Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1996
The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England.
2002
Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75000 mi, about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

***

What used to be envy has been chewed upon by unoccupied academic minds and has become a philosophy

***

A new study published in the journal Current Biology recently found that octopuses can learn how to use mirrors to locate food hidden from view in an impressive feat of spatial thinking never before observed in invertebrates.

***

Carolina Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, becoming the oldest player to win it at age 37.

***

A "Memorandum of Understanding." A "Framework." Huh?

***

Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

It is difficult to get any informative news from the US that is not ludicrously laden with righteous bias. Here are some opinions from the BBC, which may have no more value than US news. But the beliefs are surprising and, if untrue, just more international nonsense highlighting the universal mendacity of the makers of war and opinion. But if true...

1. Israel does not want the Middle East fighting to stop, and its attacks on Lebanon are intentionally provocative and disruptive.

2. The U.S. is the country that is constantly changing the rules and discussion, not Iran.  

3. The objective of the current discussions is to open the Straits and create a nonbelligerent environment for further discussions regarding the nuclear ambitions of Iran. If agreed to, the Straits will open, and the negotiating conditions will return to the way they were before the US attacked. Nothing more. So the objective of the talks is to create the pre-attack conditions.

These ideas are certainly contrary to what is being said in the US.

Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

 On this day:

1645
English Civil War: Battle of Naseby – 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers.
1775
American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.
1789
Mutiny on the Bounty: Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km journey in an open boat.
1800
The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.
1807
Emperor Napoleon I’s French Grande Armee defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.
1830
Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Fredj.
1846
Bear Flag Revolt begins – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.
1940
The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence.
1940
World War II: Paris falls under German occupation, and Allied forces retreat.
1941
June deportation, the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, begins.
1947
Roswell UFO incident: A supposed UFO crashes in Roswell, New Mexico

***

Disagreements and protests are inherent to freedom and democracy. But are confrontations inherent to democracy?  Aren't elections the alternative to confrontation?

***

CNN reporter Christine Amanpour stated she was fearful to visit the U.S. to speak at Harvard, comparing her anxiety to that of visiting North Korea. Does that kind of judgment disqualify her opinions elsewhere?

***

Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

There is worry in the writings today, worry over the desperation of mankind.

The gospel opens with, "At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." 

Christ creates the solution, the Apostles' mission is to go among the people of Israel so, as the Old Testament message in the desert says, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
He is specific, strangely tribal. “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Does he change his mind with time? Is he giving Israel the free choice, only to move on to include the Gentiles?

Paul makes Christ's decision very personal.

"Christ, while we were still helpless,
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

 

SatStats

On this day:
1525
Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1966
The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1983
Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).

***

“Sick of his arrogance and Trump-like condescension to the media he begs for money to every time he gets fired!” --Jimmy Murphy on Tortorella, bringing what everyone wants in sports: more politics.

***

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is revealing new evidence of longstanding United States government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.

***

Smith then inquired into the causes of wealth. He didn’t inquire into the causes of poverty. Smith understood that poverty is humanity’s default mode. Nearly all people before Smith’s time — and still most people during his time — were mired in poverty. Poverty is simply the condition we suffer when wealth isn’t created. Wealth, not poverty, demands explanation because wealth, not poverty, has causes.--Post


***





SatStats

Among 70-year-old men, roughly 40 percent show loss of Y in their blood cells, and among 93-year-olds, that number rises to 57 percent.

*

The middle class is shrinking, but so is the proportion of Americans below the middle class — because the upper-middle class is growing. As of 2022, they report, the share of wealth held by the middle class had fallen to 8% from 24% in 1989, while the share held by the top 3% rose from 26% in 1989 to 53% in 2022.

*

“No child deaths have been definitively linked to Covid vaccines, according to a report from the FDA that was quietly made public.”

*

Albert Einstein’s estate was worth just $65,000 when he died.

*

A study by GCheck found that, faced with anxiety about how automation could impact job security, 63% of 1,500 workers surveyed reported that they exaggerate their AI skills to appear more up-to-date. That number shot up to 80% among Gen Z workers as the tech threatens early-career and entry-level roles more drastically.

*

Wind and solar generated more electricity than gas globally for the first month ever in April 2026, according to data analysed by global energy think tank Ember. Together, wind and solar generated 22% of global electricity in April 2026, compared with 20% from gas.

*
New York City’s $125 billion budget is that it is bigger than the $115 billion expected to be spent this year by the entire state of Florida. New York City has 8.5 million people; the state of Florida has 23.6 million.

*

Swedish intel on Russia

 While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span.

Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year.

Similarly, Sweden’s military intelligence chief has estimated that today’s inflation is likely closer to the current benchmark borrowing cost of 15% than the government’s official reading of 5.2%.

“This would mean Russia is overstating its purchasing power, and that its military spending capacity is weaker than it appears,” Stenergard wrote.

But Swedish intelligence believes Russia would need the average price for Urals oil to stay above $100 a barrel for the rest of the year to provide a meaningful benefit to the government’s finances,

At the same time, more advanced Ukrainian drones with longer ranges have evaded air defenses and attacked Russian oil export terminals, limiting the gains from higher oil prices.

Ukraine has been making battlefield gains in recent months and has inflicted 1.2 million casualties on Russia since the war started, with new recruits increasingly difficult to find.

“Russia’s economy, in nominal terms, is barely bigger than the State of New York’s, smaller than that of Texas and fragile,” she said. 

Putin’s approval rate has fallen to 65.6% from 77.8% at the start of the year and prewar levels well above 80%.

Inflationary pressures will persist for years amid a demographic downturn, military mobilizations, and the high demand for labor in the defense industry.

Russia’s government has estimated the workforce will need 3.1 million more workers by 2030, according to Interfax. And in the next five years, the total shortfall will hit 11 million jobs when including a ramp-up in retirement.

Insincerity Olympics #1

On this day:
1429
Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.
1775
American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.
1776
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
1967
Venera program: Venera 4 is launched (it will become the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data).
1994
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

***

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry--Thomas Paine

***

The American politician meets the rug merchant. In the Middle East, the West has met a culture as cynical and mendacious as its own.

***

A new contest: Draw your own cartoon to fit the caption!
"Hmm. Well, I''ll see your MMA Markwayne, and raise you a Nazi."

***

The fighting in Ukraine has ground on for longer than the First World War.

***

Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France's local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections ‌in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, France's disinformation detection service, Viginum, said on Thursday.

***

Insincerity Olympics #1

The dichotomy between what the world's elite demand of us and what they do continues at breakneck speed. But in our world, where the only guy who is not a Nazi is the guy who says he is one, and has a tattoo to prove it, nothing is real or meaningful.

You can bet your bitcoin on it.

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

But the development of AI is incompatible with those pronouncements, too. And AI  promises wealth and power. acrifices will have to be made.

JPMorgan Chase is again the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, after pushing $58bn to the sector last year – up 13% from 2024.

In 2015, countries agreed in the Paris climate deal to strive to avoid breaching 1.5 °C of global heating above preindustrial levels, beyond which the world is said to suffer ever more ruinous heatwaves, floods, droughts, and other climate-fueled disasters.

Avoiding such a threshold would require the near elimination of planet-heating emissions from fossil fuel production. Since the Paris agreement, however, the world’s largest banks have funnelled $8.7tn to the fossil fuel industry to dig and drill for more coal, oil, and gas.

Scientists now predict that the 1.5C limit will be breached imminently, with a recent string of record-hot years set to be surpassed this decade.

Last year, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-backed scheme that aimed to align banks’ lending with a net-zero-emissions scenario by 2050, was disbanded after several high-profile departures from its membership.

“We’ve seen a lot of banks turn their back either quietly or more loudly amid a context of political pressure, particularly in the US,” said Lusiani.

He added: “The era of voluntary commitments has not worked at the scale that we need and so this points to a much more active role for financial regulators, legislators and policymakers, especially in those big six financial centers.”

The guys who can't run a charity want to run the world. But of the myriad of motives available, our betterment is not one of them.

Spiting Your Face in New York

 On this day:

1190
Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1793
French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety, installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
2003
The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

***

Is charity with borrowed money morally superior to self-indulgence with borrowed money?

***

Is the SPLC a Reichstag Fire organization funded with tax-deductible contributions for the purpose of fighting political opponents through de-banking, government defunding, and prejudice?

***

Let me in out of the rain, dude, or I'll kill you?

***

The Platner nomination must mean something.

***

Spiting Your Face in New York

Trump was on the way to Game 3 of the NBA Championship, with the executive order in his pocket. He was excited. The President can't be above everything. After all, the Knicks hadn't won a championship in over 40 years. And the Spurs had won 5 in the last 25. Talk about inequality!!!

Of course, the Constitution doesn't mention the NBA; that gave him some leeway--if it's a living document and all. And the success of the Spurs and the failures of the Knicks is worth something--maybe a reparations argument. 

New Yorkers had suffered some tough times, and with goofy Mamdani, more were coming; they needed a win. He stepped out of the limo.

Later that night, in an interview with FOX News, a Trump spiritual advisor explained, "Yeah, he was gonna give the Knicks 10 points by executive order, but when the fans booed him, he got pissed and bagged it."

With the final score Spurs 115--Knicks 111, those ten points would have made all the difference.