A Plague

 

On this day:

1514
Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.
1604
Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635
Founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1740
Dutch colonists and various slave groups begin massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.
1845
The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
1854
Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins. As does Tolstoy's career as a writer: “A disagreement that has not been solved by diplomacy will still less be solved by powder and blood.”
1919
Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

1936
Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
1940
World War II: Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.
1967
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969
In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24.
2006
North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.
2009
First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecraft as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. LCROSS set out to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole. On October 9, 2009, the vehicle’s spent Centaur upper stage impacted the crater Cabeus. Then the Shepherding Spacecraft descended through Centaur’s ejectate plume, collecting and relaying data before impacting the lunar surface six minutes later. It found water.


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"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible." -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author (b. 6 Oct 1950)

***

Arline Goldbaum married Richard Feynman while she was in a sanitarium with TB. Can you imagine what she must have been like? She was also a beauty, and he was crazy about her. She died three years later. 

After her death, Feynman wrote her a letter, writing on the envelope, "Please excuse my not sending this, but I don't know your new address."

 
*** 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick for a key housing post once likened wealthy homeowners to “cartels”


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A Plague

Smallpox is the only human disease to have been eradicated.

Smallpox is highly infectious and has no known cure. It has been found as early as 1350 BCE, with cases in Egyptian mummies. Its infectivity has made it a popular adjunct for engineered bioweapons.

The ancient practice of variolation (named for smallpox, also known as variola or ‘la variole’) was widely used in Asia and some parts of Africa.  Small amounts of material from smallpox sores were transferred to healthy people, resulting in milder illness and much lower mortality than natural infection. Some sources suggest people practiced variolation as early as 200 BCE.

Written accounts from the mid-1500s describe a form of variolation used in China known as insufflation, where smallpox scabs were dried, ground, and blown into the nostril using a pipe.

In India, similar practices used inoculation with a lancet or needle to transfer material from smallpox pustules to the skin of healthy children. Accounts from the 18th century suggest this technique dates back hundreds of years. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced the practice to Europe in 1721, after she observed the practice in the Ottoman Empire, where her husband was stationed as ambassador to Turkey. In the American colonies, after his slave Onesimus told him how it worked in 1716, Cotton Mather publicized it and argued for its use in response to a 1721 outbreak of smallpox in Massachusetts. John Adams and his wife used it on their children.

In 1796, hearing of local beliefs and practices in rural communities that cowpox protected against smallpox, Dr Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps with matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a local milkmaid. Later efforts to infect Phipps with smallpox failed, showing the idea worked. (The good doctor was experimenting on a child.)

Vaccination can apparently be a hard sell. Rumours circulated that it would turn people into cows.

Mandatory smallpox vaccination started in Britain and parts of the United States of America in the 1840s and 1850s, as well as in other parts of the world, leading to the establishment of the smallpox vaccination certificates required for travel. Despite over 2 million people dying every year, it took decades to achieve global unity in the fight against the disease. By the 1950s, advances in production techniques meant that heat-stable, freeze-dried smallpox vaccines could be stored without refrigeration.

In 1970, in West India, an outbreak led to a door-to-door search and vaccination program.

In 1980, with the virus limited to laboratory zoos, WHO declared smallpox officially eradicated.--much from a WHO paper

Plague

On this day:
1600
Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, receives its première performance in Florence, signifying the beginning of the Baroque Period

1777
American Revolutionary War: General Sir Henry Clinton leads British forces in the capture of Continental Army Hudson River defenses in the Battle of Forts Clinton and Montgomery.
1789
French Revolution: Louis XVI returns to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women on 5 October
1945
Baseball: Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat are ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. (His curse leads to 71 years of World Series failure for Chicago.)
1973
Egypt launches a coordinated attack with Syria against Israel, leading to the Yom Kippur War.
1981
Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat is assassinated.

***

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

***

Buffett wrote an essay in 1999 on the new, exciting technology of the day: the internet. He noted that a technology can change the world, but that doesn't necessarily make it a smart investment.Using airplanes as an example, he explained that while air travel had fundamentally transformed society, 129 airline companies had filed for bankruptcy in the last 20 years. "The key to investing," Buffett explained, "is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage."

***

Wall Street banks are pushing large law firms to cut fees, arguing that the business model that has enriched top lawyers for decades is not sustainable in an era of AI.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have told major law firms they want to set up new payment arrangements that would save them money.
“If the number of hours they’re working on a matter has come down because of AI . . . our expectation is for costs to come down significantly per transaction,” Adam Meshel, global head of legal at Citigroup, told the FT.

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A former head of Germany's foreign intelligence service was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion that he had passed state secrets to a foreign intelligence service, the federal prosecutor's office said.

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The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games two years ago. This year, Chicago finished the 2026 regular season 84-78, becoming the first team in MLB history to reach the postseason immediately after at least two consecutive 100-loss seasons—and the White Sox had actually lost 100 games three years in a row. 

This year, the White Sox swept the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, their first postseason series win since 2005. They are now 2-0 against Cleveland in their best of 5 playoff series.

***

Plague

Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev wrote on Telegram that a resident, Darya Shipilova, "may have contracted a particularly dangerous infection," but did not specifically name pneumonic plague. That's like saying a swimmer died after being attacked "by a large fish" off a Florida beach.

Nearly 200 people have been placed under medical observation in Russia’s Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia over suspected exposure to plague, according to local media reports. One woman, Darya Shipilova, said by the Russians to be a lab researcher, has died. 

This is the pneumonic (pulmonary) presentation of the bubonic plague. In a Russian lab worker. The bubonic plague.

The Russians started their bioweapons program the year after they signed the U.N. resolution to ban them. They worked for years on gain-of-function of Ebola, Anthrax, and smallpox, and efforts to combine high infectivity (like chickenpox) with those more deadly. More recent efforts tried to develop organisms for which the usually reliable anti-infective agents did not work. These are vicious weapons, indiscriminate and usually brutal and fatal. And socially disruptive. Plague in the Middle Ages killed over 33% of Europe's population, with each recurring episode.

If we poor citizens need to be reminded, these are terrible weapons, but they are wielded by terrible people. War is bad enough, but these are cataclysmic in concept, aimed at men, women, and children for the purpose of civilization destruction.

Nor are our hands clean. The Chinese lab at Wuhan had American medical--MEDICAL--support and then, when the murderous genie was out of the bottle, they, i.e., we, joined the mendacious Chinese autocrats and lied about it to our citizens and the world.

If this kind of behaviour doesn't sour you on the promises of the average politician masquerading as an average guy with a good heart, it should. It should scare you witless. And you should scrutinize any power you cede to them. These people have nuclear weapons! And anyone who thinks that AI can be muzzled with "internal controls" is not paying attention. 

The danger of the virus, the bacteria, the weapon, or the software is real and frightening, but it all starts with humans who create them, aim them, and pull the trigger.

Rules, agreements among caring men, will not be enough.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court

On this day:

1598
English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.
1692
Last people hanged for witchcraft in Britain’s North American colonies.
1776
Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1784
Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska.
1792
Primidi Vendémiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
1823
Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
1941
World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
1975
Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
2011
CERN scientists announce their discovery of neutrinos breaking the speed of light

***

"Greg [Abel, the CEO] runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against." This was Warren Buffett explaining his appointment of his son, Howard, to Berkshire. But The FT disagreed, calling the decision nepotism "But culture and values do not exist separately from the balance sheet. It is in making balance-sheet decisions where culture and values are tested and realised. That is why experience, not just decency, is required of a chair."

FT doesn't like Buffett's decision-making.

***

Start with the hardest number in Washington. Medicare costs about $1 trillion in fiscal 2026. Eliminate it entirely — as politically unthinkable as that is — and you close only about half of the current deficit. Social Security, at $1.7 trillion and rising every year, is even further off the table. Wipe out every domestic federal agency most people call “waste” — the EPA, the Department of Education, the State Department, foreign aid, all of it — and you’ve touched only 13–14 percent of the federal budget. There is no spending-cut path that closes this gap. The math forces the conversation onto revenue.--The Hill, arguing for VAT, acting as if politicians will do the right thing

***

When children are the 'tip of the spear':
Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to an inferior school on purpose to do her part to right what she saw as an educational wrong, just as she sacrificed the truth in her advancement of the nonsense 1619 "Project" to right a wrong. So the innocent,--culture, history, and her daughter--suffered for a greater cause. Ms. Hannah-Jones, however, lives in a $1.5 million NY townhouse and did pretty well.

***

Despite my criticism: Cruz has become the third Pirates player to have three straight 20-20 seasons, along with outfielders Barry Bonds (1990-92) and Andrew McCutchen (2011-13). He's been fantastic since coming back from his broken hand, hitting .318/.407/.533 for an OPS of .940 in 29 games, with 34 hits in 107 at-bats, three doubles, a triple, six home runs, 23 RBI and seven stolen bases on 10 attempts.

***

Vladimir Putin is preparing to escalate his war against Ukraine and intensify hybrid attacks on Kyiv’s allies in Europe.--Telegraph

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The Alien Terrorist Removal Court

Sometimes principles are sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was created by Congress in 1996 following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City. A judge reviews the government’s classified evidence alone, in chambers, and neither the accused nor the public may learn what it is or where it came from beyond an unclassified summary. The government may use the results of FISA wiretaps and warrantless physical searches, and the accused is specifically denied the right to suppress evidence. That is, the Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply. The court allows the government to use classified information, where disclosing that information to the public would pose risks to national security. So there is no due process.

The statutory provisions that establish the court provide paid counsel to the aliens if necessary and also permit either party to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In the first-ever case before the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), Nazira Haji Zada, 47, an Afghan national previously residing in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed from the United States after conceding that she is an alien terrorist. Zada was arrested and appeared before the ATRC’s Chief Judge, Joan N. Ericksen, in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, July 30, at 11:00 a.m.

As the matriarch in her family, she supported a plot to commit an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024 for which her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were previously arrested and convicted. The ATRC issued an order of removal on Aug. 20 that was unsealed following her return to her country of origin.

This was the first case ever brought before the ATRC, which Congress established decades ago, and which no previous administration had used. Zada is now permanently inadmissible to the United States.

According to court documents, Tawhedi admitted that between June 2024 and October 2024, he conspired with at least one other individual to purchase two AK-47 rifles, 500 rounds of ammunition, and 10 magazines, with the intent to carry out a mass-casualty attack on or around Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, on behalf of ISIS.

According to the criminal complaint, to raise funds for their attack, in 2024, the family started selling off their property, including furniture, computers, a mobile phone, and the family’s two vehicles. Zada signed a contract to sell the family house. The family also purchased one-way airfare for travel to Kabul, Afghanistan shortly before Election Day 2024 for its members, including for Zada and other minor children but not Abdullah and Tawhedi.

In compliance with the ATRC statute, the government used classified information to establish that Zada is an alien terrorist. Additionally, the government provided Zada and her lawyers, two federal public defenders, with approximately half a terabyte of documents supporting the government’s case. With her lawyers, Zada conceded that she is an alien terrorist and waived her appeal of the removal order, terminating her previous status.

Rumblings on the Left suggest this law runs counter to American tradition and values, and this particular case has fascist qualities. Trump is held responsible--though he is five decades from the writing of it. The usual clichés trot out: ICE, misogynist white supremacists, "Whiskey Pete Hegseth" makes an appearance, Trump's tech bro billionaires--in general, a bigoted, power-obsessed, autonomous and reactionary power structure with a lot of free time.

Indeed, it has the feel of a military court in wartime, a legal system of a country under attack, stressed and afraid, turning to a junta for advice. And does the impractical distort the ideal? Once 20 million illegal immigrants, with their unknown proportion of national enemies, are here, what mechanism can deal with the risks? What principles will have to be sacrificed?

Does the citizenry not have some protection through due process themselves? Can't they at least try to protect themselves, interview immigrants, screen them before welcoming them into the country and the paid benefits the country will be responsible for? If an immigrant has entered the country with the admitted purpose of destroying it, does the intended victim have no recourse? "Now that you're here, you get to play by our rules?" Once the immigrant has evaded detection and is ensconced in the victim's home, is he now afforded the same protection as his legal target, shielded by the very concepts he hopes to overthrow? Does he become that strangely American protected species, the squatter?

Horribly, these questions get to be managed by the land's most ambiguous subset who worship the naturalistic fallacy that is the law: politicians and their familiars, lawyers. Seeing a room of ugliness, they would outlaw beauty.  

But 20 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong.

Gettysburg and The Somme

On this day, June 2:

626
Li Shimin, the future Emperor Taizong of Tang, Emperor of China, ambushes and kills his rival brothers Li Yuanji and Li Jiancheng in the Incident at Xuanwu Gate.
1644
English Civil War: Battle of Marston Moor.
1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.
1776
The Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not approved until July 4.
1777
Vermont becomes the first American territory to abolish slavery.
1839
Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship Amistad.
1853
The Russian Army crossed the Pruth river into the Danubian Principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia—providing the spark that set off the Crimean War.
1881
Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President James Garfield, who eventually dies from an infection on September 19.
1897
Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.
1900
The first Zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.
1934
The Night of the Long Knives ends with the death of Ernst Röhm.
1937
Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight.
1964
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.
1976
Fall of the Republic of Vietnam; Communist North Vietnam declares their union to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

***


"To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of Freedom itself."-- Burke

***

French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the SSPX ( Society of Saint Pius X) in 1970 in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s meetings known as Vatican II revolutionized the church’s relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.

Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent in 1988. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four bishops and declared the consecrations a “schismatic act.”

Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications as part of his yearslong outreach to the group.

Leo XIV has a shorter fuse.

During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday, attended by some 15,500 people and their children, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV, who had urged the SSPX to hold off for the sake of the church’s unity.

In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a “schismatic act” and declared the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the Catholic Church.

***

One consequence of a wealth tax: When a wealth-tax bill comes due, the owner of a closely held company will often pull out a larger dividend to cover it. Once that money has left the company, it doesn’t go back into payroll or business expansion.

Inherent to taxation is the ability to destroy. That is one of the rationales for the tax exclusion of religions. A wealth tax destroys...wealth.

***

Gettysburg and The Somme

Today is the anniversary of Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg and Day 2 of the Battle of the Somme.

Gettysburg was a three-day fight.

Nearly one-third of the total forces engaged at Gettysburg became casualties. George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac lost 28 percent of the men involved; Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia suffered over 37 percent.

Of these casualties, 7,058 were fatalities (3,155 Union, 3,903 Confederate). Another 33,264 had been wounded (14,529 Union, 18,735 Confederate) and 10,790 were missing (5,365 Union, 5,425 Confederate).

The Battle of the Somme, one of the deadliest battles in all of human history, was fought between July and November 1916 during World War I.

The battle involved more than three million men, of whom one million were either wounded or killed. 20,000 British died on the first day. The total casualties, estimated to be more than 1,000,000, included 650,000 German casualties, 420,000 British, and 195,000 French. Enough to give war a bad name.

The Civil War in the U.S. was fought to preserve the Union and eventually succeeded in ending slavery in the country. WWI would be difficult to categorize; it was a result of complex allegiances and accidents.
Its main effect was to create the foundations for World War II.

The Civil War in the U.S. had some significant long-term value despite the horror, but WWI?

My point here, two days before Independence Day, is to highlight our astonishing good fortune to be removed from Europe's homicidal history and to ask the question: Why do the Europeans have such confidence in the wisdom and leadership of their rulers? Looking at WWI as an example, why would anybody trust these people, who marshal their benighted citizens to fight in inexplicable wars named in decades and centuries? Why would the world not be dominated by laws limiting the damage governments and their minions could do?

And why would any group concerned about the abuse of power that relentlessly victimizes the ordinary people of the world not emphasize the time-honored, obvious, dangerous source of real power: the warlord and the domestic leaders? Those unable to satisfy their ambition and greed through their own talents.

No one in the history of man has ever run into town screaming, "Run for your lives, the farmers are coming!"

june 2

American Hezbollah

 On this day:

1284
The legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany
1409
Western Schism: The Roman Catholic church is led into a double schism as Petros Philargos is crowned Pope Alexander V after the Council of Pisa, joining Pope Gregory XII in Rome and Pope Benedict XII in Avignon.
1848
End of the June Days Uprising in Paris.
1917
The first U.S. troops arrive in France to fight alongside Britain and France against Germany in World War I.
1948
The Western allies begin an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin.
1948
William Shockley files the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
1996
Irish Journalist Veronica Guerin is shot in her car while in traffic in the outskirts of Dublin

***

“Watch out for allies and creditors losing confidence, the loss of its reserve currency status, the selling of its debt assets, and the weakening of its currency, especially relative to gold.”--Dalio in an article comparing the US adventure in Hormuz to Britain's inflection moment in Suez.

***

A rather startling assertion from Adam Tooze in his book, The Deluge. "Unless the political leaders of Europe could shake their populations out of their usual 'political thoughtlessness', Hitler warned in 1928, the 'threatened global hegemony of the North American continent' would reduce them all to the status of Switzerland or Holland." The other Axis powers felt the same. He writes, "the future dominance of American capitalist democracy, that was the common factor impelling Hitler, Stalin, the Italian Fascists and their Japanese counterparts to such radical action. ... Whatever comforting, domesticated fantasies their followers may have projected onto them, the leaders of Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union all saw themselves as radical insurgents against an oppressive and powerful world order."

***

A British tabloid reports a man woke from a coma after a horrific car crash thinking he was Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey and speaking fluent French - despite only having a basic grasp from school. So French is pretty easy--maybe inside us all--and can sort of be released by a blow to the head.

***




American Hezbollah

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."--From Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address, delivered to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on January 27, 1838, titled "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions". He was 28.

Wars in Europe are often distinguished by time, like decades or centuries. Someone casually questioning how the wars in history--countless and purposeless and unending--could possibly occur might well start here. Who wants this confrontation? Iran wants to obliterate Israel, and Israel does not want to be obliterated. Certainly, Israel's citizens don't want to be obliterated. But do Iran's citizens want to risk death to obliterate Israel?

This conflict has been simmering, with the occasional outbreak of murder, torture, and despair, for decades. This is beginning to look more and more like Iran has strapped on the traditional Middle East dress, the suicide vest. And Israel will not have some unresolved conflict with its sworn enemy. They will not take a standing eight count or stagger away, bloodied and damaged, having "learned their lesson". If they fail, they will take the entire Middle East with them to perdition.

Ahab to Ahab.

How could reasonable men reach this point? How could leaders of innocent civilians allow confrontations to progress to threaten themselves--even the whole world--with destruction?

The history of man has been a conflict between those who work and those who would rather steal from those who work than work themselves. Those who work gradually built up their defenses so that those who would not work would find stealing others' production too dangerous.

Enter ideology--philosophy, nationalism, and religion--that taught that stealing from others was just. And the death of others was deserved, even demanded, even inevitable, and that suicide was infinitely superior to certain mundane life situations. The tremendous advantages of the cohesion of family and community have become distorted and dangerous.

Madmen, ideologues, and morons will have their moment. And, despite Lincoln's confidence, even America may not be safe.

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.

Assault on the Liberty

 

On this day:

793
Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1794
Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large, organized festivals all across France.
1967
Six-Day War: The USS Liberty "incident" occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171
1972
Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

***

Agroterrorism is a subdivision of bioweapons. Aside from its anti-human savagery, it is a metaphor for the power of the individual, like drones, a dark side of the Enlightenment's legacy, which emphasizes the tension between freedom and virtue.

The thoughtful well-poisoner expresses himself.

***

Improvements in aggregate tax competitiveness are positively and significantly associated with real GDP per capita growth, and this association is robust to a wide range of controls. (From a paper with a deep dive into the obvious.)

***
 

If a nation is unable to define itself, what is it?

***

More than 20,000 people are currently working on AGI — artificial general intelligence — while fewer than 200 are focused specifically on AI safety.

***

Ceasefire episodes broke out in the Middle East.

***

How did Platner get picked for this job? Who did that? Does he really represent the Dems? Even if his deficits are ignored, can anyone be enthusiastic about him? Or has American politics become some weird parallel universe dominated by a black hole of power distribution benefiting a sliver of avaricious iconoclasts?

***

Assault on the Liberty

Every so often, the political animal shows its stripes. And national ambition will always trump friendship. Something like this story always gives a little context, although this is more than an insight into America's friendships, it is an insight into its leadership.

Most of this is from St. Clair's summary of "Assault on the Liberty," a first-hand account by James Ennes Jr. whose book of the event is a hair-raising story of betrayal by America's presumed friends and its own leadership. On this day in history, June 8, 1967.

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six-Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived, it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over three hours. The Liberty flew a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

An easily identified, lightly armed American surveillance ship in international waters.

Soon, more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later, a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which pelted the ship with gunfire and napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire, and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship’s top officers.

The Liberty’s radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called “a buzzsaw sound.” Finally, an open channel was found, and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet’s large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty’s aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. “Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately,” he barked. The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.

After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gunfire. 

Strafed the life rafts.

Nobody was going to get out alive that way. 

After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: “Do you need any help?”
The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: “Fuck you.”
The Israeli boat turned and left.

A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered his aid, but the Liberty’s conning officer refused.

The Russians offered help first.

Finally, 16 hours after the attack, two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 were injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk about their ordeal with the press.

The following morning, Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control of the Golan Heights.

Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. “These errors do occur,” McNamara concluded.

The Children of Israel are never alone. But sometimes it's hard to see why.

Drones, People, and the Miniaturization of Violence

On this day:

1453
Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.
1660
English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1780
American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s Continentals, allegedly after the Continentals' surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1903
May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
1919
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.

***

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.


***

Robinhood launched agentic trading and an agentic credit card today, allowing AI agents to trade equities and make credit card purchases on customers' behalf.

***

Russia has passed a law authorizing its central bank and other financial institutions to repel drone attacks with their own defense systems, as the country struggles to defend against Ukrainian strikes.

The law, passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, will allow staff at Russia’s central bank to be armed and to operate the systems used to down unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) attacks without the involvement of special forces.

***

In Rome, actors could not vote, hold office, or be trusted to give an oath in legal proceedings.

***

A Blue Origin rocket exploded on the launch tower in a fiery blast during a test of its engines on Thursday night, the company said.


***

Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu is fund­ing a new pro­gram that gives “queer and trans” migrants up to $500 for mas­sages, yoga classes, and 'cre­at­ive heal­ing.'


***

Drones, People, and the Miniaturization of Violence

The Uyghurs are a Turkic and predominantly Muslim ethnic minority spread across Central Asia but concentrated in China's far-western Xinjiang region. It is they who are always referenced as examples of Chinese oppression, in the U.S., called phonetically, wiː.ɡʊr.

Through circumstance and demographics, they have become the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Syria. They were responsible for the fall of Aleppo, indirectly responsible for the overthrow of Assad, and were gratefully integrated into the new Syrian military.

They have demonstrated serious military ability and hostility.

These are the same Uyghurs that the Chinese authorities have been suppressing at home, in the Xinjiang region, for years. Starting in 2017, authorities began sending hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to "reeducation camps," where they were taught Mandarin and forced to memorize Chinese leader Xi Jinping's speeches, according to human rights organizations. Others were placed under house arrest, harassed, or subjected to extensive surveillance, or had their passports confiscated, according to prior NPR reporting and the findings of the United Nations and rights groups. In 2021, the U.S. labeled China's campaign a "genocide" aimed at eradicating Uyghur identity. (With the West's current infatuation with 'identity,' one would think they would care more.) Beijing slammed that decision and has defended the detention camps as a necessary facet of a wide-ranging de-radicalization effort in the region.

There is speculation that China is very unhappy that these people, an increasingly well-organized and disruptive group, have been welcomed in the Middle East. They also appear to hold a grudge. The belief is that China sees them as a potential destabilizing force within its own borders.

So it is in this new world where size doesn't matter, and no one is safe.

Memorial Day

 

“I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

***

Scientists do not ridicule or hound those who disagree. Nor do they hold high-spirited rallies. These are particularly political and/or religious qualities. Anyone with a scientific mind would recognize such presumptuous intolerance as specifically unscientific.

***

For those of you who are low on anxiety, by 2030, according to a recent report, half of India's population — 700 million people — will lack adequate drinking water.
“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” warns Ismail Serageldin, a former executive for the World Bank.

***

China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft Sunday night, carrying three astronauts bound for its space station, including one set to stay in space for a year.

The spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The much-anticipated launch comes as China prepares for its first crewed lunar landing by 2030.

***

Vegas Golden Knights came back from a three-goal deficit to defeat the Colorado Avalanche 5-3 in Game 3 of the Western Conference Final at T-Mobile Arena on Sunday.

The Golden Knights lead 3-0 in the best-of-7 series.

***

Memorial Day

War is man's most evil pursuit. Every single human motive morphs into something horrible and destructive; the most noble of man's qualities become misapplied. Somehow, the diffident grasshopper becomes the predatory locust. 

Yet within the world of men, some things must be done. Individuals must live and act within the admitted abomination that is war. 

In the Second War, the Germans and the Japanese were asked to fulfill their destiny and complete history. This involved destroying or subjugating everyone who was not them. The Allies' children were asked to fight for their lives. Their behavior in this gargantuan struggle should always stand as a testament to man's higher elements in the midst of man's lowest. Yet questions are always raised by some.

When Obama was in Japan and visiting Hiroshima, new discussion of the WWII atomic bombing began. An article in the LA Times asserted the bombing was cruel, gratuitous, and not a factor in the ending of the war. "Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today," the article states. 

More, the cause of the Japanese surrender was actually the Russian invasion of Manchuria. 

The article explains: "It was not the atomic evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Pacific war. Instead, it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese colonies that began at midnight on Aug. 8, 1945 — between the two bombings." 

That is to say, after the Americans dropped the bomb, the Russians moved in; probably a coincidence. Indeed, the sentiment at least seems to be in line with current thinking; the majority of Americans in polls think the bombs should not have been dropped.

Of course, people will differ in their assessment of history. Some assessments will be more accurate--sometimes more honest--than others. And many military men did not want to use the weapons. But of all the wars in history, World War Two is the least ambiguous to analyze.

The History website has this summary:
Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. (Italics added)

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided, over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower, and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists, to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. (italics added)

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

So the Emperor cites the bomb as a factor. And the alternative was an island-by-island attack on Japan that the experts accepted would cost one million--MILLION--American lives.

The LA Times article suggests the U.S. ignored a Japanese peace approach to the U.S., requesting only that the Emperor survive. But that is not entirely true. Their proposal was to keep the Emperor and the current governing militaristic system intact, something the Allies thought nonnegotiable. Another element overlooked in the LA Times article is the continuity of events. Over 200,000 people were killed in the atomic attacks. Isolated, that is horrific. One wonders how the essayist saw those deaths in the context of the war itself. Or do they spare themselves the difficulty? China suffered between 15 and 17 million--MILLION--deaths directly related to combat--many described as "crimes against humanity." The Russians lost 25 to 27 million. MILLION. And there was Nanjing, an episode so savage that it drove its main historian, Iris Chang, crazy. And Unit 731.  

Certainly, we need kinder, gentler wars.

Nonetheless, the LA Times article was quite critical of American behavior and motives in one of the world's most easily evaluated conflicts, the American democracy vs. Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Applying morality to war is tricky and can be practiced only by our best and brightest. Fortunately, a look at the byline has the reassuring information that the LA Times article was authored by none other than Oliver Stone, the esteemed and award-winning movie director. He is certainly qualified. As a member of the exclusive self-absorbed entertainment cult and the reliable creator of the movie JFK, one of the cult's more astonishing productions of incoherent historical analysis, we can certainly rely upon his opinion.

And I'm sure he would have been willing to talk to the widows, the orphans, and the parents of those million Americans, explaining that those soldiers had to die assaulting the Japanese islands because we were true to our inner nature and did not drop the cruel bombs that could have ended the war. That was not who we are.

Democracizing Power

Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final at Ball Arena on Wednesday.

***

A fossil discovery in Ethiopia shows that early Homo and a previously unknown Australopithecus species lived together around 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago.

***

Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final at Ball Arena on Wednesday.

***

Democracizing Power

In the short years of the Ukrainian War, there have been remarkable advances in accurate, cheap military murder and disruptions.  We are now blessed with affordable leverage in warfare, as we have seen in the advances of terrorism in the streets.

Here is one such change, reported by Perera.

"A Chinese AI startup called MizarVision is publishing high-resolution satellite imagery of every US military base, every carrier strike group, every F-22 deployment, every THAAD battery, and every Patriot missile position in the Middle East. Labelled. Geolocated. AI-annotated. Updated in near-realtime. Shared by PLA-linked accounts and Chinese state media to an audience of billions.

The Pentagon has downplayed the releases as “open-source.” This framing misses the point entirely. The value of MizarVision’s output is not the raw satellite image. Any government can purchase commercial satellite passes. The value is the AI processing layer that converts terabytes of imagery into labelled, searchable, cross-referenced intelligence products at a speed and scale that previously required the resources of a national intelligence agency. MizarVision is democratising military surveillance and publishing the output on social media, where Iran’s 31 autonomous IRGC provincial commands can access it from a mobile phone.

The next war will not begin with a missile launch. It will begin with an AI model labelling every target from orbit."

This is a rise in the influence of the individual that no democracy ever dreamed of. Power can increasingly be opposed affordably by the narrow and precise. 

Governments will soon argue that any deviation from common dogma carries risk.

Vigilangione, Continued

 

Joyce taught English at Berlitz schools in Pula and Trieste, and is supposed to have known up to thirteen different languages.

***


Vigilangione, Continued

Order is restrictive; when does it become oppressive? It certainly is convenient. If half the people literate in English wrote from right to left, we would have no fewer literate people, but they would not be comprehensible to one another. If half of Americans decided it was right to drive on the left side of the road, car travel would stop, the car would become useless, and its convenience would be replaced. What would happen to chess if activists tried to broaden its appeal by straightening out and simplifying the knight's move?

Mormon polygamy was seen in the nineteenth century as a threat to the U.S. moral structure and was fought, legislated against, and eventually bullied away with very little legal justification. In Europe, polygamy has become a significant socio-economic problem for the growing nurturing state as dependents logrithmically outstrip underpinning arithmetical working support.

The values of the West are increasingly impractical in the modern, expanding world. In America, the values of equality and freedom have become a threat to the stability of the culture. The Americans suffer domestic disruption by people who oppose the very laws that protect their outrage, even to the point of organized street opposition to legitimate law enforcement agencies. The British now have hate-speech laws that rival any communist country. Sitting in judgment of your fellow citizens has become very disruptive, even if you're right. And Americans are telling themselves that by taking products without paying—a behavior they call "microlooting' known to the rest of us as "stealing"—they are, in fact, engaging in a quiet political protest.

Is this a trend percolating up or seeping down? What did the Americans do in Venezuela? They declared the country an outlaw — as they did with the Barbary states — and preemptively invaded it. The danger is that, in a larger view, Venezuela deserved it. American behavior in Iran is more illustrative. Iran is certainly a danger to the civilized world, and a nuclear weapon in its hands, according to its own philosophy and statements, would result in economic disruption and nuclear destruction to friends and enemies alike. That said, there is no obvious legal or moral reason Western nations should be able to control Iran's internal affairs simply because they fear the implications of its national ambitions. Nonetheless, the Americans and Israel preemptively destroyed most of Iran's military and scientific infrastructure.

Again, this was all in a good cause. The world's nonreaction even implied its tacit approval. The Americans want only stability and stable commerce. But is their action consistent with their values? Does the threat justify their extraordinary means? And, worse, what would have happened had the Americans not resorted to those extraordinary means?

So Mangioni, whoever shot Kirk, whoever attacked the Press Dinner, the gerrymanderer, Trump himself--all place their personal motives aside and, like the sin eater of ancient times, sacrifice themselves for what each knows is the greater good.

Diego Garcia

On this day:

1603
James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England.
1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.
1765
American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
1832
In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.
1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl of petroleum after running aground.
1998
Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
2000
S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

***

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."--Thomas Jefferson

***

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smartphone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

***

Rainer Zitelmann, a German historian and sociologist, received a letter from Berlin police informing him he was under investigation for violating Germany's criminal code by using "symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations."

The post in question, which Zitelmann reshared, showed a side-by-side image of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hitler's speech bubble read, "Give me Czechoslovakia and I won't attack anyone else!" and Putin's read, "Give me Ukraine, and I won't attack anyone else!" It was not the quote that put Zitelmann in trouble with the law, but Hitler's swastika armband.

Under Section 86a of the German criminal code, it is illegal to distribute Nazi symbols and related expressions.

***


In the Jonesboro massacre, Mitchell and Golden killed four students and one teacher and wounded nine students and one teacher. All 10 injured survived. The two shooters were convicted of murder, and both were sentenced under the juvenile statutes of Arkansas. 

They were both released back among the unsuspecting public at the age of 21.

***

Diego Garcia

Before it became a pseudonym for college kids in bars all over America, Diego Garcia was, and is, part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The United States has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa.

The four-decade conflict between the U.S. and Iran has centered around the Americans insisting that Iran is building a nuclear warfare program and Iran's insistence that they are not. The Americans fear that Iran will eventually attack its political and religious enemies with nukes, destroy the Middle East, destroy the world's petroleum industry, and make much of the Mediterranean uninhabitable for several millennia.

As proof of its good intentions, Iran has previously put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers).

Iran has, however, developed a space program that, theoretically, prepares it for long-range missile flight. If they have not developed a nuclear weapon, Iran would be the only nation with a space program that hasn't.

U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and this month, Iran fired several missiles at Diego Garcia. At about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran. Diego Garcia is well outside Iran's promised range of 2000Km. Other cities within that radius include Bonn, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and New Delhi.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to hit Diego Garcia may have involved the improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

Mendacity, aggression, and mistrust with Extinction-Level-Weapons on an international level, controlled by suicidal lunatics and morons. 

So, how are reasonable men of good will supposed to live and raise their children in that kind of world? And what kind of responsibilities do the grownups in the room have?

  

The Democracy of Violence

On this day:

1708
James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth.
1775
American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” – at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia.
1801
Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael’s Castle.
1806
After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their “Corps of Discovery” begin their arduous journey home.
1956
Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan)
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.
1994
Aeroflot Flight 593 crashes in Siberia when the pilot’s fifteen-year-old son accidentally disengages the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.

***

Several ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer rescue organization were set on fire outside a synagogue in a neighborhood home to London’s largest Jewish community early on Monday

***

New York City’s LaGuardia Airport was closed Monday after a passenger plane collided with an emergency vehicle on the runway, killing two pilots

***

The head of the International Energy Agency said on Monday that at least 40 energy assets across nine countries in the Middle East have been “severely or very severely” damaged since the Iran war began, raising fears of prolonged supply disruptions.

***

Gold prices resumed their slide on Monday after suffering the worst week in 15 years before paring some losses in late morning trade.
Silver, platinum, and palladium also plunged as investors retreated from precious metals amid renewed inflation fears.

***

Chicago’s tipped workers could have their hourly pay frozen at 76% of the city’s minimum wage, thanks to a City Council vote Wednesday that throws an economic bone to restaurants, but sets the stage for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s third veto.

***

James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James 11, deposed by William in the Glorious Revolution, was the center of the Jacobite movement to restore him and Catholicism to the English throne. He made five attempts to invade the British Isles. His forces were defeated at the Boyne in Ireland, then finally and decisively at Culloden.

***

The Democracy of Violence

"God made all men, but Colt made them equal"--Samuel Colt

What started as a GPS-guided, piston-engine drone with basic inertial navigation has transformed into a platform integrating Starlink satellite connectivity, Nvidia Jetson Orin AI processors, 16-element CRPA anti-jamming antennas, and real-time video streaming. The discovery in February 2026 of a reconnaissance Geran-2 carrying a Raspberry Pi 5 microcomputer and a Windows 11 mini-PC made in China illustrates the improvised but surprisingly effective nature of Russia’s drone upgrade program — combining commercial off-the-shelf tech with military-grade components to build capability faster than Western sanctions can stop it.

A vast, unsanctionable buildout of technical destruction and death.

A new tech, cheap, with an aggressive advancement system, portable, low maintenance, satellite connected, often anonymous--this is a democratization of a murderous technology for all. Imagine this tech available to the rich drug cartels. Or a small international player with local interests. (Iran)

The raw scale of Shahed drone attacks in Ukraine in 2026 is enormous. Nearly 19,000 attack drones in a single winter campaign — from October 2025 through early March 2026 — represents an aerial bombardment campaign that has lasted, by CSIS’s reckoning, longer than the infamous London Blitz of World War II. The 810-drone single-night attack on September 6–7, 2025 set a new benchmark in drone warfare, and the cadence of attacks exceeding 500 drones per sortie across late August 2025 makes clear this was not a one-off. These figures reveal a deliberate Russian strategic posture: launch enough drones, often enough, to grind down Ukrainian air defenses, energy infrastructure, and civilian morale simultaneously.

A single Iranian drone can cost as little as $35,000 to produce, while intercepting it can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $4 million.

Ukrainian interceptor drones produced in 2025: 100,000 units

The overall interception rate is ~90%.

There are an astonishing number of sites devoted to this technology. Here are some stats in this diffuse information environment:

---Russia has scaled domestic production of the Geran/Shahed series to over 5,500 units per month at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone 

---Rather than a few thousand long-range drones, its total Shahed fleet is estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000 across all variants.

---Iran reportedly produces around 100 drones per month. This translates to approximately 3-4 drones per day.

---Shahed-136 loitering munitions cost just $20,000-$50,000 each. 

---Iran’s production facilities can manufacture up to 6,000 airframes annually,

---Iran outsourced Mohajer-6 production to Venezuela while fulfilling requests for advanced systems featuring 1,000 km range and GPS jamming capabilities. 

---The IRGC supplies Hezbollah and Syrian proxies despite Israeli strikes damaging manufacturing infrastructure.

---Tehran’s drone program generates revenue through strategic exports, with Russia becoming its primary customer since 2022.

---Modern drones now feature embedded GPS for stable positioning, Return to Home functionality, and Follow Me mode that enhances autonomous operations. These unmanned aerial vehicles enable surveillance and engagement operations while allowing Iran to reduce risk to military personnel during targeted strikes. 

---Advanced systems now integrate thermal imaging capabilities that enhance search and detection operations in challenging environments and low-visibility conditions.   

---The incorporation of 360-degree camera technology in some reconnaissance variants enables immersive real-time intelligence gathering for ground control stations. This rapid modernization timeline transformed dated assets into multi-domain strike platforms supporting sustained autonomous operations.

These changes have occurred in just a few years. They could end up in the basements of every neighborhood throughout the world--not just the West. They could put long-range destruction--or strategically focused attacks--in the hands of every nut case or hotblood or adventurer on the planet as we accelerate our return to tribalism.

The push into western Texas by the European farmers and explorers was stopped dead by the most sophisticated light cavalry in the world: the Comanche. When the Colt revolver was introduced into the stalled western expansion, the Comanche was gone.