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FIREWORKS OVER A HERC: It’s a spectacular picture of a fireworks display at Yokota Air Base, Japan. Fine photo work. This overhead explosion is peaceful entertainment. The upcoming American and Japanese test of missile defenses deployed in Japan –which will involve Yokota — will be a peaceful firepower display for North Korea’s fat boy. The exercise is serious business. I suppose the fat boy’s reaction might be entertaining, after a fashion.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Military Is Altering the Limits of Human Performance: Breakthroughs in biometric science mean future troops will fight with weapons that understand them—inside and out.

TUCK EVERLASTING.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Everything You Think You Know About An Active Shooter Situation Is Wrong.

IT JUST TAKES THE PROVERBIAL ‘ONE WEIRD TRICK:’ How to Turn Your Son into a MAGA Hat-Wearing Alpha Male (When You Didn’t Mean To).

LAYOFFS FROM EXERCISE: Not as bad as you think. Since I don’t do steroids, I follow the old-time weight-training approach of taking a clean week off from lifting every 8-10 weeks. All I do is some walking or swimming. When I come back I usually feel stronger, though also more prone to soreness the first couple of times.

Love the pic of Dave and Laree Draper, who are — or at least were — InstaPundit readers. If I try really hard, maybe one day my biceps will be as big as Dave’s forearms in that picture, but probably not.

BRAVO: US kills leader of ISIS in Afghanistan.

YOU CAN GET A NEW DRIVER’S LICENSE, OR A NEW PASSWORD. BUT IF THE DATABASE GETS HACKED IT’S HARD TO GET A NEW FACE. If You Get Your Face Scanned the Next Time You Fly, Here’s What You Should Know.

A TALE OF TWO EUROPES:

The Bravalla Music Festival, held this year between June 28 and July 1, is Sweden’s largest annual music event. Or it used to be. After a reported 23 sexual assaults and four rapes, festival organizers decided to cancel next year’s event, citing that “Certain men… apparently cannot behave.” This is not the first year that Bravalla has served as a breeding ground of sexual assault—five women were raped last year as well. Indeed, ticket sales have been declining for years, mostly due to concerns over the attacks. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven chimed in, “This is so disgusting. These are obnoxious acts by deplorable men.”

Who, exactly, are these “certain men?” And why are they only a problem recently?

Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Has a Big Problem.

The Russian Navy will repair its sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, but the massive vessel will not be upgraded or modernized in any meaningful way. Instead, Russia will focus on getting the carrier back into the fleet as soon as possible when the ship goes into overhaul next year in 2018.

“It is a ship repair with replacement of some equipment.” Sergei Vlasov, director general of Nevsky PKB told the TASS news agency.

“Essentially, there is no modernization.”

It will take the shipyard between two to three years to repair Kuznetsov depending on the scope of the work.

Vlasov noted that while the shipyard has completed technical plans to perform the repairs, there is no timeline in place to implement those fixes because a contract has yet to be signed with the Russian Defense Ministry.

One of the reasons that the Kremlin is not authorizing a much more extensive modernization of Russia’s sole aircraft carrier is because the ship needs to be back in the fleet quickly. A deep modernization might drag on for more than ten years given the state of Russian shipyards.

Russia has aspired to serious maritime power since Peter the Great, but geography and poverty have conspired against it.

HAVE THEY BEEN LOST? OR HAVE THEY BEEN CHASED OUT? We’re Losing A Whole Generation Of Young Men To Video Games. Well, the games keep getting better, while society’s offerings to young men keep getting worse. Why is anyone surprised by the result?

THIS SEEMS UNWISE: Reebok mocks Trump’s compliments of Macron’s wife.

The sports brand Reebok is mocking President Trump’s compliments of French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife that were made during Trump’s visit to France last week.

The sports apparel company posted a graphic to their Twitter account on Friday.

In a chart, labeled “when is it appropriate to say, ‘You’re in such good shape…beautiful’” several scenarios are listed, including “Are you a world leader greeting the spouse of a head of state?” and “Are you in an elevator with a woman.” In response, the company advises: “No.”

I’m sure there’s no sexism in their company.

IRAQI GENERAL: ‘No Army Can Achieve What We Achieved’ in Mosul.

Boasts aside, the real lead is that “about 80 percent of the male and female suicide bombers unleashed by ISIS in the last wave of the successful offensive to retake Mosul were foreign fighters.”

You have to wonder how many of those foreign fighters were Western-born converts, because native Iraqis seem to be tiring of sectarian violence.

MORE ON NANCY MACLEAN’S DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS — SHE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT ECONOMICS. “MacLean’s suggestion that an economist’s use of the term ‘marginal revolution’ refers to a nefarious modern American political plot is no less ridiculous than had she suggested that a physicist’s use of the term ‘Newtonian revolution’ refers to a plot to stuff all cookies with filling made of figs.”

Scholarship based on paranoia and ignorance isn’t really scholarship at all. But what it is, unfortunately, is pretty common.

BLUE ON BLUE: Black Activists Criticize Gore for Comparing Climate Change Advocacy to Fight Against Slavery.

FLASHBACK: Deroy Murdoch advises, “Dems Need to Houseclean.”

The Saturday before the 2000 election, then-Vice President Al Gore addressed a Pittsburgh church audience. “When my opponent, Governor Bush, says he’ll appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court,” Gore said, “I often think of the strictly constructed meaning that was applied when the Constitution was written, how some people [slaves] were considered three-fifths of a human being.”

Perhaps Gore believed the Three-Fifths Compromise was hidden in the 2000 Republican Platform.

I’ve never been able to tell whether Gore is mendacious or merely misinformed.

IT WILL, HOWEVER, REMAIN A TOP DEMOCRATIC PARTY GOAL: FEC Shoots Down Democrat’s Plan to Target Conservative Media.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: Acid becoming weapon of choice among teens in London amid growing attacks.

(Absolutely horrible reference in the headline.)

TRUMP NOT AS FRIENDLY TO CUBA AS OBAMA WAS, complains Raul Castro.

ARSONIST TIRES OF SMOKE: CNN’s Camerota says she has Russia fatigue.

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TRUMP’S SIX POLICY OPTIONS FOR DEALING WITH NORTH KOREA: My latest NY Observer essay. (bumped)

VERY MUCH RELATED BECAUSE THE OPERATION’S INTEGRAL TO OPTIONS 4 AND 6: Asahi Shibun reports that the U.S. and Japan will test missile defenses deployed in Japan.

The exercise, which could be held as early as August, would continue a series of moves designed to placate a Japanese population worried about increasing military provocations by North Korea in the form of ballistic missile launches.

The Japanese people are fed up with the fat boy.

FASCISM IS FOREVER DESCENDING UPON EUROPE — AND OFTEN LANDS THERE AS WELL: There’s a national debate about left-wing violence taking place…in Germany.