SAD: I’m Not Scared to Reenter Society. I’m Just Not Sure I Want To. “I’ve always loved weekends and summers, those officially sanctioned respites from productivity. This year was like one long Sunday afternoon: society suspended, life on hiatus. It felt like being offstage, or hanging out in the kitchen at a party. My circadian cycle ran amok; I stayed up long after midnight, when the world wasn’t watching, and tried to sleep through the mornings, when I used to write. I liked listening to the warm, amniotic thrum of the dishwasher, like the sound of the car engine when you were a kid, nodding off in the back seat, knowing the grownups would get you safely home. I was grateful for debilitating blizzards and cold snaps, when no sane person would venture outdoors. Recently it was oppressively nice out, 75 and sunny, and I never left my apartment. I’ve come to love the darkness, snug in my cocoon.”

Virtue-signaling for the proudly despondent.

3:30PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.

ALL THE FAKE NEWS FIT TO PRINT: Hans Bader: New York Times spreads propaganda from terrorist group Hamas.

“TOLD YOU:” Rand Paul gives 2-word response to Fauci’s unearthed emails.

SPACE: Virgin Galactic announces another human-tended science flight. “We’re going to finish our test flight program this year.”

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OVER THE TARGET WHEN YOU START RECEIVING FLAK: “Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC, said he received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN he thought the virus likely escaped from a lab. ‘I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science,’ he said.”

And speaking of death threats: Chinese State Media Warns of Nuclear War with US In Wake of Covid-Origins Investigation.

Flashback from November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.

VOX BEING VOX: Zach Beauchamp credulously quotes a far-left source: “Palestinian leaders have condemned antisemitism publicly and repeatedly.”

The Palestinians have two actual, elected (albeit in 2006) governments, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is literally a genocidal antisemitic organization. The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is a long-time Holocaust denier, who more lately focuses on denying Jewish history in Jerusalem. The most popular Palestinian leader currently out of power, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli jail for directing several terrorist murders of Israeli civilians–after Israel had offered the Palestinians independence in 2000. The Palestinian public in the Territories is among the most antisemitic in the world. The idea that the tie between antisemitism and Palestinian nationalism has been invented by Jewish organizations to “reinforce lurking anxieties that advocacy for Palestinian rights is inherently antisemitic” is maybe, along with the claim that Palestinian leaders routinely condemn antisemitism, perhaps the most gaslighty thing I’ve read all year. Beauchamp reports it, though, without comment. Of course, Beauchamp also once thought there was a bridge between the West Bank and Gaza.

Even if we are extremely generous, and assume that the source only meant prominent American Palestinians, the claim is still extremely dubious, and it’s also very unlikely that, say, Rashida Tlaib has more influence on pro-Palestinian rhetoric and actions than the actual Palestinian leadership, especially given that the perpetrators of recent antisemitic violence seem primarily to be immigrants.

BREAKING: Fauci Sent Panicked Gain-of-Function E-mails to Staff in Early COVID Days.

RAPID PROGRESS: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed.

Well, this is the 21st Century, you know.

CHANGE: COVID-19 cases hit lowest point in U.S. since pandemic began. “Nearly every week for the past 56 weeks, Axios has tracked the change — more often than not, the increase — in new COVID-19 infections. Those case counts are now so low, the virus is so well contained, that this will be our final weekly map.”

BOMBSHELL: U.S. State Department Tried to Block Investigation of Lab Leak at Wuhan.

GOOD: After 15 years, deep brain stimulation still effective in people with Parkinson’s.

SPACEX LAUNCHES new Dragon Cargo mission.

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Konrad Miller teaches distillation chemistry at UC Davis — you may recall I linked his online lectures a while back — and now he’s got a textbook coming out: Unit Operations in Winery, Brewery, and Distillery Design.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: New York Taxpayers Paying Andrew Cuomo’s $2.5 Million Legal Fees For Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Pandemic Probe.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IN LEGAL FEUD WITH SCRAPPY NEW YORK UPSTART: Lawyered-up Babylon Bee accuses New York Times of defamation, demands retraction.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS . . . SINCE 1989: NASA will launch first U.S. missions to Venus since 1989.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Donald McNeil described Americans as ‘selfish pigs’ in email to Fauci. The then-New York Times science writer compared us unfavorably to the average Chinese who ‘behaved incredibly heroically.’

(Classical reference in headline.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This makes me feel somewhat less bad about his later-cancellation at the hands of woke newsroom garbage babies.

NICE: This Black Father and His Adorable Kid Explain the True Threat of Critical Race Theory.

MAKE IT A SUMMER OF FREEDOM NO MATTER WHAT SLOW JOE SAYS: Joe Biden calls for ‘summer of freedom’ in June vaccination push.

COLORADO: Boulder shooting victim’s husband wants audit of non-profits collecting funds. “Mackenzie started a group called Stand Up Bolder that advocates for the state to audit non-profits, create a specific fund for victims and appoint a special administrator to determine how to expeditiously and properly distribute the money.”

APPARENTLY THE NFL HAS BEEN VERY BUSY ENGAGING IN ‘HANDS DOWN THE SINGLE MOST EGREGIOUS CASE OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY:’

Why, it’s as if the institutional left and the alt-right are simply mirror images of each other:

FLASHBACK: Angelo Codevilla: Scamocracy in America. “At its core, the ruling class politics of Covid-19 is now no more about public health than environmentalism is about the environment, or Feminism is about doing good to women, or BLM is about saving black lives, or the education establishment is about cognition, or the national security establishment is about public safety. None of these causes are about their purported objective than communism was about equality or the proletariat. Lenin made clear in ‘What Is To Be Done?’ (1902) that the revolution is all about power for ‘the vanguard of the proletariat.’ The Party. Like communism, each of today’s revolutionary movements is based on its own lie, and all are all scams—the purpose of which is to transfer ever more power to the ruling class.”