PROGRESS: SpaceX launches satellite to provide Internet to rural Indonesia.

PETER HOTEZ AND HIS MEDIA CHUMS SHOULD BLAME THEMSELVES FOR RFK JR.’S RISE:

Hotez and his media allies appear to believe solely in the echo chamber of cable news, and not the unclean alternative media universe that Rogan dominates. The more RFK is censored — as he has been on YouTube recently — the more traction he will gain and the bigger problem he will become for a DNC establishment already sweating a bit over an unpopular eighty-year-old, part-time president.

That Hotez believes RFK and Joe Rogan are conspiracy theorists, but Joy Reid (on whose show he has appeared) is not, is of itself very telling and political in nature. And it’s here that Hotez undermines his own expertise and shows his agenda is more about peddling the same talking points than about debunking disinformation. Hotez and his media allies only have themselves to blame for the prevailing media environment and RFK’s rise.

Related: Jordan Schachtel: The Real Peter Hotez: $cientism, snake oil, & a lifelong campaign to sell vaccines for parasites.

NARRATIVES DON’T MAINTAIN THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: White House Keeps Pushing Debunked Claim on Assault Weapons Ban.

HMM: Low-dose aspirin associated with anemia in older adults, study says.

OUCH: Meta lost a third of its AI researchers over the last year. Now it’s struggling to keep up.

FINALLY! Anheuser-Busch Says Mulvaney Was A Mistake.

AB CEO Marcel Marcondes accepted the “Creative Marketer of the Year” award at Cannes Lions, an event held in France described as the “Oscars for the adverting industry.” It seemed ironic that Marcondes was getting this award, however, given that his company lost $27 billion in the wake of the Mulvaney ad campaign.

Mr. Marcondes said told Newmax:

“In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers first of all to be very humble. That’s what we’re doing, being very humble, and really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our consumers. Which is to really celebrate and appreciate every consumer that loves our brands — but in a way that can make them be together, not apart,” the marketing exec continued.

Still not seeing an actual apology, either for the can with Mulvaney’s image on it, or for former(?) marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid insulting Bud Light’s customers as being “fratty” and “out of touch.” As Ed Morrissey wrote last month, “This is what happens when corporations take sides in social debates — especially when their executives either don’t know their customer base, don’t like their customer base — or in Heinerscheid’s case, both.”

And by wading into the culture wars, Anheuser-Busch has managed to anger everyone: Minneapolis gay bar drops Anheuser-Busch products ahead of Pride.

LIGHTNING DEAL: 12×56 High Power Monocular Telescope. #CommissionEarned

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Everything’s Legal Until You Get Caught: Teachers Hold Online Meeting About Quietly Training Kids.

YEAH, WELL, THE WHOLE “VIRTUALLY NORMAL” THING FADED AWAY A LONG TIME AGO: Backlash: Support for same-sex relationships drop — among Republicans and Democrats.

Also, of course, the Democrats have been importing voters who are much more socially conservative than the average American. Republicans should greet immigrants at the border with leaflets explaining, in their own languages, that Democrats want to cut of their boys’ penises and their girls’ breasts. It would be fun just for the reaction. But word gets around anyway.

CNN: Licht was trying to resuscitate a corpse.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: ‘How can you identify as a cat when you’re a girl?’

It’s a seemingly innocent question. Certainly, it is one that you might expect a 13-year-old student to ask if one of their fellow students declared that she was, in fact, a cat.

Young children, whatever else they might be, are not cats. Nor unicorns. Nor space aliens, right? However unique we all might be, being grounded in a basic reality is a requirement for life itself. If you believe you are a rock and insist you don’t need food, you are not only wrong but soon to be dead. Feed the person, not the delusion.

Still, in these ideologically charged times, suggesting to one’s classmate that their unique view of the universe is out of sync with, well, the universe is “despicable.” Despicable means “deserving of hatred or contempt.”

Hatred.

That is the lesson that a Church of England teacher at Rye College in East Sussex imparted to her students last week, as she chastised students for not embracing her lesson on Diversity and Inclusion.

Kids always know when the emperor has no clothes, and DEI has by design created untold numbers of petty emperors.

YOU REPORT TO ME, MAYBE: If the President appoints you to a cabinet secretary position, under the Constitution, you must answer to him directly. Unless he delegates that duty to a subordinate, which is typically what happens.

The result is, according to former Office of Personnel Director (OPM) and dynamics of bureaucracy (no, that’s not an oxymoron!) expert Donald Devine, even cabinet secretaries have trouble reaching the Chief Executive. And then we wonder why the executive branch bureaucracy acts like a foreign occupation force when a Republican is in the White House or there is a Republican congressional majority.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked for President Reagan under Devine at OPM.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, JACK: Even Biden’s Staffers Can’t Explain the Nutty Stuff He Says.

BLUE CITY BLUES: The Retreat from San Francisco Continues.

The FT’s article is accompanied by a chart which shows that hotel revenues per room are down slightly over 30 percent (May 2023 versus May 2019) in San Francisco. The only other city on the chart showing a fall is Chicago (down just under five percent). Revenues in Los Angeles are up around 10 percent, slightly ahead of New York City. Declining tourist traffic from China is a part of the story in San Francisco, but, clearly, only a part.

As Tabby Kinder, the writer of the FT’s report notes, in the city’s financial district, some office towers have been changing hands at a quarter of the price at which they were being marketed “three years ago” (presumably that’s a reference to pre-Covid prices). Potential bargain hunters evidently don’t have much confidence in their ability to price in how much further the sell-off has to go. There’s an old adage in financial markets that you shouldn’t try to catch a falling knife (meaning that a sudden decline in a security’s price does not necessarily mean that it’s cheap) and real-estate investors seem to be looking at San Francisco and seeing a lot of falling knives. They may well be right.

San Francisco might comfort themselves with the knowledge that their city still has the highest per capita income in the country (or very close to it), but once upon a time, so did Detroit.

OUT: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. IN: Mayo Clinic professor suspended after saying testosterone improves athletic performance: Doctor’s comments ‘problematic [for] the LGBTQI+ community,’ Mayo Clinic said.

Maybe we shouldn’t give “communities” a veto over science. Or maybe we should quit funding whatever goes on at Mayo, which apparently isn’t science anymore.

IT’S A COMPLICATION: Did Trump Just Convict Himself on Fox News?

BREAKING: Hunter Biden Cops a Plea Deal.

WELL, YES: Fatherhood is under attack on campus.. “These efforts are part of a broader attack on the traditional family, at a time when the American family is already in an advanced state of decay. By cautioning against using gender-specific words for parents, universities are following implicit guidance from the government.”

LET THE WRIST-SLAPPING BEGIN! Hunter Biden charged…breaking…

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: AMC abruptly cancels film documenting journey of detransitioners after backlash.

“No Way Back: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care” shares the stories of five young detransitioners and insight from a dozen medical experts on the “harm” being posed by health care providers pushing transitions.

Producers of the film claim AMC shelved screenings scheduled to begin June 21 after intense pressure from a group called the Queer Trans Project, which did not have access to view the full documentary.

Have they never heard of the Streisand Effect?

OUR AMERICAN-FUNDED HEALTH AND SCIENCE COLLEAGUES AT WORK: Do Wuhan Institute of Virology Scientists Often Fall from the Building’s Roof?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Maybe Someone Should Tell Team Biden That China and Iran Are Bad. “As the Chinese Communist Party has accelerated its rise in the superpower world, the Biden Dems have been looking inward. In their minds, America is threatened by Soccer moms and dads at school board meetings. Or Roman Catholics at Mass.”

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Jimmy Lai may yet outlast Hong Kong’s evil regime.

UM: Moscow bizarrely claims US plans to drop mosquitos with malaria onto Russian troops.

Lieutenant-general Igor Kirillov, head of Vladimir Putin’s Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops, bizarrely said the aim is to infect soldiers so they become ill or even die.

Previously, when Russia has made outlandish claims about the West or Ukraine, it means they plan to do that particular thing themselves.

Lieutenant-general Kirillov said: ‘The flooding of Kherson region planned by the Kyiv regime can complicate the situation, including with regard to arbovirus infections.

‘After a drop in the water level, it is possible to form foci of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, primarily West Nile fever.

‘The high technical level of US preparedness for the use of infected vectors is evidenced by a patent for a drone designed to spread infected mosquitoes in the air.’

Just more classic Russian paranoia, or is Moscow planning to try some kind of biological warfare?

DOES THIS SURPRISE ANYONE ANYMORE? Missionary Held Hostage By Islamic Extremists For Over 6 Years Says FBI Withheld Info, Misled Wife.