OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
Archive for 2025
June 29, 2025
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin launches third New Shepard mission within three months.
This would have been impressive in 2010.
KEEP YOUR PET HEALTHY: Liquid Probiotics for Dogs of All Ages – Probiotics for Cats. #CommissionEarned
MY GRANDMOTHER BELIEVED THIS: Human skin stood up better to the sun before there were sunscreens and parasols.
Note, however, that this analysis excludes cosmetic effects.
THE WIMBLEDON POISONER: Avocado out, peas and vegan cream in as Wimbledon goes green.
Crushed peas will replace avocado at food outlets at Wimbledon this year as the All England Club bids to become more sustainable.
Smoked salmon that originates from fish farms has also been declared off the menu, with British trout taking its place.
Avocado has long been a favourite choice for Wimbledon spectators but there have been concerns over the environmental impact of growing them in vast quantities, so crushed — but not mushy — British-grown peas will take their place in dishes such as feta and avocado on toast.
The gardener Alan Titchmarsh, a regular in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, will be delighted — he wrote a letter to The Times in March saying avocados should be treated “like foie gras” and added: “don’t eat them”. He wrote they are “grown where the rainforest has been felled at an alarming rate to accommodate them [and] need huge and often scarce supplies of water” before being shipped 5,000 miles or more.
Related: Old and busted: Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood.”
The new silliness in Old Blighty? How avocados became a blood-soaked fruit – and cursed a generation.
(Classical reference in headline.)
TIME FLIES: Two years ago today, the Supreme Court decided, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, that race discrimination really is illegal. There is still work to do in the area of college admissions: Step 1. Step 2. I’ve got a couple of other steps in mind too, but they will need to be kept under wraps for a while.
TO BOLDLY GO WHERE GRETA HAS GONE BEFORE: William Shatner Says Captain Kirk Would Be ‘Appalled’ At Pace of Climate Change.
Captain James T. Kirk would be appalled at the rapid acceleration of climate change on Earth, says William Shatner, the Montreal-born actor who played the head of the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” franchise for decades.
“I think he would probably be as appalled as I am,” Shatner said during a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles.
The actor said he could imagine Kirk “skywriting” a message to his fellow Earthlings, urging them to take action.
“Education, education, read everything,” Shatner said. “Everybody should acquaint themselves with the problem, and make a decision.”
But if Shatner is a true believer in the religion of climate change, then he made a decision to ignore it completely when he went up in one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets in 2021: Billionaires’ Single Space Flight Produces a Lifetime’s Worth of Carbon Footprint — Report.
Speaking of the carbon footprint of Bezos and his acolytes: Elites who lecture you about climate change took 90 private jets (or super-yachts) to Jeff Bezos’ wedding.
To coin a couple of Insta-phrases, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when those who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. In the meantime, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.
DANIEL GREENFIELD: Only 5% of New Yorkers Voted for Mamdani.
Who are those 5%? They aren’t New Yorkers because polls showed us Mamdani performing poorly with anyone over 50, with African-American, Latino and working class white voters. What’s left? White hipsters and Muslim immigrants.
Mamdani’s base isn’t New Yorkers, it’s a coalition of white hipsters and Muslim immigrants, most of them weren’t even in the city during 9/11, like Mamdani, have no roots in the city, and no connection to its history. The quintessential New Yorker, as envisioned by a thousand Hollywood movies, TV shows and Broadway musicals, still exists, but is harder to find than ever. The city of those movies and shows can be glimpsed as a palimpsest under layers of chain stores, illegal migrants, social justice projects and vegan eateries before it vanishes again in the rain.
What happened to New York is what happened to legendary cities across the country and around the world, from Philly to London, which is that the revival of the 90s was the final act in driving out its working class and middle class population. Rents soared until the only young people who could afford to live there were white hipsters and third world immigrants.
And their politics became based on coalitions between the hipsters and the new arrivals. In New York City, as in London, it produced a Jihadist coalition that paved the way for a Muslim mayor.
Even by 9/11, New York City already wasn’t ‘that city’. The Giuliani revolution that swept out bums and criminals was a victim of its own success. Much of the middle class had already left which was why so many of the victims of 9/11 were commuters. Those who didn’t were soon completely priced out. The working class, the Irish, Jewish and Italian men and women who appear as comic characters in countless shows, were soon priced out of everything except projects. Even as the world mourned for New York, the New Yorkers were disappearing.
Hence the same ranked choice voting primary that foisted Bill de Blasio upon the city in 2013.
I ALWAYS KINDA WANTED A ROLLS ROYCE PICKUP LIKE TRAVIS MCGEE: Bentley Would Build You a Pickup Truck If You Asked, Exec Says.
NUCLEAR WINTOUR WINDS DOWN: There will never be another Anna Wintour at Vogue. She’s made sure of it.
In the midst of Condé Nast’s descent into the banal, the most frequently asked question asked about Wintour’s embattled tenure has been “why is she still bothering?” One theory is that she wanted to surpass Edna Woolman Chase’s 37 year tenure as US editor-in-chief. In the event she has only equalled it.
Or perhaps she felt she had some “reputational” issues to finesse. In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, demonstrators with placards massed outside Wintour’s picturesque red brick downtown townhouse to protest against what they saw as Condé Nast’s (and her) long history of elitism and racism.
The case for the prosecution against Wintour has been going on since she was first appointed editor of the then genteel and cosy British Vogue in 1988. Her brusque manner, Stakhanovite work ethic and immunity to the cold (she wore micro minis throughout her two pregnancies there) inspired the moniker “Nuclear Wintour”.
Many of the ideals, values and people she has championed in her magazine – fur, P Diddy, Mike Tyson, more fur, Kanye West, Harvey Weinstein, John Galliano and Asma al-Assad – seem tone deaf, especially viewed with hindsight. There are numerous witnesses to her rudeness. You don’t inspire a culture defining book and a film (The Devil Wears Prada) by being bland.
* * * * * * * *
Wintour publicly apologised for her alleged sins after the BLM debacle, vowing to right the wrongs. Condé Nast is now more inclusive of skin colour and (a little more) inclusive of body type. On an unforgivable downside, in its general confusion about what it’s meant to be (you’d have thought the clue was in the name), Vogue, particularly online and on social media, has become a fetid hotbed of blatantly uninformed, anti-Israel propaganda, identity politics and keffiyehs. I know of at least one Jewish digital content editor who left a job she initially loved under Wintour because the perceived attitude of her team, which she felt powerless to challenge, became unbearable. Other Jewish editors still in the company are deeply unhappy – feeling unheard and unsupported by the powers that be.
What does this have to do with Wintour? It’s happening under her watch. For the past decade, she has been ever more promoted within the company until her purview reaches just about every nook and cranny. “Anna knows what’s on every page,” one European director of editorial content told me.
As with Graydon Carter stepping down as maximum editor of sister Condé Nast publication Vanity Fair, Wintour retiring as editor in chief (though remaining as “chief content office for Condé Nast and global editorial director for Vogue”) is yet another example of what Joe Nocera recently dubbed “The Luxurious Death Rattle of the Great American Magazine.”
AS HILLEL SAID, IF YOU REWARD CRUELTY WITH KINDNESS, WITH WHAT WILL YOU REWARD KINDNESS?
If you spare the wolf, you sacrifice the sheep.
Sparing the wolf is shallow, not deep, empathy. https://t.co/d15e8bi8Uy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2025
READER FAVORITE: 2×3 Washable Area Rug – Soft, Non-Slip Entrance Rug. #CommissionEarned
THE NEW YORK TIMES IS WORKING OVERTIME TO MAINSTREAM MAMDANI:
As Noam Blum of Tablet tweets, “The weirdest part about this piece is that it has nothing to do with the title. The piece is not about how Jews love Mamdani, nor does it offer any examples of Jews who love Mamdani. I’m legitimately confused by the choice of this title for anything other than rage baiting.” Which brings us to this banger of a headline, which ran on Tuesday:
We really do need a new definition of antisemitism apparently!
With Sharpton. Are they touring Crown Heights next? https://t.co/HpRiyv5PgM
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 28, 2025
UPDATE: To circle back to Michelle Goldberg’s headline atop this post:
CLEAN YOUR KEYBOARD: Solareye Compressed Air Duster – 180000RPM Electric Air Duster. #CommissionEarned
ROGER KIMBALL: Minuting the minutiae.
For most mortals, most of the time, the deliberations and periodic eructations of the Supreme Court can seem like so many bulletins from the Office of Circumlocution.
Every now and then, however, the Court’s declarations mesmerize the public’s attention.
So it was on Friday, June 27, the last day of the Court’s term. Four cases were up for its scrutiny. One case, a congressional redistricting case in Louisiana, was pushed off to the fall term. (Often described as a “voting rights case,” the real issue is whether redrawing the map to create black-majority districts is permissible.)
Many Americans were happy about the 6–3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that parents in Maryland may opt to keep their children out of primary-school classes that feature “LGBTQ+” storybooks.
The same people who applauded that decision were happy about the 6–3 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld a Texas law requiring age verification to protect minors from accessing porn sites on the internet.
But the case that really galvanized the public was Trump v. Casa, in which the Court finally began to deal with the outrageous spectacle, unknown until the twentieth century, of district court judges issuing universal injunctions or restraining orders in order to stymie executive—i.e., presidential—actions that they dislike.
Read the whole thing.
WELL, THE WHOLE ARGUMENT IS THAT FLUORIDE DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD, RIGHT? RFK Jr. says there may be ‘more cavities’ under fluoride bans: ‘It’s a balance.’
And let me just point out that dentists were morons to push so hard for water fluoridation, when filling cavities was their core business.
HAMAS CHIEF ‘WHO MASTERMINDED OCTOBER 7 ATTACK’ IS KILLED BY ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE, IDF SAY:
The Hamas chief allegedly behind the attacks on October 7 has been killed by an Israeli airstrike, according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
In a post on X on Saturday, the IDF reported it ‘eliminated’ Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa in a targeted airstrike on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza on Friday.
Describing him as both ‘one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing’ and Hamas itself, it said: ‘Issa led Hamas’ force build-up, training, and planned the October 7 massacre.’
It continued: ‘As Head of Combat Support, he advanced aerial & naval attacks against Israelis.’
The attacks on October 7, 2023, saw thousands of Hamas fighters storm into southern Israel where they killed 1,320 Israelis and took a further 251 hostage.
The IDF claims Al-Issa ‘played a significant role in the planning and execution’ of the attack as well as serving as Head of the Training Headquarters.
The post also suggests he is ‘one of the last remaining senior Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip’ and ‘a key source of knowledge’.
‘The IDF & ISA will continue to locate and eliminate all terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre,’ they added.
Curiously, the IDF causing the mastermind behind the slaughter of music festival attendees to assume room temperature won’t make the attendees and headliners of Glastonbury very happy, or the likely future mayor of New York:
Here’s Zohran Mamdani being given three opportunities to condemn the antisemitic battle cry “Globalize the Intifada” and refusing to do so each time.
He won’t condemn it because he’s led marches galvanized by it.
This is who he is.pic.twitter.com/PztZpmHdKe
— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) June 29, 2025
I’M SORRY, DAVE, I CAN’T FIX THAT: Hey Siri, fix my spacecraft! A virtual assistant could help astronauts handle unexpected space mission issues.
DEVELOPING: Thom Tillis Announces He’s Not Running for Reelection:
BREAKING
In a statement, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis announces he’s not running for re-election.
“…As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since…
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 29, 2025
Politico yesterday: Trump threatens Tillis with primary challenge.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: AI tool detects 9 types of dementia from a single brain scan.
RICH LOWRY: Blast ‘em: Get rid of the blocky brutalist buildings that blight our nation’s capital.
[T]he FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the UK building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.
The moves are in keeping with the spirit of President Donald Trump’s executive order stipulating that federal buildings should “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”
That EO should be considered common sense, but has several trigger words for defenders of the architectural status quo, including “traditional,” “classical,” and perhaps foremost of all, “beautify.”
In response, the American Institute of Architects expressed its “strong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities.”
According to The Nation magazine, Trump’s initiative is part of an agenda to “to make historical architecture on the whole inextricable from Eurocentric white supremacy.”
In short, it’s an unforgivable offense to want a government building to look nice.
Brutalism, with its blocky, minimalist structures made of poured concrete, was a creation of a post-war Europe that wanted to embrace the fresh and new and to economize on rebuilding.
Although the name “brutalism” perfectly captures the aesthetic effect, it actually comes from the French for raw concrete, béton brut.
Amazing – the far-left Nation magazine’s hatred of Trump has them defending the design concepts of a prominent member of Vichy France: Le Corbusier was ‘militant fascist’, two new books on French architect claim.
