OPEN THREAD: Have fun, kids!

READER BOOK PLUG: Now out from Roger von Oech: A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative. Revised and updated and just out.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA, Boeing delay Starliner astronaut landing to June 26 amid thruster issues.

DOUBTFUL: Can Nearby Supernova Explosions Threaten Life on Earth?

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers Uncover Key to Heart Regeneration After Heart Attacks.

FUNNY, WHEN PEOPLE PREDICTED THIS AS A CONSEQUENCE OF OPEN IMMIGRATION THEY WERE CALLED BIGOTS: You Won’t Be Surprised to Learn What Group Is Responsible for Over 3/4 of Rapes in Paris.

EVERYTHING IS DANGEROUS: Summer fruit injuries are real. Here’s how to prevent and treat avocado hand, watermelon wounds and lime burns.

THE EV BUBBLE DEFLATES: What’s Next for EVs as Market Turns Murky?

THE POLICE AREN’T THERE TO PROTECT CITIZENS FROM CRIMINALS, THEY’RE THERE TO PROTECT CRIMINALS FROM CITIZENS: Supporting Criminals? Chicago Tribune Frets Over Citizens Defending Themselves.

If police won’t defend citizens, citizens will.

CHANGE: One Million Gun Sales for 58 Months Straight.

Well, okay, it’s not much of a change.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to build a mosquito kill bucket: Setting up a larva trap at home is an effective mosquito control method.

I REMEMBER WHEN . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Existing high blood pressure drugs may prevent epilepsy, study finds.

THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Fisker is out of cash, not making cars, and filing for bankruptcy.

WE’VE ONLY GOT A FEW MONTHS UNTIL THE ELECTION: Experts: Nation needs to prepare for next pandemic, even if it’s not bird flu.

WOEING: Paul Cassell: The Possible Penalties for Boeing’s Crime of Concealing 737 MAX Safety Issues. My letter to the Justice Department lays out the possibilities, including a possible fine of $24,780,000,000.

SCIENCE!

Happy 6 year anniversary to Greta Thunberg saying we'd all be dead in 5 years. pic.twitter.com/B9mPztL5qK

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 18, 2024

Well, it’s too late now. No point worrying anymore. Maybe that’s why Chuck Schumer broke out the gas grill?

ALL THE OLD MOVIES WARNED US: Edward Snowden Says OpenAI Just Performed a “Calculated Betrayal of the Rights of Every Person on Earth.”

Plus: “‘I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance,’ Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, ‘so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it.'”

The governments of the West have, for some reason, been mobilizing for war against their own populations for a while. What do you think that reason is?

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: RFK Jr. is right — paper ballots will restore faith in our elections.

WEATHER HYPE: How a Heat Dome Creates Dangerous, Record-Breaking Temperatures. Basically, the story is about summer temperatures in the nineties:

A heat dome’s high temperatures are uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous to human health. A dome over the Pacific Northwest in 2021 caused an estimated 650 heat-related deaths in the U.S. and Canada. “There is a lot of heat stress on people, on animals, and a lot of potentially dangerous situations,” Oravec said.

Chicago broke its daily record temperature on Monday, hitting 97 degrees Fahrenheit, while forecasters said Pittsburgh is expected to hit three straight days of temperatures of 95 degrees beginning Wednesday. Hartford, Conn., is set to tie record temperatures of 95 Wednesday and 97 on Thursday, while Albany, N.Y., is expected to hit a record high of 97 degrees on Wednesday.

Although New York City isn’t expected to break any records this week, temperatures will be in the low- to mid-90s. The heat index, which is a combination of heat and humidity, could reach up to 105 degrees in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to the National Weather Service’s New York office.

Well, okay then, it’ll be hot. In the summer. Stop the presses.

“EDUCATORS” SPREADING HATE-FILLED LIES: Teachers union head: ‘Conservatives don’t even want black children to be able to read.’

DOMESTIC TERRORISM: TERROR?: Anonymous anti-Israel group ‘torched large portions’ of UC Berkeley construction site.

JEFFREY CARTER: Niall Ferguson Is Right. (So Is Mike Solana). “The problem isn’t Americans or America, it’s the elites that are running America.”

WHY IS THE NYT SO ANTI-SCIENCE? NYT Tries to Take Down Georgetown Prof Who Revealed Extent of Defensive Gun Uses.

YEAH, THEY’VE BEEN WORKING ON BUILDING UP THAT EXCUSE FOR A WHILE: Matt Taibbi: We Called It: Karine Jean-Pierre Blames AI “Deepfakes” for Joe Biden’s Real Infirmity. “Last week, Racket showed an intelligence-crafted game blaming AI for suggesting ‘one of the candidates may have dementia.’ Yesterday, Biden spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre played that exact card”

Lol. One of the candidates. Like we don’t know which one.

BTW, Democrats are leaning hard on the “convicted felon” line about Trump, but the only reason there aren’t two of those in this race is that “one of the candidates” was determined to be mentally unsuitable to stand trial. That’s no deepfake.

PLAY STUPID GAMES, WIN STUPID PRIZES: Harvard’s ‘Abysmal’ Year Continues.

All of this might have been enough to convince the people who run Harvard that they needed to make some changes, and, in fairness, they have made a few small ones. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences did away with mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring but replaced them with a service statement that could easily be used to weed out candidates on the same grounds. And it partially adopted institutional neutrality, leaving out a key and currently essential part: that political divestment to get the university to take sides is off the table—National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood saw this coming.

But, despite these small steps, or even because of how small they were, it was reasonable to remain skeptical about whether Harvard had really understood the message. Professor and Dean of Social Science Lawrence D. Bobo has made it eminently clear that it did not get through to him.

Even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. Obviously Harvard hasn’t felt enough pain yet.