GEORGE KORDA: Here’s what separation of church and state actually means and it does not apply to faith.

Archived version is here in case the above link doesn’t work.

THEY’VE KIND OF RUINED THEM: No One Wants a New Car Now. Here’s Why. Why are so many Americans forgoing new vehicles? Used cars are not just a better bargain, they retain designs and features more coveted than their high-tech replacements.

They’re bossy, they’ve subsituted touchscreens for knobs even though touchscreens are distracting and less safe because they’re cheaper, and most people don’t want the cockpit of their car to look like a home theater. The Insta-Wife hates screens in the car and bought a year-old Audi loaner from the dealer last year because the new cars had huge screens that couldn’t be turned off, while the older model had a small screen with an off switch. And I was writing about this phenomenon decades ago.

UPDATE: Second link was wrong before; fixed now. Sorry!

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Killer bear: Woman’s death inside her home marks California’s first fatal black bear attack. Probably shouldn’t have chosen the bear . . .

This should end the “controversy” over killing a bear in your living room, but it won’t, because the controversy comes from morons.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The first case of a ‘highly contagious’ ringworm infection spread through sex has arrived in the US, researchers say.

MORE PLEASE: Three Incidents of Chicago CCW Holders Shooting Back This Past Weekend.

FIRST THE MURDER HORNET LETDOWN, NOW THIS DISAPPOINTMENT: No, ‘flying’ venomous spiders are not coming for you this summer.

CHANGE: U.S., Germany double down on space exploration. “Future collaborations include gravity studies, information sharing on Earth-surface changes and national threat assessments regarding possible hostile uses of space.”

THAT’S DISAPPOINTINGLY LOW: Half of people would reveal STD to new sex partner.

AND THEY THOUGHT ELON WAS RETRO WITH STAINLESS STEEL SPACESHIPS: Wooden Satellites.

STARSHIP VS. STARLINER: Jim Meigs: Can Boeing Catch Up with SpaceX? The aerospace giant’s long-delayed Starliner finally flies astronauts, while Elon Musk’s enterprise pushes into the next frontier. The new space race is on. “The mission Starliner is finally conducting—carrying astronauts to the ISS—is one that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been doing routinely since 2020. Now, Musk’s team is working on a much bigger breakthrough in space travel.”

Related thoughts here. Personally, I’d be happy to see SpaceX face real competition. I think even Elon might feel that way. But at present if it comes from anyone it’s probably going to be from the Chinese.

NAYIB BUKELE, PHILOSOPHER KING? “He is, without a doubt, the most popular democratically elected leader in the world. . . . In his first five years as president, Bukele has transformed El Salvador. The country that was once the most dangerous in the world, overrun by criminal gangs such as MS-13, now has among the lowest murder rates in the world. The turnaround has been so profound that Salvadorans who left the country to live abroad now want to return home.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Gen Z goes to work instead of college – ‘you can make really good money.’

If only there had been some sort of warning.

THEIR CONCERN WITH FREE SPEECH IS HIGHLY SELECTIVE: FBI defends ‘First Amendment rights’ of LA student group whose fundraising poster features terrorist logo.

THEY’RE ACTUALLY AGAINST OUR DEMOCRACY, NOT DEFENDING IT: The Left’s Attack on the Secret Ballot and on Same Day voting.

KINDA LATE, BUT OKAY: ‘Let’s Declare War to Terror’: German Chancellor Vows Deportations for Terrorists, Supporters After Stabbing.

Related: Israel Rescues 4 Hostages.

IT’S SKED FOR 10:30 EDT THIS MORNING: Virgin Galactic launching final commercial spaceflight on VSS Unity spaceplane today.

MEANWHILE, IN A PART OF AMERICA THAT STILL WORKS:

Falcon 9 lands for the 300th time pic.twitter.com/syimP1jcxl

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 8, 2024

Related:

With the success of Starship, it’s important to realize how important and counter-intuitive it was for @elonmusk to overcome his team’s resistance and use stainless steel. https://t.co/XesQwYgGIK pic.twitter.com/fmTt2Dkfbl

— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) June 7, 2024

GOOD: Spain’s anti-Israel virtue signaling backfires. “Spain, though, is sticking with its consulate in Jerusalem for now, even though Israel said the consulate will not be able to provide resources to Palestinians. Spanish media is reporting that this is because Spanish diplomats in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv don’t want to live or work in Palestinian territory, both because of the lesser quality of life and because of concerns about their own safety. Maybe, just maybe, rewarding terrorists with a country so you could condemn the world’s only Jewish state was a poorly thought-out plan in the first place.”

HOLLYWOOD:

Female Star Wars showrunners putting a crackling campfire in space is the kind of thing that happens when you get rid of mansplaining pic.twitter.com/rPASr1TeQh

— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) June 6, 2024

STATISTICS: ‘Record’ Temperatures: a Statistical Certainty.

THE ENEMY WITHIN: Islamists Keep Stabbing People. Why Aren’t We Talking About It? “And herein does Savodnik answer his own question. The ‘right thinkers,’ ie, progressive elites in Europe and in the US, do not believe the West is worth saving. They welcome those who will contribute to their nihilistic project of tearing down Western civilization in the suicidal effort to atone for its sins while allowing far more brutal regimes to seize or emerge in Western spaces.”

Our society is run by fools, and morons, and people who displace their — justifiable — self-hatred onto the society that they run.

HMM: The Cultural Roots of our Demographic Ennui.

At times, it may feel like we’re living in P. D. James’s The Children of Men, but the Right Honorable Baroness might have gotten one thing wrong. Her story of a global epidemic of infertility finds the world caught in paroxysms of terrorism, xenophobia, and violent authoritarianism. But the soundtrack of a world without a future may turn out to be less the explosion of a pipe bomb in downtown London than the cool hiss of a suicide pod.

The rest of this century will feature every major nation seeking to manage population decline—a recipe for aversion to wasting precious warm bodies on the field of battle. Revolution and violence have a certain appeal to the young and dispossessed, but an older society with money in the bank has more to lose. Aging comfortably, rather than exerting power, will be the order of the day. And the back half of the twenty-first century may resemble less a rage against the dying of the light than an emotionless flip of the switch.

Related: Free Will, Children, and the Great Filter: Thoughts on the Population Implosion.

Plus: ‘The Population Bomb’ was wrong: The world now struggling to make more babies.

OPEN THREAD: When it’s all over, we’ll make some calls from my car.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chang’e 6 probe’s far-side moon samples enter return-to-Earth module in lunar orbit, China says.

INCONCEIVABLE! This May Shock You But It Appears As If the Trump Trial Might Have Been #Rigged by Ringers Who Came Into the Jury Box Already Determined to Convict.