Coincidence? I think not.

Read it.

Here’s what struck me: “The Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb….” Nothing says ‘Dutch’ like the name ‘Ahmed Aboutaleb’.

Read it.

More than 650,000 people have fled California since Gavin Newsom took office, many returning to the Dust Bowl homelands their forebears abandoned for the coast. The Democratic governor has called reports of an exodus “greatly exaggerated,” though inaccurate may be the better word: only 600,000 Jews fled Egypt. More than 200 companies ditched California in his first thirty months in office and, much like Newsom’s ex-wife, they’re heading for Trump country. Ever the optimist, Newsom says the solution to population depletion is to guarantee abortion up to the moment of birth. He’s even offered tax breaks to companies that relocate from pro-life states.

Newsom’s efforts are doomed to fail, according to Stephen Soukup, a veteran financial analyst and publisher of The Political Forum. “There’s no way anyone is going to pack up and move to California where the business climate is so hostile,” he says. “Aside from Planned Parenthood, no one is saying, ‘abortion is the key to my business.’” If only Newsom had picked up a copy of Soukup’s book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, he’d have known Big Business would preempt him.

Read it.

In the face of rampant violence by huge gangs of heavily armed bandits, one state governor has ordered the mass issuance of gun permits to citizens desperate for a chance to protect themselves.

For over a decade, Nigerians living in the country’s northwestern states have endured an endless plague of looting, kidnapping and murder at the hands of gangs and ethnic militias, which Nigerians call bandits. The violence has taken its steepest toll on the states of Zamfara and Kaduna.

Russia To Give Belarus Nuclear-Capable Iskander-M Missiles

Russia in historic foreign debt default, reports suggest (BBC)

US to announce purchase of medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile defense system for Ukraine (CNN)

John Mearsheimer’s Ukraine Crystal Ball

Russia Defaults on Foreign Debt for First Time Since 1918

Russia ‘Defaults On Foreign Debt’ For First Time Since Bolshevik Revolution Amid Western Sanctions

Read it.

The war in Ukraine has upset the global food market, and the surprising reason is not that Ukrainian wheat isn’t being harvested, but rather that it can’t leave the country. With Russia blockading sea ports, the only way out for Ukrainian grain is by train. And this exposes the long-hidden patchwork of railway tracks and train standards: trains can’t simply cross the border from Ukraine to Poland on their way to a sea port because the tracks don’t match.

Even beyond the obvious issues of connecting differently sized physical railway tracks — the track gauge — there are different signaling systems, different voltages for electrical trains, different loading and structural gauges, and so on. In Europe today, the political history of the past few hundred years can still be traced back using its railroads, with some parts of the European Union still on 1,520 mm Soviet-standard gauge, rather than the 1,435 mm Standard Gauge, which is also known as Stephenson Gauge, European Gauge, etc.

Tyler Cowen.

“Once-and-for-allism” occurs when people decide that they wish to stop worrying about an issue at the margin. They might either dismiss the issue, or they might blow up its importance but regard the issue as hopeless and undeserving of further consideration. Either way, they seek to avoid the hovering sense of “I’ve still got to devote time and energy to figuring this out.” They prefer “I am now done with this issue, once and for all!” Thus the name of the syndrome.

I see once-and-for-allism with so many issues, but one recent example would be the forthcoming path of Covid and Long Covid. Most people just don’t want to think about it any more, and so they settle on something (“it’s just a cold!” or “it will bankrupt the nation!”) rather than having to do lots of intellectual revisions based on the stream of new data.

Read it.

EU functionaries, especially diplomats, are a privileged caste that already enjoys substantial perks at the expense of the lumpenproletariat they supposedly represent. Now those pampered apparatchiks are going to be equipped to face the rigors of their time in Manhattan from a cozy little pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side.

Read it.

Last year, the Canadian tritium fueled an experiment at JET showing fusion research is approaching an important threshold: producing more energy than goes into the reactions. By getting to one-third of this breakeven point, JET offered reassurance that ITER, a similar reactor twice the size of JET under construction in France, will bust past breakeven when it begins deuterium and tritium (D-T) burns sometime next decade. “What we found matches predictions,” says Fernanda Rimini, JET’s plasma operations expert.

But that achievement could be a Pyrrhic victory, fusion scientists are realizing. ITER is expected to consume most of the world’s tritium, leaving little for reactors that come after.

Putin is squeezing gas supplies. And Europe is getting seriously worried about a total shutdown (CNBC)

Ukrainians will never accept another fake peace with Putin

Germany Fears Russia Could Shut Nord Stream 1 Within Weeks  Be careful what you wish for.

Russia’s Rebranded McDonald’s Sold 120,000 Burgers On Opening Day

Russia To Transfer Nuclear-Capable Missiles To Belarus “Within Months”: Putin  Let’s keep poking that bear! What could possibly go wrong?

Read it.

Allopathic psychiatry is worse than a harmless cargo cult, because palliative prescriptions worsen the ‘mental deterioration’ the doctors think they’re preventing.

Freeberg has a contribution to make.

We’re surrounded on all sides by people who are working awfully hard to maintain a fantasy that the two sides, conservative and liberal, maintain similarities with each other. That they both have goals, and some maintain that the goals are similar although the methods are different. That each unseemly thought held by one about the other, is neatly reciprocated, with equal justification. A tat for every tit and an equal and opposite reaction for every action.

They must have scrambled around like mad, that weekend when Sen. Ted Kennedy sunk that poor woman in his car, for a Republican senator who did exactly the same thing.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering.

Read it.

Should it be the norm for a 6-year-old to spend eight hours away from his or her mother? Should the norm be for parents to have no idea what their children are being taught? Should the norm be considering a child smart based on how they compare with their peers? The 14 featured families are driven to challenge these norms and more through their homeschooling lifestyles.

The parents addressed common concerns brought up by non-homeschoolers, such as whether homeschooled children would be socialized or whether the parents themselves are qualified to teach their own children.

Read it.

A hipster take. I wouldn’t want to live next door to this guy, but hey, it takes all kinds.

Read it.

Several months ago, Credit Suisse strategist and former NY Fed “liquidity plumber” Zoltan Pozsar predicted that as a result of Russian commodity exports being shunned by western nations and/or distributors while greeted by eastern nations (such as India and China) would would find delight in the 30% discount to spot on Russian oil, shipping costs would soar as a result of the challenging – and expensive – realignment of global supply chains which would see legacy tanker flows be scrapped only to be resurrected in the form of much more expensive alternatives.

Well, Pozsar was right again because four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the resulting dislocation of global fuel markets has lead to a surge in shipping costs of products such as diesel by sea.

On the other hand, those of us who own shipping stocks (ZIM, SBLK, GOGL) are making out like bandits.

Read it.

In French, the word for potato is pomme de terre. This literally translates to apple of the earth. By this logic, potatoes are the lowest-hanging fruit of all.

More seriously: We keep getting more and more interested in the all-potato diet. This is a diet where you eat nothing but potatoes (and sometimes a bit of seasoning) for a few weeks to a few months. It sounds like a dumb gimmick that could never work, but there are a surprising number of people out there saying that they tried it, it worked for them, and they kept the weight off for months or even years after.

Two million (dead) Irishmen can’t be wrong. (Just kidding….)

Dead cow and spuds are the basis of all true civilization. I believe that.

Read it.

A totaled Tesla Model S burst into flames in a Sacramento junkyard earlier this month, causing a fire that took “a significant amount of time, water, and thinking outside the box to extinguish,” firefighters said.

The vehicle was involved in a comparably unexplosive accident that sent it to the junkyard three weeks ago – it’s unclear what caused the Tesla to explode nearly a month after being taken off the road. Like other electric vehicle fires, it was very difficult to extinguish.

Read it.

My trauma research team quickly trained health professionals to evaluate and, if needed, treat the women. We monitored them through their pregnancies and beyond. When the babies were born, they were smaller than usual—the first sign that the trauma of the World Trade Center attack had reached the womb. Nine months later we examined 38 women and their infants when they came in for a wellness visit. Psychological evaluations revealed that many of the mothers had developed PTSD. And those with PTSD had unusually low levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol, a feature that researchers were coming to associate with the disorder.

Surprisingly and disturbingly, the saliva of the nine-month-old babies of the women with PTSD also showed low cortisol. The effect was most prominent in babies whose mothers had been in their third trimester on that fateful day. Just a year earlier a team I led had reported low cortisol levels in adult children of Holocaust survivors, but we’d assumed that it had something to do with being raised by parents who were suffering from the long-term emotional consequences of severe trauma. Now it looked like trauma leaves a trace in offspring even before they are born.

When I was young, a common schoolyard threat was ‘I’m going to beat you so bad your grandchildren will have bruises’. So maybe that actually might happen.

Read it.

Recently, several prominent writers have left jobs at national newspapers and magazines to go it alone on Substack or other email subscription services. In 2020, Matt Yglesias left Vox and Glenn Greenwald left the Intercept — both for Substack. That same year, Andrew Sullivan brought the Dish out of retirement and to Substack. Bari Weiss and Charlie Warzel left the New York Times and started a Substack in 2021. Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet, started a newsletter in 2021. Others who have written for a variety of publications — Matt Taibbi, Glenn Lourey, Jesse Singal, Erick Erickson, Freddie DeBoer, Roxanne Gay — have all made Substack their home. And the list goes on.

ZMan lays out some inconvenient truth.

For the longest time, the debate over immigration has been about how both sides can agree on open borders while appearing to disagree. The Left made the spurious claim that America was the result of immigration. If immigration declines, then the country will decline. The Right made the claim that immigrants were natural conservatives and the only way for the Right to compete in the future was to load up on those super-duper conservative immigrants via open borders.

Outside of this immigration two-step, race realist would point out that immigrants tend to support the government party for practical reasons. In the West, the government party is always a few clicks to the left of the people and several giant leaps to the left of its heritage population. In America it means seventy percent of immigrants will vote for the Democrats, regardless of their policies. The cultural inclinations of the immigrants will have no impact on their political activity.

Read it.

Minneapolis has fallen into a deep, deep hole with an undermanned and demoralized police department, an empowered criminal class, and an ineffectual judicial system. Over the past two years, the Minneapolis Police Department has lost almost 300 officers. Any sentient fool can see why, although the local press does not pass that test. Kyle’s story quotes Sergeant Andrew Schroeder, the officer with whom he rode. “There’s days where north Minneapolis [high crime precinct] has four cops,” he said, explaining how this “staffing crisis” has caused specialized units to be cut.

There is nothing like reading about the experiences of people who do ‘ride-alongs’ with police to appreciate the sort of total scum that they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Check it out.

“Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.”
? Sam Ewing

Putin’s War in Ukraine Will Lead to His ‘Demise’: Exiled Oligarch (Newsweek)

‘The world was not ready for a fight of this scale,’ Ukraine’s top negotiator says (CNBC)

Did Europe’s Latest (& Little Noticed) Anti-Russia Move Just Push The World Closer To WW3?

New Hong Kong Government Includes 4 Officials Sanctioned by US

Ukraine War Hits Grim Milestone As Civilian Deaths Surpass 10,000: UN

Ukraine Parliament Votes in Favor of Restricting Russian Music, Books

Germany Rations Gas Amid Russian Cuts, Mandates Return To Coal For Electricity Production  How soon we regret turning off our nuclear power plants….

Russians Advance, Zelenskyy Expects Escalation as EU Set to Welcome Ukraine

China May Oil Imports From Russia Soar to a Record, Surpass Top Supplier Saudi

Nuke Deal Breakthrough? Iran Drops Demand That IRGC Be Removed From Terror List

Ukrainian Refugee Influx Could Ease Eurozone Labor Shortage: ECB

Israel announces regional air defense network with Middle East partners, US

Peter the Great’s Bookend

Zelensky Says Russian Attacks To Intensify During EU Summit As Moscow Claims Kalibr Strike Killed ’50 Officers & Generals’

Does the Tank Have a Future?

Russian Central Bank: Bitcoin Payments For International Settlements Is “Possible”

China, US Escalate Over Legal Status Of Taiwan Strait After Beijing Rejects It As “International Waters”

Joel Kotkin.

America is suffering from a worker shortage, but a more persistent and perhaps even urgent problem is the profound lack of skills among younger Americans. American elite universities may still be still regarded as the world’s best, but for most young people, the educational system—from grade school to graduate school—is something of a failure, a critical engine of persistent inequality and diminished competition on the international stage.

This crisis in competence predates the pandemic. So does the very related labor shortage. The percentage of firms reporting shortages of labor more than doubled between 2015 and 2020, to 70 percent. Low birthrates among millennials has created what the forecasting firm EMSI describes as a “demographic drought,” as U.S. population growth between 16 and 64 has dropped from 20 percent in the eighties to less than 5 percent last decade. By 2028, Korn Ferry projects there will be a deficit of at least six million workers.

But the bigger problem is not just numbers; consider that our competitors, notably China, face even more challenging demographics. The big issue is the lack of skills throughout the workforce. From grade to graduate schools, our education is deteriorating.

It used to be that this country was composed mainly of Doers, with a thin layer of Talkers on top.

‘Liberal Arts’ colleges are geared toward producing more and more Talkers; as a result, there is a glut of Talkers and not enough Doers.

Our education system, with its hyper-focus on four-year colleges, has failed its students. This about one staggering statistic: Over the past 20 years, we have created twice as many bachelor’s degrees as jobs to employ those who have earned them. Over 40 percent of recent graduates are underemployed, meaning that they’re working in jobs that don’t require their degree. Many graduate programs produce fancy degrees that never return the investment for an estimated 40 percent of master’s students, particularly those earning degrees outside the sciences, business, medicine and education

Politician: Talker. Lawyer: Talker. Journalist: Talker. Professor: Talker. Author: Talker. Poet: Talker. Grievance Studies Major: Talker. Art History Major: Talker. Investment Banker: Talker. Teacher: Talker.

Joel Kotkin.

Nothing so illustrates the mindset of green politics, particularly in California, as the word “natural,” which is taken to mean unspoiled, pure, and better than the workings of man. Yet few places are as fundamentally artificial, if measured by its dependency on human intervention, as California.

So why do California’s progressives, and so many others, yearn for what the historian Leo Marx dubbed the “pastoral ideal”?Much has to do with the state’s rapid population growth from 1.5 million in 1900 to nearly 40 million today, which resulted in a regime of environmental rapine that many still living experienced.

ZMan does history.

The terms Left and Right have been ubiquitous in Western public discourse for so long people just assume they are universal constants. The fact is though, they are neither universal nor constant. There is no African Right or Burmese Left. These cultures have not been shaped by the French Revolution. Similarly, what it means to be on the Right or Left has changed over time. Today’s left-wing American genuinely detests yesterday’s left wing American, who is probably on the Right today.

There is not much in the way of ideology on either side. There has not been an important thinker on either side in a long time. The last important radical thinker was probably Herbert Marcuse or perhaps John Rawls. On the Right, Paul Gottfried and Sam Francis are recent, but their influence is only on the fringe. The main driver of politics is the Left and they are wildly ignorant of the intellectual history that shapes left-wing politics today.

Read it.

The abstract is this: the Blue Church is a kind of narrative / ideology control structure that is a natural result of mass media. It is an evolved (rather than designed) function that has come over the past half-century to be deeply connected with the Democratic political “Establishment” and lightly connected with the “Deep State” to form an effective political and dominant cultural force in the United States.

We can trace its roots at least as far back as the beginning of the 20th Century where it emerged in response to the new capabilities of mass media for social control. By mid-century it began to play an increasingly meaningful role in forming and shaping American culture-producing institutions; became pervasive through the last half of the 20th and seems to have peaked in its influence somewhere in the first decade of the 21st Century.

It is now beginning to unravel.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

It is very likely the case that the next major war has started. No—I don’t mean the Russia-Ukraine War, which could yet spread to the rest of Europe if we’re unlucky. I mean the Israel-Iran War.

It has been said that Israel and Iran have been at open war for some time now. (Actually, Iran and the U.S. have likewise been at war since 1979, though don’t tell John Kerry.) As is well known, Israel has carried out audacious raids on Iran over the last few years. It has assassinated key figures in Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the streets of Tehran, successfully extracted an intelligence cache on the nuclear program, and in recent months assassinated senior Iranian military figures beyond the nuclear arms circle. For their part, we know Iran is supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere with enormous amounts of munitions to use against Israel.

Leaders pledge arms and EU path for Ukraine in Kyiv visit (Associated Press)

Chipmakers brace for more trouble as Russia limits exports of rare gases (CNN)

Ukraine shows when democracies unite, it’s a game-changer (The Hill)

When The Lies Come Home

Russian Missiles Destroy Fuel Depot in East Ukraine Town, Injure 11: Official

Russia Continues Attacks After EU Boost for Ukraine

Luongo: Russia’s New Rules

Taiwanese Military Expert Sheds Light on Why Japan Treats Taiwan Emergency as Its Own

Western Populations Must Do More For Ukraine Even If “Costs Of Food & Fuel Are High”: NATO Chief

Ukraine Says “Prepare For The Worst” In Donbas; Kharkiv Will Likely Be Next “Frontline City”

Israel’s IAI unveils newest Othello gunfire detection system to geo-locate threats

Russia Attacks US-Backed Fighters In Syria At American Outpost

Tell the truth: Most people are eminently forgettable.

Any resemblance to a character from Seinfeld is probably inevitable.

Read it.

Screams of “RINO” and boos drowned out most of what Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) had to say at the Texas state GOP convention Friday.

Ignoring his critics, Cornyn continued speaking over the din about gun legislation, right-to-life issues, and opposing the Green New Deal, which calls for phasing out fossil fuels.

Many delegates expressed frustration over Cornyn’s negotiation with Democrats on gun legislation that would incentivize state red flag laws.

I’ll bet.

For Ukrainian troops, a need arises: Javelin customer service (Washington Post)

Russia aims to boot former Soviet nations from NATO by relinquishing sovereign recognition: lawmaker

The Military Situation –Part I: Destined to Fail

Facts Matter (June 15): U.S. Spy Chief Admits ‘No Idea’ What Ukraine Is Doing With $40B Weapons; Europol Warns: Might Be Used By ‘Criminal Groups’

These Are The Ports Still Receiving The Most Russian Fossil-Fuel Shipments

Mariupol Deja Vu: Ukraine Fighters & Civilians Trapped In Besieged Severodonetsk Chemical Plant

INFORMATION WARFARE: Coping With The VPN Threat

Leaders Of France, Germany, Italy Make Highest Profile Visit To Kiev Since War Began

Turkey & Russia Say 3 Ukrainian Ports Can Now Be Accessed By Grain Ships

EU Leaders Visit Ukraine in Show of Support After Criticism

Germany is not really with the Western alliance

Russian Gas Flows to Europe Fall, Hindering Bid to Refill Stores

ZMan turns over a rock.

If you were to go back in time to the 1980’s, scoop up a group of conservatives and show them this post from the National Conservatives, those retro-conservatives would be very confused. For starters. they would be puzzled as to why such a thing was even necessary in 2022. Surely by this late date everyone would know the general framework of the American Right. More important, it would be the general framework of the nation, given the trajectory of the conservative movement.

Once the present situation in America was explained to them, they would no doubt want to know what went wrong? Was there a horrible calamity that derailed conservatives and sent the nation reeling into authoritarian degeneracy? Did the Left stage a revolt and seize the country by force? Did we lose the Cold War? At this point, the room would fall silent as none of the signatories of that post could provide a coherent explanation for why things have gone so horribly wrong.

Panel Warns of ‘Chinese Subversion’ of US Economy

Kyiv’s war for independence

177 Ukrainian Refugees Land in Newfoundland on Second Provincially-Chartered Flight

Pope Doubles Down On NATO-Ukraine Comments: Russian Invasion Was “Provoked”

Russians Control 80 Percent of Key Ukraine City, Cut Escape Routes: Ukrainian Official

Ukrainian Troops Have Nobody To Call To Troubleshoot Their Javelin Missiles  Scott Adams had a bit on his podcast yesterday about how Ukrainians can’t use their Javelin missiles because they require batteries that the Ukrainians don’t have and can’t get.

Ukraine Situation Report: More HIMARS On The Way Once Ukraine Shows It Can Use Them In Combat

Russia is ‘hemorrhaging’ millionaires (CNN)

More than 15,000 millionaires expected to leave Russia in 2022 (The Guardian)

Putin’s Former PM Warns: If Ukraine Falls, Baltics Are Next (Newsweek)

Russian Oligarchs’ Jets Flying Over Europe Despite Sanctions: Report (Newsweek)

WEAPONS: Sweden’s Most Wanted

Russia Bans 49 British Journalists, Defence Officials From Entering  As if they would ever want to. Russia? Ew!

Biden To Announce Nearly $1BN More In Arms For Ukraine, Including Anti-Ship Missiles  Apparently the U.S. Navy wants to get in on the live-fire training and stock replenishment action.

Ukraine Defies Russia’s Sievierodonetsk Ultimatum

NATO Should Better Coordinate Its Economic Power Against Russia and China  Don’t hold your breath.

Senior Military Officer Who Retired, Went to Ukraine, Now Charged With Sexual Assault

Read it.

Walk down the aisle of any any woke supermarket whose patrons drive electric SUVs with Bernie stickers and you’ll find shortages of everything except “plant-based substitutes” for real food. Don’t bother looking for rotisserie chicken, there’s a shortage. Forget the eggs, they’re not only cage-free and going at the rate of three for a dollar, they’re also more absent than Biden.

Milk can be had in every possible variety except the kind that comes from a cow. The stock of ‘ersatz’ alternatives to milk testify to the green gold rush touched off by the urgent need to save the planet. Cows, despite roaming the plains for thousands of years before Al Gore, Greta Thunberg and Teslas, are bad for the earth. But so it turns out is absolutely everything else.

Read it.

Uh, no thanks.