That was fun. Clearly an AI engineering but possibly based on actual photographs (up to a point), although it could be a totally “original” combination of elements from very different sources other than real pictures (paintings) of Manhattan, certainly in the distant past.
Slow Open Thread day and it’s been a while since I linked to something for the deep science nerds. This one scratched the right itch for me. I’m particularly interested in the hows and whys of discovery. Why did anyone suspect the current understanding was wrong? How did they investigate? How are they sure the new explanation is right?
All that is covered very well in this video on how quarks were discovered. Roughly 30 minutes.
Putin has agreed to a three day truce in air strikes, Zelenskyy has agreed.
Footage of the Putin meeting with Witkoff and Kushner’s suggests something big is happening, Putin even said words of praise for Trump,
The US pair are now on the way to meet Zelenskyy.
YouTuber Benny Johnson says that something big is in the works. I cannot gainsay this estimate.
Johnson specifically — because of last week’s war news tying Russian tech innovation to benefit Iran’s attacks against the US — speculates that a joint peace plan for Putin’s war and Iran is in the offing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj9CrZS2T_U
This may be big news. But we’ve all seen this collapse, if only because chains of command and authority are broken in Iran.
Nonetheless, these developments following on CIA Director Ratcliff’s visit to Moscow last weekend and big threats by Putin against NATO allies like the UK tell us that fresh thinking by leaders is definitely in order.
Sept. 2026 Midterm Tally:
Remember the Trump Tally comments? Same drill on Mids as it closes in. Where we actually sit, IMHO. Election Day is November 3. Fifty-nine days.
House. Everyone’s already buried it. Republicans hold a thin majority, Dems need only a handful of net seats, generic ballot has been parked D+5 to D+7 for weeks, Trump’s approval is stuck high-30s. Forecasters love those numbers — they always do in year two. But redistricting bought real seats. Not a 2018 map. Fewer true toss-ups, and most of what’s left is still Trump country. My gut hasn’t moved: House stays Republican. Ugly, narrow, no parade. But it holds.
Senate is the one the models already treat as a knife fight, and there they’re right. GOP starts 53–47, Dems need +4 since Vance breaks a tie. Live board: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Texas — several of those Trump +10 country. If the GOP just doesn’t collapse in two or three of them, Senate stays red. Easier half of the hold.
Markets, briefly. Money isn’t as bearish on the GOP as the pundit class. Senate control is basically a coin flip. House is where the money gets pessimistic — Dems priced 80-85% for the gavel. Polymarket’s modal outcome is R Senate / D House (~47%), Dem sweep low 30s, full GOP hold in the high teens. Markets can be wrong. They are also not vibes.
My gut has the GOP holding Congress. House included. Yes.
Not because the polls are friendly — they aren’t. Because midterms this polarized don’t move in the clean national waves 2006 or 2018 did, the map was rewritten on purpose, and Republican incumbents in the remaining toss-ups have a Trump floor the generic ballot doesn’t fully capture.
What still has to happen: Trump needs a win. A firm, visible one — not another week of noise. Affordability, Iran, gas, whether this White House looks like it’s delivering or just generating weather. Fifty-nine days is enough for a late shift. It is not enough to rewrite the fundamentals without something big. Without it, history and the polls point the same way: House goes, Senate’s a brawl.
I’m giving him the time to ‘fix it‘. Same as before. I’d rather be wrong about the weather than watch the map confirm every forecast written in July.
In the Matter of (NYT “journalist”) Michael Schmidt….
“Real Russiagate Has Never Been Tried;
“According to Schmidt, there is nothing wrong with the Russia collusion narrative at all—it just hasn’t been proven yet.”— https://lyceumnow.com/real-russiagate-has-never-been-tried/
H/T Powerline blog.
Short version: Keep those serial liars and their serial lies coming…
The French Army in 1940…and the American CDC in 2010
Huxley’s squirrels:
Mama’s brief visit in your living room, how very cool!
Were you sitting, reading or watching something?
Had you just come in from nut sharing?
They are smart, social little creatures.
It’ll be interesting as her kiddos grow, how they interact with you, too.
“Uncle Huxley” … 😉
RE: Canadian PM Carney and the memes raining down on him.
I don’t know about you, but–given what my wife tells me is my childish sense of humor–I think that these memes are funny as hell–and once you’ve seen some of these memes, they make an impression—and it’s hard to forget them; they’ll stick to Carney like glue.
Basically, the creative folks on the Internet have taken the ball and run with it–have, in effect, dumped a whole tub of rotten fish guts on Carney–and the association with Carney, and the residual stink is never really going to go away.
In my estimation, ridicule, and particularly such memes, are actually a quite deadly and effective form of political warfare.
Rabbi Goldstein presents a 9m clip of Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s “Anaconda” Strategy.
With occupation and nation building off the table, and kinetics downplayed or put to tactical use only, what’s left?
A sustainable maximum “squeeze” by sanctions strategy will defeat the Theocratic state of Iran. Victor mentions a recent piece by Middle East expert Michael Doran, who, like him, is at the Hoover Institution on War and Peace. And VDH has written up “The Anaconda Strategy,” to define Trump’s plan for Iran.
One more note in the Iraq war — answering the questions How The Strait Got Cleared of mines and made safe for tanker travel?
“US special forces spent four months conducting a secret mine-clearing mission in the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to open up the waterway, the Financial Times reported Sunday.
“Iran has said it placed mines in international and Omani waters following the outbreak of the war. The International Maritime Organization estimated in June that roughly 80 mines had been deployed along important shipping routes.
“The covert operation was carried out amid ongoing exchanges of strikes between the US and Iran in and around the Strait, according to people familiar with the mission.
“Navy SEAL divers worked with unmanned vessels, robots, and specialized underwater equipment to locate and remove suspected Iranian mines, often operating at night.
“The objective of the operation was to make the strait safer for commercial vessels that had largely avoided the waterway since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February.
“US President Donald Trump announced last week that “all mines” in the strait’s international waters had been removed or destroyed, a claim subsequently confirmed by the US military.“
@ physicsguy > this is Georgia Howe’s Walkaway video from five years ago, which expands on the recent interview clip you posted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flp7gKg5G4E
AesopFan…I remember that video…shared it on FB. Thought it was very well done
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That was fun. Clearly an AI engineering but possibly based on actual photographs (up to a point), although it could be a totally “original” combination of elements from very different sources other than real pictures (paintings) of Manhattan, certainly in the distant past.
Slow Open Thread day and it’s been a while since I linked to something for the deep science nerds. This one scratched the right itch for me. I’m particularly interested in the hows and whys of discovery. Why did anyone suspect the current understanding was wrong? How did they investigate? How are they sure the new explanation is right?
All that is covered very well in this video on how quarks were discovered. Roughly 30 minutes.
https://youtu.be/NJHRvs7cGJI
Putin has agreed to a three day truce in air strikes, Zelenskyy has agreed.
Footage of the Putin meeting with Witkoff and Kushner’s suggests something big is happening, Putin even said words of praise for Trump,
The US pair are now on the way to meet Zelenskyy.
YouTuber Benny Johnson says that something big is in the works. I cannot gainsay this estimate.
Johnson specifically — because of last week’s war news tying Russian tech innovation to benefit Iran’s attacks against the US — speculates that a joint peace plan for Putin’s war and Iran is in the offing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj9CrZS2T_U
This may be big news. But we’ve all seen this collapse, if only because chains of command and authority are broken in Iran.
Nonetheless, these developments following on CIA Director Ratcliff’s visit to Moscow last weekend and big threats by Putin against NATO allies like the UK tell us that fresh thinking by leaders is definitely in order.
Sept. 2026 Midterm Tally:
Remember the Trump Tally comments? Same drill on Mids as it closes in. Where we actually sit, IMHO. Election Day is November 3. Fifty-nine days.
House. Everyone’s already buried it. Republicans hold a thin majority, Dems need only a handful of net seats, generic ballot has been parked D+5 to D+7 for weeks, Trump’s approval is stuck high-30s. Forecasters love those numbers — they always do in year two. But redistricting bought real seats. Not a 2018 map. Fewer true toss-ups, and most of what’s left is still Trump country. My gut hasn’t moved: House stays Republican. Ugly, narrow, no parade. But it holds.
Senate is the one the models already treat as a knife fight, and there they’re right. GOP starts 53–47, Dems need +4 since Vance breaks a tie. Live board: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Texas — several of those Trump +10 country. If the GOP just doesn’t collapse in two or three of them, Senate stays red. Easier half of the hold.
Markets, briefly. Money isn’t as bearish on the GOP as the pundit class. Senate control is basically a coin flip. House is where the money gets pessimistic — Dems priced 80-85% for the gavel. Polymarket’s modal outcome is R Senate / D House (~47%), Dem sweep low 30s, full GOP hold in the high teens. Markets can be wrong. They are also not vibes.
My gut has the GOP holding Congress. House included. Yes.
Not because the polls are friendly — they aren’t. Because midterms this polarized don’t move in the clean national waves 2006 or 2018 did, the map was rewritten on purpose, and Republican incumbents in the remaining toss-ups have a Trump floor the generic ballot doesn’t fully capture.
What still has to happen: Trump needs a win. A firm, visible one — not another week of noise. Affordability, Iran, gas, whether this White House looks like it’s delivering or just generating weather. Fifty-nine days is enough for a late shift. It is not enough to rewrite the fundamentals without something big. Without it, history and the polls point the same way: House goes, Senate’s a brawl.
I’m giving him the time to ‘fix it‘. Same as before. I’d rather be wrong about the weather than watch the map confirm every forecast written in July.
In the Matter of (NYT “journalist”) Michael Schmidt….
“Real Russiagate Has Never Been Tried;
“According to Schmidt, there is nothing wrong with the Russia collusion narrative at all—it just hasn’t been proven yet.”—
https://lyceumnow.com/real-russiagate-has-never-been-tried/
H/T Powerline blog.
Short version: Keep those serial liars and their serial lies coming…
The French Army in 1940…and the American CDC in 2010
https://davidfoster273133.substack.com/p/the-french-army-in-1940and-the-american
I’m still feeding the squirrels in my backyard. Turns out there are now five — mama and four kids.
Mama trusts me. I throw almonds out to her and she comes.
Today she came in through the small living room window, stood on the fireplace mantle, looked around at me and everything else. Then scampered away.
Interesting!
_______________________
–Beatles, “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVv7IzEVf3M
Huxley’s squirrels:
Mama’s brief visit in your living room, how very cool!
Were you sitting, reading or watching something?
Had you just come in from nut sharing?
They are smart, social little creatures.
It’ll be interesting as her kiddos grow, how they interact with you, too.
“Uncle Huxley” … 😉
For Neo, another changer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk8psEpKPfc
RE: Canadian PM Carney and the memes raining down on him.
I don’t know about you, but–given what my wife tells me is my childish sense of humor–I think that these memes are funny as hell–and once you’ve seen some of these memes, they make an impression—and it’s hard to forget them; they’ll stick to Carney like glue.
Basically, the creative folks on the Internet have taken the ball and run with it–have, in effect, dumped a whole tub of rotten fish guts on Carney–and the association with Carney, and the residual stink is never really going to go away.
In my estimation, ridicule, and particularly such memes, are actually a quite deadly and effective form of political warfare.
Rabbi Goldstein presents a 9m clip of Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s “Anaconda” Strategy.
With occupation and nation building off the table, and kinetics downplayed or put to tactical use only, what’s left?
A sustainable maximum “squeeze” by sanctions strategy will defeat the Theocratic state of Iran. Victor mentions a recent piece by Middle East expert Michael Doran, who, like him, is at the Hoover Institution on War and Peace. And VDH has written up “The Anaconda Strategy,” to define Trump’s plan for Iran.
Victor discusses the outcomes we can expect through it, both before or after the midterm elections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OGVD2HRDes
One more note in the Iraq war — answering the questions How The Strait Got Cleared of mines and made safe for tanker travel?
“US special forces spent four months conducting a secret mine-clearing mission in the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to open up the waterway, the Financial Times reported Sunday.
“Iran has said it placed mines in international and Omani waters following the outbreak of the war. The International Maritime Organization estimated in June that roughly 80 mines had been deployed along important shipping routes.
“The covert operation was carried out amid ongoing exchanges of strikes between the US and Iran in and around the Strait, according to people familiar with the mission.
“Navy SEAL divers worked with unmanned vessels, robots, and specialized underwater equipment to locate and remove suspected Iranian mines, often operating at night.
“The objective of the operation was to make the strait safer for commercial vessels that had largely avoided the waterway since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February.
“US President Donald Trump announced last week that “all mines” in the strait’s international waters had been removed or destroyed, a claim subsequently confirmed by the US military.“
So, FT via jpost. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-907765
@ physicsguy > this is Georgia Howe’s Walkaway video from five years ago, which expands on the recent interview clip you posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flp7gKg5G4E
AesopFan…I remember that video…shared it on FB. Thought it was very well done