Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Greg Sargent: Democrats cannot duck a fight with Trump on trade forever (Washington Post)
It's been widely observed that many Democrats appear bizarrely unwilling to take on President Trump when it comes to his signature issue of trade. Whether this is because Democrats are still traumatized by Trump's smashing of the so-called blue wall states, persuading them that he possesses a mystical hold over that region, or whether they just prefer to talk about health care, this has to change. That's because the president's record may leave him more vulnerable than he looks on the issue, which is crucial to his reelection hopes. And it's a topic that Democrats should talk more about to refine their own substantive ideas about it.
Jonathan Chait: Conservatives Stunned by Mueller Suggesting Trump Is Not Innocent (NY Mag)
Mueller produced massive evidence that President Trump committed Nixonian-scale obstruction of justice in office. But Department of Justice policy prevented him from charging a sitting president with a crime, and Mueller reportedly believes he can't openly state that this policy prevented him from accusing Trump of crimes. Mueller views his job as sending his evidence to Congress without prejudice, where the impeachment mechanism serves as a substitute for the jury trial that such crimes would normally call for.
Molly Beard: The straw problem (TLS)
I don't have very many wicked pleasures, really. But the occasional negroni (vel sim.) at 6.00 (or maybe 5.30) is one of them. And I do rather like the pleasure of sipping it through a straw. Here begins a story of an awful first world problem …
Molly Beard: "Latin quotes: why context is everything" (TLS)
Now in a way, maybe it doesn't matter too much. Maybe it is up to us to decide how we want to use these ancient slogans. But I cant help thinking that it is worth thinking about what it originally meant!
Judith Kerr: Writing with borrowed words (TLS)
When I lived in Berlin as a small German child, a lady used to come to our house and try to teach me English by means of reading Alice in Wonderland. "This is very funny", she would explain, while I stared at her with disbelief and loathing. "You see, in English the words horse and hoarse have quite different meanings…." Never, never, never, I swore to myself, would I learn this absurd and useless language. Then came Hitler and my family's emigration, first to Switzerland, then to France and finally to England. By the time I was thirteen I had, perforce, become trilingual.
Judith Kerr: Moving with the times (TLS)
Charlotte Eyre remembers the children's author and illustrator who died this week.
Elliott Hannon: "Raptors Prove Beating the Warriors Is Easy (If You Make Every Clutch Shot and Play Insane Defense)" (Slate)
The Toronto Raptors deployed a novel game plan Thursday night in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Golden Warrior Gods of Basketball-have lots of players that play awesome defense! It seems simple enough: Force the other team into scoring fewer points than your team.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Lots of truckers are using their wheels to get dogs to new homes. Sean Kiel, a 46-year-old who has been a truck driver for 30 years, helped to rescue a curly white Bichon Frise from life in a puppy mill. He took the ball of fluff to a woman in California who was eager to adopt it. Mr. Kiel said, "Here I am, a big ol' tough truck driver, and I'm sitting here choking up right now. She was so happy to get that dog - just absolutely happy. It was so touching to see." Sue Wiese, age 68, is a former truck driver from Joshua, Texas; she is also an animal lover. Ms. Wiese said, "You just have to do something." Following Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster in which lots of pets lost their homes, Ms. Wiese took action. She said, "My heart was just breaking from all the stories about the pets. I was driving down the road and I was praying, 'Lord, what can I do? I'm just a truck driver.' And then I heard one word: Transport." She founded Operation Roger. People can read online about animals that need a home, and truck drivers can volunteer to take the animals to the people who wish to adopt them. From 2005 to 2011, Operation Roger took approximately 600 animals to new homes. In some cases, animals are reunited with their owners. For example, Robert Montagna, age 56, a truck driver and Operation Roger volunteer living in Michigan, witnessed a waitress in Colorado being reunited with her chocolate Labrador retriever. Mr. Montagna said, "When they saw each other, they just ran together toward each other like it was in a movie. She cried and cried when she saw that dog." Mr. Montagna said he loves being a member of Operation Roger: "I just love doing this. I always say that if I won a big lottery, I'd buy a big RV and I'd call Sue up and say, 'Where's the dog at? I'll deliver it.' And after that, I'd call her and say, 'OK, where's the next dog at?' I'd just keep doing this all over the country."
• In December 2005, someone tried to kill a cat by putting it in a cage, weighting it with a 16-pound rock, and dropping it in the icy Clark Fork River in Montana. Fortunately for the cat, the cage hit the ice instead of the water, and firefighters from Missoula, MT, rescued it. After media reports about the rescue appeared, many, many people called the fire station to thank the firefighters for saving the life of the cat and for finding it a good home. The firefighters had used a rescue boat to get the cat and had then fed it turkey and milk. Firefighter Josh Macrow took the cat to a veterinarian and then took it home to his 12-year-old daughter, Taylor, who had long wanted a cat. City Fire Chief TomSteenberg said, "We're just doing our job. We are happy that we've got the tools and firefighters with the training to go out in the river and operate this kind of rescue safely. It takes a lot of training and specialized gear to do this kind of thing, and we train constantly." These days, firefighters train for major disasters, including complicated high-rise and confined-space rescues as well as hazardous waste emergencies. Mr. Steenberg said, "We really aren't in the business of getting cats out of trees anymore. On the other hand, a can of tuna fish has always worked. In this instance, with a caged cat out on the ice, tuna fish isn't going to work and we have a lot of people here at the station with big hearts. We can't ignore a situation like that."
• In autumn 2005, 10-year-old Chantal Burnup was swimming in the Sale River in Western Australia's Kimberley region. A 9-foot-long crocodile grabbed her by her torso and tried to pull her underwater. Her 14-year-old brother, Simon, assisted their father by punching the crocodile in a successful attempt to rescue her. The children's mother, Gabrielle Burnup, said about Chantal, "She's very well. She's had treatment and all her dressings have been renewed and she is lying in bed watching a video. She is OK as long as she doesn't have to speak directly about what has happened. She gets very emotional to put herself back into that situation." Mrs. Burnup said about Simon, "He doesn't say much, but I think it very much scared him as well. I think he was [brave] to get back in the water knowing what was in there, which is what he did. I thought he was fantastic." Chantal said, "I tried to get it off me, and my dad pulled me out of the water and he pulled me back onto the rocks." Simon spoke about his part in the rescue after his father had grabbed Chantal to keep the crocodile from dragging her underwater, "By that time I got out of the water and was watching and Dad was shouting at me to help. So I got back in and smacked it on the head and Dad pulled her out."
• Comic artist G.B. Jones says, "All girls should have big dogs." She has two bull mastiffs-huge dogs. Ms. Jones says that "there is nothing like the feeling of walking down the street, any time of the night, be it 10, 11, 12, or 3 in the morning, and seeing guys get right off the sidewalk. Nobody bothers you. Nobody says anything to you. You can go where you want. You are totally free. Can you imagine?" She says, "If a guy's bugging you, you can say, "F[**]k off, jerk." You don't have to worry that he's going to rush over and kill you." She adds, "The first time I went for a walk with a dog at night, I couldn't believe it. I experienced total freedom. I guess it's the way men live their whole lives."
• "An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." - Martin Buber
• "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanual Kant
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The marine layer has returned.
House For Sale
Tony Soprano
The owners of Tony Soprano's (James Gandolfini) HBO home are putting their family house up for sale, according to The New York Times. The 5,600 square-foot house is located in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
The iconic TV house's real-life owners Patti and Victor Recchia are offering their home, which is set on a 1.5-acre lot, for what they call a "starting price" of $3.4 million.
The Recchia home has four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and two different two-car garages. It also boasts a detached one-bedroom guesthouse. Property taxes are $34,005 a year - welcome to New Jersey.
Aside from the Recchia House, the most expensive house for sale in North Caldwell right now - per Zillow - is six bedrooms, eight baths, 6,483 square feet. That one is listed for $2.249 million. No other houses in the town are currently listed north of $1.9 million.
The Recchias have lived in their North Caldwell home for 32 years. Over six seasons of the show, the "Sopranos" crew used the property 30-50 times, the couple told the Times.
Tony Soprano
Trial Begins
Border Activist
A border activist being tried in a federal court was helping two migrants with water, food and lodging last year and only intended "to provide basic human kindness," his lawyer told jurors Wednesday.
But prosecutors say they have evidence that 36-year-old Scott Daniel Warren conspired to harbor the migrants, and that they were not even in distress when they reached a private building used to provide aid to immigrants who just crossed the desert from Mexico into Arizona.
"This case is not about humanitarian aid," Walters said. "It's about Scott Warren and his decision to shield two illegal aliens from law enforcement."
Scott Daniel Warren was arrested in 2018 when Border Patrol agents found him at a property used to provide aid to immigrants in Ajo, Arizona.
The case is one of several against members of humanitarian aid groups who say their work on the border helping migrants in distress is increasingly under scrutiny.
Border Activist
X-Ray View
The Night Sky
Based on this recently released snapshot of the night sky captured by NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), we can safely assume Superman gets no sleep at night. Just look at that thing.
The sparkling dots and tangled loops are the result of nearly two years of effort to study cosmic sources of X-rays from Earth's orbit.
On board the International Space Station (ISS) sits the workhorse of the NICER payload - a washing-machine sized cube called an X-ray Timing Instrument.
Roughly every hour and a half, after the Sun sets on the ISS orbit, the instrument scoops up high energy photons from up to eight locations per orbit in the night sky.
The Night Sky
Principal Plagiarized Speech
Ashton Kutcher
A West Virginia principal accused of plagiarizing Ashton Kutcher in an address to his school's graduating class says he didn't mean to use someone else's work.
Parkersburg High School Principal Kenny DeMoss has issued a statement saying he should have cited his sources in the May 23 speech, but asserted the ideas were his own.
"I did not get all my ideas from Ashton. Format yes, thoughts and ideas were from my heart," he wrote, adding that he's upset the speech has stolen the focus from graduating students.
A graduate posted a video to Facebook that spliced DeMoss' speech with Kutcher's 2013 Nickelodeon Teen Choice Awards speech and has since amassed more than 100,000 views. The speeches used similar wording and at times featured identical phrasing.
"Me and my family are the only ones being hurt here. My accuser isn't. I love kids and love this school and this will only make me better," DeMoss said.
Ashton Kutcher
Wrongfully Convicted
'Central Park Five'
It was 1989 and Don-Old Trump - "not widely known outside New York," where he was a real estate developer and Art of the Deal author - had something he wanted to say.
"You better believe that I hate the people who took this girl and raped her brutally. You better believe it," Trump, then some three decades from becoming president, reportedly told a packed room of people at a news conference in the wake of a notorious assault on a white woman jogging in Central Park.
Soon after the attack, in late April 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in local newspapers implicitly calling for the accused to be put to death.
His histrionic remarks continued for decades - long after the boys who became known as the "Central Park Five" were exonerated and awarded millions following their wrongful imprisonment.
Here is a look back at his role and his insistence on the boys' guilt, even in the face of their proven innocence. A White House spokesman did not comment on Trump's connection the case.
'Central Park Five'
Florida Dredging Project
Corals
A 16-month dredging project in the Port of Miami may have resulted in the death of over half a million corals despite environmental reports saying otherwise, according to a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin.
The "devastating story of loss" was told by researchers at the University of Miami who reanalyzed multiple independent data from satellites, sediment traps, and underwater surveys originally collected by consultants under an environmental monitoring program. Initial findings indicated that widespread loss of coral was attributed to the outbreak of coral disease at the same time. However, when controlling for the impacts of bleaching and disease loss, researchers found that corals near the dredge site were more likely to die than those further away.
Areas closer to dredging saw higher build-ups of sediment coverage. So much so, that divers measured sediment burying between 50 percent and up to 90 percent of nearby reefs, hindering corals' ability to feed, reproduce, and attach to a hard substrate, causing widespread coral death.
Researchers also observed that satellite images of suspended sediment, known collectively as sediment plumes, were highly correlated with negative impacts on the seafloor as a result of dredging.
Port of Miami's shipping channel bisects the Florida Reef Tract, the only nearshore coral reef in the continental US. It is surrounded by areas designated under the Endangered Species Act as critical habitat for hundreds of colonies of endangered shallow-water staghorn and elkhorn corals, some of which have declined by as much as 98 percent. As dredging continues across the world, the researchers suggest that associated activities could threaten the livelihood of fragile coral systems and result in widespread decline.
Corals
Rabid Bat
iPad
An 86-year-old man has been treated for rabies after being bitten by a bat which leapt from between the back of his iPad and its case.
Roy Syvertson, from New Hampshire in the US, had been using the device for an hour when the creature popped out and took a nibble of his hand.
He said: "It felt like a little bee sting. And I looked, and the bat was coming out between the cover and the back of the pad.
"And then I got up, still squeezing it, which I'm sure he wasn't happy about, and I took him outside."
It was only the next morning, when he saw the bat had died where he had left it, that he became concerned the animal may have been infected with rabies, NBC reports.
iPad
Early Human Settlers
Catalhoyuk
Scientists have unearthed the world's oldest case of the intestinal parasite whipworm and are using it to understand the toilet habits of early human settlers.
University of Cambridge archaeologists exploring an 8,000-year-old dung heap in the settlement of Catalhoyuk in Turkey described their find as a "special moment".
Today up to 800 million people across the globe are infected with whipworms. The 5cm parasites live on the lining of the intestines of the large bowel.
The settlement of Catalhoyuk is famous for being an incredibly well preserved early village founded around 7,100 BC, where residents cultivated wheat and barley while also herding sheep and goats.
It is thought the people living at Catalhoyuk either went to the rubbish tip, or midden, to open their bowels, or carried their waste there in in a vessel or basket.
Catalhoyuk
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers. Week of May 29, 2019:
1. Ed Sheeran; $4,084,542; $87.67.
2. Metallica; $2,921,057; $104.63.
3. Maroon 5; $2,910,577; $120.08.
4. Eric Church; $2,873,933; $93.98.
5. Elton John; $2,612,965; $141.77.
6. Pink; $2,222,506; $140.69.
7. Fleetwood Mac; $2,059,539; $146.42.
8. Justin Timberlake; $2,055,012; $135.49.
9. Cher; $1,685,401; $123.77.
10. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band; $1,543,421; $114.09.
11. Ariana Grande; $1,515,063; $113.18.
12. Michael Bublé; $1,510,617; $124.48.
13. Post Malone; $1,417,928; $83.06.
14. KISS; $1,382,687; $113.07.
15. John Mayer; $1,349,589; $119.90.
16. Bad Bunny; $1,303,591; $95.32.
17. André Rieu; $1,284,655; $81.84.
18. Arctic Monkeys; $1,233,530; $60.77.
19. Travis Scott; $1,079,517; $78.86.
20. Mumford & Sons; $1,040,827; $71.61
Global Concert Tours
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