"Israel launched a stunning series of strikes Friday morning on Iranian nuclear sites and killed several of the nation’s security chiefs, in a remarkable coup of intelligence and military force..."

"... that decapitated Tehran’s chain of command. President Trump warned that further attacks would be 'even more brutal' and redoubled pressure on Iran to reach a new deal to curb its nuclear program.... The attacks also killed top Iranian officials and nuclear scientists and hit Tehran’s long-range missile facilities and aerial defenses."

The NYT reports.

Trump at Truth Social: "I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to 'just do it,' but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!"

"The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"The survivors 'help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,' Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said during his announcement on Friday. Mr. Frydnes added that 'extraordinary efforts' by survivors of the U.S. nuclear attack in Japan, including those who are part of Nihon Hidankyo, 'have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo.' That, he said, had led to a world in which no weapons of that type had been used in war in 80 years."

The NYT reports.

"When people wonder how things might go wrong if AI controlled the world, this example clearly illustrates the point."

The sheer insanity of that actual response from Google’s AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in the future, but the bias will still be in there.

AI mirrors the mistakes of its creators.

When people wonder how things might go wrong if AI controlled the world,… https://t.co/Dr4BrxUPCm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024

Coincidentally, the NYT has this on its front page right now:

The article is full of graphics, apparently designed to boost our inadequate imagination. Here's one of the many vivid images that fly by as you scroll:

Around town.

 At the UPS store:

In the Wisconsin State Capitol:

At the café:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"At one point, Isaacson asks why Musk is so offended by anything he deems politically correct, and Musk, as usual..."

"... has to dial it up to 11. 'Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped,' he declares, 'civilization will never become multiplanetary.' There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence, but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean? Isaacson has ably conveyed that Musk doesn’t truly like pushback. Some of his lieutenants insist that he will eventually listen to reason, but Isaacson sees firsthand Musk’s habit of deriding as a saboteur or an idiot anyone who resists him. The musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk’s children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger 'demon mode' — a mind-set that 'causes a lot of chaos.' She also insists that it allows him to get stuff done...."

Writes Jennifer Szalai, in "Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People. Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial 'man-child' with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match" (NYT).

"During that phone call from the White House, my father told us that if there was a nuclear war, none of us would want to be alive anyhow."

Writes RFK Jr. in "American Values/Lessons I Learned From My Family." 

While I idolized my dad, I just couldn’t go along with him on that one. What about all that planning and practicing for the apocalypse at Our Lady of Victory? What was the point of all those drills?...

I, for one, intended to be among the survivors.

"If you are worried about rapid, catastrophic changes to the planet’s climate, then you must be worried about nuclear war...."

"[E]ven a relatively 'minor' exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.... A detonation of a [one-megaton nuke], within about a four-mile radius, produce winds equal to those in a Category 5 hurricane, immediately flattening buildings, knocking down power lines, and triggering gas leaks.... The hot, dry, hurricane-force winds would act like a supercharged version of California’s Santa Ana winds, which have triggered some of the state’s worst wildfires.... Towering clouds would carry more than five megatons of soot and ash from these fires high into the atmosphere."

Writes Robinson Meyer in "On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem/Even a 'minor' skirmish would wreck the planet" (March 9, 2022, The Atlantic).

Is Putin "rational actor"? — Jake Tapper asks Biden. Biden answers "he is a rational actor... I just think it’s irrational."

You have to separate the "he" and the "it" to make sense of it.

Here's the video. I'll quote from the transcript:

"The appointed billboard was above a Sunglass Hut, just a few paces from an Armed Forces recruiting station. Times Square was doing its Times Square thing..."

"... total sensory overload. Capitalism on cocaine. It was 8:15 p.m. I waited. Was this actually going to happen or was it some kind of conceptual art prank? And who even is Yoko Ono?

Writes Sebastian Smee in "No matter what the haters say, Yoko Ono was always about peace. Now her message is on a Times Square billboard" (WaPo). The billboard is pink and just says "Imagine Peace."

Answering his question "who even is Yoko Ono?," Smee continues:

Ono had a gift for “event scores” that were by turns mundane, poetic and (poetically) impossible.... [for example] “Disappearing Piece,” which simply commands: “Boil water” (the piece ends when the water completely evaporates) and “Clock Piece,” which instructs: “Make all the clocks in the world fast by/ two seconds without letting anyone know/ about it.”

You can easily imagine one that says: “Sit next to John Lennon throughout the recording sessions for a Beatles album. Do nothing — except when you scream.” Or one that says, simply: “Imagine Peace.”...

Smee discusses Ono's "Cut Piece," from 1964, which I embedded on this blog 11 days ago, here. Ono sits silently and quietly while members of the audience do what she's instructed: Pick up scissors and cut pieces of her clothing away. My embedding had to do with some current fashion that looked as if someone had taken scissors to a woman's ordinary clothes and left them disturbingly lopped off. Smee connects it to her long history of peace activism:

"President Putin has ordered Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces to be on high alert as he condemned NATO’s 'aggressive statements' regarding his invasion of Ukraine...."

"The significant escalation of tensions came as Germany, Britain and other NATO countries said they were sending military aid to Ukraine and imposed hard-hitting financial sanctions against Russia, including the president himself. 'Western countries are taking not only unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, I mean here illegitimate sanctions that everyone knows about. But the top officials of leading NATO countries are also allowing aggressive statements against our country,' he said, in a statement reported by the Russian news agency, Tass. 'Therefore, I order the minister of defence and the chief of the general staff to transfer the deterrent forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty.' According to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which was updated in 2020, it can carry out first-strike attacks if it has 'reliable information' about the launch of ballistic missiles targeting its territory.... Speaking on Wednesday night, before the first dawn assaults by Russian airborne troops, tanks and cruise missiles, he warned that 'whoever tries to hinder us' would see consequences 'you have never seen in your history.'"

From "Putin puts nuclear deterrent forces on high alert" (London Times).

"I am hoping that Vladimir Putin understands that he is — short of a full-blown nuclear war, he’s not in a very good position to dominate the world."

Did Biden inadvertently — obliquely — advise Putin to use nuclear weapons? 

From the transcript: 

I’m very concerned that this could end up being — look, the only war that’s worse than one that’s intended is one that’s unintended. And what I’m concerned about is this could get out of hand — very easily get out of hand because of what you said: the borders of the — of Ukraine and what Russia may or may not do. I am hoping that Vladimir Putin understands that he is — short of a full-blown nuclear war, he’s not in a very good position to dominate the world. And so, I don’t think he thinks that, but it is a concern. And that’s why we have to be very careful about how we move forward and make it clear to him that there are prices to pay that could, in fact, cost his country an awful lot. But I — of course, you have to be concerned when you have, you know, a nuclear power invade — this has — if he invades — it hasn’t happened since World War Two. This will be the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War Two.

What hasn't happened since World War II? That a nuclear power has invaded? (Is that true, and, if it's true, how did you have to interpret "invade" to get it to be true?) Or was he saying the thing that hasn't happened since WWII is the use of nuclear weapons? 

"When Polka Dots Signal Both Optimism and Disquiet/The motif has long been associated with a certain brand of American cheeriness but, as its recent ubiquity attests, is most visible during times of turbulence."

A headline in T, the NYT Style Magazine, for an article by Nick Haramis.

The history of polka dots. This is the article I want to read. I feel some pressure to write about Biden's 2-hour news conference yesterday, which I watched, but I'm loath to blog it without a complete transcript. I have seen the "5 takeaways" pieces and the "utter disaster!!!" stuff, and it's propaganda on top of propaganda. Until I find a transcript, I'm holding off, I'm in the ellipsis... and therefore: polka dots!

Haramis writes delightfully:

"I was going to call my old, first phone number in the Bronx, and talk to whoever answered.... I would interview this person long enough to reveal our common humanity..."

"... and I would then tell his or her story with compassion; whatever differences we might have — cultural, political, whatever — would disappear with greater familiarity and understanding. Above all, we would, together, two ordinary people, prove that for all this country’s troubles, modernity does not have to be soulless. So I called. And got this recording: 'The next available service specialist will be with you momentarily. They will be happy to assist you with any inquiry.' Then I was put on hold, where I remained for 22 minutes, until I hung up." 

Story idea goes bad for Gene Weingarten, but he got a column out of it anyway: "Maybe the past is only a phone call away" (WaPo). They say you can never go home again, and, it seems, you can never phone home again. 

 

We were just talking about E.T. yesterday. Remember? "Like Steven Spielberg’s E.T., [Biden] seems to instinctually believe in the healing power of physical connection—even if that intimacy can sometimes feel a bit too close."

Everybody's trying to make a connection... but maybe nobody's there anymore. Weingarten's column made me think of Bob Dylan's "Talking World War III Blues":

The NYT calls the pandemic "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes" — presumably greater than nuclear annihilation and anthropogenic climate change.

Maybe whatever is going on right now seems bigger than everything else, but the pandemic, at its worst, was only set to wipe out 5% of us, and nuclear war was going to kill us all. As for climate change, if it's not worse than killing 5% of us — mostly the old — then it's not as bad as it's been portrayed in the press.

I'm reading "The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do Right Now/Our nation is rising, however imperfectly, to meet the challenge posed by the coronavirus pandemic. That needs to be said more often" by the NYT Editorial Board.

Ah, it seems that only a few weeks ago, there were mainstream media voices who would have called Donald Trump "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes."

But the pandemic is the "existential threat" that we've done the most about — taken so seriously and changed so much of what we are doing. Maybe we need to call it the "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes" to make sense out of how much we've done. We haven't been willing to sacrifice so much to deal with climate change — to radically shrink economic activity and to stay home or very near home. Much of what we've done for the pandemic is also what we could do for climate change if we took it deadly seriously.

Why did we do it? Deaths were happening before our eyes, and experts told us this is what we all need to do, and the whole world was doing it at once, and we understood that it needed to be done right away. That is what's greatest about the pandemic: The way We the People of the World acted in response to the thing — not the thing itself.

Now, to read the editorial. It begins with a "thank you," and it advises us not to look only at the failures but to look at all the good "the vast majority of Americans have done." Why limit it to Americans? Because it's Memorial Day?

This weekend, as we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the smaller but essential patriotic sacrifices we are all making today, for one another...

We've done a lot of "smaller" things. Whether they were and are "essential," we'll never know, and we'll analyze and politicize for as long as our lifetime lasts.

You’re doing great, my fellow Americans. What you have been asked to do is not easy...

But it is much easier than giving your life in battle.

... but you’re doing it. And you’ve already made a big difference. People are alive today who might otherwise not be, thanks to the sacrifices you have made and are continuing to make....

The editors call on us to continue. It's a thanks in advance:

Until there is a vaccine, which could be years from now, the simple acts of wearing a mask and practicing social distancing may be the most reliable ways to stem the spread of the disease and save more lives.

And if you don't believe in the cause, don't protest:

The most patriotic thing that Americans can do right now is not to carry military-style rifles to a protest that shuts down their state legislature, or to spread baseless conspiracy theories online, or to pick fights in a supermarket over reasonable public health measures....

Or at least, don't do the sorts of protests that are never a good idea, whether they're about a pandemic or anything else. The editors don't go so far as to tell Americans that it's not "patriotic" to have protests about our disagreement with what the government tries to force us to do.

As Hillary Clinton famously said: "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration."

Did Trump say he wants to nuke — literally nuke — hurricanes?

The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2019

ADDED: I am reminded of this passage from "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," Bill Bryson's memoir of growing up in the 1950s:

Edward Teller, the semi-crazed Hungarian-born physicist who was one of the presiding geniuses behind the development of the H-bomb... and his acolytes at the Atomic Energy Commission envisioned using H-bombs to enable massive civil engineering projects on a scale never before conceived—to create huge open-pit mines where mountains had once stood, to alter the courses of rivers in our favor (ensuring that the Danube, for instance, served only capitalist countries), to blow away irksome impediments to commerce and shipping like the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.... They even suggested that nuclear devices could be used to alter the Earth’s weather by adjusting the amount of dust in the atmosphere, forever banishing winters from the northern United States and sending them permanently to the Soviet Union instead.... In short, the creators of the hydrogen bomb wished to wrap the world in unpredictable levels of radiation, obliterate whole ecosystems, despoil the face of the planet, and provoke and antagonize our enemies at every opportunity—and these were their peacetime dreams.

AND: Is that an accurate account of Edward Teller? From his Wikipedia page, under the heading "Operation Plowshare and Project Chariot":

"Ms. Gabbard comes across as shy or maybe tense. She is not the jovial politician cracking jokes with her staff or buttering people up."

"Doom is her main talking point. The only personal topics she speaks about easily are veganism and fitness. She says she is a big fan of mixed martial arts and drops in on classes while on the trail. As a child, she could not afford taekwondo classes, so she started doing capoeira, which was taught in the park for free, she said. Her husband is more chatty. At a snack break, Mr. Williams grabs a Capri Sun and sticks the straw in the opposite way, which he says is better. 'When we were first dating, one of my best friends said, "Dude, you’re gonna be in the White House one day,"' and I was just like, "Yeahhh."'"

From "Tulsi Gabbard Thinks We’re Doomed/Or we will be if America doesn’t leave the rest of the world alone. That’s why the 38-year-old congresswoman from Hawaii is running for president," a weird little article in the NYT.

I don't know what "sticks the straw in the opposite way" means!

The article doesn't have the word "doom" in a quote from Gabbard. It does have her saying, "There are thousands of nuclear missiles pointing right at us, and if we were to get an attack, we would have 30 minutes, 30 minutes, before we were hit," but that's a fact that's a component of any serious thinking about national security, so I don't see how citing it makes "Doom... her main talking point."

I'm going to warily give this post my "NYT pushes Kamala" tag. That's where I keep track of my suspicion that the Times (and MSM generally) predetermined that Kamala's the one. Here's the mention of Kamala Harris in the article:

After Ms. Gabbard tore into presidential candidate Kamala Harris for her prosecutorial record during the second Democratic debates on Wednesday, the California senator on CNN called Ms. Gabbard an “apologist for an individual, Assad, who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.”

The article doesn't have Gabbard responding specifically on Assad, but quotes her saying, "We should be coming to other leaders in other countries with respect, building a relationship based on cooperation rather than with, you know, a police baton."

Gabbard is also connected to some people Democrats will be wary of: Ron Paul ("Tulsi Gabbard by far is the very, very best"), Ann Coulter ("Go Tulsi!"), and Joe Rogan ("Tulsi Gabbard’s my girl, I’m voting for her I decided, I like her"), Twitter's Jack Dorsey (who's contributed), and David Duke (who "has tweeted approvingly").

I think what's going on is that Gabbard is dangerous to Democratic Party interests. The doom sensed is defeat in the presidential election.

"No one quite knows why Pyongyang slowed its public and overt testing, nor why Donald Trump’s bluntness and boasting that his nuclear button was bigger seems to have worked."

"But consider this: Trump largely inherited practices initiated in the Obama years, military moves that were meant to threaten and coerce North Korea in light of its diplomatic failures.... Into this near autonomous skid towards conflict blundered Mr. Trump. It did look grim for a few months, the two threatening strikes on each other, missiles flying, and speculation even emerging that the United States might move nuclear weapons back onto South Korean soil.... Say what you will about Trump, but after some very bad years of active nuclear testing and missile shooting, disarmament on the Korean peninsula has already occurred. Things are quieter and two leaders who previously weren’t talking – ever – now are. Sure the United States should remain vigilant, but much of the penis-wagging and button-pushing is over. To say no success has occurred is factually incorrect. Just getting rid of the war cry is enough to cheer over."

Writes William M Arkin in The Guardian.

I'm enjoying this genre of awkward acknowledgement of Trump success. Notice how carefully it steers around any potential criticism of Obama. On quick first read, I thought "much of the penis-wagging and button-pushing is over" referred to Obama, but that wouldn't happen. For Obama, the penis metaphor will be actively avoided. For Trump, they'll use it whenever they can.

"When I came into office, I met right there in the Oval Office with President Obama. And I sat in those beautiful chairs."

Said Trump — WaPo transcript — who seemed to be flying high at the end of his Q&A session after his speech today.

And we talked. It was supposed to be 15 minutes. As you know, it ended up being many times longer than that. And I said, "What's the biggest problem?" He said, "By far, North Korea." And I don't want to speak for him. But I believe he would have gone to war with North Korea. I think he was ready to go to war. In fact, he told me he was so close to starting a big war with North Korea.

Now, where are we now? No missiles, no rockets, no nuclear testing. We've learned a lot. But much more importantly than all of it, much more important -- much, much more important than that -- is we have a great relationship. I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un. And I've done a job.

In fact, I think I can say this: Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. He said, "I have nominated you, or, respectfully, on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize." I said, "Thank you." Many other people feel that way, too. I'll probably never get it.

But that's OK. They gave it to Obama. He didn't even know what he got it for. He was there for about 15 seconds and he got the Nobel Prize. He said, "Oh, what did I get it for?" With me, I probably will never get it.

But if you look at Idlib Province in Syria, I stopped the slaughter of perhaps 3 million people. Nobody talks about that.... We do a lot of good work. This administration does a tremendous job and we don’t get credit for it.... So, Prime Minister Abe came here -- I mean, it was the most beautiful... five-page letter. Nobel Prize. He sent it to them. You know why? Because he had rocket ships and he had missiles flying over Japan. And they had alarms going off -- you know that. Now, all of a sudden, they feel good. They feel safe. I did that.

And it was a very tough dialogue at the beginning. Fire and fury. Total annihilation. “My button is bigger than yours” and “My button works.” Remember that? You don’t remember that. And people said, "Trump is crazy." And you know what it ended up being? A very good relationship. I like [Kim Jong-Un] a lot and he likes me a lot. Nobody else would have done that. The Obama administration couldn’t have done it. Number one, they probably wouldn’t have done it. And number two, they didn’t have the capability to do it.

At that point, he suddenly wrapped up — "So I just want to thank everybody. I want to wish our new attorney general great luck and speed and enjoy your life." Enjoy your life? I had the feeling that someone he trusted was flagging him down — Too high, you're flying too high, bring it in for a landing — and he did.

Trump said, "I don't want to speak for" Obama, then told us Obama told him he was "so close to starting a big war with North Korea." Obama was going to start a war? A nuclear war? And Trump doesn't think he should tell, but he immediately tells. Wild.

The man (Trump) is so high on himself. It seems that he was pumping himself higher and higher. He seems liberated by the belief that the Nobel people will never give him their prize, so he'll simply declaim his deservingness... and denounce Obama's.

The Green Reaper mascot the Department of Energy created is not merely ludicrous, it's evil, because the idea was to scare children.

From Hit & Run:

Thanks to a FOIA request from journalist Emma Best... we now know... the Green Reaper... was designed in 2012, was intended to be used in "community outreach presentations to local elementary school children" and in internal memos reminding government workers to conserve energy and carpool when possible....

The Green Reaper costume cost about $5,000 to manufacture, but the documents... don't give a full accounting of how much time public employees spent brainstorming and designing it. Regardless, the government liked the design so much that Dawn Starett, the program manager who invented the Green Reaper, won a 2013 Environmental Stewardship Award from the NNSA for it.... [S]queezing that much existential terror out of a mere $5,000 is pretty damn efficient for government work.

I found that through my son John's Facebook post, and here's what I wrote there:

Wow! It was designed to scare children! I remember being scared through my entire childhood by the threat of nuclear bombs. And for thousands of years people have scared children about Hell. The fact that you're sure a threat is real doesn't justify scaring children. I laughed at this mascot at first, but it really shows how evil people are toward children.

I'm giving this post my "using children in politics" tag, because I am inferring that the Department of Energy wanted to enlist children in amping up political pressure on adults and to shape future adults at an undefended emotional level.

And, yes, this is from the Obama Era.

This also needs the "religion substitutes" tag.

ADDED: Would this propaganda work? The Grim Reaper is Death. He's scary. You don't want him coming for you. You try to avoid Death as long as you can. The Green Reaper is an environmentalist. He's scary. You don't want him coming for you. Isn't this teaching the kids to avoid environmentalists?

"#TimesSquare tradition rings in the #NewYear by dropping the big ball...if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger."

Tweeted the US Strategic Command, which is in charge of America's nuclear weaponry. The tweet was subsequently detected to have entered the zone of bad taste and deleted.