If I was president

If I was the president, where Ukraine is concerned, I'd like to think I'd have one message for Putin. "Get out of Ukraine, return the kidnapped children and the POWs, and cough up the money for rebuilding. Or the US will join this war on the side of Ukraine, and together we will win."

Lovely to See You

Moody Blues, Paris, 1970, Lovely to See You, written and sung by Justin Hayward. One of my favorites.

Starshield

Retired general Mark Hertling comments on the Ukraine/Starshield situation.

Ukraine

Ukraine runs out of Patriot interceptor missiles as Zelensky and Trump clash over war

Elon Musk says Trump is ‘ultimately’ responsible for any curbs on Ukraine’s Starshield systems

Timothy Snyder, from Ukraine ...

Brett McGurk

I've just watched a really interesting and disturbing interview with Brett McGurk, a diplomat who served under presidents from Bush through Biden. He has been making the rounds in the news because he has a new book out - Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages

McGurk points out that the one thing which always seems to get left out of discussions about the war in Gaza is the role of Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar. His main concluding message is that Hamas must not remain in power in Gaza, and Hezbollah must not remain on Lebanon's border.

Ezra Klein: relationships with AIs

In Terminator 2, Sarah watches her son interact with a Terminator, an AI/machine, and realizes the relationship between them is one of the safest and most reliable her son could have ...



And in an episode of Star Trek, this idea is tweaked as Commander Riker tries to explain to Data, an AI/machine, why he was deceived by a human being who pretended to be his friend ...



Ezra Klein delves into this subject with sociologist Sherry Turkle in his latest podcast. She seems to really hate the idea of people creating emotional relationships with AIs (or anithing else that's not a human, including animals), but I see real benefits to that.

Pope Leo

On no. I hope he gets better.

Heartbreaker

The song, Heartbreaker, was written by the Bee Gees in 1982 for Dionne Warwick, and the version that the Bee Gees sing was not released until 2006. BTW, Barry is one of the most prolific of songwriters, beaten only by Lennon and McCartney.

The Bee Gees' songs make me feel sad. When my cat Data was dying of bladder cancer, I had borrowed disks of the Bee Gees' greatest hits from the library and listened to them all the time while I was taking care of him, to help me get by. I miss Data ...

In the War Room

A really interesting conversation between Haviv and Elliot Kaufman of The Wall Street Journal about a new book from Kaufman and Yonah Jeremy Bob titled In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.

Tuesday Afternoon

The Moody Blues at La Taverne de l'Olympia in Paris, 1970.

Also 1970 and the same song, but here it was one of sixteen songs they played at the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK ...

Two interviews

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos there were two interesting interviews. One was with Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton, a Methodist theologian and minister ...



And there was also an interview with President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ...

Mathpocalypse

Star Trek NG, The Royale, Captain Picard and Commander discuss Fermat's Last Theorem.

OpenAI Just Carpet-Bombed Mathematics

In the growing chorus of mathematicians revolting against AI companies, Hugo Duminil-Copin, who in 2022 received the Fields Medal, math’s highest honor, has perhaps put mathematicians’ concerns most vividly. In an essay published just before OpenAI announced last month that it had solved one of seven grand mathematical challenges known as the Millennium Prize Problems, he wrote that AI proofs “nuke the mathematical landscape, making it increasingly difficult to inhabit after each blast.”

Public executions

Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

Ah, yes. Nothing's so much fun as a public execution. Bring the whole family, make a picnic lunch. Just like the good old days when medieval towns executed people in the public aquare as entertainment. And education - how else can the local despot make sure everyone gets the message? And it makes all the viewers complicit ... we all killed the prisoner, right? Now we're like Saudi Arabia and Iran and North Korea and ISIS. It's so cool, right?

Brought to you by Trump

OpenAI Insider

Ezra interviews David Robinson, who recently resigned from OpenAI because he thought their practices were unsafe. Some of what he said about how the new AI agents/models are being grown and the speed at which this is happening was really disturbing. Sounds more and more, to me at least, like we are really dealing with an emergent kind of being rather than a piece of software.

Remembering October 7

There's a lot of information out there about the October 7 attack by Hamas/Gaza on Israel. Some is concerned with how different elements of the Israeli government/military failed to anticipate the attack.

For me, the important thing is not about whether the attack could have been prevented, it is about the facts of the attack that did happen. Who participated in the attack and what did they do? Who were the victims and what happened to them?

There is much to be found on this because the perpetrators often filmed their own crimes using body cameras, mobile phones, and vehicle cameras, and posted the films online at places like Telegram and Facebook (Israel/Palestine: Videos of Hamas-Led Attacks Verified), and the IDF made a compilation film of some of that footage which was shown to journalists, diplomats, and others (Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre).

Let's remember some of the victims ...













Of course there are so many more but this is all I can do. There is no justifying this stuff, and shame on those who try to.

Remembering October 7

I recall seing these videos of the people in Gaza celebrating the attack on Israel, and striking the Israeli hostages, some of them dead and half naked like Shani Louk, who were paraded through the streets. No one seems to remember this now.

When they came back, countless hostages survivors said Hamas had to shield them from the mob of "civilians" who wanted to tear them limb from limb. Look what they did to the hostages who arrived dead: https://t.co/qAwhiyPRAC

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 7, 2026

Remembering October 7th

It's been three years since the October 7th terror attacks where 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage into Gaza. NBC News' Raf Sanchez was in Israel covering the events that would cause a major shift in the Middle East.

Gavin Newsom

My governor on Trump's deranged invitation to Iran to nuke Los Angeles and San Diego ...

An American president is talking about Los Angeles and San Diego being “taken out.” Where the hell is Congress? This is dangerous. The time to stand up is NOW. https://t.co/1PVG6PHb7m

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 6, 2026

Madness

In speech tonight, Trump suggests Iran should strike L.A. and San Diego with nuclear weapons, saying "it's a small price to pay". The crowd of Republicans cheers.

I'd Love to Change the World

I'd Love to Change the World by Ten Years After, 1971.

Memorial day

Israel marks October 7 anniversary as national memorial day

Israel is observing a national memorial day on Monday for those killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks and the soldiers who died in the Gaza war, Israeli media reported.







The baby and his brother and mother were killed by their captors.

Saint Francis: 800 years

Plane hijacking

Palestinians pioneered airplane hijackings as a global form of terrorism.

October 7 inspired millions more to globalize the intifada: pic.twitter.com/YUCmOf2IbF

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 1, 2026

I recall the plane hijackings of the 70s. I was often flying back then. My family's flight to Europe in July of 1976 took place just after one of the most notorious hijackings - -that of Air France flight 139 on June 27, 1976 ...

Entebbe raid ...

[T]he hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris by members of the PFLP-EO [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations] and the German Revolutionary Cells, who diverted the aircraft to Entebbe International Airport with the backing of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Following the 27 June hijacking, the captors took the 248 passengers hostage with the objective of compelling the release of imprisoned Palestinian militants and international prisoners ...

It was during the rescue of these hostages by Israeli forces that PM Netanyahu's brother was killed.

Ezra Klein and Bill Gates

A really interesting in depth interview with Bill Gates on AI.