SEND IN THE CLOWNS:  Here Are the Dems Running to Replace Graham Platner. It’s a Total Circus.

MEN HAVE THE VIRTUES OF THEIR FLAWS:  Iran: “What Saves Us and the Free World Is the Ego of Donald Trump”.

INDEED!  Why Greenland? “China’s Desire to Dominate Global Waterways Is a Threat to Sovereign Nations”.

AH, BUT YOU SEE, THE IMAGINARY ARROW OF HISTORY IS WITH THEM:  Never left enough.

BECAUSE OF COURSE:  DEI Rebranding On College Campuses – New CriticalRace.Org Report Exposes Name Change Game.

WE ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS:  Iran, Persuasion, And The Limits Of Rational Actor Theory.

INTERESTING:  From the Caribbean to the Black Sea to Hormuz: The Global Conflict No One is Seeing (Video).

PEOPLE WHO NEVER HEARD OF THE STREISAND EFFECT:  Sort of a Reverse Boycott.

FAFO TAKES MANY MANY FORMS:  NY mom’s tragic last post with boyfriend she met at pro-Palestine march revealed as he is ID’d as suspect in her Ireland murder.

LOOK, SOMETIMES I GET EXERCISED…  Teach The Children Well.

THIS JUST IN:  Congratulations to J. Kenton Pierce.

OPEN THREAD: Be part of the brotherhood.

THE DIET SMITH CORPORATION REJOICES: ‘Acceleration without fuel:’ Revolutionary superconducting thruster harnesses Earth’s magnetic field in 1st orbital test. Bring on the “Magnetic Space Coupe.”

SPACEWAR: Scientists Have Just Found a Way to Detect Nuclear Weapons in Space.

PLANETARY DEFENSE: Chinese scientists find the best way to nuke an asteroid on its way to impact Earth.

STAY STRONG: Toniiq Liposomal NAD+ and Resveratrol Supplement. #CommissionEarned

TAKE OFF AND NUKE THE SITE FROM ORBIT. IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE. How to get rid of bed bugs: A step-by-step guide.

IT’S A CUTER SMARTCAR: 2026 Fiat Topolino First Look: Adorable, But Is It Worth $15,000?

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Two Huge Reasons Why Emmys Have Become a Joke.

Watch any episode of “Landman,” and you’ll come away with one thought.

Billy Bob Thornton is as good as it gets.

The veteran actor’s turn in the Paramount Plus show is everything binge-worthy TV should be – smart, compelling, unpredictable and engaging.

You can quibble about the rest of the program, and some do. Loudly. Thornton’s performance is sublime.

Not to Emmy voters, apparently.

The main thing that keeps me coming back to “Landman” is that in every scene with Billy Bob Thornton, the writers give him at least one perfect Billy Bob Thornton line.

But do read the whole thing, which is really about the not-so-amicable divorce bettwen Hollywood and Taylor Sheridan.

ICYMI: SHOCK REPORT: The New York Times Almost Has Standards. “Not that exact piece, you say? So — there is some version of Kristof’s baseless canine consent irregularities story that Kahn’s news division would have run? Help me out here, because I’m a little confused.”

KEEP YOUR DISHWASHER CLEAN: Affresh Dishwasher Cleaner. #CommissionEarned We use this and it works well!

NOT AS MUCH AS PLATNER: Is Susan Collins in Trouble Now?

GOOD: SCOTUS’s AR-15 Ruling Could Open a Broader Range of Questions the Gun Control Industry Doesn’t Want Answered.

UGH: In the post-literate society … Look! A meme!

The End of Reading is Here, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Everyone’s reading less — if you don’t count Instagram captions — and people who do read are choosing shorter and shallower books.

The best-selling novel of 1958 was the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, she writes. Last year, the top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series.

Adults are choosing young-adult fiction and romantasy (romance and fantasy). School librarians are stocking graphic novels and manga to match students’ lower reading levels and shorter attention spans.

In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.

Reading is fundamental, they told me. And it still is.

SO STILL NO ARREST FOR THEIR FIRST OBAMA? Remember Andrew Gillum? The Democrats’ Next Obama Just Got Arrested Again.