THE UN IS CORRUPT AT EVERY LEVEL: ‘Journalist or terrorist’: Israeli envoy accuses UN of amplifying Hamas ‘lies’ on world stage.
June 30, 2026
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Supergirl — The Most Predictable Of Disasters.
WOEING:
New NASA Inspector General report on the Commercial Crew Program, which is mostly about Starliner.https://t.co/4RhTIN9YXj
Snip: pic.twitter.com/nvUNRJqy4V— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) June 30, 2026
Exit quote: “We question $127.9 million in payments to Boeing, in addition to the $43 million we questioned in a prior 2019 CCP-related report, for a mission that is far from certain.”
SCREWFLY SOLUTION: USDA opens sterile fly plant to fight screwworm as case grow in Texas.
SPACE: This Scrappy Little Rocket Company Just Made a Big Play Against Elon Musk. “Maybe you’ve heard of Rocket Lab, the scrappy New Zealand-based launch company whose innovative Electron small-lift rocket quickly became one of the most popular in U.S. service, thanks to its high success rate and rapid launch cadence. Except for nerds like me paying close attention to the launch industry, Rocket Lab gets a little lost in SpaceX’s shadow. But that might be about to change with the company’s multibillion-dollar acquisition.”
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK (CONT’D): A rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica is found tucked away in a drawer.
CHANGE: Cornerstone University launches ‘100%’ smartphone business degree.
Cornerstone University, located in Grand Rapids, is offering an associate’s degree and bachelor’s degree in strategic business management along with a master’s in organizational leadership through its new program.
Students pay a fixed rate of $2,400 per four-month term or $3,750 for the graduate level work. The intended audience is working adults.
According to the program’s website, SOAR aims to remove the financial barriers of traditional higher education by providing an affordable tuition structure where students “pay at least 50% less than other private online colleges.”
To achieve this, the platform prioritizes providing a “flexible schedule” driven by “engaging microlearning” through original podcasts, videos, audiobooks, and presentations developed by Cornerstone faculty. The goal is “to help students soar in all aspects of career and life.”
It remains to be seen whether smartphone degrees are worthwhile. But at a time when private schools are under tremendous financial pressure, adding tuition-paying students at basically zero marginal cost to the school seems smart.
WANT AIR CONDITIONING IN FRANCE? EASIEST WAY TO GET IT IS A TRIP TO THE MORGUE:
So far, somewhere over a thousand French people—older folks, mainly—have died in the heat wave that hit Europe in recent days.
That’s a preliminary number, and it’s in addition to the “normal” number of unnecessary deaths that occur every summer due to a lack of air conditioning. That’s just how many more people than you would expect in a normal summer week or two to die from excess heat. Because air conditioning is unusual in France and other European countries, more people die every year from heat-related causes than die of gunshot wounds in the United States.
You could say that in Europe, the most prolific murderers are the bureaucrats who make A/C difficult to get.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose:
There's a deep strain of elite French concern for the people being voiced here. "Let them eat cake," as Marie Antoinette put it. https://t.co/c9tLlCcRWD
— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) June 30, 2026
Like France, England has imported just the chaps to send you to the morgue:
Meanwhile the UK government pic.twitter.com/vTIMEBpNrZ
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 28, 2026
And MI6 has assigned their best spy to the case:
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 29, 2026
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Are there 14 million more insect species than previously thought?
SUPREME COURT DELIVERS LANDMARK TITLE IX WIN FOR WOMEN’S SPORTS: “With today’s decision, the Supreme Court, putting it broadly, appears to have affirmed that girls’ and women’s sports may be restricted to girls and women.”
BACK FROM LIBERTY CON, AND SHARING THE LATE PROMO POST, LATE: Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
There’s also a fun vignette challenge. (Every Sunday, normally.)
MOST OF IT COMES FROM CHINA AND THE “GLOBAL SOUTH:” One Of The Biggest Sources Of Mercury In Fish Isn’t What You’d Think. Although “China has been the world’s largest emitter of anthropogenic Hg since 1971. . . . Hg emission hotspots have significantly shifted toward the Global South (Fig. 3b), with Latin America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia experiencing rapid increases (Fig. 3a). In 2021, despite representing only one-fifth of the global economy59, the Global South (excluding China) constituted two-thirds of global emissions.”
No doubt some dumbass deputy mayor in France will blame the U.S. though.
WHOSE CAR IS IT, ANYWAY? Trump signs presidential memo that gives Americans more options to fix their cars. “The memorandum allows consumers to fix their own cars with aftermarket or third-party parts, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to issue guidance clarifying what actions individuals may take to fix their vehicles’ emissions systems, and expedites ways for consumers to acquire aftermarket auto parts.”
Cool. Now kill the kill switch.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP IN MAJOR BLOW TO TRUMP:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship, finding that the order violates the 14th Amendment.
Trump’s order declared that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
Writing on behalf of the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts says children born to parents who are in the United States unlawfully or temporarily are “born in the United States” and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
“Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth,” he wrote.
On to Plan B:
Apparently more border controls will be needed to thwart anchor baby tourism.
Pregnancy tests for all foreign women of birthing age seeking to enter the United States. OK.
Targeted deportations of foreign women of birthing age within US borders who lack resident alien status.… https://t.co/gRcZpwLApn
— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) June 30, 2026
CRY HARDER, MURDERERS AND RAPISTS: Insanity: Palestinians Now Complaining That They Can’t Cross Into Israel for Jobs.. Commit atrocities, then play victim. It’s their standard deal.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Mr. Obama, Are the Slaveowners in the Room With Us Right Now?
HOW TO YOU SAY “MAGA” IN SPANISH”? We Need to Talk About These Latin American Countries Moving to the Right.
CHANGE (IT BACK): Ford rehires experienced engineers after AI misses the mark.
Ford has rehired experienced human engineers to help address the shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI) tools meant to tackle quality issues in the automaker’s production processes.
The hiring push helped Ford top the JD Power 2026 U.S. Initial Quality Study (IQS) for the first time since 2010 amid improvements in the quality of its new vehicles, and follows some hard-learned lessons about the ability of AI to replace human knowledge in production processes.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said on a press call Wednesday, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles,” he said.
The current Shiny New Thing is AI, but at least once each generation some Shiny New Thing comes along that makes people forget that lesson about human experience.
WELL, THAT DOESN’T PASS THE SNIFF TEST: Finally, a Budget Democrats Will Cut: The Guy Who Investigates Fraud.
READER FAVORITE: C CUSHION LAB Deep Sleep Pillow. #CommissionEarned
CHECKS OUT:
Europeans dying of heat stroke: “Can we please turn on the AC?”
Their governments: “Best we can do is replace you with migrants and prosecute you for Facebook posts.” pic.twitter.com/aYt0QfrJrI
— The Drunk Republican (@DrunkRepub) June 30, 2026
From the replies: “Europeans are now rioting just to get cooled off by the water canons.”
BODY POSITIVITY: Medicare will start covering weight-loss drugs on July 1 for the first time. Here’s what you need to know.
Medicare is prohibited by law from covering weight-loss drugs, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is allowed to run short-term demonstration projects to test new payment and coverage models. The Bridge effort is part of a deal that the Trump administration announced in November with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the cost of their blockbuster anti-obesity medications.
Doctors and patient advocates have been clamoring for years to expand Medicare coverage to weight-loss drugs, arguing that obesity should be treated like any disease. The cost of buying GLP-1 medications without insurance can still run into hundreds of dollars.
Dr. Catherine Varney, obesity medicine director at the University of Virginia, has about 100 Medicare patients who will probably be eligible for Bridge program. None of them can afford to pay for weight-loss medications out of pocket, she said. Several have told her they are relieved that they may finally be able to obtain the drugs at a reasonable price.
“Most of these patients that I wanted to start on this medication are ticking time bombs,” said Varney, who is also a trustee of the Obesity Medicine Association. “They’ve got prediabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all these cardiac risk factors that are leading to heart attack and stroke.”
Maybe it’s time to change the law, because these are not quack medications.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LIMITING WOMEN’S SPORTS TO WOMEN.
Also: Federal campaign spending limits violate the First Amendment.
And now birthright citizenship: “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.” Not really a surprise, but a disappointment.
Congress can still make it a felony to enter the United States for the purpose of having a child, or to facilitate that, of course.
