A deadly, record-setting heat wave was continuing to blast most of the eastern U.S. on Tuesday, June 24, forecasters said, with temperatures soaring to near 100 degrees for tens of millions of people.
– USA Today
We’re still escaping the heat here in Seattle, with a relatively mild high of 79°F (26°C) here today.
Here is a mathematics-and-ice-cream cartoon from today’s Seattle Times, from cartoonist Bob Thaves.
Euclid is generally considered with Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga to be among the greatest mathematicians of antiquity. Euclid’s book ‘The Elements’ was a comprehensive compilation and explanation of all the known mathematics of his time, and the earliest known discussion of geometry. The Elements is often considered after the Bible as the most frequently translated, published, and studied book in the history of the Western World. [From Wikipedia]
The first images of the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile have come in.
The completion of the telescope’s construction has been two decades in the making. It was built on a mountain in northern Chile, in the foothills of the Andes, and on the edge of the Atacama Desert. The altitude and dry atmosphere around it provide clear skies for observing the cosmos.
From Kenneth Chang and Katrina Miller’s reporting in the New York Times: Rubin is far from the largest telescope in the world, but it is a technological marvel. The main structure of the telescope, with a 28-foot-wide primary mirror, an 11-foot-wide secondary mirror and the world’s largest digital camera, floats on a thin layer of oil. Magnetic motors twirl the 300-ton structure around — at full speed, it could complete one full rotation in a little more than half a minute. Its unique design means Rubin can gaze deep, wide and fast, allowing the telescope to quickly pan across the sky, taking some 1,000 photos per night. By scanning the entire sky every three to four days for 10 years, it will discover millions of exploding stars, space rocks flying past and patches of warped space-time that produce distorted, fun-house views of distant galaxies.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Cerro Pachón, Chile. [Marcos Zegers for The New York Times]A view of the observatory’s telescope mount assembly. The white disk is used for calibration of the camera. [Marcos Zegers for The New York Times]With its 3.2 billion-pixel camera, the Rubin Observatory captures extremely detailed photographs such as this small piece of a much larger image of the Virgo Cluster, a group of galaxies some 55 million light-years away. [Image from Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NSF/DOE]
I watched videos of several Tesla’s robotaxi rides in Austin today, posted by YouTubers that had been invited by Tesla to give it a try.
The robotaxi really a standard Tesla Model Y.
The displays on the main console and the backseat console have just been tailored to offer the robotaxi experience.
YouTuber Farzad’s view from the backseat. (Just as a precaution, there is a Tesla monitor in the passenger seat.) The passenger hails the robotaxi on the robotaxi app (that works similar to Uber, I’m sure), hops in, is instructed on the small backseat console to fasten their seatbelt. Then a Start Ride button appears on the touchscreen, and off the robotaxi goes. At any time, a button on the touchscreen can be used to instruct the taxi to pull over (presumably for an emergency, so that the passenger can get out). I think there is a support button on the screen as well, to place a call with.
P.S. Here comes a Cybertruck (on the left), and the white car behind it in the distance, is a Waymo self-driving car. Waymo is Google’s offering of fully autonomous driving technology and ‘robotaxi’ services. We don’t have Waymo in Seattle yet (scheduled for 2026). If all goes well, we may see Tesla robotaxis operate here in some time 2026, as well.
U.S. warplanes strike three Iranian nuclear sites in sweeping attack
The bombing is a major escalation by President Donald Trump, tethering the United States to a conflict with no clear end in sight.
While the U.S. and Iran have fought deadly proxy battles for nearly a half-century in Lebanon, Yemen, the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere, Trump’s action was the first significant U.S. military strike on Iranian soil since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Trump’s decision to enter the conflict raises immediate questions about how Iran or its proxies may react, even as scores of Israeli strikes have left Iranian military capabilities diminished. Iran has threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops, tens of thousands of whom are deployed throughout the Middle East in countries such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
-An extract from Dan Lamothe, Warren P. Strobel and Karen DeYoung’s reporting for the Washington Post
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East. Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops, the largest U.S. deployment in the country. Iran and its proxies have in recent years attacked it repeatedly. [Map and reporting from the Washington Post]
Happy Friday.
Happy Summer Solstice (here in the northern hemisphere).
The arrival of summer weather has been delayed by a few days here in Seattle, with cool and rainy weather expected this weekend.
The high today was only 62°F (17°C).
The amigos had better luck this morning, finding an open court for pickleball at the Mount Baker Pickleball and Tennis Courts. On the near side it’s a tennis court, officially, with no pickleball nets. We brought our own net, and it is set up and ready for play. Over on the far side there is a pickleball lesson is in progress. I am marveling at the number of plastic baskets that the coach had brought to the court. As far as I can tell there are 57.
It was a quiet and mild Juneteenth* holiday here in the city today, with a high of 68 °F (20°C).
On this last day of spring, the rain gauges still show zero for June.
That should change tomorrow, with much needed rain in the forecast.
*Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
The amigos ran out this morning to play pickleball, but found the courts swamped with players, everywhere. So we met at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for beers early in the evening. I walked back home from there, and took pictures of the flowers with my phone’s Portrait mode (so that it blurs the background). These are cotton lavender, belonging to the family Asteraceae.
My Ebay stamp dealer from Bishop’s Stortford (northeast of London) included this French postcard and stamp with my purchase.
It is of a cast iron balustrade plaque by French architect and designer Hector Guimard (1867 – 1942).
Look for the stylized ‘M’ at the bottom.
Guimard was a prominent practitioner of the art nouveau style.
French Decorative Art Issued Jan. 22, 1994 (one of a set of four stamps) Perf. 13¼ x 12¼ | Design: Jean Paul Véret-Lemarinier | Litho. | Engraving: ITVF Boulazac | No Watermark 2993 CMK 2.80Fr Multicolored | French Metro balustrade by Hector Guimard [Source: stampworld.com] __________ More about Guimard from Wikipedia: Between 1890 and 1930, Guimard designed and built some fifty buildings, in addition to one hundred and forty-one subway entrances for Paris Metro, as well as numerous pieces of furniture and other decorative works. However, in the 1910s art nouveau went out of fashion and by the 1960s most of his works had been demolished, and only two of his original Metro edicules were still in place.The first day post office stamp, used on the front and back of the 1994 postcard, with art nouveau lettering.It turned out I have a few pictures of this metro entrance designed by Guimard. I took them while I was in Paris in Sept. 2008. This entrance is for Pasteur station on Line 6 and Line 12 of the Paris Métro, in the 15th arrondissement. It features several of the Guimard balustrade plaques and meticulously designed street lamps. Even the font (the lettering style) for the ‘Métropolitain’ sign, was Guimard’s invention. [Shot with Canon EOS 20D f/14, 1/400s, ISO-1600, 36mm focal length]
Here is a primer of the three sites in Iran that are in the crosshairs of Israel’s attack.
Per the Washington Post: Israeli strikes on Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan pose little regional radiation risk but could release plumes of toxic chemicals, experts say. [Map from Washington Post online]
From Joshua Yang and Karen DeYoung’s report for the Washington Post titled ‘These Iran nuclear sites are the focus of Israel’s attacks’:
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran confirmed that the Israeli attacks had damaged Natanz and that chemical and radiation pollution had been detected inside the facility. Though the extent of the destruction remains unclear, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said Tuesday that the underground portion of Natanz, which contains the centrifuges, had been directly struck. The Natanz centrifuges were “severely damaged if not destroyed altogether,” IAEA head Rafael Grossi told the BBC on Monday.
The existence of Iran’s second nuclear enrichment site, Fordow, was publicly confirmed in 2009 after Iran constructed it in secret. Fordow is ostensibly designed to produce uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, but IAEA inspectors found samples of uranium enriched to 83.7 percent purity in the facility in March 2023.
A former Iranian missile base about 100 miles south of Tehran near the city of Qom, Fordow is dug into a mountainside hundreds of feet belowground. Though Fordow houses fewer centrifuges than Natanz, the facility’s subterranean design renders it far less vulnerable to airstrikes.
Israel did not include Fordow in its initial round of attacks but launched airstrikes in the vicinity of the site hours after it hit Natanz, Iranian authorities told the IAEA. The IAEA has not detected signs of damage at Fordow, Grossi said Monday.
Analysts say that Fordow could be destroyed by multiple GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, known as “bunker busters,” which use massive force to destroy targets deep underground. Israel has neither the bombs nor the planes needed to lift the heavy explosives. The United States possesses both*.
Isfahan houses the plant where natural uranium is converted into the uranium hexafluoride gas that is fed into centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Israel struck Isfahan on Friday, and Grossi confirmed Sunday that the attack had damaged four buildings, including the uranium conversion facility.
Iran’s nuclear program also includes the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, a commercial nuclear reactor in the south near the Persian Gulf, and the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, which contains a small research reactor supplied by the U.S. to the previous Iranian regime in 1967.
*WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday repudiated Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment that Iran has not been building a nuclear weapon, publicly contradicting his spy chief for the first time during his second term.
In rejecting his top spy’s judgment, Trump appeared to embrace Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s justification for launching airstrikes last week on Iranian nuclear and military targets, saying he believed Tehran was on the verge of having a warhead.
Here is the latest page that I just added to my set of albums for South Africa.
This unusual sheet of stamps— round stamps on gold foil paper, for nine different countries, in one sheet— was issued in 2010 to celebrate the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.
P.S. In June and July of next year, six matches of the 2026 World Cup will be played right here in Seattle. The USA team features in one match, and I wondered if there would be any tickets left.
Yes, there are, at a very dear price.
Ticket reseller Stubhub offers tickets starting at $2,235, for seats in the stadium.
But hold on to your beer. Right there on the pitch, one ticket is offered for $892,803 and another for $1,116,003. ‘Can relist if plans change’ it says for these. Yes. Or if the stock market crashes and you go from billionaire to millionaire.
Cartoon from The New Yorker online, by cartoonist Bernard Schoenbaum. Schoenbaum was a son of European emigrants, and born and raised in New York City. He passed away in 2010. I had trouble finding the original publication date of the cartoon, and asked ChatGPT to help me. It came back with ‘Based on style and signature, it likely dates from the 1980s or 1990s’.
On his 79th birthday, President Trump spent more than three hours on Saturday taking in the scene at a military parade commemorating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
The event, which was officially billed as a tribute to service and a showcase of American military history, was hailed by the president’s supporters as a show of strength and a savvy recruitment tactic.
But his critics argued that the event was a further politicization of the military, especially after of a tense week in which Mr. Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles to quell protests.
– Zach Montague reporting from Washington D.C. for the New York Times
A picture is worth a thousand words. The cover of the upcoming Jun 23 The New Yorker magazine.
Happy Friday.
The white daisies are out, here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
There are over 20,000 species of daisies— the flowering plants belonging to the Asteraceae family. It is one of the largest plant families. The central disk is actually a cluster of small, tightly packed flowers called disk florets. The ring of larger, more showy petals is called ray florets. [Shot on iPhone 16 Pro’s Portrait mode with Natural Light filter]
”If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country”
– US Senator Alex Padilla speaking at a news conference, appearing to briefly be overcome with emotion
This is not normal.
It’s really shocking, to see the video— and a next-level outrage, that United States Senator Alex Padilla was man-handled and cuffed for asking a question at a Dept. of Homeland Security news conference in Los Angeles, his home state.
A post from Annie Grayer (CNN Senior Reporter covering Congress) on X
We had a little bit of June gloom this morning with cool weather and low clouds.
The clouds are mostly gone now, so maybe I will get a good look at Junes’s Strawberry Moon* tonight.
*Named thus not because of the reddish glow, but because strawberries are harvested in June.
Headlines from the New York Times with photo by Gary Hershorn/ Getty Images
The Seattle metro area is coming out of the summer’s first heat wave.
A record high for June 8 was recorded at the airport on Sunday (90°F / 32°C).
It was still hot today, with a high of 87°F (31°C).
The amigos went out to the Mt Baker tennis courts for pickleball at 9.30 am before it got too toasty.
“Difficult to accept now because I had lots of chances, but this is the good part of the sport ..
Also today it got me the sad part, no? But, you know, if you watch only the sad part, you’re never going to come back.”
– Jannik Sinner after his heart-breaking defeat against Alcaraz
Congratulations to Carlos Alcaraz for defending his 2024 French Open title successfully.
It was an epic match, that saw Alcaraz face down three match points in the fourth set: trailing 3-5 and 0-40 (on his serve).
But no, Alcaraz won three points in a row, won the game, went on to win the fourth set tie-breaker.
Fifth set goes to a 10 point tie-breaker, and Alcaraz plays flawlessly to run up a 7-0 lead. 7-2, 8-2, 9-2, 10-2. The championship is his.
The Rolex clock showed 5 hours 29 minutes when it was finally over.
Congratulations to Coco Gauff for winning the French Open.
It had been a decade since an American had won this title (Serena Williams, in 2015).
Coco Gauff (21, 🇺🇸) beat world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka (27, 🇧🇾) 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-4 in a dramatic French Open final today. Simon Chambers writes for ESPN: Sabalenka went into the match as the favorite, having beaten Gauff in the Madrid Open final last month. But with the roof open and a strong wind gusting around Court Philippe Chatrier, clean ballstriking was almost impossible, the ball dying on the clay one minute and flashing through the court the next. [Photo by Adam Pretty / Getty Images]
The stamps to complete my 1931 set of South West Africa’s* first definitive stamps arrived in my mailbox today, and I promptly added them into my album.
*Namibia, since 1990. Namibia’s history spans from the arrival of hunter-gatherers like the San and the Bantu-speaking peoples to European colonialism and finally, independence.
Key periods include it as a German colony (1884-1915), a South African mandate (1915-1990), and the struggle for independence during that time, culminating in the nation’s independence on March 21, 1990.
[Source: Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
The 1½ penny was issued later (1937), but I included it in the set .. why not? I have a mint 1½d pair coming, but the used ones that I have now with OTJIEWARONGO and GROOTFONTEIN postmarks are cool, too. What’s unusual with this set is that the country name is in a different font for each denomination. Usually, the lettering for the country name is identical for all the stamps in a definitive set. The 20 shilling stamp denomination at the very end of the set is an extremely high value and must have been intended for very heavy or very large parcels. (20 shillings translates to a modern currency value at least 10x than the highest denominated modern stamps!). Furthermore: The “Okuwahakan Falls” depicted on the 1931 20-shilling stamp of South West Africa is something of a mystery. Despite its prominent appearance on the stamp, there is no well-documented waterfall in present-day Namibia known by this name, either historically or currently. Chat GPT says it is possibly a former or obscure name for a known waterfall: One candidate is Ruacana Falls on the Kunene River (the border with Angola). Another is Epupa Falls, further downstream on the Kunene. Both are among Namibia’s only notable large waterfalls. It is speculative, but “Okuwahakan” could be an old or alternate indigenous name for one of these falls.
It’s the 81st D-Day Anniversary today.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are dragging on.
And we are left with the smoldering wreckage of the Trump-Musk bromance.
‘I HATE MY X!‘ ‘says’ Trump of Musk on the cover of today’s New York Post .. and ‘Big, beautiful break-up—Trump-Elon bromance explodes into insults, threats*.
*X is formerly Twitter, now owned by Musk, from where he flung insults and allegations. (Trump fired back on his social media platform, called Truth Social). The big, beautiful is a reference to the The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’, the massive and garbage federal bill proposed by Trump and his Republicans that includes tax cuts for the rich, debt ceiling increases, and changes to social programs. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that by Fiscal Year (FY) 2034 the bill would increase America’s debt by nearly $3 trillion.
Reporting from the New York Times. One wonders if Trump took even one turn at the wheel of this Tesla Model S. (Definitely not on a public road, but presidents ARE permitted to drive on private property, such as golf courses or within controlled estates.)
