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Yes, yes, yes — another nice one by Evelyn Gordon. Unusually, Trump’s UN speech did not even mention the Palestinians. The omission is the first diplomatic suggestion to them that they may have something to lose by intransigence. To date, the only policy I can think of that has served this purpose is settlements.

In a nice interview about his book, the great Yanis Varoufakis reviews what happened during the Greek bailout negotiations.

A photo essay by Dan Frommer on attending Apple’s iPhone X event — its first at the Steve Jobs Theater.

There’s some powerful new stuff in iOS 11, as summarized at The Verge. Document scanning in Notes (though no OCR, need an app for that). Markup on screenshots. Screen recording. A file system. Configurable Control Panel. I do so love Apple.

Thank you Bjorn Lomborg for the courage to articulate the problem that is the climate change distraction. The immediate fallout from fixations is their opportunity costs.

Now that it’s over, time to tell the neo-medievalists: hurricanes are not new to Florida. Nicely researched and written piece by a chagrined resident.

As the weaker party, an itchy trigger finger makes sense for North Korea, argues this MIT-based expert.

In this adaptation from Esther Perel’s forthcoming book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, the argument goes that extra-marital affairs are often about self-development.

Enjoy this superb little series on contemporary American commercial aviation by “Slate, from security theatre to the pilot shortage.

I disagree with his conclusion as I love the new translation (and I disavow anything else on the same site, I disavow!), but here Dr. Joshua D. Wilson, a Baptist pastor, analyses the grammar behind the rather radical recent change in English translations of בְּרֵאשִׁית 1:1 from “In the beginning…” to “When God began…”

Ever the definite optimist (to use Peter Thiel’s chart), Henry Kissinger argues that the North Korean crisis is an opportunity for the USA and China to get to know each other better as their deep cooperation is the only way to solve the issue. His basic position: China allows reunification, USA and Korea keep the north demilitarized. Unfortunately his can-do spirit (when Charlie Rose asks if he’s “optimistic”, he demurs and says he’s “hopeful”) is, it seems, suddenly of a bygone era.

Great stuff: professional poker champion Phil Hellmuth on everything while Tim Ferriss tries to interview him for the podcast.

On the Y Combinator podcast (episode #29), Jack Dorsey reads from a couple of books he found important and imparts a daily practice.

In defending Amazon against Trump’s recent broadside, Matt Seybold in the beautiful Los Angeles Review of Books brings out the literary big guns: he notes that Mark Twain defended Rockefeller’s Standard Oil against Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting.

This long magazine piece on the revolution in Washington lobbying affairs in the wake of Trump reads like a great fun tv show.

From Dore Gold’s JCPA: The Jews are among the oldest of indigenous peoples.

Those without much money invest in their homes; those with invest in equities.

According to this meretriciously entitled New York Post article “Millennials don’t really care about classic movies”, the only 4 overlapping movies among the top 10 most common movies that both millennials and over-50’s have seen are: 1) Forrest Gump, 2) Back to the Future, 3) The Silence of the Lambs, and 4) The Godfather. That’s Zemeckis in 1994 and 1985, Demme in 1991, and Coppola in 1972. No Spielberg, Hitchcock, not even James Cameron. Interesting.

Peggy Noonan opens and shuts the case on statues. To me it’s all very Taliban.

On true, lowercase realism for the United States.

On golf, drunk driving in Phoenix, and “the hillbilly passover Seder”: Alice Cooper eulogizes his good friend Glen Campbell.

There are unsettling but persuasive parallels between liberal democracy and communism. A review of The Demon in Democracy by Ryszard Legutko, Polish professor of philosophy, government official and European parliament member. [via the treasure that is aldaily]

The key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships. This from an 80-year ongoing study of Harvard’s class of ’38.

The world’s most rhinestone cowboy, Glen Campbell, has died at 81. He is one of my favorites.

Casting President Trump — The Movie.

Slant Magazine is once again in Jerusalem, this time for Jerusalem Film Festival 2017. By Greg Cwik.

InspireConversation is the parenting blog of, together with his wife, Jason Greenblatt. He is the presidential envoy who accompanied Israel’s Head of Security Services to Jordan to defuse the recent Israeli embassy crisis there.

Trump Ends Support to Anti-Assad Rebels. Trump’s empty embassy move promise was it seems a symbolic harbinger of things to come. By letting Russia control what happens in Syria near Israel’s border, Trump is betraying the fundamental security interests of ally Israel, not to mention doubling down on its dereliction of superpower duty, which means abandoning American long-term interests.

Modi and Netanyahu, India and Israel’s prime ministers, are a match made in history. By Jonathan Spyer in The American Interest.

I appreciate this nicely laid out summary of wisdom reminders for the working life by Studio Lovelock, This Much We Know.

Now this you should see. Via Andy Serkis the motion capture king, Gollum reads a couple of Trump tweets as his own. Ah, excellence. [via motherjones.com]

Another dizzyingly ironic yet comic and worthy essay by a late 20-something “writer based in Brooklyn” (I shouldn’t disparage, to be such was my highest ambition), this is Daniel Kolitz’s What I Learned at Personal Branding School.

All our spines. A compilation of what Houston-based chiropractor Dr Gregory Johnson calls his ring-dingers.

In a large study of US military veterans, researchers “consistently found a significant association between PPI (proton pump inhibitor) use and increased risk of death”. They don’t know why this happens but do know that “PPI treatment impairs lysosomal acidification and proteostasis and results in increased oxidative stress, dysfunction, telomere shortening and accelerated senescence of human endothelial cells.” [via The New York Times]

What Cuba is like now, after the thawing with the United States. J. S. Tennant in The White Review.

Just the insight I was seeking on Jim Carrey as a performer.

Robots don’t eat chocolate. James Meek weaves a rich tale of Cadbury’s moving its chocolate factory from Bristol in England to Skarbimierz in Poland. We get EU politics, British commercial history and contemporary Polish politics. It’s a microcosm of the economic game of musical chairs happening in our era. [via Tyler Cowen’s marginalrevolution.com]

Giancarlo Esposito talks with Slant Magazine about, among other things, how he created Gustavo Fring. “So part of what I began to do in Breaking Bad was to use my ease of expression—my breathing in and out, my yoga practice—to drop my natural personality. So that I would be calm and relaxed and allow myself to witness a little bit.”

Efraim Inbar provides the background to the hugely significant first-time-ever visit to Israel by an Indian Prime Minister.

What an internet treasure. Standard Ebooks is — according to their web site — “a volunteer driven, not-for-profit project that produces lovingly formatted, open source, and free public domain ebooks.” These are some beautiful, consistently-designed ebooks. The epub version works a charm in iBooks.

“A wordy kind of Kardashian Instagram feed, without the self-awareness.” In this perfectly pitched skewering of Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman & Dave Eggers et al’s confrontation of the Occupation in the West Bank, Matti Friedman wonders what it’s all actually about. All this, plus: I don’t think I’ve ever seen such skilful use of the exclamation mark!

As an antidote to the borderline smarminess of Jason Horowitz’s New York Times article about returning to Rome, here is a more substantial, dignified, rewarding and useful guide to visiting the city by a blogger named Nan Quick: My Recipe for a Stress-Free Week in Rome. Warning: she takes a couple of paragraphs to warm up.

He had me with his first-paragraph mention of Trattoria Da Enzo, my favorite. I’ve forwarded to visitors this panegyric to Rome by the incoming New York Times’ bureau chief. A lot of attractive restaurants mentioned and described. [via Juan Carlos Bronstein, who was unimpressed by the tone, as are many others in the comments]

Tainted and beloved: Terry Teachout on the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras’ participation in the Nazi project..

“Gazans today are more moderate than West Bankers on the key question of permanent peace with Israel,” reports David Pollock at The Washington Institute based on what he calls “reliable data from a new survey conducted there May 16-25 by a professional, independent Palestinian pollster.” I thought it might augur hope for an eventual end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but 44% of Gazans and 55% of West Bankers still believe the conflict “should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated”. And 46% of Gazans blame Israel for their economic woes while only 4% blame Egypt. [via dailyalert.com]