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This announcement is alarming:

Effective July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public. Security officers will enforce these restrictions, and your cooperation is appreciated.

– The National Archives at College Park, Maryland

It is unclear what “a legitimate business need” means or who will make that determination. Are they planning to review the research plans of individual scholars?

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Strategic bombing’s limited efficacy:

The question that has dominated strategic warfare since it emerged a century ago remains the central question today: Does strategic warfare work? For the moment, the answer seems to be no; at the very least, it cannot on its own win wars or … induce an adversary to change its posture.

– Raphael S. Cohen, “The False Promise of Strategic Bombing,” Foreign Affairs, February 18, 2025, archive.ph….

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I know the U.S. blundering into an attack on Iran is the big story of the moment, but these weird examples of MAGA idolatry caught my eye: bills to rename WMATA to WMAGA, to make their leader’s birthday a national holiday, and to print $250 bills with said leader on them (Washington Post archive.ph…). Extreme self-parody, I guess. Would also mean more opportunities for ridiculing the has-been reality TV star turned worst president.

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Disgusting:

I’ve said it before, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. There’s an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that’s ours.…

– Vladimir Putin, June 20, 2025.

Via Meduza and The Kyiv Independent.

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I never thought I’d be living in a country whose government and law-enforcement officials are actively hostile to the populace and the rule of law.

Latest example: Federal Agents Arrest NYC Comptroller & Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander At Immigration Court.

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Grey, wet sky with wild green field framed by a tree on each side and filled with trees in the background. The colors are all dampened by the light rain.

Seen behind the firehouse in Conway Village this morning during a drizzly walk.

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Book cover for Silvie by Jennifer Sattler. Silvie, the protagonist, is a pink flamingo.

Here's the latest book in my rotation of things I read to my granddaughter via FaceTime: Jennifer Sattler, Silvie (Random House, 2009). She adores the imaginative story and the lovely, friendly art.

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Yikes! I just heard a report from the German broadcaster ARD that Iran doesn’t have any air-raid shelters for its civilians. The report was about Tehran, but I don’t imagine it’s better anywhere else in that country.

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Lots of people turned out for the protest in Conway today—big and little, young and old, two-legged and four-legged… 🇺🇸

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Fortify yourself with this timely IMY2 cover of an old favorite: “For What It’s Worth” (Buffalo Springfield) youtu.be….

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Western journalists are … taught to report various interpretations of the facts. The adage that there are two sides to a story makes sense when those who represent each side accept the factuality of the world and interpret the same set of facts. Putin’s strategy of implausible deniability exploited this convention while destroying its basis. He positioned himself as a side of the story while mocking factuality. “I am lying to you openly and we both know it” is not a side of the story. It is a trap.

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 5.

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Putin has correctly surmised that lies unite rather than divide Russia’s political class. The greater and the more obvious the lie, the more his subjects demonstrate their loyalty by accepting it, and the more they participate in the great sacral mystery of Kremlin power.

– Charles Clover, quoted in Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap 5.

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No war was taking place, and it was thoroughly justified.

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 5, regarding Russian propaganda in 2014.

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Using or threatening to use military force to counter mostly peaceful civil unrest is not a sign of strength. Our malicious fool of a president is a morally bankrupt coward. The emperor has no clothes.

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Smoke from wildfires in central and western Canada is affecting air quality in northern New England again today.

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Hazy weather from Canadian wildfire smoke today. 🔥

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📽️ Hella good midday procrastination surprise: “Seven Psychopaths,” dir. Martin McDonagh (Paramount Pictures, 2012). Two of the stars are among my modern-day favorites: Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken.

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📽️ Watched two satires. The most memorable was “Simon” (Warner Bros., 1980), starring Alan Arkin, who plays a psychologist brainwashed into believing he’s extraterrestrial. The other was “Mountainhead” (HBO Films, 2025), whose stars include Steve Carell and Ramy Youssef. They play two of four maladjusted tech bros with god complexes.

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👉 “Russia has dragged occupied Ukraine far below North Korea and other ‘worst of the worst’ – Freedom House” by Halya Coynash, May 30, 2025, for the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.

For more, see Freedom House’s 2025 World Report or its section on Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories.

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In “No God but Theirs” (63 min.), The Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigations Unit looks at the persecution of Ukrainian Christians in Melitopol. It suggests important links between communities of faith and civil society that Russian fascists find threatening. 🇺🇦

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One way to support freedom is to become a member of The Kyiv Independent. Just saying. 🇺🇦

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I just watched “The Americanization of Emily” (Warner Bros., 1964) with James Garner, Julie Andrews, and James Coburn. Set around D-Day, it’s an irreverent comedy whose naval antihero, played by Garner, is a proud coward.

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Nations are new things that refer to old things. It matters how they do so.

–Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (Tim Duggan Books, 2018), chap. 4.