‘Donald Trump arrived in France yesterday for this morning’s G7 summit and promptly confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran. Instead of merely repeating the outlines of what looks to be a terrible peace deal, however, Trump made a series of statements so bizarre, even by his usual standards, that they raise the question of whether the president still understands the words that come out of his own mouth.…’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)

‘Yesterday, Donald Trump admitted that he was being crafty when he elevated J. D. Vance to sell the resolution of the war with Iran. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the peace deal. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D.”

Trump was smirking when he said this, but it was not a joke. Judging by the messaging emanating from across the Republican Party, letting the president claim victory while making the vice president own an obvious defeat is the GOP strategy.…’ (Jonathan Chait via The Atlantic)

‘As a physician and the chief medical officer of Hospice Buffalo, Chris Kerr has seen his patients experience end-of-life dreams and visions for nearly 30 years. Since 2010, he has led a research team that studies the phenomenon and chronicles how the visions can provide solace, meaning and healing to both the dying and their loved ones.…’ (Caitlin Gibson via The Washington Post)

‘From a broken life to a broken nail, ‘trauma’ has been bleached by overuse. But it names something real – and must be reclaimed…’ ( Lily Dunn via Aeon Essays)

‘Twice in the Earth’s history, massive ranges of supermountains have formed on ancient continents.

…And while it’s often said that we are stardust — built from elements forged in the hearts of dying stars — in a sense, we also might be supermountain dust.

They were perhaps as tall or taller than Everest but their distinguishing feature was their massive breadth — we’re talking ranges 5000 miles long, three to four times the length of the Himalayas — just a unbelievable volume of earth. And their formation may have “fueled two of the biggest evolutionary boom times in our planet’s history”.

That’s a lot of rock to erode — and, according to the researchers, that’s why these enormous mountains are so important.

As both mountains eroded away, they would have dumped tremendous amounts of nutrients like iron and phosphorus into the sea through the water cycle, the researchers said. These nutrients could have significantly sped up biological cycles in the ocean, driving evolution to greater complexity. In addition to this nutrient spillover, the eroding mountains may have also released oxygen into the atmosphere, making Earth even more hospitable to complex life…’ (Jason Kottke via Kottke)

‘Officials in Tehran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation.…’ (Graeme Wood via The Atlantic)

‘The United States has capitulated to Iran. There is a “deal,” which has been signed, on terms that can only be described as those of complete Iranian victory.

The US-Iranian talks that were supposed to begin today were cancelled, so today is as good a day as any to discuss the signed “memorandum of understanding” and mark the completion of the disaster. We have what we have: humiliation.

War, as some people apparently needed to learn, is not about the pleasure one takes in watching things blow up. It is politics by other means. To win a war means changing the politics of the enemy such that they must surrender. That is what Iran just did to the United States.

This war was a parade of Trump’s incompetence at every possible level from the beginning. To win a war requires understanding the politics of the other side and how it might be changed. Trump, Hegseth and the others treated the Iranian leadership as cartoon characters who would immediately do what Americans wanted as soon as the bombs fell. The Americans had no strategy — no sense of how violence could change politics — and it did not occur to them that the Iranians would have one. Once the Iranians did the obvious, which was to respond to American long-range strikes with their own, and close the Straits of Hormuz, the war was over, and they had won. The Americans had no second move, except to claim that they had won when they had lost (which they are, laughably, still doing)…’ (Timothy Snyder via Substack)

‘The whiplash is jarring.

President Trump exulted over every bomb that dropped on Iran, every naval interdiction, and every joint U.S.-Israeli operation. Before that, he spent years preaching a policy of “maximum pressure” sanctions on the Islamic Republic. And before that, he harshly disparaged the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal reached by Barack Obama, from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.

And now? With a misguided war going poorly, with global economic chaos spreading, with Iran handed maximum leverage by its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in an instant, Trump has upended every pillar of his approach to a still-dangerous Iran.

Let’s count the ways…’ (Daniel B. Shapiro via The Atlantic)