Greenland and the Return of Great-Power Politics

Why the Hell Should We Care If Democrats Don’t?

A Quick Bible Study Vol. 303: The Best of St. Paul

1562 - The Council of Trent is reopened by Pope Pius IV for its third (and final) session 1896 - First demonstration of an X-ray machine in the US (New York City) 1960 - Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes in Virginia, killing all 50 people on-board 1973 - Orlando Cepeda is 1st player signed as MLB designated hitter by Boston Red Sox 1974 - Science fiction TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" premieres on ABC, starring Lee Majors 1980 - Price of gold reaches $850 an ounce 1992 - Comedian Pat McCormick injured in a car accident 2017 - Baseball Hall of Fame adds Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez More Historical Events »

The New York Times and its City Hall reporter Jeffery C. Mays attacked new Mayor Zohran Mamdani for not putting enough "affirmative action" in his new administration. Blacks make up about 23 percent of the population of New York City, so they expect him to be quota-conscious. The headline for this lecture:  None of Mamdani’s Deputy Mayors Are Black. It Has Become a Problem. Some Black and Latino leaders worry they are being denied access to power under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and that they may lose the ground they had gained under former Mayor Eric Adams. Mays lamented that "in his rollout as mayor, Mr. Mamdani has appointed five deputy mayors, none of them Black; one was Latino." Oh sure, Mamdani "announced Afua Atta-Mensah, who led his campaign outreach to Black voters, as the new chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice" and "reaffirmed his commitment to releasing a long overdue and mandated plan to address racial disparities in New York City." But as a man of color, he's not doing enough for the capital-B black people:  The moves were welcomed by Black and Latino leaders, but they still questioned Mr. Mamdani’s commitment to racial equity. Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, a well-known Black political consultant, said in an interview that she believed it was “damaging that there’s no Black deputy mayor.” “He already doesn’t have the best relationship with the Black community,” she said. “And it seems like he’s not interested in us because there’s no representation in his kitchen cabinet.” Mays pointed out that Mamdani’s Democrat predecessors Eric Adams and Bill DeBlasio did better, and then more complaints: “For someone who prides himself on being directly engaged with everyday New Yorkers, to be so tone deaf to the cries of Black and Latinos in the city for access to power is shocking,” said Kirsten John Foy, the president of the civil rights group Arc of Justice. “There are some very good people of color that have been appointed to some high-level positions, but those people are not at the center of the decision-making apparatus in this city.” Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for the new mayor, said there's been diversity. "Out of 32 appointees so far, 18 have been Asian American, Latino, Middle Eastern or Black, she said." Apparently, only blacks are the real "people of color" who uniquely define "diversity." The best part is how the black leftists don't like Mamdani's radical network, "as if race doesn't matter." “It is acting out what Black people don’t like about the D.S.A.,” Ms. Henderson-Rivers said of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mr. Mamdani is a member. “And that’s acting as if race doesn’t matter.” Kyle Bragg, the former head of the powerful union Local 32BJ, wrote on Facebook that the Mamdani administration was the first in decades to not appoint a Black deputy mayor. He also attributed the lack of diversity to the “D.S.A.-aligned politics” of the left, where issues of class are given more weight than race. Mays brought in leaders of both the NAACP and the National Urban League to pile on Mamdani's inadequacies. Suddenly, Mayor Eric Adams doesn't look quite so bad to these fervent bean-counters. 

Tech Workers Mistaken for ICE Agents and Accosted by Flash Mob

FAFO in Real Time: Leftist Gets Secret Service Visit Over 'What She Deserves' Threat to Press Sec

A necropolis from Late Antiquity has been discovered in in Bourget-du-Lac, southeastern France. The burials contain artifacts including coins, bronze jewelry, amber beads and locally-produced pottery that attest to the funerary rites of the period. The site, excavated prior to construction of a housing development, was on the outskirts of the ancient town. Archaeologists found remains ranging in date from the Roman era to the Modern Era, with the earliest being a wood post quadrangular structure dating to the late 1st century B.C./early 1st century A.D.). This building was replaced with a larger masonry structure in the Imperial era. Only the foundations remain, so its exact function is unknown, but archaeologists believe it was a dwelling initially. A large, very well-preserved kiln was found next to the building. It has been radiocarbon dates to the 3rd and 4th centuries, so it was a later addition. Adjacent to the masonry house is a burial ground in use from the 4th century through the first half of the 6th century. (A single later tomb dating to the 7th/8th centuries suggests the necropolis maintained its purpose in the collective memory even after a gap in use of more than a century.) Approximately 60 individual inhumation burials have been unearthed, arranged in rows that are increasingly dense with graves as they approach the dwelling. The deceased were buried in cysts formed by reused tegulae (large clay roof tiles) or by rubble walls that supported wooden planks. They were placed in the graves in supine position facing west, north or south. Some of them wore jewelry — copper alloy bracelet with serpent head terminals, ivory bangles, amber beads — and had ceramic jugs, pots and bowls as grave goods. The clay-coated pottery is typical of a locally manufactured type made in the workshop of Portout on the northern shores of Lake Bourget. (Bourget-du-Lac is on the southern shore about 15 miles away.) Some of the pottery bears signs of having been deliberately broken in the funerary rites. They weren’t smashed, but rather carefully broken, for example the neck of a jug snapped off the body. Biological data have already made it possible to define a community space without selective recruitment, where adult graves (men and women) are located alongside those of children, sometimes in groupings that could reflect social or family ties between individuals.

Traces of plant poison on ancient African arrowheads provide the oldest direct evidence of poisoned weapons. Scientists have discovered chemical traces of plant-based poison on Stone Age arrowheads from South Africa, representing the earliest known example of poisoned arrows. Reported in the journal Science Advances, the findings show that people living in southern Africa 60,000 [...]