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the day's top 10 · june 13th
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Jun 13, 2026 · 23 min listen
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the day's top 10 · june 13th
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The National Academies of Science, founded in the Civil War era to advise the government, has long been a trusted source of expert analysis on complex scientific and technological issues. Its reputation rests on the ability to convene top researchers from across the country and produce thorough, peer‑reviewed reports that can inform policy without being swayed by partisan pressures.
Historically, the Academies have not shied away from controversial topics, delivering findings that sometimes upset powerful interests yet still maintaining credibility with the agencies that fund them. This balance, however, appears to be fraying as Republican lawmakers increasingly view the institution as a political opponent rather than a neutral advisor.
The latest flashpoint involves a forthcoming report on the attribution of extreme weather events to human‑driven climate change. Fossil‑fuel companies fear the study could bolster lawsuits that hold them liable for climate‑related damages, prompting a coordinated push from Republican politicians to block or undermine the Academies’ work.
According to a detailed Politico investigation, the tension has escalated into a public clash. Republican officials have begun questioning the Academies’ funding, demanding greater oversight, and threatening to curtail its ability to publish findings that could be used in litigation against the energy sector. The move reflects a broader strategy to limit the influence of scientific consensus on climate policy.
If the pressure succeeds, the National Academies could lose its capacity to issue independent assessments on climate attribution, weakening a key source of evidence that courts and policymakers rely on. The dispute underscores a growing trend where scientific institutions face heightened political scrutiny, especially when their conclusions intersect with powerful economic interests.
The National Academies of Science have been a trusted advisor to the US government since the Civil War, providing comprehensive reports on scientific and technological issues. The organization has managed to maintain its reputation and respect from governmental organizations despite weighing in on controversial topics. However, it appears that the Academies' ability to avoid political backlash may be coming to an end.
A recent report has highlighted the growing tension between the National Academies and Republican politicians. The Academies are currently preparing a report on the attribution of weather events to human-driven climate change. This report has significant implications, particularly for fossil fuel companies that are facing lawsuits related to their role in climate change.
Fossil fuel companies are concerned that the report will lead to findings of liability, which could have major consequences for their businesses. As a result, they are pushing back against the National Academies and their report. This has led to a breakdown in the relationship between the Academies and Republican politicians, who are often aligned with the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
The National Academies have traditionally been able to maintain their independence and objectivity, but it appears that they are now facing significant political pressure. The outcome of this situation will be important, as it could impact the ability of the National Academies to provide unbiased scientific advice to the government. If the Academies are seen as being influenced by political considerations, it could undermine their credibility and effectiveness.
The report on climate change and weather events is likely to be highly influential, and its findings could have significant implications for policy and regulation. The National Academies must navigate this complex and contentious issue while maintaining their independence and objectivity. The success of the Academies in doing so will be crucial in determining their ongoing role as a trusted advisor to the US government.
Founded during the US Civil War to provide advice to the government, the National Academies of Science have become one of the most prestigious scientific organizations. Its primary function is to prepare comprehensive reports on scientific and technological issues, aided by its ability to attract top talent from across the country. Those reports have not been afraid to weigh in on matters of public controversy and risk offending powerful groups, which it has managed to do without losing the respect of the governmental organizations that fund these reports. But this year, there have been increasing signs that the Academies' ability to dodge political firestorms has reached its limit. Yesterday, a deeply reported story from Politico explained the breakdown between the National Academies and Republican politicians. The National Academies is preparing an expert report on attribution of weather events to human-driven climate change, and fossil fuel companies are worried it will lead to findings of liability in the many cases where those companies are being sued.
The June 2026 paperback roundup spotlights fifteen fresh titles that blend high‑octane thrills with domestic suspense. Lucy Clarke’s The Surf House turns a seaside retreat into a maze of secrets, while James Lee Burke returns with Don’t Forget Me Little Bessie, featuring a resilient heroine in his gritty style. Katia Lief’s Women Like Us offers a darkly clever take on ambition and the Time’s Up movement, and Andrea Bartz’s The Last Ferry Out delivers a killer premise with unpredictable twists. Other notable releases include Happy Wife by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores, a dual‑timeline marriage saga narrated by an unreliable voice; Liv Constantine’s Don’t Open Your Eyes, which adds a supernatural edge to the domestic thriller formula; Elle Berman’s L.A. Woman, exploring ambition and motherhood in a California fishbowl; and Catherine Chidge’s latest mystery, rounding out a season of strong female leads and inventive plotting.
An essay on gender and technology examines why stories that pit women against machines resonate so powerfully. Classic examples like The Terminator show Sarah Connor evolving from an ordinary waitress into humanity’s savior, while David Eggers’s The Circle warns of a heroine who abandons intuition for corporate logic, leading to tragedy. The discussion extends to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, where women fight a tech‑enabled totalitarian regime, and the film Ex Machina, where an AI robot uses empathy and flirtation to outwit her creator. The piece argues that a heroine’s empathy, intuition, and primal drive give her an edge over cold calculation, making the clash both personal and thrilling.
The third segment revives Phoebe Atwood Taylor, the “Codfish Sherlock” of Cape Cod’s Golden Age of mystery. Her detective Asey Mayo, a homespun wise man, anchors a series of novels that capture the region’s transition from isolated fishing villages to a fashionable summer haven. The newly highlighted novel Sandbar Sinister places Mayo in 1934, amid the construction of the Cape Cod Canal and the social upheaval of the Depression. A boatload of pre‑Prohibition booze washes ashore, sparking chaos, bodies, and a tightly plotted investigation that
Republican “Jesus” Buck Swanson, a self‑styled MAGA enthusiast in Florida, shocked guests at a wedding by allegedly converting plastic squirt guns into functional AR‑15‑style rifles. The stunt went viral among fringe right‑wing circles, spawning a cult‑like devotion that treats him as a messianic figure with miraculous powers. Local clergy denounced him as a false idol, warning believers to stay grounded in traditional doctrine. At the time of reporting Swanson was seen fleeing an active‑shooter incident at a nearby Walmart, still armed with one of his improvised rifles, fueling debate over the influence of extremist personalities on politics and religion.
In South Carolina, a staunch conservative named Darryl Higgins tried to convince his wife that the dating app Grindr was actually a tool‑search platform for power tools. He claimed the app was used to look up grinders and other hardware for a secret flag‑pole project, while his wife remained skeptical, noting similar accusations from other Moms for Liberty members. Grindr representatives confirmed they field daily inquiries from confused spouses, emphasizing the app’s true purpose and expressing frustration with the misunderstandings.
Coca‑Cola’s marketing team responded to a viral video from a bullied gay teen in Jacksonville by bombarding his social feeds with a targeted ad that read “Nothing Goes Better With Being Gay Than The Refreshing Taste of Coca‑Cola.” The teen found the repetitive messaging odd, questioning the link between the soft drink and his sexual orientation. A company spokesperson said the campaign was a test of AI‑driven advertising, hinting at future personalized ads for other health issues, and framed the effort as a selfless act despite the cynical tone.
Satirical pieces from a well‑known humor outlet offered absurd takes on current topics. One mock study claimed the 2007 iPhone launch lowered birth rates among young adults. Another listed tongue‑in‑cheek pros and cons of sleepaway camp, from forced socialization to
This post is sponsored by Thrive Market I am always looking for ways to make my life easier and Thrive Market, my go-to online grocery store, continues to be a place where I get my monthly and weekly basics. With your Thrive Market membership you get access to top organic and non-GMO brands at up to 30% off and with the membership at $5 a month, it basically pays for itself in savings. I order my pantry staples like pasta, canned beans, anchovies, avocado oil and cleaning products on repeat and know that I will never run out. Use my exclusive link here and you will receive $20 off your first 3 orders and a $60 free gift when you sign up today. Plus this week only, enjoy 25% off top products in their big Summer Essentials Sale which ends tomorrow. Sometimes the best dishes come out of digging in your fridge or pantry and doing like a mini challenge with yourself and what you can make out of the items you have to hand. I made this the day before a travel day and had some shallots that needed using and found a half empty jar of roasted bell peppers and I always have Calabrian chilis to hand. Trust me, buy a jar of them and you will be shocked at how often you reach for them. This one is so easy as the blender does all the hard work. You do nothing more than a rough chop on the shallots and smash a few garlic cloves. It’s perfect for a week night when you really don’t want to do a whole lot of cooking but still want to eat really well. It’s also beautiful. And creamy without having cream in it. A winning dish on so many levels. You will love it. Serves 4-6 Ingredients: 4 large shallots or 2 medium yellow onions – peeled and roughly chopped 3 tablespoons of a good flavorful drizzling olive oil – I used Umbrian Gold 1/2 teaspoon Maldon salt 1 large red roasted bell pepper – I used the ones from a jar Calabrian chilis in oil – I used 3 tablespoons which is fairly hot, 2 tablespoons for medium and 1 tablespoon for very little heat 2 whole peeled smashed garlic cloves 5-7 cherry tomatoes 1 box of pasta or 16 ounces – I used a penne shape but any short pasta would work well here 1/3 cup microplane grated Pecorino Romano Finish with a drizzle of olive oil, final dusting of Pecorino and a small pinch of dried oregano salt or just dried oregano Method: In a small to medium lidded soup pot, add the shallots, olive oil, roasted bell peppers, salt, garlic, tomatoes and Calabrian chilis. The prep is almost minimum as you just roughly chop the shallots and you leave the bell peppers, tomatoes and garlic whole. Cook on medium heat until you start to hear a sizzle. Then cover and turn down to medium low and cook for 20-25 minutes or until all the shallots are soft. You don’t want any color on these and cooking them in a higher sided soup pot helps with that. After 25 minutes the shallots, tomatoes and garlic are very soft. Remove and put in a high speed blender and blend until smooth. The high speed blender is what makes the sauce creamy without adding cream. I love how smooth it is. Cook the pasta in boiling salted water that is as salty as the sea. Cook until 1 minute under the package instructions for al dente. Add the blended sauce to a saucier or large pan and then add the Pecorino. Give it a good mix. Now add the pasta directly to the saucier with half a ladle of cooking water. Mix well and it’s done. If the sauce is too thick, add a touch more water. You want it to be silky smooth. Plate up on to a large serving platter and give it a final dusting of Pecorino, a drizzle of good olive oil and then the faintest pinch of dried oregano salt or just dried oregano. It’s hard to stop eating this one. The kick from the Calabrian chilis make it very more-ish. You just want to keep eating it. This is a wonderful dish as Summer gets into full swing. Serve it with a big plate of grilled vegetables and grilled lamb chops or with a big arugula salad and swordfish steaks and you have a perfect meal. Enjoy! Xx Corre
June feels like a gentle step toward summer, and the new weekly menu reflects that shift. It leans on bright, seasonal ingredients—think frozen corn, roasted tomatoes, and a comforting soup that feels just right for the longer days. The dishes aim to capture the simplicity of warm-weather cooking while acknowledging that we’re still in a transitional period.
The menu is designed to be flexible, offering fresh flavor pairings and culinary lessons that don’t require a full‑on summer commitment. It’s meant to meet diners where they are, whether they’re looking for a quick, seasonal bite or a more involved dinner experience.
For the best experience with Restaurant Dropout, the recommendation is to use a desktop browser. Subscribers can dive straight into the new menu, and those who prefer more control can build their own meals from a library of hundreds of sauces, marinades, breads, grains, and proteins, or pick from over a hundred past weekly menus.
If the current selection isn’t a fit, there’s no pressure—customers can customize or switch to another menu at any time, keeping the dining experience both personal and adaptable.
The author shared a video that pairs with a reading they previously sent out, noting that the video is essential for understanding the material. They’ve now posted almost all of the related recordings, leaving only two pending: a cognitive‑warfare symposium and a conversation with the Cohens, father and daughter.
Those final two videos are being held back while the author experiments with AI‑driven editing tools. The goal is to transform the raw Zoom footage into something that feels more like a polished documentary—clearer audio, more engaging visuals, and a professional look that moves beyond the “COVID‑era” feel of typical online meetings.
The author believes the content deserves high‑quality production and is optimistic that current AI advancements can deliver that slick aesthetic. They’re still figuring out the right prompts and may need a few more weeks before the final edits are ready.
In the meantime, listeners are encouraged to enjoy the discussion that’s already available, and to stay tuned for the upcoming, upgraded videos.
neuroplasticity is a concept that will genuinely change your life when you learn about it. your brain is a mushy piece of meat constantly adapting to what you do, what you think about, what you practice, and what you repeatedly expose yourself to. every experience leaves a small mark on the neural machinery that produced it. brilliant concept. one of the most important things i’ve ever written about on this substack. but something someone might mistakenly assume from reading that is that all our brains start from the same place. and when i say ‘place’, i’m not talking about subjective experience. not how you see the world, your values, your personality. detach from all of that for a second because of course everyone operates differently in those ways. i’m talking about the actual physical architecture of the brain. the way neurons connect. the strength of those connections. the balance of neurotransmitters. the way information is filtered, processed, and prioritized. all of it can differ. our brains are like fingerprints. specifically unique to each person. technically all our brains are made of the same stuff. fat, water, protein, electrical signals. the same basic ingredients. so it would be a reasonable assumption that they all operate the same way. that couldn’t be further from the truth. in many cases people are processing reality through genuinely different neurological architectures… the aroma of black coffee fills the room right now. for some this specific scent might be overly unbearable. to some it might be very weak. the whiteboard on my wall covered in notes from last night. arrows pointing one way, then another, then another, connecting topics across the board like i’m trying to solve something unsolvable. my notebook looks like a murder scene. ink everywhere, scribbles crossing over other scribbles, words circled and then connected to other circled words across three pages. one thing about me is that i am genuinely not a neat note taker. i like seeing everything everywhere. i like connections sprawling across the page rather than everything sitting in order line by line. my brain works by pattern recognition across apparent chaos. we’ll get deeper into why that might be later in this post. neuroplasticity teaches us that the brain can change. neurodiversity teaches us that brains don’t all start from the same place. let’s get into it. "if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." — albert einstein what does it mean when a person is neurodivergent? there is an assumption most people hold without ever consciously forming it. the assumption that everybody’s brain basically works the same way. that the experience of moving through the world, of focusing, of processing sensory information, of reading social situations, is roughly equivalent across all humans. neurodivergent is the term used to describe people whose brain differences affect how their brain works. different strengths and challenges. different experiences of the same reality. it’s a way of describing natural variation without defaulting to the framework of normal versus abnormal. and here’s the thing about ‘normal’. normal is just the statistical average. not the objectively correct way for a brain to function. the average height of a human adult isn’t the correct height. the average resting heart rate isn’t the correct resting heart rate. normal describes the centre of a distribution. it says nothing about what’s right. so what actually varies? picture two people sitting in the same cafe. the cafe can have the exact same noise level, same lighting, same ambient chaos of a busy space. person one barely notices any of it. background noise stays background and they’re focused on their conversation, their coffee, their thoughts. person two is processing all of it simultaneously. the scrape of a chair two tables over. the specific frequency of the espresso machine. the flicker in the overhead lighting. and it’s not even intentional most of the time.
This year’s World Cup has something no other World Cup has had before: commercial breaks. This means that each match now contains two three-ish-minute opportunities to absolutely demolish the vibe of the party by talking about things that nobody wants to hear about, but probably should. Here are three of my suggestions. This will probably be your most natural transition from game to grooaaan. Back in December, FIFA announced that this year’s World Cup would include three-minute hydration breaks for players midway through each half of every match, and that broadcasters would be permitted (but not required) to run commercial breaks during that time. These mandated water breaks, FIFA said, are due to increasingly intense heat and humidity conditions putting player safety at risk. This overall rise in extreme heat is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, as the New York Times explained Friday: Since the last time World Cup matches were played in North America in 1994, the world has warmed roughly 1.3 degrees [Celsius]1. And the frequency of extreme heat in June and July has on average tripled across this year’s 10 host cities that previously hosted World Cup games. … In recent days, the English team has practiced in the Miami sun in an effort to acclimatize its athletes and prepare for what could be one of the hottest tournaments on record. And last month a group of 21 scientists, including physiologists and climate experts, wrote to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, saying that its current safety guidelines for heat were insufficient and “impossible to justify,” and urging it to give players longer breaks and implement “aggressive” locker-room cooling, among other steps. FIFA has framed these hydration breaks as an attempt to ensure players remain safe. Others have a more understandably cynical interpretation: That FIFA is using player welfare as an excuse to money grab. The breaks are, after all, mandated no matter the weather. It could be cool and raining and commercials would still run. “This is effectively a parallel to greenwashing, where the use of climate change and the pretence of care for players is used to distort the Laws of the Game and insert commercials,” wrote reddit user Hot-Job-6281 on Friday. But even if FIFA is exploiting the climate rationale for ad money, the climate rationale still exists. The world is getting hotter, and it is threatening the safety of World Cup players and spectators. An analysis by Climate Central found that climate change is “boosting the likelihood of performance-impairing heat” during 97 of 104 scheduled World Cup matches. It also happens to be making our at-home watching experience super annoying. So do your part: tell your friends. It can’t be more bothersome than the ads themselves… right? Read more: The 2026 World Cup could be the hottest yet OK, now we’re getting into the territory of possibly being more annoying than the commercials. But this is your duty; you must persist. Last month, geographer David Gogishvili at the University of Lausanne told AFP that this year’s World Cup would "produce the largest carbon footprint in the history of international sport:" anywhere from 5 million to 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. For comparison, the 2024 Paris Olympics emitted around 1.75 million tons. Other estimates have been similar. An analysis from the New Weather Institute found that the 2026 World Cup is “on track to be the ‘most polluting’ World Cup ever,” with total emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. They conservatively predicted that the World Cup would emit about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is about the same as 21 gas-fired power plants running for a year; 1.9 million cars driven for a year; or 9 billion pounds of coal burned. This is mostly because FIFA chose to have not one, but three host countries: the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a total of 16 host venues. In addition, the tournament added an extra 16 teams. That all means a lot of air travel. Scientists estimate air travel emissions for the World Cup to be around 7 million tons of CO2 equivalent, with worst case predictions at 13.7 million tons. Why does this matter? For one, FIFA is doing this while publicly touting a commitment to sustainability, including reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. As Jules Boykoff wrote for the Guardian, “to passively allow Fifa to willfully trash the environment is to succumb to greenwashing: the duplicitous practice of talking a big green game, but failing to follow through with meaningful sustainability measures.” The biggest problem is not just the emissions from one tournament. It fact that model FIFA is choosing an ever-increasing emissions model for the future of the sport, which is already suffering under a warmer world.
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