Hanging a BA 5: At this point, this is the kind of news you know about by hearing from friends and family who have tested positive. “The BA.5 version of Covid-19 has become the majority variant of the virus in America in a matter of weeks, in a troubling development that comes amid what may already be America’s second-largest wave of the pandemic. It also comes at a time when much of the US has relaxed nearly all Covid restrictions in public and life has largely returned to normal.” WaPo: The worst virus variant just arrived. The pandemic is not over.

+ Wisconsin of Omission: “Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled supreme court ruled on Friday that absentee ballot drop boxes may be placed only in election offices and that no one other than the voter can return a ballot in person, dealing a critical defeat to Democrats in the battleground state.” (As long as we keep defining the limiting of voting rights to a defeat to Democrats, we’re missing the story. This is a defeat to democracy.)

+ Starter Guns: “Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest.” Putin to Ukraine: Russia has barely started its action. (That’s also bad news for Russian soldiers since some reports suggest 36,000 of them have been killed.) Meanwhile. Western leaders snubbed a G20 photo op with Russia’s Sergey Lavrov. (That’s a small price to pay for mass murder.)

+ Snap Shots: A very modern headline: Secret Service Director James Murray to step down, head to Snap. (Throwing yourself in front of a meme beats throwing yourself in front of a bullet any day…)

+ He Was Overcompensating: “Brexit, the solution to the problem Johnson and his supporters described, was based on a series of lies. The electorate was promised that departure from the EU would lead not only to fewer immigrants but to greater prosperity, more welfare spending, less crowded hospitals. Instead, six years after the vote, Britain is less prosperous and more unequal.” Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: What Brexit Did to Boris Johnson—And Britain. It took a long, hard time, but Johnson’s swollen promises were finally exposed by a party that no longer considers him a member.

+ Elon Strange Trip: This won’t surprise anyone, but Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover deal is in serious jeopardy. Thus, my return to using Twitter has a serious shot of happening.

+ Gone Too Late: “He passed away on June 27, 2022, living a long life, much longer than he deserved. He is survived by his three children, no four. Oops, five children. Well as of 2022 we believe there is one more that we know about, but there could be more. His love was abundant when it came to himself, but for his children it was limited. From a young age, he was a ladies’ man and an abusive alcoholic, solidifying his commitment to both with the path of destruction he left behind, damaging his adult children, and leaving them broken.” There’s really nothing quite like an honest obituary.