Israel Tests Iran

Plus: Trump watches the Knicks, H-1B fee ruling, Mormons off the list, and more...

Yesterday's promises: Just a day ago, the Iranian military warned that if Israel strikes southern Lebanon again, "much harsher and more crushing actions than before will be on the way" to its adversary.

So Israel struck southern Lebanon again, directly testing Iran. Yesterday, at least nine people were killed in a strike near Tyre, in the south. The Israeli army has ordered people to evacuate Tyre, including those who live in the Christian quarter, which had formerly been somewhat more insulated from the bombings.

Hezbollah, which operates out of Lebanon but is distinct from the Lebanese government (unlike Hamas in Gaza, which is deeply enmeshed in the government), does not seem to want to be covered by a ceasefire deal.

"Hezbollah, for its part, has rejected any cease-fire with Israel, and has continued firing on Israel from its positions in southern Lebanon," notes The New York Times. Iran, meanwhile, has held Hezbollah up as necessary to cover in any sort of agreement.

Meanwhile, a U.S. helicopter—an Apache gunship—"went down near the coast of Oman while patrolling regional waters," per a report from U.S. Central Command. The two crew members were rescued relatively quickly, and the cause is unknown.

Iran is trying to "impose a new equation"—according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—by firing at Israel in response to that country's attacks on the terrorist group Hezbollah, near Beirut. But, to Netanyahu, this equation is "unbearable and unacceptable." He made that much clear by striking Tyre again after Iran issued its warning.

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The relationship between phones and fertility: "Did the introduction of the iPhone causally reduce fertility?" asks Brad Wilcox, researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, discussing a new paper examining "causal evidence from AT&T's 2007–2011 carrier monopoly" by Caitlin K. Myers and Ezekiel Hooper.

Takes abound (though it's hard to know how reliable the paper is, take it with grains of salt).

Maybe it's the dating apps:

A takeaway is phones turn dating into a second price auction but with counterparties that lack creditworthiness or performance requirements. @conorsen @Noahpinion @robinhanson

— Nick Walker (@nw3) June 8, 2026

Or maybe it's that phones are conduits for the porn:

Lots of people posting about this one. I want to draw your attention to one part of the paper: the argument that among other channels, the iPhone reduces fertility by increasing the availability of pornography as a substitute for sex.

"The Google Trends annual index for the… https://t.co/Ux7dxO9BNt pic.twitter.com/45AIYYUeDU

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) June 8, 2026

I think it's probably a combination of factors, but I especially like the "false anthropology" point:

It's the phones.
It's the phones for a hundred reasons. Here are a few:
1) Male consumption of porn reduces marriage (for like 10 reasons)
2) Because of time-wasting college kids and 20-somethings just socialize less, reducing marriage.
3) The dating apps ruin dating (for 10… https://t.co/xXWxBv8MpF

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) June 8, 2026

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Scenes from New York: They shut down a ton of Midtown last night to provide a tighter security perimeter so President Donald Trump could attend the Knicks game at Madison Square Garden.

lol imagine being one of the thousand bars inside this zone having your night of the year shut down https://t.co/zAD1AcZvXA

— JokerMakeupJacobite 🇮🇪👹🐋🐢🌹🇺🇦🇵🇸 (@ClwnPrncCharlie) June 8, 2026

More on last night, from around the internet:

Hercules and Nessus, by Giambologna, 1599 pic.twitter.com/nsMxu5ST0z

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) June 9, 2026

The star player of the San Antonio Spurs, Victor Wembanyama, has made himself rather at home in New York:

The Spurs might be down 2-0 but that isn't stopping Wemby from getting in some drawing time in Gramercy Park pic.twitter.com/mVcy7kkTVY

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) June 8, 2026

The Spurs ended up beating the Knicks. But at least Larry David didn't end up detained! (I appreciated this person who gamed out a whole Curb scenario.)

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QUICK HITS

• Yes to everything David Bernstein is saying. I have never once considered the climate question:

It's wild to me that progressive political types like @ezraklein live in a world where questioning whether one should have children because of climate change is a frequent topic of conversation. I've literally never heard anyone i Know say anything remotely like this. But it does… pic.twitter.com/6EgDK5lgwQ

— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) June 9, 2026

• Excellent:

JUST IN: A federal judge has ruled Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee is an unauthorized tax on businesses and must be vacated. https://t.co/bQXFTaiMmK pic.twitter.com/g5HTy9Cu0X

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 8, 2026

• "The Trump administration has drawn up a plan to surge US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to New York City, a move that threatens to escalate tensions with New York Governor Kathy Hochul over the president's migrant crackdown," reports Bloomberg. "President Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, said Monday he'd warned Hochul of the surge before she signed a bill late last month curbing operations and banning masked ICE agents in her state."
• Do Mormons count as Christians? The Defense Department seems to think no, Sen. Mike Lee (R–you already know which one) thinks yes (and is himself Mormon). The reason why it's relevant to the government at all? "This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of 'officially approved' religions," said the department. "Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups."
• The votes are in: Nithya Raman is officially running against Karen Bass in the L.A. mayoral primary; Spencer Pratt is out.
• OpenAI is trying to IPO, following in Anthropic's footsteps.