Babar-Be-Cue

Plus: How mental health divides liberal and conservative men, Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web & the roller coaster of the Iranian gold market.

Jun 04, 2025

We need to address the elephant in the room… but soon to be in some lucky African’s belly! . Zimbabwe has authorized the killing of up to 50 elephants at the Save (sic) Valley Conservancy (sic) to address overpopulation (it’s all kind of sick). The meat will be distributed to local communities, while ivory will be retained by the state. Strategic Ivory Reserve, anyone? For those of us who live in the elephant-sparse parts of the world, it sounds unbelievable to eat these majestic beasts, who, we’ve been told, govern justly with only the input from Queen Celeste and the National Security Advisor Zephir the Monkey.

On the other trunk, while I haven't come across a story about an animal preserve feeding their animals to humans, it's not unheard of for zoos to take animals that had to be euthanized and feed them to the big cats enclosure. And while these stories have sparked a lot of outrage over the years, it's worth remembering that this is what animals do (and that your cat might start eating you if you die alone in your apartment.)

Secondly, African countries often offer elephant hunting tags for a good reason: population control, conservation, and targeting bulls that are aggressive to local villages. And what happens to that meat? Well, they feed it to the villagers.

Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today's podcast episode.

Here's what's on my mind:

🕷️ How Ukraine carried out Operation Spider Web and what it means for modern warfare.

🥇 The roller coaster of the Iranian gold market. (🔒)

🦟 We can get rid of mosquitoes… but should we?

🏳️‍⚧️ Tim Walz, trans kids, and Democrats winning elections.

🧢 Mental health: The dividing factor between liberal and conservative men. (🔒)

🌡️ Alarming or alarmist? What’s happening with the National Weather Service.

The Gist List

How Ukraine Carried Out Daring 'Spider Web' Attack on Russian Bombers (BBC)

In a remarkably coordinated and covert operation named "Spider Web," Ukraine launched 117 drones on June 1 that struck deep inside Russia, targeting long-range nuclear-capable bombers across five regions. These drones were smuggled into Russia, hidden in wooden cabins mounted on trucks with remote-controlled detachable roofs. Unwitting (they say) drivers were contracted to deliver these loads, and drones were launched remotely from parked trucks near airbases. Each drone had its pilot and was guided via GPS.

What this underscores, however, is that this marks a new era in how we fight wars. For better or for worse, there are inventive ways to keep soldiers off the front lines and to disable threats from afar.

Why Iranians Are Seeking Safety in Gold (Financial Times)🔒

With everyone's 401K accounts bouncing all over the place and the president's tariff policy less rigorous than your friend Fitzy’s “lucky” hunches on when to hit on a soft-17, you can't fault folks for seeking refuge in the warm, gleaming embrace of gold. But in Iran, gold has jumped the Shah(rk). It's gone from a safe store of value in tumultuous times to a risky investment unto itself. Gold prices in Iran have surged well over 80% in the past year, a lot more than the global increase of 45%. But with nuclear negotiations casting their shadow and sanctions playing their usual party-pooping role, as they do, those golden gains are starting to look as safe as a Hezbollah Lieutenantant about to get a phone call.

We Finally May Be Able to Rid the World of Mosquitoes. But Should We? (Washington Post)

Yes. Ok, the story has some more detail — scientists are developing gene-editing tools to potentially rid the world of mosquitoes once and for all.

Of course, this idea of ridding the world of the main vector of malaria can’t be without critics. Some bioethicists are concerned about humans bending the biome to our will, and that it might affect other ecosystems. They suggest that we should be using this gene editing on screw worms (I am also pro-eradication of screw worm despite no longer being able to make jokes about it). It should be noted that these bioethicists do all have long, needle-like noses and totter about in the same manner as would 15,000 mostiquitos stacked on top of each other while wearing a trench coat.

Gov. Tim Walz Backs Transgender Kids as Democrats Grapple With Debate Over Sports Bans (Minnesota Star Tribune)

At the California Democratic convention, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz delivered a forceful defense of transgender youth and criticized Democrats who back away from the issue for political gain—i.e. he's doing the exact opposite as Gavin Newsom. He even went as far as to say, "Shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus for thinking they're going to get elected… Don't worry about the pollsters calling it distractions, because we need to be the party of human dignity."

But that kind of highlights the problem that the Democratic party has been facing—it is quite distracting. It's an issue that affects a small number of children, presents a minefield of bioethical concerns, lends itself too easily to bus-based metaphors, and is probably not being helped by the intense amount of public attention it has been receiving. Perhaps it is also fair to assume that many Democrats have genuine misgivings about sports and bioethical concerns for legitimate reasons, in addition to the fact that they would also like to win an election once in a while.

Why Young Men Don't Like Democrats (Silver Bulletin)🔒

This one has been getting a lot of airtime recently, so it felt right to share it here. Nate Silver offered some insightful commentary on why many men are leaning conservative these days. One of the things that struck me is the relationship between politics and mental affect for men:

People who say they have excellent mental health are much more likely to identify as conservative.
Those reporting poor mental health skew heavily liberal.

This is something that seems to be a bit of a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Is it that men who are individualistic tend to lean conservative, while those who tend to worry about the world around them and doom scroll lean liberal, or is it the other way around and identifying with one of those parties makes them that way?

Young men's affect is generally less outwardly negative or neurotic than that of young women (at least in terms of self-reporting). Nevertheless, this affects how they respond to political messaging: appeals to safety, victimhood, or emotional validation may land poorly with a group that prizes self-reliance, optimism, and agency, even if they're struggling in quieter ways. Wow, it would be great to talk to Nate about this. So I will, in a Substack Live TDB, but soon.

Stabilizing 'Operations,' the National Weather Service Hires Again After Trump Cuts (NPR)

While scrolling through the news this morning, this video of a weatherman warning us about federal budget cuts caught my eye:

The stats he cited were alarming, but I couldn't help but ask if he was being alarmist, so I did some digging. There is data backing up the idea that the cuts could affect forecasting—weather balloons are down, staffing was cut by 600 (don't worry, they're hiring 100 back), and forecasting quality has degraded. Another thing I noticed? The NWS underfunding has been an issue for years, and the trump cuts only compounded the GOA and other Biden-era warnings about understaffing and underfunding.

Yesterday on The Show: France's Overlooked Role, British Arrogance, and American Endurance

Pulitzer Prize–winner Rick Atkinson joins to discuss The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777 to 1780, the second volume in his Revolutionary War trilogy. He explores the crucial but often-overlooked role of France, the underestimated grit of American generals, and the British strategic failures rooted in imperial delusion.

There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.

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