How Old Is Emil Bove?

Plus: LGBTQ adults feel more accepted, the deep state is pretty shallow & Putin supports women in STEM… at a cost.

May 30, 2025

President Donald Trump has nominated Emil Bove, a top legal ally and senior official in the Justice Department, to serve on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. There are a lot of interesting things to say about Bove: He fired dozens of Jan. 6 prosecutors; he ordered the dismissal of the federal corruption case against Eric Adams; and he’s been the president’s bulldog against state and local officials who interfere with federal immigration operations.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to play a game: Who’s Younger than Emil Bove? (Cue lights and game show music.) Don’t look it up—guess from this list of celebrities below which ones are older than Emil Bove and which ones are younger, and leave a comment below.

The Gist List

The Experiences of LGBTQ Americans Today (Pew Research)

A new Pew study just dropped about the experiences of LGBTQ adults. They’ve been doing this study since 2013, so it’s really interesting to see the change in attitude over time. Here’s what stood out to me:

82% of LGBTQ adults say there’s more acceptance of gay and lesbian people today than 10 years ago.
Support for same-sex marriage has grown from 31% in 2004 to 63% in 2023.
The Obergefell decision in 2015 was seen as a major cultural shift, with 67% saying it made the country more accepting of same-sex couples.

One of the things I found particularly interesting about the study is how accepting the people around them are:

46% say all of their parents are accepting.
69% say all of their siblings are accepting.
Only 27% say all of their extended family members are accepting.
However, 50% say that all of their coworkers are accepting.

The stats about parents, siblings and extended family seem expected to me. What struck me was the part about the co-workers. Obviously, there’s an upper limit on how many parents you can have. Not everyone has siblings, but as they are younger than your parents, it seems like they would be more accepting. And it’s hard to get extended family to agree on anything. But people have dozens, even hundreds, of coworkers throughout their lives, so you’re more likely to run into less accepting people. The differences are even more stark when you break it down by gay/lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

France to Ban Smoking on Beaches, Parks and Near Schools (BBC)

The French have passed a law that strikes at the heart of being French: they will ban smoking in outdoor public spaces frequented by children, including beaches, parks and school entrances. Smoking rates are declining across the nation, but the idea behind it is to allow the “freedom of children to breathe fresh air.”

Some places are not subject to the ban, like terrasses and outdoor bistro seating (they aren’t neanderthals, after all), but children will be able to breathe easy in most of the places they go.

Trump Has Long Warned of a Government 'Deep State.' Now in Power, He's Under Pressure to Expose It (AP)

We all remember Trump’s promises to expose the “deep state” while he was on the campaign trail, but so far, he has yet to deliver.

So why hasn’t he exposed it yet? Well, for one, it’s hard to produce receipts from something that lacks a factual basis. While they have declassified things like the JFK records they haven’t done anything about the alleged criminal activity by Hillary Clinton or James Comey (although Comey has enough to worry about.) It’s also hard to expose a conspiracy when Trump’s own people aren’t on the same page and dismissing popular theories like Epstein being murdered.

All that being said, I don’t think we need to give the government too much credit for being organized enough to pull off a massive conspiracy.

It turns out that the deep state is neither deep nor stately. Discuss.

Who Was Umbrella Man, Who Smashed Windows Before 'First Fire' in 2020 Minneapolis Protests? (Minnesota Star Tribune)

On May 27, 2020, a mysterious man dressed in black with an umbrella—nicknamed “Umbrella Man”—was filmed smashing windows at an AutoZone in Minneapolis. The identity of the guy was shrouded in mystery, but it’s believed that he was the guy who pushed the first domino that resulted in the riots after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Naturally, the internet was abuzz with speculation about who this guy could be. Theories included that it was a police officer (doesn’t seem likely), a white supremacist biker (seems too easy of a target) or possibly just an outside agitator wanting to see the world burn. The mystery is still unsolved.

Africans Are Building Putin's Suicide Drones (The Economist) 🔒

You have to give it to Putin for supporting women in STEM and letting their dreams take flight. Unfortunately, what these young women aged 18–22 didn’t know was that they were unwittingly recruited to work at a Russian factory in Alabuga assembling Iranian-designed drones used in the war against Ukraine. Why women? The boss at Alabuga, Timur Shagivaleev, allegedly explained their hiring preference with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, claiming African men are “too aggressive and dangerous.” (Nothing quite sounds like “We value diversity” quite like that.)

What was originally marketed as a work-study program offering training in fields like catering, hospitality or administration, these women were recruited from their home countries to toil away on drone assembly lines. Most of them did not discover the reality of the program until they arrived in Russia. Some of these women have even been wounded in attacks.

While Burkina Faso has shown some backbone by trying to stop this recruitment scheme, most other African nations are doing their best impression of the "This is fine" meme—either unable or unwilling to intervene, caught between high unemployment rates and their cozy relationship with Moscow.

Yesterday on the Show: Do Dog Talking Buttons Work or Is That BS?

Sadie Dingfelder returns for an “Is That BS?” segment to investigate dog talking buttons—those viral gadgets that claim to give pets a voice. Are dogs communicating abstract thoughts, or is it all one big squeaky placebo?

Also, stay tuned for the upcoming article about this very thing!

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