To use the word “negotiations” about tomorrow’s meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, if we consider its historical use for other actions between representatives of their nations, is to commit a category error.

Historically, negotiations on ending wars or treaties or trade or any of the numerous issues that must be sorted out between nations have been carried out by subject-matter specialists: nuclear scientists and engineers for arms control treaties; financial and commerce specialists for trade; and ending a war may require specialists in many areas, including the history and sociology of the nations involved, manufacturing and financial experts, and geographers.  Skillful interpreters are needed for the face to face interactions, and translators to make sure that the documents convey the same legal meanings in all languages involved.

As far as we know, Trump has employed only his golf buddy, Steve Witkoff, who knows nothing of Russian history or language, nothing of conventional or nuclear arms manufacture or capability, nothing of trade or national boundaries and the humans living within them. He may know a bit about New York real estate finance, which probably doesn’t help much with sanctions, and he’s open to whomever shows up at the table as his interpreter.

My colleague at Balloon Juice, Tom Levenson, has written another book. Tom is a popular-science writer and has written a number of books on various aspects of science – climate, Newton, Einstein are a few.

So Very Small is particularly relevant to our time. It traces the development of germ theory while also giving an account of how science develops. Tom is on Bluesky, and his comments there suggested to me that the book would be a relative of Microbe Hunters, by Paul de Kruif, a book that was formative for me.

Microbe Hunters, as I recall from decades back, is a series of vignettes about the various scientists who found particular microbes and successfully associated them with disease, sometimes finding a cure or prevention. As a child, I had no trouble imagining myself as one of the scientists: Robert Koch and anthrax, Louis Pasteur’s swan-necked flasks, those who used mercury as a harsh cure for many things, including syphilis.

Levenson uses many of the stories of Microbe Hunters in a different way. Imagine watching your children or neighbors get sick and die and not know why. There are patterns but they do not point clearly to a cause. Some commonality – dead bodies and bad odors suggest that perhaps a malign miasma wafts its way toward the unfortunate. Or they may have been weak to begin with, and something went wrong inside their bodies. Or, of course, God’s inscrutable will.

I have a number of questions about the overhead photos of the bombing at Fordo. I haven’t done a detailed photo analysis like this in a long time – probably back to the photos of what turned out to be a Syrian reactor under construction in 2007. And I’m not up to date on how the MOP bombs work, so these may be dumb questions. But I haven’t seen them asked or answered.

At the very least, perhaps this analysis will help people to understand how it’s done.

A number of news outlets report that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has assessed that the damage at Fordo was not extensive, not the obliteration that Donald Trump claims. Trump has been at odds with the intelligence agencies on a number of issues around the attack he ordered on Iran’s nuclear sites. I choose to believe the intelligence agencies over Trump’s vibes. But it is an early assessment and can change.

The Ukrainian drone attack hit two components of the Russian nuclear force. The primary purpose of the attack was to destroy the planes that launch cruise missiles at Ukraine. Some of those planes are also the types that carry nuclear weapons. There also were hits at Severomorsk, the headquarters of the Northern Fleet and Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. We have much less information about the hits at Severomorsk, so I won’t say more about it in this post. I want to make clear that from what we know, no nuclear weapons were involved in today’s action. The primary nuclear bomber bases were not targeted.

As much as a third of Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet was destroyed. No new bombers have been produced for some time, and there are no facilities to produce them. This has serious implications for the nuclear balance between Russia and the United States.