Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Again we have the last batch of wildlife photos on hand. Send yours in, please!
Today’s group of photos come from reader Ephraim Heller; it’s the second part of a two-part series (part 1 is here). Ephraim’s text is indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Little St. Simons Island is an 11,000-acre barrier island on the coast of Georgia. Much of it is salt marsh, with a few islands in freshwater ponds for wading bird rookeries. I was lucky to spend a week there in April during the nesting season. My last post focused on the wading birds; this one focuses on other species.
A well camouflaged American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) lurking in the rookery pond:
American oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus) are obligate specialists on intertidal invertebrates that feed in two ways: finding a mussel or oyster with its shell slightly ajar, the bird inserts the bill and severs the adductor muscle before the shell can close; alternatively, it hammers the shell directly to fracture it.
I took these photos on the shore where the oystercatchers were nesting. The sustained 40 mph winds whipped the beach into an abrasive sandstorm, which bothered me much more than it bothered the birds:
Royal terns (Thalasseus maximus) are among the larger terns on the Atlantic coast:
Boat-tailed grackles (Quiscalus major) have a mating system I have not previously encountered: females aggregate in colonial nesting groups while dominant males compete for access to the entire group. Although the dominant male at a colony performs the majority of observed copulations, genetic analysis shows he sires fewer than 40% of nestlings. Females regularly copulate with other males outside the colony and return to lay eggs that are not the dominant male’s offspring.
The long toes of the common gallinule (Gallinula galeata) allow it to walk atop floating vegetation.
Red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) drum on resonant surfaces to broadcast their territories and for mate attraction. The tree cavities they excavate and abandon become nests for other species, such as owls, bluebirds, and flying squirrels. They often cache food in bark crevices.
The common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). Garter snakes are viviparous, giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs, with typical litters of 15–40 babies.
Welcome to June 14, 2026, shabbos for gentile cats (remember that the Sabbath was made for cats, not cats for the Sabbath), and National Strawberry Shortcake Day. I don’t have a photo, but here’s a substitute: a strawberry shave ice from Hawaii, photographed in 2019. Shave ice, in all its various forms, is one of the epicurean delights of the islands.
At long last, the New York Knicks are NBA champions.
In a Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night that looked much like the previous four, the San Antonio Spurs took a double-digit lead in the first quarter. But like in three of the previous four games, the Knicks rallied — this time from a 16-point deficit — to secure a 94-90 Game 5 win and a 4-1 series victory.
Jalen Brunson led the way with a legacy-securing 45-point effort as New York‘s only reliable source of offense on a night when both teams struggled from the field. But for New York, the win didn’t have to be pretty. The result is the franchise’s first NBA championship since 1973. And Brunson has secured his place among New York’s sporting greats.
Here are the last few minutes of the game. New York is going wild.
*There are several reports that a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran is close. First from the Times of Israel:
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says that the United States and Iran have agreed to a framework for a peace deal that would end the months-long conflict in the Middle East, with a final text of the deal reached.
Pakistan is now preparing for an electronic signing expected within the next 24 hours, followed by technical-level talks next week, Sharif added.
Israel is not mentioned as having agreed to it. Note that it’s also a “framework for a peace deal”. From the WSJ:
Mediators have said they are close to completing an agreement that reopens the strait and relieves restrictions associated with the U.S. blockade of Iran, leaving other issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and the unfreezing of Iranian assets abroad, to be negotiated later.
“There’s lots of ways Iran can just buy time,” said William Wechsler, the director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, and a former Defense Department official. “It’s in their interest, and it will continue to be the pattern.”
A turning point in the past week of drama came on Wednesday when a Qatari delegation of diplomats returned from a trip to Tehran with new language for the draft peace agreement, people familiar with the matter said. Pakistani officials convinced Trump that a deal was close at hand, U.S. officials said, and he called off strikes that he had promised for that evening.
Gaps remain between the Iranian and American positions, though, a Qatari official said, on Iran’s billions of dollars in frozen assets, control of the strait and the disposal of Iran’s highly enriched uranium. Iran continued to push for early access to its frozen funds, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump was frustrated when text purporting to be from the final agreement—and which was friendly to the Iranian position—was leaked, U.S. officials said. He instructed his team to push back on the narrative that the deal would be weak or that Iran would receive funds before fulfilling its commitments.
From the NYT:
In the course of this war, Iran has gone from appearing weak and defenseless to a regime not only surviving, but also retaining important military and nuclear abilities. Iran’s extensive security apparatus seems firmly in control of all aspects of governing, society and foreign policy.
Iran is now led by “a younger, more brazen generation in power,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, in what Aaron David Miller, a former American diplomat at the Carnegie Endowment, called “a transition from divine power to hard power.”
Let’s face it: as it looks now, even if you were for to the war with Iran, the U.S. is losing the war. There are 60 days for further negotiations, and that will entail even more waffling about what to do with enriched uranium. It’s not clear whether the Straits of Hormuz will be free and open, and how many of its frozen assets Iran will get back. And what about Israel in Lebanon? At least the Israelis, I think, will not accept any stipulations that they stop fighting Hezbollah and withdraw from southern Lebanon. It’s an ungodly mess, and I predict an acceptable cease-fire won’t be signed in the coming week.
*Trump has just suffered four losses in court. Here they are with links to the NYT articles:
A federal judge indefinitely banned the creation of the president’s $1.8 billion payout fund, citing mixed messages from the administration about the fund’s future.
A couple of paras from each:
Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center:
After a night of storms, both political and meteorological, workers removed President Trump’s name from the white marble facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts early on Saturday morning, responding to a federal judge’s ruling that its rebranding was unlawful.
The letters began coming down just past 3 a.m., after the center was granted an extension of a midnight deadline. Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, attributed the delay to a cluster of summer storms. On Saturday morning, he filed a sworn declaration with the court confirming that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed.
Restarting immigration procedures:
The Trump administration said on Friday that it would comply with a court order to restart processing asylum and other immigration applications filed by a broad swath of people who had been left in legal limbo for months.
The move comes after a federal judge in Rhode Island last week struck down a suite of policies imposed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a major blow to the administration’s expanding efforts to restrict legal immigration. The policies included a global hold on asylum applications filed with the agency and a freeze on immigration applications filed by people from 39 countries, largely in Africa and the Middle East, that are subject to President Trump’s travel ban.
More than a million applications had ground to a halt as a result, preventing many people from obtaining green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits. The halt also disrupted people’s ability to legally work and left them waiting indefinitely for decisions on their applications.
National Park signs:
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the National Park Service from removing or revising signs, films and other materials at national parks across the country to comply with a directive from President Trump.
To comply with the president’s directive, the Park Service has taken down plaques about slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a sign about climate change at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a sign about Indigenous people at Acadia National Park in Maine.
Trump’s payoff fund:
A federal judge on Friday barred the Trump administration until further notice from setting up a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government, saying that her order was needed because of mixed messages about the scheme from President Trump.
The ruling by the judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, was the strongest effort to date by anyone in government to hold the administration to its word that the proposal to create the fund had actually been set aside. While Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told Congress last week that the fund would not move forward, Mr. Trump has been much more circumspect, insisting that he still loves the idea and believes that people who suffered in court at the hands of the government should get financial compensation.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is looking to make good on his campaign promise to invest $65 million in taxpayer funds toward expanding access to “gender-affirming care” in the Big Apple.
“As a first step, my administration has made a $15 million investment in gender-affirming care over the next two years, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to make sure every trans and gender non-conforming New Yorker can live with the dignity, safety and freedom they deserve,” Mamdani said at a Pride month celebration Tuesday. “The threats will continue and so will our relentless protection of trans people across this city.”
Despite efforts from the Trump administration to keep taxpayer dollars from funding gender-transition services, the mayor and his administration are doubling down on their attempts to fund these procedures — and even looking for ways to circumvent the president’s restrictions on gender-transition treatments for minors.
NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin recently spoke at a City Council health budget hearing where he made public the city’s desire to endorse these procedures for gender-confused youth without getting caught in the crossfire of the federal government.
“We are committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth as well as making sure that we don’t expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give,” Martin said.
Two major city hospital systems, NYU Langone Health and Mount Sinai Health, shuttered their youth transgender programs amid concerns over threatened federal funding. The Mamdani administration, however, seems committed to maintaining access to the controversial treatments for the city’s youth.
. . . The city, through the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, plans to open a “gender-affirming care clinic” in Corona, a neighborhood in Queens. Martin said this is “one of the first times that the public health department has ever taken that step.”
The department has told other media outlets that it will only offer treatments to patients that are at least 19 years of age, in order to avoid running afoul of the Trump administration’s mandates. However, the department did not immediately return National Review‘s request for comment regarding the timeline on the opening of the clinic and if it will serve minors, in light of the mayor’s comments.
The whole concept of “gender-affirming care”, rather than objective assessment rather than gung-ho treadmill through therapy to hormones and/or surgery, is misguided, and has been abandoned in other countries. The “19-and-above” stipulation is a good standard for hormones and surgery, but I’m betting the city won’t adhere to it. Care for dysphoria, yes; affirmative care, no way. This seems to be more performative wokeness by the mayor, but, hey, people who voted for him had an idea of what they were getting.
As Democrats wrestle with the past behavior of their Senate candidate in Maine, one name keeps coming up: Donald Trump.
The president lowered the bar, some liberal voters and lawmakers argue, when he won the highest office in the land despite facing allegations of misconduct from multiple women and being caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitals. The stakes, they say, are too high to obsess over a candidate’s past when flipping control of the Senate to Democrats would give the country a needed check on the president.
“Look who’s in the White House,” said Abigail Woods, a 37-year-old city councillor in Biddeford. “Purity politics don’t get us anywhere.”
Democrat Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran, faces Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the fall, and winning the blue state is crucial to Democrats’ uphill battle to retake the Senate. Platner won his party’s nomination in the state’s primary Tuesday, easily overcoming a small protest vote for Gov. Janet Mills (D), who suspended her campaign in April.
Platner has weathered reports that he sent sexually explicit texts to multiple women while married and had volatile relationships with women in the past. He also faced questions over a Nazi-linked tattoo he said he mistakenly got while serving in the military and has now covered up, and over deleted social media posts in which he insulted rural Mainers and police officers and downplayed the seriousness of sexual assault. Platner has disavowed the posts, saying that when he made them he was suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder after multiple tours in Iraq as a Marine.
The controversies have opened up a debate among Democrats about how much matters of personal character should count after a decade when they’ve decried the thrice-divorced Trump’s personal failings, with little result. Before he won reelection, Trump was held liable for sexual abuse in a civil case in New York. (He denied the charge and has never been criminally charged with sexual assault.)
Some Democratic voters in the Trump era are not impressed by lesser scandals and don’t want to play by a different set of rules than the opposition.
Joan Brown, 77, who lives in Skowhegan, was disappointed by Platner’s texts, but she said they weren’t a dealbreaker for her.
“Is this the first man in civilization who’s ever been a pig?” she asked.
That’s hilarious, as she admits she’s voting for a pig. (If you lie down with one, you get up muddy.) I keep saying I’m glad I don’t have to vote in Maine, though for Senator I’d still vote for Platner. But let’s just say I don’t have a lot of confidence in his abilities, and am distressed that Maine Democrats can’t find a better candidate. At least they’re not pretending that a substandard candidate is excellent—as they did with Kamala “She brings us joy” Harris.
Senate Democrats’ decision to let a key surveillance authority lapse comes as they are increasingly emboldened in their legislative fights against President Donald Trump, blocking even traditionally bipartisan bills as they push back against his policies and personnel.
The posture is an escalation from a year ago, when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was widely criticized within his party for a spring vote with Republicans to keep the government open. Since then, Democrats have forced government shutdowns, slowed Trump’s nominations and now blocked the bipartisan intelligence law as they seek leverage in a Republican-led Congress.
The risky strategy has consequences when government programs go dark, and Democrats have little to show for it so far in terms of policy victories. Republicans say it is a grave threat to national security to let the surveillance law, which aims to prevent terrorist attacks, expire just as millions of people are entering the United States for World Cup games and as celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary get underway.
But the hardball approach has helped unite Democrats inside and outside of the Capitol as they say they have no other choice — and that the blame should fall on Trump for how he is governing.
“I don’t deny that this is dangerous,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday about Democrats allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expire starting Saturday. “But this didn’t have to happen.”
This irks me. What didn’t have to happen is that Democrats didn’t have to kill a useful bill just to get back at Trump. As far as I can see, the bipartisan intelligence law funds the U.S. to collect “useful intelligence” (i.e., spying) abroad. To block a bill to show their dissatisfaction with Trump, who was legally elected as President, as odious as the man is, doesn’t seem to me to be either ethical or rational behavior by Democrats. Your mileage may differ.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the feud between Hili and Kulka continues, and it will last forever. Hili is at bottom right here.
Hili: Don’t even think about coming over here.
Kulka: I’m going in the opposite direction.
From JKR, and yes, the guy is uttering complete and utter bullshit? What is “THE PLAN” and who is this guy. It doesn’t matter for assessing his BS-emission, though.
Every single person who still cringes at the memory of trying to bullshit their way through an interview or exam question: today, the slate is wiped clean. Set down your burden of shame. Nothing – nothing, I say – could touch this. pic.twitter.com/n0hSdThavw
From Luana, who says that with near certainty Hunter Biden’s post was posted with AI. I’m starting to recognize this style, which I often see on Facebook posts:
To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:
Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.…
From Captain Ella (really a Lieutenant Colonel now), who sees the World Cup through the focus of Iran:
English translation from the Arabic:
From the field to the goal… the Defense Army deserves the World Cup rightfully after crushing the heads of terrorism and crime. For no goal is too difficult for us, and no net too far.
من الميدان إلى المرمى…جيش الدفاع يستحق كأس العالم بجدارة بعد سحق رؤوس الإرهاب والجريمة. فلا هدف يصعب علينا، ولا مرمى بعيد pic.twitter.com/8XxUfCcpXa
— Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya | إيلا واوية (@CaptainElla1) June 11, 2026
How did I miss that David Hockney died? I learned it from Larry the Cat, who shows one of Hockney’s paintings (an obituary is here):
This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was three years old, and would be 87 today had he lived. https://t.co/CLsYQ8MIhe
We have three cat-related items today, the first from the Journal of Chemical Ecology.Click to read it, and after doing so you might consider giving your cats silver vine rather than catnip.
Silver vine (Actinidia polygama) grows in the mountainous areas of NE Asia, and has long been known as a cat attractant. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “A silver vine plant with the eponymous silver markings on its leaves.”
Qwert1234 at ja.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia says this about its effect on cats. (it has other medicinal and culinary uses for humans):
Silver vine has long been known to elicit euphoric response in cats. The reaction to silver vine is similar to the response to catnip, but appears to be more intense. Silver vine is an alternative to catnip, and many cats that do not react to catnip will respond positively to silver vine powder made from dried fruit galls. Typical behaviors include rolling, chin and cheek rubbing, drooling, and licking. The effect usually lasts between 5 and 30 minutes, but afterwards cats exhibit a refractory period lasting roughly an hour during which they are unresponsive to further dosage.
A study published in January 2021 suggests that felines are specifically attracted to the iridoidsnepetalactol and nepetalactone, present in silver vine and catnip, respectively. The compounds were found to repel mosquitos, and it is hypothesized that rubbing against the plants provides the cats with a chemical coat that protects them against mosquito bites.
That sounds weird but may be true: cats’ behavior may have evolved so that the moggy became attracted to the plant and rubs all over it: those cats who behave this way get fewer mosquito bites. I suspect that’s wrong, though. Do cats get malaria or other reproduction-reducing maladies from mosquitoes?
Here’s a gif from Wikipedia of “A cat under the influence of Actinidia polygama“. It’s baked!
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Here’s the paper’s abstract:
Chemical cues that appear potent in controlled laboratory bioassays do not necessarily function as effective behavioural cues under natural conditions, where animals can freely approach or ignore stimuli. How chemical detectability translates into voluntary behavioural engagement, therefore, remains an important unresolved question. Plant-derived semiochemicals provide a tractable system for examining this issue because the same compounds can be presented either as intact natural sources or as purified chemicals. Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) show a characteristic self-anointing response to iridoid-producing plants, including catnip (Nepeta cataria) and silver vine (Actinidia polygama), both widely regarded as cat-attractants. Here, we tested whether these plants differ in their ability to induce voluntary engagement under free-choice conditions. Free-roaming cats rarely showed self-anointing behaviour (face-rubbing and rolling) toward intact catnip plants, but consistently engaged with silver vine. The same bias toward silver vine was observed in captive cats presented simultaneously with plant extracts. Chemical analyses confirmed that catnip contained abundant bioactive nepetalactone, indicating that weak responsiveness was not explained by a lack of bioactive compounds. These findings demonstrate that chemical abundance and laboratory bioactivity do not necessarily predict behavioural reliability under natural encounter conditions. Instead, whether a cue consistently elicits voluntary engagement may determine its ecological effectiveness as a behavioural cue.
But can you buy silvervine, and is it dangerous? The answer to the second question is a firm “no”; vets say it is safe and nontoxic. The only dangers are possible ingestion of chew sticks if you buy silvervine in that form, and some stomach upset if the cat ingests too much. Here’s Grok’s summary:
Silvervine comes in safe forms like powder (from the fruit galls), sprays, toys, and the aforementioned sticks. Powder or sprays are often sprinkled on toys, beds, or scratching posts. Some products are designed for light ingestion.In short: Silvervine is one of the safest and most effective plant-based enrichments for cats. It’s widely recommended by vets as a catnip alternative with an excellent safety profile. If your cat has any pre-existing health conditions, it’s always wise to check with your veterinarian before introducing new toys or treats, but for the vast majority of healthy cats, it’s perfectly fine and enjoyable.
As for buying it, Amazon has a gazillion silvervine items on its site, including sticks, powder, and toys. The sticks have another advantage over catnip: they clean the cat’s teeth when it’s chewing them. If you’ve used silver vine, report below, or try them out!
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The Good News Girl reports on something that cat cognoscenti have known for a long time: Disneyland is populated by over 200 feral cats recruited to keep the rodent populations down (not Mickey or Minnie, I hope!). Here’s her report, click to hear:
Here’s a longer but good video (6-minutes) explaining the origin of the cats and their care (they get food and veterinary care, and are also trapped and neutered). Kittens or overly familiar cats get adopted out.
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Finally, in one Indiana city, at one time seven years ago, you could pay off parking tickets by giving the cops food for cats! I saw this on FB and decided to check it out:
Here’s a 2019 article from the Washington Post about the program, though my investigation showed that this program operated only in Indiana in 2019 and is no longer in practice. In some places, however, you can pay tickets by giving food for homeless people.
An excerpt:
There were too many kittens in the animal shelter, just as there had been last year and the year before that. Like other shelters that swell to capacity during cats’ annual breeding season, Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana was struggling this summer to meet the need.
“One day I was standing by the counter and somebody brought in six kittens,” said Officer Chase Winkle, a spokesman for the Muncie Police Department. “And before they could get those checked in, somebody came in with another four.”
To ease the pressure, police created a trade-off: For five days in July, people could pay for their parking tickets by donating to the shelter the equivalent value of cat food or litter. Residents who brought their donations to the police chief’s office with a receipt proving the value got their tickets wiped away. A police officer’s daughter works at the shelter and had made the department aware of the organization’s need.
Muncie is among cities across the country that are opting temporarily to accept charitable donations in lieu of monetary payments for parking infractions. From Anchorage, to Woodstock, Va., municipalities are writing off tickets in exchange for school supplies or cat litter — a way to fill a community need while lessening the sting of getting a ticket. Some cities offer a discount to people who pay with a donation, while choosing the donation option in other municipalities simply allows the payer to feel good.
In Muncie, about a dozen people made donations to pay for roughly $600 in parking tickets, Winkle said. Only offenses that didn’t pose a safety hazard counted: Donations couldn’t resolve a moving violation or a ticket for parking in a handicap spot. Most tickets that people paid with donations were worth about $25 each and had been issued for parking too long in a certain zone, Winkle said.
From the CNN article above:
What’s the cost of a parking ticket in Muncie, Indiana? For a few days in July, it was a cat food or supplies donation for a local animal shelter.
In an effort to help the Muncie Animal Care and Services Shelter, the Muncie Police Department asked violators to pay their parking tickets in cat food.
The request came after a couple of officers toured the shelter and found that it was running short on supplies to care for over 350 cats and kittens.
“If you have a $25 parking ticket, you can bring up to $25 worth of cat food or litter to the Clerk’s Office, and you can get your parking ticket to go away with the exchange of the donation,” Officer Jamie Brown said on a July 15 video shared by the police department on Facebook.
Although the offer ran only from July 15 to 19, the department quickly learned that people will do practically anything when little balls of fur are involved.
“This room was almost empty before we started! Most of the folks that donated didn’t even have parking tickets,” Muncie Police said in a tweet with a photo of all the donations.
. . .”I don’t know if the police department plans on doing this again, but we’re incredibly grateful to them and the community. Their response was overwhelming,” Ashley Honeycutt, the shelter’s office manager, told CNN.
I think they need to reinstate this program!
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Lagniappe: A famous cat in a riad (a fancy Moroccan house converted into a boutique hotel). Click on the screenshot to read more,. but I’ve put the whole text below:
A small riad in the Marrakech medina has built a wall display in its entry courtyard out of guest reviews. The reviews are not about the riad. They are about the cat, an orange tabby named Mishmish, who has been working the front gate for about six years.
The owner started noticing the pattern when his bookings began increasing for reasons he could not initially explain. He pulled the reviews.
A representative selection: “Mishmish was very professional.” “Mishmish escorted us to our room and approved.” “The location was good but Mishmish was the highlight of our trip.” “Mishmish let me cry in the courtyard for a long time and did not say anything.”
The owner printed his ten favorites, framed them in cheap wooden frames, and hung them on the wall above the reception desk. Mishmish now sits underneath the display like a portrait subject seated beneath his own gallery.
Booking inquiries now routinely ask whether he will be on duty during the guest’s stay.
If you want to stay at this place, here’s how to do it (from Grok):
Riad Julines is praised overall for its clean, charming traditional Moroccan decor, friendly staff (like hosts Raja/Raga and Daniel), excellent breakfast on the terrace, indoor pool/terrace, and peaceful vibe despite the central location. It’s a boutique-style guesthouse that feels like a home.If you’re planning a stay and love cats, this riad is a great match—many reviews note how the resident cats enhance the experience. You can find it on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, or by searching “Riad Julines Marrakech.” Note that cat policies can vary, so confirm directly with the riad if you have allergies or preferences.
Yesterday I planned a full day of reading and writing for a project I’m working on, but was interrupted three times for duckling rescues, so in terms of “professional” work, I got nothing done. In terms of waterfowl work, I—with the help of others—did rescue eight stranded ducklings who would otherwise have died. I suppose that’s a fair trade-off, but I really hope these rescues end: they do save lives, but they’re hard on the mother ducks, the ducklings, and on me. Here are the three rescues.
RESCUE 1. Around 11 a.m. I saw on the PondCam that a person was standing in the “wildlife area” where nobody is supposed to be. I wandered down to the Pond and found a young man staring fixedly at a spot in the pond—and there was a young (1-3 days old) duckling, paddling along by itself.
The guy, whose name was Arjun Dhar, told me he had found it wandering in the quad and had put it in the pond, hoping that some female would adopt it. Well, that’s a nice thought, but it wouldn’t work for any number of reasons, one being that there were no hens with babies in the pond. Arjun said that now he wanted to rescue it and take it home to raise. That, too, involves formidable difficulties, and it would be better to take it to rehab. I told him to wait there, keep her eye on the baby, and I’d be right back.
I quickly returned with two nets and a “duck box”, a small box lined with soft paper towels in which to sequester rescues. It was not that hard to net the baby, and I drove Arjun with me to the rehab volunteer, who lives nearby. Here’s Arajun, showing off the duckling after we scooped it out of the pond. He himself had worked at Lincoln Park Zoo and kept a huge collection of reptiles in his home, including a monitor lizard and a python. I hope to see this fellow animal lover around the pond.
I cuddled it for a second before taking it to rehab:
Fortuitously, there were two other volunteers at the rehabber’s house—the very two who captured Vashti’s babies a few days before—making a run to Willowbrook with a load of injured or orphaned wildlife. The rehab woman put the duckling in a paper back and off it went. The car was also carrying a bald eagle, who had been in a tree the night before when, during the fierce storms over Chicago, the tree was struck by lightning. The eagle was not in good shape and apparently had a wound in the eye. When I asked the drivers if it would survive, they said they didn’t know. Here’s the poor thing:
RESCUE 2, around 12:30. Right when I returned from the rehab woman, I saw a knot of people around the channel in the Pond, looking at a narrow spot between two rows of rocks by the drain. In that channel was another orphan duckling, and so I had to get my net and procure it, too, with the help of a member of our Department who sometimes helps Team Duck. This duckling was diving each time I went for it, surfacing at some random locality. I knew I could get it if it stayed in the narrow gap between the rocks, and when it dived I gently swept the ground under the water. Sure enough, I came up with a thoroughly wet and thoroughly muddy duckling. I took it up to my office, dried it off, put it on my chest to warm up, and then put it in another small duck box that I placed next to a space heater. The poor thing was traumatized and not too vigorous, and I was afraid it would die. But it didn’t. Here it is on my desk and then on my chest:
I am dishevelled and unshaven; the duck business takes a lot out of you. You can see it’s still wet, but it dried quickly with paper towels and heat (hypothermia is a danger):
When I was catching that duckling, a lady told me that there was an entire brood wandering around the Quad with its mom. I said that I couldn’t go roaming the entire Quad trying to find it, as I was harried. But eventually someone contacted me about it, which led to the next rescue. Before I recount that one, I have a theory, which is mine. Rescue #1 probably involved a duckling fron the Quad brood, as the woman who put it in the pond found it there. And rescue #2 may well have been the leftover duckling from Vashti’s brood. I was told that they had recovered seven, for seven had hatched, but I found out when I met the rehabbers earlier that they missed one and got only six. The wet, muddy duckling was, I suspect, the one that was left behind.
On to. . .
Rescue 3. I was settled in my office with the duckling in a box at my feet, getting plenty warm from the space heater. I wss about to get to work when suddenly I got an email from a grad student, time-stamped 2:09 pm.:
Dear Dr. Coyne,
A mother duck is limping on campus. She has brought her ducklings to Cobb Hall.
Sorry to bother you if this is not abnormal, but thought you would want to know in case it is.
Thanks,
Jenks
IB Student
No phone number was given, so I emailed Jenks to call me, which he did immediately. This time there was a whole brood far from water. The choices were to herd them to Botany Pond, where they’d be driven out by the aggressive drake still here, or capture the entire family for removal to a rehab facility or a distant pond. I had never captured a hen before, so I equipped myself with two nets and two duck boxes, with a big one for mom. I knew that there was little chance of catching the hen, but I also knew that if left alone, the whole brood would die. I decided to do what I could to capture the family; and if I couldn’t get mom, I’d take the babies to rehab.
I went over to Cobb Hall and met Jenks and his girlfriend Niyati, who was keeping watch on the brood. You can see them below: mom and six babies, walking around in the bushes. The mother had a very slight limp, but she waddled like all ducks, and Jenks mistook some of that waddling for limping.
I watched them for a while, and decided to get the babies, who were peeping, and put them in a box, knowing that mom would stay near the peeping and hoping I could catch her with my big net:
Photo by Jenks and Niyati (I cropped it).
Two very short videos taken by Jenks Hehmeyer and Niyati Jain, who both turned out to be biology grad students. Lovely and helpful people.
The mother did go near the box, which I put in an interior corner of the building to make capturing her easier. I have to admit that I had no idea how to handle a full-grown hen, but a CBCM (Chicago Bird Collision Monitor) volunteer told me to put it in a big box and cover it with a towel. I had a big box but no towel.
At any rate, capturing the mother was futile. I would think I had her cornered, and she’d fly straight up and around me. I must have tried four or five times, and each time the mother would get more freaked out and wouldn’t come too close to the box. It wss hot, the ducklings in the box were peeping (the mother pecked my leg from behind when I was gathering them), so I decided to take them to rehab, too. The stress-out orphan was still in my office by the space heater, and, returning to the lab to add the singleton to the six, I was delighted to see that that duckling had perked up, had pooped, was peeping, and was much more vigorous. They were on their way to rehab:
Here is the box o’ ducklings from rescue #3 before I added the one from the second rescue to the batch. They were all in good shape and very vigorous.
So that was the last rescue. I made a final foray around the Pond to see if there were any ducklings left behind (the motto of Team Duck is “no duckling left behind”), and then drove the box of seven back to the rehab lady who lives nearby.
After that I washed off my nets and tidied up, and then, too tired to finish the Hili dialogues, I drove home. (I almost always walk home, but had the car because I had gone shopping the day before.. That made driving the babies to the rescue liaison lady much easier.)
The upshot, again: three rescues, eight babies caught. I do hope they do well at the rehab facility, which I think is the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center. I’m told the survivorship of orphaned ducklings there is over 90%—much higher than the survivorship of any of these ducklings, which would be zero.
I should be happy about this but I was psychologically debilitated. I am not a resilient person and always tend to look on the dark side, so the quacking of the bereft mother, the peeping of the babies, and the stress involved in trying to net orphan ducklings in the pond had taken its toll. I’m not asking for pity, but only recounting that three rescues in one day is stressful and fatiguing, aeven when those these three rescues were, physically, a piece of cake.
I went home, lay down on my bed and sometime later wandered to the kitchen to get dinner. This morning I wandered down to the Pond again, fearful I’d find another orphan. There weren’t any, but there was the aggressive drake, whose wife, I think, is the second hen who produced a brood in the pond—a brood that disappeared on the same day it came down. She flew down to the pond from the windowsill when I was feeding the drake, so I suspect that she, like Vashti, is re-nesting. If so, that could be good, as the only ducks in the pond now are her aggressive drake and herself, so there’s nobody to go after a new brood. (Fingers crossed!)
Perhaps we’ll have a viable brood of ducklings after all. If that is the case, we can expect to see it around July 10. That’s still a good time for ducklings as it takes them only eight weeks to get to the fledging stage. Stay tuned!
Today we have another “spot the” feature from Robert Lang, whose commentary is indented below. Spot the two frogs! There will be a reveal at 11 a.m. Chicago time.
The last two days on early-morning hikes, I’ve encountered literally dozens of tiny frogs hopping across the trail—so many that I had to watch my step to avoid them. Fortunately, on the light, sandy trail, they stand out pretty well, but once they get into the leaf litter on either side, they practically vanish. Today I brought my phone-camera on the hike, which means that it’s time for yet another “Spot the Froggies!”
My previous “Spot the Froggies” were California Tree Frogs (Pseudacris cadaverina), whose gray color made for perfect camouflage against streambed granite. I think these might be California Toads (Anaxyrus boreas halophilus)—I’ve seen full-size adults of the latter in this area, and I think I make out the beginnings of the white stripe running down the back of these subadults. I invite firm IDs from our herpetological expert fellow readers. These were taken along the Arroyo Seco, above JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] in Pasadena.
Here’s the “Spot-the” photo; there are two frogs in the picture (though it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more that I overlooked). Also attached is a close-up of one on my hand. (That’s his left leg extended, not a tadpole tail.)
Click to enlarge (I rate this “fairly easy”). Please don’t reveal where they are in the comments, but you’re welcome to tell us if you found them, and how many you saw.
My, how the week has flown! We had bad storms on Thursday—part of the tornado/storm system that hit the Midwest. Luckily we didn’t lose power, though I had to drive the wrong way down a one-way street on my way to work: a large tree had fallen, locking off the legal route.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 13, shabbos for Jewish cats, and also National Golf Cart Day. Here’s an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” with the irascible Larry David, showing the sequelae of his using the famous “drop and tug” strategy in golf. As usual, David is in a golf cart when on the links.
This week saw multiple cases of the trope. On Sunday, we were supposedly so close to a deal that Trump demanded Israel take a direct Iranian attack on the cheek. Then, at the last moment, a U.S. helicopter was downed by Iranian fire, and the president declared they’d been “playing us for suckers.” Deal’s off.
What followed was a night of strikes, plans for another, even a declaration that “in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island.” Then, at the last moment—crash. “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved,” according to the White House, and Trump called off the strikes.
Charlie Brown isn’t the only one with a headache, and no one—except the Iranians—is laughing.
But much like the devil, the fate of this deal is in the details—and so far, the details look familiar. This MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] appears nearly identical to the disastrous deal floated in late May, the one Trump abandoned after Republicans had an allergic reaction to it, while Iran reportedly concluded e was simply too desperate for a deal and they could wait him out.
Rather than a full agreement, what’s on the table is an MOU extending the ceasefire for 60 days while nuclear negotiations continue—and, despite the steep costs Israel recently paid to sever the two fronts, this one appears to fold Lebanon back in as well. On the nuclear file, the text lays out a framework for addressing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, though any actual action would wait on a second, more detailed accord.
Worse is the financial relief: according to the report, after reopening the strait, Iran would be given temporary sanctions waivers allowing it to sell oil for 60 days, generating precious revenue for Tehran. That relief would expand if Iran complies with the initial agreement and shows “good faith” in subsequent negotiations—though, as one diplomat put it, “there is no set date for sanctions relief, and it will be tied to the implementation of the deal.”
Less clear is what happens to the billions in Iranian funds frozen overseas. Iran has insisted it must receive some money immediately upon signing any initial deal, while the U.S. has said release would come in tranches based on compliance. Separately, the U.S., Iran and Qatar have reportedly discussed a mechanism letting Iran access some of its frozen funds in Qatar for humanitarian purchases. I’m not sure if Qatar is simply trying to make its terrorism support tax-deductible, but these payments are humanitarian in name only—just ask Hamas. Money is fungible, and the regime still controls imports, so it can either redirect funds from what little it gives its own population now that it is being covered by Qatar, or simply sell the humanitarian goods to its own population and pocket the revenue.
This deal can be judged by a simple test: does it merely pause the regime—leaving Iran roughly where it’s been since the blockade began—or does it rewind the clock, leaving Tehran better off than before? If sanctions are eased and frozen assets unlocked, it’s definitely the latter.
As one very senior Israeli official put it to me this morning, the deal is “shit.”
. . . The good news is that nothing’s locked in—the gaps between the parties remain huge—and given how fond Trump has grown of yanking the football away at the last second, maybe this time it’s the Ayatollah who ends up flat on his back.
Every day things go back and forth here, but if Trump is going to make a deal, it has to be one that allows him to claim that the U.S. “won”. And now the negotiations are extended for another two months, so Trump can’t really claim he “won” until the end of August at the earliest—and that’s getting close to the midterms.
*This NYT op-ed is clickbait for me, though when you click on the screenshot, you’ll see that the title has changed—whoops, it changed back again. (Thearticle is archived here). But of course the “winning issue” turns out to be screwy: it’s DATA CENTERS, Jake!
Americans hate data centers. They really, really hate them.
A Gallup poll from May found that 71 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built in their area. In rural communities in Utah and North Carolina, regular people are organizing to stop data center construction, speaking out at public hearings and pressuring politicians for bans. They are passionate enough to attend political education sessions about water rights, land use and thermodynamics. Cities like Tulsa, Okla.; Birmingham, Ala.; and New Orleans have recently passed temporary moratoriums on data center construction. Last week, lawmakers in New York passed a statewide pause on large-scale data centers; other states, including Maryland and Michigan, could be next.
According to polling by Heatmap News, more than half of all Americans support a national ban on data centers. The public seems to agree that data centers are giant, ugly, noisy, smelly altars to industrial-scale hostile architecture. In our virulently partisan country, this constitutes a rare show of consensus.
What Ms. Cottom doesn’t realize is that most Americans couldn’t even tell you what a data center is, that data centers are vitally important in today’s computer-infused world, and their impact could be minimized by putting them in remote areas. Yes, they have problems, but as far as I can see, we’re better off with them than without them. However, given the widespread ignorance about these matters, Cottom tells us Dems, “Hop on the issue pronto!”:
Democrats need organized voters. The political mobilization that the civil rights movement built and that has propelled Democrats to victories across the country is aging. The G.O.P. is racing to disorganize and dilute Black electoral power across the South and the Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Your guess about the Democratic Party’s plan to fill the gaps is as good as mine. The party seems to want some kind of economic populist message without embracing the demographic reality that a member of the working class is just as likely to be Black or a woman as a white dude in a Carhartt. Whether the data center resistance is a blip or a beginning of a new political imagination, it refutes the idea that you cannot have it all: populist energy, an economic message and a multiracial coalition that crosses class divides, in the South and beyond. Why aren’t Democrats jumping at the chance to get into the fight?
You know why. It’s not an important issue to most Americans, and data centers are not going to be pivotal in electing Democrats.
. . . . To win the future, Democrats have to survive the midterms. We have lived in Trump’s America for a decade now. Almost none of us are better off for it. The voters showing up to fight data centers demonstrate that a lot of us want something different. If the Democrats want to convince us that they are the party to get us there, they need a plan to rebuild institutions, rebalance the branches of power and restore faith in the system. They also need a national message equal to the righteous rage driving millions of Americans to look up from their enemy and finally see, instead, a neighbor and future worth fighting for. In the end, it’s simple.
We can win. That’s it. That’s the message.
There’s another message: Cotton has wasted 1,728 words conveying a message that, to me, is trivial and useless for winning elections. You be the judge.
*Yesrterday’s NYT’s morning newsletter announced that SpaceX was going public, and the sale of shares may make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: that is one thousand billion dollars. Here are the details:
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-building, satellite-launching and artificial intelligence company, is set to go public today at $135 a share. The company plans to sell 555 million of them. That means SpaceX would raise around $75 billion, putting its valuation at $1.77 trillion, the largest I.P.O. in history.
It could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Or it could tank. Some analysts have argued that SpaceX is significantly overvalued. The market could decide that Musk’s an overpromiser and pass on the stock’s high price. (Remember his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022? The company, now known as X, saw its ad revenue decline by 65 percent last year. Musk folded it into his A.I. company, xAI. Which is now part of SpaceX.)
Plenty of people will get rich anyway. One launch engineer who worked at the company for 12 years told The Times he’d earned more than 100,000 shares during his tenure. At $135 a pop, his SpaceX stock would be worth at least $13.5 million at some point today. Even if the price drops by half, he’d still have millions on paper. “The magnitude of this has been ridiculous,” he said.
Or look to Antonio Gracias, one of Musk’s staunchest friends and business allies. He and his private equity firm, Valor Equity Partners, have a $65 billion stake in SpaceX at its target I.P.O. valuation. If the stock soars, Gracias will instantly become one of the world’s richest human beings.
When firms go public, they usually reserve a small sliver of their stock for individuals, with the bulk going to giant investors like asset managers and hedge funds.
SpaceX, however, sought commitments from individuals for up to 20 percent of its shares, much larger than a typical offering.
Some of those shares set aside for individual investors will be available under the SPCX ticker on online brokerage platforms like Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab and SoFi.
For anyone looking to buy SpaceX shares, the brokerages have said investors may notget the total number that they request, given a limited supply of stock at the initial offering price.
“Here, you ask for 1,000 shares — maybe you’ll get 300; maybe you’ll get 50,” said Jay Ritter, an I.P.O. expert at the University of Florida.
Individuals may find themselves owning SpaceX shares even if they didn’t actively choose to invest.
The Nasdaq-100, a popular index that tracks the top 100 nonfinancial companies listed on that exchange, recently relaxed its rules to make it easier and faster for SpaceX to be included. That will force funds that track the index to invest in SpaceX practically overnight.
When the stock starts trading on Friday, investors can buy the shares on the open market, but they probably won’t be able to purchase them at the I.P.O. price of $135 a share. The stock could open at a lower or higher price, depending on what type of demand the company’s bankers can muster up ahead of the first trade.
I ain’t buying any. One thing I’ve learned in investing (and I’ve been doing it for years, limiting myself largely to Vanguard mutual funds), is not to try to time the market, and not to buy individual stocks. Following those rules has given me a comfortable retirement, and I ain’t about to change them now.
SpaceX’s shares rose about 30% over their opening price as the largest-ever IPO had Wall Street and investors around the world glued to their screens.
The stock opened trading at $150, 11% above the IPO price of $135. The initial climb gave it a market cap above $2.2 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed company.
Elon Musk officially became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX—trading under the ticker SPCX— went public. His stake in the rocket maker was valued at around $690 billion at the IPO price, while his Tesla stake makes up around $279 billion of his net worth.
Lead banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will take home the biggest share of the IPO fees, getting a combined 40% or around $100 million apiece.
Some users reported issues with Robinhood’s platform in the half hour or so after shares of SpaceX started trading, with reports dropping off after noon.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “We economists have done the maths.”
→ Insane amounts of money are about to be made: With the SpaceX IPO, it’s estimated that more than 4,000 people are about to become millionaires, with 400 projected to have fortunes over $100 million. And then there’s the upcoming Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. Between space and LLMs, we’re looking at a new generation of wealth. And if I can climb back on my California soapbox for a moment, it’s always amazing to me that the East Coast produces none of this. The East Coast is the Europe of America. You go to New York when you decide it’s time to hire a dozen ADHD-identified individuals in Brooklyn who will sue you, not like, build stuff. For that, it’s all still the Bay Area or, thanks to SpaceX, Texas! And in the boom times, one group that’s thriving is (of course) prostitutes. Forbes has an amazing story about the nerdy escort boom. These ladies are charging upward of $2,000 an hour, even as much as $6,000 an hour—and you know they’re spending most of that hour talking about Moravec’s Paradox. One reports charging $23,000 a day. The absolute weirdest people in America have created artificial consciousness (probably Satanic) and despite all their efforts, they still exist in these pesky bodies that demand stupid things like [redacted], which the computer can’t quite do yet. Good for the prosties.
In other signs of new financial realities, women are hiring witches to help protect their weddings, or so Bloomberg tells us this week. Is it just me, or is heterosexuality getting weirder than being gay? Prostitutes and witches? Maybe you guys should take Pride this year, I think you need it.
→ Finally, data on how many girls were given testosterone: At the height of the movement to medically transition gender-dysphoric kids, it was always a little unclear how many kids were affected. Like, how riled up should we all get, really? Now we have data and a great write-up thanks to the brave journalist Benjamin Ryan. In Oregon, from 2016 to 2023, about 1 in 250 girls were taking testosterone by age 17. And that number was likely increasing every year in that time frame, so by 2023 it was probably a lot more than 1 in 250. That is objectively wild. That is a huge number of girls being put on testosterone, which alters them permanently, for life. Their voices, their bone structure. In retrospect, the reactions to this over the past few years were probably too muted! Here’s the chart Benjamin Ryan put together, based on a recent study of insurance data for 2016–2023:
Rarely do I look back on a moral panic and think, wow, we did exactly the right thing in response to it. Rarely do you say, it’s a good thing we panicked there or things could’ve gotten really bad! But in this case, it’s the truth. Doctors were drugging every gender-nonconforming girl they could get their paws on. Any girl going through puberty and feeling a little weird was offered. . . testosterone! An army of desexed girls was created. It’s really so dark. There is no way in hell I would have survived this maw. If I’d been born just a few years later, I would have been puberty-blocked and T’ed so fast, and then I’d never have children and have to shave my face forever. Equally terrible.
→ Now some good news: A number of pro-Hamas conspirators accused of haunting University of Michigan leaders have been indicted by a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors say the conspirators, who were “associated with the University of Michigan,” did things like throwing “glass jars filled with butyric acid and dye into the homes” of their targets. Here’s a nice little excerpt from our activists’ messages (you bet one was a medical student!):
These are cries for liberation, don’t you see! Sweet poetry for stolen lands. If you think there’s not medical torture happening right now by this guy’s fellow ideologues, you’re fooling yourself. Stay healthy out there! Don’t end up in an emergency room! If Bari ever does, I’ll just say goodbye at the door because we all know she ain’t comin’ out.
Meanwhile, the Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of Colorado Boulder issued a statement honoring a local terrorist for his murder of a local elderly Jewish woman. Remember the guy who firebombed that group who had gathered in honor of the Hamas hostages? That guy, who killed 82-year-old Karen Diamond and burned a bunch of other folks? “One year ago today, on June 1st, 2025, Mohamed Sabry Soliman took direct action against one manifestation of the Zionist death cult that we have allowed to fester in our city,” the student group posted, adding that the killer “chose the only sane response available to a rational human being.” Totally open blood lust. And to think, Colorado is so beautiful! They could be hiking and enjoying themselves, having a nice beer brewed right in town paired with some bison jerky and a burrito. Instead, they’re celebrating the death of an old Jewish woman. Odd.
They’re also celebrating the injuries sustained by more than a dozen other people in Soliman’s firebombing; see the NYT article here. And do look at the archived Students for Justice in Palestine site’s response to see how horrific that organization is. Here’s a screenshot of part of it. Oy!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is hiding from Hili:
Szaron: I know you’re coming this way. Hili: How do you know?
Sharon: The stones told me.
In Polish:
Szaron: Wiem, że tu idziesz.
Hili: Skąd wiesz?
Szaron: Kamienie mi powiedziały.
I’ll give only two tweets today as yesterday I engaged in three duckling rescues yesterday (total of eight ducklings saved) and was busy much of the day. Photos follow, including one of a bald eagle taken to rehab (no, I did not find that one!).
Here is a video tweet from Masih showing a Taliban truck running over four women who dared to go to a seminar on education. For some reason they’ve made it un-embeddable, but if you click on the screenshot you’ll see it. (WARNING: women getting hit by a truck):
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he got to Auschwitz. He was one year old, and would be 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/4a2MKehu2r
