Tuesday: Hili dialogue

December 30, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Tuesday, December 30, 2025, the Cruelest Day. But it’s also the final day of Koynezaa, which means it’s my damn birthday, and also Bacon Day, distinctly unkosher.

Reader Bill made a lovely montage for my birthday (see also the special Hili dialogue below):

It’s a thin holiday, saved only by the end of Koynezaa, so all I can say is that it’s National Bicarbonate of Soda Day, which you can take if you eat too much bacon.  Notables born on this day include the Roman Emperor Titus (AD 39), Rudyard Kipling (1865), Paul Bowles (1910), Bo Diddley (1928), Skeeter Davis (1931), Del Shannon (1934; it was a big year for music),  Patti Smith (1946), Tracey Ullman (1959), and Tiger Woods (1975)., who is 50 today.

Here’s Skeeter Davis’s most famous song, and it’s a good one. First, a note from YouTube (my bolding):

Davis recorded her version with sound engineer Bill Porter on June 8, 1962, at the RCA Studios in Nashville, produced by Chet Atkins, and featuring Floyd Cramer. Released by RCA Records in December 1962, “The End of the World” peaked in March 1963 at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (behind “Our Day Will Come” by Ruby & the Romantics), No. 2 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Singles chart, No. 1 on Billboard‘s Easy Listening chart, and No. 4 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B Singles chart.  It is the first, and, to date, only time that a song cracked the Top 10 (and Top 5) on all four Billboard charts.  Billboard ranked the record as the No. 2 song of 1963.

It’s a country song, but surely a crossover.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the WaPo, Zelensky, meeting with Trump in D.C., asked the U.S. for security guarantees for fifty years!

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that he had asked President Donald Trump to make a “historic decision” and grant Ukraine security guarantees against Russian aggression that would last decades — a request he said Trump has agreed to consider.

Zelensky made the request during a meeting Sunday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where the two leaders discussed the latest version of a 20-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. Several difficult issues, including the length of security guarantees, future control over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and territorial questions emanating from the war, remained unresolved after Sunday’s meeting, Zelensky told journalists via voice notes in a WhatsApp group Monday.

Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin before meeting with Zelensky on Sunday. European leaders, including from Britain, France and Germany, joined the Trump-Zelensky meeting via conference call. In a news conference Sunday evening, Trump sounded optimistic about the prospects for peace but left plenty of room for the possibility of failure, saying Russia and Ukraine would continue fighting if the current negotiations did not succeed.

The 20-point plan, drafted by U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, says Ukraine will receive strong security guarantees, according to a summary. Zelensky has said they would be comparable to NATO’s Article 5, which commits to the collective defense of the alliance and treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. But the precise nature of the U.S. security commitment to Ukraine has yet to be made public.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that he had asked President Donald Trump to make a “historic decision” and grant Ukraine security guarantees against Russian aggression that would last decades — a request he said Trump has agreed to consider.

Zelensky made the request during a meeting Sunday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where the two leaders discussed the latest version of a 20-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. Several difficult issues, including the length of security guarantees, future control over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and territorial questions emanating from the war, remained unresolved after Sunday’s meeting, Zelensky told journalists via voice notes in a WhatsApp group Monday.

Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin before meeting with Zelensky on Sunday. European leaders, including from Britain, France and Germany, joined the Trump-Zelensky meeting via conference call. In a news conference Sunday evening, Trump sounded optimistic about the prospects for peace but left plenty of room for the possibility of failure, saying Russia and Ukraine would continue fighting if the current negotiations did not succeed.

The 20-point plan, drafted by U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, says Ukraine will receive strong security guarantees, according to a summary. Zelensky has said they would be comparable to NATO’s Article 5, which commits to the collective defense of the alliance and treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. But the precise nature of the U.S. security commitment to Ukraine has yet to be made public.

First, Trump will be President for only three more years. Are agreements on security guarantees supposed to outlast him, or can they be undone by future Presidents? And will they be agreed on not just by the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia, but by Europe as well?  At any rate, I think that if the guarantee is of this nature, it has a snowball’s chance in hell with Putin.

*According to the WSJ, the government is going after private companies that, they say, violate laws by using diversity initiatives to hire employees.

The Trump administration has launched investigations into the use of diversity initiatives in hiring and promotion at major U.S. companies, built on the novel use of a federal law meant to punish businesses that cheat the government.

The civil probes are proceeding under the umbrella of the False Claims Act, which has traditionally been used to go after contractors who bill the government for work that was never performed or inflate the cost of services rendered.

Now the Justice Department is embracing the theory that holding a federal contract while still considering diversity when hiring is, in effect, fraud against the government that entitles it to recoup potentially millions of dollars.

Alphabet’s Google and Verizon Communications are among a list of companies that have received Justice Department demands for documents and information about their workplace programs, according to people familiar with the investigations.

Other companies being scrutinized come from industries ranging from automotive and pharmaceuticals to defense and utilities, the people familiar with the investigations said, and some have met in person with Justice Department officials. A complete list of companies being targeted couldn’t be learned.

Google and Verizon declined to comment.

False-claims investigations are commonly initiated after a whistleblower or an internal government watchdog has tipped off the Justice Department to alleged fraud. The DEI probes, however, have been spurred by politically appointed officials in the department who believe companies with contracts aren’t abiding by their obligations to the government if they still embrace diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

In a May enforcement memo, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche ordered a new initiative that directed the department “to investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims against any recipient of federal funds” who knowingly engages in preferences that create benefits or burdens based on race, ethnicity, or national origin.

Blanche’s memo said the department would be working to penalize private-sector companies with government contracts if they still have DEI policies on the books after President Trump issued an executive order to end what he said are discriminatory race- and sex-based preferences in government work. Blanche said the False Claims Act would be the “weapon” used to go after corporations and schools that “continue to adhere to racist policies.”

. . . . Lawyers who practice in the area said it is unusual to see the antifraud law used to pursue hot-button conservative policy objectives.

The University of Chicago prohibits hiring and promotion on any grounds other than scholarship and service, but I still think that a diversity of both groups and thought is useful in universities. I keep pondering how to attain that, and my best solution so far is that when two candidates are equally qualified for a position, give the nod to the one that increases diversity. But how often are candidates equally qualified? That would apply more to college admissions, with tons of candidates, than to academic hiring, when there are at best 100 applicants (in biology, at least).

*News is thin this past week, and the end of the year is the time to make lists. Here’s one by Frank Bruni on “The best sentences of 2025.” There’s a lot about Trump, and I’ll give one, but Trump-bashing is just too easy. Here are some sentences with the person who wrote them or said them, and the finder.

In The Atlantic, David A. Graham processed the addition of “Trump” to “Kennedy” in the moniker for Washington’s premier performing arts center: “He asks not what he can do for his country, but what his country can name for him.” (Darrell Ing, Honolulu)

Also in The Times, David Brooks explained many Republicans’ affinity for Russia’s president: “One of the reasons MAGA conservatives admire Putin is that they see him as an ally against their ultimate enemy — the ethnic studies program at Columbia.” (Jenny O’Farrell, Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Jessica Fitch, Corpus Christi, Texas, among many others)

In The New Yorker, Sam Knight contemplated Britain’s diminished place in the world: “Old empires are like old stars in the sky. You can’t tell whether the light actually burned out years ago.” (Margaret Wayne, Evanston, Ill., and Douglas R. Melin, Findlay, Ohio)

In The Washington Post, Mark Lasswell traced the lineage of a polarizing punctuation mark: “Too demure to be a colon but more assertive than a comma, the semicolon was introduced in 1494 by Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius. What a useful little tool it has been in its primary role of inserting a graceful pause between two related independent clauses, as in: ‘R.F.K. Jr. came to my house; he tore out the medicine cabinet with a crowbar.’” (Dorit Suffness, Dallas, and Nancy Loe, San Luis Obispo, Calif., among others)

Also in The Times, Dwight Garner noted a lacuna in “Sister Europe,” by Nell Zink: “No real sex takes place in this novel, though it’s gently pervy, like Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin.” (John Jacoby, North Andover, Mass.)

And Andi Zeisler appraised the stage persona of the pop star Sabrina Carpenter: “She presents as a half-pint pinup doll whose doe eyes, big Bardot hair and frothy, lingerie-inspired costumes evoke two iconic Hollywoods (Old, and Frederick’s of).” (David Baer, Concord, Calif., and Ilene V. Smith, Manhattan)

In The BMJ, Kamran Abassi composed a eulogy for honest, factual information. “We live in a world of lies, damned lies, and A.I. hallucinations,” he wrote. “A lie, they say, travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Today, a lie travels so fast that the truth might as well stay in bed.” (Harold Goll, Baltimore)

I think this is my favorite one (there are many more at the article, archived here):

In The Times, James Hamblin parodied the typical message and script of a television drug ad: “You will frolic on the beach at sunset psoriasis-free, with a golden retriever, smiling into the distance. You also may experience sudden loss of cardiac function, seizures of the arms or intermittent explosive ear discharge. Talk to your doctor.” (Susan Casey, Palm City, Fla.)

*On his Substack, Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry (not Jewish, but demonized for his sympathy for Israel) recounts why 2025 for him was “Disappointment.”  He’s also made his excellent essay refuting the claim of a Gaza “genocide,” called “They don’t believe it either: The Gaza genocide as ideological performance” free on his site. I’ve called attention to the latter essay before, which is well worth reading. Here are a few things that disappointed Maarten this years, including Doctors Without Borders, which has long disappointed me. I greatly regret having donated quite a bit to them.

In my view, once the dust has settled, the “Gaza genocide” will be recognized as the most egregious case in recent years of what Joseph Heath calls “highbrow misinformation”—worse even than all the nonsense we were subjected to during the COVID era. And it was dangerous misinformation, akin to a modern-day blood libel, stoking antisemitism and anti-Zionism across the globe, and endangering Jewish and Israeli lives everywhere.

This is also why I stopped donating to NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International, despite the invaluable and admirable work they still do. The level of ideological capture has simply become too extreme. All of these organizations irresponsibly parroted the “genocide” libel, relying on the same bogus arguments, the same willful ignorance about urban warfare and Hamas’s cynical tactics, and the same regurgitated lists of distorted or fabricated “quotes” from Israeli leaders. Doctors Without Borders even lied about Hamas’s systematic presence and extensive tunnel network beneath the al-Shifa hospital, where the NGO has operated for decades, effectively giving cover to the terrorist group. I now donate exclusively to effective charities that have a proven track record of solving real-life misery without engaging in ideological grandstanding.

A tweet added by Maarten:

More:

The same applies to Wikipedia, another noble project I once donated to. Given the website’s leftward drift over the past years, it’s no surprise they have now “taken the oath” and officially endorsed the Gaza genocide, defined as the “ongoing, intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people” by Israel (in reality, the population has ballooned for decades). Even Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales has blasted the article as “one of the worst Wikipedia entries I’ve seen in a very long time” and a “particularly egregious example” of ideological bias.

We’ve discussed the biases in Wikipedia before, but have a look at the screenshot of this article that Maarten includes. The “genocide” is of course not by Hamas but by Israel. Good going, Wikipedia!

None of this means that Israel should not be criticized, including for plausible war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza. I do so myself in my Quillette piece. But the charge of genocide (i.e., the deliberate extermination of a whole people) remains as absurd and obscene as when it was first leveled—mere days after the October 7 massacre, which in itself reveals how deeply unserious this accusation was.

I have already lost too many friends over this horrible conflict, so I promise I won’t hold it against anyone personally. I think my friends are woefully wrong; they think the same of me, and are probably also very disappointed. So be it. But I can’t hide my own disappointment and frustration.

Anyway, I’ve now removed the paywall to my essay on the genocide calumny: “They don’t believe it either.“

Read it!

*The Free Press asked a number of notables and staffers what they learned this year. I’ll give a couple of responses.

H.R. McMaster, former U.S. national security adviser

I learned that the human desire for freedom is universal and indomitable. María Corina Machado exemplified the courage and perseverance of the Venezuelan opposition to Nicolás Maduro. Cubans used the arts to demand that the Cuban government release political prisoners. In Iran, the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement sustained civil disobedience networks even as the theocratic dictatorship expanded digital surveillance, executed at least 1,922 people, and, during its war with Israel, arrested 21,000. Despite the Kremlin’s escalating system of repression, military desertions increased, while soldiers’ wives and mothers demanded an end to Putin’s war on Ukraine. Despite its technologically advanced Orwellian police state, the Chinese Communist Party could not break the spirit of Jimmy Lai, religious groups, and others advocating for liberty.

Steven Pinker, psychologist and writer

Human progress continues, with some backsliding.

Since publishing two books on human progress (The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, and Enlightenment Now, 2018), every year I update my graphs on the major dimensions of human well-being. Most people think everything’s gotten worse, but that can be a misleading impression from following headlines, a nonrandom sample of the worst things happening anywhere on earth. The data show that, after the pandemic blip, global life expectancy, affluence, and literacy are at all-time highs, while extreme poverty and violent crime are at all-time lows. The world has backslid in democracy and war deaths, taking us back to levels in the late 1990s—though we’re still better than at any time in the 20th century since relevant data were recorded.

Bill Maher, comedian and host of Real Time with Bill Maher

This year, I learned that maybe the optimistic historians, who I sometimes argued with when feeling pessimistic, might be right when they say our system and our democracy will win out in the end, as they have in the past. “Not so fast” is how I would characterize the reaction to attempts at usurping democratic norms in the last couple of months—including partly from members of MAGA nation itself. I’ll never be a big optimist, but I feel good that at least there might be a fight about this stuff.

Rod Dreher, writer

I learned that my side—the political right—could become as crazy as the woke left, especially on the matter of the Jews. Yeah, I knew that there were antisemites on the right, and other radicals, including conspiracy nuts, but I thought they were pretty much contained on the fringes. Nope. Shame on me for being surprised: As I’ve been saying for years, all the basic conditions Hannah Arendt said are present in a pre-totalitarian society are with us in America. A kind of totalitarian thinking long ago conquered the left and its institutions with wokeness. I thought all we on the right had to do was defeat wokeness, and we’d be okay. I was wrong. For the last six weeks, I’ve been devouring books about 1920s Germany. People like to joke darkly about “Weimar America,” but the more I learn from history, the less amusing it seems.

And the final one from a freed Israeli hostage:

Emily Damari, freed Israeli hostage

Firstly, God. I have learned I have a very strong relationship with God, and I had many conversations with Him in captivity. This relationship continues today.

I have also learned to value everything I do in my life. I open the fridge: I say thank you. I drink cold water: I say thank you. I am thankful for everything—big things and little things. Gratitude is very important. I am grateful that I have the privilege of being thankful. I was thankful before, but now it’s on a different level.

There we have it: optimism and pessimism. There’s more at the site, including at least one additional accusation of growing antisemitism on the American Right.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is celebrating my birthday! O Joy! (she’s in the pouch):

Andrzej: Can you tell what day it is today?
Hili: Of course I can – it’s Jerry’s birthday! Many happy returns, Jerry.

In Polish:
Ja: Czy pamiętasz jaki dziś dzień?
Hili: Oczywiście, dziś są urodziny Jerrego! Many happy reterns, Jerry.

*******************

From The Dodo Pet:

From CinEmma:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih. I had no idea this was going on.But it’s verified by many sources, including PBS, which reports that the exchange rate is now 1.3 million rial to the dollar.  The Iranian regime can’t fall soon enough for me,

A tweet I made because I’m sick to death of the Free Press constantly touting and osculating faith. Here’s the coverage of their “America at 250” issues:

From Luana; more evidence that making SATs or other standardized tests obligatory when applying for college actually helps students with lower incomes. Read the summary of the paper:

From Malcolm, who wants one of these (I wonder how it works):

One from my feed. I wonder if it’s true; it does seem to be! (Sound up.)

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Matthew. The first one’s two days late, but the bridge disaster figures in my new Quillette article:

Ah, 28 December: 146th anniversary of the Tay Bridge disaster, which tragically took the lives of 59 people – and rather more happily gave the world ‘Sir’ William Topaz McGonagall’s most famous work

— Coates is Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2025-12-28T10:45:06.587Z

And Sjupp! Where did Linnaeus get a New World mammal?

Carl Linnaeus's beloved pet raccoon, Sjupp, was a gift from the King of Sweden, and regularly stole snacks from Linnaeus's students. This drawing is thought to be Sjupp. (LM/PF/ALS/1) #EYAPets

— The Linnean Society of London (@linneansociety.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T13:30:38.240Z

 

The world’s three best cuisines

December 29, 2025 • 12:35 pm

In light of the absence of news as well as my recurring insomnia, which has made me unable to brain, I’m posting a list of what I consider the three best cuisines in the world.  What I mean by this is that if I were constrained to eat only one nation’s cuisine for the rest of my life, these are the three I’d choose among.

Now I have experience with all of these on their home turf (and I’m also a decent Szechuan cook), so I know I’d be happy with them. One notable omission is Italian, although it’s only because I’m not familiar with the cuisine and have been to Italy only a handful of times. I suspect if I knew it better, that would be on the list.  Here we go, and in no particular order:

French (all regions)
Indian (all regions, particularly the north where wheat and meat dominate over rice and vegetables, but I would never neglect the great food of southern India as well).
Chinese (again, all regions, though Hunanese and Szechuan are my favorites)

I’ll add that I am not looking for haute cuisine, particularly in France. The dishes that regular people eat are the dishes I want.

Sadly, I see Jewish food as constituting a mediocre cuisine. Yes, some Jewish food is great—latkes, pastrami, and (if you consider it Jewish) cheesecake—but you can’t eat just that for the rest of your life.

Of course you should weigh in below. And remember, this is a purely subjective list, but it is based on considerable experience.

A specimen of French food: a cassoulet:

BrokenSphere, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Indian: A biryani, Hyderabad style

Mahi Tatavarty, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And mapo dofu, one of the glories of Szechuan cuisine (I ate it at the place in Chengdu where it was said to have been created):

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 29, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today we have some plant photos sent by reader Amy Perry.  Amy’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

These photos were taken with my iPhone 11 in December of 2025 in the Torrey Pines State Nature Reserve Extension, except where otherwise indicated. I was pleasantly surprised to find enough flowers in bloom to photograph to send to you.

The Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana), for which the state nature reserve is named, is a rare pine species in California. It is a critically endangered species growing only in coastal San Diego County, and on Santa Rosa Island, offshore from Santa Barbara. The Torrey pine is endemic to the California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion. Like all pines, its needles are clustered into fascicles that have a particular number of needles for each pine species; in the Torrey pine there are five needles in each fascicle, as in Photo 1 (taken outside the reserve in December 2024). Trees near the ocean are battered by strong winds into odd, twisty, even grotesque, shapes, as in the second photo. The third photo shows an upright tree, growing in the reserve extension, which is a separate area a few blocks from the ocean.

The species epithet torreyana is named for John Torrey, an American botanist, after whom the coniferous genus Torreya is also named. The Torrey pine is protected by a city tree ordinance in Del Mar, near the native habitat, and construction projects and residents require a permit for its removal.

California buckwheat, or flat-topped buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), is a keystone species for sagebrush scrub ecosystems. It has been used as a food crop and medicinal plant by various Native American tribes. It’s a nectar host for several butterflies and a larval host for several others. Often the compact, drab dark brown balls of winter (Photo 4) coexist on the same plant as, and contrast with the fluffy, delicate white and pink blossoms (second photo) left over from spring, summer, and fall.

White sage (Salvia apiana) leaves are thickly covered in hairs that trigger oil glands; when rubbed oils and resins are released, producing a strong aroma. The flowers are very attractive to bees, which is described by the specific epithet, apiana. Young leaves start off green and turn white as they get older.

Also called bee sage or sacred sage, white sage is deeply rooted in the cultures and lifeways of indigenous communities of southern California and northern Baja, the only region where this sage naturally occurs in the world. Over-harvest of wild Californian white sage populations is a concern held by many Native American groups and conservationists. The destruction of white sage has become a focus of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy.

California aster (Symphyotrichum chilense) sports petite flowers in subtle shades of blue and lavender. I see it in those colors and in white. (Other flowers usually in blue or lavender sometimes occur in white in Indiana, where I live.) Butterflies and moths are attracted to the nectar. California aster, also called coast aster and Pacific aster, is a host plant for several species of both insects. Birds eat the seeds after blooming. Despite its scientific name, it does not occur in Chile:

Laurel sumac (Malosma laurina) is named “laurel” because the foliage is reminiscent of bay laurel but it is not in that plant family. It is a key plant in coastal sage scrub and chaparral, and the berries (second photo, October 2025) are appreciated by songbirds, especially warblers. It is sensitive to cold and tolerates extended freezing conditions poorly. Orange growers in the early history of southern California used to pick places to plant their oranges based on where laurel sumac was growing because this indicated it would not get too cold for oranges:

Telegraph weed (Heterotheca grandiflora) is a pioneer species and roadside weed even where it is native. This is a tall, bristly, hairy plant and looks weedy, but I think it’s cool because it’s unusual and spectacular. Sometimes exceeding a meter in height, as in the second photo (December 2024), its resemblance to a telegraph pole gives it this name. Another name is silk-grass goldenaster:

California sagebrush (Artemisia californica) has an aromatic fragrance and threadlike silvery green leaves. The silvery appearance is due to the numerous fine hairs on the leaves. Although it is called sage because of its aroma, it is really a member of the sunflower family. An amusing name for it is Cowboy cologne. Here it is growing in the middle of California brittlebush or California bush sunflower (Encelia californica). The dried resin of this plant can be burned for incense; the Spanish common name for this plant is incienso. Like many desert plants, both of these are very sprawling and unruly-looking:

 

Monday: Hili dialogue

December 29, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the start of a “work” week, and the air quotes indicate that the indolent won’t be coming to work this week. It’s Monday, Dec. 29, 2025 and the penultimate day of Koynezaa. It’s a thin holiday, most notably National Pepper Pot Day, celebrating a soup described this way in Wikipedia:

Pepper pot soup is a thick stew of beef tripe, vegetables, pepper and other seasonings. The soup was first made in West Africa and the Caribbean before being brought to North America through slave trade and made into a distinctively Philadelphian dish by colonial Black women during the nineteenth century.

I’ll eschew the tripe, thank you, but here’s a painting of the concoction with the caption: “Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market (1811) by John Lewis Krimmel.  The scene depicts a pepper pot soup street vendor in Philadelphia serving soup from a pot to customers.”  The customers don’t look like they’re enjoying it. 

John Lewis Krimmel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National “Get on the Scales” Day, apparently to see how much you’ve gained over the holidays. But they’re not over yet!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Brigitte Bardot, actress, singer, and sex symbol extraodinaire, died at 91.

Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with “And God Created Woman,” then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, died on Sunday at her home in southern France. She was 91.

Fondation Brigitte Bardot, which she established for the protection of animals, announced her death.

Ms. Bardot was 23 when “And God Created Woman,” a box-office flop in France in 1956, opened in the United States the next year and made her an international star. Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, called her “undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship” and “a phenomenon you have to see to believe.” Like many critics, he was unimpressed by the film itself.

Ms. Bardot’s film persona was distinctive, compared with other movie sex symbols of the time, not only for her ripe youthfulness but also for her unapologetic carnal appetite. Her director was her husband, Roger Vadim, and although they soon divorced, he continued to shape her public image, directing her in four more movies over the next two decades.

Few of Ms. Bardot’s movies were serious cinematic undertakings, and she later told a French newspaper that she considered “La Vérité,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated 1960 crime drama, the only good film she ever made.

Nicknamed B.B. (pronounced in French much like the word for baby), she was best known for light comedies like “The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful” (1956), “Babette Goes to War” (1959) and “The Vixen” (1969), but she did work with some of France’s most respected directors.

When Ms. Bardot announced her retirement from films in 1973, she had already begun her work on behalf of animal rights and welfare (although she had told an American reporter in 1965, “I adore furs”). But it was only in 1986, a year after she was made a chevalier of France’s Legion of Honor, that she created the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, based in Paris, which has waged battles against wolf hunting, bullfighting, vivisection and the consumption of horse meat. In 1987, she auctioned off her jewelry and other personal belongings to ensure the foundation’s financial base.

“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she was quoted as saying at the time, “and now I am giving my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”

Here’s the French trailer for the film that made her famous, “And God Created Woman” (1956).  Bardot was 22 (portrayed as 18 in the movie), and married to the director, Roger Vadim, whose third wife was Jane Fonda.

And here’s a good 5-minute capsule bio of BB that shows her speaking English in an interview:

*Yesterday Trump met Zelensky, and since I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon, before the meeting, I’ll update it if there’s added information. Zelensky is desperate to end the war without having to give a way a huge chunk of his country, while Trump could give a fig about Ukraine and just wants his Nobel Peace Prize.

UPDATE: There is no substantive update. The NYT reports that there was little progress in the talks, but just the fact that Zelensky kept Trump engaged and talking counts as a win for Ukraine. (Well, only a temporary one.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking to persuade President Trump to more forcefully back a proposed peace agreement that includes security guarantees and would convert contested territory with Russia into a demilitarized free economic zone.

Zelensky and Trump were set to meet Sunday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to go over a 20-point draft that has been revised by Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators in recent weeks in the latest attempt to end the nearly four-year war. Zelensky’s hope is that Trump will apply more pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a deal.

Ahead of Sunday’s meeting, Trump said on social media he had “a good and very productive telephone call” with Putin.

Going into the summit, the main sticking points were the future of the approximately 20% of the Donetsk region that Russia wants to be surrendered to it, the status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, that is currently under Russian occupation, and details of security guarantees that Washington would provide for Ukraine.

Before meeting Trump, Zelensky on Sunday highlighted Russia’s stepped-up attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in recent days that have left swaths of the country without power. He said he was there not only to talk about ending the war but also ensuring that pressure on Russia remained high, with effective sanctions and new air defenses for Ukraine.

“These are some of the most active diplomatic days of the year right now, and a lot can be decided before the New Year,” Zelensky said on X. “We are doing everything toward this, but whether decisions will be made depends on our partners—those who help Ukraine, and those who put pressure on Russia so that Russians feel the consequences of their own aggression.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday that Zelensky and Europe aren’t “ready to engage in constructive talks.” He called European countries “the main obstacles to peace” and said Moscow remained committed to working with the U.S. to “devise lasting agreements for addressing the conflict’s root causes,” language the Kremlin often uses for concessions Ukraine sees as capitulation.

It looks as if Zelensky has accepted the fact that he has to give up territory, but I’m wondering what kind of “security guarantees” Trump will be willing to offer. The only good to come out of this is that Europe is really ticked off at Putin and Russia, but the bad bit is that now that Putin knows that he can get away with seizing bits of neighboring sovereign countries (for the second time!), he might be more likely to do it again.

*I put up the tweet below yesterday but will do so again as it emphasizes the fraud that’s plaguing Minnesota and has now cost the U.S. government hundreds of millions of dollars. The video was made not by a newsperson but a YouTuber (Nick Shirley). If you haven’t watched the 42-minute video, I urge you to do so. As I said yesterday, this scandal has been covered a bit by the MSM, but more often by the right-wing media, since the fraudsters were largely Somalis and are therefore “the oppressed”.  But their ethnicity is irrelevant, save to show that a community that is supported largely on welfare and hasn’t yet integrated itself into American life, has been tempted to go for the big bucks. Tweet first:

Minnesota Governor Walz is pushing back, saying that he’s always investigated fraud.  He doesn’t seem to realize the scale of this fraud, though.  Remember, he ran for VP with Harris.

From Forbes (that’s how far you have to go to find the most recent news):

FBI Director Kash Patel said Sunday the agency is continuing to investigate alleged fraud in Minnesota, as Republicans have seized on the allegations to attack the state’s Somali population and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

Key facts:

  • Patel issued a lengthy statement on X on Sunday responding to social media reports regarding fraud in Minnesota, saying the FBI “had surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota” to “dismantle” the alleged fraud schemes even prior to the issue gaining attention on social media.
  • The alleged fraud schemes have taken more than $200 million from programs through the Education Department and Medicaid, along with housing and autism services according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, and have led to more than 90 people being indicted.
  • Patel said the FBI believes the fraud schemes alleged so far are “just the tip of a very large iceberg” and the agency’s investigation into the alleged schemes “very much remains ongoing.”
  • Many of those indicted for fraud have been from Minnesota’s Somali population, leading President Donald Trump and other Republicans to use the fraud allegations to launch broader attacks on the state’s Somali residents and strip them of immigration protections.

Patel said in his statement Sunday that many of those involved with the alleged fraud schemes “are also being referred to immigrations officials for possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings.”

There are a number of alleged fraud schemes that have contributed to the current fraud crisis in Minnesota, dating back to 2015 when daycare centers were alleged to have overcharged Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program. More recent schemes have involved Medicaid-funded disability schemes, particularly a housing program that helped seniors and those with disabilities find and move into housing, which was shut down earlier this year due to “large-scale fraud.” The nonprofit Feeding Our Future was also implicated in a $250 million fraud scheme as the organization allegedly took advantage of a COVID-era federal aid program for child nutrition, which resulted in more than 70 people being indicted. Two leaders from the group were found guilty at trial in March, while at least one other has pleaded guilty to the charges against them. While the alleged fraud schemes in Minnesota are wide-ranging, the Star-Tribune notes the allegations have primarily focused on instances of the government being billed for services that were never actually provided.

and yahoo! news writes about part of the scandal: Ilhan Omar’s huge increase in wealth in one year: there are suggestions that her husband may have been part of the fraud scheme (see also this piece in the NY Post):

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is once again under fire — this time because her husband Tim Mynett’s $25 million venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, reportedly purged key officer details amid growing questions about the couple’s wealth and Minnesota’s ongoing welfare fraud investigations.

According to her latest financial disclosure in May, the couple’s net worth surged 3500% in just one year; their net worth is now anywhere from $6 million to $30 million. The venture capital firm alone, per the filing, is worth between $5 million-$25 million.

The New York Post was the first outlet to report Mynett’s firm scrubbed names on Saturday.

“There’s a lot of strange things going on,” Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, told the Post. “She was basically broke when she came into office and now she’s worth perhaps up to $30 million … she needs to come clean on these assets.”

Rose Lake Capital allegedly had less than $1,000 in assets in 2023, according to the financial disclosure for that year — leading many to question the firm’s skyrocketing fiscal growth.

Between September and October, nine officer and advisor details were removed from the site, including former Obama officials, according to the NYP.  These names include former Obama Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli; former Obama Ambassador to China Max Baucus; DNC Finance Chair associate Alex Hoffman; former DNC treasurer William Derrough and former ex-CEO of Amalgamated Bank Keith Mestrich, per the New York Post‘s findings.

This move comes amid growing scrutiny of Omar.

Ninety people have been accused, and in many cases convicted, of defrauding the state of hundreds of millions of dollars — three of whom have alleged ties to Omar, though she has not been charged herself.

Some of the scrutiny toward Omar comes from her support of reforms that have since been exploited in this fraud scheme, which includes the MEALS Act — changes to the federal reimbursement rules during the COVID-19 pandemic, waiving oversight requirements to increase timely access to meals for children.

I’m not a big fan of “squad” member Ilhan Omar, who’s also seemed to me antisemitic, based partly but not wholly on tweets like this.  Only time will tell if she was involved in this deception.

*Over at the Free Press, newly minted Christian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose greatest fear is the spread of the intifada (and she is rightly worried), reports that, with the Bondi Beach shooting, “The intifada comes to Australia.”

This attack was not random. It wasn’t an eruption of private madness. It was deliberate. Jews were targeted on a Jewish holiday, in broad daylight, in a public place. This matters. When we blur that fact, we betray the dead.

The method chosen by the murderers should also trouble us deeply. Families were gathered in joy when men with guns got out of a car and began firing. The violence arrived with speed and cruelty, and though the scale differs, the pattern is unmistakable; it mirrors October 7 in Israel. A holiday. A crowd. Daylight. Attackers who targeted the most vulnerable, and knew precisely what they were doing.

This way of killing has been studied, praised, and spread for years. It appears in pamphlets, videos, and online posts. It is celebrated in slogans shouted at marches and emblazoned on placards. It is excused as rage, sanitized as politics. When killing is justified in moral terms, it no longer horrifies. Instead, it multiplies.

Australia has long told itself a comforting story. It is far from old hatreds. Its gun laws are strict. Its cities are calm. Its people get along. That story has been repeated for years, even as reality moved in the opposite direction.

Antisemitism in Australia didn’t appear suddenly. Over recent years, it has risen steadily, then sharply. Synagogues have been firebombed. Jewish schools and daycare centers have been vandalized. Cars have been torched. Homes marked. Children bullied. Threats normalized. Since October 7, reported antisemitic incidents have surged several times over, reaching levels not seen in living memory. Terror attacks on Jewish targets in Melbourne in October and December of last year have been linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Yet too often, leaders chose reassurance over honesty. Chants calling for violence were justified as protest. Language forged in violence was treated as politics. Direct threats were brushed aside. Each retreat gave hatred more room. When murder is given a moral excuse, it no longer shocks. It simply spreads.

A serious response means candor and clear-eyed judgment. It means enforcing the law without apology. Incitement is not opinion. Calls for violence are not protest. Praise for terror is not speech worth protecting. These are not extreme positions. In truth, they are the minimum conditions of a civilized society.

Most of all, it means standing openly with Australia’s Jewish citizens, not only in grief, but in resolve. Jews shouldn’t be asked to hide their faith to stay safe. They shouldn’t be told to understand the anger of those who threaten them. They shouldn’t be left wondering whether their future lies somewhere else.

Hirsi Ali is calling for an end to “hate speech”, even in the U.S.’s First-Amendment form, under which calls for globalizing the intifada or moving Palestine from the river to the sea are legal.  The problem, of course, is severalfold here. The haters out themselves with verbal hate, while banning it drives them underground.  And is it “incitement”? In the U.S., incitement is demonstrated when “hate speech” is likely to incite imminent and predictable violence. Otherwise, how do you know that someone miles away and days separated, has incited a case of violence.  Finally, there is the slippery slope argument against “hate speech”, and it’s not just theoretical: it’s on tap in the UK now. For the nonce I’m content to go with the courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment.  This of course is not a justification of what happened at Bondi Beach. What Australia needs is more counterspeech, enforcement of laws against harassment, and education about antisemitism.

*And the malady that made Barry Manilow cancel his concert dates has been identified as lung cancer. Fortunately, it’s been caught early. (Manilow was born named Barry Alan Pincus, and was Jewish.)

The singer Barry Manilow has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will undergo surgery, he announced in a social-media post on Monday.

Manilow, 82, said he had been fighting bronchitis for more than two months when his doctors ordered an M.R.I.

The test “discovered a cancerous spot on my left lung that needs to be removed,” he wrote in a statement on Instagram. “It’s pure luck (and a great doctor) that it was found so early.”

He said that doctors did not think the cancer had spread and that he would have additional tests to confirm their diagnosis.

“No chemo,” he added. “No radiation. Just chicken soup and I Love Lucy reruns.”

Manilow did not say when he would have the surgery, but he is expected to need a month to recover from it. That means, Manilow wrote in his statement, that nine concert dates scheduled for January will be postponed.

“Just like you, we were all looking forward to the January shows and hate having to move everything around,” he wrote.

A representative for Manilow declined to comment on Monday.

Manilow, who is known for hits including “Mandy,” “Copacabana” and “Can’t Smile Without You,” is one of the last holdovers from the pre-rock era. Between the release of his self-titled debut album in 1973 and 1981, he notched nine Top 10 singles on the pop charts and 12 No. 1 hits in the mellow Adult Contemporary radio format. He has won a Grammy, a Tony and an Emmy, and been nominated for an Oscar.

From the description it looks as if Manilow has stage 1A non small-cell lung cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of over 65%.  That’s not too bad for someone who’s 82. (Manilow smoked up to three packs a day for 30 years before he quit.) I don’t suppose this news interests people beyond a few geezers like me, but I do like several of Manilow’s songs, of which this (not “Mandy”) is my favorite:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to be worried. Is it Kulka?  No; see below:

Andrzej: Are you going to the orchard?
Hili: I don’t know yet. It depends on who’s in the garden.

In Polish:

Ja: Wybierasz się do sadu?
Hili: Jeszcze nie wiem, to zależy od tego, kto jest w ogrodzie.

Andrzej explains:

Paulina and Mariusz have taken in a young dog (an Alsatian); she’s four months old, irresponsible, and it will take a few months to get her used to cats.  For now, the cats are scared by her smell, barking, and the sight of her through the windows.

The dog is adorable, but it’s going to be a long and difficult road to friendship.

The d*g:

 

*******************

From The Language Nerds:

From Meow Incorporated:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih; another half blinded Iranian woman, shot in the face for protesting.

You probably know that Emma Hilton is a developmental biologist at Manchester (a colleague of Matthew’s).  She’s developing a quick way to screen the sexes for sports assignment, and is asking for dosh to support her. It’s a good cause, and you can find the link below (or go here). Every penny helps!

From Luana, and, this is ironic (see above):

From Jay, a way cool tweet:

Larry the Cat mourns Bardot:

Au revoir Brigitte x

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-12-28T11:20:13.076Z

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

 

And two from Dr. Cobb.  First, a video showing a brittle star catching a squid. This is not right!

Brittle star vs. Squid! Ophiuroids only appear dainty & harmless. Another cool moment from #OkeanosExplorer #MarineLife youtu.be/oHN4sWAuBVc?…

— Lisa (@tuexplorer1.bsky.social) 2025-12-28T13:52:53.821Z

And the first Jewish joke Matthew ever sent me!

A horse walks into a synagogue, so they made him cantor

— Rob Palk (@robpalk.bsky.social) 2025-12-28T11:59:31.329Z

Roolz emphasis: overcommenting

December 28, 2025 • 12:00 pm

Several people, whom I won’t name, have taken to commenting more often than is suggested by Da Roolz. Let me reiterate the relevant one: Rool #9:

Try not to dominate threads, particularly in a one-on-one argument. I’ve found that those are rarely informative, and the participants never reach agreement. A good guideline is that if your comments constitute over 10% of the comments on a thread, you’re posting too much.

This is a guideline, not a hard-and-fast dictum, but be aware that comments should be informative, advance the discussion, and aren’t there just so you can tell the world that you exist.  Comments that say “+1” are particularly egregious because they say nothing more than “I agree,” evincing a laziness that can’t even produce those two words! (And even “I agree” is not that useful.)

Thanks!

 

 

The Atlantic denies the existence of free will but says that determinism makes us behave badly

December 28, 2025 • 10:00 am

I can’t resist calling your attention to a 2016 article on free will, mainly because it appeared in The Atlantic—a magazine many here (including me) admire. And as I’m reading Matthew Cobb’s terrific new biography of Francis Crick, I see that Crick was a determinist like me, though he realized that different phenomena require different levels of analysis. Crick didn’t think that free will was even worth considering, and avoided it like the plague though he was deeply concerned with consciousness. His research program for understanding the brain is deeply deterministic and pretty reductionist. But read Matthew’s book for yourself.

In view of Crick’s ideas that I’ve just learned about, and a reader calling my attention to this article, which I haven’t seen, it’s worth seeing how author Stephen Cave deals with determinism.  You can read the article by clicking below, but since it’s likely to be paywalled you can find it archived here.

The article’s main points are these, two of which are summarized in the title and subtitle (my take):

1.)  We have no such thing as free will in the libertarian sense of “you could have done other than what you did”

2.) But studies show that if you reject free will, you are likely to cheat, be lazy and fatalistic, and reject the idea of moral responsibility

3.)  To avoid these injurious social effects, we must confect a new take on free will, encouraging others to behave better. This can enhance “autonomy” (not “agency” or “autonomy in the sense of ‘ability to govern oneself'”, neither of which we have) but “autonomy” in the sense of “adhering to behaviors that help our selves and society”.

Now #3 may look like a bogus solution, and author Steven Cave sort of admits that, but we can clearly improve our behaviors with the right carrots and sticks.  It’s a misconception about determinism that people’s behavior can’t be changed. Clearly, the influence of others, blaming and praising people for actions they consider respectively injurious and admirable, can, over time, change your neurons in such a way that you begin behaving in ways better for you and for society.  The fly in this ointment is the infinite regression of determinism: whether and how we even try to change people’s minds is itself determined by people’s genes and environments. But I won’t go down that rabbit hole here.

Cave’s solution is at least better than that of compatibilists like Dan Dennett, who simply redefined free will so that we could tell people they had it. Since Dan adhered to point #2, thinking that belief in strict determinism was bad for everyone, he wrote two books designed to convince people that they had free will in a meaningful way. I found his arguments unconvincing.  Dan later stressed that he was not making this “little people’s” argument, one similar to making the “belief in belief” claim that even though there’s no God, it’s good for society to be religious. But in Dan’s own writings I did find him making the Little People’s argument, which I quoted in a post here in 2022:

Here, for example, are two statements by the doyen of compatibilism, my pal Dan Dennett (sorry, Dan!):

There is—and has always been—an arms race between persuaders and their targets or intended victims, and folklore is full of tales of innocents being taken in by the blandishments of sharp talkers. This folklore is part of the defense we pass on to our children, so they will become adept at guarding against it. We don’t want our children to become puppets! If neuroscientists are saying that it is no use—we are already puppets, controlled by the environment, they are making a big, and potentially harmful mistake. . . . we [Dennett and Erasmus] both share the doctrine that free will is an illusion is likely to have profoundly unfortunate consequences if not rebutted forcefully.

—Dan Dennett, “Erasmus: Sometimes a Spin Doctor is Right” (Erasmus Prize Essay).

and

If nobody is responsible, not really, then not only should the prisons be emptied, but no contract is valid, mortgages should be abolished, and we can never hold anybody to account for anything they do.  Preserving “law and order” without a concept of real responsibility is a daunting task.

—Dan Dennett, “Reflections on Free Will” (naturalism.org)

But you can be a “hard determinist” and still believe in responsibility!

Dan is no longer with us, but I did post these when he was alive, so I’m not beating a dead philosopher.

I will try to be brief, discussing the three points above. Quotes from the Atlantic article are indented, while my own take is flush left:

1.)  We have no such thing as free will in the libertarian sense of “you could have done other than what you did.” To his credit, Cave admits this straight off, noting that science supports determinism.

In recent decades, research on the inner workings of the brain has helped to resolve the nature-nurture debate—and has dealt a further blow to the idea of free will. Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams.

. . . . The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. But it left some room, at least in the popular imagination, for the possibility that we could overcome our circumstances or our genes to become the author of our own destiny. The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.

This is what I believe, and also what Crick believed.  Now we’ll never know enough to be able to predict people’s behavior, but if quantum effects don’t manifest themselves in behavior (making you choose a salad rather than french fries, for example), then yes, determinism could lead to absolute predictability. But that will never happen, because we’d have to know enough to predict environmental factors like the weather. Besides, scientists have not decided that quantum phenomena affect behavior. Crick himself rejected that as “woo”, and I’m awaiting evidence for such influences. (We have none.) Finally, even if quantum effects do scupper determinism for some behaviors, they are not effects that we can control by “will.”

I won’t add here the many experiments showing that you can largely predict people’s (simple) decisions before they’re made, beginning with the study of Libet.  As these studies continue, we can, by monitoring brain activity, predict what people will do in simple binary tasks farther and farther ahead of the time they’re aware of making such decisions (up to ten seconds, I believe). Free willies, however, always find ways to reject these studies, since that work suggests that our feeling of agency is a post facto phenomenon occurring only after the brain’s neurons have made a “decision”. 

2.) But studies show that if you reject free will, you are likely to cheat, be lazy and fatalistic, and reject the idea of moral responsibility.  Much of this is based on an early study of Vohs and Schooler showing that college students who are “primed” by reading passages on determinism are more likely to act badly and to cheat than students primed by reading about free will.  But that was just over a very short time, was a highly artificial study on college students, and a later meta-analysis showed no deleterious effect of rejecting free will on “prosocial” behaviors. (Note that most of the studies tested behaviors lasting at most a week or so after “priming”.  Cave does, however, mention one study suggesting inimical effects of belief in determinism, though:

In another study, for instance, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings. Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.
I suggest you look at that study (it appears to be Stillman et al. 2020, “study 2”), as it doesn’t contain a multifactorial analysis using all the cross-correlated factors. Furthere, the p values are low, yet the authors did not correct for multiple tests of significance using something like the Bonferroni correction.

But even if the evidence did show small deleterious effects on behavior stemming from determinism, are we supposed to pretend to believe we have agency so we can behave better? How can you pretend to believe something you don’t? It would be like asking atheists to believe in God because that belief has salubrious effects. It can’t be done—at least not for rational people. It’s like asking a lion to stop chasing gazelles and start eating salads. It’s not in us!

Two other points.  We always feel like we have free will, so I doubt that the scientific truth will make people fatalistic. Whether this belief evolved by natural selection or is merely an epiphenomenon of our evolved brain structure is not clear, and I doubt we’ll ever know.  So I don’t take point #2 seriously in most circumstances. Where it IS important to recognize the truth of determinism is in our system or rewards and punishment, most notably in the legal system.  If people who act badly are simply people with “broken brains,” then how we treat them depends crucially on recognizing this.  A society in which we realize, for instance, that a thief had no choice about whether or not he stole, or a killer about whether or not he pulled the trigger, we would have a very different system of punishment than a society in which we think people had a choice of how they behaved. (Yes, I know that some people say that belief in libertarian free will wouldn’t change how we dispense justice, but I reject that view.)

This does not mean that we should do away with the idea of responsibility and punishment. Far from it. While I don’t consider people morally responsible in the sense that they could have done something “moral” rather than “immoral”, that doesn’t mean that every criminal obtains a get-out-of-jail-free card. People are responsible for their acts in the sense that they are the people who do the acts, and that leads to the idea that those people need, for their own sake and society’s, to be punished or rewarded. Punishment is still justified under determinism to keep criminals out of society, to give them a chance to be rehabilitated, and (to most) as a form of deterrence. What is not justified is retributive punishment like the death penalty, as that implicitly assumes the criminal made a choice (the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, anyway, and can’t be revoked if someone is later found to be innocent).

Finally, praise is as justified as punishment, for praising people for some actions, even if they had no choice, will almost always lead them to perform more good actions, because we’re evolved to appreciate praise, which raises our status. In the end, though none of us have choices about how we behave, we go about our lives feeling as if we did, and that’s enough for me. When the rubber hits the road, as when determinism really matters (as in punishment), we can still revert to what science tells us.

3.)  To avoid this injurious social effects, we must confect a new take on free will, encouraging others to behave better, which can enhance “autonomy” (not “agency” or “autonomy” in the sense of “ability to govern oneself”, neither of which we have, but “autonomy” in the sense of adhering to behaviors that help our selves and society.  Author Cave is wise enough to accept the science and the determinism it suggests, but he still thinks we need a solution to the problem that belief in determinism leads to bad behavior.  I am not convinced that this is true, as different studies show different things. And I don’t think we need to do what Dennett did, writing big books confecting new definitions of a “free will worth wanting.”  It is this last part of the article that most disappointed me, for Cave suggest a tepid solution: we all need to behave better. (He cites Bruce Waller, a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University):

Yet Waller’s account of free will still leads to a very different view of justice and responsibility than most people hold today. No one has caused himself: No one chose his genes or the environment into which he was born. Therefore no one bears ultimate responsibility for who he is and what he does. Waller told me he supported the sentiment of Barack Obama’s 2012 “You didn’t build that” speech, in which the president called attention to the external factors that help bring about success. He was also not surprised that it drew such a sharp reaction from those who want to believe that they were the sole architects of their achievements. But he argues that we must accept that life outcomes are determined by disparities in nature and nurture, “so we can take practical measures to remedy misfortune and help everyone to fulfill their potential.”

Of course Obama was determined to say this via the laws of physics, but his words may still have had a good effect on society. Poor people don’t choose to be poor, nor homeless people to be homeless. We need to realize this, for that form of determinism is good for everyone (except perhaps for some Republicans).  Cave admits that accepting determinism but trying to be good is somewhat bogus, but at least it’s nor harmful—not in the way I think Dennett’s views were.

Cave:

Understanding how will be the work of decades, as we slowly unravel the nature of our own minds. In many areas, that work will likely yield more compassion: offering more (and more precise) help to those who find themselves in a bad place. And when the threat of punishment is necessary as a deterrent, it will in many cases be balanced with efforts to strengthen, rather than undermine, the capacities for autonomy that are essential for anyone to lead a decent life. The kind of will that leads to success—seeing positive options for oneself, making good decisions and sticking to them—can be cultivated, and those at the bottom of society are most in need of that cultivation.

To some people, this may sound like a gratuitous attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. And in a way it is. It is an attempt to retain the best parts of the free-will belief system while ditching the worst. President Obama—who has both defended “a faith in free will” and argued that we are not the sole architects of our fortune—has had to learn what a fine line this is to tread. Yet it might be what we need to rescue the American dream—and indeed, many of our ideas about civilization, the world over—in the scientific age.

Well, that’s a bit dramatic, but we do need to reform our notions of praise and—especially—blame. I’ve outlined some of the changes in the justice system we should make in light of determinism, and Gregg Caruso (e.g., here) has done so far more extensively.  But I don’t think we should go around telling people that the classical notion of free will is true.  Although I’ve been kicked out of a friend’s house and also threatened by a jazz musician for defending determinism (in the latter case by telling him that his saxophone solos were determined rather than improvised under free will, so that he could not have played a different solo), I’m still a diehard determinist.

Yes, the Atlantic article is nine years old, but the field hasn’t moved very far since it was written. Do people even need to think and write about free will, then?  Certainly Francis Crick didn’t think so: he completely ignored the problem in his late-life work on the brain, dismissing free will as a nonstarter. But because notions of free will still permeate our justice system in a bad way, yes, I think everyone needs to think about determinism and accept the science buttressing it. Then we can go about our everyday lives acting as though we have choices.

h/t: Reese

Holiday flowers!

December 28, 2025 • 8:30 am

And to complete the wildlife today, reader Rodger Atkin sent in some flowers. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This flowered last night in our garden in Thailand. From Wikipedia:

“Dracaena fragrans (cornstalk dracaena), is a flowering plant species that is native to tropical Africa, from Sudan south to Mozambique, west to Côte d’Ivoire and southwest to Angola, growing in upland regions at 600–2,250 m (1,970–7,380 ft) altitude.”

Wikipedia does not mention it but ours flowers only at night, giving off a very heady perfume. I have never seen anything to pollinate it and have never seen fruit on the plant.

The second two pictures were from the next morning:all finished, and and we’ll wait for next year.