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.
This week’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “bite2”, is new but came out a bit late on Wednesday. In response to last week’s criticism of Islam, Mo now gets the chance to make fun of Christian ritual. He does a good job, but Jesus gets the last word.
It was a lazy day today, with one visit to an architectural/history site and then one big and delicious meal. After we had a leisurely breakfast and did our ablutions, it was nearly 11 a.m. We then walked the ten blocks to the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters:
The Owens–Thomas House & Slave Quarters (originally known as the Richardson House) is a historic home in Savannah, Georgia, that is operated as a historic house museum by Telfair Museums. It is located at 124 Abercorn Street, on the northeast corner of Oglethorpe Square. The Owens–Thomas House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, as one of the nation’s finest examples of English Regency architecture.
. . . The house is notable for its early cast iron side veranda with elaborate acanthus scroll supports on which the Marquis de Lafayette addressed the citizens of Savannah on his visit in 1825.
The house was built between 1816 and 1819, designed by the architect William Jay of Bath and financed and occupied by Richard Richardson. It was then purchased by attorney and politician George Welshman Owens, who was briefly mayor of Savannah and later a U.S. Representative.
The Owens family lived in the house for a while, but after some decades turned it into a boarding house, which is when Lafayette stayed there on his final visit to America on the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution—in which Lafayette played a huge role.
In 1951 the family turned the house over to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences , which still owns it (I visited the other two parts of the Museum on my first day here).
The sign below gives pretty much the same information above.
The front of the house (I forgot to photograph the famous balcony). When Lafayette, an abolitionist, visited Savannah in 1825, the town kept all the slaves inside, along with the free blacks, so they wouldn’t be incited by Lafayette’s antislavery sentiments.
The back garden of the house, designed to be completely symmetrical. In the rear are the slave quarters. This is only part of them: the small house held 12 people, and there were a bit more than 20 enslaved people working for the white residents.
This sign was in the slave quarters, explaining why the guides and many of the signs used the terms “enslaved people” instead of “slaves.”
Inside the quarters, which slept at least twelve people, though many of the enslaved, like the cook and those who took care of the chlldren, slept inside the big house.
The dining room. Food was cooked in the basement, and since there was no dumbwaiter it was carried on trays up two floors from the basement and put in the butler’s pantry before being served.
The butler’s pantry was a small room, with four empty bottles of wine sitting on the sideboard. As the tour moved on, I picked up one of the bottles and saw what’s below: a bottle of Barton and Guestier bordeaux—from 1870! I’d never held a wine bottle that old before. And this chateau is still going strong; it was founded in 1725.
The structural material of the house was tabby, an equal mixture of sand, burnt oyster shells, water, and ash. It was an early form of concrete, and was quite durable. As you see, the tabby was covered with wood paneling.
This room was presumed to be the library/study, though now they’re unsure what all the rooms were used for.
This is presumed to be the oldest son’s bedroom.
And a mirror, at the bottom of which you can see a selfie of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus):
The (presumed) master bedroom, now a word that’s out of favor for obvious reasons (I can’t remember what it’s supposed to be called now).
After the tour we walked home and then got in the car to drive to a restaurant I’d scoped out as a likely prospect: great food, not overly expensive and, most important, Southern. Yes, we went to Erica Davis Lowcountry. It turned out to be all I hoped for, though if you drove by this place you wouldn’t think to go in. But you’d be making a mistake if you didn’t.
We split two appetizers. First, oysters Rockefeller made with local oysters. Wikipedia describes the dish this way:
Oysters Rockefeller is a dish consisting of oysters on the half-shell that have been topped with a rich sauce of butter, parsley and other green herbs, bread crumbs, and then baked or broiled.
There were also collard greens, cream. and Parmesan cheese. It was scrumptious—the first time I’ve had this dish. With all that garnish you could still taste the oysters, and I love oysters. You’d think the dish would be too busy with all the ingredients, but the flavors mingled perfectly.
Another Southern classic: fried green tomatoes, these with feta cheese and balsamic vinegar reduction.
The menu was so full of good stuff (see the link above) that I asked the waiter what she recommended. Without question she mentioned the shrimp, which are local, fresh, and delicious. So I got a half pound of boiled shrimp. They came with clarified butter, shrimp sauce, and two sides (I chose cheese grits and deep-fried okra). And oy, were those shrimp good! I ate the shells, of course, as all good shrimp lovers do.
Tim had the Wassaw redfish, described as “pan-seared redfish filet, garlic beurre blanc, heirloom tomato, stone ground grits, fresh green beans.” He pronounced it excellent.
Betsy had two crab cakes along with green beans and cole slaw. As expected, the cakes were almost all lump crabmeat, with just a small amount of filling to hold them together. With a little bit of the sauce on the crab, it was a Platonic version of this dish.
And my Southern dessert: the third helping of banana pudding I’ve had on this trip—this time served in a Mason jar. This was the fanciest version of all I’ve had. As you can see, it’s topped with whipped cream dusted with vanilla wafer crumbs, with a whole wafer on the side. (Banana pudding sans vanilla wafers is unthinkable.) Then there’s a layer of banana pudding, then a layer of cake, and then a bottom layer of pudding with chunks of banana. This was the best version I had on this trip, and probably the best version I’d ever had. (I’ve eaten it many times, often with BBQ or a meat-and-three plate in the South.)
The meal was terrific, not very expensive, and prepared with great care. I’d recommend this place very highly to anyone who visits Savannah.
Welcome to Friday, April 24, 2026. Today I fly back to Chicago. Normally I would look forward with joy to returning, ready to help Vashti rear her brook of seven ducklings to maturity. This is not to be, however, and I am heartbroken to know that I’ll face an empty pond.
To some it may sound stupid that I’m mourning the loss of our brood of ducklings, but, as the old Jewish saying goes, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” What that means is that if you save the life of any creature, you have saved the world for that creature, who now gets to experience a world it would otherwise lose. That is our situation—seven times over.
Truth be told, I am not energized to write today, and it may be a while before I am. As always, I do my best.
Here, in memoriam to our brood, are three photos taken by Peggy Mason and one by another student. They were sent to me as I didn’t see the brood myself. Whatever happened to them, I hope they found safe harbor.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 24 Wikipedia page.
The 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, due to expire Sunday, will be extended for three weeks, President Donald Trump said Thursday during the second round of peace talks at the White House.
The announcement of an extension, which had been requested by Lebanon, came as Trump and Vice President JD Vance joined participants of the talks in the Oval Office. Led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and State Department Counselor Michael Needham, Israel and Lebanon were represented by their ambassadors to the U.S. The U.S. ambassadors to Lebanon and Israel also participated.
Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the extension of “an additional three weeks of, I guess no firing, ceasefire, no more firing. And we’re going to be working with Lebanon to get things straightened out in that country. I really believe it’s something we can do pretty easily,” Trump told reporters admitted to the Oval Office where participants were seated on sofas.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been only tenuously observed, with reduced but continued attacks by Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has not officially recognized the pause in hostilities and on Thursday launched its first missile attack on northern Israel since the ceasefire went into effect April 16. The Israel Defense Forces said the missiles had been intercepted.
Israel has continued sporadic bombing attacks in what it says is “self defense” permitted under the ceasefire, and tens of thousands IDF troops occupying southern Lebanon have continued attacks against alleged militants and their infrastructure.
Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire.
Note that the talks are with Lebanon, not Hezbollah. The Lebanese government cannot stop the terrorism of Hezbollah, which is why Iran wants these negotations to be part of its own cease-fire settlement. The negotiations will not be successful because Hezbollah’s aim is to destroy Israel, and, Hezbollah has ignored the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1701 from 2006, ordering the group to cease hostilities and disarm. What is Trump thinking? Until Lebanon gets control of Hezbollah—a very slim possibility—there will be no peace between the two countries.
For the first time in the history of the IDF, a part of the defense budget had to be devoted to buying a statue of Jesus. But it was the right thing to do.
The first point is the most obvious: it is a blatant moral failure to desecrate another faith’s holy items. As a matter of history Jews should know how that feels. The conduct of an IDF soldier destroying a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon is entirely unacceptable, particularly for a military operating as an occupying force.
But if morality didn’t stop this soldier’s actions, I should think practicality would.
If you were to ask any Jew to identify the single most lethal antisemitic trope in history, the answer would undoubtedly be the accusation of being “Christ killers.” Knowing that history, how any Jewish soldier could think that taking a sledgehammer to a statue of Jesus—and filming it—was in any way a good idea simply baffles me.
Thankfully, out of both moral necessity and practical reality, the IDF has taken swift action. The soldier who smashed the statue, along with the soldier who photographed the act, have been dismissed from combat duty and sentenced to jail. Six other troops who were present at the scene and did not act to stop the incident or report it are also under investigation. The IDF has also organized a replacement for the broken statue, which it has returned to the village.
The unfortunate truth is that soldiers will inevitably do destructive, foolish things. That cannot always be prevented. The ultimate measure of an army’s morality is not whether bad actors exist within its ranks—it is how the system holds them accountable.
Here, courtesy of Amit Segal at the site, is an IDF photo of their replacement statue, which has been installed. Although the entire world, including the MSM, has been tarring the whole IDF, and by extension Israel, for breaking the statue, please read the last paragraph above.
And a bit from today’s report, suggesting that Iran’s titular leader may in fact be dead, an ex-ayatollah:
In early April, a joint U.S.-Israeli diplomatic memo, reported by The Times, claimed that Mojtaba is physically incapacitated, completely unconscious, and hidden in a specialized hospital. The memo also noted ongoing preparations for a massive mausoleum in Qom—a subtle hint that the regime is preparing for a funeral.
This week, The New York Times published a detailed investigation based on leaks from “senior Iranian insiders,” claiming the Supreme Leader is sequestered in a highly secure medical hideout. These officials concede he is severely mutilated—awaiting a prosthetic after three leg surgeries and suffering from facial burns that render him largely mute—but insist he remains “mentally sharp.” Conveniently, because all modern electronics are banned around him to prevent Israeli tracking, he is entirely isolated, relying on a slow human chain of motorcycle couriers to communicate with the IRGC generals who are now effectively running the state.
But within Israeli intelligence, a much colder, simpler theory is taking root: Mojtaba is already dead. All that fantastic, detailed intel—even the candid admissions of severe injury in The New York Times—is carefully calibrated Iranian disinformation.
*Over at Quillette, Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry writes about his awakening on October 7, 2023 in a piece called “What do you think decolonization meant?” (article is archived here).
I was terribly wrong to be so insouciant, as I discovered when 7 October happened. I’m not Jewish and don’t have a personal connection to Israel, so initially I didn’t follow the news very closely. I had relegated the attack to the—regrettably vast—mental category of jihadist terrorist attacks across the globe, failing to grasp that this was, in fact, a full-blown invasion. In my naivety, I assumed that after the massacres in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin, and countless other Western cities, everyone had finally woken up to the true nature of jihadism. When a bunch of Allahu Akbar-chanting fanatics slaughtered innocent young people at a music festival, just as they had done at the Bataclan in Paris, it seemed inconceivable to me that any of my colleagues and friends would condone, rationalise, or even celebrate such acts. And yet that is precisely what happened.
To my horror, within days—even hours—of the attack, when the Israeli army was still fighting off the invaders, I started seeing reactions of excitement and gleeful jubilation on social media. Not from the usual religious maniacs praising Allah, but from left-wing activists at prestigious universities. Academics started breathlessly applying the same framework of decolonisation that I had foolishly brushed aside as amusing but harmless virtue signalling. As the writer Najma Sharif famously posted on X that day, racking up tens of thousands of likes and reposts: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”
It was as though she was talking about me. I was one of those “losers” who had been foolish enough to think that decolonisation amounted to little more than papers and essays, along with some harmless but well-intentioned proposals to diversify the philosophy curriculum. If only. What I came to see in the wake of 7 October was something far less benign. Decolonisation operates as a rigid, almost Manichaean ideology that neatly divides the world into evil perpetrators (Western colonisers) and innocent victims (the colonised, indigenous peoples). In this worldview, there is no room for moral ambiguity. Those on the wrong side of the divide are irredeemably rotten and deserve everything that’s coming to them, while those on the side of the angels are completely absolved of any wrongdoing. If they appear to commit atrocities, these are reframed as understandable—perhaps even inevitable—responses to prior injustice. In fact, the more extreme the violence, the greater the wrongs they must have endured.
At one point, many on the Left considered Israel an admirable success story of decolonisation—of an indigenous people driving out the Western colonisers and achieving self-determination in their historical homeland. For a variety of complex historical reasons, however, the Jewish state is now firmly relegated to the side of the oppressors. In fact, Israel is regarded as the settler-colonialist enterprise par excellence, and Palestinians as paragons of victimhood. And that is all the latter-day activists need to know to reach their moral verdicts—which explains why those verdicts came rushing in mere hours into the unfolding event.
That mindset was on full display in a joint open letter at my own Ghent University, published just three days after 7 October. It pointedly refused to condemn Hamas, shifted all blame for the massacre onto “Zionists,” and praised Palestinians for their “tenacity and fierce resistance to racism and settler colonialism,” which the signatories found immensely “inspiring.” The ideological rationale is right there in the letter: “Decolonization is not a metaphor, nor is it only a theory to be used for intellectual clout. It is about supporting the right for self-determination of Palestinians to live freely and with dignity.” It was signed by two thousand academics and students.
An even more revolting open letter at the University of Amsterdam, again with hundreds of signatories, rejoiced that 2023 “will no doubt be the year admired, recorded and studied for the way in which Palestinians steadfastly resisted colonialism, occupation and survived genocide.” The text echoes the same jargon and turns of phrase, as if its authors’ minds had been hijacked by the same zombie virus: “We must stress that decolonisation is not an abstract theory, it is an action, it is a way of being. […] Decolonisation is not a metaphor. […] It is the UvA’s ethical duty to support decolonial endeavors that aim to end colonialism.”
Every one of these academics would describe themselves as “progressive” or “left-wing.” And yet here they were, rallying to the defence of a reactionary death cult that had just committed the largest antisemitic pogrom since the Holocaust, livestreaming their atrocities with GoPro cameras, sadistically calling family members on the victims’ cellphones, ecstatically calling home in triumph to boast of how many Jews they had killed with their bare hands.
If there are two words that describe this species of “progressive”, they are “anti-Enlightenment” and “Manichean”.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a gene therapy that can cure a rare, inherited form of deafness. The treatment is the first to restore normal hearing in children who were born deaf.
The maker of the therapy, Regeneron, plans to provide it free to any child who needs it. “We wanted to make a statement,” Dr. George Yancopoulos, Regeneron’s chief scientific officer said on Thursday morning.
The therapy called Otarmeni, is intended for children with otoferlin deafness, a rare form of hearing loss caused by a mutation in a single gene. The mutation destroys a protein in the inner ear that is needed to transmit sound to the brain.
. . . Although otoferlin deafness accounts for just 2 percent to 8 percent of congenital hearing loss, the new treatment “is groundbreaking,” Dr. Dylan Chan, a pediatric otolaryngologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said.
He added, “This is the first time in history that there has been a medical therapy that has enabled deaf children to hear.”
. . .Researchers chose to focus on otoferlin deafness because its cause was straightforward. The otoferlin gene is expressed only in the hair cells of the inner ear. The inner ear structures, including the hair cells, are intact. So to allow patients to hear, doctors simply needed to deliver a working copy of the otoferlin gene.
Otolaryngologists had long thought that injecting a medicine into the inner ear would inevitably damage the delicate cells and membranes of the cochlea.
But children with otoferlin deafness are already unable to hear. Even if an attempt at gene therapy damaged their inner ears, they could still receive cochlear implants.
. . .Kerri M., whose baby, Miles, had otoferlin deafness, said gene therapy “completely changed our lives.” She spoke on condition of anonymity because she wanted to protect her son’s diagnosis from appearing on the internet.
Dr. Shearer said Miles’s hearing loss was so profound that he could not hear a jet engine if it were next to him.
Miles was given the Regeneron therapy on May 19, 2025, when he was 13 months old. At his last visit, his hearing was normal.
. . .Most children who received the gene therapy have had hearing restored, but not all have been as fortunate as Miles. So far, Dr. Chan said, about 80 percent of the patients who have been treated successfully in clinical trials were able to hear well without needing cochlear implants.
Most still needed a hearing aid, but about 30 percent of those who could hear after the treatment were like Miles — their hearing was in the normal range.
The next target for the scientists working on gene therapies to correct deafness is mutations in the GJB2 gene. It causes the most common form of congenital hearing loss in children and accounts for about 20 percent of cases.
This is remarkable, and heartening that the company that created the cure is supplying it for free. Of course most genetically-based diseases are not this easy to remedy, but we are on a thresh0ld of successful gene therapy.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: We live in the world we’re in.” The first story about bannng tobacco sales in the UK is true:
→ New job opportunity for Americans: The United Kingdom passed a bill this week to ban the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008. The goal is to create a “smoke-free generation.” Anyone born after 2008 will never be able to buy cigarettes or vapes or any tobacco product in the United Kingdom. Ever. Might as well call them the loser generation. Taking cigs away from Brits is like grabbing spaghetti out of an Italian’s mouth. If there’s no cigarette, what are young Brits meant to do with their hands after making a wry and devastating observation? Wave? That’s for the Yanks.
For a kid from the UK, coming to New York and trying a vape is going to be the equivalent of an American going to Amsterdam to try crack and prostitutes. Me, I’m going to travel to London with strawberry vapes sewn into my Levi’s, like an American hero. They said artificial intelligence would take all our jobs, but they didn’t consider that cigarette smuggling would employ 15,000 Americans each year. British teens: Call me!
→ What’s going on with Ilhan Omar’s net worth?: Rep. Ilhan Omar has revised her net worth. Earlier, she filed paperwork reporting her and her husband’s net worth at between $6 million and $30 million. Now, she’s filed new paperwork reporting their net worth to be between $18,004 to $95,000. An easy enough mistake to make! Zeros are confusing. Responding to a letter from the Office of Congressional Conduct, her lawyer said: “As the busiest of people, it is very common for members and their spouses to rely on learned professionals like accountants to make calculations and determinations that appear on public filings. While the error is, of course, unfortunate, there is nothing untoward, and nothing illegal has occurred.” The busiest of people. So busy, somewhere between the personal training and CAIR meetings, they forgot how many more millions they made. Apparently the confusion comes from her husband being involved in so many businesses. All you need to know is that there was some backlash and the husband is worth nothing now. As a scholar of LLCs, my wild guess, if there is a noncriminal explanation, is that the money was put into a new trust or something. So it’s not hers anymore, per se, not exactly.
→ Carrying knives “for a good reason”:
A Kuwaiti man, on trial for allegedly trying to break into the Israeli embassy in London while armed with two knives, regaled the court with tales of his treacherous boat crossings in which he put his “life on the line.” As noted by the BBC: “His defense case is likely to be that he was not trying to enter the embassy for a terrorist purpose, and that he was carrying the knives ‘for a good reason’ unrelated to his activities that day, jurors have been told.” Unless there’s a fish market inside that embassy, I got a few questions about what constitutes a “good reason” in the UK.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej sounds a familiar note:
Hili: We have to work again?
Andrzej: That’s our lot.
From Masih, with the President mis-sexed in the English translation (there are subtitles):
The President of the German Bundestag [Julia Klöckner] declared with clarity and courage: [S]He does not recognize a regime that blinds women and pierces the bodies of protesters with buckshot. And he made this statement from the podium of the President of the German Bundestag. These remarks were made in tribute to the efforts of Masih Alinejad, for raising global public awareness of the fully armed governmental violence, through which she has become the extension of the voice of millions of Iranians who do not recognize this regime.
The original:
رئیس مجلس آلمان، با صراحت و شجاعت اعلام کرد:
او رژیمی را که زنان را نابینا میکند و بدن معترضان را با ساچمه میدرد، به رسمیت نمیشناسد.
و این حرف را از جایگاه رییس مجلس آلمان زد.
این سخنان در تقدیر از تلاشهای مسیح علینژاد بیان شد، برای آگاهسازی افکار عمومی جهان از خشونتهای… pic.twitter.com/kPQyKTzCHE
— United Against Gender Apartheid (@UAGApartheid) April 23, 2026
From Luana, though the community notes say the quote was mistranslated. The apparently correct translation, which you can see here, is even better.
The first recorded appearance of a cat in Japan is described arriving as an imperial gift, written down on March 11, 889 AD by 22-year-old Emperor Uda on his diary: pic.twitter.com/fw1MsR4PSY
And a turkey named JERRY who loves and protects ducks:
The turkey you see here is Jerry. He never seemed to like living with other turkeys but LOVES the ducks, so we let him move in with them a few years ago. They all get along, in fact Jerry puffs up to protect them whenever a raptor is in the neighborhood. Sometimes found family is the best family! ❤️
It breaks my heart to have to report this, but somehow Vashti and her brood of seven ducklings vanished from Botany Pond sometime after Tuesday morning, and have not been seen since.
I have no idea what happened. They were last seen at the pond during Tuesday’s morning rain showers, with the brood warmly tucked under Vashti’s belly. Now: no ducks—not a trace. The only one left is Armon, who swims disconsolately around the pond and refuses food. He has lost his family.
It was probably not predators: no bodies were found. I’ve ascertained that no workpeople were in the pond during the week. Either someone scared them away or they walked away, something that hasn’t happened before.
Whatever is the case, the ducklings will probably perish, as the nearest body of water is too far away for little ones to walk.
The members of Team Duck and I are devastates. The seven ducklings were healthy, Vashti was being a great mother, and even Armon stepped up to protect the brood. The invading undocumented drakes left the brood alone. Everything promised a great duck season, and I was looking forward to helping the little ones grow up into adult mallards.
That, it seems, is not to be. This portends to be The Year Without Ducklings.
Welcome to Thursday, April 23, 2026 and World Table Tennis Day. It’s a good day to watch the excellent but not world-class movie “Marty Supreme“, about the sport and a down-at-the-heels master of it.
Here’s a video of one person’s top ten table tennis players, with each getting about a minute. The caliber of play is amazing, and doubles competitions look quite hard!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*From this morning’s report at It’s Noon in Israel. (There’s more, too–about a rift in Iran’s leadership):
It’s Thursday, April 23, and the war with Iran is no longer about oil or gas; it is a battle over a single resource: time. The question that will determine the fate of the Middle East is who controls the clock, who can afford to wait, and who is simply out of time?
Currently, the Ayatollahs boast that their dictatorial regime will allow them to hold out indefinitely, while the closure of the Strait of Hormuz imposes an expiration date on U.S. aggression. Meanwhile, Trump claims to be in an equally comfortable position: Iranian ports are blockaded, some commercial ships are still navigating the strait despite the closure, and fresh U.S. military assets are on their way.
The question is, who’s bluffing?
The reality is both. But Iran’s position is significantly weaker.
Every American president sits on a ticking clock, and with the midterm elections approaching, Trump has less time than most. But Iran is bleeding an estimated $400 million a day to the blockade. It’s true that the U.S. is also sustaining high costs to forward-deploy its forces, alongside the strategic opportunity cost of their absence in other theaters. The difference is that Washington can afford it: the Iranian annual budget sits around $56 billion; the U.S. budget is over $6 trillion.
It all comes down to the blockade. Rather than risk casualties to seize Kharg Island or force immediate results through an aerial campaign, the U.S. military can cruise safely out of range in the Arabian Sea, intercept the occasional breakout vessel, and simply wait for economic isolation to do its work.
While Washington holds the front door closed, Tehran’s most crucial ally is starting to push them harder from behind. Xi Jinping is fighting a clock of his own as China’s oil reserves rapidly dry up. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Iran accepted the Pakistani-mediated ceasefire following a last-minute intervention by China, which asked Iran “to show flexibility and defuse tensions.” But that was the rhetoric of a China that had an extra half-month of oil reserves compared to today. I doubt their words will be as soft now.
The Iranians certainly believe the blockade is effective. Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf recently compared the strategy to the bombing campaign and demanded its cessation as a precondition for continuing the talks in Islamabad.
Tehran has another, separate crisis draining its time reserves. As a senior Pakistani source recently confirmed to the U.S., a significant rift has paralyzed the regime. On one side are the Revolutionary Guards and the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, representing the uncompromising extreme; on the other is the civil-political echelon led by Ghalibaf. Presiding above this fracture is the severely injured Mojtaba Khamenei, whom both sides defer to as the final authority. Because of his grievous wounds and the constant threat of Israeli assassination, simply communicating with the supreme leader has become a lengthy, complex logistical nightmare.
Pakistan had hoped for another windfall of global good will as it prepared to host a new round of peace talks between the U.S. and Iran this week, locking down its capital for the second time in a month in the hope that the warring sides could make a deal. But this time, after the principal players were no-shows, disappointment has set in and businesses are counting their losses.
. . . Pakistani officials say they remain hopeful both sides could agree to de-escalate and meet again. An advanced U.S. security team sent to protect a senior American delegation remains on the ground, said people familiar with the matter.
. . .“Both countries are back on the brink, there is no getting away from that,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistan diplomat who was twice the country’s ambassador to the U.S. “The question is how to get them to step back from the brink.”
Pakistani officials are still speaking with both sides and pushing for flexibility. “They haven’t given up by any stretch of the imagination,” she said.
. . .There were glimmers of that again this week. Trump said he had unilaterally extended the cease-fire, which was supposed to end Wednesday, at the request of Munir and Sharif, and the American president has continued to heap praise on Pakistan for its mediation efforts; Iran has said it isn’t bound by Trump’s announcement, with officials saying the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports means the cease-fire had already lapsed.
Yet the prevailing feeling in the Pakistani capital is that it is a city stuck in limbo. Authorities have maintained security measures for now, given the logistical challenges—and expense—of withdrawing the security net and having to reimpose it should talks suddenly materialize.
I have stopped trying to make useful comments about this war. The two sides are far apart, and Trump is chaotic. All I can say is that there should be no moratorium on Iran’s attempt to make nuclear weapons: there should be a blanket prohibition forever. And one of my most fervent wishes—that the Iranian people could somehow take control of their government and eliminate the theocracy—seems to have dropped off Trump’s agenda after he deluded himself (or us) that there has been “real regime change.”
*Speaking of “regime change,” the NYT describes how IRGC generals have replaced the Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (the son of the late Ayatollah) as the figures running Iran (article archived here). But they imply that Mojtaba is still calling the shots.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son, is an elusive figure who has not been seen and whose voice has not been heard since he was appointed in March. Instead, a battle-hardened collective of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and those aligned with them are the key decision makers on matters of security, war and diplomacy.
“Mojtaba is managing the country as though he is the director of the board,” said Abdolreza Davari, a politician who served as senior adviser to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was president and knows Mr. Khamenei.
“He relies heavily on the advice and guidance of the board members, and they collectively make all the decisions,” Mr. Davari said in a phone interview from Tehran. “The generals are the board members.”
. . . Mr. Khamenei, who was selected by a council of senior clerics as the new supreme leader, has been in hiding since American and Israeli forces bombed his father’s compound on Feb. 28, where he also lived with his family. His father, wife and son were all killed. Access to him is extremely difficult and limited now. He is surrounded mostly by a team of doctors and medical staff who are treating the injuries he sustained in the airstrikes.
Senior commanders of the Guards and senior government officials do not visit him, fearing that Israel may trace them to him and kill him. President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is also a heart surgeon, and the minister of health have both been involved in his care.
Though Mr. Khamenei was gravely wounded, he is mentally sharp and engaged, according to four senior Iranian officials familiar with his health. One leg was operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand and is slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been burned severely, making it difficult for him to speak, the officials said, adding that, eventually, he will need plastic surgery.
. . . The combination of concern for his safety, his injuries and the sheer challenge of reaching him has resulted in Mr. Khamenei’s delegating decision making to the generals, at least for now. Reformist factions, as well as ultra-hard-liners, are still involved in political discussions. But analysts say that Mr. Khamenei’s close ties to the generals, whom he grew up with when he volunteered to fight in the Iran-Iraq war as a teenager, have made them the dominant force.
Generals, schmenerals Whether they run the country or whether the theocrats run the country, it’s still hard-line authoritarians. That is the “regime change” that Trump says he’s effected.
Of course the sources, “senior Iranian officials” would say that he’s still “managing the country.”
*One of the most amazingly persistent bis of “fake news” is the Canadian fixation on the unsubstantiated claim that 215 indigenous (“First Nations”) children were killed (or dued) and were secretly buried at a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Jonathan Kay recounts the story at Quillette, which speaks very poorly about Canadian journalism and its “search for truth” (h/t Luana). You won’t see this story in the American MSM. Tha article is archived free here.
As just about every Liberal in the Palais des congrès audience would have known (or at the very least, should have known), those “215 kids” risen from the dead in Kamloops are fictional characters. They never existed “in flesh,” even if their “spirit” once felt very real to Canadians, thanks to a nationwide social panic that spread in mid-2021 following falseclaimsthat215 “unmarked graves” had been found on the grounds of a former Indigenous residential school in the aforementioned city of Kamloops.
The original 27 May 2021 announcement convulsed Canadian society for many weeks. The Canadian Press called it the “Story of the Year.” Justin Trudeau lowered flags on federal buildings for almost six months, and had himself photographed bowing his head and taking a knee, BLM-style. He also authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Indigenous groups—including $12.1-million to the Kamloops First Nation alone—so they could find, exhume, and identify the children whose bodies (we were told) had been tossed anonymously into the earth by murderous white teachers and administrators.
In the four years and eleven months that have passed since then, not a single actual grave (let alone human remains) have been found at any of the identified sites. It turns out that back in 2021, no one—not the Kamloops band leadership, not Canadian journalists, not Justin Trudeau—had bothered to educate themselves about the limits of the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology that had been the basis of the unmarked-graves claims.
GPR technology doesn’t provide X-ray-type images of what lies beneath the earth’s surface, as Canadians had been led to believe. Rather, it identifies sub-surface soil dislocations. Such dislocations can signify graves, but also many other things—including pipes, irrigation networks, rocks, and tree roots.
It so happens that the area in question had formerly been used as an orchard when the Kamloops residential school was operating—a place where trees were planted in neat rows, much like graves. And one might think that would provide a more likely explanation than—oh, say—the hitherto unreported slaughter of 215 unidentified children.
. . . One might also think that the people who’d spread this misinformation would now be humbled, abashed, and perhaps even contrite. If so, one would be wrong. While the CBC belatedly admitted that no “unmarked graves” have been found in Kamloops, most media outlets and politicians have simply gone silent on the issue altogether, hoping that history will forget their role in signal-boosting fake news.
and here’s the kicker:
Moreover, Deer’s gauzy language about the invisible “spirits” of those 215 (non-existent) children captured one of the fallback claims that public figures have been making in recent days: that it doesn’t actually matter if there are real bodies under the ground—because what we should truly focus on is the “symbolic” idea that such graves would represent.
When the facts don’t support your ideology, simply say that the facts don’t matter: what matters is that there was (or is) still oppression.
Canada should be ashamed at how its politicians and media have quietly dropped the story when they couldn’t substantiate it, but won’t even mention the lack of evidence. Now, it’s possible that there may be graves, but until they find them (and they’re not looking), people should, as Archie Bunker told Edith, “stifle themselves.”
Harvard’s graduate student union began its second day on strike Wednesday morning, with roughly 20 picketers gathering at the Science Center as the walkout continued.
Around 8:30 a.m., demonstrators assembled in the Science Center plaza, where they set up a tent and began circling outside the building’s main entrance.
The strike centers on disputes over pay, workplace protections, and benefits. Union leaders have said some graduate workers earn as little as $26,300 annually and are calling for a $55,000 base pay floor, along with raises tied to inflation. They are also seeking stronger protections for international students, an independent process for handling harassment and discrimination complaints, and the restoration of benefits that expired with the previous contract in June 2025. (Harvard, however, has pushed back on the union’s characterization of compensation, saying that Ph.D. students receive at least $425,000 in total benefits over a minimum of five years.)
Benefits not mentioned above include restoring child care and medical expenses that were in the contract that expired last June.
Union members – including teaching fellows, course assistants, and graduate research assistants – have paused teaching and research duties as the strike continues.
Harvard has not scheduled additional bargaining sessions beyond April 28. Union leaders said Tuesday that Harvard has yet to reengage with the union since the walkout began.
Given that the median income for all Americans is about $63,000, and many Americans get neither childcare nor medical insurance with their jobs, these seem like extraordinarily high demands for work that is not only not full time, but also is part of their education as academics. Not to mention that while getting a Harard Ph.D., students already receive over $400,000 along with their prestigious degree. It’s not like they’re making cars or anything.
The president of the John Templeton Foundation, Timothy Dalrymple, said: “What makes Conway Morris abundantly deserving of the Templeton Prize are his groundbreaking advancements on the theoretical foundations of evolutionary theory alongside his commitment to addressing the philosophical implications of that work for humankind.”
. . . Professor Conway Morris said: “As somebody once said — ‘Be careful when you step on to the unending road.’ A Ph.D. on fossil worms might logically lead to fieldwork in Greenland, but to an absorption with evolutionary convergence and thence the Fermi Paradox? And still the road stretches on, now to the question of human uniqueness and, I suspect, way beyond.”
As I’ve noted, Conway Morris sees evolutionary convergence (the arriving of different animal and plant groups at similar phenotypic “solutions” to environmental challenges) as signs of a divine hand behind evolution. He is a theistic evolutionist.
A professing Christian, Professor Conway Morris is highly critical of materialism and reductionism, and has participated in many public debates on religion and science. His study of the patterns and processes of life on earth has, in recent years, led to a keen interest in astrobiology — “the study of things that do not exist”, as he says.
His criticality of materialism and reductionism is only because he sees a divine hand behind evolution. Earlier in his career, Conway Morris made big contributions to paleontology, particularly in early life around the time of the Cambrian Explosion. But he went off the rails and his recent books have been osculations of God as a dab hand in evolution.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron have an arcane discussion:
Hili: What color was Sisyphus’s stone? Szaron: Blue, the gods do not value gray.
In Polish:
Hili: Jaki kolor miał kamień Syzyfa?
Szaron: Błękitny, bogowie nie cenią szarości.
From Luana, who hopes that many people see this (you can read the article here):
Hamas terrorists are gang-raping displaced widows in tents in Gaza. But when it gets reported up the chain, leadership orders silence. The media has largely ignored it too.
From Barry, who adds this: “But can it be a ‘pet’? I don’t understand why it’s in someone’s home. And as someone commented, ‘How long until it starts chewing off the stairway railings for wood supply?’“
This beaver was orphaned and rescued as a newborn. See the incredible instinct to build a dam, even though no parent has ever passed this information to it. [📹 hmuraco]Original post
And two from Dr. Cobb. LOOK AT THIS SQUIRREL! It’s a thread and I’ve put in two posts:
The Tufted ground squirrel (Rheithrosciurus macrotis) is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in floof.Let's start with the *FLOOF* & talk about why they're called "VAMPIRE SQUIRRELS" last.They have the largest tail: body size ratio of any mammal on Earth: the tail is *130%* the size the body.
They're only found on the island of Borneo, which is why they're an enigma. They have many properties SHARED with squirrels from Europe & America (baculum, grooved teeth), but almost none of the characteristics of Asian squirrels.Their closest living relatives are in South America.
Bill Maher’s “New Rules” segment from the week before last is about AI, its history, its dangers, and its errors. Maher doesn’t think too much of it, for, after all, AI can’t cure cancer. I think he gives these bots overly short shrift, and neglects the productive things AI really can do. But he then implies that it’s run by sociopaths and could drive humanity extinct.
Without a doubt, the most famous “restaurant” in Savannah is Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room, formerly known as Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House (the apostrophe seems to be optional). It is a stupendous all-you-can eat Southern homestyle meal, formerly served to the lodgers at a boarding house. A bit from Wikipedia:
Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room was previously the dining hall of the Wilkes House, a downtown boardinghouse. Today the restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the same historic house, built in 1870, at 107 West Jones Street. The restaurant was described by author William Schemmel as “a treasure hidden away in a historic district town-house”. Its longtime owner, Sema Wilkes, published several cookbooks. As of 2024 her family continued to run the restaurant, serving lunch on weekdays.
We happen to be staying at about 200 Jones Street, so could walk get there in about 7 minutes, though waddling home the obligatory postprandial nap took a while longer!
More:
Mrs. Wilkes’ is noted for its homestyle traditions, in which guests are escorted in shifts of ten into the dining room, where a variety of dishes are freshly laid on one of several long tables. There is no menu; dishes are selected by the restaurant and change daily. Travel Holiday in 1993 recalled that the “tables were set with steaming bowls and platters of tasty Southern food”.
The guests sit at the table and pass the dishes around to one another like a family. There are usually long queues waiting to get in.
Usually?? Try “always”!
We tried to go on Monday, but didn’t make the first seating and so, lest we miss our Monday architecture tour, decided to return yesterday. The first three pictures are from Monday, but the line was the same (long) yesterday. The difference was that yesterday got there a full hour before it opened at 11 a.m., and so were seated as soon as the doors opened.
I’ve put a lovely YouTube video about the place at the bottom of this post, so be sure to watch it. It perfectly captures the Wilkes Dining Experience.
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The line was longer than this but I wanted to fit in the house as well as the hungry customers.
I wanted Tim to photograph me holding a fried chicken leg (the place is famous for its fried chicken) and, sure enough, my chicken leg was on the sign by the entrance.
The place was about five minutes late in opening—a delay I couldn’t tolerate. Photo by Tim.
They take only case: no credit cards (there’s an ATM nearby).
Our table set up with some (but far from all) of the dishes we got, along with glasses of tea (sweetened, of course) and fresh roses. You can see collard greens, fried okra, macaroni salad, cucumber salad, and, well, I put below of what we were offered.
One of the two dining rooms after it filled up.
Immediately after sitting down, we were served both cornbread and fresh, hot biscuits.
And of course the food and atmosphere were conducive to making friends, and so we chatted with two amiable visitors from the UK, one from Manchester, where Matthew lives. I’m sure this is a particularly unique experience for Brits who aren’t familiar with southern American cuisine (the best in the U.S., in my view, especially if you throw in Texas brisket).
Here are the dishes that were put on the table, but we may have forgotten a few. There were more than two dozen, and you could help yourself to as much as you wanted. Our lunch took about an hour.
Below: my plate, the first of 2.5 platefuls I ate. Clockwise from 11 o’clock: biscuit, cornbread, collard greens, deep-fried okra, macaroni salad, pulled pork, black-eyed peas, stewed cabbage, rice with chorizo, sweetened yams, and fried chicken. As expected, the fried chicken was fantastic: among the best I’ve ever had. A crunchy, crackly exterior enshrouded juicy chicken.
This was, of course, only my first plate, as I wanted to try nearly all the dishes except stewed okra (okra is edible only when deep-friend, and ;then can be very good).
Me eating chicken–a breast this time, though I also had a thigh. Photo by Tim.
Here are Tim and Betsy digging in:
We were offered a choice of desserts: peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream or banana pudding studded with vanilla wafers. Since part of my stomach is reserved for desserts, I asked for (and got) both.
Cobbler:
Banana pudding:
We waddled home after that, and all of us needed a nap. I did not eat a bit of food until this morning, when I ate only two pieces of toast.
If you go to Savannah (and do go when it’s not summer), you MUST go to Mrs. Wilkes’. This is not optional.
Here’s a great video about the place I found on YouTube.
