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.
Here’s a video of NYT columnist Bret Stephens speaking at the famous 92nd Street YMCA in New York. (It’s 34 minutes long, and well worth watching.) I like Stephens’s columns quite a bit despite his identification as a “conservative”. He’s the paper’s best columnist on Israel and the Gaza War, and he’s also Jewish, and he’s a centrist conservative, not at all a MAGA conservative.
In the video Stephens gives a heterodox take on the “state of World Jewry.” His message is fourfold (I’m expanding on his own words here):
1.) The fight against antisemitism is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend and focus our energy elsewhere.
2.) Antisemitism is the world’s most unwitting compliment, for it is based largely on envy and resentment based on Jewish success.
3.) Proper defense against Jew-hatred is not to prove haters wrong by acting well, but to lean into our Jewishness irrespective of what anybody else thinks of it. As he says, “It goes without saying that there’s nothing Jews can do to cure the Jew-haters of their hate. . . .And there is nothing we should want to do, either. . . If it’s impossible to cure an antisemite, it’s almost impossible to cure Jews of the delusion that we can cure antisemites.”
4.) Jews don’t need a seat at the table of victimized groups. We should build our own table.
To me, the best part is his analysis of the psychology of antisemitism, which he think is not properly understood. Here is one misconception: “We think that antisemitism stems from missing or inaccurate information.” (e.g., the lies of the Gaza war). The result is that people hope to erase antisemitism by correcting widespread misconceptions (“Israel is an apartheid state”, “Israel is committing genocide,” and so on.)
But he argues that Jew hatred is “not the result of a defect of education,” It is, instead, “the product of a psychological reflex. . . . It’s not just a prejudice and belief, but a neurosis.” Antisemitism preceded the founding of the state of Israel, and therefore can’t just rest on the presence of a Jewish state. He further argues that Jew hatred doesn’t come largely because “we killed Christ,” which is just one excuse people use to justify their bigotry. Instead, says Stephens, people hate Jews because of the virtues of our religion (e.g., the love of life rather than death), and, most of all, because Jews have been successful. A quote: “They do not hate us because of our faults and failures; they hate us because of our virtues and successes. The more virtuous and successful we are, the more we’ll be hated by those whose animating emotions are resentment and envy.”
To Stephens, the obvious conclusion is that it’s a fool’s errand for Jews to try to earn the world’s love.
As for building our own table, it seems to involve “Jewish thriving”: “a community in which Jewish learning, Jewish culture, Jewish ritual, Jewish concerns, Jewish aspiration and Jewish identification. . . . are central to every member’s sense of him or herself.” He thinks that this can be done both culturally and religiously. (I don’t know how pious Stephens is, or what he believes about God and the Old Testament, but he seems to be more religious than I thought.) Building our own table further involves expanding Jewish education, building more Jewish cultural institutions and creating more venues for Jewish philanthropy, de-wokeifying liberal Jewish congregations, and “reinventing publishing” so it is not as antisemitic as it is now.
As an atheist but also a cultural Jew, I’m a bit put off by the overly religious nature of Stephen’s suggested cure. After all, Jewish schools are founded on the truth of Judaism, which is, like that of all religions, pure superstition. But yes, Jews need to de-wokeify (the ones who voted for Mamdani, for example, seem to me deluded) and not act like victims.
And I agree with Stephens that it’s time to stop trying to prove to the rest of the world that we’re okay. That is truly a fool’s errand, and what has happened since October 7 proves it. The more Israel tried to help Gazans dispossessed by the war, the more Israel (and Jews) was hated. It seems to me that antisemitism is now worse than ever; there are daily pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demnonstrations (e.g. “From the river to the sea. . “) all over Europe, Jews are killed en masse in Australia, and universities cater to pro-Palestinians and “encampers,” failing to enforce their rules when they are violated by antisemites.
In the end, Stephens avers that the precipice of Judaism is but a step away from its zenith, and we’ve failed to recognize the imminence of our downfall. But he’s still hopeful, finishing this way:
“All this was understood once, and will be understood again. Until then, we will, again, endure the honor of being hated as we continue to work for a thriving Jewish future.”
Besides the overemphasis on religious Judaism, my only criticism is that Stephens, like all academics in the humanities, reads a pre-written paper out loud, rarely looking at the audience. But I’ll excuse that, for his talk provides a lot of food for thought—and for argument. And I think his main argument, encapsulated in the four points above, is correct.
I’ve run on too long: listen to the talk (if you’re a religious or a cultural Jew, you must listen to the talk):
We’re back with the Caturday felids: three items and several more for lagniappe.
First, an 18-minute video from Meowtopia about how cats see humans. It’s designed to prove that cats aren’t just using us, but that we are “their secure base.” It’s a mixture of true facts mixed with some dry humor, somewhat like a toned-down ZeFrank video. The them is cat psychology: “What are cats thinking?”
It turns out that we are actually “Super Providers” whose purpose is to provide food; in other words, we are vending machines made of meat. But we also mean one thing to them: “Safety.”
The video invokes a lot of scientific research on cats, is full of interesting results, and is well worth watching.
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Click below to see an article from the Washington Post showing that “pet-friendly” hotels are actually biased against cats. (The article is archived here.) What gives?
An excerpt; the article begins with cat staff checking into a “pet friendl” hotel in Amsterdam.
“Hotels will say they’re pet-friendly, but they really mean dogs,” said Erin Geldermans, who adopted “Liebs” in Colorado. “So we’ll show up with our cat, and they’re like, ‘Oh, sorry, cats aren’t allowed.’”
Cast into the night without a room, Geldermans and [their tabby cat Liebchen] landed on their feet, finding more inclusive accommodations at the Jan Luyken Amsterdam next door. The hotel didn’t even charge them a pet fee. However, the experience was a stark reminder that, for jet-setting cats, it’s a dog’s world.
Travelers who vacation with their feline companions say they have encountered an anti-cat bias around the world. They come across it in airports and on planes, at hotels and vacation rentals. The owners say they must often overcome hurdles to earn the same trust and acceptance granted to dogs.
“This is discrimination,” said Anna Karsten, a France-based travel blogger who has faced a double standard when traveling with her Ragdoll, Poofy. “It’s a higher risk, apparently, which, if you think about it, is outrageous. The cat is literally going to sleep, but the dog might destroy the entire room if it’s stressed.”
During check-in at a rental in the Dutch city of Leiden, Karsten had to provide references that Poofy was a model guest. Stung by a previous incident involving cat pee, the apartment’s owner said the family would have to keep Poofy in a “cage.”
After several minutes of negotiations, the two sides agreed to sequester the cat in the bathroom whenever the family was out. Karsten abided by the rule the first day but eventually left the door ajar. By the end of the week-long stay, the host had experienced a change of heart.
“She loved the cat,” Karsten said triumphantly.
REFERENCES?? The lesson is that if you travel with your cat, be sure that any “pet friendly” accommodations your reserve consider cats as adequate “pets.” Actually, cats are not pets but owners, and we are their staff.
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We all know of Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office . He was rescued from the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, and has lived at 10 Downing Street for 15 years. Larry is now 19: technically an old cat, but still quite spry, running about outside the Prime Minister’s home and the object of many photographs. He’s gone through five Prime Ministers!
Here’s a 15-minute BBC News video showing seven times that Larry caused mischief. He’s not a very good mouser; he’s said to have caught only 3 in his 15-year tenure. Don’t miss Obama’s meeting Larry at 5:40. There are many comments about Larry from Prime Ministers, journalists, and so on.
This too is an excellent video. If you want more Larry, his Twitter feed is here. Don’t miss the BBC journalist Helen Catt (that’s right!), who comments throughout.
Lagniappe: Larry turned 19 a few weeks ago. Here is what he wants to tell us on his birthday, including how old he’d be in human years.
Extra lagniappe: Japanese road signs. Slow down for cats!
Still more lagniappe from the Facebook group Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit: A new and excellent Swedish law. If we have any Swedish readers, please confirm this.
Today we have urban wildlife, from Marcel van Oijen in Edinburgh. His notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Urban wildlife in Scotland: Vertebrates
Marcel van Oijen
We live in Edinburgh South and our back garden borders a small woodland. The following pictures were all taken in the garden over a number of years, but I sorted them by month, from January to November.
Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are among the first visitors to our garden each year. They have become very common in British cities. There are about 400,000 foxes in the U.K., and roughly one third are city-dwellers.
Magpies (Pica pica) come in droves to our garden. They are fascinating to watch but tend to frighten off the songbirds and steal their food:
Occasionally we see sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus) plucking pigeons apart until what is left is small enough to fly away with. The magpies resent the sparrowhawks invading their territory, and gang up against them:
Carrion crows (Corvus corone) usually come in pairs; this one was an exception. The way it walked, paused, looked around, nodded its head, inspecting everything – it all suggested confidence and cleverness:
We do not often see Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), but regularly hear them pecking away when walking in the woodland behind the garden:
The mammals we see the most are our American friends, the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). They tend to chase ach other away, but these two were friendly, maybe young siblings:
We are always surprised to see amphibians because there is not much open water in our neighbourhood. This summer visitor is a Common Frog (Rana temporaria):
Wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) are almost as acrobatic as the squirrels, and we see them climbing up the stems of plants and jumping onto the birdfeeders:
We don’t see hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) often enough – we would like them to eat more of the slugs that invade our house from the garden:
This is the more common behaviour of the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis): entering supposedly squirrel-proof birdfeeders and being nasty to each other:
We often see pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) around the golf course one kilometer away, but last November was the first time one came to see us:
Here’s Mikhail Baryshnikov, now 78, doing his stuff. Although I’m not a real ballet fan, I love it when the male dancers do stuff like this. There is good explanation of his more difficult moves, which made me appreciate the art more.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 7 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*According to the NY Times and satellite image analysis, Iran has resumed work on building missiles, though progress on nuclear enrichment and nuclear bombs is apparently slow. Is anyone surprised that they’re busy building missiles again? This gives the U.S. and Israel another reason to attack Iran, as Itan and its proxies can use missiles against Israel.
Iran appears to have rapidly repaired several ballistic missile facilities damaged in strikes last year, but it has made only limited fixes to major nuclear sites struck by Israel and the United States, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests.
The uneven pace of reconstruction offers clues about Iran’s military priorities as the United States amasses forces near it and President Trump weighs new military action. If the United States were to attack, Iran would most likely retaliate with ballistic missiles targeting Israel and U.S. assets in the region.
The United States and Iran were expected to meet in Oman on Friday in an attempt to stave off another conflict. The scope of the talks was not immediately clear, but Iran’s nuclear program was likely to be a key focus.
Experts who closely track Iranian nuclear and missile programs corroborated the analysis by The Times, which looked at around two dozen locations struck by Israel or the United States during the 12-day conflict last June. The Times found construction work at more than half of them.
The experts cautioned that the full extent of the repairs remains unclear, given that satellite imagery offers only an aboveground view of the construction.
Satellite images analyzed by The Times show that repair work has been carried out over the past few months at a dozen missile facilities or more, including production sites.
. . . .Intelligence assessments have found that Iran has largely rebuilt its ballistic missile program since the attacks in June.
“The emphasis that’s been put on rebuilding the missile program stands in contrast to the nuclear program,” said Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
The White House’s National Security Strategy, published in November, says that the strikes “significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program.”
Experts say that despite some visible work, Iran’s three main enrichment facilities — Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo — appear inoperative.
Since December, Iran has erected roofs at two of the facilities, which makes it hard to determine whether any rebuilding is happening inside the structures. Experts say that could mean it is trying to recover assets without being observed from above. Much of the other aboveground damage caused in June remains visible.
Putting roofs over nuclear facilities does show that they don’t want anybody to see them, whether or not they are active. They likely want to keep their activities secret, for if nothing is happening, they can still use the threat of nukes as a bargaining chip, and if something is happening, they don’t want to give the U.S. and Israel a chance to attack. What is certain is they have not abandoned their plans to create nuclear weapons.
*The Palestinian Authority (PA’s) Martyr’s Fund, known more accurately as the “Pay for slay” program, is a fund that pays off terrorists who kill Israeli Jews and go to prison, or pays off their families. It takes up 7% of the PA’s annual budget, and of course has been widely criticized. Last year, PA President for Life Mahmoud Abbas promised to end the fund, but the Free Beacon (yes, a right-wing source, but corroborated by the Times of Israel) indicates that the fund is still active:
The Palestinian Authority is set to distribute $315 million this year to terrorists and their families in blatant violation of President Mahmoud Abbas’s pledge to end its “pay-to-slay” program, according to a new analysis by Palestinian Media Watch shared exclusively with the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo. The pay-to-slay payments typically go to Palestinians in Israeli prisons for terror offenses—as well as to their families—and to families of Palestinian terrorists who died in suicide bombings and other attacks on Israel.
The report finds that the PA is quietly routing money through its civil service, Palestinian Security Forces, as well as its pension system, allowing more than 23,500 recipients to collect monthly stipends of up to $3,800, a sizable sum in the region. Abbas’s government, Palestinian Media Watch says, “is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners.”
The findings reinforce last week’s State Department determination that the PA has merely disguised its terror payments rather than ending them. After Abbas, 90, declared the program dead in February 2025, international donors resumed funding some Palestinian Authority programs, unaware that terror payments had been rerouted through agencies like the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution. Telegram messages reviewed by Palestinian Media Watch show recipients confirming that “the situation … has returned to how it was before,” with prisoners and wounded fighters now classified as pensioners and paid accordingly.
The report also documents more than $86 million flowing to 13,500 terrorist families in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt via the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PA’s parent organization, which faces less scrutiny.
As Abbas seeks renewed Western backing, the evidence suggests the incentive system he promised to dismantle is actually secretly expanding. A State Department official says the deception disqualifies the PA from eventually governing postwar Gaza—which is part of the American plan for the territory—warning that “attempts … to conceal payments to relatives of those who have murdered both Americans and Israelis are unacceptable.”
This is no surprise to me. While everyone seems to think the PA would be a good organization to run Gaza under a “two state solution,” in fact the PA, like Hamas, is dedicated to promulgating terrorism. And it have been suggested by Trump as one of the parties to run Gaza in the interim. Nevertheless, Gazans and Hamas hate the PA, and killed many of them when Hamas won the last election in Gaza——beating Fatah, the PA’s political party. In the last two decades, Hamas has allowed no elections in Gaza. Does the UN object to that, or anybody else save Israel, for that matter? Of course not.
Here’s a snapshot of something commonplace just five years ago: During a lecture on endocrinology, one medical school professor begged the students to forgive him for his offensiveness. His wrongdoing? Saying “pregnant women.” Another doctor received so many online complaints from students in real time while she was lecturing that when the class finished she burst into tears. Her misdeed? Saying “male” and “female.”
These incidents, and many more, were reported in a pathbreaking story, “Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex,” by Katie Herzog, published in July 2021 in The Free Press, or Common Sense as it was then named. It was our first story about a gender mania that was sweeping the country and undermining institutions, from education, to government, to the media, to—most shockingly—medicine itself.
This ideology had come on so quickly, and was enforced by activists so fiercely, that using the wrong pronoun could and did put one’s job in jeopardy. People were told that biological sex was a fiction. Many, depending on their profession, were forced to say they believed this. Remember the attestation that “trans women are women”?
. . .Dozens of stories later, we have done just that. And now we find ourselves at a promising, and perilous, moment of change. We have gotten here because of journalists willing to investigate and tell the truth, because of victims and whistleblowers willing to speak up, because of clinicians willing to say harm was being done to patients, and because of lawyers willing to bring suits.
Consider that earlier this week we published an exclusive account, “A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine,” by Ben Ryan, about the first malpractice case by a detransitioner to reach a successful jury verdict. (A detransitioner is someone who, after transitioning, later returns to living as their biological sex.)
. . .Which brings us to today. It now seems safe to (quietly) take the pronouns off your email signature. And you can probably say “pregnant women” without fearing the gulag. But the issue is far from resolved.
Upon retaking office, Donald Trump made ending gender transition of minors a high-profile domestic issue. In response, some blue states are offering themselves as sanctuaries for these minors, and their families, seeking medical intervention. In Leor Sapir’s December 2025 piece for us, “‘We’re All Just Winging It’: What the Gender Doctors Say in Private,” Sapir warns that our penchant for headlines about the end of youth transition may be premature. Envisioning a Democratic president eager to undo what Trump has done, Sapir writes, “There is the looming question of whether we will simply ping-pong between Democratic expansion and Republican restriction.”
Sapir notes such expansion would be against the desires of the majority of Democratic voters. He writes, “More than seven in 10 Americans, including more than half of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, believe minors should not be offered puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, according to a recentNew York Times/Ipsos poll.”
Yoffee gives the Free Press has been responsible for much of the change in attitudes, but I think they are taking too much credit, for right-wing sites have been banging this drum for a long time. Nevertheless, the MSM has largely ignored the problematic acts of those who, for example, say that biological sex is a spectrum, so perhaps the site has had an effect on the Left, which is largely behind the more harmful gender activism. Yoffee clearly applauds the changes she describes, and so do it.
*Oy! Nellie isn’t here for her weekly snark-and-news summary at The Free Press; she’s replaced by Suzy Weiss (nepotism) and Sascha Steinfeld, whose replacement column is called “TGIF: Sorry for all the typos .Sent from my iPhone.” I’ll steal a few items, but they don’t have Nellie’s panache.
→ Newsom gets the Beto treatment: Here’s how a new profile of Gavin Newsom begins: “He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address.” Hello! This sounds like the beginning of a sex thing, and I don’t know if I want to be a part of it. The piece went on, and on, and on, and on, about how the governor is “lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque.” And don’t forget “his stunning wife and four adorable kids, and the executive strut of a self-made millionaire.” They should’ve asked if I was 18 or older before I was prompted to read this.
I threw in the towel on this profile around when I got to “Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back—away from me,” because that seemed like a private moment, though you can read the whole thing here. One funny note: Newsom describes his “undiagnosed dyslexia” as a source of confusion over where he fit in the world. Which is rich. I applied to college (very poorly). I know how this goes. You gotta drum up some sob story to get the adversity points up, but low-grade dyslexia? Sir. That’s like the quarterback saying he felt bullied because he only got 15 high-fives instead of 20 after the homecoming game. I can buy that he’s “gregarious and aloof” and “sensitive” and all the other fuzzy adjectives about Newsom, but I refuse to believe that he was ever some sort of outcast. Look at his silver-seasoned hair!
→ The jury has reached no verdict: A jury in the United Kingdom reached partial or no verdicts on charges of “criminal damage and violent disorder” for a group of Palestine Action activists accused of breaking into a factory owned by Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense firm, while finding them not guilty of aggravated burglary. One of the defendants was accused of slamming a female police officer’s back with a sledgehammer, fracturing her lumbar spine. The leader of the Green Party celebrated the win: “Pleased to see the jury make this decision. We need to have eyes wide open this is exactly why the Government wants to abolish juries. People protesting against a genocide are not the criminals here—it’s the politicians who continue to provide cover.”
Ah, yes: The real criminals are the politicians and the cops, and the real victims are the burglars wielding sledgehammers. You see, in England now, nonviolent resistance means breaking a police officer’s back. Peaceful protesting is drop-kicking a taxi driver. Stabbing your neighbor is just registering a formal complaint.
→ Expired parts: A new cosmetic trend has women injecting sterilized, “ethically sourced” cadaver fat into their breasts and buttocks. One patient admitted that this “can sound jarring at first,” (no. . . really?) but insisted it is safe, regulated, and effective. “It’s like we’re recycling,” said Stacey, a 34-year-old who spent nearly $45,000 on the injections, adding that the results “outweigh any creepiness.” Any? Forget a black market for organs—by this time next year teens are going to be buying other people’s lips to sew onto their faces. Nothing says “transhumanism won” like walking around with someone else’s tushy. I defended Ozempic, which to some is already spiritually in question. But just because I’m not comfortable with the ankles I’ve been given by God doesn’t mean I’m going to rob someone’s crypt over it. Instead, I will do the dignified thing and never wear shorts outside.
One more, and who is paying for this?
→ Must remain seated: A Craigslist ad that circulated in the Boston area claimed moviegoers could earn $50 per occupied seat to attend a screening of the Melania Trump documentary during its opening weekend, on the condition that they “must remain in seats” for the entire film. Are they supposed to wear diapers? Maybe if I sit for back-to-back screenings for a whole week, I could buy myself a certain black-and-white wide-brim hat I’ve been eyeing. The movie apparently did better than expected—$7 million in its opening weekend—and we can’t wait for the sequel: Barron. By then, it will be mandatory viewing in all public schools. By the time we get to Part III: Ivanka and Others, it will be the only thing on cable.
Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on new restrictions for federal immigration agents that Democrats have demanded in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) laid out their demands late Wednesday in a letter to Republicans, including barring immigration agents from wearing face masks and entering private property without a warrant from a judge.
Republicans immediately criticized Democrats’ proposals as excessive. Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), who is representing Senate Republicans in negotiations with Democrats, described it as “a ridiculous Christmas list of demands.”
Democrats have threatened to block funding for DHS when it expires at the end of the day Feb. 13, giving the two sides barely a week to strike a deal and avert a shutdown of the department. The brunt of a shutdown would fall on agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency because Republicans last year sent DHS tens of billions of dollars in extra border security and immigration enforcement funding.
Schumer called on President Donald Trump — who said Wednesday that the administration could “use a little bit of a softer touch” after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — to press Republicans to strike a deal.
“President Trump knows things have to change,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “He should lean on Republicans in Congress to work with Democrats and deliver.”
Some Republicans dismissed most of the Democrats’ demands as nonstarters, but others said they saw room to compromise on some of them if Democrats are willing to negotiate.
“There’s some room in there to negotiate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters Thursday. “I think there’s some things that could get done. But you have to have people at the table to do that, and as of right now there’s only one side of the table that’s filled.”
You can see the Democrats’ letter here; it has ten demands, all of which seem reasonable to me, including standardized uniforms for agents of a given type. It doesn’t ban ICE, nor restrict their actions to detaining only undocumented immigrants who have committed some crime beyond illegal entry. It is standard law enforcement, and I’m frankly surprised that more Republicans don’t just accept the compromise. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed section has an article calling Trump’s ICE tactics unacceptable.
Since Jeffrey Epstein’s death, a parade of powerful people who associated with him have insisted they were ignorant of the true nature of his crimes. Many have issued carefully worded statements of regret.
But private correspondence recently made public in government releases and email leaks tells a different story.
Some prominent people in politics, business and academia didn’t just maintain ties with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. They actively consoled him, cast him as a victim and in some cases offered advice on how to rehabilitate his image.
In February 2019—long after Virginia Giuffre went public with her sex-trafficking allegations and newspaper investigations put a spotlight on Epstein’s activities—the political activist and professor Noam Chomsky sent Epstein a message.
Responding to Epstein’s request for advice on how to handle his “putrid press,” Chomsky counseled him to stay silent: “What the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts.”
He went further, dismissing the broader reckoning with sexual abuse: “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”
Five months later, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
Chomsky, now 97, was hardly the only famous associate who was privately consoling Epstein or giving him advice to rehabilitate his public image. Their messages, however, were hidden until the recent release of the FBI’s files into the Epstein case and other document disclosures last year.
The others include Richard Branson, Steve Bannon, Prince Andrew, and Peter Mandelson, the European Commissioner for Trader. Here are a few emails and communications courtesy of the Department of Justice and reproduced in the Wall Street Journal (click to enlarge):
Prince Andrew:
Chomsky:
Richard Branson:
“As long as you bring your harem”? Oy! Now it’s no crime to be friends with Epstein, or to console him, but the emails above make me cringe with consolation for pedophilic crimes. Prince Andrew has already been demoted from the Firm for his dalliances, and we can expect that the others will have their reputations plummet in light of the correspondence—and that’s proper. Chomsky, of course, is too old to care, but I wonder if, in retrospect, his works will suffer cancellation.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is, as a Jewish cat, filled with worry. Look at that face!
Hili: All of this worries me.
Andrzej: What’s bothering you, sweetheart?
Hili: I just said – everything.
In Polish:
Hili: Martwi mnie to wszystko.
Ja: Co cię martwi, kochanie?
Hili: Przecież powiedziałam, że wszystko.
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Because it’s Caturday, we have all cat memes today.
From CinEmma, a Lego cat set and a real cat that looks just like it:
From Masih: a video that I can’t embed but you can watch (Warning: gory!) by clicking on the tweet. Iranian security forces went to hospitals and killed the wounded protestors. Now they’re arresting doctors and nurses who helped injured protestors! Masih is one of the best sources of news from Iran.
Have a gander if you have any doubts about Mamdani’s antisemitism:
Again, twelve BILLION dollar deficit, but somehow plenty to divert health department resources to do irrelevant BS activism on behalf of Hamas.
What does this have to do with New York?
Hey, remember during the debates when Zohran refused to answer that question about Israel and… https://t.co/9XggLj1nyW
Khelif has finally admitted having a disorder/difference of sex determination, so the “female” boxer was really a biological male. Emma Hilton comments:
Plenty of us pushed back against the nonsensical and dangerous IOC rules for Olympic boxing at Paris.
Plenty of us have criticised the IOC guidelines in the mainstream and academic press.
And one from Dr. Cobb. This starts a lovely albatross thread. I could have gone to Dunedin when I was in NZ, but didn’t. Sad.
In 1981, when I was ten, I visited Christchurch, New Zealand with my parents. I loved birds, especially albatrosses, and learned that tantalizingly close—360 km to the south—was the royal albatross colony in Dunedin. It was not meant to be that trip. But 44 years later, I finally made it happen.
The old Groundhog Day trope is this, “As the tradition goes, if the groundhog sees his shadow, we will have six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, an early spring is coming.” The holiday is celebrated on February 2, and over the years the tradition has come to center on Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who lives in the eponymous Pennsylvania town.
Every year on February 2, a group of top-hatted men called the “Inner Circle” haul the hapless rodent out of his hibernation, slap him down on a lectern like a pancake, tap him with a cane, and then wait a bit. Then they lift the groundhog into the air and proclaim, via a poem, whether or not he saw his shadow. Here’s this year’s prediction: Phil did see his shadow (so they surmised) so we’re in for a long winter:
Of course the exercise is ludicrous, and Phil’s record of predictions is abysmal: about a 35%-40% accuracy. But I can prove from first principles that this exercise is futile from the get-go.
Here:
To determine if the groundhog sees his shadow there must be
1.) The possibility of a shadow (i.e., the sun must be shining), and
2.) If there is a shadow, the groundhog must have the ability to see it, and we have to know if he did or did not.
But if there is no shadow, as when the weather is overcast like this year, then the groundhog has nothing to see or not see, so he clearly cannot see his shadow whether or not he looks. Thus, if the weather is overcast (as it was this year), you don’t need a damn groundhog: there will be an early spring. (As you see above, he is said to have seen his shadow! Oy!)
If there IS a shadow, then you have to determine whether the groundhog saw it. I doubt that we’re able to do this, as Punxsutawney Phil is not trained to indicate whether or not he saw his own shadow. Thus if it’s sunny, the prediction becomes indeterminate.
Therefore there is only one possible predictive outcome, and that depends solely on whether the weather is sunny or not. The sole prediction is this (here it comes): no shadows possible, therefore an early Spring. That is, of course, bogus as well.
You could diagram this with a decision tree, but I think my logic here is impeccable given our inability to detect qualia in groundhogs. And this indicates why Phil’s bogus “predictions”, based on what the top-hatted men say, have been so inaccurate.
Humans have the ability to do “secondary representations”: that is, to pretend that one object or action is actually different from a real one. This can also be called “pretense”. Examples are children’s “tea parties” in which they use empty pots and toy cups, pretending to drink from the empty cups while knowing they are empty. Then they can pour pretend tea into one of two cups, and when asked to drink will drink from the “pretend full” cup. Or they can have sword fights with sticks, pretending that the sticks are real weapons while knowing they are not.
Secondary representations of states that are only imagined start early (some experiments suggest at 15 months), and the ability to imagine things that haven’t happened, or aren’t real, surely underlie much of human behavior involving planning for the future or imagining what someone might be thinking. The authors of a new paper in Science (see below) argue that no such abilities to “pretend” or have secondary representations are known from any species save humans. (I am not sure about this. As I recall some birds caching food are known to unhide it and re-cache it elsewhere if they see other birds looking on: something that seems like an ability represent another bird’s state of mind.)
And there is anecdotal evidence that chimps can do this. For example, female chimps have been seen to hold and carry sticks as if they were their babies; this involves imagining that the stick is a real baby (that only females do this suggests sexually differentiated behavior). Or if chimps have played with blocks, sometimes they’ve been observed to drag around imaginary strings of blocks. This and other data suggest that some primates can have imaginative representations, but the existing data, say Bastos et al., don’t rule out other explanations.
They thus did three experiments on a single, human-acclimated male bonobo at a facility in Iowa. The bonobo, named Kanzi, was 43 years old and died the year after the experiment (no, he didn’t pretend to be dead!). Kanzi has his own Wikipedia page, which notes his abilities:
Kanzi is well known for his noteworthy cognitive abilities. He had a very well-documented linguistic understanding of the human language. He is believed to be the first non-human great ape to understand and comprehend spoken English. In addition, he was also heavily documented for his understanding and usage of symbols to communicate, usually through lexigrams and partial ASL. The vast amount of information that researchers gathered from Kanzi created a significant impact for the fields of linguistics and cognitive science. Kanzi’s behavior and abilities have been the topic of research published in scientific journals, as well as reports in popular media. He died in 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Click below to go to the paper (pdf here), or you can read a summary of the study in the NYT, written by Alexa Robles-Gil, here (archived here)
Three experiments were involved, but the second was really a control for the first.
First, Kanzi was prepared for the pretense test by letting him learn about a real object: fruit juice that could be poured into glasses from a pitcher. In 18 trials, real juice was poured into one of two cups from a pitcher. Kanzi, who had been trained to point at what he wanted to have, was then asked, “Where’s the juice?” He was successful in all trials.
Then the pretense experiment began. The same pouring was done, but from an empty pitcher into both of two empty cups. Then one of the pretend-filled cups was poured back into the pitcher, so it would be pretend-empty while the other was pretend-full. Again, Kanzi was asked “Where’s the juice?” In 50 trials, involving no reinforcement of any kind for making the correct choice, Kanzi chose the pretend-full cup 34 times and the pretend-empty cup 16 times, a highly significant deviation from an expectation of 50:50 under the null hypothesis. This showed that Kanzi could track where pretend juice was.
The second experiment used a cup of real juice next to an empty cup, and the empty cup was pretend-filled from an empty pitcher. Then Kanzi was asked, “Which one do you want?” Kanzi wanted the real juice in 14 out of 18 trials, again, a significant deviation from 50:50 under the null hypothesis. This showed that Kanzi didn’t simply believe that there was real juice in the empty cups in the first experiment, for he was able to distinguish real juice from pretend-poured juice.
The third experiment was like the second, except involving grapes. First, Kanzi was “trained to indicate the location of a real grape in one of two transparent jars after observing the experimenter sample a grape from a plastic container and place it into one of the jars and perform a control action on the other jar.” When asked to choose one jar to get the grape, he was successful in every one of 18 trials.
Then Kanzi was given pretend grapes to choose. From the paper;
In probe trials, the experimenter pretended to sample a grape from an empty container, then placed it inside one of the two jars, before repeating the same action on the other side. Then, one of the jars was pretend-emptied, and Kanzi was asked, “where’s the grape?” Kanzi succeeded at this conceptual replication even more quickly than in the first experiment. He correctly indicated the location of the remaining pretend grape above chance, in 31 out of 45 unreinforced probe trials
Again, Kanzi was highly successful at the juice and grape trials, able to recognize a pretend action of pouring and emptying juice, and determining which of two jars containing pretend-grapes had had the grape removed. In other words, he was playing tea party, and highly successfully.
This one chimp, then, was able to conceptualize pretend actions as real ones.
There are a number of possibilities not involving secondary representation that the authors say could be happening here. For example, apes like Kanzi who have been trained to recognize symbols to represent objects (as he was), might be better at communicating their wishes than are wild apes. Or symbol training could actually create the ability to do secondary representation. It’s hard to rule out these possibilities since to do such experiments an ape has to be “enculturated” by interaction with humans, and Kanzi was surely highly enculturated.
But if the authors are right that these experiments show that apes can have secondary representation, playing along with “pretense”, that opens up a world of possibilities of thinking about the cognitive abilities of apes (and other animals). The authors dwell on this at the end:
Secondary representations underlie many other complex cognitive capacities, such as imagining future possibilities (20) and mental state attribution (13). Our results may therefore help to interpret other bodies of data that have been hampered by an apparent logical problem (32). Finding that a bonobo can generate secondary representations in pretense contexts increases the likelihood that these representations are available for other cognitive functions. This finding reinforces growing evidence that apes track decoupled mental states, such as beliefs, rather than simply reading behavior (25, 28, 31). It also increases the likelihood that secondary representations could subserve future-oriented behavior (24, 35, 50–53), whose underlying representations have not yet been established.
In conclusion, our findings suggest that some nonhuman animals can generate secondary representations that are decoupled from reality, and that this capacity was likely within the cognitive potential of our last common ancestor with other apes, which lived 6 to 9 million years ago.
It is no surprise that our closest relative (along with chimps) could do this. As Darwin posited in 1871, our own behaviors and mental states evolved from those present in our common ancestors.
Kanzi died suddenly the year after the experiment, simply collapsing. He apparently suffered a heart attack, as he had a history of heart issues and had previously been obese. You can read about his other training in representing objects with keyboard symbols at the Wikipedia site.
From Wikipedia, here’s Kanzi in 2006 (he died in 2025):
William H. Calvin, PhD, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Today we have some flower photos from reader MichaelC. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Sri Lanka Flora!
Recently I sent WEIT some photos from the Dambulla cave temples in Sri Lanka. My wife and I took a “pre-honeymoon” there (we took our honeymoon before the wedding; we’re olde so rules don’t apply to us!) and I have a large number of photos of Sri Lankan flora. [Today we have the flora.]
I hope some of the ones I’ve selected are new to readers. I have tried to identify them, some I’m sure of, others not so much, and some I don’t know at all. The countryside in Sri Lanka is bursting with color; there are flowers everywhere. And birdsong! If you don’t like singing birds, Sri Lankan is not a place for you. Most of the flowers are probably familiar to people – I’ve seen many myself. These were mostly taken at the Royal Botanical Gardens or on the estate of the Dilmah Tea Plantation.
