Scientific American on the skids, sold by Springer Nature to another company

August 31, 2026 • 9:00 am

Well, I suspect that the magazine Scientific American, now 121 years old, has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. Apparently it’s been going downhill for some time, losing revenue and subscribers, and went even farther downhill content-wise under the previous editor Laura Helmuth, who decided to use the magazine as a “progressive ideological” mouthpiece (see my posts on this issue here).

Research Information (RI) and Legal Insurrection (LI) are among the several places announcing that Scientific American, until recently owned by Springer Nature, has been sold to another company because it was unprofitable (h/t Howie). There’s no announcement on the journal’s website itself, but the content looks tepid, as it has been for some time. Scientific American used to have articles on real science written by real scientists, but that pretty much stopped a lont time ago.  As Wikipedia notes, the journal was founded in 1845, and:

Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Prize-winners having been featured since its inception.

This is sad, but the morbidity of the journal probably reflects waning interest in magazines and especially in popular-science journalism. The only newspaper I can think of that still has a dedicated science section is The New York Times (every Tuesday), though I may be missing some venues because I don’t read newspapers on paper. To me, another sign of this waning interest is the lack of science books in many compilations of “best books of the year,” and I don’t think that’s due to a paucity of good science books.

From RI:

Springer Nature has announced the sale of its consumer media businesses, including the science publication Scientific Americani n the United States and Spektrum der Wissenschaft in Germany.

The publisher says the move forms part of a strategic decision to focus on its core global publishing activities across research, health and education, while supporting the long-term development of the two consumer-facing brands.

According to Springer Nature, both titles are being acquired by new owners with significant consumer media expertise and the capacity to support their future growth.

Frank Vrancken Peeters, Chief Executive Officer of Springer Nature, said: “Scientific American and Spektrum der Wissenschaft are respected and loved science media brands with a long and valued history, and we are grateful to the teams who have built and sustained them. We have taken the time to ensure these strong brands find the right homes – organisations with the consumer media expertise and ambition to invest in their future.”

Springer Nature said it is working with both buyers to ensure continuity of publication throughout the transition process. Scientific American is to be acquired by LabX Media Group, a global science-focused media company; the transaction will complete on 24 June 2026.

You can read about LabXMedia group on Wikipedia or its own web page; the organization already publishes The Scientist, a trade journal for working biologists rather than a popular-science magazine.

Author Leslie Eastman at LI is not as kind to the magazine:

I have been following the antics of Scientific American, the Bud Light of science journals, for quite some time now.

The low-lights from the magazine’s stack of articles include:

JAC: These articles of course came out under the helm of editor Laura Helmuth who, after a wild social-media rant when Trump was elected, left the magazine in 2024. On this site I documented many other wonky articles that appeared in the magazine, most of them catering to “progressive” ideology: More from Legal Insurrection:

Now comes news that Springer Nature, the publisher, announced it is divesting both of its flagship consumer science magazines, Scientific American and Spektrum der Wissenschaft (Spectrum of Science) in Germany. The company says that the sales are part of a strategic pivot to concentrate exclusively on its core academic, health, and education publishing business.

. . .The decline of Scientific American in both respect and profits offers a cautionary tale: when a once-venerable science publication abandons rigorous, evidence-based journalism in favor of ideological advocacy by endorsing political candidates, adopting contested social terminology, and framing sports injuries through a racial lens, it erodes the very credibility that made it indispensable to its readers.

Had the magazine’s leadership chosen to trust its audience’s intelligence and doubled down on accessible, accurate science coverage rooted in empirical reality, it would have retained the broad American readership that sustained it for nearly 180 years, rather than shrinking into a niche ideological outlet.

The sale to LabX Media Group may yet represent a second chance, but only if new ownership recognizes that scientific literacy and editorial integrity are the foundation on which a sustainable, respected science publication must be built. Based on the union drama, I fear it will be a significant challenge.

If the new owners don’t reset the publication’s priorities, they will find it harder to rebrand the product than Bud Light did.

I asked two AI bots for information about the profits and circulation of Scientific American over time.

From Claude:

Bottom line: the reliable, roughly comparable data points suggest the US print/print+digital base fell from around 550,000–650,000 in the mid-2000s to around 300,000 by 2020 — a decline of roughly 50%, consistent with the broader magazine industry’s collapse over that period.

From Grok:

Detailed standalone profit-and-loss numbers for Scientific American are not published. It was a small unit inside Springer Nature (and previously Nature Publishing Group/Holtzbrinck) and was not broken out in annual reports.

  • Third-party estimates put Scientific American revenue in the ~$29.5 million range, consistent with the combined €25 million figure for both titles.
  • Circulation was reported at roughly 300,000 in 2020 (about 240,000 print + digital and 22,000 digital-only). Earlier peaks were higher (around 450,000 paid subscribers mentioned in mid-2010s coverage). Print readership (including pass-along) was cited at 2.2 million in recent media kits.
  • Print advertising pages and newsstand sales have declined over decades, as they have across most consumer magazines. Digital traffic and subscriptions exist but operate in a lower-margin environment than Springer Nature’s research journals.

Judging from readers’ comments, Scientific American has been lame for a long time, well before Helmuth took over. For some reason it stopped using well known scientists to write articles (or those scientists didn’t want to write for the magazine). And under Helmuth the magazine hit rock bottom because it was not only lacking good articles by good scientists, but became ideologically captured. Will LabX Media Group bring it back? I doubt it; perhaps the days of public interest in science are gone.

Monday: Hili dialogue

August 31, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the tail end o’ the month: it’s August 31, 2026 and We Love Memoirs Day. Well, I love biographies more, as they’re not distorted by the self-image issue of a memoir, and yesterday I posted a short list of my favorite biographies, inviting readers to name their choices.

It’s also Eat Outside Day, National Diatomaceous Earth Day, National Trail Mix Day, and National Matchmaker Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz: Lots about the Middle East toeday.

*The NYT has an article about  Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (D) called “Most Democrats don’t want to talk about transgender athletes. He’s leaning in” (article archived here).

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts might be the only high-profile Democrat in America eagerly campaigning as a supporter of transgender rights.

Even as many other top Democrats have grown cagey on the issue, Mr. Markey is offering a passionate defense of transgender athletes as he runs in a primary contest on Tuesday against Representative Seth Moulton, a more moderate challenger.

Mr. Markey has argued in particular that Mr. Moulton “threw trans kids under the bus” when, shortly after the 2024 election, the congressman attributed Democrats’ defeat in part to their position on transgender issues. Mr. Moulton long defended his remarks but expressed some contrition for them this month.

“Trans athletes should be able to play,” Mr. Markey said in an interview this past week. “That reflects Massachusetts and who we are. And Seth Moulton does not.”

Mr. Markey, 80, has staked out his ardent pro-trans rights position at a moment when the rest of his party is grappling with the issue, which President Trump and other Republicans have used as a cultural wedge. Ambitious younger Democrats who are likely to run for president — including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary — have edged away from defending the participation of transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports.

Other prominent Democrats have sought to defuse the issue by not talking about it or punting responsibility while trying to pivot to more favorable issues like the economy.

Mr. Markey has leaned in. He is, according to Charlotte Clymer, a liberal activist and strategist who is transgender and supports the senator, “the only one who is really talking about this front and center.”

Markey, while presumably expressing his moral conviction, is not only out of step with most Americans on transgender “right” in sports (see below), but I think is also pushing a policy that is palpably unfair to biological women in sports.  While most Americans, like me, favor banning discrimination against trans people in jobs, housing, and other public accommodations (56%, to be precise), most Americans don’t favor transgender athletes competing on sports teams that don’t match their natal sex.

From  a 2025 Pew Survey:

  • 73% of Americans were uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that do not match their sex at birth.
  • 66% of adults favored a law or policy that would require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.

*After more Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank Saturday, PM Netanyahu finally condemned it (article archived here).

Dozens of Israeli settlers burst into a Palestinian man’s house in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, trapping and attacking people inside, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said. It was the latest in a series of assaults by Israeli extremists that have drawn international condemnation.

The attack took place near the Palestinian town of Qusra in the northern West Bank, where groups of Israeli settlers recently besieged the homes of several other Palestinians, including an American citizen. Violence has snowballed in the Israeli-occupied territory over the past several months, with Palestinians saying the Israeli authorities frequently look the other way.

But the intensity of Saturday’s assault drew a rare condemnation from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who has largely played down the attacks as the actions of a small minority.

The Israeli military said soldiers were sent to both Qusra and nearby Jalud after reports of violent clashes and Israeli rioters hurling stones toward Palestinians. Dozens of rioters had “barricaded themselves” inside a Palestinian house, the military said, leading Israeli forces to remove the attackers and confiscate their vehicles. It was not clear whether any Israelis were arrested.

The house’s owner, Luay Beyrouti, 29, said that around noon on Saturday, a handful of settlers had approached the structure, throwing stones. Mr. Beyrouti’s family does not live in the house at the moment; he had gone there along with several other Palestinians to renovate it.

. . . A separate attack unfolded about four miles away in the Palestinian town of Jalud. A group of masked Israeli settlers attacked and injured reporters with NBC News who were interviewing a Palestinian woman driven out of her home, the outlet said. Settlers in a car approached the group as they were walking down a hill, hitting them with sticks and throwing rocks, according to NBC, which said three of its staff and the woman were hurt.

Members of Israel’s right-wing, pro-settler government have frequently argued that concerns about settler violence are overblown, and officials have sometimes signaled their support for Israelis accused of attacks.

But on Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu said the attackers were not only “breaking the law” but also harming Israel’s reputation abroad, causing “immense harm to the law-abiding settler community” and damaging “Israel’s standing in the world.”

“I expect law enforcement authorities to arrest the rioters and bring them to justice as soon as possible,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Netantyahu is of course right here: nobody should be inflicting violence on somebody else or intimidating them, and those who do should be punished. (He seems more fixated on Israel’s reputation than on the attacked Palestinians.) However, I think it’s debatable whether Israelis who settle in area C of the West Bank should be called “settlers”, as there’s a credible case to be made that their presence in this area is not illegal (many think that “settling” is illegal under international law).

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal has a piece called, “‘Not as Naive as you think’: America’s Gaza Gamble.” The statement refers to the U.S. who, according to Segal, is giving away the store in Gaza.

t’s Sunday, August 30, and over the past year the Americans have talked with almost every lowlife in the Middle East. The Iranians are like the don of the crime family. Hamas is his debt collector, way down at the end of the chain, on some street in New Jersey.

While everyone fixates on the dons, the Americans are once again talking to the debt collectors. On the face of it, Hamas got a big prize: Jared Kushner met with senior figures of the murderous terror organization that murdered and kidnapped dozens of Americans on October 7. The Americans have an answer: last year we met with them to extract 56 hostages; now—the kidnapped Gaza Strip itself.

We’re not as naive as you think, they keep repeating. Time and again we said Hamas will have no weapons and no control over the Strip. The means matter less to us than the end. People forget the meetings with senior Hamas figures, they say. And in the same breath they note that a very, very senior figure in the defense establishment spoke directly, by phone, with the heads of the Nazi organization during the negotiations to free hostages. Why is it permitted for you and not for us, they say.

In Israel people are appalled at the thought of Qatar and Turkey being involved in the Strip. Contrary to what the opposition says, the two hostile states won’t send soldiers into the Strip. But their very presence on the oversight council—the body meant to determine whether Israel is meeting the agreement or not—is untenable, practically and morally.

Most of Israel’s concerns were laid to rest after some back-and-forth with the Americans. What remains is the fear that the international body, instead of demilitarizing Hamas, will separate the IDF from Hamas and effectively constrain Israel’s movements in the Strip.

At the White House they’re angry with Benjamin Netanyahu, but they’ve fallen in line with most of his demands. Trump himself has, for months now, pointedly refrained from declaring support for him in the election. But his people are preparing a victory image for Likud: a handover of weapons in the Strip, into American hands, before the elections. The payment, in the form of a partial withdrawal, will be on credit—after the ballot boxes close.

Agreed: first Hamas must completely disarm, and then the IDF will withdraw. Why? Because Hamas has proven itself untrustworthy, because they are sworn to destroy Israel and its Jews, and because if Israel agrees to withdraw if Hamas scrupulously meet the conditions of the agreement, then Israel will indeed withdraw.

*The Jerusalem Post reports that Finland has discontinued funding to UNRWA , making it one of only three countries (including the U.S. and Sweden) to stop funding an organization that is not only ridden with Hamas terrorists, but also promotes terrorism in its schools.

Finland has chosen not to renew its multi-year funding agreement with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after it expires this year, Finnish Foreign Trade Minister Ville Tavio announced on Thursday.
The multi-year agreement, which was signed in March 2023, included Finland contributing a total of 20 million euros to UNRWA. It followed a previous 2019-2022 agreement, throughout which Finland provided 5 million euros to the agency each year.

In a post on X/Twitter, Tavio clarified that his country will not reduce its funding for humanitarian efforts in Palestinian territories and will instead contribute to organizations like the World Food Programme.

Tavio previously ordered Finland to suspend its contributions to the agency in 2024 over allegations that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre against Israel.

In a January 2024 press release, Tavio asserted that his country “must make sure that not a single euro of Finland’s money goes to Hamas or other terrorists” and urged that the allegations be seriously investigated.

. . . Since the 2024 allegations, UNRWA has been plagued by additional accusations and investigations, with multiple employees being found to have participated in the October 7 massacre and maintained ties to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Grok adds this via UN Watch:

In late January 2024, roughly 16–18 countries plus the EU temporarily paused or delayed new funding pending investigations. These included Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, and others. Almost all of those that paused later resumed contributions in 2024 after UNRWA fired accused staff, launched probes, and pledged reforms. The Netherlands briefly planned a phase-out but restored full annual funding (€19 million) in 2026.

Funding for UNRWA should be suspended not just because it’s a refuge for Palestinian terrorism, but also because it is the only UN agency for refugees that is designated for a specific group of people. All the rest of the world’s refugees are dealt with by a single agency, the The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which works in more than 130 countries.

*The battle between the U.S. and Canada continues about what Lake Ontario is supposed to be called. As you remember, in a move of his unusual stupidity, even for Trump, our “President” decided to change the name of “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America,” even though only American agencies have to use the new name. But Canada is fighting back!

Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the country erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.

Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.

Trump’s order for the US government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America by Sunday had at least one prominent impact. Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order.

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great” that dates back more than 400 years.

. . . In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump’s desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to “reflect name changes in official government sources”. Trump’s order affects the US’s federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), “which sets the standard for official US maps”, the tech company said.

. . .Meanwhile, on Saturday, the US president raised the volume again by resorting to the kind of AI-generated imagery for which he has shown a penchant.

He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America. He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has implemented into his public appearances for years.

Across the US’s northern border, Ontario premier Doug Ford replied with a two-stories high billboard declaring “Lake Ontario. Now and Always,” near Grimsby, Ontario. Ford said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves”, and he argued the name would outlast the president.

“Long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.

You go, Canada! Here’s a video of Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, unveiling the sign.

And a short spoof video of the name change with an original song. I quite like this one:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili objects to one part of science:

Hili: What is science?
Andrzej: A method of systematically seeking the truth, combined with the ability to admit when one is wrong.
Hili: Not for me.

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest nauka?
Ja: Metoda systematycznego dociekania prawdy, połączona ze zdolnością przyznania się do błędu.
Hili: To nie dla mnie.

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

Talking about things with faces, reader Colin sent me a photo he took of a “rather sad banana, who had just heard about Dolly Parton’s death.”:

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

From Masih: a condemned protestor in Iran tells his family, in a last message, not to believe anything the regime says about him:

From Luana. Do you notice anything bizarre about this ad?

From Simon; clearly AI but funny:

From J. K. Rowling, whose daughter will be signing her mom’s autographs:

Two from my feed; first, a hungry donkey:

Birds of Paradise have awesome courtship. Here’s a male of one species:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

From Matthew, who loves sprites. Translation from the Russian:

“Red sprites near Sayre, Oklahoma, on August 15. I specifically planned my trip from Arizona to catch this show!”

🔭 «Красные спрайты возле города Сэйр, Оклахома, 15 августа. Cпециально спланировал свою поездку из Аризоны так, чтобы попасть на это шоу!» – делится Джим Тан

— Старый Ворон/Old Raven (@oldvalravn.bsky.social) 2026-08-30T09:18:43.412Z

My favorite biographies

August 30, 2026 • 10:45 am

I noticed, while preparing tomorrow’s Hili Dialogue, that tomorrow is We Love Memoirs Day. Well, I’m not a fan of memoirs so much as of biographies, for memoirs can easily be distorted because the writer is the subject.  That’s not so true of biographies, and it got me thinking about the biographies I’ve loved the most. I’ll mention just four (three of them comprise more than one volume), and I encourage you to note your own selections in the comments.

My criteria are simply that the subject of the biography be an interesting person—or, in the case of the first two, made interesting by the author’s research—and that the book be written very well, so the prose is a pleasure to read.

These are listed in no particular order.

1.)_ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (1974). I read this behemoth (1,336 pages!) soon after it came out, and I couldn’t put it down. One wouldn’t think that Robert Moses, an urban planner who held a number of powerful positions in New York City, would be such an interesting subject for a biography, but Robert Moses made it so.  As Wikipedia notes,

Moses’ construction projects transformed the New York area and revolutionized the way urban areas across the United States were designed and built. His philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across the United States.

I won’t summarize what he did, as you can read the Wikipedia link to the book above or Moses’s short biography on the site.  It’s a mesmerizing read, although some critics complain it has a number of errors (Moses, who was still alive when it came out, shares that opinion). You can look up these allegations after you read the book, but if you like biography you must read it. It won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1975.

Here’s the cover; click to get the Amazon link. At $16.47 for the huge paperback, it’s a great bargain:

2.) What Caro did for Robert Moses—making an unlikely subject seem fascinating—he also did for Lyndon Johnson, in a four-volume work that’s supposed to end at volume five. The Years of Lyndon Johnson (first volume from 1982), currently over 3,000 pages, and is another series of books that are hard to put down.  The first volume covers Johnson’s youth through his first campaign for the Senate, the second up to his successful election to the Senate in 1947, the third his control of the Senate and passage of the Civil Rights act of 1957 (this volume won both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award), and the fourth up to Johnson’s attaining the Presidency after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

Unfortunately, the fifth and final volume, up to Johnson’s death, is still in the works, and, like the book below, it’s a race against time as Caro is now 90 and has been saying for several decades that the book is nearly finished. Caro notes that he’s written a lot of the book, and I hope he’ll finish, as the final volume will cover Johnson’s tenure during the Vietnam War and his resignation from the Presidency in 1969.  This is a crucial volume in the set, and we all hope Caro finishes it.

Here’s the set on Amazon, with the boxed hardcover set going for $113 and the paperbacks from $11-14, those being great bargains as well.

3.) The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchwster (I am speaking of the first two volumes). Manchester completed two volumes in 1983 and 1988, and I devoured them.  He died  of stomach cancer before the third volume could be completed, so his unfinished manuscript was co-published with Paul Reid as the final volume. I haven’t read it.

You’re drawn into the series by the first chapter of the first book, which simply recounts a day in Churchill’s life as PM at his home in Chartwell, Kent. What a life the man had! Soldier, journalist, prisoner of war and escapee, holder of many big government positions (including First Lord of the Admiralty, during which he was humiliated by the Dardanelles fiasco and had to resign), parliamentarian, Prime Minister (twice), and elder statesman.  He could write very well, was a prolifie author, and his books The Second World War and A History of the English Speaking Peoples won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.  (I can’t think of another British PM who won a Nobel Prize for Literature.)

Unfortunately, the second volume of the biography, Alone, ends just when Churchill takes the reins as Prime Minister during WWII, and I was greatly looking forward to see the account of Churchill helming the UK during that war. But because Manchester died before that volume was published, I never read it, even though it came out with Reid’s help.  Even so, you might read the first two volumes and see if you want to go on to the co-authored third.

Here’s the Amazon link to the trio: another bargain for the hardbacks at $79 (nearly 50% off), with the paperbacks around $15.

4. The two-volume biography of Charles Darwin by Janet Browne, comprising Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995), and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002). The first book covers Darwin’s life up to 1856, when he was starting On the Origin of Species, and the second his life at Down House, the publication of The Origin and his other books, ending, of course, with his death in 1882.

I may be biased in this selection because it is after all about Darwin, but it’s an extraordinarily well written duo, with a lot about the science.  Janet has now condensed the two books into one, Darwin: A Biography, which just came out on June 30. I haven’t read it, so what I’m recommending is the two-volume set. Do read it. The cover below links to the Amazon site of the first volume

Now it’s your turn, and I look forward to hearing what biographies the readers recommend (I use those as a source of future reading).

A hyperbolic and misguided article in the New England Journal of Medicine, prompted by the death of Jason Arday

August 30, 2026 • 8:45 am

Although the respected New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has the right to publish what it wants, and African-American gynecological oncologist Kemi Doll has the right to write about what she thinks, their intersection in a new NEJM “voices” piece is hyperbolic and misguided to the point of toxicity. Doll’s article simply poisons the debate about merit versus “equity” in America by simply asserting that there are “structural” intentions held by academics to kill—literally exterminate—black professors. The thesis is in Doll’s first sentence—her topic sentence:

“They are trying to kill us.”

And yes, she means that literally.

Doll’s short op-ed, which you can access below, is so over the top that the NEJM has itself gone off the rails, embarrassing itself by publishing it. Its assertions are either distorted or wrong, and there’s no evidence of a conspiracy to exterminate black scholars. Doll’s “evidence” rests on two academics who committed suicide, one being Jason Arday, the Cambridge University professor of sociology who apparently committed suicide after his plagiarism and made-up stories came to light (see my posts about him here).  To Kemi Doll, Arday died because the allegations against him were intended to kill him.

That, of course, is nonsense. The story is complicated, but to couch it as people wanting Arday to die is a ridiculous simplification. There may have been a bit of racism motivating some of Arday’s critics, but most of it came from the realization that Arday, a professor without much merit as well as a serial liar, was promoted largely because of his ethnicity and his claimed disability (he said he was severely autistic). It was an obvious case of ideological capture of academia, a case so clear that it has now become acceptable to talk and write about ethnicity versus quality—a topic previously taboo.

You can read the NEJM piece by clicking on the screenshot below.

I’ll quote a lot of it starting from the beginning. The quotes are indented, and my comments are flush left.

They are trying to kill us.

When Black academics say this, I imagine folks outside of our community think we are being hyperbolic. We are not. I think my non-Black colleagues are starting to get a taste of this as they realize how diabolically opposed to our own well-being most of the movements of our federal health agencies seem to be these days. It’s appalling and scary and also — yes, welcome. This is how it feels to know that there are systemic pressures working against your success, your well-being, and in the case of Jason Arday — your life.

Note that Doll cites racist “systemic pressures” that are aimed at ruining the carers of black academics and even killing them. In fact, the opposite is true.  Affirmative action, DEI, and the “racial reckoning” that’s been occurring for a long time have given minority academics, including women, a leg up. These initiatives, which led to Arday’s promotion and, indeed, sacralization, is clearly what got him the Cambridge professorship in the first place. Until Arday’s fabulism and plagiarism were revealed (starting with a post by Nathan Cofnas, who clearly didn’t want Arday to die), Arday was on a pedestal, told by his own chairperson at Cambridge that “We are so lucky to have you. You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.” Doll continues:

Jason Arday had the distinction of being the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. His publications specifically focused on race and racism in the British educational system, and he didn’t shy away from using his own life in his examples. After the deliberate targeting of his veracity as an academic by another former Cambridge professor, dismissed due to his racism and white supremacist views, Prof. Arday came under intense scrutiny with regard to his Ph.D. thesis and the stories in his memoir. Besides making the point that his Ph.D. advisor and the university cleared him of any deliberate plagiarism allegations, I want to be clear that I don’t care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true. None of them were worth his career. And certainly not his life.

Note the penultimate statement: Doll didn’t care whether any allegations against Arday were true. But if they were true (they include made-up positions he put on his c.v.), and they seem to be, then he was unqualified for his position at Cambridge. Remember that Arday killed himself only after Cambridge decided to investigate the allegations. Did anybody predict that those allegations would lead to his (presumed) suicide? I don’t think so, but Doll argues that his death was not only predictable, but engineered by academia and the media:

But Black academics know that we will always be held to a different standard, and it will look “fair” to most until perhaps we are dead. Dr. Antoinette “Bonnie” Candia-Bailey of Lincoln University expressed the severe stress, pressure, and undue criticism she weathered in her position before her suicide in 2024. Dr. JoAnne A. Epps, Executive Vice President and Provost of Temple University, and Dr. Orinthia T. Montague, President of Volunteer State Community College, died enduring the unique stressors of their jobs. Prof. Claudine Gay was hounded by accusations of plagiarism and ousted by Harvard, who bent to those who simply could not stomach a world where a Black woman was president of such a storied institution. Today, I took a moment to appreciate that she is still with us, thank God.

I urge you to check those references for suicide caused by stress, pressure, and criticism. Yes, Candia-Bailey killed herself after claiming she was bullied in academia, but Epps “died. . . . after becoming ill onstage at a memorial service, the university said.” The reference to Orinthia Montague says nothing about suicide, and I can find nothing about that in other places (e.g., here) What is ludicrous about Doll’s claims here is that she simply asserts that the last two died because of “stress and pressure”. But, for crying out loud, being a president or provost of any college is a stressful job, and there is no evidence that Montague or Epps had sufficiently more stress than other administrators because they were black, crossing a stress threshhold that led to death. Neither death is attributed to suicide, so Doll simply asserts that they were due to blackness-induced pressure. Didn’t the NEJM even check the links?

As for Claudine Gay, she was asked to resign by the Harvard Corporation because she did not handle well the allegations of antisemitism at Harvard (she had to clarify her position several times), because she was credibly accused of plagiarism, and because she could no longer lead the University effectively. Rather than boot her out of the Presidency, Harvard stood by her (even dismissing her plagiarism accusations as only examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution“) until the pressure from the Corporation became too great. Indeed, some people, as in NYT link I just gave, argued that Harvard was going easier on Gay than it was on students who might have done the same thing.  I see no evidence that Harvard wanted to dump Gay because she was black. Indeed, why was she appointed President if there were structural pressures to ruin her career?

At any rate, Gay landed on her feet. Though she resigned the Presidency, Harvard Magazine says that Gay returned to the faculty as professor of government and of African and American studies, earning “a base salary of $1,397,749, plus other compensation of $150,802 (again, principally the value of a University-provided official residence)”. I don’t know another regular humanities professor making nearly $1.5 million per year! Clearly, Harvard was not trying to ruin her career.

More:

The message to Black academics is clear. Come in, be great and indeed be excellent, but don’t dare dream too big. Don’t dare shine too bright. Walk the line of excellence and humility with perfect grace, and be ready to fight for your life.

The lesson is really that your ethnicity (and, in Arday’s class, his claimed early disability) can elevate you to prestige. Beyond Arday and Candia-Bailey, the argument that universities and academia are trying to exterminate black people is nonexistent.

Doll does mention one white man who lost his job after accusations of falsified data:

In contrast, as a white man, you can rise to be president of Stanford University, and after your falsified data is found and has set back an entire field of research for years — you will only lose your job and then quickly find another one as the CEO of a $1 billion biopharma start-up. Beyond this single story of nauseating privilege, it is a fantasy to act like plagiarism, falsified data, and suspicious, unreproducible results are not major and common problems in academia. We have entire websites devoted to attempting to keep pace with the number of scientific papers retracted amid scandal. Scroll through the recent posts on Retraction Watch and let me know how many of those investigators have been hounded, literally, to death by the news media. I hear the assertions that the British press is particularly vicious and unabashedly racist, which contributed to hundreds of articles attacking Prof. Arday in a matter of days. However, this country is not far behind. The New York Times, before his body was even laid to rest, asserted on social media that Arday’s death was a result of “race, diversity, and academic hiring.” Sure.

I won’t list other white academics who lost their jobs for plagiarism or other accusations, or even killed themselves as a result, as that’s just playing an anecdotes game. Yes, Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned from Stanford after wonky and apparently falsified data were found in a paper he co-authored, but, like Claudine Gay, he landed on his feet. And remember, the attention directed to Arday was only tangentially because he was black, for it was his ethnicity and claimed disability, as well as the accusations of fabulism and plagiarism that Cambridge University at first ignored, that gave the story its viral status. The striking part was the realization of how far ideological capture had gone in academia—so far that a man totally unqualified for a professorship had gotten there without anybody looking too closely at his qualifications. (Indeed, I think the NEJM publishing Doll’s palpably ludicrous analysis is itself an example of ideological capture of the journal.)

At the end, Doll bemoans her own fate, telling us that she pretty much has it as bad as did Arday, although that cannot be true. She also analogizes her accusations of racism to lynching, for lynching is the subject of the song “Strange Fruit,” made famous by Billie Holiday in 1939 (bolding below is mine):

As someone who introduced herself here as being in it for the long haul in academia, I am in contemplation this week. Not because I am considering leaving, but because it’s important to query whether my systems and boundaries for my own well-being are strong enough to withstand the ever-present winds of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Are my bonds with my fellow Black academics well-tended to? Are my filters to keep nonsense out of my inbox tight enough? Do I need to ratchet up my “No”s even further?

In these times where trees bearing strange fruit are on the rise (again) in the U.S. South, where Black mothers everywhere heard about Nolan Wells long before it was in the mainstream media, I don’t believe there is such thing as hyperbole. They are trying to kill us. They always have been.

And yet, we are still here.

Rest in peace, Jason Arday.

Ask yourself if you’re an academic: are colleges and universities trying to deny jobs to minorities, impede their progress, or even trying to kill them by putting in motion processes that they know will result in suicide? I’d say that, in these days of DEI, it’s the precise opposite.

But why did the NEJM even publish such a palpably misguided and hyperbolic piece? I would answer this way: the journal’s editors were trying to signal their virtue. And that’s ideological capture.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

August 30, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, August 30, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats and the sixth weekiversary since Miss Duck and her brood came to Botany Pond. Here are the babies on July 20, the second day after they came to the pond (they presumably hatched one day before Pond Entry Day). There are few animals more adorable than a baby mallard.

And here they are sex days ago. In two more weeks they’ll be eight weeks old, and about ready able to fly. They may hang around a while, but they may also leave quickly, and then I’ll feel like a parent whose kid goes off to college—except I’ll never see most of the kids again. They’ll be out in the real world, having obtained jobs as Being Mallards.

It’s also National Mai Tai Day, International Whale Shark Day, and National Toasted Marshmallow Day (I like them burnt black).

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

Da Nooz:

*Well, the U.S. finally got some benefit from leaving a political heir of Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez, in power in Venezuela. Now we can take their oil!

President Trump confirmed late Friday that the U.S. reached a deal with Venezuela to secure control of a big chunk of the Latin American country’s oil reserves.

“At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” the president said on social media.

The country’s oil industry has fallen into widespread disarray following years of mismanagement during the regimes of the late Hugo Chávez and former President Nicolás Maduro.

Since ousting Maduro in January, Trump has pushed U.S. oil companies to plow money into the country in a bid to shore up oil production. But many have been hesitant to do so.

Friday’s deal would give the U.S. a foothold in some of the most promising oil-and-gas fields. The country says it has some 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, the largest in the world. In comparison, the U.S. has about 46 billion.

Trump also said the agreement would substantially lower gas prices for all Americans. He and his team have been trying to shore up energy security in the Western Hemisphere while the Iran war has locked a big portion of the world’s oil and gas behind the Strait of Hormuz.

Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president, has granted a private company—a joint project of the U.S. government and a private operator in Venezuela—a 100-year lease for the oil fields, a U.S. official said. The entity would be the world’s second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.

This of course is a way for Trump to try to boost support, as surely rising gas prices are one reason why Trump’s approval rating has fallen, and why Republicans are in trouble for the midterms.  But oil experts on the news last night said it would take months to years before this agreement would reach the gas pumps to lower prices. But I’m sure that Nobel Peace Prize laureate (2025) María Corina Machado, wherever she’s living (she dare not return to Venezuela for fear of assassination), is looking on in horror.

*The First Amendment doesn’t just apply to American citizens, but to people legally in America. That was the basis of a new ruling by a federal judge in California who said that the Trump administration violated the law when it sought to deport foreign students who criticized Israel (article archived here).

A federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration violated the constitutional rights of international students when it sought to deport them for criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a 90-page ruling, Judge Noël Wise found that the key legal foundations that the Trump administration had relied on to arrest and deport foreign students were unconstitutional, because Trump officials had wielded them to target students who used their freedom of speech to express opinions that the government did not like.

“In the United States,” Judge Wise wrote, “free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength.

“That strength is diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation,” she wrote. “This downward spiral is antithetical to our Constitution that recognizes our right to speak freely. Here you can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it.”

Judge Wise, who was appointed to the Northern District of California by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., effectively declared that a section of immigration law frequently invoked by the Trump administration violated the First and Fifth Amendments, reasoning that the provision was vague and allowed the secretary of state to remove noncitizens for speech and other activities protected by the First Amendment.

Conor Fitzpatrick, the chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which brought the lawsuit, celebrated the ruling.

“Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child,” he said in a statement.

Yay for FIRE, and YAY for the appropriately named Judge Wise. I’m wondering whether the government will appeal this to the Supreme Court, but there’s nothing in the First Amendment that limits free speech only to Americans who are citizens:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

*We all know that Dolly Parton refused to say anything about politics; she maintained that she was an entertainer and not a politician, and she didn’t want to alienate her fans. But Fox News shows how deep her resistance to taking public stands went (Ricky Gervais would be happy):

“I don’t like to get involved in politics, because first of all, I have as many Republican fans as I do Democrats,” Parton told USA Today. “I don’t want to offend anybody, I have a right to myself.”

“Like God gave us free will, America gave us free speech, but you’ve got to be responsible for anything you say and do,” she added.

Two years earlier, Parton was repeatedly pressed about Trump during an interview with ABC’s David Wright, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

“I have a lot of fans out there, and I don’t want to offend anybody,” Parton said.

When Wright attempted to draw a parallel between Trump and the sexually abusive boss in Parton’s 1980 film “9 to 5,” she refused to bite.

“I’m not addressing that,” Parton said. “I learned a long time ago, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay in show business. … I’m not in politics, I’m an entertainer.”

When Wright pointed out that Parton was also a role model, she responded: “Yes I am. That’s why I don’t talk about people.”

Her aversion to political camps did not mean she kept quiet about everything she believed.

“I know whatever I say, people are going to listen, and they’re going to make more of it than maybe what I meant. So I have to be careful,” Parton told People in 2021. “Of course I have my opinion, but I’m not an opinionated person as a rule. You’re allowed your own beliefs and your own faith, but you don’t have to use it like a weapon when it could be a tool.”

Parton’s political neutrality was something she could joke about.

“My daddy was a Republican, my mama was a Democrat, and I’m a hypocrite!” Parton famously quipped, pronouncing “hypocrite” as “hypo-crat” in her iconic Tennessee drawl.

I’ve seen several posts on social media however, that Parton’s refusal to take political positions constituted her own “dark side,” an accusation that began in 2021 in a Vox article by Constance Grady called “How Dolly Parton became a secular American saint.” Grady’s claim was that you have to take sides in a “post-Trump America,”  To wit:

Dolly Parton is beloved because she has devoted her career to standing for love. And, usefully, she is willing to be ambiguous about what exactly that love means and how much it includes people that those on different sides of the political aisle consider their enemies. But in a post-Trump America, is Dolly Parton’s love enough?

. . .“I say this with humility and as someone who is not a believer,” Dolly Parton’s America host Jad Abumrad told Billboard in 2019: “There’s something very Christ-like about her.”

But America in the 21st century is no time for a secular pop saint. And there’s a dark side to Dolly’s ability to appeal, Christ-like, to all people at all times.

Well, I have no time for this kind of stuff.  Parton did speak out in favor of LGBTQ rights, and rather than taking performative stands, she helped people: giving them money after natural disasters, and handing out books by the millions. I have no time for people now who are going after her for being nonpolitical.

*Daily Jew Hatred, and this time it’s directed to, of all people, Dolly Parton. The Jerusalem Post reports that as soon as Dolly Parton died, e-vandals slapped antisemiti content all over her Wikipedia page.

Dolly Parton’s Wikipedia page was allegedly targeted by vandals with antisemitic content and offensive modifications within an hour of the public announcement of her death at age 80 on Tuesday.
As millions around the world mourned the loss of the legendary cultural icon, social media users shared screenshots of modifications to her profile.

Here’s one tweet:

More:

The alterations included replacing her profile photo with an image of a Nazi swastika, changing her name to “Jew lover,” and altering her display title to reference Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members.

One screenshot shared on X/Twitter captured a Google search result listing her Wikipedia page title as “Dolly Parton – Adam Lanza was a hero.” The edits were quickly identified and reversed using Wikipedia’s revision history safeguards, restoring the page to its proper state.

And another tweet:

As far as I know, Parton never said anything about Jews or Israel, though she had at least one close Jewish friend. It’s a sign of the times that the worst thing you can say about a beloved American icon after she died was that she was a “Jew lover.”

*Finally, reader βPer sent me this: “A CBC editor has responded to the ‘terrorism’ kerfuffle with a blog post and I think you may find it interesting” with the reader noting that I may find the final six paragraphs edifying.  Indeed! (Remember that the CBC has been criticized recently for refusing to use the word “terrorist” and “terrorism” without attribution, saying the words were “loaded” and “controversial.” The CBC editor defends his organization’s position (the bolding is mine). Here are the final paragraphs:

And we intend to mark the forthcoming 25th anniversary of 9/11 with extensive, special coverage that will continue to respectfully and thoughtfully reflect on the monumental nature of this tragedy.

CBC’s reporting on terrorism, wherever it occurs, has always been guided by the principle of attribution, and like other major news organizations, it has been our practice for decades. The reason for the extreme care around the use of the words “terrorist” and “terrorism” was detailed in this earlier editor’s blog.

But to be clear, CBC News has never said what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have stated in recent days. We have reported fully and accurately on the reasons and motivations for those attacks as determined by police, governments and an independent commission. We’ve just made sure to do it with attribution.

Clarity and understanding are at the heart of our journalism. The leaked excerpt without context or explanation has raised more questions for the public that we must now answer.

After reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism. 

We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding. 

At the same time, as new acts of politically or ideologically motivated violence occur in our world, we will continue to follow the journalistically sound practice of attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts.

So now 9/11 is terrorism, but only that one event. Are the perpetrators of 9/11 still not “terrorists”? I don’t buy it; this is a woke language prohibition to avoid stigmatizing people who kill noncombatants for ideological gain. My reader added this:

I think, reading between the lines, this may be the editors trying to rein in their woke reporter’s unprofessional tendencies to inject their personal beliefs in hot-button issues.  For example, a reporter casually describing a murderer as a ‘psychopath’ instead of doing the journalistic basics of seeking out a professional’s opinion of the murderer’s mental state.  In particular, I wonder if the editors have been frustrated by their reporters showing their pro-Palestinian tendencies by using ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ incorrectly.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Kulka, bitter enemies, are acting like Israel and Palestine, with Kulka playing the role of Palestine (Hili is a Jewish cat):

Hili: You again?
Kulka: Yes, I propose a ceasefire on my terms.

In Polish:

Hili: Ty znowu tu?
Kulka: Tak, proponuję zawieszenie broni na moich warunkach.

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

From TherionArms:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Animal Antics:

J. K. Rowling on Dolly (JKR has a great sense of humor):

And from Simon:

From Luana; a really bad chemistry accident at MIT.

This is what happens when you get two drops of the stuff: on a gloved hand! It goes right through latex gloves and then takes months to kill you.

 

The Number Ten cat goes after Trump (the Torygraph article is real):

From Malcolm; a d*g interrupts important cat bzns:

One from my feed; featuring a post by Trump (are we taxpayers footing the bill for someone to make these posts?):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And one from Dr. Cobb; a beautiful trailcam catch, and the snow leopard makes the flehmen response:

Snow leopard on a trail camera: #AGoodPlaceSource: http://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFu…

— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) 2026-08-27T10:53:59.334Z

Bill Maher’s “new rule”: the young are puppeteering the lunatrocracy

August 29, 2026 • 11:15 am

In yesterday’s “Real Time” comedy-and-politics bit, Bill Maher calls attention to the fact that much of the real work in Congress isn’t done by the older Senators and Representatives, but rather by their staff, who may be “too young.”

In other words, the 20-somethings are writing the bills, and, as Maher said, “the kids are not all right.”  In Maher’s view, these kids , whatever their politics, grew up on social media, and on the Left they’re too woke and on the Right they’re too conservative and racist (40% of Republican staffers are fans of Nick Fuentes!). Neither side, he maintains, understands the art of compromise and of rational analysis aimed at producing solution.  The Democrats, though, seem to get most of Maher’s flak.  At the end he says, “The problem isn’t just the old farts; maybe it’s also the new little shits.”

Maher’s guests on this segment include Byron Donalds, a Republican Congressman from Florida, and Molly Jong-Fast, author and host of the Fast Politics podcast (as well as the daughter of Erica Jong).

 

Caturday felid trifecta: World’s most polydactylous cat; stolen kitten used in bank robbery; cat may get statue on Nebraska state capitol grounds; and lagniappe

August 29, 2026 • 9:40 am

Well, I have some cat stuff for you. The first is a doozy: the world’s most polydactylous cat: a Maine Coon with 29—count them—29 toes. That’s 11 more than the normal number of 18, with 5 toes on each front paw (including the dewclaw) and four on each rear foot. Click the screenshot to read the article from  Parade Pets:

An excerpt:

This ridiculously fluffy gray Maine Coon kitten has so many extra toes that his family literally started counting them because they suspected they might have a Guinness World Record holder living in their house. They were right. Erebus officially holds the Guinness World Record for the most toes on a cat, and I don’t even want to imagine how long it takes to trim all those tiny claws.

The adorable video was shared by TikTok user @kendraschultz81 and features Erebus proudly showing off his impressively oversized paws.

According to WFRV Local 5, Erebus was born with 29 toes. His family, Kendra and Hunter of Blue Northern Maine Coons, realized almost immediately that they might have something extraordinary on their hands and carefully counted every single toe. After completing Guinness World Records’ verification process, Erebus officially became the new world record holder for the most toes on a cat.

Polydactyly is a naturally occurring genetic trait that causes cats to be born with extra toes. While it can occur in many breeds, it’s especially common in Maine Coons, where the extra toes are thought to have helped their ancestors walk more easily through snow and rough terrain.

Most polydactyl cats have one or two extra toes on some of their paws, but Erebus takes things to an entirely different level with an astonishing 29 toes.

The condition isn’t usually painful, and many polydactyl cats live completely normal, healthy lives. In fact, many pet parents think the oversized paws make them even more adorable.

. . . aaaand, here’s a video report on Erebus. Look at the size of these feet! At first he had lung problems, and wasn’t expect to survive, but the feisty moggy survived.

Here’s the Tik Tok video that brought Erebus fame:

@kendraschultz81

♬ Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes

Guinness hasn’t yet updated its record, as it still reports, at the link below, two cats who tied with a 28-toe count, but Erebus has one more:

A quote:

An adorable 10-month-old kitten named Toby Henderson (USA) has tied a longstanding Guinness World Records title for the most toes on a cat, after equalling Jake the Polydactyl Cat’s (Canada) 2002 total of 28 claw-some digits.

Toby, who belongs to Delaney Henderson, recently found his forever home in Lansing, Michigan, and was made Officially Amazing on 12 May 2025. He lives alongside his loving parents and sister Connie, another polydactyl cat who has two extra toes on her front paws.

Here are two photos of Toby’s feet, but remember that Erebus beat him by a toe:

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

Now here’s a clickbait headline from the Washington Post that will lure cat-lovers (click to read, or see it archived here). A tuxedo kitten was first stolen from a pet store, and then somehow used in a bank robbery:

An excerpt:

A man wearing a black beanie walked into a Maryland pet store last month, approached a kitten up for adoption and ran out moments later carrying the cat.

Stephanie Stullich, whose nonprofit organization rescued the tuxedo cat the month before, received a frantic call about the theft.

“We’d never had a kitten stolen before,” Stullich said. “So we had no idea why or how — or if we would ever see her again.”

Stullich hurried to the scene, where she wondered why six police cars were there for a stolen cat. She soon learned the kitten’s morning was more harrowingthan she had feared.

After grabbing the kitten, the thief walked into a PNC Bank near the pet store, approached a teller window while still holding the cat and passed anote that read, “This is a Robbery,” according to court documents.

Prince George’s County police said they arrived on the scene and arrested the man.

A few minutes after getting there, Stullich said she was relieved when a police officer told her the cat was safe inside the bank.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Stullich said. “Who would believe it?”

Stullich found the cat, named Magnolia, safe in a manager’s office. The kitten, now 5 months old, was unfazed, Stullich said.

. . .Stullich brought Magnolia back to the Pet Supplies Plus in Beltsville, where the kitten attracted a lot of attention — welcomed, this time — after her unwitting participation in a crime.

More than 20 people applied to adopt her. Most cats rescued by Beltsville Community Cats receive three applications if they’re lucky, Stullich said.

The rescue group decided the person who applied before the kitten’s brush with the law — Kaylei Roldan, 28 — should adopt Magnolia. For the past month, Magnolia has been enjoying a quiet life — with cuddles, chicken-flavored treats and a cat tree — at Roldan’s apartment in Laurel, Maryland.

The perp:

Court records identify the suspect as Jacob Loethen, 19, of Beltsville. He was charged with robbery, second-degree assault and theft of at least $100 but less than $1,500, according to court documents.

Court records show Loethen is represented by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, which declined to comment. Police did not disclose a possible motive.

And a good outcome (besides the rescue of Magnolia):

PNC Bank said it donated $150 to Beltsville Community Cats, the equivalent of the fee to adopt a kitten from the rescue group.

“The safety and security of our employees and customers — two and four-legged — is at the forefront of everything we do,” Christina Stowers, a spokeswoman for the bank, said in an email to The Washington Post. “We’re pleased that this tale has a happy ending.”

That should be “tail”.  I wonder how the kitten was “used”. Did the suspect thrust Magnolia at the teller and say, “Give me all your money. I have a kitten.”? And they didn’t even charge him with catnapping. . .

Here’s a short video showing photos of the lovely Magnolia.

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

From “good.good.good.co,” we learn that Nebraskans had an unofficial State Cat named Cameron, who until recently haunted the grounds of the state Capitol Building in Lincoln. Now ailurophiles are capaigning to put a statue of Cameron on the Capitol grounds. Click below to read:

An excerpt:

The Nebraska State Capitol’s unofficial feline mascot could soon become a permanent fixture outside the historic building he brought warmth and love to for a decade.

Until this spring, Cameron the “Capitol Cat” made a home away from home at the Capitol near his downtown Lincoln residence with his owner, Dianna McGinnis. After long legislative days, staffers and lawmakers alike would greet Cameron, even on nights after heated filibusters or those that stretched toward midnight. Many found relief as he awaited their attention.

Cameron retired in May as the unofficial Capitol greeter when McGinnis moved to assisted living. But his pawprint on lawmakers, staff, and community members well beyond Nebraska could soon live on with a statue on the south side of the Capitol off Goodhue Boulevard.

The life-size bronze statue of Cameron would be about 18-20 inches tall and sit atop a pedestal made from Indiana limestone, about 28-32 inches in height. The limestone is proposed to mirror the stone facing and architectural trim of the historic Nebraska State Capitol.

This is adorable:

“I mean, let’s be real, it would be so freaking cute and everybody would get their picture by it, and his little head would be petted, and it’d be shiny gold because everybody would rub his little head coming in,” state Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward, who is helping the project, said Friday.

No state or taxpayer funds would go toward the statue.

Hughes, who joined the Legislature in 2023, and former state Sen. Anna Wishart of Lincoln, who served between 2017 and 2025, will pitch the privately funded project to the Nebraska Capitol Environs Commission on Friday. The meeting is for feedback initially, and the supporters would need final approval before the statue could be affixed near the Capitol.

More:

Hughes said she first heard of the statue idea around the time lawmakers adjourned in April from one of her constituents, Scott Shafer, who works for the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. Using artificial intelligence, she created a rendering of how the statue could look. However, the final design would fall to the storied sculptor supporters hope to hire.

Benjamin Victor of Boise, Idaho, the artist behind the Ponca Chief Standing Bear and Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte statues on Lincoln Mall north of the Nebraska Capitol has agreed to sculpt the bronze Cameron.

. . .As of Tuesday afternoon, the fundraising campaign had raised almost $3,500 toward its $37,500 goal just a few days after launching. Shaw has also agreed to donate profits from his photo book about Cameron to the project through October.

The cost includes Victor’s estimate and ongoing maintenance. Meeting materials indicate minimal upkeep with materials “designed to withstand Nebraska seasonal cycles without degradation.”

While Shaw was not necessarily an animal photographer, he said he always enjoyed photographing Cameron. He has two adopted cats of his own — littermates, which his daughters named Toby, after “The Office” character, and Peanut, for a marking on his nose.

The article was published this week, and, sadly, the project appears to be in limbo, as this headling from Nebraska Public Media appeared yesterday. Click to read:


An excerpt from that:

Plans to memorialize Cameron the Capitol Cat’s years of service in the Nebraska Legislature are in limbo after the Nebraska Capitol Environs Commission expressed doubts about his ability to withstand the test of time.

Blockheads!  Here’s their unconvincing explanation:

Landis said the statues included both in and around the Capitol building are placed there because of the significance of their lives and accomplishments. While many of the real people the statues commemorate and those who knew them have passed beyond living memory, Landis said they deserve to be remembered. The statues are placed on the environs to instruct the public about their lives.

“This is a well-loved cat,” Landis said. “But when the time runs out and those of you who loved this cat have passed by, what is the historical significance of the cat?”

Commission members one after the other voiced their agreement with Landis, saying that the cat cannot be seen as comparable to statues of important historical figures like Ponca tribal chief Standing Bear, who advocated for his tribe’s right to live on their own land and won against the U.S. Government.

Courtney Wittstruck, a public commenter, said Cameron’s significance was more than the love visiting fourth grade classes had for him. While intense debates were going on within the Capitol, Cameron greeted everyone, regardless of party or political view, the same, Wittstruck said.

“He became a small but meaningful symbol of the best of Nebraska: kindness, friendliness and compassion,” Wittstruck said, adding that a plaque should go with the statue to emphasize the symbolism. “It’s a reminder that we are all Nebraskans and that, at the end of the day, we have more in common than we have differences.”

See? Cameron exemplifies Nebraska’s kindness and friendliness. What more do these legislators need than that?  Well, I hope they put the statue up somewhere near the Capitol building if it isn’t approved. In the meantime, here’s a video:

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Lagniappe:

Komatsu rescued! Fitted with a hard hat and put to work.

Click headline to read (from the UPI’s Odd News:

An excerpt:

A kitten rescued from inside an excavator has become the newest member of an Ohio construction crew, complete with her own vest and hard hat.

Chase Guello, operating supervisor with RiverReach Construction, was examining an excavator at a Leavittsburg job site when he found the tiny orange kitten inside the engine bay.

The crew was unable to locate the kitten’s mother or any siblings in the area.

The construction company named the cat Komatsu in honor of the brand of excavator, or Sue for short.

Sue spent two weeks in foster care before being placed with RiverReach’s shop mechanic, Jared, and his family.

“Once she’s of age, she’ll be traveling to and from work with him, and she’ll eventually become a shop cat under his supervision,” Guello told WJW-TV.

Meanwhile, video of Sue’s rescue went viral online, and came to the attention of officials at Komatsu.

The company sent RiverReach a tiny safety vest and hard hat for Sue.

Click on the screenshot below (and put the sound up) to see the Instagram post of Sue’s rescue:

You can see more photos of Sue and her work clothes at the River Reach Construction Instagram page.

Extra lagniappe: two cat tweets:

In Turkey, an elderly man who shines shoes for a living is visited each morning by a cat that comes for its daily brushing

— Wait That's Interesting (@waitinteresting.bsky.social) 2026-08-28T00:04:39.217Z

h/t: Norman, Debra, Matthew