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.
We’re back again with readers’ photos, but this is only one of two batches I have left. Please send ’em if you got good photos.
Today we have plants (and one video of flamingos), and different views of one species of plant from reader Eric Cabot. Eric’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Following Wallace Stevens, I’d call this “Eleven Ways of Looking at a Lotus.”
Here is a series of photographs featuring the American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea), taken at a roadside pond in Middleton, Wisconsin, in mid-August, 2018 There are few things as comforting as a quiet boardwalk-stroll through a flotilla of this beautiful plant towards the end of a fine day.
I was unsure of the plants’ identity until I found this statement on an informative website (https://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/): Lotus leaves are circular but do not have a notch/sinus—they are continuous all the way around.
Unfortunately, the pond and the paths and boardwalks associated it were completely washed away by a deadly flash flood the following spring. The pond has since been rebuilt, but not the boardwalk. I haven’t gone back to see if the site has any lotuses. For now the images will have to do.
Here a video of pink flamingos the I recorded in “Cabo” a few years ago. [JAC: Keep watching for the displays and weird cries.]
The Hili dialogue will be shortened today as I was preoccupied with the war between Iran and every other country.
Welcome to the first day of March: Sunday, March 1, 2026, and International Rescue Cat Day. Here’s the rescue of a kitten in Malaysia, and of course it ends well (the woman who rescued him had nine cat!). Click “play on YouTube” or go here:
Here’s the March entry from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416), showing plowing and other spring planting activities at the Château de Lusignan. Almost nothing remains of the castle, château, and town.
Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
I’ll feature the latest on the war today, but concentrating on opinion beside the news. First, though, an update from the NYT and the Times of Israel.
First, the NYT headline, which affirms that the Supreme Leader was taken out. Click on headline to read, or find it archived here:
An excerpt:
The Iranian government vowed on Sunday that it would retaliate for the attacks that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s longtime supreme leader and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, as attacks on the country entered a second day.
The Iranian state news agency confirmed the ayatollah’s death on Sunday morning, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — a powerful institution answering to the supreme leader — said that Iran would avenge him. Ali Larijani, a senior leader and Khamenei confidant, vowed that Iranian forces would fight even harder.
The ayatollah’s death prompted a range of reactions within Iran on Saturday. Large crowds poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities to celebrate the toppling of a leader who had ruled with an iron fist for nearly 37 years. Others mourned him.
The killing is a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region.
The United States and Israel said overnight that they were still attacking Iran. President Trump said on social media that U.S. strikes would continue “throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
In Israel, where the authorities reported one death on Sunday, air-raid sirens warned of further Iranian missile launches. Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the initial strikes. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.
Of course Iran is already retaliating as hard as it can, and I’m not sure how they’ll retaliate even harder. I am shedding no tears for the death of Khamenei; as he really was a guiding force of Iran and its use of proxies. The council of theocrats he appointed will of course choose a replacement. Iran should have given up its nuclear program, but of course that was never in the cards.
From the Times of Israel:
An excerpt:
US President Donald Trump threatened early Sunday morning to hit Iran with unprecedented force after Tehran warned it would step up attacks in retaliation for the killing of its supreme leader and fired successive volleys of rockets at Israel for a second consecutive day Sunday.
In Iran, the Israel Defense Forces continued to carry out strikes on military sites, including a massive blast in Tehran. The army announced that it had dropped over 1,000 pieces of munition in just over 24 hours of attacks that kicked off Saturday morning with a strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.
“Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network. “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”
His comments came just a few hours after the Iranian regime confirmed that its longtime leader Khamenei had been killed in a strike on his office early Saturday morning.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Sunday morning in a video carried on state TV that Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have “crossed our red lines” and “will suffer the consequences.”
The elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed in a statement Sunday that Iran’s armed forces would soon retaliate again with the “most ferocious offensive operation in history” against US bases and Israel.
“The hand of revenge of the Iranian nation for a severe, decisive and regrettable punishment for the murderers of the Imam of the Ummah will not let go of them,” the IRGC said in a statement.
Waves of sirens rang out repeatedly across much of central, southern and northern Israel on Saturday night and Sunday morning as Iran fired ballistic missiles at the country, sending millions of Israelis to shelter. Iran’s state broadcaster said 27 US bases in the region, as well as Israel’s military headquarters and a defense industries complex in Tel Aviv, were among the targets in the new wave of strikes.
There were no reports of impacts in residential areas or direct injuries following the salvos, medics said. Magen David Adom said it treated people lightly hurt by falling while running to bomb shelters.
Police said they received reports of missile and interceptor fragments that landed in the Jerusalem area, and the Fire and Rescue Service said it was responding to a gas leak caused by falling shrapnel in the West Bank.
In contrast to the large barrages fired at Israel during the 12-day war with Iran in June, most salvos Saturday and Sunday have consisted of small number of missiles, usually three at a time, with breaks of a few minutes between each launch, according to the IDF.
There has been one Israeli killed, a remarkably small toll for a supposedly big reprisal:
The attacks have caused only a small number of injuries, aside from a particularly large barrage of some 20 missiles toward the Tel Aviv area Saturday night in which one projectile managed to evade air defenses, hitting near a residential building and killing a woman.
The slain woman, a foreign caregiver for an elderly woman, did not manage to reach a shelter in time, the military said Sunday after an initial investigation. The woman she was caring for was extracted by rescue workers from the rubble alive.
According to the NYT, the CIA helped locate the Ayatollah, which led to the attack taking place when it did:
Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.
The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.
The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.
Another NYT piece (archived here), summarizing world reaction, says that most governments in the West, save Australia, have urged restraint in the attacks, and few (save Spain, Turkey, and some Arab states) have outright condemned the attack on Iran. I’m surprised by the mildness of the reaction, but it seems to come from Iran’s position as a promoter of worldwide terror, combined with the reported killing of up to 30,000 of its own citizens who protested the government.
Those protesting the attacks include the MSM, including the New York Times. whose op-ed yesterday was called “Trump’s attack on Iran is reckless.”
Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.
. . .A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation of the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.
Mr. Trump is not even attempting this approach. He is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.
It’s hard to see how “freedom for the people” can be accomplished in any meaningful sense without some U.S. boots on the ground, at least for a time. Yet Trump appears to lack any appetite for doing so. That might give pause to civilians trying to decide whether to risk their lives by rising up.
Whether Trump has made the right call will hinge on factors now beyond his control. No president has ever intended to get drawn into a quagmire.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Short of that, the War Powers Act ensures the legislative branch will get a say on this war of choice. It’s essential that the people’s elected representatives get to vote on whether these strikes are justified. A comprehensive case has yet to be made, and better late than never.
Most of the NYT op-eds are critical of Trump and say the attack either was useless or conducted incorrectly. Here’s a screenshot of some the paper’s op-eds (there is at least one pro-attack one, see below):
But then there’s Bret Stephens, whose take on the war seems to be sensible (i.e., it resonates with mine). His column yesterday was called “The case for striking Iran” (archived here). An excerpt:
It’s happening. On Saturday, the United States and Israel jointly launched what President Trump has described as a “massive and ongoing” series of strikes on Iran, aiming not only to destroy the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities but also to overthrow the regime itself. The president may rightly be faulted for barely bothering to spell out the reasons for war in the weeks leading to Saturday’s attack. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a compelling case for action.
There are three, in fact.
Iran poses a threat to global order by way of its damaged but abiding nuclear ambitions, its deep strategic ties to Moscow and Beijing, its persistent threats to maritime commerce and its support for international terrorism.
It poses a threat to regional stability, not just through its support for anti-Israel proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, but also by its meddling in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and (until the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime) Syria.
And it’s a mortal threat to the life and safety of its own people, many thousands of whom it slaughtered last month. There was a time not long ago when Americans, both left and right, cared enough about human rights to believe it could, in some circumstances, justify military intervention.
Why is a military attack crucial? Look at what hasn’t worked to change the regime’s behavior.
He then lists all the sanctions, economic engagements, failed diplomatic efforts that have failed. Those failures would have simply continued without the US/Israel attack on Iran. Stephens concludes this way:
No wonder protests in Iran have resumed, this time among university students who are bravely undaunted by the terrifying risk. Their protests seem connected to the 40-day memorials for the victims of last month’s massacres. But it’s not a stretch to assume those protests are also a signal to Trump that his promise last month to Iranians that “help is on its way” hasn’t been forgotten, and that ordinary Iranians are prepared to join the fight for their own liberation.
If so, then there is at least a reasonable chance that a sustained military operation that not only further degrades the regime’s nuclear, missile and military capabilities — a desirable outcome in its own right — but also targets its apparatus of domestic repression could embolden the type of sustained mass protests that could finally bring the regime down. Even more so if the leaders who give the orders, including the supreme leader and his circle, are not immune from attack.
For all of its willfulness and the evil it has wreaked over 47 years, the regime does not stand 10 feet tall. It nearly fell during the 2009 Green Movement against that year’s fraudulent elections. It nearly fell again in 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.
The difference on those occasions was the absence of external military support. Donald Trump now has a unique opportunity to provide it. Despite the risk that military strikes entail, the bigger risk, in the judgment of history, would be to fail to take it.
His sentiments are echoed in the short video below by Elica Le Bon, an Iranian-American activist and lawyer whose parents fled Iran during the Revolution. Here is her eloquent indictment of the Western media and defense of the attack on Iran. She winds up in tears. (If you can’t see this 3-minute video, go to her X page here.)
In my view, now that the attack has commenced, the horse has left the barn. It has to be seen through because the Iranian people need to live free. All the kvetching by the press seems to me like so much pilpul, writen largely because it was Trump who did it. It also seems that the MSM, and my own Democratic Party, would prefer that there would never have been an attack on Iran, and, though they criticize the Iranian regime, would sit on their hands rather than stop its horrors, its nuclear program, its spread of terror to other countires, including the U.S., and above all, the slaughter of its people. The kvetchers would, I think, prefer Iran to continue as it has (as Stephens notes, no attempts to change the regimes behavior have worked). And if the results are nuclear weapons in Iranian hands, well, too bad. Of course Trump needs a viable endgame, and he hasn’t articulated one, nor did he have a decent one in Gaza. But once the attack was begun—and I was ambivalent about that from the start—it has to be carried through. We can’t simply stop and let Iran go back to how it was. And, in their hearts, I think that most Western countries agree, despite their calls for caution or even a ceasefire. I am moved by Le Bon’s words.
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And we can’t forget The Princess!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is befuddled again.
Hili: I’m trying to understand the world and I’m not sure.
Me: What are you not sure about?
Hili: Whether these attempts aren’t a waste of time.
In Polish:
Hili: Próbuję zrozumieć świat i nie jestem pewna.
Ja: Czego nie jesteś pewna?
Hili: Czy te próby nie są stratą czasu.
This is just a short update on the news, as I presume everyone with an interest in this conflict is following what is happening today. Below is the headline in the NYT; click on the screenshot to read or find the article archived here:
Of coure you wonder how Trump knew that. An excerpt:
President Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for almost 37 years and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, in a potentially seismic political shift in Tehran and the broader region.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said earlier that there were “many indications” that Ayatollah Khamenei was dead, but stopped short of making a definitive statement.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Iranian government. Earlier in the day Iranian officials had dismissed such claims as bravado or psychological warfare. Later the ayatollah’s official account on X later posted an image rich with Shia religious symbolism, of a faceless clerical figure holding a flaming sword.
It was not immediately clear which country’s forces had killed Ayatollah Khamenei, but either way, the action exhibited a high degree of coordination between the United States and Israel. Israel’s military said it had targeted a gathering of senior Iranian officials in the opening strikes. Satellite imagery showed a plume of smoke and extensive damage at the supreme leader’s high-security compound.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu both made clear that regime change was a goal of the massive waves of strikes on Iran that began around 1 a.m. local time Saturday.
But it is uncertain whether removing Ayatollah Khamenei, who was 86, would result in significant changes to the system he led, as many people in authority owed their positions to him.
The power to choose a new supreme leader rests with the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of clerics who, given Ayatollah Khamenei’s age and infirmities, have likely given ample thought to potential successors.
In retaliation for the Israeli-U. S. attack, Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, while the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.
So it is not definitive, but surely Israel has spies in Iran that could provide some confirmation. Eventually Iran will have to announce it.
So far there ha been little damage to the countries Iran attacked, and not one death in Israel.
Will there be regime change? I have no idea; it is foolish to predict such a thing so early in the conflict. Perhaps the U.S. could find an amenable leader in the current regime to do its bidding, as it has in Venezuela, but that seems unlikely: all the rulers are, as it says, conservative theocrats. And the government has all the soldiers and weapons while the people have none.
Every day will tell a new story, but the critics of the attacks are predictable: most Democrats (save the rogue Fetterman) and the mainstream media (save Bret Stephens at the NYT). We will know if the attack was a good thing only in retrospect.
And my immediate interpretation is that the paper publishes all the news that is worth knowing. Indeed, the NYT is also known as the American “paper of record,” the paper one reads to see good, solid journalism. It’s still my go-to source though it has its biases.
I hadn’t thought too much about that slogan until I read Michael Shermer’s new book on truth. As I’ve said before, Shermer’s book is well worth reading, though I do disagree with his take on free will (he seems to accept its existence, though I think the discussion is misguided). But there are great discussions of religions, miracle, morality, truth denialism, and especially history and how to interpret it. I do recommend the book.
Last night, as I read his chapter six on history (the last chapter I’ve read, as I skipped around), I saw that Michael quoted the NYT motto, saying that it was shown with “no apparent awareness of self-contradiction”,
But is it self-contradictory? I didn’t see how. It’s not a great motto, though it’s stood the test of time, but I couldn’t find an internal contradiction. Rather, I found a tautology. Here are the problems with the motto.
a.) Does it leave out some of the news that’s fit to print? That doesn’t make sense because the motto asserts that the paper prints all the news that is fit to appear. Thus it’s impossible for the motto to be wrong, for if there’s news that doesn’t appear in the paper, it wasn’t worth putting in the paper.
b.) Does it put in some news that is not fit to print? This is a little trickier, for the motto could be construed as saying, “All the news that’s fit to print as well as some news that’s not fit to print.” That is neither contradictory nor tautological.
c.) But the motto could be considered tautological (see “a”). This rests on the fact that someone has to decide what news is “fit to print“. News does not come with an inherent “print-worthiness”. In that light, you could consider the motto to mean “We print all the news that we decide to print.” And they don’t put into print the news that they decide not to print. That is tautological.
In the end, the motto, which has appeared since 1897 (it was written by owner Adolf S. Ochs as an assertion of the paper’s impartiality), could be better written as “All the news you need to know,” which avoids the “fit to print” confusion. But it still implies some God-like figure that decides what we need to know. (This is why I object to journalism’s recent use of subheadings on news articles saying, “What you need to know about X.” They seem patronizing, as if I couldn’t myself decide what I needed to know.)
We’ll continue with Caturday Felids and see how many people read them. First, from the BBC, a somewhat misleading headline (my beloved Teddy died of lymphoma)
Click on the screenshot, but if it’s paywalled you can find the article archived here.
Here’s what they did:
The first detailed genetic map of cancer in pet cats reveals striking similarities with human versions of the disease, possibly helping find new ways to treat cancers in both.
Scientists analysed tumour DNA from almost 500 domestic cats, uncovering key genetic mutations linked with the condition.
Cancer is one of the main causes of illness and death in cats, however, very little is known about how it develops.
“Cat cancer genetics has totally been a black box up until now,” said lead researcher, Dr Louise Van der Wayden. “The more we can understand about cancer in any species has got to be beneficial for everybody.”
They found many of the genes driving cat cancers are mirrored in humans, suggesting the two species share key biological processes that allow tumours to grow and spread.x
The scientists say the household cat could hold the key to understanding certain types of breast cancer, such as triple negative breast cancer. Around 15 out of 100 breast cancers are of this type.
Cats develop this subtype more often than humans, giving scientists access to samples, and offering clues to new medicines that might help in treatment.
Almost a quarter of UK households own at least one cat, making the animal almost as popular as dogs as a trusted companion.
But while cancer studies have been carried out extensively in dogs, cats have remained unexplored.
Here’s the Science paper (click to read it) with the abstract, but I have to say I haven’t read it:
As you see, the contribution of cats is that we have a lot of them to provide tumor tissue, and they get some “humanlike’ cancers more often than do humans. So identifying oncogenes in cats, some of which may have the same pathology in humans, might be useful.
“Oncogenes” are genes in humans that, when they mutate, cause a cell to grow uncontrollably, producing cancer. Identifying oncogenes might lead to the creation of cancer therapies tailored to people’s specific mutations. The most famous of these genes are BRCA2 and BRCA2, involved in DNA repair and cell death, which have a tendency to mutate in women, causing breast and ovarian cancers.
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“If that cat could talk, what tales he’d tell About Della and the dealer, and the dog as well, But the cat was cool, and he never said a mumblin’ word.”
Here’s a song written and recorded by country singer Hoyt Axton (1938-199), “Della and the Dealer,” which features a cat named Kalamazoo. (You can see the lyrics here.)
It also features the narrator, a woman named Della, her lover, and a dog named Jake. It’s got a pickup truck (first verse), coke snorting through a $100 bill (Axton was a coke addict), booze, jealousy, and a murder. What more could you want? The cat witnessed all the action but kept his gob shut.
I know of no other country song featuring a cat, but I’m not that knowledgeable about country music. Readers might let me know of other country songs with cats.
Here’s alive version, introduced by Axton saying, “I’m what’s left of Hoyt Axton”.
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I’ve never seen “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but know enough about it from popular culture. Here’s a very short cat video that parodies the movie, and I can see the parallels. I love the fish being tossed into the air becoming a cat-shaped spaceship! The claws on the ship are also cool.
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Lagniappe: A football player helps a thirsty cat. I first saw the meme from the site Cats Doing Cat Stuff, and then found a video of the incident. I wish that Omar had adopted the cat!
Welcome to CaturSaturday, February 28, 2026: the last day of a grim February, and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also National Science Day, which I’d say is a good day. Go appreciate and hug your local scientist (I’m available in Chicago). Here’s Carl Sagan telling Johnny Carson what was scientifically wrong with “Star Wars”, beginning with rerunning the tape of evolution.
I have described the beginning conflict between the US/Israel versus Iran in the previous post. Stay tuned for updates, but there may not be a Hili dialogue tomorrow.
Neil Sedaka, legendary singer-songwriter behind hits like “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Bad Blood,” “Laughter in the Rain” and “Calendar Girl,” has died, a rep confirms to Variety. He was 86.
A Brooklyn native and a veteran of the legendary “Brill Building” hit factory of the early ’60s, Sedaka scored three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and nine in the Top 10, primarily during his peak years in the early 1960s and a mid-’70s comeback assisted by Elton John (who performed with him on the 1975 No. 1 “Bad Blood”).
Sedaka also wrote many songs that were hits for other artists, most notably Connie Francis’ 1958 hit “Stupid Cupid” and, 17 years later, the Captain and Tennille’s breakthrough chart-topper “Love Will Keep Us Together.” He continued to tour and record for many years after his commercial peak.
His best song, in my view, is “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” written by Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, a toe-tapper that hit #1 in America in 1962. It is right up there with “So Much in Love“ by the Tymes as a bouncy doo-wop classic (the latter is the best of all doo-wop songs). But I digress: here is the original of the Sedaka song. with the singer lip-synching the original release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8ndaRoGUjsWith the threat of a U.S. strike on Iran looming, the United States embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers that they may leave Israel and warned them that if they want to, it is vital that they do so immediately.
The directive came from Ambassador Mike Huckabee in an email to embassy workers at the U.S. mission on Friday, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.
Those wishing to leave “should do so TODAY,” Mr. Huckabee wrote, urging them to find flights out of Ben-Gurion Airport to any destination for which they could book passage. “There is no need to panic,” he added, “but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.”
The email, which was verified by three people with knowledge of the matter, made no explicit mention of Iran. It followed meetings and phone calls through the night, Mr. Huckabee wrote to employees, and resulted from “an abundance of caution” and conversations with the State Department in which officials agreed that the safety of embassy staff was a priority.
The embassy’s move “will likely result in high demand for airline seats today,” he said in the email. “Focus on getting a seat to anyplace from which you can then continue travel to DC, but the first priority will be getting expeditiously out of country.”
Umm. . . .I think Huckabee knows something the rest of us don’t. Why would he tell the staff to leave TODAY if the attack wasn’t imminent. On the other hand, this could be a bluff to force Iran to give up stuff. But the Islamic Republic will never give up what’s most important to them: the facilities for enriching uranium to the weapons-grade 90%+.
*As always, I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news/snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The situation has snowballed.”
→ Bill Gates and Larry Summers: Bill Gates, that poor malaria-curing genius, formally apologized this week to his foundation staff in a big town hall over his Jeffrey Epstein ties and the fact that he had affairs with two Russian women—that we know about. And Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, resigned from all teaching duties over his friendship with Epstein. I don’t know. I definitely think Epstein was a sex trafficker who deserved his fate (which was for sure that he was murdered), but I also think there’s a moral panic right now around anyone who came into contact with him. Like, Bill Clinton flew on his plane a bunch, but do I think Bill Clinton is a cannibal baby eater? No, I don’t. I think he cheated on Hillary and Jeff was someone to do bad things with. Do I think Bill should be entirely destroyed for that? Well, he was cheating on My Hilz, so, maybe. Wrong example. But to me, the current conniptions are a little manic, a little like a witch hunt. Now it’s become a whole thing about The Epstein Class. Maybe, I’m just defensive, as a member of the Epstein Files Community (I was a New York Times reporter doing a meeting for a story under the supervision of like five editors, I scream into the void, to no avail). Not everyone who emailed with Epstein was eating babies! We are a diverse community. Some are reporters, some are philanderers, and yes, morally that is the same, but still. Larry Summers is (probably?) innocent. Plus, I’m allergic to baby!
→ How dare you use the Naval Yard for military companies: Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York, and his team are ousting military contractors from the city-owned Naval Yard. Here’s a local council member, celebrating the decision: “Easy Aerial is leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard. [Brooklyn Navy Yard] leadership made the right decision last month to not renew their lease. This public asset should not be leasing space to companies producing drones that are being transformed into weapons of war.” It’s part of a movement to “Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard.” What do we think the word navy means? A deep shade of blue that symbolizes authority? Okay, fine. But genuinely, is the idea that America should not have a military, or just that the people who build our Air Force shouldn’t be allowed to live in Brooklyn? Play it out for me. I’m calling it—a “Let’s Sink the Intrepid Museum” movement (hiring 400 anti-Ozempic individuals to jump on it) is on the horizon.
→ Pack an AR-15 on your vacation, Grandma: Tourists were left stranded in Mexico as cartel violence exploded across places like Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, a fabulous vacation destination if you’re a burning tire. It looked like a civil war. Cars were on fire outside of a Costco. Women wearing custom pink trucker hats on girls’ trips were trapped.Hotels were reportedly denying late checkout, even to Marriott Platinum Elite members. Platinum Elites get a more dignified welcome internationally than most public officials. They may have more power than an ambassador. But now, everyone must fend for themselves. For some reason, this really made me laugh:
Gringos, especially members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, have been trapped in a drug war, and Canada’s government is like: We especially see you, two-spirit Puerto Vallarta party boys. Stay safe, queens. Because in those shorts? They’re coming for you, specifically.
And from Nellie’s bit on antisemitism. She gives two examples.
Here’s the investigations editor at The American Prospect, a mainstream progressive publication. She was a founding staffer at the popular feminist site Jezebel. And now this is what she explains would be the only way Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro could be considered a presidential front-runner:
The key phrase is the idea of mass slaughter to save the human race. Killing off this one people might just save the whole world.
Or here’s Ana Kasparian, another influential progressive commentator, elegantly summarizing the mood of the moment.
Verifying the above (yes, it’s real), I found that Kasparian had commented on that comment:
Antisemitic blockheads speaking! Israel has destroyed the United States? And no, Kasparian cannot be silenced; she can only be called out for what she is.
By sifting through an anonymized genealogy database, researchers have discovered a Utah family that has been having twice as many boys as girls for seven generations. It is the first clear evidence that humans might have ‘selfish genes’ that distort the sex ratio of offspring from roughly 50:50, the researchers argue in a preprint posted on bioRxiv earlier this month1. The findings have not been peer-reviewed.
Such sex ‘distorters’ have been discovered — and studied in great depth — in laboratory animals such as mice and flies, in which their effects can be detected through selective breeding. “If you look, more often than not, you find them,” says Nitin Phadnis, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who co-led the study.
Theoretical predictions suggest that sex distorters probably do exist in people as well, and that they could produce excesses of biological boys or girls at birth. But humans’ long generation times and low birth rates as well as ethical issues have made such genes — and other ‘selfish’ genetic elements , meaning that they bias their own transmission to future generations whether or not they improve an individual’s biological fitness — difficult to spot.
To overcome such issues, Phadnis and his colleagues looked to the Utah Population Database, which contains genealogical, health and other data for people from the late eighteenth century through to the present.
In humans, biological sex is determined by the sex chromosome that fathers pass onto their offspring: each sperm cell typically carries either a Y or an X chromosome, but not both. The mother’s egg cell, by contrast, usually carries a single X. Therefore, when sperm cells fertilize an egg cell, those with a Y chromosome give rise to biological male offspring (people who have both an X and a Y) and those with an X chromosome create biological female offspring (people with two Xs).
It’s likely that in this case the Y chromosome itself carries genes—although it carries few genes—that get it preferentially into a sperm or zygote, but there are several ways this can happen. We don’t know which one, nor do we yet know the molecular mechanism of sex-ratio distortion. Experiments are hard because these are humans, and you can’t do crosses with them, or manipulate their genes as we can do it in mice or flies. One might wonder if this distortion, if continued, would eliminate females from the population, but there are at least two reasons that won’t happen. I’ll leave you to think of them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested a Columbia University student on Thursday, then released her hours later following a request from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to President Donald Trump.
Federal immigration officers arrested Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva in an early-morning operation Thursday that led to a federal lawsuit and conflicting accounts of how the federal agents identified themselves to gain entry into her university-owned apartment in New York.
The New York City mayor’s office confirmed her release, saying officials asked ICE not to move her from the city so that she could have her day in immigration court.
“ICE cooperated with the request,” city spokesman Sam Raskin said in an email. “Mayor Mamdani then raised the issue directly with the President at the White House, and shortly after their meeting, the President informed him over the phone that Aghayeva would be released.”
After her release, the university and federal officials gave starkly different accounts of the circumstances of her arrest.
Claire Shipman, the school’s acting president, released a video and statement Thursday evening saying officers had misrepresented themselves. She said surveillance cameras showed five federal agents enter the off-campus Columbia residential building where Aghayeva lived shortly after 6 a.m. After making their way to her apartment, they showed pictures of an alleged missing child.
“Once inside the apartment, it became clear they had misrepresented themselves,” Shipman said. “A public safety officer arrived, asked multiple times for a warrant, which was not produced, and asked for time to call his boss, which was not given.
“The agents took our student.”
Shipman called the incident “frightening” and “unacceptable.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit identified themselves verbally and displayed their badges. The department did not directly respond to allegations that the agents had entered student housing under false pretenses. Federal officials said the building manager and her roommate let them into the apartment.
ICE placed Aghayeva in removal proceedings, federal officials added, and released her to await a hearing.
This is why ICE agents should wear body cameras, as the Democrats have demanded (that standoff is still going on). At any rate, this seems to be a tolerable outcome. She isn’t captive, but is awaiting her day in immigration court. I hope that won’t take too long. All immigrants suspected of illegal entry, unless they were convicted of crimes beyond that, should be afforded freedom before they appear before an immigration judge.
*Bill Clinton began his deposition before the Senate about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, and was less abrasive than Hillary. He was deposed not in Washington, but in an Arts center in New York. He maintains his innocence, but I wonder about those 17 visits of Epstein to the White House (why so many?) and the photographs of Clinton with Epstein and women whose faces are redacted (you can see some at the Guardian). The Guardian notes this:
The former president has maintained that he was an acquaintance of Epstein’s but stopped communicating with him at least a decade before his arrest in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. He flew on Epstein’s plane several times in the early 2000s after he left office and says he severed ties in the mid-2000s, several years before Epstein’s 2008 conviction of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Former President Bill Clinton began what was expected to be hours of testimony as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, striking a less defiant tone than Hillary Clinton did a day earlier.
In an opening statement posted online, Mr. Clinton acknowledged that he did have a connection with Mr. Epstein and that he was wiling to answer questions about it. But he insisted that he never knew about Mr. Epstein’s crimes and cut off his association with him long before his first guilty plea.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” he said. “Even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long.”
His deposition at the Chappaqua Performing Arts center near his home in the New York City suburbs marked the first time in history a former president was forced to testify before Congress against his will. The Democratic members of the panel have immediately signaled their intention to use it as a precedent to try to force President Trump to also answer questions about his relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Clinton’s session with House lawmakers was expected to follow the same format that Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, sat through on Thursday. Her deposition, which lasted more than six hours, appeared to yield no information about Mr. Epstein.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” she told reporters after the session ended. “It’s on the record numerous times.”
But Mr. Clinton did have a relationship with Epstein during the years he was building the Clinton Global Initiative, his post-presidential foundation, and Republicans said that they were eager to press him about their contacts. They also said that Mrs. Clinton had referred many of their questions to her husband and that lawmakers planned to follow up with him.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s chairman, declared the committee was bringing “some of the most powerful people in the world” to testify in the Epstein investigation.
He said he intended to ask about Mr. Epstein’s 17 visits to the White House while Mr. Clinton was in office, as well as photographs of the men together. “There are a lot of photos,” Mr. Comer said.
The Clintons fought for months to block the subpoenas they called invalid, unenforceable and politically motivated. They ultimately capitulated to Mr. Comer’s demands after some Democrats on the House Oversight Committee voted with Republicans to hold them in contempt of Congress if they failed to testify. Mr. Comer said on Friday that he would release the full transcript and video of Mrs. Clinton’s deposition, which she had requested to be made public, in the coming days.
This is the first time any President, sitting or ex-, has testified before Congress, and he’s the man who said “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.” Of course that depended on a weaselly definition of sex (fellatio), but like everyone, without a trial, we should presume that Clinton is innocent.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s getting bathing advice from Andrzej:
Hili: What was I about to wash? Andrzej: Your ear, I guess?
Hili: The right or the left?
In Polish:
Hili: Co ja miałam teraz umyć?
Ja: Pewnie ucho?
Hili: Prawe, czy lewe?
At least 23,000 Roma and Sinti people – including 11 thousand children were deported by the Nazi German regime to Auschwitz. After the Jews and Poles, they are the third largest groups of the victims of the camp.
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, one of his beloved illusions, and a paper about it:
Here's a striking visual illusion – the 9 purple dots.Focus your eyes on the top left dot. That one is more purple than the others, right? Now try another dot… that one becomes the purple one! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41744429/
I’ve posted this before in English, but the point is the same in French, and I love the video because it shows a savvy mallard. (“Cesars” are the French equivalent of Oscars.)
Well, what seemed likely has now happened; here are the headlines in today’s NYT (click headlines to read live feed, article archived here):
Trump’s 8-minute statement, calling for the “elimination of major threats from the Iranian regime”, which endangers the United States troops, our overseas bases, and our “allies throughout the world” (that of course largely means Israel). He asserts that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and says that, despite negotiations, Iran refused to abandon its nuclear program. He vows to “obliterate” their nuclear program, “annihilate their navy”, and assure that its proxies can no longer endanger the world.
Importantly, he tells the Iranian people that “the hour of your freedom is at hand”, asking them, when the attack is finished, to “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. ”
Do listen to it:
A summary of the ongoing news:
The United States and Israel on Saturday launched a major attack on Iran, with President Trump vowing to devastate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in its government.
Large explosions shook the Iranian capital, Tehran, where people reported seeing smoke rising from the district that includes the presidential palace. Witnesses described chaos in the streets as Iranians rushed to seek shelter, find loved ones or flee the city.
The American-led attack appeared to herald a much broader regional crisis. Iranian news media reported that Iran had targeted at least four U.S. military bases across the Persian Gulf — including in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which said they had come under attack.
Iran also fired multiple waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, prompting booms in the skies as Israeli air defenses sought to repel them. Air-raid sirens sounded across the country, sending Israelis running to fortified shelters.
Mr. Trump vowed that the “massive and ongoing” campaign would target not just Iran’s nuclear program, which was the focus of a U.S. attack last June. Instead, Mr. Trump said the United States would “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy,” arguing that Iran had refused to reach a deal with the United States that would have averted war.
He then called on Iranians to overthrow their government when the U.S. military assault came to an end. “It will be yours to take,” he said. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
Iran’s government vowed “crushing retaliation” against Israel and the United States and said it would not “surrender to their despicable demands.” Internet access in Iran plummeted amid the attack, making communication difficult.
And from the Times of Israel (click for free read):
From the ToI:
After long weeks of escalating regional tensions and burgeoning threats of conflict, Israel and the US launched a major joint strike on Iran on Saturday, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic.
Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear.
Targets in the campaign also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.
Several senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and political officials were killed in the strikes, an Iranian source close to the establishment told Reuters.
US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally… obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy,” he said in a video statement posted on his Truth Social account. “We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”
Trump indicated that the goal was to topple the regime, and he called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and take over their government.
Here are the questions that remain to be answered (my bold; indents from the news). Summaries are as of 5:30 a.m. today:
a.) What is happening to the Iranian people? The brave people of Iran, many of whom have been killed by the regime in recent protests against the government, are naturally anxious and terrified. They don’t know what is going to happen to their country. From the NYT:
Just as Iranians began their workweek on Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli strikes sent panicked residents of Tehran into the streets and parents racing back to schools where they had just dropped off their children.
Chaos and uncertainty set in as explosions shook the densely populated city, Iran’s capital, according to witnesses who spoke to The New York Times.
Ali, a businessman from Tehran, said in a text message that he was sitting in his office with many employees when they heard two explosions along with fighter jets streaking over the sky. Employees ran screaming out of the building, he said. He, like several other residents who spoke to The Times, asked not to be identified by his full name because he feared for his safety.
. . .When Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran last June, it targeted mostly military and nuclear sites and strikes in Tehran and assassinated its top military chain of command. The strikes on Saturday appeared far broader, including political targets like the intelligence ministry, the judiciary and the Pasteur gated compound where the president and supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, generally reside, according to residents in the area and local news outlets.
. . . Not all Iranians were angry as they watched the plumes of smoke rising from the blasts, said Arian, a resident of the Ekteban township west of the capital, who said some of his relatives were cheering the strikes. He said he could hear voices outside his building chanting, “Long live the shah,” a reference to Iran’s monarch, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
As warplanes launched strikes across the country, President Trump released a video statement announcing to Iranians that “the hour of your freedom is at hand,” and urging them to rise up gainst the government once the bombing stops.
b.) Did the U.S. strike do substantial damage to Iranian leaders, the Revolutionary Guards, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei?
From the Times of Israel:
Channel 12, quoting unnamed Israeli sources, says the palace of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been completely destroyed. It says it is not clear whether Khamenei was present. It also says all of Iran’s key leaders were targeted in the strikes so far today.
Which high officials have been eliminated remains to be seen; information out of Iran is thin because there’s an Internet blackout.
From the NYT:
Israel is still assessing its opening strikes, which hit a variety of targets, including figures considered essential personnel in the Iranian war machine, according to an Israeli military official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, in line with army rules. The official refused to elaborate on the identity of those targets. He said that Iran had fired dozens of missiles at Israel so far.
. . . Satellite imagery shows a black plume of smoke and extensive damage at the secure compound of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in Tehran, though his whereabouts were unclear. The image, taken by Airbus on Saturday morning, shows collapsed buildings at the complex, which typically serves as Mr. Khamenei’s residence and main premises for hosting senior officials.
c.) Where is Iran attacking? So far, Iranian missiles have been fired at U.S. bases, at Jordan, at the United Arabe Emirates, and of course at Israel.
From the Toi:
An Iranian missile has fallen on a home in Jordan’s capital Amman, state media reports.
Footage published by Arabic media shows flames and smoke rising from the wreckage.
. . . Jordan’s military says its air force is at work to protect the kingdom and its people while the strikes are ongoing. A military official says that two ballistic missiles targeting the kingdom’s territory “were successfully intercepted by Jordanian air defence systems”.
From the NYT:
The Emirati defense ministry said in a statement that it had intercepted a number of Iranian ballistic missiles and that a person in the capital Abu Dhabi had died as a result of falling debris. “The UAE reserves its full right to respond to this escalation and to take all necessary measures to protect its territory, citizens, and residents,” the statement said.
There is not much reports of damage to U.S. military bases or to other Middle Eastern countries, though missiles have been fired at them:
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, to inform him that Iran will be targeting U.S. military bases in the region, according to an Iraqi foreign ministry statement published on the ministry’s website. One of those bases is in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. The Iraqi statement said Mr. Araghchi had “clarified that these attacks were not targeting the countries involved, but were limited to military sites.”
Likewise, Israel is sending civilians to bomb shelters, but not much damage has been reported. From the NYT:
Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, the Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement on Telegram.
It also launched missile attacks targeting U.S. military bases in the region, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Fars reported.
Qatar’s ministry of defense said that it had “successfully thwarted a number of attacks” targeting its territory. The attack echoed another strike last June, when Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at an American military base near the Qatari capital, Doha, in response to a U.S. attack on its nuclear facilities.
From reader Jay, who’s following the Israel Home Front Command’s warning system. Jay says that “I have now gotten red alerts for every region in Israel I have alerts set for: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva. Apparently the whole country is under attack by Iranian missiles.” For example:
d.) How is the world reacting? They are, of course, distressed and worried, calling for the U.S. not to set off a wider war. From the ToI:
Countries in the Middle East and around the world voice fear of a regional conflagration after the United States and Israel launch long-feared strikes on Iran.
Russia calls on its citizens to leave Iran, with former president Dmitry Medvedev saying that talks with the United States had just been a “cover.”
The European Union warns the situation in the region is “perilous” and calls for civilians to be protected in any conflict.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, on X, urges “all parties to exercise restraint,” stressing it is “critical” to “ensure nuclear safety” after the US indicated Iran’s nuclear sites were in its crosshairs.
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announces the withdrawal of the bloc’s non-essential personnel from the region.
The UK government fears the strikes could blow up into a broader Middle East conflict, and urges its citizens in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE to find shelter.
“We do not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict,” a government spokesperson says, adding that the UK’s “immediate priority” is the safety of its citizens in the region.
From the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission. Note the beginning which takes Iran to task:
The latest developments across the Middle East are perilous.
Iran’s regime has killed thousands. Its ballistic missile and nuclear programmes, along with support for terror groups, pose a serious threat to global security. The EU has adopted strong sanctions against Iran and…
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada and his foreign minister, Anita Anand, backed the American action. “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” they said in a joint statement.
******
Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, said his government endorsed the U.S. attacks on Iran. “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security,” he said in a statement. He said Iran has been a “destabilizing force” for decades, and pointed to the two terrorist attacks in 2024 in Australia that the Australian government had said had been directed by an arm of the Iranian military. In one attack, men set fire to a Jewish kosher restaurant, and in another arsonists firebombed a synagogue, injuring one congregant. Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador afterward. (Reporting from Washington)
The reaction of the West is surprisingly mild, and even positive, probably because they, too, have put sanctions on Iran, and are not that unhappy about the prospect of regime change in Iran.
I have been ambivalent about this attack, worried that there would be substantial death to civilians should the U.S. put boots on the ground, which I saw as necessary if the U.S. really wanted regime change. Perhaps change can be effected without a ground war, but it’s early days now, and we’ll see. I am not sure, either, whether Iranian civilians truly can, in the face of the Iranian military, take over their government. The Revolutionary Guard has substantial weapons; the Iranian people almost nothing.
I am less worried about Israel, which survived a previous Iranian attack without much damage; the Iron Dome and its successor defenses are good at taking down missiles. But they’re not 100% effective, and there could be substantial loss of life as well as destruction of historic sites.
The world has changed overnight, so stay tuned to the news. The outcome right now is completely unclear.
