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.
All the ducks are doing well: the four offspring of Miss Duck are getting larger and have developed visible necks and tails. Yesterday was their “weekiversary,” as they came to the pond on Sunday, July 19.
Miss Duck is taking good care of them. It was wicked hot yesterday, but they survived by immersing themselves in cool water as well as sleeping most of the day. Here are a few snapshots from Sunday, including one video and two turtle snaps.
The lovely Miss Duck. While I love all hens, she is an exceptionally pretty and graceful one, possessing a long, slender neck:
Head-on shot:
A thriving duckling:
A video of the brood swimming, dunking, and diving after lunch:
And we musn’t forget our four turtles. Miss Duck is afraid of them, pecks at them underwater when she can, and quacks and moves away when they’re swimming nearby. But when the ducks are on the rocks, the turtles avoid basking there. I guess they harbor a mild dislike of each other, but there is no real animosity.
Here are three doing “turtle yoga,” stretching out their necks and limbs to catch the sun:
And one of the red-eared sliders. I believe it’s a male based on the long front claws.
Now that the U.S. has abandoned the Iranian people’s freedom as a goal in the ceasefire negotiations, it’s time to look back on what happened to women since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, creating a theocracy. In the past I’ve done that, as I do here, by doing a Google image search for women in Iran. The results are telling. Here we see the regressive change wrought in the last fifty years.
First, the results of the Google image search, “Women in Iran, 1975″ , before the Revolution. Do the search for yourself, and click what’s below to enlarge it. Note the women in shorts skirts and Western dress, with only a very few in burqas or hijabs:
The results of the Google image search, “Women in Iran, 2025”. Most of the women are covered, and those who are not are protesting covering or demanding freedom. This is what the theocracy has done to women, and the argument that covering is a “choice” simply doesn’t stand up. It’s not chosen, but compelled. (Note: there are some areas of Tehran where women eschew veiling as the Morality Police don’t do their thing there.)
These are half of the people Donald Trump implied that he’d free: they would take over their government after he toppled it.
Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, July 27, 2026, and National Scotch Day. Although I’m not much of a Scotch drinker, when I do have one it’s the single-malt from Scotland highlighted below:
Here again are my mother’s brothers Bernie and Mo, honoring Aunts and Uncles Day, which was yesterday. My sister sent me this and added, “As you can see, Morley’s zipper is down. In almost every picture of these two, one of them has an unzipped zipper. It was a family joke!” Moe is on the left (the unzipping in the photos was accidental):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 26 Wikipedia page.
President Trump often celebrates his unpredictability, declaring that it keeps allies and adversaries alike off balance.
By his telling, his willingness to bomb Iranian nuclear sites 13 months ago, and send Delta Force commandos in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in early January, reflected his determination to execute military operations that would have made his predecessors blanch. He told The New York Times he was limited only by “my own morality,” as he wielded the world’s biggest hammer.
But in recent weeks, he has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.
He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined as he began full combat operations on Feb. 28, when he set out goals for a swift end to Iran’s nuclear program and the overthrow of the country’s government.
Five months later, those goals remain almost entirely unaccomplished. And Mr. Trump, once confident that overwhelming force would enable him to pursue in Iran what he proudly called the “Venezuela model” — a change of government to one amenable to U.S. control — is now hesitant to plunge back into major combat operations that his intelligence agencies assess are unlikely to work as well in Tehran.
He has been unable to control surging oil prices, or their effects on the stock market. The shipping that crawled to a stop in the Strait of Hormuz, then was opened for a few short weeks, is back to a trickle, with a second choke point, between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, now threatened. And while the president has threatened to take Kharg Island, where Iran ships oil, or to seize its underground stores of enriched uranium, he has said publicly that he knows there is no appetite for sending in ground troops.
Those limits have left him deeply frustrated, his aides say, and have made him more erratic, even by Trumpian standards. Last week alone, Mr. Trump’s energy secretary signed a historic pact with Saudi Arabia to provide civil nuclear power to the kingdom, before the president undercut the deal less than 24 hours later, stunning the Saudis by declaring that the agreement, negotiated over 18 months, was dead unless the country joined the Abraham Accords and recognized Israel.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat with long experience in the Mideast, said that Mr. Trump again “alienated the Saudis, delighted Benjamin Netanyahu and gave Iran strong talking points as to why cutting deals with U.S. is a fool’s errand, bound to be betrayed.”
. . .Not all of Mr. Trump’s frustrations, people close to the president say, are driven by the war, now so unpopular that only 29 percent of Americans polled by The Washington Post and Ipsos approved of his handling of the conflict. But much of it is. And the angst is clear as he promises to stop Iran’s nuclear program at any cost, while his allies at home want out.
“We got to wrap it up,” Speaker Mike Johnson said last week, voicing a sentiment heard increasingly from Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters.
But the president does not have a clear way to accomplish that goal. Having entered the conflict with little strategy for victory, he now is struggling for a face-saving way to exit.
This is a “news analysis” piece, which is why it sounds like an op-ed, and it’s clearly designed to show Trump’s ineptness at handling the war. But it’s not far off, either. Winning the war definitively would seem to require boots on the ground, and the American people won’t tolerate that. I have no solution as I’m no strategist or pundit, but I wonder how many of the 71% who don’t approve of his handling the war would suggest that he do. Presumably many Democrats, “progressive” or otherwise, would tell him just to get the hell out of Iran, and stop bombing. But then, when Iran controls access to the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, what would they suggest? (see the next item).
*The WSJ describes how the vast oil supplies of Saudi Arabia are beginning to depend on only a single exit route, through the Suez Canal. And the Canal itself is threatened by the Houthis, an arm of Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s vast oil exports increasingly depend on one last narrow exit.
Since the Iran war began, the kingdom has ramped up exports across the country to its Red Sea coast, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, and shipped them through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to Asian customers. Now, threats from Houthi militants—and several attacks against Saudi vessels in recent days—risk choking off that workaround, forcing more Saudi barrels onto a longer, costlier and technically challenging journey through Egypt’s Suez Canal and around Africa.
This week, at least four tankers carrying Saudi crude abruptly reversed course before reaching Bab al-Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea to head north toward Suez, while Saudi Arabia has begun offering more crude cargoes for loading from Egypt’s Mediterranean ports, according to ship-tracking firm Vortexa. In the first three weeks of July, seaborne oil transit via the Suez Canal ran at its highest volume in 2½ years, while imports to the Sumed pipeline—which runs parallel to the canal—were up 50% from the previous month, Vortexa data showed.
The diversions mark the latest redrawing of global oil flows after months of war have forced producers, traders and shipowners to abandon familiar routes for ever costlier detours. Gulf producers from the United Arab Emirates to Kuwait have been racing to build routes bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. On Saturday, Iraq said it would sign an agreement with Syria to build a pipeline project to carry Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean Sea.
The stakes for the global economy are high: Persistent risks to regional shipping could push oil well above $100 a barrel, analysts say, stoking inflation and straining an already fragile global economy.
Here’s the current route, which still goes through the narrow 2-mile-wide shipping channel of Bab al-Mandeb. If the Houthis close that one off, presumably under Iranian orders, the alternative pathway to China (or anywhere, really), shown in orange, is a LOT longer. If Iran tries to block off both straits, or impose tolls for transit, somebody has to stop it. (Photo credits at bottom.)
(From WSJ): Fully loaded very large crude carriers sit too deep to pass through the Suez Canal and would have to carry partial loads. Source: Kpler
The “settler violence” narrative has a template. Settlers instigate, IDF forces arrive to back them, and trigger-happy Israelis, now with military cover, are unleashed on defenseless Palestinians. But consider what happened near Havat Gilad on Friday morning.
By the end, two Israelis were dead. Benayahu Melet, 32, a father of two from the outpost’s emergency squad, was murdered rushing to defend a group of hikers; Maj. Yuval Ezra, 27, an artillery battery commander, later succumbed to his wounds. The group—some 60 in all, a number of them minors accompanied by armed adults—had set out from Har Bracha before dawn on what was meant to be a hike. But they walked into Area B, where Israelis are not meant to enter without prior coordination. The army later confirmed the entry had not been cleared.
The first attack came around 7:05 a.m. as they passed the village: Palestinians throwing stones and swinging clubs, with one hiker struck in the face. Rather than escalate, the group fired warning shots in the air and withdrew toward Havat Gilad.
An hour later, dozens more surrounded them from three directions. Here the template says the soldiers arrive and the shooting starts. Instead, by the hikers’ account, armed civilians fired in self-defense while the first soldier on the scene refused to fire; when more troops arrived, they too “did nothing.” The video shows the IDF hesitant and trying to deescalate. Only when one of the attackers wrested a rifle from a civilian guard and opened fire—killing two Israelis—did the soldiers finally return fire.
The group should not have been in the area without IDF coordination. But the punishment for trespass is not death. Yet the international framing treats the mere existence of Jews beyond the Green Line as an implicit acceptance of that consequence—as if presence itself is provocation and violence its inevitable answer. This is not a story of settler violence. It’s an example of Palestinians treating the presence of Jews itself as an act of aggression—and answering that “aggression” with violence.
The question is how often the “international framing” episode takes place. I haven’t written much about the West Bank situation because I haven’t followed it nearly as closely as I’ve followed the conflict in Gaza, and the West Bank is a complicated issue. Undoubtedly the “settlers” have behaved badly with dire consequences for Palestinian residents. But as we see the opposite as well. In 2013 I was driven to the border of the West Bank, to an area which theoretically allows Jews and even Israeli Jews to enter, but I didn’t enter because this sign scared me. “Dangerous”!
*In an article called “Hoot and shoot,“The Washington Times reports that the mass slaughter of barred owls, in a misguided government attempt to save spotted owls, has begun,
It may be hard to imagine the federal government paying hunters to shoot and kill owls, but that is exactly what has begun in the Pacific Northwest and California, where the destruction of up to 450,000 barred owls is underway in a desperate bid to save spotted owls.
After years of planning and despite public backlash, objections from Congress and animal rights organizations, and an ongoing lawsuit, the shooting of thousands of barred owls has started.
The Yakama Nation Tribe in Washington, using grant money provided by the federal government, is hunting and killing up to 1,500 barred owls on reservation land. The Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California, operating off a $4.5 million federal grant, has started removing barred owls from area forests.
A team from the University of Wisconsin has been participating in the shotgun culling of barred owls for several years.
The UW team has helped destroy 3,373 barred owls in California — about a third of the state’s population — as part of a key study that researchers say shows that removing the brown-and-white raptors slowed the decline of the threatened California spotted owl.
“Removals stabilized spotted owl populations and halted the establishment of barred owls,” researchers wrote in Conservation Letters. “Our work provides direct support for the federal strategy to address this pressing issue and highlights general strategies to maximize conservation while minimizing invader killing.”
Opponents, including animal welfare groups, biologists and environmentalists, have tried to stop government-sanctioned massacres, arguing that the removal will not increase the spotted owl population and is inhumane and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“We’re going to be picking winners and losers in nature,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, which seeks to prevent animal cruelty and is suing to stop the plan. “Natural movements of animals are going to be judged as trespassing, and we are going to try to kill off these other animals to put our thumb on the scales for northern spotted owls. And it’s not going to work.”
Yes, the higher population of barred owls reflects a “natural” movement, as they weren’t imported to the area. It may be due to human effects, like global warming, though I don’t know. But I don’t think the solution is killing the barred owls to save the spotted ones. Whatever caused the incursion of barred owls will continue, and, like Pacelle says, I doubt that this mass slaughter will work. STOP KILLING THE OWLS!
*Martha Lillard, as this WaPo story describes, spent 73 years in an iron lung after contracting polio at age 5. What a horrible fate! When I was young polio, and the iron lung to which many victims were doomed, were much more common, and we all had to avoid swimming pools during epidemics. But soon thereafter there were vaccinations (the first ones when I was six), and polio is no longer much of an issue. But Ashely Alker, identified as “an emergency medicine physician and the author of 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them, tells us “What could die with the last person using an iron lung” (archived here).
In 1955, just two years after Lillard contracted the virus, the first polio vaccine became available, and by 1979, the disease was eliminated in the United States.
But when it comes to vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S., society can be a victim of its own successes. As public health efforts such as vaccines eliminate the suffering caused by a disease, collective memory of the illness fades. Contemporary health information is often gathered from personal networks, the internet and the media, none of which is compelled to cover seemingly obsolete vaccine-preventable diseases, such as rubella, diphtheria and polio. The paucity of accurate information leaves a gap for profiteers, who may sensationalize vaccine skepticism in the hopes of going viral. This has proven especially concerning when supported by the leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Polio, or poliomyelitis, was once a feared childhood viral infection in the U.S., with 58,000 reported cases in 1952. Common symptoms include fever, sore throat, nausea and vomiting. The virus may spread through the bloodstream to the brain stem and spinal cord, where it attacks motor nerves, causing paralysis known as paralytic polio and often called infantile paralysis in children. Polio is still present outside of the U.S., with 52 cases confirmed last year, and most commonly affects children under age 5. Among those paralyzed, up to 10 percent will die once paralysis affects the breathing muscles. The disease is highly contagious: Patients can spread the virus for several weeks, which is how it killed or paralyzed over half a million people a year globally before the vaccine.
. . .Over the past 50 years, global immunizations have saved the equivalent of six lives a minute, an estimated 154 million lives — most of them infants. There is no effective cure for polio, or for most other vaccine-preventable diseases. Without adequate vaccine coverage in the population, outcomes may resemble those of the pre-vaccine era.
And vaccines do more than save lives; they protect economies and safeguard future generations — and ensure military readiness. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rescinded the U.S. military’s influenza vaccine mandate. Late last month, an influenza outbreak occurred at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, with initial reports of more than 280 ill, four hospitalized and one young man dead. Shortly after — by coincidence, said one Pentagon official — the Defense Department’s influenza vaccine mandate was partially reinstated.
Science may offer the most up-to-date information on vaccine-preventable disease, but history is an indispensable public health tool, too. On March 11, 1918, one of the first reported cases of the flu pandemic occurred at Fort Riley, Kansas, where overcrowding and poor sanitation led the virus to spread to more than 500 men within a week. This strain of influenza was more devastating than World War I, infecting one-third of the world and killing an estimated 50 million people. In 1945, when the influenza vaccine was licensed, it was immediately mandated by the Defense Department for active-duty service members, a decision that was informed by the memory of violent illness.
Here’s the lesson, and it’s clearly directed at RFK, Jr., who seems bent on reducing vaccination as much as he can get away with.
Likewise, Lillard’s story is an essential piece of American history. Understanding the risk posed by a vaccine-preventable disease is essential to the success of future public health initiatives. If Americans forget what vaccines fight against, then neither will they understand the importance of maintaining defenses.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are discussing biology. I would have said “maybe ants,” but termites evolved well before ants did.
Hili: Who invented an artificial environment first? Andrzej: I would guess termites, but I’m probably wrong.
In Polish:
Hili: Kto pierwszy wymyślił sztuczne środowisko?
Ja: Podejrzewam termity, ale prawdopodobnie jestem w błędzie.
From Masih, who goes off on Mamdani; English translation below:
Masih Alinejad, the Iranian human rights activist, in a live television program directly addressed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying, “I oppose your hypocrisy, Mr. Mayor.” She accused Mamdani of loudly taking stances on Netanyahu and Palestine, but remaining completely silent about the Islamic Republic’s crimes against the Iranian people—the same regime that executes protesters, tortures political prisoners, and exports terrorism across the region.
This is not just a political clash, but an exposure of a pattern among Western politicians who wear “human rights” like a theatrical costume, only when it suits their interests and never when they must confront Tehran head-on.
🔴#فوری | مسیح علینژاد خطاب به ممدانی، شهردار نیویورک
مسیح علینژاد، فعال حقوق بشر ایرانی، در یک برنامه زنده تلویزیونی مستقیم خطاب به شهردار نیویورک، زهران ممدانی، گفت «من مخالف ریاکاری تو هستم، آقای شهردار.» او ممدانی را متهم کرد که با صدای بلند درباره ی نتانیاهو و فلسطین…
From Luana via Maarten Boudry, who notes that Cofnas is “problematic” because he’s considered a hereditarian (and has also behaved badly, which led to his demonization at Cambridge University). But the story of this Cambridge professor, who appears to be both a fabulist and a plagiarist, is disturbing, for Cambridge seems to be covering up the facts (read the story here).
Every time you think academia has hit rock bottom, you read something like this, from the prestigious @Cambridge_Uni. If you’ll excuse me now, I need to go pick my jaw up off the floor.
(Please bracket whatever you think about @nathancofnas and his views on IQ & race, which are…
I wouldn’t mind having this, but it’s a lot of dosh!
This pretty perspex model of the double helix, from 1953, was just sold for $614,400. It was made at the Cavendish by Tony Broad, the ace technician who also ran the X-ray crystallography set-up. I think they cost around £50 each at the time (a lot, back then!). Watson’s copy is in the CSHL archive.
We are in dire need of wildlife photos, so if you have some good ones, please send them in.
Today we have the sixth and last installment of Ephraim Heller’s photos from his recent trip to Namibia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
This is the last installment in my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. Today’s photos were taken inland, at the Ongava/Etosha region (where I photographed rhinos for last week’s installment) and at Nkasa Rupara National Park in the Caprivi Strip.
Most of the animals in this post are well known to readers, but the history of the Caprivi Strip is worth a digression on 19th century colonial competition in Africa. Here is a map (courtesy of WorldAtlas) of present-day Namibia. The Caprivi Strip is the odd extension in the northeast corner of the country that juts out to contact Angola, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It is 30 km wide and 450 km long:
Germany had established the colony of German South West Africa (modern Namibia) in 1884. Germany also had the colony of German East Africa (Tanganyika, the mainland portion of modern-day Tanzania). German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi wanted to establish a trade corridor between the two German colonies on the west and east coasts of Africa, but there was one problem: the British held colonies in between. He came up with the idea that if he could extend German South West Africa’s eastern border to the Zambezi River, there would be a navigable waterway linking the two German colonies.
This ambition led to negotiations with Britain and to the signing of the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty in 1890. Britain transferred the Caprivi strip and ceded the North Sea island of Heligoland to Germany. In return, Germany recognized British authority over the Zanzibar islands (now also part of Tanzania) off of Tanganyika.
All of Chancellor Caprivi’s scheming came to naught, however, because the Germans were not aware of a small obstacle to navigation in the Zambezi River known today as Victoria Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the world (photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons):
The cunning British, on the other hand, were well aware of the existence of Victoria Falls (David Livingstone having named them in 1855). Perfidious Albion, indeed. As usual during the Scramble for Africa, the indigenous people were not a consideration in this deal.
Now, on to the animals. I’ll skip descriptions as most species will be familiar to readers:
Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, July 26, 2026, and National Bagelfest Day. Below I put, as always, a genuine bagel rather than the large, airy bread toruses that pass for bagels in America. This was in Montreal ten years ago. No commentary is needed:
One with a schmear. Notice that the bagel is small and dense.
It’s also Aunts and Uncles Day, National Coffee Milkshake Day, and World Tofu Day. In honor of the first holiday, here are my late uncles Bernie (left) and Mo (right)—my mother’s brothers. They’re all decked out for a round of golf, at the Jewish country club, of course (Jews weren’t allowed to join the regular country club):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 26 Wikipedia page.
I have visitors for much of this week, so posting will be light; perhaps even days without a Hili dialogue. Caturday posts are being eliminated because interest is low.
The war between the United States and Iran remained on pause for a second straight day on Sunday, while the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that there had been some movement in talks between Tehran and mediators over the Strait of Hormuz.
No U.S. strikes on Iran have been reported since Friday, while Iran has similarly held off attacking American allies around the Middle East after about two weeks of skirmishes brought the two countries back to the brink of full-blown war.
President Trump decided last week to put off plans to escalate the U.S. assault on Iran, at least for now, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Trump and his aides were motivated in part by dwindling stockpiles of interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
Mr. Trump has struggled to decisively end the war on Iran that the United States and Israel started jointly five months ago, even as the global economic toll and number of American casualties have mounted. A cease-fire signed last month effectively collapsed after Iran continued to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments.
Iran is and will continue to be the main exporter of terrorism in the Middle East—indeed, in the world. If it’s allowed to retain the power it had to do that, America will have failed completely in our war aims.
President Trump met on Friday with top advisers and senior members of his cabinet to decide whether to intensify the military assault against Iran, according to four people briefed on the discussion.
The meeting took place as Mr. Trump faces a potential inflection point in his approach to Iran, after the collapse of a fragile cease-fire and a memorandum of understanding that was intended to bring the United States and Iran back to the negotiating table for a longer-term denuclearization.
The White House did not divulge whether Mr. Trump determined how to proceed. But the president indicated that the military was ready to carry out heavier assaults if ordered to do so even while leaving open the door to a diplomatic solution.
“Look, we’re locked and loaded,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. “We’re ready to go, but we’re talking to them, so maybe there will be, maybe there won’t be a tipping point.”
He added: “Maybe they will cry uncle, or maybe they’ll just give up, or maybe they’ll just go into a cave and hide.”
Mr. Trump previewed some of his discussions in an interview with Axios on Thursday, saying: “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”
He also indicated that the Israelis most likely would not be part of a new escalation, saying there could be “consequences” for them, apparently meaning from Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is coming to the United States on Monday and plans to meet with Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced.
Mr. Trump has insisted that the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran would be a relatively short “excursion,” although it has lasted nearly five months, with no end in sight.
In my view, that last sentence is on the border of news and opinion. Nobody knows how long a war would last when it’s started, and nobody predicted that the Iranian regime would decide to tough it out while inflicting economic damage on the world by controlling the Strait of Hormuz. I have no idea whether Trump will escalate (I’m starting to think he will), nor what route he would take if he did.
Somewhere around the two-hour mark in JD Vance’s nearly three-hour podcast interview last week with Joe Rogan, the pair got into a serious conversation about supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena. By serious, I mean it in the sense that Rogan seemed to take the subject seriously while Vance cynically, or cretinously, or cravenly, or credulously or conspiratorially — or perhaps it’s all of the above — played along with him.
It contained the following insights from the vice president of the United States:
“If we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is humanlike, but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.”
And:
“If you’re looking for me to concede the point that there is something different or could be something different between an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural but non-any-of-those-other-things beings, yes, I concede that.”
And:
“I got two-and-a-half more years as V.P., and I swear to you, if there are little green men, like body remains, I’m not going to text you. I’m going to try to smuggle a camera in and get a photo of these things.”
By this point, the two men had already propounded one conspiracy theory — that the Los Angeles mayoral election had been rigged (a claim previously debunked by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor); followed by Vance’s accusation that Joe Biden’s staff got him to eat ice cream “in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable” (a remarkable way of turning naked mendacity into adolescent prurience into another conspiracy theory); followed by an exchange about eating corn dogs in public (because, you know); followed by an argument about whether the Ten Commandments should be mandated in Texas public schools, in which neither man appeared to be aware that the commandments are not originally Christian.
The truth — that the most influential media figure in America today, with tens of millions of followers on social media, is a jocular bro with an Everyman affect who seems never to have encountered an idiotic or despicable conspiracy theory he isn’t willing to promote (moon-landing denial) or platform (Hitler revisionism). We are a nation that has moved at speed from the realm of fact colored by opinions to a kingdom of delusion infested with fear.
The truth — that the current vice president is by far the worst person ever to hold the office (move over, Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun and Spiro T. Agnew); that he thinks, probably correctly, that there’s no political downside in today’s Republican Party to talking like a guy who thinks Dan Brown novels are works of nonfiction; and that it’s equally OK for a person who, by his own admission, has access to all U.S. intelligence to tease the possibility of deep-state conspiracies of the sort his political base is likely to believe. The prospect of this callow and sinister opportunist taking the place of the erratic buffoon now governing us may be the single scariest thought in world politics today.
The truth — that Vance’s interview with Rogan (as close as politics gives us to a national cancer diagnosis) was a blip in the news cycle, because crazy today is every day, and our capacity to feel shocked diminishes with every asinine utterance coming from the vice president’s mouth, to say nothing of that of his boss.
The truth is that the demons are here. We elected them.
Ouch! Well, this is good for the Democrats: there’s plenty of dirt on Vance if he runs for President. But perhaps his acolytes don’t care.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been running a campaign to demonize Israel and its supporters for committing “genocide.” He should reconsider after Thursday’s double-stabbing in New York, which included a kippah-wearing Jew attacked after exiting a synagogue.
Police arrested Raul Morales in connection with the stabbings. The mayor said victim and witness statements allege that Mr. Morales yelled “Allahu akbar” while attacking a Jew, Moshe Grunhaus and an Asian, Chok Sung. The NYPD is evaluating if this was a hate crime.
A friend who visited Mr. Grunhaus at the hospital tells us the victim was in the process of moving to Florida, in part due to concerns about crime, antisemitism and Mr. Mamdani. He returned to New York to tie up loose ends and attended synagogue during the fast of Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the ancient temple in Jerusalem.
Earlier this week Mr. Mamdani taped a video accusing Israel of genocide and deliberate child murder. The next day he wished New York’s Jews a “peaceful” fast, in which “mourners will pause and reflect on the history and resiliency of the Jewish people.” That history is in Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but the mayor calls the Jewish state a “settler-colonial” project.
Thursday’s stabbing would fit comfortably with the Palestinian intifadas that Mr. Mamdani and his allies have been keen to “globalize.” Only after repeatedly excusing that phrase did he say that he would “discourage” it. He now sticks to “genocide,” “apartheid,” child-killing and other accusations to render Israel an enemy of mankind, along with the “Zionists” whose crime is to support its existence.
Before his mayoral run, Mr. Mamdani used “Zionist” as a casual slur. He also told comrades: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” Israel’s military.
Mr. Mamdani reacted to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by bashing Israel, not Hamas, and mourning victims on both sides. His wife liked Instagram posts cheering on the Hamas attack. His party, NYC’s Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed a rally by pro-Hamas groups on Oct. 8 in “solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist,” as the DSA put it.
. . .Mr. Mamdani isn’t responsible for Thursday’s stabbing. But he is responsible for promoting a culture of denigration that is all too easy for a fevered mind to hear and conclude that violence against Jews is acceptable. The mayor and his ideological groupies are playing with antisemitic fire.
“When I was growing up,” Rabbi Yosie Levine said Friday, after the attack on a congregant, “the only time we saw security outside my synagogue or my Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak. The police were there to protect him. Today, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us.”
What can I say? Mamdani seems far more concerned with denigrating Israel and accusing it of apartheid and genocide than running his city. And the MSM, save for the conservative Wall Street Journal, won’t mention it at all. (That’s of course because they agree with the Mayor.)
*I am opposed to government-run lotteries and to sports betting, which is rapidly taking over the U.S. Lotteries are simply regressive taxes, and sports betting is a way to get people addicted to gambling, as well as for the government to collect taxes on a profitable enterprise (the government taxes the companies as well as the winnings of successful betters)—companies that are guaranteed to do better than the sports fans. In an essay in The Free Press, “The case against sports betting,” Coleman Hughes gives us his take.
Infamous as these offenses are, they became so because they were rare. For most of American history, it has been difficult and risky for a professional athlete to place a major bet on his own games.
But with the legalization of sports betting in most U.S. states—touched off by the Supreme Court’s overturning of a federal ban in 2018—we are now entering a darker era. With online betting legal and frictionless, athletes need only a few seconds on their smartphones in order to place a bet (or better yet, get a friend or family member to do the same). And they need not do anything as noticeable as throw a game. A professional basketball player, for instance, can simply bet on individual elements of their personal statistics line (called a “player prop” bet), and then subtly alter their play without drawing unwanted attention.
The scandals are now coming so frequently that it is hard to keep track of them. Just last Friday, the NFL suspended Arizona Cardinals executive Ryan Gold for allegedly betting on his team’s games. A few weeks prior, former NBA player Malik Beasley was indicted for allegedly manipulating his play in at least four 2024 NBA games in coordination with a group of bettors.
In the age of frictionless online betting on player props, all it really takes to cheat is to coordinate with one trusted friend or family member, tell them that you’re not feeling your best before a game, subtly underperform throughout the game, and then accept in-kind gifts from that person. Sure, the authorities will catch those who do this sloppily. But how exactly will they catch a duo who carries out such a scheme in an intelligent and patient manner?
But Hughes has an argument beyond the cheating argument given above—a view more similar to mine:
But the problem with sports betting is not just its effect on the integrity (both real and perceived) of sports. It’s also the unhealthy temptation it creates for sports fans. For psychologically well-adjusted bettors, it’s an innocent hobby. But for a significant minority, it’s a dangerous vice. One scholarly paper found that the introduction of online sports betting to a U.S. state caused a 12-point decline in average credit scores as well as an increase in “indicators of excessive debt, including bankruptcy filings, debt sent to collections, credit card delinquencies, and auto loan delinquencies.”
. . . And where is that money coming from? It’s what people would normally be saving in retirement accounts or for purchasing a home, worthwhile investments that can better their lives. A new study concludes that “risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments,” and instead drive up household debt, even as betting companies soak up billions in revenue.
What to do? As Hughes recognizes, once the government gets a taste of the money, and fans are used to betting, the cat is out of the bad for good. He proposes a more moderate solution:
So what should be done? Returning to something like the pre-2018 status quo—where sports betting was illegal in every U.S. state (except for Nevada, Oregon, Delaware, and Montana)—would be ideal. But it’s not going to happen. Now that states have a taste for the tax revenue that comes from the $167 billion industry, they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. In principle Congress could ban it federally, but that is unlikely for much the same reason.
There are, however, more moderate alternatives. The SAFE Bet Act, introduced by Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal and New York Rep. Paul Tonko, both Democrats, would keep sports betting legal while curbing its excesses. The bill would, among other things, ban in-game betting, advertising that targets minors, and player prop bets. Its main flaw is that it would require bettors to prove that they can afford bets before making them, which would require invasive financial disclosures. But on the whole, it is a decent first draft of the kind of legislation that we need.
I’d still favor a ban on betting, but it ain’t gonna happen.
*The FDA is considering whether to make peptides available to the public by allowing “compounding pharmacies” to make them. (A “compounding pharmacy” makes medicines on site.) The NYT tells us what peptides people want (archived here). I was interested because I heard on the news yesterday that there’s a peptide for insomnia, but I lost interest after I read about it.
An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration convened Thursday to evaluate whether compounding pharmacies should be allowed to produce seven peptides that were previously banned over safety concerns.
Despite being prohibited, some of these peptides have become increasingly popular among consumers who purchase them from longevity clinics, alternative health providers, biohacking influencers and even TikTok. The peptides may be produced in unregulated labs, often in China, and sold as “research grade” compounds.
The F.D.A. is evaluating the peptides for specific uses, like treating ulcerative colitis, insomnia and osteoporosis. But they are marketed and used for many other purposes, which could be permitted if the drugs were cleared.
F.D.A. staff scientists reviewed the research on the peptides and have recommended against clearing the peptides, citing a lack of safety and efficacy data in humans. Here’s what they found.
I’ll give just two:
BPC-157
BPC-157, sometimes referred to as Body Protection Compound or bepecin, is one of the most popular “gray market” peptides.
The F.D.A. is evaluating it to treat ulcerative colitis, and it is also marketed as helping to reduce gastrointestinal inflammation and prevent ulcers. Another common use is to support muscle and joint healing — it is sometimes referred to as the “Wolverine compound,” after the Marvel superhero, especially when taken in combination with another peptide, TB-500.
A few small studies in humans have suggested BPC-157 might have benefits for knee pain, bladder-related pain or ulcerative colitis symptoms. But these had notable limitations: Two lacked a placebo group, and another was not published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Emideltide
Emideltide, also known as the delta sleep-inducing peptide, is naturally produced in the brain. Levels fluctuate throughout the day, which suggests it is connected to circadian rhythms, and it has been shown to increase deep sleep in animals.
The F.D.A. is considering an emideltide injections for insomnia, narcolepsy and opioid withdrawal. (Scientists think it acts through the opioid system.) It’s also marketed for stress, pain, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
There are several human studies of emideltide, most from the 1980s involving intravenous infusions. The research has generally suggested that emideltide helps people with insomnia fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer compared with a placebo. But the studies were very small and had limitations and did not all show a clear benefit.
The human data was even more limited for narcolepsy — just a single case report in one patient.
There are others, but with just as pessimistic a take. The upshot for all the peptides discussed is that the evidence is very thin, that there are some with side effects that may be serious, and tjat although some of these may eventually be useful, none are yet ready for prime time.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have a high-level discussion:
Hili: How would you characterize the consciousness of artificial intelligence? Andrzej: The determinism of algorithms. Though you shouldn’t take me seriously.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak byś określił świadomość sztucznej inteligencji?
Ja: Determinizm algorytmów. Ale nie traktuj mnie poważnie.
From FIRE via Luana; this doesn’t seem to rise to the level of “fighting words,” though the speech was hateful and odious. Click to read full tweet and get link:
This makes me sad because my dad was a college professor, and if he was still alive he really, really would have enjoyed fucking with his students like this. https://t.co/xmX5vx3YOK
One from my feed, a lovely fawn. I’d like to see the adult:
On a farm in Michigan, a rare deer named “Dragon” was born with pure white fur and captivating blue eyes.
But because of his unusual color, his mother rejected him and abandoned him.
A kind family adopted him and cared for him until he grew up to become one of the most… pic.twitter.com/3QM8HAw4LY
A hare—and one who takes off very fast when it sees the human:
I’ve been standing stock still in this wood for about 10 minutes while I mess about with a photo on my phone. I look up, notice the shape, and slowly crouch down to filmThis has made me so happy I feel I could cry. It’s as close to magic as I hope to get.
We have three cat-related items today, and a bit of lagniappe.
From Facebook’s F’d Up Facts (note that the image is AI):
And the information attached to it:
At the Glenturret whiskey distillery in Scotland, there was a cat named Towser. She was a long-haired tortoiseshell. Her job was to keep the place free of mice. She did her job very well. In fact, she was the best mouser in the world. Over 24 years, she is believed to have killed 28,899 mice. That’s about 3 mice every day for her entire career. The Guinness Book of Records officially recognizes her record. She became a legend in the distillery. A statue was even put up to h…
All hail Towser. In the pantheon of mouse-catching machines, the famous cat from the home of The Famous Grouse reigns supreme, and it’s all about the numbers: almost a quarter of a century on duty at Glenturret, and a frankly mind-boggling 28,899 rodents liquidated.
Towser was a kitten of the ’60s, but seems to have skipped the ‘peace and love’ stuff – and she was still gamely terrorising mice until her death, three weeks short of her 24th birthday, in 1987.
Her longevity is attributed to the addition of a wee dram to her milk every night, although we should say that this is not a form of treatment formally endorsed by the veterinary profession.
If you’ve a calculator handy, you might have worked out that, for Towser to account for 28,899 mice over a 24-year period, she’d have had to kill three or four every day. That’s quite a vermin problem.
The story behind the figures is simple: a team from The Guinness Book of Records observed Towser’s activities for a few days, totted up the corpses and extrapolated the total from there. Not exactly scientific.
But let’s not allow such mundane concerns detract from the legend of Towser; a legend that lives on, both in the form of a statue at Glenturret distillery and, earlier this year, in a distillery bottling named after the mouser supreme.
You can see the official Guinness record here. Towser puts Larry to shame!
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Here’s a video I found on Facebook. It’s basically true (see below), describing a parachute drop of cats into Borneo to control rodents where the native cats may have been exterminated by application of DDT.
The Wikipedia article on “Operation Cat Drop” is here, and here’s a bit of it:
Operation Cat Drop is the name given to the delivery of cats, equipment and supplies by the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force to remote regions of the then-British colony of Sarawak (today part of Malaysia), on the island of Borneo in 1960. The cats were flown out of Singapore and delivered in crates dropped by parachutes as part of a broader program of supplying cats to curb an infestation of rats. The operation was reported as a “success” at the time. Newspaper reports published soon after the operation reference only 23 cats being used. Some unreliable later accounts of the event claim that as many as 14,000 cats were used, but this figure is apocryphal. An additional source references a “recruitment” drive for 30 cats a few days prior to Operation Cat Drop.
Insecticides including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) were widely used during the 1950s, including in Borneo, as a malaria control measure. The insecticides were intended to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes before they could pass the disease onto humans.
At the time of the cat drop in 1960, newspaper reports indicate that a district in Sarawak was suffering from an infestation of rats, which were destroying crops. It has been suggested that this rat infestation was the result of many of the existing local cats dying due to the use of DDT or other insecticides, and the rat population subsequently increasing as it faced reduced predation from cats. While it has been claimed that these cat deaths resulted from biomagnification of DDT – the cats eating other creatures such as lizards or cockroaches that had in turn been exposed to DDT – this has not been confirmed. Deaths of cats may have been caused by direct exposure to DDT sprayed in dwellings, as opposed to biomagnification.[4]
A nine-minute video about the operation, with pictures and video supplied by AI.
Text for the video is here. And Wikipedia notes the unintended consequences of spraying DDT to control mosquitoes and the malaria they carried. Note that the video gives another but less likely story involving the proliferation of geckos or, alternatively, of caterpillars.
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Finally, a new NYT article dispelling another bit of cat-related “wisdom”: that cats groom each other as a form of friendship and bonding. Not always true! You can read the article here by clicking below, or find it archived here.
An excerpt:
Let’s just say cats have a reputation — of being standoffish, manipulative, maybe even jerks. Here’s more corroborating evidence: Scientists are beginning to think that even seemingly innocent cat behavior — grooming another cat — might not always be nice.
Mutual grooming, called allogrooming, is widespread in the animal kingdom and found in primates, birds, horses and even insects. The grooming is typically focused on parts of the body that are difficult for an animal to reach on its own, like its back and neck, making the behavior an act of kindness that supports social bonding and wins friends.
Like primates that pick lice from each other’s backs, cats that lick each other have also been considered an indicator of social bonding. “So far, mutual grooming in cats has been categorized as affiliative, or ‘friendly,’ cat behavior,” said Noema Gajdos Kmecova, a cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University and an author of the new study.
Or so we thought.
Morgane Van Belle, another cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University and the study’s lead author, was observing her own cats, Fabio and Giovanni, interacting over a favorite napping spot in the sun and noticed something.
“I saw these weird grooming patterns in my own cats where I thought, This is not super friendly at all,” she said. “Sometimes one cat would lay on the blanket near the window and the other cat would come up and start licking it — but in an annoying way.” The interaction would induce the licked cat to get up and forfeit the sunny spot, she said.
Reader Divy told me she noticed eactly this with her two cats Jango and Boba. A bit more:
To check whether this behavior was more widespread, Ms. Van Belle and her colleagues looked at 53 households across Europe with two or more cats. After telling the pet owners what to look for, the researchers had them submit videos of their cats’ interactions. The scientists then randomly selected a submission from each participant and used statistical analyses to tease apart the hidden nuance in cat-licking behavior.
“It became immediately clear from the analysis that mutual grooming does not mean the same thing in all contexts,” Ms. Van Belle said.
The results revealed two things. The first was consistent with typical grooming behavior: The cats licked each other on the head, neck or ears. In these videos, the cats were much more likely to mimic each other’s body postures, either cuddling together or sitting next to one another before and after the grooming. The licks were clearly friendly gestures.
The other side of the cat-licking coin revealed something more in line with bullying. A subset of the videos showed that licking often preceded conflict. These interactions were defined by differing body postures, where one cat might stand and lick the other sitting cat. The aggressive licks were followed by signs of stress in the licked cat, including staring, yowling, rotating the ears, licking the lips or swiping at the other cat. The results were inconsistent with the prior conception of cat allogrooming.
“Based on our findings, allogrooming is associated with at least two contexts — not only social bonding, but also social tension,” Ms. Kmecova said.
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Lagniappe: First, the cat with the world’s longest tail:
Here’s a 2½-minute video of Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about socialism, communism, and his vision of America. It’s a bit Ayn Rand-ish, and I ignored the bit about God. (I don’t know the narrator, but it appears to be a “media personality” named Jillian Michaels, a woman of conservative views.
Rubio is speaking about “radical leftism” and its goal of “social justice” that, he thinks, is really acting out a mindset of “poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation. . . “.
Have a listen and tell me that part of this doesn’t resonate with you; and forget it’s Marco Rubio speaking and just listen to the message. Of course I’ll get labeled an “alt-righter” for posting this, but I don’t care. I sent the video to several of my center-left friends, and in general they liked it (except for the God part).
Head-on shot:
