Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This is a question I’ve entertained for a long time, probably because I’m preoccupied with death. But I was curious about what would happen if astronauts, like the ones going around the Moon now, found themselves stranded in space with no way to get home, facing death from oxygen depletion or starvation. Or what would happen if the astronauts who were on the Moon years couldn’t start up the Lunar Module to get back to the Command Module and then back to Earth? Would they have been carrying something that would allow them to commit suicide quickly, avoiding a prolonged death?
I asked Jim Batterson, our resident NASA expert, and he didn’t know the answer. I then turned to the AI bot Grok, which I got for free when X (“Twitter”)—for reasons unknown—gave me a free blue checkmark.
My question to Grok is in bold below, and the short answer (indented) is that no, American astronauts don’t carry anything to do themselves in, though one Russian astronaut did. Grok went though the data in 11 seconds, and spat out the following. Note that there are references (the bot gives you the links, which I haven’t included) to check the statements.
Do the astronauts carry cyanide capsules or anything they can use to commit suicide if they are stuck in space?
Thought for 11s
No, astronauts do not carry cyanide capsules or any dedicated suicide pills as standard equipment.
iflscience.com
NASA has never issued suicide pills (sometimes called “L-pills” or cyanide capsules) to its astronauts, including during the Apollo lunar missions or on current ISS and Artemis programs. Astronaut Jim Lovell (Apollo 13 commander) explicitly debunked this long-standing rumor: “Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, ‘Did you have suicide pills on board?’ We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.”
iflscience.com
The idea appears to stem from spy-movie tropes, urban legends, or sci-fi (e.g., the film Contact), but it has been consistently denied by NASA and astronauts. Multiple sources, including direct statements from astronauts, confirm that no such pills have ever been part of U.S. spaceflight medical kits.
quora.com
Why the rumor persists, and why pills aren’t needed anywayIn a worst-case scenario of being stranded in space with no rescue possible (e.g., a failed re-entry or detached during a spacewalk), astronauts have pointed out that the vacuum of space itself provides a relatively quick way to end life if someone chose to—by simply opening a suit valve or venting the spacecraft’s atmosphere. This would cause unconsciousness in seconds and death shortly after, making a pill unnecessary.
theguardian.com
NASA’s focus is on prevention and survival: rigorous psychological screening, crew training, rescue protocols (e.g., multiple docked return vehicles on the ISS), and detailed medical kits. Those kits contain painkillers, anti-nausea drugs, antibiotics, etc., but nothing lethal like cyanide.
nasa.gov
If an astronaut were to experience a mental health crisis in space (e.g., becoming suicidal or psychotic), NASA has written procedures: crewmates are instructed to restrain the person with duct tape and bungee cords, monitor them, and administer sedatives like Haldol or Valium (orally or by injection if needed). The goal is stabilization, not euthanasia.
cbsnews.com
One historical exception (Soviet side) The only verified case involves Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first person to spacewalk, in 1965 on Voskhod 2). He stated that he was issued a suicide pill for that specific high-risk mission—in case he couldn’t re-enter the spacecraft and his crewmate had to leave him behind in orbit. His suit ballooned during the walk, and he barely made it back inside after partially depressurizing it. This was not standard practice for the Soviet program overall, and no evidence exists of it being routine for cosmonauts then or now.
iflscience.com
In short, modern astronauts (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc.) rely on engineering, training, and international rescue plans rather than personal suicide options. No agency equips crews with cyanide or equivalent for “stuck in space” scenarios.
I thought that Shermer’s article was confusing, largely because his own definition of free will seemed to smuggle in a bit of libertarianism, but also because the argument for free will seemed to say this: “We have free will because we feel like we have free will.”
Shermer then responded in the pages of Skeptic, the magazine he founded in 1992 and still edits; his response was called “Free will, determinism, and compatibilism: Shermer responds to Jerry Coyne.” He once again argued for compatibilism, buttressing his argument with statistics showing that most philosophers accept compatibilism (59.1%), with minorities being libertarian free-willers (13.7%), determinists (12.2%, I’m in this camp though I’m not a philosopher), and those who are “other” (14.9%). The gist of his argument seemed to be this:
I agree with Jerry and Dan that we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature. But I disagree with Jerry that this eliminates free will, or if you prefer “volition” or “choice” (again, this entire field is, to use Jerry’s term, “muddled” with confusion of terminology). My compatibilist work-around is “self-determinism,” in which while we live under the causal net of a determined universe, we are part of that causal net ourselves, helping to determine the future as it unfolds before us, and of which we are a part. My compatibilist position is based on the best understanding of physics today. Let me explain.
Physicists tell us that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy, means that time flows forward, and therefore no future scenario can ever perfectly match one from the past. As Heraclitus’ idiom informs us, “you cannot step into the same river twice,” because you are different and the river is different. What you did in the past influences what you choose to do next in future circumstances, which are always different from the past. So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen. Thus, our universe is not pre-determined in a block-universe way (in which past, present, and future exist simultaneously) but rather post-determined (after the fact we can look back to determine the causal connections), and we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world.
Free will, Shermer wrote, is somehow to be found in billions and billions of neurons, (to paraphrase Sagan):
Coyne is unhappy with my invoking of “emergence” and says I’m being rude to him and Sapolsky and Harris in accusing them of “physics envy,” but that’s what it is! Here, for example, is Sapolsky defending his belief that free will does not exist because single neurons don’t have it: “Individual neurons don’t become causeless causes that defy gravity and help generate free will just because they’re interacting with lots of other neurons.”
In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.
I found that confusing because I saw no freedom in simply saying that humans are part of the “causal net of a determined universe.” And I was confused by the claim that “while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen.” I didn’t understand that, and it seemed to smuggle some magic into the definition. And, as I’ll show below by quoting Sam Harris, I think that compatibilism misses the key feature of most people’s view of free will (yes, there are surveys): “We could have done other than what we did.” If you say, “yes,” then you are a free willer, but have to specify what aspect of the universe enables us to have done otherwise. If you say, “No, never,” then you are either a determinist or a compatibilist. Determinism needs no further explication, but compatibilism demands that you confect a new definition of free will—one that insists that we have it despite physical determinism.
Now there are at least a half-dozen versions of compatibilism, each proposing a different definition of the “free will” we supposedly have, so compatibilists themeslves have incompatible views about free will! It’s my belief from reading Dennett and others that compatibilism is pursued by people who think that if we don’t think we have some sort of free will, society will fall apart. People will think that without free will, we lack moral responsibility, and apart from that, we’ll all become nihilists unwilling to even get out of bed. After all, what’s the point if everything’s determined?
I have answered both of these assertions before, saying that determinists like me are not nihilists, that society can function even realizing that determinism is true, because people still feel like they have free will, and that we can have “respnsibility” without needing to have “moral responsibility,” which assumes we could have behaved otherwise.
But I’ve written about all this before. Michael was kind enough to allow me to respond to his response in the pages of Skeptic, and you can read my 2000-word response by clicking the screenshot below, or reading the article archived here. (The title comes from an old novelty song, “Yes! We have no bananas,”)
I’ll give just a few quotes from my piece; it’s short enough that you can read it in a few minutes.
[Shermer’s] smuggled-in dualism becomes clear when Shermer claims that although the action of individual neurons may be determined, “billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises.” But how can one neuron be governed by the laws of physics but a group of interacting neurons not be governed by the laws of physics. If they are, then there is no freedom, no volition, no “willed” control of our behavior, and no ability to have done otherwise. Yet Shermer argues that when a group of neurons cooperates, some kind of “will” arises. This dilemma won’t be resolved until Shermer explains the relevant difference between the behavior of one neuron and of a group of neurons.
. . .As Shermer notes, 59 percent of surveyed philosophers are compatibilists while the rest are almost equally divided between libertarians, determinists, and those with no opinion. He deems philosophers the “most qualified people” to pronounce on the problem, but are philosophers more qualified than neuroscientists or physicists? As Sam Harris (a neuroscientist and a determinist) said:
[Compatibilism] ignores the very source of our belief in free will: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.
. . . Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings. [JAC: I love that line.]
Importantly, the “folk” conception of free will—the libertarian version—is what most people think they have. It is that version that permeates society, the legal system, and, of course, religion, and is therefore the most important version to discuss.
And my ending:
Finally, Shermer poses what he sees as an unassailable challenge to my determinism:
In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation [of the monetary sort] in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.
That is a red herring. Like all phenomena in human society, you won’t find monetary inflation in the laws of physics. Nor will you find academics, music, sports, or any other human endeavor. The question is not whether these phenomena are in the laws of physics, but whether they result from the laws of physicsas emergent phenomena wholly compatible with underlying naturalism. And Shermer himself said yes, they do: “we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature.”
The problem of free will is “insoluble” only insofar as Shermer, trying to retain an idea of self-control, and ignoring the massive body of data on affecting volition, has confected a new definition that simply redescribes human behavior. The important question is this: “Is there physical determinism of human behavior or not?” Both Shermer and I agree that there is. In the end, however, Shermer seems to argue that we have free will because we feel like it. One might as well say that there’s a God because we feel like there is one.
That’s it; you can read the argument and come to your own conclusions. For some reason I can’t stop arguing about free will. I guess my persistence is also determined. . .
I have enough photos for about 1½ wildlife posts, the half-post being a collection of singletons. I’m saving all these to fill in lacunae, but as you see there’s a need for more photos. There was a time when I didn’t have to beg for photos, but since people haven’t sent many in, yes, I’m on my knees. At any rate, if you have good photos, of the quality normally posted here, by all means send them in.
Welcome to Thursday, April 2, 2026, and National Ferret Day. Here’s a video about ferrets, but I wouldn’t recommend you getting one as a pet: they’re cute but also stinky, and they bite.
It’s also Maundy Thursday (“maundy” refers to the Christian ceremony of washing people’s feet, as Jesus supposedly did on the day of the Last Supper. Some churches still ask people to wash each other’s feet), National Burrito Day, National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, and the first full day of Passover, which began yesterday at sundown and will last until sundown on April 9.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Yesterday Artemis II around-the-Moon mission, which will last ten days, took off successfully (or “nominally”, as they say) and, save for a glitch in the crew toilet, which was fixed, all is well. Here’s ten-minute video of the liftoff if you missed it:
*Here’s a summary of the war news (and Middle East news) from the NYT morning newsletter (with links):
Trump said that Iran was no longer a nuclear threat, but there is no evidence that is true.
The U.S. military began flying B-52 bombers over Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. It’s a sign the U.S. has control of Iran’s skies.
The global price of oil has reached $100, down four percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:
Ten people have been hospitalized following a missile impact in the city of Bnei Brak this morning. Two young children were badly injured—one critically, the other seriously. The mother of one and the father of the other are both being treated in moderate condition. Six additional children are undergoing medical evaluation.
The United States has reportedly attacked the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which had become a gathering point for Revolutionary Guards and Basij fighters. This is the same building in which 52 Americans were held by the regime for 444 days during the 1979 hostage crisis.
Yesterday, Pakistan and China jointly published a five-point initiative to end the conflict in Iran, calling for an immediate ceasefire, the start of negotiations, a halt to attacks on civilian targets, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a final peace agreement grounded in the UN Charter.
Let’s look at just the first one:
President Trump declared on Tuesday that he had already achieved one of the primary objectives of his attack on Iran, the elimination of its ability to build a nuclear weapon. But there is no evidence that the United States or Israel has removed or destroyed the country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade fuel.
“I had one goal,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office late in the afternoon. “They will have no nuclear weapon, and that goal has been attained.”
Several of Mr. Trump’s top aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have joined him in narrowing the war objectives in recent days, presumably to give the president space to declare victory and pull back from the conflict. When Mr. Rubio this week sketched out four major objectives — telling an interviewer to “write them down” — he made no mention at all of halting Iran’s nuclear program. (The State Department on Tuesday issued a video in which Mr. Rubio celebrated the smashing of the “shield” of missiles and drones that had protected the country’s nuclear infrastructure.)
But the country’s nuclear ambitions were the central argument for going to war when Mr. Trump announced the commencement of the military operation on Feb 28. In a speech to the nation that morning, Mr. Trump said he initiated “major combat operations” in part because Iran had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”
Dropping the elimination of the nuclear program from the administration’s list of strategic goals, or declaring the problem solved when Iran retains control over its nuclear fuel, now poses a factual, political and rhetorical challenge.
Indeed it does, as that was the main objective that Trump described when he announced the attack on Iran. If he’s going to just declare victory and get the hell out, then everything will go back to where it did before, and Iran will eventually have nukes. That is not what the sensible (i.e., non-terrorist) countries in the Middle East want.
The United Arab Emirates is preparing to help the U.S. and other allies open the Strait of Hormuz by force, Arab officials said, a move that would make it the first Persian Gulf country to become a combatant, after being hit by Iranian attacks.
The U.A.E. is lobbying for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize such action, the officials said. Emirati diplomats have urged the U.S. and military powers in Europe and Asia to form a coalition to open the strait by force, the officials said. A U.A.E. official said the Iranian regime thinks it is fighting for its existence and is willing to bring the global economy down with it in a chokehold on the strait.
The U.A.E. official said the country had reviewed its capabilities to assist in securing the strait, including efforts to help clear it of mines and other support services.
The Gulf state has also said the U.S. should occupy islands in the strategic waterway including Abu Musa, which has been held by Iran for a half-century and is claimed by the U.A.E., other Arab officials said.Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are now turning against Iran’s regime and want the war to continue until it is disabled or toppled, Arab officials said, though they have stopped short of committing their military. Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is sponsoring the U.N. resolution, with a vote expected Thursday.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are now turning against Iran’s regime and want the war to continue until it is disabled or toppled, Arab officials said, though they have stopped short of committing their military. Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is sponsoring the U.N. resolution, with a vote expected Thursday.
I didn’t think the UAE had much of a military, but it turns out it does, and even has mandatory conscription. The military has 65,000 people on active duty, and there are 130,000 reservists, along with 139 fighter planes and a small navy with two minesweepers. It also has a decent air defense system. It’s not comparable to what Israel or the U.S. has brought to bear, but it’s heartening that other Middle Eastern countries are willing to help open the Strait, especially in view of Iran being willing to take on anybody who takes on this task.
A majority of the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of President Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship during arguments on Wednesday.
Key conservative justices raised doubts about the constitutionality of the president’s executive order that would end automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign visitors.
But in an argument that lasted more than two hours, several of the court’s conservative justices also asked tough questions of a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the legal challenge, making the outcome of the legally complicated and hugely consequential case not fully clear.
In an unprecedented move and a signal of the stakes of the landmark case, President Trump attended the first part of the argument, watching from a public gallery as his solicitor general defended the policy. Mr. Trump had been railing against the court on social media in the days leading up to the argument.
The case focuses on the constitutionality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump last year that would end citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign visitors.
The executive order, which was blocked by lower courts and has never gone into effect, would affect only babies born in the future. Opponents say a decision to uphold it would create chaos and uncertainty for newborns and their parents, and cast doubt over the status of millions of people who have already benefited from birthright citizenship.
I think Trump’s birthright ban was clearly unconstitutional, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Given that provision, he’s bucking the law. I was surprised to learn that birthright citizenship is far from universal. Here’s a map that Luana sent me of how countries relate birthplace to citizienship. She thought that Australia’s and the UK’s policy of requiring the parents being legal residents was more sensible than “automatic” citizenship. I was surprised that no European country adheres to the U.S. policy, and, indeed, the “parents must be legal residents” policy has things to say for it.
Israel’s public image is in the toilet. On the socialist left, the Jewish state is portrayed as a genocidal colony. On the populist right, Israel and its supporters in America are conniving courtiers who bullied President Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran on its behalf. The numbers back it up too. A Gallup poll released late last month found that more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis for the first time in the quarter century that Gallup has been asking the question.
All of this might lead Zionists to despair for Israel’s future. In terms of soft power, Jerusalem is being pummeled by podcasts, protests, and social media. But that is only part of the picture. When it comes to hard power, the stuff of arms sales, diplomacy, and air space, Israel is on a generational run.
. . .In the recent past, American presidents have asked Israel to hold fire, fearing its participation in the previous Gulf wars against Iraq would poison cooperation with Arab allies. Under the old rules, Israel was the underdog, surrounded by enemies, protected and subsidized by America. Now Israel’s air force is helping shoot down Iranian missiles aimed at the Gulf States that once refused even to recognize its existence.
Nothing succeeds like success. Since the fall of 2024, Israel has demonstrated the ability to decapitate the leadership of its enemies from the air. The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology that made these air strikes possible is now the envy of its neighbors. The dreams of pro-Palestinian activists to persuade the world to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel look quaint when nearly every military would love to learn how Israel is able to assassinate terrorist leaders without committing ground forces.
Pollack said that Gulf Arab monarchies “are not going to tank their partnership because of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. They need them for all these other reasons. It’s the ultimate triumph of Israel’s economic and military power.”
Beyond Israel’s military advances, the Jewish state has also been accumulating allies. Take Israel’s recent pact with Somaliland in January. Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, contrasted the Somaliland agreement with past Israeli development projects in Africa. “This is not just a new water project,” she said. “This is a strategic asset on the Red Sea.” Israel may soon be able to project naval power in one of the most important waterways in the world.
Bryen said, “There is a tectonic shift going on generally. Countries are moving to align with what they consider to be a strategic power, Israel, in the Middle East, in Africa, and Europe.”
. . . Israel still has a steep hill to climb when it comes to its public image in America and Europe. But very few people have noticed that as Israel has lost the public relations war in the West, it has been winning a real war in the Middle East. And the countries that used to yell loudest about Israel’s perfidy are quietly cheering on its air force as it helps to dominate the skies and pulverize the regime in Iran.
One can hope. But that steep hill is still there, and my personal impression is that antisemitism is growing, at least in the West. A new Middle East is shaking out, and I hope I’m alive to see what happens in the next ten or fifteen years.
*When I visited Iceland for most of a week last August, I found it expensive, as does everyone else. Most stuff is imported, raising prices, and now they’re even higher because of the rising price of oil. Even the famous Icelandic hot dog, of which I had several, has shot up in price. You probably didn’t know that hot dogs are almost Iceland’s national dish, though they haven’t quite learned the right way to serve them yet.
Iceland is an expensive place to eat. This country in the North Atlantic depends on imported food, and inflation has been raging for years despite the government’s efforts to tame it.
But even though food prices are high, most Icelanders can still afford a hot dog.
“Everyone eats it, rich or poor,” said Gabriel Máni De Sousa, 16, fixing his hairnet behind the counter of Pylsubarinn, a decades-old hot-dog stand south of Reykjavik, where he works weekends.
Then he started making “one with everything,” the local way — with both raw and fried onions between the meat and the bun, and a healthy squirt of ketchup, sweet brown mustard and a rémoulade on top. Usually made with a blend of three meats — Icelandic lamb and beef as well as some imported pork — the dogs have a real snap, followed by a burst of juice that could shame their American peers.
If Iceland had a national dish, it would be the hot dog. It’s akin to the dollar slice, that emblem of affordable New York City eating: hot, reliable and better than it needs to be.
The dollar slice in NYC has gone the way of the Edsel, I’m afraid; a slice is three or four bucks now. Note that Icelanders PUT KETCHUP on the dog along with mustard, something that’s a capital offense in Chicago. A bit more:
But even Iceland’s hot dogs are not immune to inflation.
Prices vary depending on the stand and the toppings. But for the most part, a standard dog costs about 750 Icelandic krona, around $6. That is low for the Reykjavik area, where a kebab can cost $17 and dinner-plate-sized pizza can be $20. Consumer prices were 5.2 percent higher last month than in February 2025 — that’s more than twice that of the European Union. Hot dog prices have followed, steadily increasing at stands across the country.
Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur — the most famous hot dog shop in Iceland, whose name translates to “The Town’s Best Hot Dogs” — has been selling in downtown Reykjavik since at least the 1930s, and expanded rapidly in recent years from four to 14 locations.
Baldur Ingi Halldorsson, the chief executive, said he has raised prices more in the past few years than in the previous 20. In 2022, the price was 600 krona (about $4.80); now, it’s 880 krona, or just over $7. Inflation has increased ingredient costs and wages have gone up, so the cost of running a business is higher.
I actually got a dog and a Coke at the very location pictured in the NYT article, but really, you need at least two dogs to make a meal, and that’s getting up there in price.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili becomes a self-help cat:
Hili: Put your worries off until tomorrow.
Andrzej: They might grow old.
Hili: That’s the point.
In Polish:
Hili: Odłóż zmartwienia na jutro.
Ja: Mogą się zestarzeć.
Hili: I o to chodzi.
From Bryan; Steve Stewart-Williams has done the hard work of untangling what people mean when they make probabilitistic statements:
Ever wondered how people interpret phrases like “almost certainly,” “probably,” and “probably not”? Well, wonder no more. The graph below shows the probability estimates people give for these and various other terms and phrases.
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 1, 2026
From Luana. This is distressing, but you remember Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was murdered on a train in North Carolina. A mural of her has been defaces in some places and, in Providence, Rhode Island, has been removed. You can read the story here. It’s complicated by the fact that some rumors say the murals were funded by Elon Musk. To me, they’re justified as a remembrance of a woman who fled to America to find safety, but instead was murdered. The “division” appears to be about race, as the killer was black (and also mentally ill).
Rep. David Morales justified the removal of the mural of Iryna Zarutska “to make sure that every community member who calls Providence home feels safe.” It appears that memorializing the murder of an innocent woman makes some feel unsafe… https://t.co/OULyFBKuWg
This Dutch Jewish girl, along with her mother and two brothers, was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was about seven years old. https://t.co/9Lk5AaB26H
One from Dr. Cobb, on hols till tomorrow. This book might be worth looking into: it’s got 4.8 stars on Amazon out of 627 reviews.
I am excited that I have a new edition and new publisher for my book KAIBYO: THE SUPERNATURAL CATS OF JAPAN. I increased the text, added some new images, and basically fixed all the stuff that has been bugging me since it's first release 8 years ago.It's a banger.www.amazon.com/Kaibyo-Super…
The ten-day around-the-Moon mision launches at 6:26 pm Eastern US time, about 26 minutes from when this is posted. Actually, that is the start of a 2-hour launch window. Stay tuned!
You can call me a curmudgeon for saying that rock and pop music today are dreadful compared to that of their years of apogee (yes, my teenage years!), but you’d have to call Rick Beato a curmudgeon as well. And he knows a ton about music, being a musician himself, a producer, a music analyst, and a teacher. So he surely has more musical cred than I. Nevertheless, we generally share opinions about music, in particular the view modern rock and pop is tedious, repetitive, and boring. And I’ll argue strenuously that it’s not just because I like the music of my youth, and other generations like the music of their youth. Nope, metrics like musical complexity, the frequency of autotuning, and so on support the decline of rock and pop.
In the ten-minute video below, Beato compares the Beatles with Taylor Swift, and you can guess who comes off worse. (The “kids” may disagree, but they also are largely ignorant of the Beatles.) I have to say that I’ve listened to a fair amount of Taylor Swift, trying arduously to find out what it is about her music that’s made her the world’s biggest pop sensation. It can’t be her tunes, which are unmemorable, so perhaps it’s her lyrics about the bad guys she’s been involved with—something that surely resonates with her (mostly) female fans.
In this video Beato reacts to a 2024 NYT article (archived here) that discussed whether Taylor Swift is bigger now than the Beatles were in the past. That article concludes that both were huge and, if you use the right metrics, Swift can be seen as even bigger than the Beatles:
The length of Swift’s career has allowed her into the Beatles’ vaunted ballpark by giving her the chance to evolve her sound, grow her loyal audience and take full advantage of technological advances.
Yet as wild as it is for the Beatles to have accomplished so much in so little time, Swift’s longevity might be considered equally impressive in pop music, which often overvalues the new and — especially among female artists — the young.
Swift is of course still active, so we can’t measure something that I consider important: will their music be listened to twenty years hence? And how will it be regarded several decades after Swift or the Beatles stopped making music? We’ll have to wait, of course, for the answers to those questions, and I’ll be underground.
However, in this video, Beato details his experiences with Swift, having attended a number of her concerts and having a deep acquaintance with her music, as he has with the Beatles. But Beato is concentrating on quality, not sales or chart position. He notes that many of Taylor Swift’s melodies were written by a large number of people who change over time, compared to only three for the Beatles (Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison). And it shows in the lame melodies (Beato likes Swift’s lyrics better than “her” tunes.) Further, Swift’s instrumentation itself was largely produced and performed \ by people other than Swift—something that, says Beato, is simply “how pop music is made” these days.
Although one would think that the Beatles don’t need to be extolled by Beato, since he’s done it so many times before, but he does mention great melodies of Beatles songs like “Lady Madonna,” or “I am the Walrus.” (I could mention a gazillion more.) In contrast to Swift, he argues, the Beatles did not repeat ideas, and “they came up with all those ideas themselves.” He winds up calling Swift a “content creator”, who picks the brains of other people when she wants to change her music.
Beato asks for comments on his opinion, and I welcome yours below. But I doubt I’ll change my opinion that rock and pop music peaked several decades ago, and has gone downhill ever since. Swift’s immense popularity only proves that.
I have never heard a Taylor Swift song that comes close to the quality of this Beatles classic, and it isn’t all that complex compared to their later work. George Martin’s interpolation at 1:42, however, is a piece of genius:
The song was recorded on 18 October 1965, and it was complete except for the instrumental bridge. At that time, Lennon had not decided what instrument to use, but he subsequently asked George Martin to play a piano solo, suggesting “something Baroque-sounding”. Martin wrote a Bach-influenced piece that he found he could not play at the song’s tempo. On 22 October, the solo was recorded with the tape running at half speed, so when played back at normal pace the piano was twice as fast and an octave higher, solving the performance challenge and also giving the solo a unique timbre, reminiscent of a harpsichord.
The background: in 2019, Colorado passed a bill banning “conversion therapy for a minor” (HB19-1129), which you can see here. it defined “conversion therapy” this way:
(5.5) (a) “CONVERSION THERAPY” MEANS ANY PRACTICE OR TREATMENT BY A LICENSED PHYSICIAN SPECIALIZING IN THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHIATRY THAT ATTEMPTS OR PURPORTS TO CHANGE AN INDIVIDUAL’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY, INCLUDING EFFORTS TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS OR GENDER EXPRESSIONS OR TO ELIMINATE OR REDUCE SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC ATTRACTION OR FEELINGS TOWARD INDIVIDUALS OF THE SAME SEX.
(b) “CONVERSION THERAPY” DOES NOT INCLUDE PRACTICES OR TREATMENTS THAT PROVIDE:
(I) ACCEPTANCE, SUPPORT, AND UNDERSTANDING FOR THE FACILITATION OF AN INDIVIDUAL’S COPING, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND IDENTITY EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT, INCLUDING SEXUAL ORIENTATION-NEUTRAL INTERVENTIONS TO PREVENT OR ADDRESS UNLAWFUL CONDUCT OR UNSAFE SEXUAL PRACTICES, AS LONG AS THE COUNSELING DOES NOT SEEK TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY; OR
(II) ASSISTANCE TO A PERSON UNDERGOING GENDER TRANSITION.
This is aimed only at minors—people under 18. Conversion therapy was not characterized as a criminal offense, but as a violation of professional discipline—a form of “unprofessional conduct” that could be punished by licensing boards, including suspension of licenses and fines.
Note that although we hear a lot about the law banning “affirmative therapy,” most of us see that as a kind of therapy that urges children who are gender dysphoric to alter their gender or their sex. But the law as written also bans “gay conversion therapy”: attempts, once in vogue when homosexuality was seen as a mental illness, to prevent people from being gay—to keep them “straight.” There are laws in 27 states and the District of Colombia, as shown in the map below from the Measurement Advancement Project, prohibiting this kind of therapy.
As the SCOTUS blog reports (as does the Supreme Court’s decision, linked below), the ban was challenged by a therapist who wanted to help her clients transition the way they wanted:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sent a challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – treatment intended to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity – for young people back to the lower courts for them to apply a new standard. By a vote of 8-1, the justices agreed with Kaley Chiles, the licensed counselor challenging the law, that the ban discriminates against her based on the views that she expresses in her talk therapy. A federal appeals court, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, should have applied a more stringent standard of review, known as strict scrutiny, to determine whether the law violates the First Amendment as applied to Chiles.
But the Supreme Court also strongly hinted that the ban would fail that test. In his 23-page opinion, Gorsuch stressed that in cases like Chiles’, Colorado’s ban “censors speech based on viewpoint.” Because the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth,” Gorsuch continued, “any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. She argued that the majority’s opinion “could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”
Chiles went to federal court in Colorado to challenge the constitutionality of the 2019 law and block Colorado from enforcing it against her. She contended that she did not attempt to “convert” her clients. Instead, she said, she merely tried to help them “with their stated desires and objectives in counseling, which sometimes includes clients seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit allowed the state to continue to enforce the law. The majority concluded that the conversion therapy ban simply regulated conduct – a licensed mental health professional’s treatment of a client – that also happened to involve speech. Therefore, the court of appeals concluded, it would review the ban using the least stringent test for constitutional challenges, known as the “rational basis” test – a relatively low bar, the court of appeals said, that the ban passed.
Chiles came to the Supreme Court in 2024, asking the justices to weigh in. On Tuesday, they reversed the 10th Circuit’s ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts for another look.
Curiously, Chiles apparently wasn’t trying to force her clients to adopt one course of action over another, but to achieve the course of action they wanted:
[Chiles] contended that she did not attempt to “convert” her clients. Instead, she said, she merely tried to help them “with their stated desires and objectives in counseling, which sometimes includes clients seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”
The issue here is that it’s still “affirmative” in that Chiles went along with what their (minor) patients wanted rather than examining what they wanted.
The grounds for the decision were narrow: banning conversion therapy violated the First Amendment’s provision for freedom of speech (my bold below):
Gorsuch characterized the question before the justices as “a narrow one”: whether Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates the First Amendment as applied to the talk therapy that Chiles provides, and in particular whether the 10th Circuit was correct in applying “rational basis review” to the ban.
The Supreme Court, Gorsuch observed, “has long held that laws regulating speech based on its subject matter or ‘communicative content’ are ‘presumptively unconstitutional’” and therefore trigger strict scrutiny, which requires the government to show that a restriction on speech is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. “Under that test,” Gorsuch added, “it is ‘“rare that a regulation . . . will ever be permissible.”’”
The court has also acknowledged, Gorsuch continued, “the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. When the government seeks not just to restrict speech based on its subject matter, but also seeks to dictate what particular ‘opinion or perspective’ individuals may express on that subject, ‘the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,’” Gorsuch stressed. “’Viewpoint discrimination,’” Gorsuch said, “represents ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation, and governments in this country must nearly always ‘abstain’ from it.”
“Applying these principles,” Gorsuch continued, “we conclude that the courts below failed to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny in this case.” First and foremost, Gorsuch wrote, although “the First Amendment protects many and varied forms of expression, the spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech. And that is exactly the kind of expression in which Ms. Chiles seeks to engage.”
. . . The majority rejected the state’s contention that the conversion therapy ban targets conduct or medical treatments, rather than speech, and therefore should be subject to a more deferential standard of review. Although the ban “may address conduct—such as aversive physical interventions” – Gorsuch wrote, Chiles “seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say,” as well as “what views she may and may not express.” “Colorado,” Gorsuch concluded, “does not regulate speech incident to conduct; it regulates ‘speech as speech.’”
Note as well that Colorado’s ban wasn’t fully negated, nor were similar bans throughout the U.S.. Rather, the case was sent back to the lower courts for reevaluation on these grounds (from Grok, with sources); the applicable appellate courts must:
Apply strict scrutiny (the most demanding level of First Amendment review) to the law as it applies to Chiles’s talk therapy. Under this standard, Colorado bears the burden of proving that the restriction on Chiles’s speech is narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.
Reconsider the case in light of the Court’s determination that the law engages in viewpoint discrimination (banning one set of views on sexual orientation/gender identity while expressly permitting the opposing “affirmative” views, such as acceptance, support, identity exploration, or assistance with gender transition).
The Court’s opinion, concurrences, and Justice Jackson’s dissent can be found by clicking on the screenshot below:
I’ll be brief here (I hope): the Court screwed up big time here, failing to recognize, as Justice Jackson said in her 35-page dissent (which she read from the bench in toto), that in the case of therapy, medical or psychological, talk is more than just speech, it’s treatment. From her dissent:
No one directly disputes that Colorado has the power to regulate the medical treatments that state-licensed professionals provide to patients. Nor is it asserted that, when doing so, a State always runs afoul of the Constitution. So, in my view, it cannot also be the case that Colorado’s decision to restrict a dangerous therapy modality that, incidentally, involves provider speech is presumptively unconstitutional. In concluding otherwise, the Court’s opinion misreads our precedents, is unprincipled and unworkable, and will eventually prove untenable for those who rely upon the long-recognized responsibility of States to regulate the medical profession for the protection of public health.
Remember that medical therapy uses speech as well. Any doctor who simply told a patient to go home and drink vinegar with herbs to treat their cancer would be guilty of professional misconduct. Note that here the doctor doesn’t do anything, but could still be punished for malpractice. The doctor must adhere to reasonable and accepted forms of treatment, and that includes treatments suggested only through speech.
Brown notes that conversion therapy is “dangerous,” and nearly everyone would agree with that vis-à-vis gay conversion therapy. It’s long been recognized by therapists and their organizations that trying to force someone out of becoming gay, instead of simply talking over the issue, is acting unethically and, insofar as this causes stress and may change someone’s life in a negative way, i.e. causing harm.
We’re beginning to recognize that the same holds for “affirmative therapy” as well. If it works, affirmative therapy puts young people on a one-way treadmill leading to to puberty blockers, then to adult hormones, and perhaps to surgery. Britain’s Cass Review, as well as studies in Scandinavian countries, have already recognized that “affirmative therapy” that leads to blockers and hormones is of unproven efficacy and could be dangerous over the long term. Insofar as talk therapy promotes these actions, then, it too is dangerous—much like telling someone they should take vinegar for cancer. It seems only rational that when a minor has a psychological problem around gender or sexuality, the therapist should be giving objective treatment—helping the patient sort out their feelings—and not imposing some outside ideology on the therapy. For outside ideology is exactly what is polluting “conversion therapy”: you shouldn’t be gay on the one hand, and on the other your gender dysphoria should be roundly affirmed (e.g., you feel like a girl inhabiting a boy’s body, and thus should go that route) rather than examined.
Perhaps when this case is remanded to lower courts, they will clarify these issues, notably that talk therapy is equivalent to action. But surely the Supreme Court could have said that, and, as far as I can see, they messed up big time. I’m especially disappointed that the other two liberal justices, Kagan and Sotomayor, deemed the Colorado law a case of “viewpoint discrimination.” It may have been that way for legislators, but the law as written doesn’t deal with motivations. It is trying to prevent harm to minors.
I disagree strongly with the Court’s decision, while at the same time remembering that the law it banned is aimed at minors, not adults.
