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.
Over the years I’ve posted several of what I call “Coyne’s Rules for Life”, giving advice that I’ve learned can be useful. Here are two I remember (I haven’t written the list down anywhere):
When taking a shower or running a bath, turn the cold water on first and only then the hot water, adding the hot to the cold until the desirable temperature is reached. This prevents you from burning yourself.
When buttoning your shirt, start from the bottom up. This makes it much easier to avoid mis-buttoning, which can be time-consuming to rectify.
There are others, but I’ve forgotten them. As I was doing the “readers’ wildlife” this morning, one of Coyne’s Rules ofLife came to me—and then I remembered two others. I had thought of these years ago, but they were buried in my neurons and somehow emerged spontaneously. In contrast to the rules of life, which are prescriptive, the rules for life are simply my observations about humanity and human nature. These three are all about people’s self-images, not about the reality of their character:
1.) Most people think that they’re a little bit crazy (in a good way). What I mean is that everybody thinks that they have one or more lovable eccentricities or peccadillos. Nobody wants to think they’re normal and boring, which is why people have this self image. My observation is that the “eccentricities” that people think make them adorable are often either mundane or seriously disturbing. If you want an example of someone who reveals an adorable craziness on a regular basis, I give you Sarah Silverman.
2.) Most people think they have a good sense of humor. Again, humor is a much appreciated characteristic in people—just look at the personals ads, which show you that everyone wants someone like that. People without a sense of humor are seen as mundane, serious, solemn, or even dour—in other words, people who are no fun to be with. However, most people do not have a good sense of humor. They may have a sense of humor in that they try to makes jokes or they laugh at other people’s jokes, but they’re not people who make you laugh regularly. The apogee of a good sense of humor is seen in people like Robin Williams.
3.) Nearly everyone thinks they’re a nice person. In other words, nobody thinks they’re a bad person, a jerk, or an asshole. How often have you heard somebody say, “You know—I’m a real jerk” and mean that. they are a real jerk pretty much all the time? (Larry David plays a real jerk on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”)
Of course nearly everyone is capable of being nice or a jerk on occasion, but I’m talking about real jerks—the people you avoid being around because they’re constantly annoying. Because almost nobody thinks they’re a jerk but observation shows that the world has plenty of jerks, we are forced to conclude that there’s a lot of self-deception going on. (See Robert Trivers’s book The Folly of Fools for more examples.)
Needless to say, I fancy myself falling in all three categories, but is it true? Who knows? That’s why I’m prone to introspection about my interactions with others and tend to beat myself up if I think I’ve acted badly.
Please add other “rules of life” if you have some.
Today I’m stealing (with permission) some photos from Professor Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia. Scott’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. (Scott’s Facebook page is here.). I’ve inserted the Latin binomials and links to the bird page.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“Puckeldagen” in Swedish), Wednesday, September 9, 2026 and it’s National Teddy Bear Day. Here is my teddy bear, whose name you should know if you’ve read this site for a while (put it below if you remember0. The first person to send a photo of their teddy along with a few words of description will have it posted below. I got this bear when I was born, and here he is nearly eight decades later, battered, head sewed back on, new eyes, and nearly devoid of fur. That makes two of us (save for the head part).
Reader Normansent a stuffed doggy, but it’s close enough to Toasty that I’ll post it. His comments:
Not a bear, so this may not count, but this is Sooty. My cousin Michael, exactly 15 years to the day older than me, gave this to me when I was born. I’ve had it ever since and now have it in a display case. Its eyes are gone. Its stuffing is gone. But it’s still Sooty to me.
Again I note that posting will be light for a while. Not only do I have a writing assignment, but my insomnia has returned big time. And I’m still anxious about the ducklings, though I think they’ll be all right.
New Canadian tariffs targeting roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports officially snapped into place on Tuesday, the latest escalation in an increasingly costly trade war that has ensnarled two longtime allies.
For now, the economic effects of the tit-for-tat may be limited because the tariffs encompass only a small portion of the annual trade between the United States and Canada. The more pressing concern is a potential cycle of retaliation, one that results in even higher and more exhaustive duties that harm families and businesses on both sides of the border.
In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to position himself as a bulwark against Mr. Trump’s trade aggression, describing his nation as “at war.” Canadian officials generally have pledged to respond “dollar for dollar” to any U.S. duties.
In Washington, the president and his aides have repeatedly mocked their Canadian counterparts and the size of their ally’s economy and military. Mr. Trump has already threatened additional tariffs on auto imports from Canada, and on Friday, he even suggested he could try to halt bilateral trade outright.
Then, hours before Canada’s new tariffs took effect, Mr. Trump took to social media to continue his attack. He singled out Bombardier, a Canadian plane manufacturer, claiming there would be “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!”
Bombardier said in a statement that aerospace products are a top American export and that the company makes crucial components like wings in California and Texas. “Bombardier is a strong contributor to the sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs across the United States,” it said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The spat with Canada offered the latest evidence that Mr. Trump remains as committed as ever to his disruptive strategy of trade brinkmanship. Despite nearly two years of blistering court defeats, vicious international disputes and mounting domestic blowback, tariffs remain the president’s preferred tool to try to boost domestic manufacturing and broker better trade deals.
Trump is not only dead wrong about tariffs, but is also alienating our friendly neighbor to the north. It galls me that Canadians may think that most Americans are anti-Canadian, but in reality most Americans have taken a dim view of Trump’s tariff rampage. This is not going to be good for Trump or the Republicans in the midterm elections.
*There’s a new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the now jailed creator of the blood-testing company Theranos. The documentary, called “You Can See Everything”, is are somewhat secret as even the NYT doesn’t want to give away the spoilers, the film doesn’t open until October, and the trailer, below, is just over one minute long. (In 2023 Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in the federal pen.) An excerpt from the NYT piece, which is archived here.
Thirty-four days before Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the medical testing company Theranos, reported to prison to begin her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors, she invited a camera crew into her rented home in Southern California in an effort to clear her name. Yet the two people she chose to chronicle her life were Nathan Fielder, the absurdist comedian behind “Nathan for You,” and the documentary director Lance Oppenheim.
That decision turned into a three-year odyssey for the filmmakers and a three-hour documentary called “You Can See Everything” that may upend the documentary genre itself. The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in a secret screening on Sunday night that was not revealed until audience members took their seats. It will make its theatrical debut, courtesy of A24, on Oct. 16.
The movie features long, intense conversations between Fielder and Holmes with extreme close-ups. It also reveals that while Holmes serves her time at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, she and her partner, Billy Evans, are making plans “to launch a new and improved Theranos,” the company that collapsed after its deceptive claims about blood-testing technology were exposed in The Wall Street Journal in 2015.
What can’t be featured in on-camera interviews is depicted in innovative recreations. Two weeks before she leaves for prison, Fielder moves into the home and is there for moments many would consider off limits. There’s also a surprise plot point that shouldn’t be spoiled.
“I don’t know why I’m there,” Fielder said in a post-screening question-and-answer session at Telluride. Throughout the film he gives the couple many opportunities to turn off the cameras, he noted. “I’m really struggling to this day to understand what I experienced,” he added. “I’m excited for this movie to come out and for people to help me with what I experienced.”
That’s a plenty weird documentary, and the trailer, below, is equally weird. I don’t believe for a minute she’s telling the truth; what she has to gain is burnishing her image:
As for “launching a new and improved Theranos, Holmes should forget about it. I think she may be forbidden to do that kind of stuff for a while, and who, in view of her deception and crimes, would invest in it?
*Here are the results of yesterday’s poll on Lindsay Clancy. There were some good comments, too. The votes weren’t numerous—another sign of the dying of this site—but to my surprise the most votes went to “guilty” with “not criminally responsible” in second place (as you can see from the yellow bar, I voted “no opinion or unsure” as I wasn’t on the jury and really don’t have an opinion). As I note below, I think the jury was going to render a verdict like “not guilty by reason of mental illness,” which still would have put Clancy in jail for a long time.
It had looked like the end of deliberations in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy.
Eleven of twelve jurors had agreed not to convict Ms. Clancy. Then the one holdout “admitted he had reasonable doubt,” the jury’s forewoman, Roni Carlson, said in an interview with the television station NBC10 in Boston on Tuesday.
According to the judge’s instructions, if jurors had considered all the evidence but still had reasonable doubt about the charges against Ms. Clancy, they had to acquit her.
So Ms. Carlson, a retired teacher, started to fill out the three verdict forms, she said in the interview. She got as far as writing her signature on each sheet. But then, Ms. Carlson recalled, the holdout juror said, “I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”
In the first public statements by jurors since the monthlong trial, Ms. Carlson and two other jurors opened up about the grueling week of deliberations in which the jury of nine women and three men were deadlocked, prompting Judge William Sullivan to declare a mistrial
Now I’m not sure whether “not guilty by reason of insanity” equates to “not criminally responsible for murder,” but I
Apropos, over at the City Journal Christina Buttons describes the effect that housing criminal defendants has had on psychiatric facilities (a lot more violence and assaults on staff). She favors a hybrid jail/treatment option:
States should take a different approach. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Stephen Eide argues that they should invest in psychiatric care inside jails rather than continually moving offenders into state hospitals. Jails already have legal obligations to provide health care, and competency restoration often consists of psychiatric stabilization along with teaching defendants enough about the legal process to participate in their cases. States can fund specialized restoration programs within secure correctional settings while reserving hospital transfer for defendants whose conditions actually require hospital-level treatment. The ACLU has opposed this approach, calling jail-based competency treatment “inhumane” and arguing that defendants should instead receive restoration in a therapeutic setting.
Eide’s proposal recognizes that treatment and criminal accountability can coexist. A defendant can suffer from serious mental illness and still belong within the criminal-justice system. Improving psychiatric care in jails would allow states to provide treatment without turning ordinary psychiatric hospitals into de facto correctional facilities. It would also preserve scarce civil beds and reduce the burden on staff and patients when hospitals are asked to manage forensic populations they were not designed to house.
The debate over Lindsay Clancy reflects the same tendency to treat compassion for the offender as incompatible with criminal accountability. Much of the public response has centered on her suffering rather than on the three children she killed. The same priorities appear in policy when the needs of offenders take precedence over crime victims, hospital workers, and psychiatric patients who committed no crime.
*The head of the Smithsonian Institution is stepping down, though he denies that Trump’s efforts to reshape the Institution’s message had anything to do with the premature retirement:
The Smithsonian Institution’s top official, Lonnie G. Bunch III, is retiring, ushering in a seismic transition at the nation’s museum and research organization just as President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign to influence its portrayal of American history.
Bunch, the 73-year-old historian who founded the National Museum of African American History and Culture and then became the Smithsonian’s first Black leader, publicly announced Tuesday that he is stepping down after more than seven years in the institution’s top job.
Bunch plans to depart by the end of the year, the Smithsonian said in a statement.
Bunch’s resignation comes at one of the most politically fraught moments in the Smithsonian’s 180-year history. Since March 2025, Trump has sought to purge what he calls “improper ideology” from its museums, while his administration has threatened the institution’s federal funding, tried to fire a museum director and challenged its authority over personnel and exhibitions.
But the president does not choose the Smithsonian secretary. That power belongs to its governing body, the Board of Regents, which is made up of high-level government officials, members of Congress and citizens appointed by Congress. As vice president, JD Vance sits on that 17-member board, which currently includes two vacant seats.
Bunch said in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday that the administration’s pressure played no role in his decision and that he was still ready to do battle to protect the Smithsonian’s autonomy.
“We’re at a time when people are challenging that independence,” he said, “but I feel very strongly that it is as independent as we were before, and that I will continue to fight — for as long as I’m in this chair — for the independence of the Smithsonian.”
Bunch said he had been contemplating retirement for about a year and settled on leaving after spending several weeks this summer with his children and grandchildren. He originally planned to serve five years as secretary but eventually decided to stay into the nation’s 250th anniversary year and through the approaching 10th anniversary of the African American history museum.
Well, I’m not sure whether Bunch’s statement that he’s fighting for the Smithsonian’s independence has nothing to do with Trump. Who else is threatening that independence?
President Trump appeared to suggest on Sunday that New Mexico should be renamed “New America,” prompting swift backlash from the state’s Democratic leaders over his latest effort to put an American stamp on geographic names.
On social media, Mr. Trump shared an image of a map of New Mexico with the word “Mexico” crossed out with a red X and replaced with “America.” The White House re-shared the image shortly after on its official X account.
The president posted again several hours later, with what appeared to be an A.I. video of him placing a label with the word “America” over “Mexico” on a “Welcome to New Mexico” road sign.
Mr. Trump has no legal authority to rename any state, which in New Mexico’s case is written into its Constitution. Any proposed change would have to originate within the state, a prospect that New Mexico’s Democratic leaders rejected forcefully on Sunday.
“New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote on social media.
Representative Melanie Stansbury was more blunt: “Oh hell no!” she wrote on X, adding, “Our state’s name carries generations of history, culture, and family — and it belongs to us.”
Here’s the map Trump posted, though the El Paso Times notes that it originated at a parody account:
The “New America” map was previously posted on Sept. 1 on the parody account Daily Noud, which posted a fake image falsely claiming Trump had signed an executive order renaming New Mexico. Daily Noud account on X states, “These are fake stories.”
And the AI video showing Trump posting the new name. Are we taxpayers funding someone in the White House to make these videos?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili demands attention.
Hili: Did you really forget I was here?
Andrzej: Sometimes, when I’m reading, I even forget about you.
In Polish:
Hili: Naprawdę zapomniałeś, że tu jestem? Ja: Czasem, czytając zapominam nawet o tobie.
From Bryan, two views of Chicago from space (“LED vs sodium vapor”) showing our famous grid street design:
Chicago, USA 2024 vs 2003
The grid street layout of Chicago is immediately recognizable from orbit, and characteristic of many North American cities, and emphasize the change in color intensity. pic.twitter.com/JO1uRZBUyq
From Luana, three minutes of academic insanity, this time involving “body fascism”:
🚨 Da’Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the policing of “Black fat flesh” is foundational to broader “entire systems of governance.”
“Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized… pic.twitter.com/GP4foaTgUJ
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was about six years old, and would be 88 today had she lived. https://t.co/WGOn13jthS
I just published a brief account of Jim Watson’s life, aimed at students. It leans heavily on the insights of @nccomfort.bsky.social, whose biography of Watson will be out next year. Free link here: rdcu.be/M91CnnE3N4wa
By now most of you know about the Lindsay Clancy case, but I’ll briefly reiterate it. Clancy, then 32 years old, says she was afflicted with postpartum psychosis after the birth of her youngest child, and in 2023 strangled her three children, eight months old, three years old, and five years old. Then, attempting suicide, she jumped out of a window, managing to paralyze herself from the waist down.
The article below from Northeastern Global News (click headline to read) clarifies what an “insanity defense” constitutes in Massachusetts (note that Clancy did not please “not guilty by reason of insanity,” but simply “not guilty.”
An excerpt:
Once the defense raises the issue of the accused’s mental state at the time of the crime, prosecutors bear the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible, said Daniel Medwed, a university distinguished professor of law.
“In Massachusetts, we don’t typically use the term ‘insanity defense,’” Medwed said, citing the stigma that attaches to the word “insanity.” Instead, it’s referred to as “lack of criminal responsibility.”
. . .Once the defense raises the issue of the accused’s mental state at the time of the crime, prosecutors bear the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible, said Daniel Medwed, a university distinguished professor of law.
“In Massachusetts, we don’t typically use the term ‘insanity defense,’” Medwed said, citing the stigma that attaches to the word “insanity.” Instead, it’s referred to as “lack of criminal responsibility.”
But what constitues “criminal responsibility”? Psychiatrist Sally Satel answers that in a Free Press article:
Massachusetts uses the McHoul standard for insanity. It allows for a determination of “not criminally responsible” if a person with a mental disorder or defect (which every expert agreed Clancy had) lacks either the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or the capacity to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law. If the defendant presents evidence to support her lack of responsibility, the prosecutors bear the burden to prove her responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Some thought the prosecutors did not carry this burden; others thought they did.
My response to this as a hard determinist is that no criminal has the ability to change their mind about whether their conduct be right or wrong, regardless of whether they had a diagnosis of being mentally ill. As I’ve said before, since I don’t believe in retributive punishment, if Clancy did the killings, and is thus physically responsible—which she admitted she was—then there are three reasons to either put her in jail or hospitalize her:
To sequester a dangerous person from society. I’m not sure how dangerous Clancy is. Both her age and her physical condition militate against her having further children, but one could argue, I suppose, that she could harm other people’s children, or constitute a danger in other ways.
To cure her of her illness. This is manifestly possible, I’m told, but we don’t know how long it will take. However long it takes, that’s how long Clancy should be confined. But the moment that several reputable and objective therapists pronounce her as cured, that’s the moment she should walk free.
At any rate, I’ll take a nonscientific poll here, but regardless of whether or how you answer, I’d appreciate any comments below on what you think could happen to Clancy, even if you didn’t listen to six weeks of evidence. Or tell us your thoughts on this very difficult case.
What verdict would you have rendered if you were on the jury judging Lindsay Clancy?
Welcome to Tuesday, not the Cruelest Day this week because in America this “work week” has only four days. It is September 8, 2026 and it’s National Ants on a Log Day. What is that? This “healthy snack” comes from my childhood, and consists of peanut butter spread on a celery stick and dotted with raisins. Wikipedia, which has an article on this comestible, says there are variants:
Ants on a log is a North American snack made by spreading peanut butter, cream cheese, ricotta cheese, or another spread on celery, pretzels or bananas and placing raisins, blueberries, or chocolate chips, etc. on top. The snack and its name are presumed to originate in the 1950s. The classic peanut butter version of ants on a log is recommended as a healthy snack by the McKinley Health Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
. . .There are numerous variations of ants on a log, including:
Gnats on a log: currants
Ants on vacation: without “ants” (raisins)
Ants on a Slip ‘n Slide: add honey on top of the peanut butter before adding raisins
Ants on a canoe: substitute apple slices for traditional celery
Pigs in a pen: substitute pimento cheese for peanut butter and replace “ants” (raisins) with bacon bits (pigs)
Ants on a ranch: substitute ranch dressing for peanut butter and peas for raisins
Fish on a stream: Hummus spread on a celery stalk and topped with Goldfish crackers
The “classic” version, not to be mistaken for the much tastier Chinese dish called “ants climbing a tree.”
To celebrate actors day, here are two of them in a great scene from the 1954 movie “On the Waterfront“: Marlon Brando (perhaps the greatest actor of our time) and Eva Marie Saint. Saint is still alive at 102; it’s hard to believe that someone who acted with Brando in that movie is still with us. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and Brando won for Best Actor. The film is seen as having popularized method acting—acting in which an actor’s life experiences and personal emotions are used to inform the role.
The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election on Sunday, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to become the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era.
If those results hold, the AfD, as the party is known by its German initials, could still assume power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the negotiations among rival parties that have vowed not to support an AfD government.
Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state, and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the election result sent shock waves through the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from ever returning to power.
“The AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt is less a reflection of the appeal of its political agenda than a stark demonstration of the political establishment’s failure to articulate a convincing vision for the state’s economic, political and social future,” said Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah. Still, the party tapped into voter frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win about 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in the Parliament.
Remember that this was a small state (population about 2 million) and was absorbed into East Germany; it was re-constituted when Germany was unified. From the second link:
Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe.
This wasn’t just any European country; it was Germany, a country that has relentlessly isolated far-right political parties since the calamity of Nazism. And it wasn’t just a strange outlier, but rather the latest step in a steady, decade-long march that has brought the far right ever closer to the fulcrum of power in Europe.
With elections scheduled across Europe next year, the striking success of the party, Alternative for Germany, could be a harbinger of further far-right victories, according to analysts, as well as a template for how they can be engineered. Its populist, anti-immigrant message echoes those of nationalist leaders in Britain, France, Italy and Spain, all countries where voters harbor many of the same grievances as those in Germany.
Germany’s Alternative for Germany scored a historic victory at a regional election on Sunday but was just short of the majority needed to form the country’s first far-right government since World War II, according to preliminary results.
The result will present other parties on the right and the left with a stark choice: continue banding together to keep the AfD out of power despite deep political differences—a decades-old strategy known as the firewall—or let the AfD form a minority government for the first time.
Now the ball is with Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his center-right Christian Democratic Union. The path he takes could decide his fate and that of his government.
Merz has ruled out even passive cooperation with the AfD, but CDU lawmakers in Eastern Germany, where the far-right party is strongest, are divided about the firewall, setting the stage for a possible split in the party. Critics think ostracizing the AfD has alienated voters and forced the CDU to govern with parties that don’t support its agenda, leading to policy paralysis.
This move to the right is also going on in England, Spain, and Italy; it’s curious that immigration is barely mentioned in the two NYT articles, even though it was a selling pint for the AfD, which takes a pretty hard line:
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated the AfD as a “suspected extremist” group and its Saxony-Anhalt branch as “extremist.” Some of the party’s leaders have played down the Holocaust and adopted Nazi slogans. Others have strong ties to Russia. The AfD has also said that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed to conduct mass deportations of immigrants.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal sees the Gaza situation over the last 7 months as one that “has been maintained by an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object—the former being Israel’s determination not to give an inch of ground, the latter, Hamas’s refusal to disarm.” According to an unnamed source on the Trump-mandated Board of Peace, Israel now has four options:
The first is to keep the current policy, which “could lead to another October 7”: attacking Hamas but never fully destroying it, with Hamas still in control of the Gazan population, still fully armed, and with more terrorists than it had before the war began. I would quibble with the prediction of another October 7, but the reputational and alliance costs he didn’t explicitly mention are considerable.
The second option is to hand Gaza over to the PA. This is the preferred option of most of the Arab states and the UN, which is itself enough to disqualify it. I would count this as the most likely to lead to another October 7.
The third, according to them, is for Israel to conquer and control all of Gaza, assuming responsibility for 2 million Gazans with no international support and likely copious amounts of international hostility. The IDF would have to draft tens of thousands of reservists to take Gaza and even more to maintain their hold on the Strip. This we can agree is unviable.
The fourth and “only viable option,” they claim, is to cooperate with the Board of Peace and abide by the 20-point peace plan. It’s a “win-win for Israel,” they insist. Israel keeps the Yellow Line and does not withdraw. If Hamas fully disarms, the BoP and National Committee for the Administration of Gaza take control of Gaza, headed by President Trump. Israel withdraws fully only after Hamas is removed from governing and stripped of all its military capabilities. If Hamas does not fully disarm, then Israel has a green light to destroy it, while the BoP takes care of the population in areas outside Hamas control. No isolation for Israel, no bill for occupation.
. . .Yet for all my criticism of his framing, I don’t disagree. Israel needs to entertain the process and put the pressure back on Hamas to start moving on disarmament. Despite what newly minted Israel critics may claim, the country never had the luxury of unconditional support or a blank check. Uncompromising stubbornness comes at an incredibly high price, but Israel can reduce the bill with the occasional cooperation. It’s called give and take.
My take: see how many Kalashnikovs the BoP can collect, how many Hamas members they include in their police force, and proceed accordingly. Regardless, ensure Israel isn’t the one to blame if the process collapses. But as Kushner accurately diagnoses, none of this will happen before elections.
Segal, like me and “The Source,” sees option 4 as the best by far. This is not a “two state solution” but it’s the best that can be done right now. Segal doesn’t think Trump gives a hoot what happens in Gaza, but Israel does! I cannot believe that, after all this, Hamas will disarm.
The new head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Sunday said Tehran plans to announce an “exclusion zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz aimed at vessels it believes are attempting to transit the waterway.
Mohsen Rezaei’s comments to Iran’s state broadcaster came with few details, a day after the U.S. struck three Iranian oil tankers in response to Tehran launching ballistic missiles at U.S. warships. Experts called the launches a dangerous escalation after Iran’s previous attacks at sea targeted commercial shipping.
The new zone should be announced in the coming days and weeks and “will begin from the line of the U.S. naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz, and from this side continue into the Persian Gulf,” Rezaei said. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list.”
It is not clear where Iran defines the location of the weekslong U.S. blockade, which is aimed at Iranian ports and keeping Tehran from shipping out its oil. The U.S. military has said over 20 warships are supporting the blockade, which as of Sunday had redirected 92 commercial ships and disabled three.
The U.S. has been introducing new measures to increase the economic pain on Iran after negotiations collapsed and no end to the intermittent fighting appears in sight. Meanwhile, Iran continues to attack some ships trying to transit the strait, which has become an important source of leverage for Tehran in the war that began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes.
I wonder what the Iranian “sanctions list for ships” consists of.
A year after New Mexico launched free child care for all families, Dakota Rivera still can’t find a place to send her kids.
The mom of two was ecstatic when the state’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, announced last September that New Mexico would expand its day care assistance program to any family who wanted it.
But Rivera lives in a city with an acute shortage of child care centers. She still spends her days piecing together care with help from family members, canvassing social media and searching for babysitters.
She’s on 10 different waiting lists.
“I think the systems that they put in are great, sure, but it’s just not there yet,” Rivera said, as she triedto answer work emails while holding her 8-month-old daughter, who was cooing and waving a plastic giraffe. “In five years, maybe. For parents trying to do it now, it’s impossible.”
When Lujan Grisham first announced the programin a state with a majority-female legislature, it was widely praised as a historic step to address an issue that consumes the lives of parents everywhere — and their incomes. Costs for caring for an infant can often exceed a year’s rent, according tothe U.S. Department of Labor.
But the groundbreaking program, in part funded by the state’s sizable oil and gas revenue, has had a rocky debut.
The number of children who have enrolled has skyrocketed, far outpacing the capacity of day care centers in the state. Lujan Grisham has had to grapple with legal challenges, including a whistleblower case from the program’s chief financial officer, who says she was fired after flagging an $83 million budget deficit.
Critics have raised concerns that annual costs could balloon to more than $800 million — nearly $400 million more than when the program debuted. State legislative analysts have also found that newly eligible, higher-income families may be squeezing out some of the lowest-income recipients. The state’s GOP leaders dubbed the program“Nannies for Millionaires.”
The stakes could not be higher as more Americans say raising children is too expensive and as political leaders look to New Mexico as they try to address overwhelming child care needs. Vermont and Connecticut already have smaller-scale programs, and New York MayorZohran Mamdani (D) is rolling out free day care for thousands ofthe city’s 2-year-olds — a move that has also had a bumpy start.
When I asked Grok why the program had a rocky start, it told me this:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free 2-K program for 2-year-olds—the first phase of his campaign promise of universal childcare—has faced a rocky rollout because of delayed city payments and contract approvals that have left many daycare providers short of cash just days before the September 10, 2026 start date.
Providers report they have not received the usual August advance payments needed for furniture, supplies, teacher salaries, and utilities. Some have warned parents their sites may not open. City-offered interest-free bridge loans have also been slow to arrive, forcing operators to tap personal savings, 401(k)s, high-interest loans, or family members. One Bronx operator with four planned 2-K classes put it bluntly: the city created the program “but they didn’t set up the infrastructure to make it work.”
These delays are not new. New York’s early-childhood contracting system has struggled with late payments for more than a decade, beginning with the 2014 Universal Pre-K launch under Bill de Blasio. The problem worsened under Eric Adams after hundreds of staff—including instructional coordinators who worked directly with providers—were cut or reassigned. The Division of Early Childhood Education remains understaffed, and launching a new 2-K cohort on top of existing 3-K and pre-K programs added more contracts than the depleted office could process quickly.
Nobody believes that Mamdani will keep a majority (or any) of the pie-in-the-sky promises that got him elected. But neither do people care. He’s a socialist and hates Israel, and that is apparently what’s important to people.
*And the ever-reliable AP Odd News site reports a massive theft of Guinness Stout:
British police have a stout task ahead: recovering 70,000 pints worth of stolen Guinness.
Two trailer truckloads of the famously creamy dark beer valued at 115,000 pounds ($155,000) were stolen from a depot near Liverpool in northwest England, the Cheshire Constabulary said Thursday.
“It is famously said that ‘Guinness is good for you,’ but that is only the case when it has been bought and paid for,” Det. Sgt. Gary McClatchy said. “We will settle for nothing less than the full recovery of all the items stolen.”
The Guinness had been destined for pubs, but was snatched Monday night by two drivers who pulled up to an industrial park in Runcorn and hauled away the trailers containing about 800 barrels of stout.
The value of the trailers was estimated at 50,000 pounds ($67,000).
The theft comes just weeks after a beer heist in the United States captured the public’s attention because of the brewer’s cheeky social media posts about the loss of roughly 34,000 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
What I don’t understand is this: these are not cans or bottles of Guinness, but CASKS that were intended for pubs. So what is going to happened to the 800 barrels of purloined stout? You need a whole system (including a cool cellar) to tap these kegs, and there are hundreds of them. It’s a very odd thing to steal!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the conversation is getting antiwoke:
Hili: And again, we’ve turned today into yesterday.
Andrzej: Please, don’t tell me that time is a social construct.
In Polish:
Hili: I znów zmieniliśmy dziś we wczoraj.
Ja: Proszę, nie mów, że czas to konstrukt społeczny.
From Luana. I don’t know what’s worse: people helping others to cheat who then lose their jobs, or people simply cheating. I suppose it’s the former.
Any way you want to look at this it’s insane:
“At its peak early this decade, at least 40,000 people in the city were being paid to do other people’s homework, researchers estimated” pic.twitter.com/10FvS3DEpu
It looks like Milo Yiannopoulos has become Muslim. When he was gay (no longer, I think) he was violently opposed to Islam. Wikipedia says this:
Yiannopoulos is a frequent critic of Islam and has said the “fear of Islam is entirely rational”.[91][needs update] He has blamed Islam, not just extremist groups and terrorists, for violence against women and homosexuals. Yiannopoulos said “I’m not talking about Islamists. I’m not talking about terrorists. I’m not talking about radical Islam. I’m talking about mainstream Muslim culture”.
The Prophet ﷺ said:
خيارُكم في الجاهليةِ ، خيارُكم في الإسلامِ إذا فقُهوا
“The best of you in the time of ignorance (Jāhiliyyah) are the best of you in Islam, if they gain understanding.”
A circling school of Cownose Rays near the beach in Clearwater, Florida yesterday. Nature is Awesome! Notice the long trail of sediment being stirred up by the rays. Different marine life often leaves different tracks to follow just like land animals. #animals #wildlife #nature #florida #awesome
Did you spot the tawny frogmouth in this morning’s post. It wasn’t too hard, was it. Here is the reveal and some closeups. By the way, I welcome good “spot the. . . ” photos, but try to avoid putting the hidden animal in the dead center of the photo!
Closeups:
How nice to live in a place where you can see one of these in your yard, even though they’re not easy to see!
For reasons I don’t understand, Miss Duck left Botany Pond three days ago and has not returned. There are no signs of a predator attack, and my best guess is that she just felt it was time for her to leave. Unfortunately, she leaves behind the brood of four, who seem quite discombobulated without their mom around. The only good part is that they’re seven weeks and one day old, and will be flying on their own very soon.
The brood hangs around together as they have all along, but seem aimless, and their appetite is definitely down. I am not too worried, but I do feed them as much as they can handle and I talk to them as they do know my voice. (I learned today they can recognize it over the telephone.)
I don’t know if I’ll ever see Miss Duck again, but she proved to be somewhat of a worse mother than we thought. Maybe she’ll return next spring; if she does she’ll get a stiff lecture (but after a big meal). I have some duck pictures left to post, but that will be later. For the time being, here is Miss Duck (when she was on the Pond):
