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.
I heard this song yesterday on Facebook, where the melody was used as background for a video of a man walking two kimono-clad cats in Kyoto. I hadn’t heard “Sukiyaki” in many years (it came out in the U.S. when I was 13), but I remembered the tune instantly, though the words of course are in Japanese. The Japanese title was changed for play in other countries, but changed into the name of a dish, for crying out loud. And I didn’t know how popular the song was (see below).
It’s a song of loneliness, though it inspired by politics. The details below are from Wikipedia.
Ue o Muite Arukō” (Japanese: 上を向いて歩こう; “I Look Up as I Walk”), alternatively titled “Sukiyaki“, is a song by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto, first released in Japan in 1961. The song topped the charts in a number of countries, including the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. The song grew to become one of the world’s best-selling singles of all time, selling over 13 million copies worldwide.
Sakamoto died at 43 in a plane crash.
“Ue o Muite Arukō” (pronounced[ɯeomɯiteaɾɯkoꜜː]) was written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. The lyrics tell the story of a man who looks up while he is walking so that his tears will not fall, with the verses describing his memories and feelings. Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from participating in the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, expressing his frustration and dejection at the failed efforts to stop the treaty. However, the lyrics were purposely generic so that they might refer to any lost love
In the US, “Sukiyaki” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1963, one of the few non-English songs to have done so, and the first in a non-European language. It was the only single by an Asian artist to top the Hot 100 until the 2020 release of “Dynamite” by the South Korean band BTS. “Sukiyaki” also peaked at number eighteen on the Billboard R&B chart, and spent five weeks at number one on the Middle of the Road chart.
Can you name an American chart-topper in a European language? I can!
Here’s “Sukiyaki,” which has both the Japanese words written in English transliteration as well as the English translation.
Here we have Bill Maher kvetching about people who say that the rich don’t pay taxes, and about “progressives” who say that multimillionaires and billionaires should be taxed much more heavily. In this tirade against “progressives,” Maher also argues that the U.S., despite the plaints of Bernie Sanders and his ilk, already has a lot of socialism, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment compensation, and so on.
His point is a bit obscure to me, but seems to be that there’s too much income inequality in America, so that a few people make a lot, while many make bupkes. And prices continue to rise, putting stuff like concerts and Disneyland, not to mention Lego kits, out of reach of the middle class. And don’t even mention healthcare! So what’s new?
The guests last week were Governor Wes Moore (Democratic Governor of Maryland), Chris Cuomo (NewsNation Host), and Sarah Isgur (ABC News Analyst and Contributing Editor at The Dispatch). Cuomo and Isgur show up in this clip.
All in all, Maher seems to be complaining both about the super-rich and their failure to help the poor (beyond paying taxes), and also about income inequality. What is he asking for?
Out of curiosity, I asked Grok what Maher’s net worth is. The answer is below: he’s about one-seventh of a billionaire:
Bill Maher’s net worth is estimated at $140 million.
This figure is consistently reported across reliable sources as of late 2025 and into 2026, including Celebrity Net Worth (the primary reference used by most outlets) and recent articles from TV Insider, Yahoo Entertainment, and others.
A big part of his wealth comes from his long-running HBO gig: he reportedly earns about $10 million per year as host of Real Time with Bill Maher (which he’s done since 2003, after earlier runs hosting Politically Incorrect).
Another major boost was a smart 2012 investment: he bought a minority stake (roughly 4%) in the New York Mets for around $20 million and sold it in 2020 when the team changed hands, netting an estimated $80 million profit.
His earnings also include stand-up tours, comedy specials, acting roles, producing projects (like the documentary Religulous and the series Vice), and his podcast Club Random. He’s known for being relatively frugal with his spending despite the high income.
Keep in mind that celebrity net worth estimates are approximate—they’re based on public data about salaries, investments, real estate, and other assets, minus expenses and taxes—but $140 million has been the stable consensus for several years with no major contradictory reports.
Just before and during my trip to Savannah, I started noticing that people are asking for tips everywhere, including when you buy bread at a bakery or food at McDonald’s. And by “asking”, I mean that when you pay with a credit card directly or on your phone, a lit-up sign appears at the register asking “Do you want to leave a tip?” And then, helpfully, suggesting tips, usually starting at 20% and going up to 30%. (There’s an option for a “custom tip”.) This is a form of unwarranted pressure on consumers to tip for things that, historically, didn’t require tips. It’s the capitalistic equivalent of grade inflation.
Here are a few of the places that asked me for tips in the last ten days. I left a tip for only the last one:
A $3.00 baguette I bought at a local Hyde Park bakery (from the counter, for crying out loud)
Ice cream served from the counter at Leopold’s in Savannah
Two double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s in the Savannah airport (takeaway counter service). And don’t shame me about McD’s: my plane was leaving and I needed food after a 7-hour wait. I haven’t eaten this kind of fast food in over a year, but I needed nourishment—if you call that “nourishment”. Actually, it did the job, but my tip was zero.
My Uber ride from Midway Airport to home.
Now I always leave a tip for Uber drivers, even though only 20% of customers tip and Uber itself says that tips can be given, but only for exceptional service. Tips make up only 10% of the salaries of Uber and Lyft drivers, while they constitute about half the incomes of those who deliver food and groceries. And yes, I tip when I am delivered cooked food at home, but that happens only about once very two years. (To me, food delivery feels too much like I’m a king or something.)
Because Uber rides are pleasant and cheaper than taxi fares, I usually leave about 10% of the fare as a tip. But in the past you would leave the Uber tip some hours after the ride, and after the driver had rated you as a passenger. In this last case, however, a screen was affixed to the back seat asking me to leave a tip for the driver, whose name was Muhammed. That was unfair, as that makes you tip before the driver rates you, and you’re supposed to be rated on your conduct as a passenger, not for how much extra money you give. NeverthelessI left a tip as usual, though not until the next day.
The services I usually tip for, and about 20% on average, are haircuts, non-Uber taxi rides, sit-down service in a restaurant, the people who service my cabin on cruises (less than 20% of the price!, plus a group tip for the service staff), and a few other services I can’t remember. But I refused to tip when just buying a hamburger or getting ice cream or bread to take away. I usually don’t tip when I carry out food, either, but it varies.
If this importuning for tips reflects a real deficit of salary in an establishment, I would much prefer that they raise their prices than put me in a guilt-trippy situation where I have to tip on the spot.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. I found this story in USA Today about tip inflation in American institutions. Click below to read the story for free.
A few exccerpts:
Has tipping gotten out of hand?
In a new survey by Popmenu, more than 3 out of 4 people or 78% said they believed that tipping practices have become ridiculous. Forty-four percent say they’re tipping less this year than last year.
Consumers aren’t shy about expressing their tip fatigue online and on social media sites.
“I can’t enjoy a weekend without at least 5 prompts to tip for doing absolutely nothing,” one user on Reddit said about tipping fatigue. “The anxiety that comes from this false pressure to tip a percentage on every bill is ludicrous.”
. . .People feel that “tipping has become maybe ubiquitous and that now we’re being asked to tip for everything all the time, even for things that we didn’t feel were customary or normal,” Brendan Sweeney, CEO of Popmenu, told USA TODAY.
Popmenu, which is a restaurant tech company, has been surveying customers about tipping for more than five years, Sweeney said.
Tipping really increased during the COVID-19 lockdown era and after when the hospitality industry was hurting and consumers started leaving tips for take-out or tipping more “as a warm and fuzzy” feeling, Sweeney said.
“But then I think we got to a point where it was like, wait.. is this still an emergency? Is it still we’re helping people? At the same time, people are really feeling the pinch of inflation,” he said.
But tip fatigue is starting to tell!
And more digital register systems at businesses have the tipping screen built into the software, Sweeney said.
Still, Sweeney said guilt tipping, or feeling guilted into leaving a tip to avoid the awkwardness, is a thing.
When a digital screen asks for a tip, 59% of the respondents said they feel compelled to leave one. But that’s down from 66% in September 2025. And the share of people who say they tip on a weekly basis at places where it isn’t warranted also fell from 44% to 39%. Over the last 12 months, consumers estimate they spent about $130 on tips they didn’t think were necessary, down from $150 when the same question was posed in September 2025.
. . . The percentage of consumers tipping 20% or higher for restaurant servers and delivery drivers fell over the last six months:
41% of consumers tip restaurant servers 20% or more, which is down from 45% in September 2025. Twenty nine percent of people said they tip servers 15%, which is similar to September 2025.
15% tip restaurant delivery drivers 20% or higher, down from 23% in September 2025.
27% tip delivery drivers 15%, which is similar to September 2025.
Tips at places other than restaurants also changed.
39% of consumers tip at coffee shops, down from 46% in September 2025.
27% tip at food trucks, down from 32% in September 2025.
22% tip at fast food restaurants, down from 27% in September 2025.
Separate from the survey, Popmenu also tracked tipping on online orders received through its platform. Pickup orders with a digital tip declined from 78% in 2022 to 62% in 2026.
. . . Three in four consumers (74%) say they have noticed restaurants raising the minimum suggested tip on digital screens. Here’s what people said they did when they saw that screen:
36% typically leave a custom tip
17% choose the lowest suggested tip
32% choose the mid-tier tip
7% choose the highest tip
9% don’t typically tip
Consumers in the survey said they were willing to pay higher prices instead of tipping. If given a choice, 56% of consumers are willing to pay more for meals and beverages to provide higher wages for workers and eliminate gratuities.
What’s that, you say? If I buy an ice cream cone, there is labor involved in making the ice cream and scooping it out to put in a cone. Shouldn’t we pay for that labor? No—the workers should get a decent wage and costs should be folded into the prices. In the past I’ve heard arguments that if labor is involved, tips should be given, but that’s always the case and, at any rate, such sentiments were covid-related.
I much prefer the French system, which applies especially at restaurants. The menu says explicitly that labor costs are included in the menu prices, and if you like the service, you can leave a couple of euros on the bill plate, regardless of what the meal cost. There the pressure is off, and you don’t feel guilty about having to choose between a 15% tip and a 30% tip. And you never are expected to tip when you take food away.
Of course you’re welcome to weigh in. How much and when do you tip, and do you feel pressured to tip in circumstances where you don’t think it’s necessary?
Today we have photos of stick-mimicking insects from Trinidad and Tobago, all taken by Ephraim Heller. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
I remember the fascination I felt as a child on the rare occasions when I was taken to a zoo that had a terrarium containing stick insects. I still feel that way. In researching this post, I discovered that stick insects are even more remarkable and unusual than I anticipated. For example, parthenogenesis is common; they regrow lost limbs; and the world’s longest insect is Phryganistria chinensis, found in China and measuring 36 cm in body length (62 cm or 2 feet with legs extended, photo here).
I photographed two species. The first four photos are the Trinidad log insect (Phanocles keratosqueleton), known in regional folklore as the “god horse” or “hag’s horse.” It appears in folklore as an omen of death, despite being a harmless herbivore.
I never found a stick insect during our daytime hikes. During daytime, stick insects press themselves flat against plants and remain motionless, rendering them camouflaged and invisible. After dark, they walk out onto exposed vegetation to feed, molt, and mate. They are easily spotted with a headlamp due to their eyeshine:
Their camouflage can incorporate three distinct adaptations: cryptic coloration and background matching; cryptic body shape and texture; and behavioral crypsis (swaying when disturbed, mimicking a twig moving in a breeze). Not only are the insects themselves camouflaged, but many species evolved eggs that look like plant seeds:
Stick insects are in the order Phasmatodea, which contains over 3,500 species. Phasmids sits under Polyneoptera, which contains other winged insects such as grasshoppers, mantises, stoneflies, and earwigs. They are found on all continents except Antarctica. Against my expectations, Phasmatodea is monophyletic: the group evolved once from a single common ancestor, rather than through convergent evolution:
The next six photos are of the Trinidad twig or Trinidad stick (Ocnophiloidea regularis). More details on this species are at the end:
The oldest phasmid fossil is about 165 million years old, but recent studies claim that Phasmatodea first evolved 252 – 299 million years ago. This suggests that they evolved in response to the radiation of early insectivorous vertebrates such as parareptiles, amphibians, and synapsids. A major diversification occurred in the late Cretaceous, with the rapid spread of flowering plants (providing new foliage types to mimic) and the emergence of early birds:
Stick insect species’ reproduction ranges from sexual to obligate parthenogenesis, and much in between. Parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization) is common and has evolved independently many times among phasmids. Parthenogenic offspring are almost always females, producing all-female or near-all-female lineages. The offspring are not true clones of the parent, but are typically homozygous and have reduced genetic diversity, which can impair their ability to adapt to new stresses. Some species are facultatively parthenogenetic, meaning females can switch between sexual and asexual reproduction depending on conditions:
Phasmids can voluntarily shed a leg when grabbed by a predator. The leg is broken off at a specialized weak joint. Phasmatodea is the only insect order known to regenerate lost legs. Regeneration is restricted to nymphs because it requires molting. Cells at the wound site dedifferentiate and form a mass called a blastema, which then rebuilds the limb segment by segment through successive molts. The same molecular signaling pathway (ERK/CK2) involved in vertebrate limb regeneration drives the process in stick insects, which has attracted research interest for regenerative medicine. Regeneration is not free. Regrowing a leg during development results in disproportionately smaller wings and measurably reduced flight performance in adults. The body appears to divert resources away from wing development to fund limb repair:
The Trinidad twig (photos above and below) reproduces sexually:
The photo below shows two males attached to a female. Phasmids don’t do polycules and this is not standard reproductive behavior, but research on a closely related species has documented this scenario. While one male is guarding a female by remaining clasped to her abdomen, a rival male can approach and attempt to insert his genitalia while the first mate is momentarily repositioning or feeding. If the rival succeeds in attaching, both males end up simultaneously clasped to the female. This can result in a slow-motion “boxing-like” confrontation, with both males leaning backward and suspended from the female while trading blows with their forelegs until one of the males is eventually displaced:
Welcome to the last Monday in April: it’s April 27, 2026 and National Babe Ruth Day, celebrating the man who many people consider the greatest baseball player of all time (Shohei Ohtani, who also both pitches and hits, may take his place!). It was on this day in 1947 that Ruth, dying of cancer, made a farewell appearance at Yankee Stadium, Here’s a recording of his words on that day; the ravages of throat cancer is clear in his gravelly speech:
Here’s the world’s largest Gummi Bear. It weighed Weighing a total of 1728 kg (3810 pounds), and AI says, “This record-breaking candy measures approximately 2.2 x 2 x 1 meters and is equivalent to about 850,000 standard-sized gummi bears.”
Finally, I saw two bunnies on my way to work today. With eight rabbits’ feet in view, I thought it might be a lucky day, but the only thing I want is for my ducklings to return, and that ain’t gonna happen:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*It’s Noon in Israel suggests that Qatar, long a refuge for members of Hamas, isn’t going to put up with the terror group any more:
Traveling abroad comes with a standard set of anxieties: missed connections, lost luggage or, if you’re Israeli, a regional war erupting just before the holidays. But spare a thought for Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ chief negotiator, who left his five-star exile in Qatar for what was intended to be a quick diplomatic trip to Cairo. After summarily rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament proposal that offered a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, he received a text message notifying him that he had been evicted from his luxury lodgings and was officially barred from re-entering the country. It is every vacationer’s worst nightmare.
It appears that Hamas’ latest bout of intractability has finally broken its patron’s back. After 20 years, Qatar is pulling its investment in the terror group. According to my sources, Doha will no longer play the role of host and negotiator, and most of Hamas’ leadership has already departed the country.
After two decades, the obvious question is: Why now?
The decisive turning point wasn’t Cairo, nor was it October 7—if anything, the latter represented a major appreciation of Doha’s investment. The breaking point was Operation Roaring Lion. After 16 agonizing days of silence, torn between their two patrons, Hamas ultimately issued a statement defending Iran’s “right of self-defense,” but asked Tehran to refrain from targeting “neighboring countries.” For Qatar, a nation whose sovereign territory was actively being struck by Iranian missiles, this relatively weak, delayed condemnation from the group they had been funneling cash and support to for decades was not endearing.
This isn’t just about moral clarity or hurt feelings. In exchange for their luxury accommodations, Hamas provided Qatar with a highly marketable service: terrorist mediation. Alongside their shared ideological alignment, this mediation is precisely why Qatar reached out to Hamas after the group’s 2006 electoral victory when the rest of the world cut contact. Doha cornered an unserved market. But the value of that service is in steep decline—not only because a new status quo is settling over Gaza, but because the primary consumer of Qatar’s service, the United States, has developed a distaste for such intimate terrorist ties.
About time, I say. And perhaps this portends a lessening of all the encampments and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the West. Don’t forget that at least a majority of Palestinians support Hamas, and they support the group over Fatah, the political party of Mahmoud Abass and the Palestinian Authority. This means that supporting Palestine means, by and large, supporting a territory whose inhabitants favor terrorism.
Investigators were still working to determine the motive in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner that sent Secret Service agents rushing President Trump from the stage inside a Washington hotel, the acting attorney general said on Sunday. But a preliminary review indicated that members of the administration, “likely including the president,” had been the target, he said.
Mr. Trump told Fox News that the suspect had written what he described as a “manifesto,” without offering details. The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier Sunday that investigators gathering evidence about the suspect “know there were some writings” but cautioned that the analysis of his motivation could change.
The suspect, identified by two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., was taken into custody after the police said he ran through a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with the authorities inside the Washington Hilton on Saturday night. Officials said he did not reach the ballroom, where Mr. Trump, top administration officials and hundreds of journalists had gathered.
Late Saturday night, federal authorities in the Los Angeles suburbs surrounded a two-story home where records show Mr. Allen lives. Residents gathered nearby on darkened sidewalks as police helicopters circled overhead and law enforcement vehicles with flashing red and blue lights blocked the street.
The suspect was armed with knives, a shotgun and a handgun, the interim Washington, D.C., police chief, Jeffery W. Carroll, told reporters on Saturday night. Mr. Blanche said the man had purchased the two weapons he was carrying “within the last couple of years.”
There were no metal detectors set up at the hotel’s entrances on Saturday, and a secure perimeter was only established closer to the ballroom. Mr. Blanche defended the security at the event, noting that the suspect did not enter the ballroom where Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and cabinet officials were among the guests.
The 31-year-old suspect in the shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is a Caltech grad who recently won a “teacher of the month” award.
Cole Allen, of Torrance, Calif., has been identified as the man suspected of opening fire Saturday night near the ballroom where President Trump was in attendance, according to two law-enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. Allen was armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives and was a guest at the Washington Hilton where the dinner was taking place, police said. One law-enforcement officer was wounded in the attack.
I doubt this is a setup. If the shooter was in on it, why would he risk the certainty of years in jail? And what if he actually killed the law-enforcement official rather than hitting him in a bullet-proof vest? No, you have to be nuts to broach a conspiracy theory like that.
Sabastian Sawe made history on the morning of April 26, 2026, when he crossed the finish line in a time of 1:59:30 at the 2026 London Marathon. Sawe, a 31-year-old from Kenya, became the first person to ever run under 2 hours for a marathon … officially.
The term “officially” is important here. Sawe isn’t the first runner to break the 2-hour barrier for 26.2 miles. That distinction belongs to Eliud Kipchoge, the most decorated—and arguably the greatest—marathoner to ever live.
In 2019, Kipchoge, 34 on race day, ran 1:59:40 at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge in a tree-shaded park in Vienna, Austria. At the time, it was the fastest marathon ever run. But it didn’t count as a world record. That’s because standard competition rules for pacing and fluids were not followed.
Here’s a news report on the Marathon, showing Sawe’s victory and his reaction to the win (which also shaved 56 seconds off the world record):
An Ontario town has been fined $10,000 and its officials ordered to complete mandatory “human rights” training after it refused to celebrate Pride Month.
Emo is a township of about 1,300 people located in the far west of Ontario, along the border with Minnesota.
In a decision handed down last week, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that Emo, its mayor and two of its councillors had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by refusing to proclaim June as “Pride Month.”
The town was also cited for failing to fly “an LGBTQ2 rainbow flag,” despite the fact that they don’t have an official flag pole.
The dispute began in 2020 when the township was approached by the group Borderland Pride with a written request to proclaim June as Pride Month.
Attached to the letter was a draft proclamation including clauses such as “pride is necessary to show community support and belonging for LGBTQ2 individuals” and “the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression represents a positive contribution to society.”
Emo was also asked to fly an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag for a week of your choosing.”
Borderland Pride then asked Emo to “email us a copy of your proclamation or resolution once adopted and signed.”
Although symbolic proclamations are standard fare in larger municipal governments such as Toronto or Hamilton, this didn’t happen all that often in Emo.
“The record indicated the Township did not receive many requests for declarations or proclamations or requests for display of a flag,” the subsequent Tribunal decision would read. In a single 12-month period they received only four — two of which were from Borderland Pride.
Tribunal hearings would also reveal that Emo doesn’t really have a central flag pole, aside from a Canadian flag angled over the front door of the Emo Municipal Office.
Nevertheless, Borderland Pride’s draft proclamation was tabled before a May 2020 meeting of the Emo Township Council, where it was defeated by a vote of three to two.
The claim of discrimination ultimately hinged on a single line uttered by Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker. When the proclamation came up for consideration, McQuaker was heard to say in a recording of the meeting, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”
As Human Rights Tribunal vice-chair Karen Dawson wrote in her decision, “I find this remark was demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which
Clearly the town is being punished for the whataboutery of Emo’s mayor, which may reflect bigotry, ir it may not. It may just reflect ideological neutrality. Whatever the cause, a town should not be compelled to celebrate any sex or gender diversity and then fined if it doesn’t. O Canada!
*The WSJ reports on the ubiquity of AI videos these days, many of them using Chinese programs.
In a scene from Amazon’s biblical series “House of David,” human actors portray fallen angels and mortal women. The surrounding landscape—a moody tableau of steel-gray skies and jagged mountains—is the work of AI.
Of the 850 visual-effect shots in the show’s first season, 73 were built using generative artificial intelligence, including a tool developed by one of China’s most popular social-media sites. That saved money on expensive on-location shoots, according to Wonder Project, the studio behind the series.
From Hollywood productions to short social-media videos, video makers are increasingly using AI to create content that once required sprawling crews.
“As production costs fall, it becomes more affordable for creators to experiment and test new ideas,” said Zeng Yushen of Kuaishou, the Chinese company whose AI model was used in “House of David.”
China plays a big role in this business, though it wouldn’t be obvious to most Americans watching television or scrolling through videos on their phones. Chinese labs claimed seven of the top 10 spots for video-generation models on rating platform Artificial Analysis, competing with those from Google and Elon Musk’s xAI.
This month, a video-generation model called HappyHorse went viral after beating American rivals in blind quality tests. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba later disclosed the model was its own.
And Seedance 2.0, the latest AI video generator from TikTok parent ByteDance, won attention earlier this year for its ability to turn script prompts into realistic short-movie scenes. ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok, competes with Kuaishou’s video-sharing app, which has hundreds of millions of users in China.
Such platforms “naturally have large volumes of labeled short-video data that can be used for training,” said Tilly Zhang, a technology analyst at research house Gavekal. “This creates a data barrier that most companies cannot easily replicate.”
I don’t mind people using AI in movies or videos, but I think it’s incumbent on them to tell us when it’s used. It’s not like animation in which you know that it’s not reality. Instead, AI sometimes either represents itself as reality or could be mistaken for reality. There outghta to a law, if not an ethical rule. I think the day will come when nearly all video made by professionals (and a lot by amateurs) will involve AI, and that’s a bit sad. They’re already resurrecting dead actors and putting them in movies.
*In 1990 the biggest art heist in history took place: in the wee hours of March 18, over $500 million worth of paintings were rem0ved at night from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Wikipedia totes up some of the stolen works:
The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and were intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection. Among them was The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by Johannes Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world. Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt‘s only seascape. Other paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Govert Flinck were stolen, along with a relatively valueless eagle finial and Chinese gu. Experts were puzzled by the choice of artwork, as more valuable works were left untouched. As the collection and its layout are intended to be permanent, empty frames remain hanging both in homage to the missing works and as placeholders for their return.
In 2013, the FBI said it knew who was responsible for the Boston museum heist but declined to name them, fueling speculation that persists today.
A former FBI agent who led the investigation for more than two decades is now offering the first detailed account of how investigators reached that conclusion — and publicly identifying the men he believes were involved. In a new book, Geoff Kelly traces how the artworks moved through criminal networks, where violence took the lives of key suspects and witnesses, and challenges long-circulating theories by revisiting key details.
. . . In the decades since the robbery, several people believed to have ties to the heist were killed, and another died under suspicious circumstances.
Robert “Bobby” Donati, a Boston mob associate long suspected in the case, was found stabbed to death in 1991, his body left in the trunk of a car after his home had been ransacked.
Years earlier, Donati visited the Gardner with another known art thief, Myles Connor, to scope it out for a robbery and said that if he ever took the museum’s Napoleonic finial, it would be his “calling card.” Years later, a jeweler told investigators Donati tried to sell a finial from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum but backed off, saying it was “too hot.”
A separate line of evidence centered on George Reissfelder, who investigators believe owned the getaway car.
Kelly tracked down Reissfelder’s brother, a retired military officer who had initially not believed his brother was involved. He broke down after being shown Manet’s “Chez Tortoni,” saying he recognized it as a painting he himself hung above his brother’s bed.
Reissfelder later died under suspicious circumstances. When investigators searched his home, the painting was gone.
Both men had ties to TRC Auto Electric, a Dorchester shop linked to Charles “Chuck” Merlino’s crew.
Kelly personifies the missing artworks and describes them as “perfect fugitives.”
“They don’t go to the doctor. They don’t get stopped for speeding. They don’t leave fingerprints,” he said. “They can just disappear.”
Unlike human fugitives, he said, artworks can also be copied.
Over the years, that has meant chasing down false leads — including paintings spotted in a Reno antique market, hanging in private homes and even one that appeared in an episode of the TV show “Monk.”
Because the works are so recognizable, it’s nearly impossible to sell them publicly.
“Stealing the artwork from the museum, that’s the easy part,” Kelly said. “Profiting from it, that’s the difficult part.”
He imagines the paintings will surface one day — outliving those who carried out the heist.
“I have no doubt they still exist,” he said
Of course they still exist, either hidden by the thieves or in some rich private collector’s hands. You don’t pull a job like that and destroy $500 million worth of paintings. Here’s “The Concert,” the Vermeer painting that was stolen:
Johannes Vermeer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And here’s the missing Rembrandt, which is a good one:
From Masih; Iranian officials and their offspring enjoy luxury while protestors get shot and blinded (sound up, and translations from Spanish welcomes):
Just yesterday and again today, they executed another Iranian while they send their children abroad to enjoy safety and luxury.
This is the son of another Islamic Republic of Iran official who served as a diplomat of the Islamic Republic in Venezuela.
From J. K. Rowling. Biological men don’t belong in women’s prisons:
The Scottish government is responsible for this sexual assault. The Supreme Court has confirmed women’s right to single sex spaces, a ruling the SNP continues to flout. If the victim wishes to sue, https://t.co/iyohnrgVZN can assist with all costs. https://t.co/rnyKbWXhj5
The Daily Mail just published testimonies of Gazan children being raped by Hamas-affiliated clerics at local mosques — and then threatened into silence by the Qassam Brigades.
One from my feed; the “community note” says that pelicans like this are common in Greece, but this one isn’t 37 years old:
A pelican, around 37 years old, shows up every day at a Greek restaurant to get its portion of fish. The bird has become a well-known local figure along the seafront pic.twitter.com/FqHAAANMag
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was four years old. She would be 88 today had she survived. https://t.co/VqBPPZHwAF
And a sad tale of the death of Florida’s citrus industry. I used to collect Drosophila in Florida, concentrating on orange groves where flies were common:
Totally off-topic, but did y'all the know the Free State of Florida's citrus industry is basically dead??This is quite a story:slate.com/business/202…
If I was asked ten years ago to explain this difference and also the trend over time, I wouldn’t have been able to give an answer, though now various places have suggested self-selection: academia by its very nature of free expression and (supposed) favoritism of argument and open ideas, favors liberals over conservatives. Here’s from The Independent Review:
The very nature of political inquiry is implicated here as well. Some argue that because academia focuses on expanding ideas, it is inherently opposed to conservatism, which seeks, in a nod to Buckley, to yell “Stop!” In some respects, a liberal-leaning academia should be expected to some degree. The confounding reality now, though, is that many liberal academics agree it is vital to limit ideas they deem harmful.
Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas.
Now what does that mean? I suppose you can interpret it as another way of saying what’s above: universities, whose job is to find out the truth (“reality”) tend to attract liberals. But I don’t think that’s what the phrase is supposed to mean. I think that Colbert meant, and others mean, that reality itself has a tendency to buttress Left-wing views. That’s what Grok says when asked to explain how the Left uses the phrase:
Often deployed earnestly (or semi-earnestly) to argue that empirical evidence on topics like climate change, inequality, public health data, or social issues tends to support center-left policy conclusions more than conservative ones. The implication: “Stop calling facts ‘liberal bias’—reality just doesn’t align with your priors.”
And that may indeed be true, but it reverses the causes of what’s meant: “the views of liberals are more often supported by the facts than are the views of conservatives or moderates.”
Well, one can argue about even that (e.g., climate change on one hand and Israel on the other), but what bothers me is that the quote implies that reality itself leads to liberalism. But reality has no ideology: it’s simply what’s true about the Universe. Evolutionary biology itself gives just the facts, though those facts can be accepted by liberals or rejected by conservatives like religious creationists. How one deals with the facts depends on one’s upbringing and predisposition.
Actually, anyone studying reality—trying to find the truth—had best abandon any ideological slant beforehand, as ideology impedes the search for truth. The methodology of science itself—hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt, double-blind testing, the use of math and statistics, publication and communication, and empirical observation—is not ideological, and does not lead one to either the Left or Right.
This paper from BioScience, written by a philosopher and an evolutionary molecular biologist, shows that studying reality itself is best done in an atmosphere of ethnical neutrality. Click screenshot to read.
The authors argue first that ideological neutrality is important in finding the truth:
Arguably, a more feasible solution to the new demarcation problem is an old solution: when engaging in the core activities of scientific research, scientists should strive to eliminate the influence of all non-epistemic (e.g., ethical and political) values from the work they are conducting and (importantly) reviewing—at least to the extent that this is humanly possible. Like the ideal of a perfect democracy, the ideal of perfect ethical or political neutrality is probably never attainable in practice. Nonetheless, it is an ideal that motivates scientists to identify and hold each other accountable for any non-epistemic biases that might infiltrate and potentially distort scientific reasoning.
They then say that science is best conducted employing four Mertonian norms (Robert Merton was an American sociologists who wrote a lot about the sociology of science):
Merton’s first norm, perhaps inappropriately called “communism,” “prescribes the open communication of findings to other scientists and correlatively proscribing secrecy” (Zuckerman and Merton 1971).
. . . Merton’s second norm—universalism—states that personal attributes of a scientist, such as race, gender, nationality, religion, class, or political affiliation, are irrelevant when evaluating their scientific work. This norm functions epistemically as a corrective against all possible forms of discrimination other than merit.
. . . Merton’s third value, organized skepticism, encourages scientists to remain open to future falsification. This involves considering “all new evidence, hypotheses, theories, and innovations, even those that challenge or contradict their own work” (Anderson et al. 2010).
. . . Merton’s fourth norm called “disinterestedness” is perhaps the most controversial. Taken literally, this norm seems to require of scientists that they set aside personal goals in the pure pursuit of truth. Even the most careful scientist is vulnerable to confirmation bias (Wiens 1997). The expectation that scientists should behave as if they had no stake in the outcomes of their research is meant to counteract the effects of wishful thinking.
Now the authors discuss the opposition to these norms, and problems that arise when using them, but I think it’s useful to recognize that setting aside ideology is the best and fastest way to understand reality.
I suppose this post is a long-winded way of exporessing what I see as a self-aggrandizing phrase, and one that distorts the way that finding truth really works, but I’ve heard the phrase often enough to dissect it a bit.
The upshot: neither morality or ideology can be derived from reality, but those of a certain ideological or moral bent may rely on reality more than those of other stripes.
I think this was news commentary, but I didn’t hear the whole show: just a snippet on my car radio. At any rate, one commenter said this:
“Joe Biden is probably the last Democratic President for generations who will be in favor of Israel.”
One could say that the Democrats are taking a position of neutrality, favoring neither Israel or its opponents (e.g., Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, or Hamas), but I doubt that is the case. The Democratic Party is being taken over by so-called “progressives,” and they are opposed to Israel in general—not just “Zionism” (which means Israel’s existence as a state), and not just Netanyahu. This, according to a poll of Palestinians taken in the West Bank and Gaza two years ago, is who the Democrats are and will be favoring:
According to the poll, only seven percent of Gazans blamed Hamas for their suffering. Seventy-one percent of all Palestinians supported Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7 — up 14 points among Gazans and down 11 points among West Bank Palestinians compared to three months ago. Fifty-nine percent of all Palestinians thought Hamas should rule Gaza, and 70 percent were satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the war.
Before October 7, Fatah would have defeated Hamas in a head-to-head vote of all Palestinians 26 to 22 percent. If elections were held today, Fatah would lose to Hamas 17 to 34 percent. Eighty-one percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Abbas, up from 76 percent before the war. Sixty-two percent did not view the recent resignation of former PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh as a sign of reform. And 65 percent of Palestinians think the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people. Among likely voters, 56 percent supported Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences for his role in the murder of Jews during the Second Intifada. Thirty-two percent supported Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and 11 percent supported Abbas.
Only 5 percent of Palestinians think Hamas’s massacre on October 7 constitutes a war crime.
The poll was taken by a Palestinian organization, “the Ramallah-based non-profit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.” And we have this breakdown of Democratic support (almost nil) from The Arab Center:
On April 15, 2026, the United States Senate considered two resolutions to block nearly $450 million of arms sales to Israel over concerns about human rights violations and the US-Israel war on Iran. With pro-Israel Republicans controlling the Senate, the defeat of these resolutions, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), was predictable. Indeed, the first resolution, to stop a $295 million sale of bulldozers that Israel has used in the past to destroy civilian homes, lost in a 59-40 vote; the second, to halt a $151 million sale of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs, failed 63-36. The surprise was that more than three-quarters of the 47-member Democratic caucus voted to halt at least one of the sales—an unprecedented number.
Jews were reliably Democratic before the war, and Democrats were reliable friends of Israel. Brothers and sisters, friends and comrades, those days are gone. Democrats are not only ignoring Hamas’s war crimes and avowed desire to destroy Israel, but also favoring an oppressive, misogynistic, and truly genocidal regime against the only democratic state in the Middle East. And no, I don’t think it’s just animus against Netanyahu or “Zionism” that’s motivating this change. I think that Democratic opposition to Israel would be nearly as strong if Israel had some other Prime Minister. And it’s not “Zionism” they oppose, either, for that’s just the new euphemism for “Judaism”, for Zionism is just the recognition of the validity of the state of Israel as a refuge for Jews. (Do these people oppose the many explicitly Muslim states as examples of “Islamism”? If so, I haven’t heard about it.)
Israel (and Jews) are now seen as oppressors in the “oppressor-victim” narrative that’s behind wokeness. And the “oppression” by Israel involves the Two Big Lies: Israel is “genocidal” and “an apartheid state.” (For a refutation of the “genocide” canard go here, and of the “apartheid” canard go here). We are seeing the Democratic Party becoming more antisemitic and anti-Enlightenment. For Democrats like me, this is depressing. I’m not a one-issue candidate but I’m still Jewish, and how am I to vote for someone who is anti-Israel?
