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’m proffering you a must-watch video, at least if you’re interested in the rise and fall of American academia.
Vanderbilt University, with its emphasis on free speech, academic freedom, and institutional neutrality, is rapidly becoming the University of Chicago of the South—or should I say that The University of Chicago is the Vanderbilt of the North? For Vanderbilt has been transformed since hiring the University of Chicago’s previous Provost, Daniel Diermeier, as its Chancellor (i.e., President). Diermeier is implementing the Chicago Principles in a big way at Vanderbilt. In fact, he’s doing better than Chicago. For example, when pro-Palestinian protestors illegally occupied a university building in Vanderbilt in 2024, the protestors were removed after 22 hours, with some students arrested and others suspended.
In contrast, when this happened four times at Chicago (i.e., violations of University rules during anti-Israel demonstrations), nothing happened to the students. Some of them, and lik-minded faculty, were arrested after a sit-in in our Admissions Office, but all charges were dropped. Bachelor’s degrees with temporarily withheld here from a few later protestors, but then the degrees were granted soon thereafter. At Chicago, violations of university rules during protests—invariably pro-Palestinian protests—are met with no punishment, which of course simply encourages further rules violations. When inquiring about this laxity, I was told that it would be the worst possible optics if the University police were seen to “lay hands on protestors.”
So here’s a one-hour talk by Chancellor Diermeier at the Heterodox Academy meeting at UC Berkeley (he’s introduced by the UCB Chancellor). The Youtube notes are below.
Centered on the theme “The Value of Viewpoint Diversity: Why It Matters and How to Practice It Well”, this conference offers actionable insights, fosters rich intellectual exchange, and brings together individuals from across the region who are invested in the future of higher education.
Notice that Diermeier speaks without notes, yet the speech is well constructed and logical. Kudos to him. At the beginning he outlines three areas of inquiry, which I’ve put in bold. I’ve also added comments.
Progress
Diermeier argues that there has been progress in free expression of universities: there is now less shouting down of speakers—something he attributes largely to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). To see if he’s right, you can check FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database. So far, there have been 98 deplatformings or attempted deplatformings in 2026, and the year isn’t half over. I’m not sure that this isn’t an increase rather than a decrease over previous years. You can count them if you wish.
Diermeier is also glad that institutional neutrality is spreading rapidly: more than 140 schools, he says, have adopted some kind of position of being institutionally neutral—that is, taking no official position on political, moral, or ideological issues unless they have a direct influence on the stated mission of a university. I was dubious of this figure, but he’s right. Here’s a chart from an article in Free the Inquiry showing the remarkable rise in U.S. and Canadian universities adopting institutional neutrality. Look at the big jump starting in 2024!
And there’s also been some improvements in the UK as reported by Times Higher Education: click to read (h/t Jez):
Finally, Diermeier states that the intrusive and ideologically extreme versions of DEI are becoming less powerful in universities. Here he’s right, too, though that may disappear after Trump goes. Extreme forms of DEI will certainly return if we get a Democratic President—one of the bad side effects of Democrats, especially “progressive” Democrats, gain power.
Principle is the second area of Diermeier’s talk. His topic is the answer to the question, “What is the purpose of a univesity?” And here he has no doubts, for the purpose is to produce “pathbreaking research and transformative education”—production of knowledge and conveying this knowledge to society via publications or other scholarly outlets.
He goes on to discuss the importance of free speech and emphasizes that it’s not the same thing as academic freedom, a point I’ve made repeatedly. As a private citizen I am free to espouse creationism as much as I want, but I am not free to teach creationism—or other palpable falsehoods—in my biology classes. You can’t say anything you want as a professor teaching classes.
Diermeier takes up the issue of the meeting: “viewpoint diversity”, which many people think is the real kind of diversity that universities should strive for. But he notes that although viewpoint diversity is a worthy goal if it’s meant to buttressfree speech, he’s not clear about what the term really means. Diermeier notes that viewpoint diversity as a desideratum is really the byproduct of a more important goal: preventing the erosion of scholarly standards by political or ideological principles. If that erosion is taking place, as it is in many areas (science is somewhat of an exception, but, as Luana and I showed, the erosion is even affecting biology), then it enforces a conformity that stifles free speech and academic freedom. Thus, if you prevent that kind of erosion and its chilling effect on speech, viewpoint diversity should automatically inrease.
Diermeier then gives several examples of the kind of symptoms we see when academic fields are afflicted with ideological erosion. The symptoms are “citation justice,” “positionality statements,” and “avoidance of trans issues” (he means the fear of academics to even discuss trans issues). I’ve never heard a college president be so open in opposing these trends, but he’s right.
Politics is Diermeier’s third topic, and this is where he suggests remedies. He notes that ideology isn’t pervasive in academia, guessing that about 85% of faculty are committed to doing their academic mission—investigating the areas of interest to them, like me working on speciation in fruit flies. But, he says, the other 15% “have political commitments that they consider essential to who they are as scholars.:” Examples of these people, in my view, are Chicago professors like Alireza Doostdar and Eman Abdelhadi, pro-Palestinian scholars who are always spouting off or demonstrating against Israel. Abdelhadi is reported as saying this:
Abdelhadi. . . . described the University [of Chicago] as “evil” and “a colonial landlord” in her remarks, which centered on the topic of political organizing in one’s community.
“Why would I organize here? I don’t care about this institution. Like I don’t—like fuck the University of Chicago, it’s evil. Like, you know? It’s a colonial landlord. Like, why would I put any of my political energy into this space,” Abdelhadi said at the conference. “And I kind of had a moment of disdain for people who spent a lot of time doing that.”
“The genocide really collapsed that and made me realize two things,” she continued. “One is that, well, my students need me. So, it was like: ‘Oh, I actually have to organize here to take care of my students, who I do care about.’ But I also realized—and I think this is a painful lesson that a lot of us in the Palestine solidarity movement have been learning—is that we don’t have power.”
Despite her criticisms of the University’s role as a “landlord, a healthcare provider, [and] a police force,” she described UChicago as “a place where [she has] access to thousands of people that [she] could potentially organize” politically.
In other words, damn the scholarship; she is here to ideologically convert “thousands of students.” This is what Diermeier means by the “other 15%.” He adds that people with such an agenda are mostly on the Left, and yes, that is also correct.
How do we fix this? In the Q&A session beginning 44 minutes in, this is precisely the question that Abby Thompson of UC Davis asks Diermeier, and his answer isn’t completely satisfying: he says that the faculty must organize and stand together against this kind of ideological erosion. My response is that that’s way easier said than done.
But I’ve gone on too long, and my summary is no substitute for listening to this engaging talk. It’s the best discussion of the state of American universities that I’ve heard since I started teaching:
We have more photos! Today’s batch comes from Leo Glenn, and were taken in New Zealand. Leo (and his friends’ ) captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
It’s been a long time since I’ve submitted wildlife photos. I just haven’t taken any recently that I thought were worthy of submission. However, my son, Ossian, and his partner, Emma, are enjoying a semester study abroad program at the University of Otago in Dunedin on the southern island of New Zealand, and they have granted me permission to share some of their photos. All of the photos are on the Otago peninsula.
The birds at the waterline are Variable Oystercatchers, Haematopus unicolor. Photo by Ossian Glenn:
Only a few people appear to be reading these dialogues, at least judging by the comments on Monday’s Hili. This is sad.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 6 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The war with Iran is back on, though Trump denies it. Here’s the latest from It’s Noon in Israel:
It’s Tuesday, May 5, and yesterday, shortly after news broke that the UAE was attacked by Iran, Jerusalem shook with a massive sonic boom as a squadron of Israeli Air Force fighter jets tore overhead. Naturally, the exact same thought popped into every head in the city at once: “Looks like the war is back on.” After 20 minutes of mentally inventorying the supplies needed for a return to the bomb shelters, the IAF finally issued a clarification. This wasn’t a combat sortie heading east; it was just a rehearsal for the farewell flyover honoring outgoing IAF Chief Tomer Bar. Apparently, the IAF takes going out with a bang quite literally.
But the Jerusalemites’ fear of regional escalation is well-founded, especially after yesterday’s events. As part of “Operation Freedom,” U.S. destroyers successfully guided commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz—sinking six Iranian fast-attack craft that attempted to interfere in the process.
This left the regime in an incredibly awkward position: its threats of a blockade had just been exposed as empty. Unable to pierce the defenses of the U.S. convoy, Iran immediately pivoted to softer targets. They struck the UAE’s oil infrastructure in Fujairah, a South Korean cargo vessel, and impacted Oman.
So, is the war back on? Not exactly.
President Donald Trump indicated that these most recent Iranian attacks did not constitute a ceasefire violation, stating there was no “heavy firing” involved. Welcome to the “Israel Club,” UAE—sometimes your immediate security needs are subordinated to a larger U.S. strategic goal.
The larger goal here isn’t the collapse of the Iranian regime; it’s the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. While Operation Freedom was ostensibly a humanitarian mission to extract trapped ships, it was also a test of a classic naval strategy: the convoy escort. The mission proved to both Trump and the Iranians that if the U.S. wants to, it can forcefully reopen the strait by escorting international shipping.
It’s a powerful strategy that becomes even more potent under a continuing ceasefire. It transforms what was previously a two-way street of passive economic pressure into a one-way street aimed directly at Iran. Any economic ticking clock that might have been pressuring Trump to withdraw freezes, while the clock measuring the lifespan of the regime just keeps ticking.
The United States and Iran made competing claims over which side controlled the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, adding pressure to their shaky cease-fire after the U.S. Navy launched an effort to protect vessels through the vital oil shipping route.
The strait itself remains effectively closed: Only two ships were known to have passed through the waterway on Monday, and none had made the trip on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. effort to free trapped vessels is ongoing, adding “We’re ensuring that we have control of that strait, which we do.” Iran’s state broadcaster dismissed the U.S. effort as a failure and said Iranian control over the strait had “intensified.”
Of course the Iranian attacks were a ceasefire violation. Trump is pretending that there is peace when there is no peace: both Iran and the U.S. say they’re controlling the Strait. I’m appalled by the pretense, but also curious about how this whole thing will turn out.
*You may have heard that a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean (now off the Cape Verde Islands in Africa) has had some passengers infected with a deadly hantavirus, a virus that’s normally spread by rodents and not human-to-human contact. Several passengers have already died, and they’re not letting anybody off the ship, which probably means that everybody is locked in their cabin and is being brought some kind of sterile food. I saw a video last night that a passenger made, and boy, was he anxious and ready to go home. But the ship was described as floating with its cargo of live and dead passengers. (They didn’t mention whether the dead had been evacuated.) Now the WSJ reports that this virus may ineed be transmitted by humans:
The World Health Organization said it is possible there was human-to-human transmission of hantavirus on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean, a rare way the virus typically carried by rodents can spread.
“We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that’s happening among the really close contacts,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said Tuesday morning.
“We don’t have a full picture yet,” she said, “but we have some working assumptions.”
A suspected hantavirus outbreak aboard a ship carrying 147 passengers and crew has led to three deaths and four other infections, according to the WHO. Two of the seven total cases have been confirmed in laboratories as hantavirus, and the five others were suspected cases, the WHO said.
The passenger-cruise ship called MV Hondius was traveling in the Atlantic Ocean, said the vessel’s operator Oceanwide Expeditions, and is currently off the coast of the West African nation of Cape Verde.
Officials are preparing to evacuate two sick people on board to the Netherlands, Van Kerkhove said. After they are evacuated, the ship will go to the Canary Islands, where Spanish authorities will welcome the ship and work with the WHO to do a full epidemiological investigation, Van Kerkhove said. Oceanwide Expeditions said Tuesday discussions related to the ship’s next steps for disembarkment “are ongoing.”
The MV Hondius departed from Ushuaia, a city in southern Argentina, in early April and made stops in Antarctica and the British territory of St. Helena before anchoring off Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on Sunday. Local health authorities chose not to allow the ship to dock in Praia due to public health concerns, according to a statement from Cape Verde’s health authority.
Health workers getting off the MV Hondius after a suspected hantavirus outbreak.Qasem Elhato/Associated Press
Hantavirus, a family of viruses carried by rodents and spread to humans through contact with infected urine, droppings or saliva, doesn’t typically spread between humans. But one strain of the virus found primarily in Chile and Argentina, known as the Andes virus, has shown limited evidence of human-to-human transmission.
While epidemiological assessments and testing are still under way, Van Kerkhove said the WHO is operating under the assumption that this hantavirus virus is the Andes variant. A Dutch man who died on the ship on April 11 and his wife who died later that month were both infected with hantavirus.
I’ve been to Ushuaia on previous trips to the Antarctic and am going again when I travel to the island of South Georgia. I was on one trip where there was a Covid infection aboard, and as “crew” (a lecturer) I was tested every day. Passengers were tested, too, and those who were positive were confined to their cabins with a chair put in front of the door as a warning. A hantavirus outbreak on a small Antarctic cruise ship is about the most horrific travel situation I can imagine.
*The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded. The ones for journalism are hardly worth mentioning (see here if you must), but here are the awards for Books, Drama & Music. Click on the titles to see something about the work. Links go to the Pulitzer’s description of the work and why it won. I’ve added a description of a few:
A breathless novel of World War I, a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence. [JAC: this is one I want to read.]
Ms. Lepore won the prize for “a lively and engaging narrative that investigates why the Constitution is so difficult to amend, including a review of noteworthy failed amendments proposed by marginalized groups,” the committee said.
A lively and detailed biography of two daughters of wealthy and influential Dutch landowners who colored our nation’s history, using present tense to tell their story and past tense to chronicle the dramatic sweep of the American Revolution.
A writer’s deeply moving and revelatory account of losing her younger son to suicide a little more than six years after her older son died in the same manner, an austere and defiant memoir of acceptance that focuses on facts, language and the persistence of life. [JAC: Another one I want to read.]
A feat of reportage, analysis and storytelling focusing on the issues that have created a national crisis of family homelessness among the so-called working poor.
*ScienceDaily reports on a paper in eLife about the sideways walking of crabs. It turns out that the sidewayswalk evolved only once, and was inherited by all its ancestors that now walk sideways. Some crabs still walk forward, though. (h/t Barry). The phylogeny below, taken from the eLife paper, shows the sideways walkers in blue and the straight walkers in read. You can see that all the modern sideways walkers are descendants of a species that lived about 200-150 million years ago. Before that, the ancestral condition was walking straight. It also shows that some species, like those in the genera Lybia, Arcania, and Dorippe, reversed their walks, coming from a sideways walking ancestor but evolving back to the ancestral condition of walking straight.
(From the paper). Ancestral state reconstruction of locomotion in crabs under the all-rates-different (ARD) model.
From ScienceDaily, which addresses the question of why some crabs do walk sideways:
A new study, released as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, brings together the largest dataset yet on how crabs move. By comparing many species, the researchers traced this unusual walking style back to a shared ancestor that lived roughly 200 million years ago. Editors at eLife describe the findings as valuable and supported by largely convincing evidence, with broad relevance for scientists studying how animals move.
Sideways walking is a hallmark of ‘true crabs’ (Brachyura), the largest group among crab decapods. This unusual way of moving may offer important advantages. For example, it can help crabs escape predators by making their direction harder to predict.
“Sideways locomotion may have contributed significantly to the ecological success of true crabs,” says senior corresponding author Yuuki Kawabata, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Japan. “There are around 7,904 species of true crabs, far exceeding that of their sister group, Anomura, or their closest relatives, Astacidea; they have colonized diverse habitats around the world, including terrestrial, freshwater and deep-sea environments; and their crab-like body shape has evolved repeatedly over time in a phenomenon known as carcinization.
“Despite the rich information available on true crabs, data concerning their locomotor behaviors are sparse. Although most true crab species use sideways locomotion, there are some groups that walk forwards, which raises some interesting questions. When did their sideways locomotion originate, how many times over the years did it evolve, and how many times did it revert?”
. . . Out of the 50 species studied, 35 primarily moved sideways, while 15 moved forward. When the researchers mapped these behaviors onto the evolutionary tree, a clear pattern emerged. Sideways walking appears to have evolved just once, originating from a forward-walking ancestor at the base of Eubrachyura, a group that includes more advanced crabs. After that point, the trait remained largely unchanged across true crabs.
“This single event contrasts starkly with carcinization, which has occurred repeatedly across decapod species,” Kawabata explains. “This highlights that while body shapes may converge multiple times, behavioral changes such as sideways walking can be rare.”
The researchers suggest that this one-time shift to sideways movement may have played a major role in the success of true crabs. Moving laterally allows crabs to travel quickly in either direction, making it easier to evade predators. At the same time, this type of locomotion is uncommon across the animal kingdom, possibly because it can interfere with other important activities such as burrowing, mating and feeding.
According to the authors, sideways walking may represent a rare evolutionary innovation seen mainly in true crabs, and possibly in a few other groups.
There you have it. You’ll be the life of the party if you ask people about what evolutionary advantages may come from crabs walking sideways.
The University of Michigan has issued a formal apology after its faculty senate chair went off-script to praise anti-Israel student protesters during last weekend’s commencement address.
Derek Peterson, who also praised the memory of the school’s first Jewish professor in his speech, had drawn criticism from Michigan Hillel and from major organizations, including the American Jewish Committee.
Now, a growing chorus of faculty members have signed a letter pushing back on the school president’s apology. On the right, Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott has urged the federal government to stop funding the public university over the incident, writing, “If this is what Americans are paying for, it’s time to cut them off COMPLETELY.”
“At today’s U-M spring commencement ceremony, our outgoing Faculty Senate Chair made remarks regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that were hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community,” Michigan’s interim president, Domenico Grasso, wrote in his letter on Saturday. “We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment. For this, the university apologizes.”
Peterson, a history and African-American studies professor who is finishing a stint as faculty chair, had structured his commencement speech around pioneers in university history.
. . .Peterson’s comments, Grasso said, “were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position,” which he said was “institutional neutrality.” (Many universities have adopted a stance of neutrality in recent years as they have sought to navigate tensions around Israel.)
Grasso added, “Commencement is a time of celebration, recognition and unity. The Chair’s remarks were expected to be congratulatory, not a platform for personal or political expression.”
Here’s a video clip of his remarks, provided by Peterson himself. He first touts the admission of Jewish and black students and professors, but then, at 4:30, he segues into the part where he praises the pro-Palestinian activists who “opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza” (note the loud cheers from the students; there was an encampment at this University). You might say that by simultaneously calling attention to past Jewish and black “pioneer” students, Peterson’s remarks about Gaza weren’t so bad, but it’s clear that his real aim was to slip in praise for the pro-Hamas students. Or do you think it was okay? After all, while he’s touting minority students and faculty who were hired, he’s touting activists, not Gazans who were admitted to the school.
From CBS News: Here’s how Peterson defended his remarks:
“I would however urge Regent Hubbard to review the comments I actually made at yesterday’s commencement. It should not be controversial to have one’s “heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel’s war in Gaza”, which is what I credited activists with doing. Having an open heart to other people’s suffering is a fundamental human virtue. It is a quality that I hope we teach our students, whatever their political posture might be.
“So I am mystified about what I have done to earn Regent Hubbard’s ire. I have – like many of us here in Michigan – been convicted by the evidence of human suffering in Gaza; and I credit my awareness of that to pro-Palestinian activists. That is why I gave the speech that I did. On a day meant to honor students for their accomplishments, I thought it important that we would honor the student activists who have, over the course of time, pushed the institution toward justice.
He can say what he wants, of course, but should stick to the speech he gave in advance to the administration, which he knew was a lie. I would object to pro-Israel remarks just as vehemently as to these, particularly if a lie was also involved. Pushing an ideological point of view is inappropriate in a nonpolitical speech.
*Iran has executed three more detained protestors. This is of course on top of the 30,000 that were shot in the streets, but this doesn’t get as much attention. Masih makes sure it gets some:
All these three Iranians have been hanged today. This is a campaign of terror and the world is watching like it’s just another Netflix series, waiting to see how many episodes it takes before anyone actually does something.
From Luana: geneticist David Reich on the “freezing” of interbreeding between northern and southern populations in India:
One of the coolest stories I heard from David Reich about the interaction between genetics and human culture:
The caste system was powerful enough to essentially ‘freeze’ Indian genetics for thousands of years, almost completely stopping the process of genetic mixture. pic.twitter.com/SEJtKjODLj
This Hungarian girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old, and would be 92 today had she lived. https://t.co/C2tTJ6jQYu
And two from Dr. Cobb. If Wikipedia is making a joke here, it’s a lame one:
famously the only joke allowed on Wikipedia is, in their List of Whales, any entry that is missing a photo says [cetacean needed] apparently some unfunny losers have made it their job to find public domain images of whales to eradicate this jokeonly one instance of [cetacean needed] remains
The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded today, which reminded me to recommend two good novels that I’ve recently finished. One is a short book while the other is quite long, but both are excellent and well worth reading.
First, the short one: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, her first book. It’s recent (published in 2025), short (285 small pages), and was issued by my own publisher, Penguin Random House. You can access the Amazon site by clicking on the cover image below.
It’s about the only “epistolary novel” I’ve ever read, which means it consists solely of a series of letters—written by and sent to one Sybil van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in her late seventies who lives in Annapolis, Maryland. van Antwerp is insistent that letters are the most efficient ways of expressing her thoughts and feelings, and she’ll write emails only when pressed. At this late stage of her life, she’s writing to her family (partly estranged), to an unknown troll her hates her, to her friends, and to writers like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry, who answer her letters. (The correspondence, of course, is all made up.)
On starting the book one gets the sense of an honest, upright woman with strong feelings but also substantial empathy for others. Over the course of the correspondence, however, this image erodes as one becomes aware that Sybil has had immense trouble in her life and uses letters as a way to assuage it. As the book proceeds, her life become more cluttered, but in a good way: she takes in a troubled adolescent, gets involved with two men, and finds a long-lost relative using a DNA ancestry company. All the while she engages in writing a single continuous letter, one she never sends, to someone about whom she feels guilty.
The book is superb though not a classic: the task one faces is to figure out what Sybil is really like from her letters; and that impression changes over the course of the book. I won’t give any spoilers here, but if you’re in the mood for a relatively short and engrossing read, The Correspondent is a book you should consider.
Mating, by Norman Rush, is a much more complex and ambitious affair. It came out in 1991 (published by Granta Books and now Vintage) and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction that same year, so I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it. Unusually, though the author is a man, the narrative comes from a woman—a strong-willed and opinionated (an unnamed) graduate student in her thirties, who abandons her work in Botswana because her field, anthropology, seems passé. Instead of doing her work, she accumulates experience, particularly with men. (This is a book about a woman’s experience written by a man, which may explain some of her authoritarian ideas and feelings. I doubt whether, given the disparity of sex between author and narrator, the book could be published today.)
The unnamed narrator becomes fixated on a male scholar, Nelson Denoon, who has founded a female-run utopian community in the Kalahari desert, a community so isolated that the narrator has to trek to it in an arduous weeklong journey through the wilderness with two donkeys. She finds Nelson in a small town with intricate rules designed to promote harmony. But the narrator can’t quite fit in, and spends a lot of time not only pondering how to act among a group of African women who jointly run the town as a commune, but also pondering her growing romance with Denoon. There is endless agonizing about the nature of their relationship, with the narrator constantly wondering whether her actions are fostering or eroding intimacy. While some might consider this a fault, it’s my experience that women analyze their relationships far more thoroughly than do men, particularly when talking to others of their own sex.
I won’t give away the plot or the ending beyond that. Although the book is nearly 500 pages long, I looked forward to reading thirty or forty pages of it each night, and again recommend it highly. At least start the book and see if the momentum carries you through it.
You can go to its Amazon page by clicking the link below. And, as always, let us know what you’re reading and what you’re liking—or not liking.
Today’s photos come from reader Jan Malik, who took pictures of wildflowers in the Catskills. Jan’s photos and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.
During my recent hike in the Catskills, near Woodstock, NY, I found some spring flowers, ephemerals as they call them. They are hardy plants that use the narrow window between snow disappearance and tree leaves developing to get nearly all of their photosynthesis done for the year. They seem delicate but they need to withstand temperatures well below freezing – it was snowing on the second day of my hike and these plants weathered it just fine. To use this quick growth strategy, these plants have to be perennials, with underground roots, tubers or bulbs preserving the nutrients. All of these are native to the Northeast – there is no shortage of “undocumented” plants in the Catskills but I haven’t included them here.
Bluets (Houstonia caerulea), not so common in the Catskills. They are more widespread in acidic regions like the White Mountains of New Hampshire or generally in acidic soil:
Red trillium (Trillium erectum), with their flowers pointing down (I had to get low to take this picture) despite the second part of their binomial; that part of the name refers to an upright stalk. Their close cousin, the white-petaled Painted trillium is rare in the Catskills, preferring more acidic soils of the Adirondacks:
Spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), were everywhere, their flowers opening as soon as the temperature was high enough for the small insects to fly. They have a variable amount of pink in the petals, some plants produce them very pale and some very pink:
Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) have flower shape quite similar to the Bleeding hearts, and they are indeed in the same family Papaveraceae:
Downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens). I think the black stripes have the same function as landing strips on an airfield, guiding pollinators to nectar:
There were many blue violets, this one is probably a Selkirk’s Violet (Viola selkirkii):
Canada violet (Viola canadensis) has flowers growing from a tall stalk, unlike other violets. There were other violets too in that wood, each species with unique preference for moisture, sun exposure, acidity etc.:
A lovely plant, Catskills’ specialty – ramps (Allium tricoccum), or wild leeks as some call them. They don’t bloom until late May or June, when leaves will have withered. In early spring the leaves are juicy, fragrant and tender, can be stewed, fried or just eaten raw with a sandwich. I collect them by picking one leaf from a plant (there are two to three leaves per plant), which should not kill it. The underground bulb is also delicious, reportedly, but I could never bring myself to kill it. Ramps developed their chemical defences (thiosulfinates) against animal browsing, and while deer eat it only in an emergency, for great apes it is perversely a culinary attraction. Waking up to a chill morning and leaning out of the tent to collect a few leaves for breakfast is what makes early spring hiking in the Catskills so special:
Hobble-bush (Viburnum lantanoides) flowers grow from a woody shrub. The plant can spread vegetatively, by sending its twigs low on the ground and forming roots. Hobblebush thicket can be a real obstacle for an off-trail hiker, but the plant redeems itself by developing tasty berries (ripe when black) in fall. These berries are in short supply though as thrushes get to them first:
Wild oats (Uvularia sessilifolia), not much to do with cereals, just droopy leaves resembling ears of real oats:
Dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius) has edible underground tubers. These plants are too rare in the Catskills to dig one up and try cooking it, though:
Crinkle root (Cardamine diphylla). It is a member of the mustard family and its leaves are edible (as a salad or stewed) when young:
Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) in its purple-petal variant. Later in summer, the plant will produce round dark-blue berries, somewhat similar to individual grapes. They look quite attractive but are said to be poisonous. Always eager to engage in culinary biology, I once tried to bite on a berry and can assure you there is no risk of being poisoned – the taste is so awful that swallowing it is out of the question:
Trout lily (Erythronium americanum) gets its name from spots on its leaves, which are not unlike those on the fish. There were plenty of those plants in the open Catskill forest, but only a small portion of them are in bloom. They need to grow for a couple years, collecting nutrients in their tubers before becoming mature:
Welcome to The Cruelest Day: May 5, 2026, and it’s National Hoagie Day (also called a “sub” or “submarine sandwich”. It was hard to find a photo of the longest one, but of course it was on Twitter. The damn thing was nearly half a mile long. Guinness says this:
The longest sandwich measured 735 m (2,411 ft 5 in) and was created by members of three teams in total. These teams were Groupe Notre Dame Hazmieh-Scouts de L’Independence (Lebanon), Municipality of Hazmieh (Lebanon)and Mini-B chain restaurants (Lebanon). The attempt took place in Hazmieh village, Beirut, Lebanon, on 22 May 2011.
The sandwich started at Notre Dame des Soeurs Antonines School and ended on Elie Street, in Hazmieh, Beirut, Lebanon. The width of the sandwich was 12.5cm and the overall estimated weight of the sandwich is 577.03kg.
The total number of participants from the three teams who were involved in the preparation and cooking of the sandwich was 136 and 639 participants filled the sandwich, which took 22 hours to make.
Four 4-wheel movable ovens were created especially for this attempt in order to bake one long continuous piece of bread. The dough had been divided into sections and rolled out, at which point they were then joined together by further rolling, before having the movable ovens on each end of the table rolling on top of the bread cooking it as it passed.
This sandwich consisted of chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise, red vinegar, salt, mustard, white pepper, lemon juice, kammoun spices and corriander.
And here’s a photo (a lot of other “long sandwich” records, like the one for Philly cheesesteaks, appear to simply involve regular sandwiches placed end to end, and no attempt to create a long piece of bread).
There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating National Teacher Day. Click on screenshot to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses diverging answer to the question of whether the U.S. and Israel have defeated Iran—so far.
All of this brings us back to the lingering question that has haunted the Israeli defense establishment since the Iranian ceasefire: If the campaign stops here, was it a success?
Two highly informed Israeli experts—both of whom I deeply respect—have come to opposite conclusions. The first is Tamir Hayman, former head of IDF Military Intelligence, who spoke with my colleague Yonit Levi on Channel 12. The second is Yuval Steinitz, a veteran cabinet minister and current chairman of Rafael, whom I interviewed on Meet the Press. And so, in the great Jewish tradition, let us argue:
We can start with their overall assessments. Hayman, ever the measured intelligence chief, concluded that the overall balance of the campaign “leans toward the negative.” Steinitz diverged slightly, calling it “a massive victory” reminiscent of the Six-Day War.
This gap in perception hinges almost entirely on their assessment of Israel’s greatest existential threat: the nuclear program. Steinitz argues that by eliminating top scientists—an achievement he enthusiastically notes happened in the “first 7 seconds” of the campaign—and destroying weaponization equipment, Israel bought itself significant time. He claims that while Iran may have previously been months away from a bomb, “this time in my opinion it is several years,” because the physical mechanisms required to build a warhead were removed from the equation.
Hayman, however, refuses to grade on a curve. To the former intel chief, blowing up weaponization labs and eliminating scientists doesn’t matter if the raw materials are still sitting safely underground. He completely rejects Steinitz’s premise, warning that the fundamental components of a nuclear breakout—the subterranean facilities, the advanced centrifuges and the stockpiles of enriched uranium—were left intact inside the country. He bluntly states that “we hardly touched the nuclear issue,” warning that Iran’s breakout time remains dangerously short, leaving Israel in a situation “similar to the one in which we started the fighting.” While Hayman acknowledges his assessment might shift if a negotiated agreement ultimately collars the Iranian program, short of that, his conclusion is stark: “If the nuclear threat is not addressed, then the question arises—what did we do in this whole event?”
This profound divide extends to their views on the stability of the Iranian regime. Steinitz sees a government on its knees. He argues that the strikes so thoroughly decimated Iranian supply chains and infrastructure that the country has “turned from a tiger into a cat.” In his view, Iran is “highly weakened” and teetering “on the verge of collapse”—suggesting the ayatollahs would have fallen completely had the U.S. not prematurely halted the war.
Hayman views the exact same scenario and sees a disaster. To him, the regime’s sheer survival against a coordinated U.S.-Israeli coalition is a terrifying victory for Tehran. He argues that “in the eyes of the regime itself, it is stronger because it experienced the most severe thing—and survived it.” Worse, he warns that Israel will inevitably have to strike again in the future, and when that day comes in a post-Trump era, there is a very high chance Israel will be left to face an emboldened regime alone.
I have to say that I agree with the pessimist Hayman. If the attacks on nuclear facilities so far have only bought Israel a few years of respite, how can they be called a success? And isn’t it a victory for Iran if, at the end of the war, the hard-liners remain in control of its regime? One thing is for sure: we can’t count on a Democratic administration to support Israel’s strikes in the future.
Iran on Monday rejected a new U.S. effort to help free ships trapped by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to attack American warships or other vessels that tried to pass through the strategic waterway without Iran’s consent.
President Trump announced the plan on Sunday, but he did not provide details on how the United States would assist the trapped ships. The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said on Monday that two U.S.-flagged ships had safely crossed the strait, but it was not clear whether they did so with American military escorts.
The rising tensions across the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit route for global oil, put the nearly month-old cease-fire between Iran and the United States on shakier ground.
In response to Mr. Trump’s new initiative, Ali Abdollahi, a top Iranian military commander, cautioned “all commercial ships and oil tankers to refrain from any attempt to transit without coordination with the armed forces,” Iranian state media reported on Monday.
“We warn that any foreign armed force, especially the aggressive U.S. military, if they intend to approach or enter the Strait of Hormuz, will be targeted and attacked,” Mr. Abdollahi said.
The U.S. effort was the latest attempt to break Iran’s grip over the strait, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and much natural gas is normally shipped. The Iranian blockade has rattled global energy markets, leading the Trump administration to retaliate by imposing its own blockade on shipping into and out of Iranian ports.
Scattered incidents on Monday reflected the fragility of the truce.
For the first time since a U.S.-Iranian cease-fire was reached in early April, the United Arab Emirates said that four cruise missiles had been fired from Iran at Emirati territory. Three were intercepted and one fell in the sea, the Emirati authorities said.
Also on Monday, the Emirates accused Iran of launching a drone attack on an oil tanker owned by the Emirati state oil company, ADNOC, while it tried to transit through the Strait of Hormuz. And South Korea’s government said a cargo ship belonging to a South Korean company caught fire after an explosion in the strait.
There was no immediate response from Iranian officials. State media in Iran also claimed that the country’s military forces had fired warning shots at an American ship traversing the strait, although the U.S. military denied it.
Mr. Trump, for his part, warned that any Iranian interference in the operation to free stranded ships, named Project Freedom, would be dealt with “forcefully.” U.S. forces, including destroyers and some 15,000 personnel, were work
All this shows is that the war with Iran is far, far from over, and now Iran is making the boneheaded move of attacking other Gulf Arab states. “Wait and see” is my motto.
The new film, voiced by a cast of A-list actors including Glenn Close, Seth Rogen, Steve Buscemi, and Woody Harrelson, earned bad press when its trailer was released late last year, but the reality is somehow even worse than it seemed back then. The film feels, to put it plainly, like a bad joke about Orwell that a right-wing X account would dream up to get mad at. Hey guys, what if those crazy, woke socialists in Hollyweird actually went back and rewrote “Animal Farm” to be about the exact opposite of what the author intended? In the film, the message is no longer about how the revolutionary dreams of doing away with capitalist hierarchy are inevitably dashed by the avaricious realities of human nature. The problem, as portrayed by Serkis, is instead corporate greed under capitalism.
In the film, we experience events through the eyes of a pig character named Lucky, who doesn’t appear in the book. In an opening scene, as the animals break out of a slaughterhouse truck, it becomes clear that their revolution is not ultimately against Farmer Jones, as in the original text. Rather, it’s against a bank to which Jones owes unpaid mortgage payments. And the bank is working hand in glove with a gigantic faceless conglomerate called Pilkington, which seems to own factory farms, malls, and hydroelectric plants. The conglomerate’s evil CEO also drives an unmistakably Tesla-like car. This is just the first sign that the movie is not about any longstanding political idea, but rather is an attack on right-wing figures as they currently exist. More attacks come fast and thick. The Joseph Stalin-like pig, Napoleon, voiced by Seth Rogen, repeatedly uses Trumpian locutions, arguing against the noble Leon Trotsky-like pig, Snowball, voiced by Laverne Cox, with such rhetorical flourishes as “many animals have been saying.”
You get the idea. But I promise you that it is worse than you think. For one thing, this film’s crimes are not merely its ideological smallness but also its sheer ugliness. There is the corny revolutionary rap version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” that plays over the opening credits. There are the fart jokes and the shaking pig butts and the terrible attempts at timely dialogue. (Napoleon, who spends half the film driving a Lamborghini, is called “Napopo.”) Upon visiting a Pilkington-branded shopping mall, the greedy pigs express their consumerism thus: “Don’t think, just buy it. Buy it all!” Some kind of disco beat dance number breaks out seemingly every five minutes, in what feels like an ill-fitting attempt to capitalize on the success of films like Shrek or Despicable Me.
The biggest problem, however, is the movie’s ending. The bleak novel ends when the oppressed animals betray their utopian vision so completely that they are indistinguishable from their former oppressors. In the Animal Farm movie, Lucky instead has a change of heart, disgusted with what he and his fellow pigs have become after they have sold the farm to the conglomerate to build, I kid you not, a hydroelectric dam. (As it happens, building out large, clean-energy infrastructure projects is just about the most pro-social kind of activity a large conglomerate could ever engage in, but it is depicted as having very bad vibes.) Lucky goes back to the other animals and apologizes that the revolution has gone wrong. “I want us to remember that feeling that we had on the first day when we chased the slaughterhouse truck off the farm,” he says. Boxer (Woody Harrelson), the kindly and hardworking horse who represents the ordinary prole, delivers this howler: “To work hard for our friends, not because we have to but because we choose to, that is freedom.”
I ain’t gonna see this movie, but it’s ironic that the movie combines the theme of Orwell’s novel with that of another novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which involved both the erasure and the reversal of history by the regime, which is precisely what the moviemakers are doing.
Here’s the trailer, though it doesn’t show much about capitalism:
The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail.
In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and shipping them to patients, causing confusion for providers and patients. The one-sentence order imposes a pause until at least May 11. He requested that the parties file briefs by Thursday, and then the full court will determine how to proceed.
The state of Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail has allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban.
Medication is now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States, and is typically delivered in the form of a two-drug regimen through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Friday’s ruling from the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily reinstated an F.D.A. requirement that patients visit medical providers in person to obtain mifepristone while the litigation continues. That rule was first lifted in 2021.
Two manufacturers of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In court filings, they said the Fifth Circuit ruling would cause chaos for providers and patients — and upend a major avenue for abortion access across the country. About one-fourth of abortions in the United States are now provided through telemedicine.
Justice Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, was provisional and expected, but an important interim step for women seeking to obtain mifepristone in the next week. The order does not signal how the full court may eventually handle the case.
. . .After the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, Republican-led states like Louisiana imposed strict bans. In response, many Democratic-led states passed shield laws that protect abortion providers who prescribe pills by telemedicine and send them to patients in states with abortion bans.
Louisiana and abortion opponents have asserted in court that the F.D.A.’s decision to allow abortion pills to be available by mail posed safety risks to women and in
Alito, who may be set to retire, decided this by himself, as he’s handling emergency orders. The full court will decide the case later, and what happens after May 11 is yet unknown. What we have here is a clash between state laws that will be adjudicated by a federal court. But the Postal Service is a federal agency, and it would be weird, I think, if the Supreme Court banned it from carrying medication that’s legal in prescribing states but illegal in some or all recipient states. I’ve always been “pro choice,” so I applaud this decision and hope it becomes permanent.
Has it hit you yet what we’re watching? Has it sunk in what is happening when Mason Miller takes the mound to finish off another thank-you-and-drive-home-safely baseball game in San Diego?
We are watching the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Period.
There. I said it. And now I’m here to prove it.
I’ve looked at everyone who ever had a case to hold that title: Nolan Ryan … Aroldis Chapman … Josh Hader … Edwin Díaz … Craig Kimbrel … Mariano Rivera … Eric Gagne … Pedro Martínez … Randy Johnson … Jacob deGrom … Sandy Koufax … Walter Johnson … and on and on.
I’ve talked to two of the greatest closers of modern times, Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner.
I’ve dug deep into every number that could shape this argument.
It has all pointed me right back to the same place: The Padres’ closer is the most unhittable pitcher who ever lived. Fortunately, I had no trouble finding two Hall of Fame closers who were right there with me.
But second, I honestly am prepared to prove this theory. It isn’t even that hard. Just check out these numbers for yourself.
I started with Miller’s appearance last Aug. 6, the day after his final run allowed last year — and kept counting until he finally gave up another run four days ago. Now get a whiff of Miller’s Sidd Finch-ian numbers in between. Unlike Sports Illustrated, I didn’t make any of these up:
• Opposing hitters went 7-for-127 (.055), with 87 strikeouts
• Let’s repeat that: 87 strikeouts … and … 7 hits
• He faced 141 hitters. Not one of them scored.
• 39 straight games with zero extra-base hits allowed
• 39 straight games without ever allowing more than one hit
Compares to Mariano Rivera, whose longevity gives him the title so far:
. . . . we’re not here to pretend that the current closer for the Padres is anywhere near that status. He’s a guy who has faced exactly nine hitters in October in his life. So he has another 500 to go before we start comparing him to Mariano. On the other hand …
So we don’t know yet where Mason Miller is going. But if it looks anything like this, whew. We might all be in for a show unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed.
“Is he going to pull off 10 seasons where he’s able to do these kinds of numbers?” Wagner wondered. “Only time will tell. But he’s — what, three years in? — and he’s as dominating a pitcher as there ever has been in the whole history of the game.
Here he is in his third season, striking out batter after batter. The ratio of strikeouts to balls on single pitches is astounding.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a somewhat out-of-focus Hili’s still asking the Big Questions:
Andrzej: What are you looking for?
Hili: I’m checking whether the meaning of life isn’t lying under this bush.
In Polish:
Ja: Czego szukasz? Hili: Patrzę, czy pod tym krzakiem nie leży sens życia.
From Luana; and yes, I agree that there’s no more cultural need for whale hunting:
The left treats the Indigenous as some sort of mythical forest elves who cannot do wrong.
Whale hunting is bad. It was necessary for some people in ages past. But it is not anymore. I don’t care that it’s “cultural.” Many terrible things are cultural. They should knock it off. https://t.co/CF7pThMuk7
This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven years old and would be ninety today had he lived. https://t.co/tdScHWpQcE
This delightful duck is an askos, a ceramic container used for storing and pouring oil.It was made over two thousand years ago by the Etruscans, who inhabited a reigon called Etruria in what is now central Italy.
Bill Maher is tired of heaing about stuff like the Overton window, MKUltra, the “shadow docket” of the Supreme Court, looksmaxxing, “heuristic,” “cognitive offloading” and other examples of what he calls “pedantic bullshit.” (But he really hates the Overton Window. His curmudgeonly diatribe segues into a Dr. Seuss-like poem. He winds up arguing that his brain having been filled with useless knowledge—like the names of all the Kardashians and the characters in “Friends”—is “violence.” Indeed!
