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.
Today we have part 2 of Jan Malik’s photos from New York State (part 1 is here). Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Here’s his intro to both sets:
It is a little tradition of mine to spend at least one day each fall watching raptors from an exposed ledge on Millbrook Mountain, which is a part of the Shawangunk Ridge, NY. I would call it a “hawk watch”, but hawks are attracted on their way south by the nearby Hudson River, which is a much better navigational aid. Instead, a whole day is spent observing vultures. This year the foliage was not at its best and the light was below average, so I’m mixing pictures from the past couple of years.
The cliff is home to a mix of about 50 Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) and Black vultures (Coragyps atratus), our only Northeast vultures. Neither the California condor nor the King vulture makes it here, and the peculiar Crested Caracara, half vulture-half hawk, doesn’t live north of Texas.
I think of vultures as an “underrepresented minority” of the avian world, with charismatic eagles, feisty ducks, or cute songbirds capturing nearly all the attention of birdwatching crowds, while these humble aerial sanitation workers remain in the shadows, unjustly. At least, with the large population of deer in the Northeast combined with vehicular traffic, their food supply is abundant:
This is an immature Turkey vulture, with its head not quite as red as in the adults. It is looking up, since while they feel safe when soaring, they may be occasionally harassed by other local inhabitants on the Ridge:
One of them, quite aggressive, is a resident Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). I see it every time I visit these cliffs, but to photograph a lightning-fast bird is difficult. This being outside their nesting season, it didn’t dive-bomb a human intruder with the intention of scalping or eye-gouging, but simply zoomed past:
Occasionally, Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) also use the Shawangunk Ridge for navigation:
Other raptors, like this Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) also pass by, but usually high above the Ridge:
The largest songbird, the Common Raven (Corvus corax) also lives on the ridge, and a mated pair can engage in their synchronous flight even in the fall:
The Gunks being the best climbing area of the Northeast (de gustibus..) let’s not forget about the local hominid variety, the Homo verticalis. This one is scaling an arête on the route “Nectar Vector” 5.12b/c R, a pretty bold climb. That letter “R” (as in scaRy or an R-rated movie) will scare off an average gym climber:
But humans aside, vultures are the most visible vertebrates on the Ridge:
In good flying weather, one can be surrounded by many vultures who sometimes form a “kettle”, circling on thermals to gain altitude. The swish of wind on your face from them flying within several feet is unforgettable:
As usual in the fall, Canada geese form skeins flying south above the Ridge:
I stay until sunset, just to absorb the subtle colors of the New York backcountry in the fall. This year, I was alone at dusk – all the vultures were gone in the late afternoon, likely attracted to a roadkill. They share with us humans a love for well-seasoned meat, so bon appétit!:
Welcome to Thursday, October 29, 2026 and it’s National Cat Day!
Here is a reader’s cat: Jango, staffed by Divy and Ivan in Florida. He is a male rescue tabby with a lovely ticked coat. Here he crosses his paws for you.
. . . and here’s a lovely bowl of oatmeal I had at my inn where they put me up during the Kent Presents meetings in August of 2018. Look at all those goodies: dried fruit, nuts, cream, maple syrup, and fresh fruit on the side. I would eat this every day if I wanted to live forever. Leslie Stahl was sitting at the next table, an hour or two before she interviewed Henry Kissinger onstage. The previous night I rode back to the inn in a limo with her and asked her what she was going to ask Kissinger. She told me she was going to wing it. Good times.
About an hour later, Leslie interviewed Henry. Kissinger actually lived in Kent, Connecticut, where the meeting was held. He died in 2023 at age 100. He must have been 95 in this photo.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 29 Wikipedia page.
Spain is living through a recurring nightmare. For the second time in less than a year, a high-speed crash between the same two train operators on the same busy line from Madrid to Seville threw the country into official days of mourning, shook its confidence in the security of it once-vaunted rail system and undercut its international image as a modernizing tourist mecca helping to thrust Europe forward.
Apparently the safety system on the tracks first went down, automatically stopping six trains in the region. But someone in the traffic control center told another train to keep going at normal speed, and it crashed into a stopped train from the rear at 120 mph.
At the moment of impact, Antonio de la Corte, 77, was napping in the third carriage in the back of the Renfe train. “Bam!” he said, recalling that he was immediately awakened, lurched forward and banged his knees while his brother, with whom he was traveling, hit his head. A rail shot through the inside of his train car like a skewer, killing people seated to his right, he said.
As he and his brother climbed down to the field, farmhands cut the fences around the embankment so passengers could take shelter in the fields of alfalfa and almond trees. Word of the disaster quickly spread, and Yahadi Mohamed Maulud, 41, a resident in the nearby town of Yébenes, loaded his car with water bottles and rushed to help.
“We found a massacre,” he said, describing torn limbs and one woman, drenched in blood, searching for her brother. He said he was one of the first people on the scene and helped move the injured passengers on makeshift stretchers.
Soon, a long procession of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks arrived under the whir of rescue helicopters flying low overhead. Dozens of Civil Guard officers, many wearing the white protective suits and masks used by forensic investigators, inspected the scene and gathered evidence.
. . .The scene was eerily quiet because people were either dead or so hurt they couldn’t speak. He said survivors used parts of the destroyed train as makeshift stretchers to extract the injured from the wreckage. That’s when the screaming started. Doctors among the passengers treated people in what became a field hospital among almond groves.
At least 68 people died in the crash. More than 50 others were injured, some critically.
This is the second train crash in a year on the same rail line from Madrid to Seville, and involving the same train companies.
Near-final results show that a clear majority of Israelis voted for parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued rule, yet the longtime premier could remain in power — not because his opponents lack the numbers to replace him, but because some refuse to recognize Arab lawmakers as legitimate political partners.
A historic surge in Arab voter turnout in Tuesday’s election has placed Israel’s Arab-majority parties in a position to determine the next government, putting the Zionist opposition’s longstanding refusal to rely on their support to a potentially decisive test.
With 85.6 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 2:32 p.m. Wednesday, partial results published by the Central Elections Committee gave 53 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 48 to the bloc led by Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The two Arab-led parties are projected to win a combined 19 seats — an unprecedented high — with 12 for the Joint List and seven for Ra’am. The two parties have five seats apiece in the outgoing Knesset. The previous combined record was 15, in 2020.
Despite leading the largest party, Netanyahu has no obvious path to expanding his bloc beyond his existing far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies to get the 61-seat majority he needs to form a government.
Meanwhile, the Zionist opposition and Arab parties are projected to hold 66 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, reflecting widespread opposition to Netanyahu’s government, in part due to the extraordinary turnout by Arab voters driven by deep animus toward Netanyahu’s government and its far-right ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Claiming yesterday’s election was “stolen” by Arab parties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party demands an investigation by police and the Shin Bet into allegations of widespread voter fraud and intimidation.
“The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters,” insists the Likud party in a statement.
The Arab-led political parties, Ra’am and the Joint List, which run in every election and hold seats in the Knesset, received a record number of votes yesterday, and are projected to win a historic high of 19 seats. That number means that both Netanyahu’s bloc and the Jewish-led parties opposing him will be far from achieving a Knesset majority.
Here’s a bar chart of the votes published by the ToI.
Like my heartthrob Gal Gadot, who went back to Israel to both get an honorary degree and to vote (there are no votes by mail), I would have “voted for change” too.
And so much for the apartheid state! The Israeli Arabs may decide the fate of the government!
*The El-Sayed campaign in Michigan is distancing itself from this ad, produced not by them but by Cenk Uygur’s “Rebellion Pac”. It’s pretty dire, for it blames Israel and its war with Hamas on high American grocery prices. Here, watch it by itself (it’s hard to find the ad without commentary!)
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, sought to distance himself on Monday from an outside group’s political ad that endorses him and attacks his Republican opponent over support of Israel, a longtime U.S. ally.
. . .Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign emphasized that the ad, created by a left-wing political action committee called Rebellion PAC, was “not affiliated in any way” with him or his candidacy.
“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders,” the campaign said in a statement on Monday. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.”
Dr. El-Sayed has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was set off by the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people. The war has killed at least 74,000 people, according to Gaza health officials.
The ad, a version of which first ran in 2024, has garnered more than six million views since it was posted on X on Friday. On Monday, Representative Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel Democrat whom Dr. El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the Senate primary, publicly criticized it for what she called “fearmongering about Israel.”
Antisemitism is said to be the socialism of fools. Well, it turns out that it’s also the populism of the innumerate. U.S. military aid to Israel comprises at most a half a percentage point of the U.S. federal government budget. The overwhelming majority of that money is poured back into the American economy because Israel is required to spend the aid on U.S. weapons systems. Also—not that it needs stating—the U.S. does not pay for Israel’s health insurance system. Claiming that aid to Israel is responsible for high grocery prices is a grotesque lie that resurrects an ancient and sinister trope that blames international Jewry for economic misery.
So it’s not surprising that prominent Democrats like the party’s former chairman, Jaime Harrison, and El-Sayed’s opponent during the primary, Haley Stevens (who has endorsed El-Sayed in the general election) have offered full-throated denunciations of the ad.
One might think El-Sayed would take the opportunity to forcefully demand that Rebellion PAC take it down. This would be an easy way to win back some of the Michigan Democrats that have committed to his Republican rival, Mike Rogers. It would help dispel the Rogers’ campaign message that El-Sayed has ties to the antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood and can’t be trusted with national security. And yet, the only comment from the El-Sayed campaign has come from a spokesman, who said the ad was “not affiliated in any way” with the campaign. That’s not a denunciation so much as a weasel-word salad.
So, why not take the high road? One reason might be that Rebellion PAC is run by an ally of the campaign, Cenk Uygur. He was once a middling progressive influencer. In recent years he has transformed into a hollering podcaster obsessed with the perfidy of Israel and its supporters in America. El-Sayed appeared on a panel with Uygur in September at a conference sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America. Uygur’s nephew is the anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed in the final weeks of his primary campaign. Piker has said that the authors of the October 7 massacre, Hamas, are morally superior to Israel. He once said his favorite flag was the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that until recently rained rockets and missiles over Israel. He has also said that America “deserved” 9/11.
. . .It’s accurate to say that AIPAC tries to influence U.S. foreign policy to pursue a good relationship with Israel. But claiming that the lobby dictates U.S. foreign policy to presidents is an exaggeration that is a mirror image of the antisemitic libel that Jews function as a disloyal fifth column inside their host countries—or the idea that you can’t afford groceries because of military aid to Israel.
Indeed, El-Sayed offered a very similar argument as the Rebellion PAC grocery ad in an interview with The Ink published on August 3. “Israel is an affordability issue,” he said. “Every time you want to put glasses on kids’ faces or give people healthcare or fix a school, somebody pops up and is like, ‘Well how are you going to pay for that?’ I don’t know. Maybe we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals. That’s our money.”
So maybe the reason El-Sayed is not denouncing Uygur’s antisemitic ad is because he pretty much agrees with its content. At the very least, he doesn’t want to offend the antisemites in Michigan who he hopes will make him the state’s next U.S. senator.
Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know that Hasan Piker was related to Cenk. But they’re both odious human beings: is it in the genes? As for “hollering,” yes, I fear that Cenk is going to blow an artery some day. As for the disgusting ad, well El-Sayed should denounce it, as it’s damaging him. But he can’t, as he’s walking a fine line between being an anti-Semite and being someone that Democrats will vote for.
The defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing to Argentina with his family and boarding a private plane to the U.S.
Television images showed Bolsonaro and his family stepping off the private jet they boarded in Argentina late Tuesday after fleeing across the border from Brazil.
The Trump administration has said it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family to allow them legal entry upon arrival.
The long journey, carried out largely in secret, came after Bolsonaro lost the presidential election to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday by a close but convincing margin. Shortly after the results, Brazilian authorities demanded Bolsonaro turn over his passports and remain in the country as he faces investigation over alleged financial crimes.
The son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and says he and his family are the victims of a witch hunt by Brazil’s Supreme Court. He has refused to recognize Sunday’s election result—a position backed by Trump who told reporters Monday the race looked “rigged.”
Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. local time Tuesday accompanied by his wife, Fernanda, and daughters Carolina and Luiza, Argentine authorities said. The family crossed into Argentina via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge in Misiones province, a remote area where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.
Authorities in Argentina, where President Javier Milei has been one of Bolsonaro’s most fervent supporters, said they presented valid travel documents and faced no legal restrictions on entering the country.
At 11:30 p.m., just 40 minutes later, the family boarded a private aircraft operated by Baires Fly, with Guayaquil, Ecuador, listed as its destination on the flight plan—flight LV-JQW, according to Argentina presidential spokesman Fabian Fernandez.
I’m told the guy is a crook (but can’t vouch for any of that), but is he classified as a “refugee”? For sure he’s fleeing likely jailing, but I’m not sure how many dubious politicans we can absorb. After all, we abducted Maduro, who’s now in jail, whil Bolsonero will live a sweet life in the U.S. of A.
At a Rhode Island debate last week, two candidates for governor turned into hall monitors. Democratic front-runner Helena Foulkes and Republican Aaron Guckian each called out independent businessman Ken Block for bringing typed notes onstage in violation of the rules. The payoff for tattling came in the ensuing made-for-TV moment: Everyone watched a sheepish Block eat crow, tucking his cheat sheet away and showing his hands to the audience.
Fear of such minor missteps going viral is just one reason there have been fewer debates this midterm year. A review by ABC News found that 21 of 36 gubernatorial races will pass without a debate. In 2018, just two states skipped them. The same trend holds for Senate elections — 21 out of 35 races will not feature a debate, a 50 percent increase from four years ago. For all the advantages that can be gained from a solid performance, a gaffe or shaky showing can be disastrous. Today, a candidate’s calculus increasingly hinges on a simpler question: Why bother?
Their reasons for opting out are all over the place. In Alabama’s gubernatorial election, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a MAGA firebrand sitting on an 11-point polling lead, refused to debate on pragmatic grounds, declaring, “There’s no reason to get up there and argue about differences of opinion.”
In Florida, Democratic nominee for governor David Jolly took an ideological stance, saying the nation’s politics are broken, and debates only “further the division, further the toxicity, further the insults, further the mistruths, further the bad faith.” And in North Carolina, both Senate candidates have taken a strategic approach: be open to debate but never agree to one; better to spend that time on cable news appearances and curated events to rally the base. No matter the explanation, the outcome is the same: Voters are denied the chance to see the candidates face scrutiny and each other.
Political debates are most useful when they have clear rules and formats, when candidates believe engaging their opponent is worthwhile to the campaign and the public, and when they serve as important civic rituals in a democracy. Since the late 20th century, televised debates have been common and widely expected for candidates competing for federal and statewide office. They offer a rare chance to speak to large audiences, followed by extensive media coverage. And they provide voters an opportunity to see the candidates largely unscripted and in the hot seat — conditions favorable to getting a glimpse of character and preparedness rather than monologued quips in safe spaces.
. . . Sometimes they’re successful. . . But extreme polarization, alongside candidates’ ability to bypass traditional media for direct-to-voter social platforms, has upended the landscape. The civic ritual now is to flood airwaves and mobile devices with attack ads and caricatures of opponents. If the age of debate is ending, then what replaces it should be worrisome to voters.
. . . Besides, what advantage does debating offer candidates when there’s little penalty for skipping them altogether? The rebuttal from Republican candidates can be summarized this way: “Well, what are you going to do — vote for communism?” Democrats who opt out suggest that elections are not helped by giving credence to MAGA politicians co-signed by the historically unpopular President Donald Trump. Better to avoid the unpredictable made-for-TV moment by producing short ads clipping an opponent eating crow, perfectly curated for a media-saturated electorate to devour.
Unfortunately, the author is right. Nixon lost to Kennedy because Tricky Dick wasn’t as charistmatic and sweated too much. Biden dropped out after his debate performance was abysmal. But there’s no political theater better than a good debate. It’s much more fun that watching attack ads or listening to stump speeches.
It’s perhaps the most consequential map in American history. And it could be yours.
The hand-drawn chart of the Mason-Dixon Line that eventually divided the free from the slave states is going up for auction. Remounted on backing made of Japanese rice paper, the document will go on sale Thursday in a livestreamed auction.
“It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” said Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”
Brunk estimates it could fetch anywhere from $800,000 to $1.2 million for the anonymous seller.The survey by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon was originally meant to settle a border dispute between the then-colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. But when it was used in the 1820 Missouri Compromise to establish the limits of human bondage in the still adolescent United States, it became synonymous with the fundamental divisions that exploded into civil war four decades later.
You can see the original map here (the current bid is $400,000), and here’s a map of the Mason-Dixon Line from Wikipedia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (who is not feeling well and went to the vet) ponders time and mortality with Andrzej:
Hili: October is coming to an end, and soon the trees will be bare. Andrzej: If we live to see spring, we’ll enjoy the greenery again.
In Polish:
Hili: Kończy się październik, zaraz drzewa będą gołe.
Ja: Jeśli dożyjemy do wiosny, będziemy się znowu cieszyć zielenią.
And one from Matthew; yesterday was the 113th anniversary of the cartoon strip Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman. It’s a cartoon series that both Matthew and I love. Click to go to the tweet.
Curiously, yesterday my spam email included an announcement of Jesus’s return. The email was very long, so I’ll give about a quarter of it below. The funny thing is that I saw Jesus in the CVS store on the very same day! (See below; I had the presence of mind to take a photo.)
Coincidence? I think not—not when it comes to The Lamb of God.
Here. Jesus is apparently a senior white woman, and thus has to wear identification. We have mixed up her pronouns all these centuries:
Eliyah Lap<eliyah.lap@aol.com>
Good day,
The Return of Yeshua (Jesus Christ) is very Near! Are we ready?
Le retour de Yéshua (Jésus-Christ) est très Proche ! Sommes-nous prêts(es) ?
This theory proposes that many “substitutions” (mutations) in the DNA have no detectable effect on the fitness of the carrier. In other words, compared to other variants at the gene (or site), they make no difference in the relative rate or replication of the gene: they are neither “selfish” nor “retiring”. One example is a mutation in the second or third position of some three base “codons”, the triplets that code in the DNA (and trascribed RNA) for proteins. Because there are more nucleotide triplets than amino acids in proteins (64 triplets but only 20 amino acids), some triplets are “synonymous”: coding for the same amino acid.
Here’s the genetic code from Wikibooks, showing that, given the first, second, and third nucleotide base in a codon, you can see which amino acid it codes for. The four bases are T for Thymine (which become uracil in the mRNA transcribed), C for Cytosine, G for Guanine, and A for Adenine.
As you can see in the table, nearly every one of the 20 amino acids can be coded for by different triplets (“stop” codons are those that, when present in a DNA sequence, terminate the production of a protein by the matching RNA that gets translated to proteins). In the first column, for example, you can see in the last four rows that all four codons that begin with “GT” will code for valine in the resulting protein. That means that whether the last base is a T, a C, a G, or an A makes no difference in what amino acid is in place in the protein.
So if there is a mutation in the DNA changing GTT to GTC, GTA, or GTG, the protein produced will be the same. This means that, nearly without exception, the “fitness” of these four different variants will be identical, and the mutational variants will neither be selected for or against. You can see the number of “synonymous” codons: they comprise about a quarter of all mutations in genes that code for proteins. And that means that nearly a quarter of mutations in the DNA will not affect the “fitness” of the carrier.
But it could be even a larger number, as there are huge portions of the DNA that seem to have no function at all. This is called “junk DNA”, and constitutes about 90% of the DNA in our own genome. (There is important DNA that does not code for proteins but is not “junk,” such as bits of DNA that control the expression of other genes.)
You see that I’ve been talking about the sequences of DNA rather than organismal traits, although mutations in the former can affect the latter. This is why the “neutral theory of evolution” is often called the “neutral theory of molecular evolution.” And that, in turn, is because it’s easier to construct evolutionary theory using the frequencies of gene variants rather than traits. But some differences in traits can also be neutral if they don’t affect fitness. Some possible examples in humans based on mutations include whether or not your earlobes are attached, whether you can roll your tongue or wiggle your ears, and maybe your Landsteiner blood type (A, B, or O).
But I digress. Since 1963 there has been a tremendous amount of both theoretical and empirical work on the neutral theory and on the dynamics of neutral mutations. As you might expect, truly neutral variants bounce around in frequency in populations because they’re neither selected for nor against. We know that neutral variants tend to be more visible in larger populations because small populations lead to loss of variation. We know the rate of evolutionary change of neutral variants: how often they arise in populations and how fast they become “fixed” in every member of a population (for a single change, these two rates are, curiously, equal). We know that “nearly neutral” mutations with weak effects on replication can even overcome selection, and act as if they are truly neutral in small populations whether they be good or bad. (This depends on the relative size of the selection coefficient and the inverse of the population size.)
There’s a whole mathematical analysis of these things, but I won’t go into it. I just want to make three points.
First, the neutral theory is important, especially if you’re looking at the evolution of DNA sequences, which happens pretty often in evolutionary biology. But it can also play a role in some traits in which mutations cause visible differences (ear attachment or shell color and pattern in some snail species).
Second, the neutral theory is a truly novel modification of Darwinism that was proposed within our lifetime, though earlier evolutionists sometimes alluded to the possibility of neutral mutations. The neutral theory is far more novel than other modifications that are said to help “overturn” evolutionary biology, like niche construction or plasticity.
Finally, Comfort does not mention the neutral theory in his article as a discovery that requires us to retool evolutionary theory, even though if there’s anything that seriously modifies our view of evolution, it is the neutral theory. The Selfish Gene doesn’t discuss it, either, even though the theory was already out when TSG was published. That’s probably because Dawkins’s book was a book about adaptive evolution, not nonadaptive or neutral evolution. (Dawkins does mention it in later books like The Blind Watchmaker.) Thus, when critiquing modern evolutionary theory, it is Comfort who should have mentioned what I think is the most important modification of our view of evolution in the last 65 years.
We are of course lacking readers’ wildlife photos, though I don’t know why. If you have some good ones, please send them in.
We do have a batch today, though, sent in by reader Jan Malik. Today’s photos feature vultures from New York State, and there are photos of other birds that will come in a part 2. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
It is a little tradition of mine to spend at least one day each fall watching raptors from an exposed ledge on Millbrook Mountain, which is a part of the Shawangunk Ridge, NY. I would call it a “hawk watch”, but hawks are attracted on their way south by the nearby Hudson River, which is a much better navigational aid. Instead, a whole day is spent observing vultures. This year the foliage was not at its best and the light was below average, so I’m mixing pictures from the past couple of years.
The cliff is home to a mix of about 50 Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) and Black vultures (Coragyps atratus), our only Northeast vultures. Neither the California condor nor the King vulture makes it here, and the peculiar Crested Caracara, half vulture-half hawk, doesn’t live north of Texas.
Here’s an early morning view from my perch, which is quite exposed but ensures privacy from the numerous hikers. Progressively fading into the distance are other parts of the ridge: Near Trapps, the Trapps, and Skytop, while the Hudson Valley is on the right:
Vultures are late-morning flyers. The unpredictability of their food forces extreme energy-saving behavior, such as efficient soaring flight and lowering body temperature at night by several degrees to minimize heat loss. In the morning, they use sheltered depressions in the cliff to sun and warm themselves. Here, three Turkey vultures spread their wings in the so-called horaltic pose, maximizing exposure to solar radiation:
Eventually, at 9-10 AM, the Millbrook cliff rocks heat up a bit and thermals—vertical movements of air based on density differences—develop enough to allow soaring flight for the Turkey vultures, who in good conditions can stay aloft indefinitely, flapping their wings only when taking off or alighting on a perch:
An hour or so later than for the Turkey vultures, flying weather develops for the Black vultures. Turkey vultures are possibly the most efficient flying organisms (outside of invertebrates), while the Black vultures need a little more effort to stay aloft – flapping their wings often enough that it is possible to tell them apart from a distance:
Another difference is the underside of the wings – it is mostly silvery-white in Turkey vultures:
Black vultures have white markings on the tips of their wings’ underside only:
Additionally, while Turkey vultures have uniformly black/dark brown wing coverts, Black vultures have white markings on their primary feathers, making them appear from a distance as white spots:
Black vultures often fly or soar with their feet down. This is paradoxical since it obviously increases aerodynamic drag, and I’d think that the Black vultures – having higher wing loading than the Turkey vultures – would do everything possible to avoid that. But apparently it is needed to stabilize the flight, possibly due to a different aspect ratio – Black vultures have slightly shorter tail feathers than do Turkey vultures:
When at rest, Black vultures stay together and a bit apart from the Turkey vultures, but I did not notice any particular animosity between these species. Each vulture group has social rules, with the best perches reserved for dominant birds. Scuffles are infrequent and posturing is usually enough to make a contender vacate a prime spot:
From time to time, Turkey vultures also conglomerate to rest and warm themselves in the sun. The same wing anatomy that allows hours-long soaring flight also lets them spread their wings effortlessly by locking their joints:
But then it’s taking to the air again, soaring up and down the ridge, in the hope of catching a whiff of decomposing flesh. What helps them in finding food is their good sense of smell, which they have in common with pelagic seabirds. From my observations on the Shawangunk Ridge (or, as climbers call it, the Gunks), their hearing is sub-par; a few times when scrambling on a ledge I caught a resting vulture quite unaware of my presence until I was nearly touching it:
It’s an AP article that says this (among other things):
For some evangelical Christians, faith is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. At $1.99 per minute, the tech company Just Like Me is taking that concept to a new level.
Users of the platform can join video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence. Like other religious AI tools on the market, it offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages. With the occasional glitch, it remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips.
You can also talk to avatars of Charlie Kirk, Santa Claus, or your twin.
Two bucks a minute is expensive! But the strip is funny.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“Il giro di boa della settimana” in Italian): Wednesday, October 28, 2026 and National Chocolate Day. Here are some profiteroles from one of myfavorite restaurants in Paris, filled with ice cream and topped with a warm and luscious chocolate sauce:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 28 Wikipedia page.
Posting will be light today as I have to go to the retina doctor for a checkup on the results of laser treatment. All was well last time, so I’m optimistic.
Da Nooz:
*There are conflicting results in the Israel vote. The NYT reports that it’s neck and neck between Eisenkot and Netanyahu (“Bibi”), but It’s Noon in Israel says that Bibi’s bloc is leading (“Bibi hasn’t won, but the opposition has lost“. We won’t know who will be prime minister until there’s until a coalition puts one forward or the country has another election.
NYT:
Israelis were bracing on Wednesday for what could be weeks of political gridlock after exit polls showed no clear winner in a national election that many have described as a make-or-break moment for the country.
Turnout in Tuesday’s election, widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, was the highest in at least a quarter-century. It was the first election since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks ignited three years of war.
Exit polls — which have a spotty record in Israel — suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance was neck and neck with a bloc of opposition parties led by Gadi Eisenkot, leaving neither side positioned to form a government.
That uncertainty did not stop the leading candidates from making triumphant late-night speeches to their supporters.
Mr. Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, struck a defiant tone toward Mr. Netanyahu, saying: “Tonight we got the answer: The public opted for change.”
It’s Noon in Israel:
It’s Wednesday, October 28, and with about 77 percent of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s coalition parties hold 54 seats to the change bloc’s 49. The Joint List has 11 and Ra’am six. Likud leads with 27 seats, followed by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar with 22 and Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad with 12. The Democrats have eight, while United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beiteinu, Otzma Yehudit and Shas each have seven, and Religious Zionism, running with Zehut, has six. These numbers will still shift, and the double-envelope ballots, cast by soldiers and other special voters, have yet to be counted.
Last night, the exit polls told one story: Netanyahu had lost, but it wasn’t clear who on the other side had won. This morning, the results are telling another. Netanyahu hasn’t won yet, but the change bloc has clearly lost.
I’ve covered politics since the start of the century. I have never seen a camp organize for an election as impeccably, as efficiently and as energetically as the change bloc did. It signed model surplus-vote agreements, so that no leftover votes would go to waste, and ran an unprecedented operation flying Israelis home from abroad to vote. And by the actual count, it ended up with more or less the same number of seats as in the last election.
Demography beat energy, and the message also proved flawed and unsuccessful. The public wasn’t convinced that the war had been a total victory, as Netanyahu claimed, but it also refused to buy the opposition’s claim that it was a total failure. It was repelled by Haredi draft-dodging, but didn’t think the solution was a minority government propped up by draft refusers and anti-Zionists. It was disgusted when ultra-Orthodox protesters chanted “We do not believe in the rule of the Zionists,” but it was just as shocked when “Biladi, Biladi,” the Palestinian national anthem, was sung at the Joint List’s headquarters last night.
As Yiddish speakers in Israel might say, “Oy vey!”
Finally, here was a subheadline in the NYT last night. You can always count on them to get in a dig at Israel, but this is ridiculous:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to restrict a Biden-era policy that allows immigration judges to use their discretion to close thousands of deportation cases each year.
Immigration advocates say the practice allows judges to ease loads on strained immigration courts and spare some migrants — such as crime victims or neglected juveniles — from going through removal proceedings if they have a good case for remaining in the United States.
Critics call the procedure, known as “administrative closure,” a form of backdoor amnesty.
After the first Trump administration tried to bar judges from using administrative closure, the Biden administration codified the practice in 2024.It hasbeen going on in some form for decades, with roughly 360,000 migrants granted administrative closure since 1990, according to government statistics.
The cases are closed, but not dismissed, so they could now be reopened.
When Trump returned to office last year, the administration announced it would no longer defend the Biden-era policy. Texas then challenged the rule in afederal court inthat state.
The Department of Justice told the judge it supported a judgment favoring Texas. The judge entered a permanent injunction blocking the policy allowingadministrative closure.
Three cities with large migrant populations — Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; and New Haven, Connecticut — and an immigrant rights’ group sought to intervene in the case to defend the Biden rule and overturn the judgment. Courts denied those moves, giving way to their appeal to the Supreme Court.
I guess they vote on these unsigned opinions, and I further guess that the vote was 6-3. Will we ever find out (I doubt it) or get any written opinions? The decision seems ok insofar as some immigrants who should be deported are allowed to stay, but I doubt that many (or any) of the closed-out cases involve clearly deporation-worthy people.
*I love quizzes in the news, and the Wall Street Journal has one placing you as either very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, or very conservative.
The Wall Street Journal found broad areas of agreement when it asked 1,500 voters recently about some of the top policy ideas circulating in Congress and on the campaign trail.
Conservatives, liberals and moderates all backed a set of ideas to make healthcare and other expenses more affordable, as well as to curb illegal immigration. Yet some ideas were sharply polarizing and drew staunch opposition along ideological lines.
Take our poll to see how your views compare with the liberals, conservatives and moderates in our survey.
First you self-identify (I said I thought I was “somewhat liberal), then you’re asked how you feel about policies in the three areas of cost of living, healthcare, and immigration and the border. You have to say how you feel about four statements in each area, then you get a score. Here’s my outcome, which is disparate in the three areas, and I’m typed as a “moderate” overall. I guess that’s okay, though I just voted by mail, and my votes would, I think, type me as at least “somewhat liberal.”
*Over at his Substack site, Maarten Boudry argues that “Islamo-Leftism is not a conspiracy theory“, using evidence to show that the “red-green alliance” is very real and is coming for the West. (The article is free.) It started with this tweet, which you should read in full:
We will all soon know what it feels like to be Jewish. In France, they already do.
It will be our just deserts for having abandoned the Jews, ignored their warnings, turned against them, and even marched alongside their oppressors.
For three years, you useful idiots have been parading Palestinian flags, sporting keffiyehs, screaming “From the River to the Sea”, and recognizing a fictitious Palestinian state as a reward for Hamas’s October 7 massacre (looking at you, @EmmanuelMacron). You have boycotted the only Jewish state in the world, vilified the Jewish people’s right to self-determination (aka “Zionism”), and spread the “Gaza genocide” blood libel.
Did you really think that if you fed the crocodile enough Jewish flesh, it would eventually be satiated? All you have done is embolden the monster and whet its appetite.
So you were worried about “colonization”? Look around. The only thing being colonized here are our own Western cities. The Palestinian flag has become a victory banner, proudly waved amid the ruins of looted and vandalized historic buildings—a symbol of hatred for our civilization and everything it stands for.
In its mainstream form, Islamo-leftism is simply the left’s love affair with Islam, which it regards as the religion of the downtrodden and oppressed. The bargain is straightforward: leftists coddle Muslims and give them preferential treatment, while Muslims respond by voting for left-wing parties. The perfect embodiment of this rapprochement is the concept of “Islamophobia”, which left-wing academics, journalists and intellectuals have brandished for decades to shield Islam from legitimate criticism, much to the delight of Islamists. Instead of contemplating the possibility that fear of Islam may be a rational response to certain Islamic doctrines (such as the death penalty for apostates) and to the attitudes of the many Muslims who endorse them, large swaths of the left have pretended that it is a form of mental illness, an irrational paranoia with no basis in fact.
,. . . Even progressives who don’t actively rally to Islam’s defense have often turned a blind eye to the homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism and violence against apostates that are rampant in Islam, while sternly condemning comparable tendencies among fundamentalist Christians. This double standard is in itself a passive form of Islamo-leftism: abandoning your own progressive values for the sake of one religion, because most of its adherents have a darker complexion and you’re afraid of being called racist.
. . . The most explicit form of the Red-Green alliance is plainly visible on the streets of every Western city. For years, radical-left and Islamist groups have marched shoulder to shoulder at demonstrations and rallies against their common enemies: Zionism and Western imperialism. This unholy alliance is now held together by the all-purpose Palestinian flag, which no longer represents a people or an aspiring country, but an avatar onto which all sorts of fantasies can be projected.
For Muslims, it stands for the religious struggle against both the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (the United States), and for the religious duty to reconquer every piece of land that was once under Islamic rule. For leftists, it is the one thread that will unravel the whole fabric of the despised world order. That is the only way to understand the Irish writer Sally Rooney’s bizarre claim that “the liberation of Palestine represents the liberation of the world”. Although both groups have their reasons for obsessing about Palestine, it is mostly the Muslims who lead and the leftists who follow. If your favorite victim group hates the Jews Zionists with such fervor, surely those Jews Zionists must be uniquely diabolical.
Still not explicit enough for you? In 2006, one of the most influential academics on the left, Judith Butler, has described Hamas and Hezbollah as “progressive” movements that are “on the left”. She also insisted that the October 7 attack was not a terrorist attack but “an act of armed resistance”.
Soccer star Kylian Mbappé apologized for comments in which he apparently referred to Mao Zedong, the founding leader of Communist China, as a dictator, after facing backlash and losing brand deals with at least three different Chinese companies.
“My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world,” Mbappé said in a statement Tuesday.
“I apologize to everyone my words have upset,” he said. “This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”
The incident is the latest in a string of cases where China leverages its economic clout to compel foreign companies and individuals to toe its political line. In 2019, Chinese state television ceased broadcasting NBA games after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
. . .Beverage maker Dongpeng, dairy giant Mengniu and cheese maker Milkground said in similarly worded statements Tuesday that they were ending agreements with the soccer star, each saying they oppose “any words and actions that hurt national sentiment.”
The companies did not specify what prompted their decisions, but they released their statements after a clip that appeared to show Mbappé being interviewed ahead of going on the French online talk show “The Bridge” circulated on X.
The China Football Association said in a statement Tuesday that it has “lodged a stern protest” with Real Madrid and demanded that both the player and the football club “issue a public and formal apology.”
What did Mbappé say? Here’s Wikipedia’s report:
On 26 October 2026, during a French talk show The Bridge, Mbappé said that a meme “that makes me laugh the most…the one where there’s a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator”, which refers to Mao Zedong, the founder and first leader of the People’s Republic of China. Mao’s portrait superimposed with Mbappé’s face appeared as he spoke.
I wouldn’t apologize, though I’m far, far poorer than Mbappé. And how many Chinese really would be offended if Mao were called a dictator, especially because he was? Here’s a video showing Mbappé at work:
An Australian man serving a life sentence for murder lost his legal effort to be able to eat Vegemite behind bars when a state supreme court on Monday upheld a prison ban on the country’s beloved spread.
For some, being spared the salty, yeasty condiment might seem like mercy. But Andre McKechnie argued that it was a violation of his human rights.
He filed suit last year in the Supreme Court of Victoria, arguing that the state’s ban on serving the pantry staple in prisons denied him his “culture as an Australian.” Prison officials, however, saw a security risk: The pungent spread could distract police dogs trained to sniff out contraband and could also be used by prisoners to brew alcohol.
The court ruled that Mr. McKechnie’s cultural rights had been curtailed but that the restriction was justified because of security concerns. In a 47-page judgment, Justice Claire Harris identified a fundamental justification for the ban.
“The limitation on Mr. McKechnie’s ability to enjoy Vegemite in community with other persons of Australian background is primarily that he is a prisoner, having been sentenced by a court to a term of imprisonment,” she wrote.
In his suit, Mr. McKechnie noted that neighboring New South Wales did not ban Vegemite from its prisons and claimed that not eating it made him feel “sad and disconnected from my family and community.”
Justice Harris was unconvinced.
“It is difficult to accept that the inability to consume Vegemite, rather than the fact of his imprisonment, is a material cause of his sadness and disconnection from his family and community,” she wrote.
. . .Vegemite was invented in Melbourne in the 1920s and can be found in more than 80 percent of Australian households today, according to the company’s website. Like Marmite, its British forebear, the spread inspires intense loyalty and equal distaste.
President Barack Obama called it “horrible.” But for many in Australia, it is a cherished national icon.
Barack Obama was right.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili feigns ignorance::
Hili: If my bowl is empty… Me: It means somebody has eaten whatever I put in it.
Hili: Is it possible that somebody was me?
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli moja miseczka jest pusta…
Ja: To znaczy, że ktoś zjadł to, co do niej włożyłem.
Hili: Czy to mogłam być ja?
From Luana. I have to note that I was once an “entitled hippy bastard”:
An oldie but a goodie. In 1968 a bunch of entitled hippy bastards sent a letter detailing their specious demands to the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford. This was their letter of reply, which speaks to how far the academy has since fallen. https://t.co/si8oxve85p
Wisdom just welcomed another chick at approximately seventy-four years of age.
The most elderly documented wild bird on Earth has been breeding offspring since the era of President Eisenhower. Biologists originally placed an identification band on the Laysan albatross back in 1956, a time when she had already reached maturity and was occupying a breeding nest. Almost seventy years after that moment, she arrived back at Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean alongside a different mate and produced another egg during the final months of 2024.
Her historic partner, Akeakamai, had gone missing for numerous consecutive seasons. Although these seabirds typically establish permanent, lifelong unions, they possess the ability to choose a replacement companion if their original mate vanishes.
Conservation officers successfully captured footage of Wisdom softly leaning her head against her current mate shortly before he took his place on top of their shared egg.
Two from my feed. First, the infamous Michigan campaign ad made by Cenk Uygur’s organization. He has said it’s “defamatory,” but it’s not. Van Jones says that El-Sayed should denounce it, but he hasn’t, as far as I know:
I have spoken out against anti-Muslim hate in the Michigan Senate race. I will speak out just as loudly when the target is Jewish people.
Let me state a little-known fact: ISRAEL GETS LESS THAN 0.1 PERCENT OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET. That’s less than one tenth of a percent!
But there is an ad running that tells voters they can’t afford groceries because the United States gives so much money to Israel. In reality, the United States spends money in and on countries all around the world – but this ad singles out the Jewish state. The ad is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
You can disagree with how the United States spends money abroad. But telling hungry families that the Jewish state is the reason they are suffering is wrong and shameful.
Blaming Jews for people’s problems is an old story. Anybody who has read the last century of history knows where it leads. It is a dark pathway.
This ad is anti-Jewish hate and should come down immediately. Abdul El-Sayed should denounce it today.
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz, probably with his mother. He was three years old, and would be 88 today had he lived.
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, apparent REM sleep in spiders. Do they dream?
🕷️💤 New paper in time for 🎃!Do #spiders really sleep? In our new study on #Portia fimbriata we tested all behavioural criteria of #sleep and found evidence for regulated, two-stage sleep with recurring REM-like stages. Out in @pnas.org!@roesslerdaniela.bsky.social 📄 tinyurl.com/3fky8ze7🧵1/9
Look how deep this crab it! I don’t think it could walk to that spot:
The #SamplingGap team recorded this wily crustacean more than 4,300 m beneath the ocean surface. During this expedition, scientists are documenting biodiversity along the Romanche Fracture Zone, an active transform fault that serves as a vital corridor between the eastern & western Atlantic basins.
It’s clear that the two great female vocalists of our time were Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand. It’s harder to choose best male vocalists, but surely near the top should be Johnny Mathis, who is 91. What a voice! Among his great songs is “It’s not for Me to Say,” recorded in 1957 and here performed live.
