Berkeley math professor argues that we need to bring back SATs and other standardized tests in college admissions

June 14, 2026 • 10:45 am

Svetlana (Lana) Jitomirskaya is a mathematics professor at Berkeley (Wikipedia, which puts her at two other schools, is out of date), and is one of 29 authors (I’m in there, too) on a paper in the Journal of Controversial Ideas, “In Defense of Merit in Science“. Lana is also a winner of the American Academy of Science and Letters’s Barry Prize for distinguished intellectual achievement.

I mention this because she is distressed at the very low math performance of entering students in Berkeley (and other schools in the University of California [UC] system), but did some calculations to show, as Governor Gavin Newsom intended with his 2024 California Education Compact, that the chances of a student getting admitted to a University of California branch are higher the worse the student’s high school is! Newsom and some “progressive” educators are against using standardized tests like the SAT for students applying for college, because they believe standardized tests discriminate against minority students.  Grade-point averages (GPAs) are one predictor of college and post-college success, but grade inflation is eliminating the inter-student variation that made GPAs useful, and data show that standardized tests add substantial predictive value to success (especially for highly selective schools like Berkeley), so it’s better that schools have both kinds of information for applicants.  Nevertheless, in an attempt to achieve “equity,” UC schools have completely barred the use of standardized tests, and that was against the recommendations of both a UC faculty task force and members of the Board of Regents.

At my own University, standardized tests are optional, but, weirdly, are used only when they can help a student get admitted, which seems to defeat the purpose of using a standardized benchmark. Here’s what Grok says about the University of Chicago’s standardized testing policy for admissions:

UChicago has maintained a test-optional policy since implementing it in 2018 as part of its UChicago Empower Initiative (initially focused on expanding access for first-generation and low-income students). This policy applies to all applicants, including domestic, international, and transfer students.

No Harm Testing Policy. In addition to being test-optional, UChicago uses a distinctive “No Harm” policy:

  • Submitting SAT or ACT scores is entirely your choice.
  • If you submit scores, they are only considered if they would positively affect your chance of admission.
  • Scores that could negatively impact your application are not used in the review process.
  • You can self-report scores on your application (via Common App or Coalition); official scores are only needed if you’re admitted and enroll.

This approach gives applicants flexibility—strong scores can help, but weaker ones (or not submitting) won’t hurt you.

Lana maintains that the omission of test requirements, (and I’d add the use of  “no harm testing policies”) hurts everyone: reducing the chances of really good students getting into even moderately good schools, while harming students from poorer schools by eliminating the pressure for them to study the “right” way: not memorizing but actually learning the material and learning to think, which you need to get good SAT scores. (It also eliminates the pressure for teachers to teach that way.) If you’re poorly qualified for a college you attend, the chances of you either dropping out or going into a “gut” major are higher.

The argument and the crucial graph is included in Lana’s new article in the Free Press, “Bring Back the SAT”.  You can read it if you’re a subscriber by clicking below, but I’ll reproduce some of her arguments plus the graph:

Lana gives several extended anecdotes about great students, once destined for Berkeley or UC San Diego, not getting in and having to go to community colleges, as well as students who got high grades by memorizing but did poorly in schools because they didn’t really learn to think. Many of those students, due to the negative correlation, get into places like UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.  I’ll mostly summarize the assertions about educational policy. (Quotes from Lana’s article are indented.)

What does an A grade in AP Calculus mean when it is paired with a score of 1 on the national exam? Exactly what a recent UC San Diego report revealed: In too many public schools, grades have become completely decoupled from learning.

None of this was Diego’s fault [his name is changed]. But now, he would face the reality of a world-class university. He would be required to retake calculus at Berkeley before moving on to the grueling upper-division requirements of mechanical engineering. With his immense drive and determination, common sense says he would catch up. Right?

“Getting into calculus in 11th grade is impressive,” I told him during the interview. “How and when did you realize you were good at math?”

“Math was always very difficult for me,” Diego replied. “But I worked hard and memorized all the formulas.”

This is the last thing a math professor wants to hear. Mathematics is not about rote memorization—it’s about conceptual understanding and logical reasoning, and Diego was never taught the difference. Like countless students at schools where teachers don’t understand mathematics themselves, he was instead taught what my colleague Hung-Hsi Wu calls anti-mathematics: a confusing, disconnected collection of unexplained procedures to be memorized for a test—and then immediately forgotten.

On the UC system’s abolition of SATs in 2020 and what it means for students like Diego:

To succeed now, Diego will need to unlearn these habits and rebuild his mathematical foundation from scratch, with much of what he has already learned not helping but standing in the way.

I desperately hope he manages to do so. But statistically, the chances are dangerously low. With the foundational deficiencies Diego demonstrated in his interview, the probability that he will survive his first Berkeley calculus course, even with a barely passing grade, is 50-50. He will spend his entire college career in a frantic, exhausting game of catch-up, and it is far more likely that he will be forced to change his major—leaving a hardworking young man’s confidence badly shaken, his engineering dreams derailed, and significant public resources wasted.

None of this would be as likely if the UC system still used a standardized test benchmark. The SAT was completely abolished for UC admissions by a Board of Regents decision in 2020, driven by concerns that standardized tests disadvantage minority and low-income students. This decision went against the unanimous, data-driven recommendation of the UC faculty task force—and against many of the Board of Regents’ own stated convictions. The SAT, imperfect as it is, measures knowledge of the absolute basics and the ability to reason clearly under a time constraint. An SAT score would have told us—and Diego himself—the truth about his preparation before it was too late.

Even more importantly, preparing for the test is itself a powerful intervention. If Diego knew that the SAT stood between him and a Berkeley engineering degree, his drive would have led him to use free, high-quality resources away from rote memorization and toward real mathematical reasoning. The preparation itself would have rewired his foundation. We failed Diego once by not providing him a decent math education. We should not fail students like him again by removing the incentive to build one themselves.

This is why my UC colleagues and I wrote an open letter to the Regents demanding a return to standardized testing. Within days, it garnered over 1,400 signatures, including those of 60 department chairs across the UC system. This unprecedented consensus is significant because STEM faculty aren’t political activists—they are the ones shaping California’s next generation of mathematicians and engineers.

That is indeed a powerful consensus!

According to Lana, the disconnect between grades and merit involves schools infusing courses with ideology:

Many of my colleagues teaching introductory gateway courses are not so lucky. They report a feeling of the bottom falling out of the classroom. “In my second-year engineering class, a student asked me to explain why 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6,” one professor said. “The lecture had to stop while I explained fractions.”

The root cause of this bifurcation is California’s broken K-12 education. Teachers are trapped in systems that prioritize ideology over subject mastery, pressured by administrators to inflate grades, lower standards, and pass unprepared students along. The state has spent tens of billions of dollars on a high-speed rail line that has yielded zero benefit. It has spent far more, and done far worse, inflicting immense generational damage on California’s youth by failing to provide them a quality K-12 math education.

This is the fundamental reason why we cannot honestly satisfy the Newsom Compact’s goals. The onus for a decent math education has fallen entirely on parents. Those who can afford to move to a good school district or send their kids to after-school programs do so. Children of those who cannot are usually left trapped with subpar math instruction. Meanwhile, the schools that provide rigorous education become increasingly competitive. This is the engine behind the bifurcation we are seeing.

And here’s the critical and completely counterintuitive graph, the result of “progressive” thinking. Lana introduces it this way (bolding is mine)

An analysis of official California Department of Education data reveals that this is a systemic pattern. Over the last decade, the UC system has transitioned from a positive correlation between a high school’s math and English proficiency and its admissions success to a statistically significant negative correlation. Today, the more successful a public high school is at preparing its students, the lower its graduates’ chances of getting into top UC campuses like Berkeley and San Diego.

This is the kind of graph that only a mathematician could produce, as it summarizes a ton of data but to a layperson its point is not immediately grasp-able. (Thanks to Jay Tanzman, who put me onto the article and is a statistician, for explaining it to me.)  It is a plot over time in which the Y-axis values represent correlations: the correlation in one year between the assessed quality of a high school itself (not of a student), and the probability of students from that school being accepted to two UC schools: Berkeley and San Diego.  The points not only fall with time, but have gone below zero into negative territory, showing that the worse the school, the higher the chances of a its students getting into Berkeley and, especially, UC San Diego, where there’s a whopping -0.5 correlation between high school quality and probability of its students getting into UCSD. (If you’re statistically minded, you could say “how BAD a high school you went to is 25% of the reason you got admitted to UC San Diego.”) 

This result is in fact what Newsom and other higher-ups had in mind, for high schools rated of lower quality also have a higher proportion of minority students. This negative correlation largely, says Lana, resulted from an ongoing attempt to achieve equity by upgrading the admission chances of students from poorer schools.  I believe Lana’s point is not that this situation is the result of dropping SATs—for the correlation was already falling before 2020 when SATs were abolished—but that we now need the SATs to be able to assess how good students really are. 

I’m told that nearly all high-school students in California get straight As now, so GPAs are a terrible predictor of success, even though I’m also told that “conventional wisdom” says that GPAs and standardized tests are roughly equally important in predicting success in college. That may be wrong, at least for California, but I’ll depend on diligent readers to look it up.

Whatever the case, it’s certainly true that if you go to a worse school, your chances of getting into the two best UC branches improve! Lana winds up for calling for the reinstatement of SATs, and I’m with her:

It is too late to reintroduce the SAT for the 2026 cycle, but we can still help thousands of students like Diego who will apply to the UC system in 2027. That is why a growing coalition of faculty members is rushing to force an emergency course correction. If a car full of your children is hurtling toward a cliff, it is not the time to create yet another subcommittee. You’ve got to slam on the brakes. The University of California must recognize this academic emergency for what it is and act to immediately restore objective standards to the admissions process.

Now if you’re a “progressive”, you’ll object to her characterizing SATs as “objective”, but that’s an argument for another day.

h/t: Jay Tanzman

Bill Maher on Graham Platner

June 14, 2026 • 9:30 am

I wondered what Bill Maher thought about the sketchy Graham Platner and his run as a Democrat for the Senate seat from Maine. Well, see the video below. Maher realizes that Platner is a “broken person,” but we’re “always electing our reflection in the mirror.”  And he thinks that Dems should still vote for Platner because they need the Senate and we should just get used to America being “a country full of a lot of “broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted sort of nutty people,” and Platner is simply one of those. Maher points out some of our representatives or candidates who are already plenty weird (e.g., Tom Kean Jr., who’s been missing for over 100 days, Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist who wants to put Zionists in concentration camps, and.Victor Marx, who does exorcisms over the phone).

Maher goes off further on Americans: “Everything people ‘know’ now is from social media and shitposting and whatever some other idiot send them  or whatever the Chinese are feeding them on Tik Tok.” This leads to a new breed of voter “who is intensely political but somehow know[s] almost nothing about politics.” True, and also true for “encampers.”

Maher includes Trump as a primo example of brokenness, faulting him for not editing his stream of consciousness (the clips of the Prez are rich), though Maher misses a chance to mention Joyce’s Ulysses (the audience might not know what he meant, though).

This is a pretty good bit, but it’s also somewhat depressing because Maher, though appearing elitist here, does show us how nuts American politics has become.

The guests on Friday’s episode of Real Time were author David Sedaris, political scientist Ian Bremmer, and former National Security Council director Hagar Chemali.  The last two appear in this segment. 

World Cup: Brazil vs. Morocco (highlights)

June 14, 2026 • 9:30 am

I’ll put up some videos of the World Cup games or highlights that interest me. Here are 20 minutes of highlights between Brazil and Morocco, which was tied 1-1 at the end.

Summary from the BBC:

Vinicius Jr spared Brazil the embarrassment of defeat in an opening World Cup match for the first since 1934 as his spectacular solo goal earned a draw for the five-time winners against Morocco at the New York New Jersey Stadium.

Brazil fell behind in the 21st minute when Ismael Saibari lifted the ball over the onrushing Alisson Becker from outside the area following a lapse in communication between the Liverpool goalkeeper and his defenders, Gabriel and Marquinhos.

It was the first time the African champions had scored against South American opposition at the World Cup, having failed to do so against Peru in 1970 and Brazil in 1998.

Morocco continued to dominate and, by the 30th minute, had registered 12 shots – the most Brazil have faced in a World Cup match since their encounter with Mexico in 2018.

But as Mohamed Ouahbi’s side failed to capitalise on their advantage, Brazil drew level 13 minutes before the break through Vinicius.

Making his 50th appearance for the Selecao, he collected a ball from Bruno Guimaraes inside the area, cut inside, and unleashed a fierce strike past Yassine Bounou.

Former West Ham midfielder Lucas Paqueta almost put Brazil ahead in first-half stoppage time, but his acrobatic effort was tipped behind for a corner.

With several members of Brazil’s triumphant 2002 squad watching on in New Jersey – including Ronaldo, Kaka and Roberto Carlos – Carlo Ancelotti’s side began to move through the gears after the break.

And although chances were at a premium for both sides, Raphinha came closest to finding an elusive second when he narrowly failed to connect with Guimaraes’ low-driven cross across the face of goal.

The draw means Morocco’s wait to win their opening game at a World Cup goes on, while Brazil’s remarkable 92‑year unbeaten first-match record remains intact.

Brazil’s tying goal begins at 6:41.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 14, 2026 • 8:15 am

Again we have the last batch of wildlife photos on hand.  Send yours in, please!

Today’s group of photos come from reader Ephraim Heller; it’s the second part of a two-part series (part 1 is here). Ephraim’s text is indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Little St. Simons Island is an 11,000-acre barrier island on the coast of Georgia. Much of it is salt marsh, with a few islands in freshwater ponds for wading bird rookeries. I was lucky to spend a week there in April during the nesting season. My last post focused on the wading birds; this one focuses on other species.

A well camouflaged American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) lurking in the rookery pond:

American oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus) are obligate specialists on intertidal invertebrates that feed in two ways: finding a mussel or oyster with its shell slightly ajar, the bird inserts the bill and severs the adductor muscle before the shell can close; alternatively, it hammers the shell directly to fracture it.

I took these photos on the shore where the oystercatchers were nesting. The sustained 40 mph winds whipped the beach into an abrasive sandstorm, which bothered me much more than it bothered the birds:

Royal terns (Thalasseus maximus) are among the larger terns on the Atlantic coast:

Boat-tailed grackles (Quiscalus major) have a mating system I have not previously encountered: females aggregate in colonial nesting groups while dominant males compete for access to the entire group. Although the dominant male at a colony performs the majority of observed copulations, genetic analysis shows he sires fewer than 40% of nestlings. Females regularly copulate with other males outside the colony and return to lay eggs that are not the dominant male’s offspring.

The long toes of the common gallinule (Gallinula galeata) allow it to walk atop floating vegetation.

Red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) drum on resonant surfaces to broadcast their territories and for mate attraction. The tree cavities they excavate and abandon become nests for other species, such as owls, bluebirds, and flying squirrels. They often cache food in bark crevices.

The common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). Garter snakes are viviparous, giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs, with typical litters of 15–40 babies.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 14, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to June 14, 2026, shabbos for gentile cats (remember that the Sabbath was made for cats, not cats for the Sabbath), and National Strawberry Shortcake Day. I don’t have a photo, but here’s a substitute: a strawberry shave ice from Hawaii, photographed in 2019. Shave ice, in all its various forms, is one of the epicurean delights of the islands.

It’s also Army’s Birthday (“on June 14, 1775, the American Continental Army formed, in order to present a unified opposition against Britain”), Flag Day, International Bath Day (my father hated them, saying, “who wants to sit in their own schmutz?”; and so I, his son, take only showers), International Feta Day, National Bourbon Day, National Cucumber Day, and World Blood Donor Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Big news for basketball fans. The New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in the NBA finals, taking their first championship in 53 years.  (The Knicks won four games to one in a seven-game series.)

At long last, the New York Knicks are NBA champions.

In a Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night that looked much like the previous four, the San Antonio Spurs took a double-digit lead in the first quarter. But like in three of the previous four games, the Knicks rallied — this time from a 16-point deficit — to secure a 94-90 Game 5 win and a 4-1 series victory.

Jalen Brunson led the way with a legacy-securing 45-point effort as New York‘s only reliable source of offense on a night when both teams struggled from the field. But for New York, the win didn’t have to be pretty. The result is the franchise’s first NBA championship since 1973. And Brunson has secured his place among New York’s sporting greats.

Here are the last few minutes of the game.  New York is going wild.

*There are several reports that a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran is close. First from the Times of Israel:

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says that the United States and Iran have agreed to a framework for a peace deal that would end the months-long conflict in the Middle East, with a final text of the deal reached.

Pakistan is now preparing for an electronic signing expected within the next 24 hours, followed by technical-level talks next week, Sharif added.

Israel is not mentioned as having agreed to it. Note that it’s also a “framework for a peace deal”.   From the WSJ:

Mediators have said they are close to completing an agreement that reopens the strait and relieves restrictions associated with the U.S. blockade of Iran, leaving other issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and the unfreezing of Iranian assets abroad, to be negotiated later.

“There’s lots of ways Iran can just buy time,” said William Wechsler, the director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, and a former Defense Department official. “It’s in their interest, and it will continue to be the pattern.”

A turning point in the past week of drama came on Wednesday when a Qatari delegation of diplomats returned from a trip to Tehran with new language for the draft peace agreement, people familiar with the matter said. Pakistani officials convinced Trump that a deal was close at hand, U.S. officials said, and he called off strikes that he had promised for that evening.

Gaps remain between the Iranian and American positions, though, a Qatari official said, on Iran’s billions of dollars in frozen assets, control of the strait and the disposal of Iran’s highly enriched uranium. Iran continued to push for early access to its frozen funds, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump was frustrated when text purporting to be from the final agreement—and which was friendly to the Iranian position—was leaked, U.S. officials said. He instructed his team to push back on the narrative that the deal would be weak or that Iran would receive funds before fulfilling its commitments.

From the NYT:

In the course of this war, Iran has gone from appearing weak and defenseless to a regime not only surviving, but also retaining important military and nuclear abilities. Iran’s extensive security apparatus seems firmly in control of all aspects of governing, society and foreign policy.

Iran is now led by “a younger, more brazen generation in power,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, in what Aaron David Miller, a former American diplomat at the Carnegie Endowment, called “a transition from divine power to hard power.”

Let’s face it: as it looks now, even if you were for to the war with Iran, the U.S. is losing the war.  There are 60 days for further negotiations, and that will entail even more waffling about what to do with enriched uranium. It’s not clear whether the Straits of Hormuz will be free and open, and how many of its frozen assets Iran will get back. And what about Israel in Lebanon? At least the Israelis, I think, will not accept any stipulations that they stop fighting Hezbollah and withdraw from southern Lebanon. It’s an ungodly mess, and I predict an acceptable cease-fire won’t be signed in the coming week.

*Trump has just suffered four losses in court. Here they are with links to the NYT articles:

A couple of  paras from each:

Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center:

After a night of storms, both political and meteorological, workers removed President Trump’s name from the white marble facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts early on Saturday morning, responding to a federal judge’s ruling that its rebranding was unlawful.

The letters began coming down just past 3 a.m., after the center was granted an extension of a midnight deadline. Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, attributed the delay to a cluster of summer storms. On Saturday morning, he filed a sworn declaration with the court confirming that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed.

Restarting immigration procedures:

The Trump administration said on Friday that it would comply with a court order to restart processing asylum and other immigration applications filed by a broad swath of people who had been left in legal limbo for months.

The move comes after a federal judge in Rhode Island last week struck down a suite of policies imposed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a major blow to the administration’s expanding efforts to restrict legal immigration. The policies included a global hold on asylum applications filed with the agency and a freeze on immigration applications filed by people from 39 countries, largely in Africa and the Middle East, that are subject to President Trump’s travel ban.

More than a million applications had ground to a halt as a result, preventing many people from obtaining green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits. The halt also disrupted people’s ability to legally work and left them waiting indefinitely for decisions on their applications.

National Park signs:

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the National Park Service from removing or revising signs, films and other materials at national parks across the country to comply with a directive from President Trump.

The ruling pauses enforcement of an executive order that called for removing or covering up materials at national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans” or cast the United States “in a negative light.”

To comply with the president’s directive, the Park Service has taken down plaques about slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a sign about climate change at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a sign about Indigenous people at Acadia National Park in Maine.

Trump’s payoff fund:

A federal judge on Friday barred the Trump administration until further notice from setting up a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government, saying that her order was needed because of mixed messages about the scheme from President Trump.

The ruling by the judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, was the strongest effort to date by anyone in government to hold the administration to its word that the proposal to create the fund had actually been set aside. While Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told Congress last week that the fund would not move forward, Mr. Trump has been much more circumspect, insisting that he still loves the idea and believes that people who suffered in court at the hands of the government should get financial compensation.

*The National Review reports that NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to provide $65 million in “gender-affirming care” to the people of his city.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is looking to make good on his campaign promise to invest $65 million in taxpayer funds toward expanding access to “gender-affirming care” in the Big Apple.

“As a first step, my administration has made a $15 million investment in gender-affirming care over the next two years, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to make sure every trans and gender non-conforming New Yorker can live with the dignity, safety and freedom they deserve,” Mamdani said at a Pride month celebration Tuesday. “The threats will continue and so will our relentless protection of trans people across this city.”

Despite efforts from the Trump administration to keep taxpayer dollars from funding gender-transition services, the mayor and his administration are doubling down on their attempts to fund these procedures — and even looking for ways to circumvent the president’s restrictions on gender-transition treatments for minors.

NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin recently spoke at a City Council health budget hearing where he made public the city’s desire to endorse these procedures for gender-confused youth without getting caught in the crossfire of the federal government.

“We are committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth as well as making sure that we don’t expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give,” Martin said.

Two major city hospital systems, NYU Langone Health and Mount Sinai Health, shuttered their youth transgender programs amid concerns over threatened federal funding. The Mamdani administration, however, seems committed to maintaining access to the controversial treatments for the city’s youth.

. . . The city, through the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, plans to open a “gender-affirming care clinic” in Corona, a neighborhood in Queens. Martin said this is “one of the first times that the public health department has ever taken that step.”

The department has told other media outlets that it will only offer treatments to patients that are at least 19 years of age, in order to avoid running afoul of the Trump administration’s mandates. However, the department did not immediately return National Review‘s request for comment regarding the timeline on the opening of the clinic and if it will serve minors, in light of the mayor’s comments.

The whole concept of “gender-affirming care”, rather than objective assessment rather than gung-ho treadmill through therapy to hormones and/or surgery, is misguided, and has been abandoned in other countries.  The “19-and-above” stipulation is a good standard for hormones and surgery, but I’m betting the city won’t adhere to it. Care for dysphoria, yes; affirmative care, no way. This seems to be more performative wokeness by the mayor, but, hey, people who voted for him had an idea of what they were getting.

*The Democrats have finally admitted that yes, Graham Platner has his problems, but that hesitating to vote for him is “purity politics” that is not needed in the drive to limit Trump’s reach.

 As Democrats wrestle with the past behavior of their Senate candidate in Maine, one name keeps coming up: Donald Trump.

The president lowered the bar, some liberal voters and lawmakers argue, when he won the highest office in the land despite facing allegations of misconduct from multiple women and being caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitals. The stakes, they say, are too high to obsess over a candidate’s past when flipping control of the Senate to Democrats would give the country a needed check on the president.

“Look who’s in the White House,” said Abigail Woods, a 37-year-old city councillor in Biddeford. “Purity politics don’t get us anywhere.”

Democrat Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran, faces Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the fall, and winning the blue state is crucial to Democrats’ uphill battle to retake the Senate. Platner won his party’s nomination in the state’s primary Tuesday, easily overcoming a small protest vote for Gov. Janet Mills (D), who suspended her campaign in April.

Platner has weathered reports that he sent sexually explicit texts to multiple women while married and had volatile relationships with women in the past. He also faced questions over a Nazi-linked tattoo he said he mistakenly got while serving in the military and has now covered up, and over deleted social media posts in which he insulted rural Mainers and police officers and downplayed the seriousness of sexual assault. Platner has disavowed the posts, saying that when he made them he was suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder after multiple tours in Iraq as a Marine.

The controversies have opened up a debate among Democrats about how much matters of personal character should count after a decade when they’ve decried the thrice-divorced Trump’s personal failings, with little result. Before he won reelection, Trump was held liable for sexual abuse in a civil case in New York. (He denied the charge and has never been criminally charged with sexual assault.)

Some Democratic voters in the Trump era are not impressed by lesser scandals and don’t want to play by a different set of rules than the opposition.

Joan Brown, 77, who lives in Skowhegan, was disappointed by Platner’s texts, but she said they weren’t a dealbreaker for her.

“Is this the first man in civilization who’s ever been a pig?” she asked.

That’s hilarious, as she admits she’s voting for a pig. (If you lie down with one, you get up muddy.)  I keep saying I’m glad I don’t have to vote in Maine, though for Senator I’d still vote for Platner. But let’s just say I don’t have a lot of confidence in his abilities, and am distressed that Maine Democrats can’t find a better candidate.  At least they’re not pretending that a substandard candidate is excellent—as they did with Kamala “She brings us joy” Harris.
*On the other hand, the AP reports that, with Trump’s approval ratings plummeting and Democrats getting emboldened, the Blue Party is increasingly opposing even bipartisan bills as a way to strike at Trump.

Senate Democrats’ decision to let a key surveillance authority lapse comes as they are increasingly emboldened in their legislative fights against President Donald Trump, blocking even traditionally bipartisan bills as they push back against his policies and personnel.

The posture is an escalation from a year ago, when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was widely criticized within his party for a spring vote with Republicans to keep the government open. Since then, Democrats have forced government shutdowns, slowed Trump’s nominations and now blocked the bipartisan intelligence law as they seek leverage in a Republican-led Congress.

The risky strategy has consequences when government programs go dark, and Democrats have little to show for it so far in terms of policy victories. Republicans say it is a grave threat to national security to let the surveillance law, which aims to prevent terrorist attacks, expire just as millions of people are entering the United States for World Cup games and as celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary get underway.

But the hardball approach has helped unite Democrats inside and outside of the Capitol as they say they have no other choice — and that the blame should fall on Trump for how he is governing.

“I don’t deny that this is dangerous,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday about Democrats allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expire starting Saturday. “But this didn’t have to happen.”

This irks me. What didn’t have to happen is that Democrats didn’t have to kill a useful bill just to get back at Trump.  As far as I can see, the bipartisan intelligence law funds the U.S. to collect “useful intelligence” (i.e., spying) abroad.  To block a bill to show their dissatisfaction with Trump, who was legally elected as President, as odious as the man is, doesn’t seem to me to be either ethical or rational behavior by Democrats. Your mileage may differ.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the feud between Hili and Kulka continues, and it will last forever. Hili is at bottom right here.

Hili: Don’t even think about coming over here.
Kulka: I’m going in the opposite direction.

In Polish:
Hili: Nawet nie próbuj do mnie podchodzić.
Kulka: Przecież idę w inną stronę.

 

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From Stacy, who agrees that this is an outrage:

Another great letter from TherionArms:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

From JKR, and yes, the guy is uttering complete and utter bullshit? What is “THE PLAN” and who is this guy. It doesn’t matter for assessing his BS-emission, though.

From Luana, who says that with near certainty Hunter Biden’s post was posted with AI. I’m starting to recognize this style, which I often see on Facebook posts:

From Captain Ella (really a Lieutenant Colonel now), who sees the World Cup through the focus of Iran:

English translation from the Arabic:

From the field to the goal… the Defense Army deserves the World Cup rightfully after crushing the heads of terrorism and crime. For no goal is too difficult for us, and no net too far.

How did I miss that David Hockney died? I learned it from Larry the Cat, who shows one of Hockney’s paintings (an obituary is here):

One from my feed, showing evolved antipredator behavior. Sound up to hear the call:

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two posts from Matthew in Switzerland, both showing the Matterhorn. First morning, then night:

Matterhorn in the morning

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-13T05:38:47.471Z

Matterhorn at night.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-06-12T20:54:41.124Z

Caturday felid trifecta: Cats prefer silver vine to catnip; Disneyland’s cats; police department allowed people to pay off tickets with cat food; and lagniappe

June 13, 2026 • 11:30 am

We have three cat-related items today, the first from the  Journal of Chemical Ecology. Click to read it, and after doing so you might consider giving your cats silver vine rather than catnip.

Silver vine (Actinidia polygama) grows in the mountainous areas of NE Asia, and has long been known as a cat attractant. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “A silver vine plant with the eponymous silver markings on its leaves.”

Qwert1234 at ja.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia says this about its effect on cats. (it has other medicinal and culinary uses for humans):

Silver vine has long been known to elicit euphoric response in cats.  The reaction to silver vine is similar to the response to catnip, but appears to be more intense. Silver vine is an alternative to catnip, and many cats that do not react to catnip will respond positively to silver vine powder made from dried fruit galls.  Typical behaviors include rolling, chin and cheek rubbing, drooling, and licking. The effect usually lasts between 5 and 30 minutes, but afterwards cats exhibit a refractory period lasting roughly an hour during which they are unresponsive to further dosage.

A study published in January 2021 suggests that felines are specifically attracted to the iridoids nepetalactol and nepetalactone, present in silver vine and catnip, respectively.  The compounds were found to repel mosquitos, and it is hypothesized that rubbing against the plants provides the cats with a chemical coat that protects them against mosquito bites.

That sounds weird but may be true: cats’ behavior may have evolved so that the moggy became attracted to the plant and rubs all over it: those cats who behave this way get fewer mosquito bites.  I suspect that’s wrong, though. Do cats get malaria or other reproduction-reducing maladies from mosquitoes?

Here’s a gif from Wikipedia of “A cat under the influence of Actinidia polygama“. It’s baked!

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Here’s the paper’s abstract:

Chemical cues that appear potent in controlled laboratory bioassays do not necessarily function as effective behavioural cues under natural conditions, where animals can freely approach or ignore stimuli. How chemical detectability translates into voluntary behavioural engagement, therefore, remains an important unresolved question. Plant-derived semiochemicals provide a tractable system for examining this issue because the same compounds can be presented either as intact natural sources or as purified chemicals. Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) show a characteristic self-anointing response to iridoid-producing plants, including catnip (Nepeta cataria) and silver vine (Actinidia polygama), both widely regarded as cat-attractants. Here, we tested whether these plants differ in their ability to induce voluntary engagement under free-choice conditions. Free-roaming cats rarely showed self-anointing behaviour (face-rubbing and rolling) toward intact catnip plants, but consistently engaged with silver vine. The same bias toward silver vine was observed in captive cats presented simultaneously with plant extracts. Chemical analyses confirmed that catnip contained abundant bioactive nepetalactone, indicating that weak responsiveness was not explained by a lack of bioactive compounds. These findings demonstrate that chemical abundance and laboratory bioactivity do not necessarily predict behavioural reliability under natural encounter conditions. Instead, whether a cue consistently elicits voluntary engagement may determine its ecological effectiveness as a behavioural cue.

But can you buy silvervine, and is it dangerous? The answer to the second question is a firm “no”; vets say it is safe and nontoxic. The only dangers are possible ingestion of chew sticks if you buy silvervine in that form, and some stomach upset if the cat ingests too much.  Here’s Grok’s summary:

Silvervine comes in safe forms like powder (from the fruit galls), sprays, toys, and the aforementioned sticks. Powder or sprays are often sprinkled on toys, beds, or scratching posts. Some products are designed for light ingestion.In short: Silvervine is one of the safest and most effective plant-based enrichments for cats. It’s widely recommended by vets as a catnip alternative with an excellent safety profile. If your cat has any pre-existing health conditions, it’s always wise to check with your veterinarian before introducing new toys or treats, but for the vast majority of healthy cats, it’s perfectly fine and enjoyable.
As for buying it, Amazon has a gazillion silvervine items on its site, including sticks, powder, and toys. The sticks have another advantage over catnip: they clean the cat’s teeth when it’s chewing them. If you’ve used silver vine, report below, or try them out!

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The Good News Girl reports on something that cat cognoscenti have known for a long time: Disneyland is populated by over 200 feral cats recruited to keep the rodent populations down (not Mickey or Minnie, I hope!). Here’s her report, click to hear:

Here’s a longer but good video  (6-minutes) explaining the origin of the cats and their care (they get food and veterinary care, and are also trapped and neutered). Kittens or overly familiar cats get adopted out.

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Finally, in one Indiana city, at one time seven years ago, you could pay off parking tickets by giving the cops food for cats! I saw this on FB and decided to check it out:

Here’s a 2019 article from the Washington Post about the program, though my investigation showed that this program operated only in Indiana in 2019 and is no longer in practice. In some places, however, you can pay tickets by giving food for homeless people.

An excerpt:

There were too many kittens in the animal shelter, just as there had been last year and the year before that. Like other shelters that swell to capacity during cats’ annual breeding season, Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana was struggling this summer to meet the need.

“One day I was standing by the counter and somebody brought in six kittens,” said Officer Chase Winkle, a spokesman for the Muncie Police Department. “And before they could get those checked in, somebody came in with another four.”

To ease the pressure, police created a trade-off: For five days in July, people could pay for their parking tickets by donating to the shelter the equivalent value of cat food or litter. Residents who brought their donations to the police chief’s office with a receipt proving the value got their tickets wiped away. A police officer’s daughter works at the shelter and had made the department aware of the organization’s need.

Muncie is among cities across the country that are opting temporarily to accept charitable donations in lieu of monetary payments for parking infractions. From Anchorage, to Woodstock, Va., municipalities are writing off tickets in exchange for school supplies or cat litter — a way to fill a community need while lessening the sting of getting a ticket. Some cities offer a discount to people who pay with a donation, while choosing the donation option in other municipalities simply allows the payer to feel good.

In Muncie, about a dozen people made donations to pay for roughly $600 in parking tickets, Winkle said. Only offenses that didn’t pose a safety hazard counted: Donations couldn’t resolve a moving violation or a ticket for parking in a handicap spot. Most tickets that people paid with donations were worth about $25 each and had been issued for parking too long in a certain zone, Winkle said.

From the CNN article above:

What’s the cost of a parking ticket in Muncie, Indiana? For a few days in July, it was a cat food or supplies donation for a local animal shelter.

In an effort to help the Muncie Animal Care and Services Shelter, the Muncie Police Department asked violators to pay their parking tickets in cat food.

The request came after a couple of officers toured the shelter and found that it was running short on supplies to care for over 350 cats and kittens.

“If you have a $25 parking ticket, you can bring up to $25 worth of cat food or litter to the Clerk’s Office, and you can get your parking ticket to go away with the exchange of the donation,” Officer Jamie Brown said on a July 15 video shared by the police department on Facebook.

Although the offer ran only from July 15 to 19, the department quickly learned that people will do practically anything when little balls of fur are involved.

“This room was almost empty before we started! Most of the folks that donated didn’t even have parking tickets,” Muncie Police said in a tweet with a photo of all the donations.

. . .”I don’t know if the police department plans on doing this again, but we’re incredibly grateful to them and the community. Their response was overwhelming,” Ashley Honeycutt, the shelter’s office manager, told CNN.

I think they need to reinstate this program!

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Lagniappe: A famous cat in a riad (a fancy Moroccan house converted into a boutique hotel). Click on the screenshot to read more,. but I’ve put the whole text below:

A small riad in the Marrakech medina has built a wall display in its entry courtyard out of guest reviews. The reviews are not about the riad. They are about the cat, an orange tabby named Mishmish, who has been working the front gate for about six years.

The owner started noticing the pattern when his bookings began increasing for reasons he could not initially explain. He pulled the reviews.

A representative selection: “Mishmish was very professional.” “Mishmish escorted us to our room and approved.” “The location was good but Mishmish was the highlight of our trip.” “Mishmish let me cry in the courtyard for a long time and did not say anything.”

The owner printed his ten favorites, framed them in cheap wooden frames, and hung them on the wall above the reception desk. Mishmish now sits underneath the display like a portrait subject seated beneath his own gallery.

Booking inquiries now routinely ask whether he will be on duty during the guest’s stay.

If you want to stay at this place, here’s how to do it (from Grok):

Riad Julines is praised overall for its clean, charming traditional Moroccan decor, friendly staff (like hosts Raja/Raga and Daniel), excellent breakfast on the terrace, indoor pool/terrace, and peaceful vibe despite the central location. It’s a boutique-style guesthouse that feels like a home.If you’re planning a stay and love cats, this riad is a great match—many reviews note how the resident cats enhance the experience. You can find it on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, or by searching “Riad Julines Marrakech.” Note that cat policies can vary, so confirm directly with the riad if you have allergies or preferences.

h/t: Reese