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.
Of. course I’ll get raked for putting up this post, but I’m frankly sick of people denigrating others as “Zionists”, which in most cases is simply a euphemism for “people who are pro-Israel” or even “Jews”, so that “anti-Zionist” becomes a euphemism for “anti-Israel” or “antisemitic”. My contention, echoed by Natasha Hausdorff and Douglas Murray in a fairly recent Munk debate, is that, at present, “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”.
Why do I say this? Well, look at the definitions of “Zionism” and “anti-Zionism” in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), my touchstone for language.
Here’s anti-Zionism in the OED:
So you have to look up “Zionism,” and when you do, you get this:
Note that “anti-Zionism” does not mean “opposition to some of Israel’s policies” or “opposition to Netanyahu”. Rather, it means “opposition to the sovereignty of Israel and the right of the state to exist and defend itself against attacks.” (You might add “the right of the state to exist as, in part, a place for Judaism to thrive”,: but then all the Muslim nations of the Middle East are also places for Islam to thrive. In fact, Christianity and Judaism are not tolerated in most Muslim states, which, unlike Israel, criminalize the practice of other faiths. Note too the existence of official names like “The Islamic Republic of Iran” and “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.) There are a gazillion states in the Middle East where Islam is the official religion and other religions aren’t tolerated.
But I digress. Israel was established as a sovereign state by the United Nations in 1948. Before that, Palestinians were offered their own state but rejected it, and have rejected it nearly a half-dozen times since. As Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf argue in a 2020 book, The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, the Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution. Rather, they want a one-state solution: a single state in which all descendants of Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 would be allowed to return to the present country of Israel, which would then become a Palestinian state. (The “right of return,” which is unique to Palestinians among all who fled their land in the past, is their key demand that they know, if exercised, would lead to the disappearance of Israel. Read the book, a meticulous and scholarly history of this neglected concept.)
A “Zionist,” then, is someone who believes that Israel, now established, should be allowed to remain a sovereign state on territory considered the Jewish homeland but also the homeland of the Arabs who are Israeli citizens. As Natasha Hausdorff argues below, the state of Israel is a fait accompli. To argue against its existence now is to argue that its Jews should either be expelled or—more likely if the “right of return is exercised”—killed.
Since other groups have sovereign states, too, so singling out the Jewish people as the only group undeserving of an established sovereign state in their ancestral land is anti-Semitic because it’s discriminatory. Remember that Israel is to a large extent a secular state in which there is freedom of religion: about 20% of its inhabitants are Arab Muslims, who have full rights as citizens.
If Netanyahu disappears as Israel’s Prime Minister, as I hope he will, it’s certain that anti-Zionism will remain, for it is really opposition to Israel, not Israel’s politics.
The video below eloquently expresses the equivalence of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. In this Munk debate, the claim that they are equivalent did indeed “win”, changing the minds of the audience more towards equivalence than to non-equivalence. Have a listen to Hausdorff’s short but telling argument:
I have lost friends, and will probably lose more, for being sympathetic to Israel and its right to exist. (Only a handful of American Jews—around 7%—say they are “anti-Zionist”, though there is disagreement about the term’s meaning.). One friend, an excellent scientist with whom I had a good relationship, told me he wanted to unsubscribe to this website because of my views on Israel. (I don’t have the ability to unsubscribe people.) Another, an old paramour whom I still care about, told me she doubted we could get along because of “the Israel thing.” And of course Maarten Boudry and I were disinvited to a biology discussion at the University of Amsterdam because of “our views on Israel,” which are simply that it has a right to exist and defend itself when attacked.
I’m not beefing here, as I regret nothing I’ve said. I just want to reiterate the point once again that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, for it is the view that Israel should not exist and should be eliminated. The sentiment will persist regardless of what Israel does or who is Prime Minister.
This Jesus and Mo strip, called “wrong” is a Friday flashback that appeared twenty years ago. Here Mo explains why he is absolutely adamant about his beliefs.
Today’s photos come from Miriam Meyerhoff, who responded to my call for readers to send it photo. (That call, by the way, still exists!). Miram’s captions are indented and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.
In June we spent a week in Orkney (Mainland and Westray) to see neolithic sites and some wildlife. I’m not good at photographing birds (and I just have an iPhone) so I have photos of puffins, some fulmars and lots of plants.
On the Mainland of Orkney, we visited Skara Brae and various stone circles. Skara Brae was first inhabited about 3100 BCE. The homes had built-in furniture (kind of like Frank Lloyd Wright did with his houses) with a dresser of shelves opposite the door and beds built into the walls on the right and left walls:
On Westray, we walked for about an hour with a local guide, Megan of Wild Orkney Walks. Megan was extremely knowledgeable about plants and wildlife and is deeply concerned about the impact of over-fishing on the Orkney sea birds.
It turns out puffins (Fratercula sp.) are not at all scared of people and will let you come very close:
They nested alongside fulmars on the cliffs. Fulmars (Fulmaris sp.) are not gulls, they are in the same family as albatrosses and petrels. Apparently, fulmars can defend themselves by spewing up a foul smelling oily mess and spitting it at you. The first syllable ful- is cognate with the word foul on account of this habit:
The clifftops we walked along had many plants that were new to me. Sea thrift (Armeria maritima, aka sea pinks) and red campion and sea campion as well as meadowsweet [flowers in order]:
There was also an impressive selection of different thistles. I think this was a cruel thistle (Cersium ferox):
Wild roses (Rosa rugosa) were also in bloom. I didn’t know you can eat the petals. They taste a bit like glycerin to me:
Back on the mainland, the oddest plant I saw was Cottonweed. The seed heads do produce something very like cotton wool:
But the most beautiful (to me) was the smallest flower on a clifftop near Yesnaby, sea milkwort. I gather it is quite common in the northern hemisphere, but I didn’t grow up here. I loved how simultaneously tough and dainty it manages be.
Welcome to the first Friday of the month: August 7, 2026, and International Beer Day. I’ve always maintained that the best session beer (not the best overall beer) in the world is Timothy Taylor Landlord, brewed in Britain, and readers keep sending me welcome photos of their pints, although I cannot get any in the U.S. Here’s one sent by Gregory from the Woolly Sheep Inn in Skipton, owned by the brewery:
But Gregory reports on a new Taylor beer, too:
“I’ve now sampled seven of their brews and while I will always enjoy the Landlord, the others are also quite good. (Although the Dark Mild is VERY mild, so maybe I wouldn’t have another of those.). Anyway, Landlord Dark is excellent, although the regular Landlord is a better bitter. But without a doubt, their Boltmaker Bitter is even better than Landlord itself, hard as that may be to believe.”
THAT is a chellenge, so, I’ll have to try this, whose existence I wasn’t aware of. You don’t take the “Champion Beer of Britain” award lightly!
Iran and Oman are close to finalizing an agreement on an acceptable route for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said, according to state media reports on Wednesday.
The two countries, which sit on opposite sides of the strategic waterway, have been in talks to find a formula to reopen the strait. Iran effectively closed the strait, used to transport a significant quantity of the world’s oil and gas supplies, in retaliation for attacks by the United States and Israel this year.
Iranian officials have insisted they will not give up on some measure of control over the strait, which before the war was an open international waterway.
“The geographic coordinates of the route envisioned by both sides have been agreed upon,” the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, was quoted as saying by Iran’s state news agency. “If certain third parties do not obstruct the process, a joint statement by the two countries, containing the principal considerations and points of agreement, is currently in the final stages of review and drafting.”
Officials familiar with the emerging accord had earlier told The New York Times that under its terms, vessels heading into the Persian Gulf would transit a channel controlled by Iran and close to its coast. Ships leaving the gulf would travel on a channel near Oman.
Mr. Baghaei said nothing about charging fees or tolls for ships passing through the strait, according to the reported comments.
A regional diplomat with knowledge of the ongoing talks said the negotiators were working hard and hoping for the best.
The Omani government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iranian officials have said that while there will be no tolls charged in the strait, the agreement includes a “service fee” to cover the environmental effect of the shipping, security for the cargo ships and tankers, and staffing. Revenues would be divided equally between Iran and Oman, Iranian officials said.
Give me a break: a “service fee” is no different from a toll. And they didn’t need “service fees” before the war. The U.S. should not stand for any solution that changes the condition of passage from what it was before the war, i.e. free.
The left beat the establishment, but the results showed its limits.
Dr. El-Sayed campaigned hard against the Democratic political establishment. That was enough to win, but enough voters backed Ms. Stevens to suggest that the establishment still has plenty of influence
The ground has shifted under pro-Israel Democrats.
But Dr. El-Sayed’s primary success in Michigan was arguably the most remarkable victory yet for the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States — and maybe the biggest setback for pro-Israel Democrats.
D.S.A. candidates had a mixed night.
The primaries on Tuesday had the biggest stakes for progressive Democrats of any night on this year’s political calendar.
Dr. El-Sayed was the headliner, but three House candidates with ties to democratic socialism also faced primary voters.
Republicans are going to go after El-Sayed hard.
Ms. Stevens said throughout the final weeks of the primary that Mr. Rogers and his fellow Republicans were itching for Dr. El-Sayed to win the primary because they thought he would be easier to beat in November.
Now Republicans will get their chance to prove Ms. Stevens correct.
Michigan was another defeat for Schumer.
Before this year, it had been a long time since a Democrat backed by Senator Chuck Schumer lost a Senate primary. Now it has happened twice this summer.
Mr. Schumer’s endorsement of Ms. Stevens may have signaled to donors to get behind her, but it cemented her position as the establishment candidate in a year when Democratic primary voters are furious with the establishment.
But winning a primary isn’t the same as winning the general election in a swing state like Michigan. Mr. El-Sayed will face Mike Rogers, a one-time FBI agent and former head of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Rogers is a strong candidate who lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin two years ago by fewer than 20,000 votes out of more than 5.4 million cast. He has shown he can unite the moderate suburban and MAGA wings of the state GOP.
It’s a new political landscape, but we’ll see how the “progressives” do in red or purple states. We don’t have any running here, though Mayor Brandon Johnson comes close. But in general voters don’t like him, and he hasn’t announced whether he’ll run again for mayor.
Democratic primary voters in Michigan just made it harder for their party to flip the Senate.
Abdul El-Sayed struggled mightily with the working-class voters he claims his policies will help. The Bernie Sanders acolyte badly underperformed pre-primary polls to eke out a victory in Tuesday’s Senate primary with less than 50 percent. A win is a win, but he carries heavy baggage into the general election.
El-Sayed benefited from the strongly anti-establishment mood in the Democratic ranks to defeat Rep. Haley Stevens. Other Michigan races showed that this cycle remains perilous for incumbents: Rep. Shri Thanedar lost to a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is the sixth Democratic congressman who has been toppled by a primary challenger.
Stevens had support from outgoing Sen. Gary Peters and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. El-Sayed campaigned with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and live-streamer Hasan Piker, who has said “America deserved 9/11.”
. . .Because Vice President JD Vance can break 50-50 ties, Democrats need to net four Senate seats. Losing Michigan would require them to find another state to flip. Democrats see opportunities to pick up GOP-held seats in North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa and Texas.
Trump is so unpopular right now, and the national environment is so favorable for Democrats, that El-Sayed might win despite himself. If he loses and the GOP controls the Senate for the last two years of Trump’s term as a result, it could teach Democrats an important lesson heading into 2028. Pragmatism, not radicalism, offers the best path out of the wilderness.
So what are the chances that El-Sayed will win in November? Prediction markets and pollsters make it a narrow race, with perhaps El-Sayed having a slight advantage over his Republican opponent, former Representative Mike Rogers. But El-Sayed underperformed in the polls for the primary, so I’m not making any bets. As an anti-Zionist, he rejects Zionism, construed as “the movement supporting the self-determination and continued existence of the State of Israel.” If you oppose that, you want Israel gone, and that, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades, is antisemitism.
A Republican-led Senate committee voted Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, escalating a yearslong GOP effort to scrutinize one of the nation’s top former health officials.
Senators voted 8-5 on the resolution, along party lines, which was brought by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.). It seeks to refer the case directly to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, bypassing a vote from the full Senate, where Republicans would be unlikely to meet a 60-vote threshold to advance the resolution.
“Seeking the truth is not a witch hunt,” Paul said before the vote. “Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is what stands between the American people and a repeat of the mistakes and the very real consequences of the past.”
. . . It is unclear how the Justice Department, which has shown a willingness to investigate President Trump’s political adversaries, would approach the contempt issue. Fauci, 85 years old, received a pre-emptive pardon from President Joe Biden, who sought to shield him and other officials from anticipated prosecution by Trump and his allies. During the pandemic, Fauci was serving as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a role he held for decades.
The vote comes as legal and political pressure on Fauci builds, with top Republicans in Washington pressing for additional documents and at least four Republican-led states launching their own investigations.
. . .For now, Fauci and his team are preparing for the political and legal battles ahead while maintaining confidence that none of the investigations will yield credible charges. They have portrayed Paul’s yearslong pursuit of Fauci as evidence that the investigation is politically driven, while privately noting that Paul’s previous referrals of Fauci to the Justice Department for potential prosecution—including one under the current Trump administration—didn’t result in charges.
The congressional effort is unfolding alongside a push by Republican officials to pursue Fauci through other legal avenues. This week, Oklahoma became the latest state to launch an inquiry into whether Fauci’s actions during the pandemic violated state law, following similar investigations announced in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana.
I’d bet against Fauci facing any kind of conviction, though he may find his golden years occupied with fighting various legal charges. I haven’t seen anything in the record that rises to the level or criminality, but we’ll have to see what the Republican bloodhounds dig up.
A small organ in eastern Germany is the headliner of the world’s slowest concert. It has been playing the same piece of music by composer John Cage at a glacial pace for nearly 25 years.
A rare chord change on Wednesday — from seven notes to eight — represented the completion of about 4% of the 639-year endeavor of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt.
It was a historic moment inside the medieval Burchardi Church, in Halberstadt, Germany, that reflected the past, present and future of the project, as well as those who are following its — albeit very slow — progression.
. . .While the project commenced in 2000, the performance began Sept. 5, 2001 — Cage’s 89th birthday — with a silent pause that lasted until Feb. 5, 2003, when the first chords could actually be heard.
The composition — called “ORGAN²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)” — is scheduled to finish on Sept. 4, 2640.
An electric-powered blower system sends wind into the organ to create a continuous sound. A chord change, done manually, means that the sound of the organ pipes changes either because new sounds are added or existing sounds end.
More than 150 people squeezed inside the church Wednesday to witness what was the piece’s 17th chord change, with dozens more watching a livestream outside.
For three minutes, the crowd listened to the “old” chord with its seven pipes. Then, an eighth pipe was slotted into the small organ, bringing with it a new sound that reverberated throughout the church. The spectators listened for another three minutes — some filming with cellphones, others taking it all in with their eyes closed and heads bowed — before breaking out into applause and cries of “bravo!”
The chord change is supposed to be in this video, not the one below, but it’s hard to hear. I think it’s at 11:30 in the previous link.
I ask you, is this artistic music? I call it a trick designed to impress people who think that a urinal is art. Get off my lawn!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a fancy-pants way of telling Andrzej that her bowl is empty:
Hili: I looked into my bowl just a moment ago. Me: And what did you find?
Hili: Abstract cognitive categories suspended in a subtle void.
In Polish:
Hili: Zaglądałam przed chwilą do mojej miseczki.
Ja: I co tam znalazłaś?
Hili: Abstrakcyjne kategorie poznawcze zgromadzone w subtelnej pustce.
Cats will square up with a bear like they’ve got something to prove, but the minute the vacuum comes out, they act like the end of civilization is here.
That cat looked back like, “You boys got this on tape?” 😂🐈⬛ pic.twitter.com/b5lehxYLXn
The Botafumeiro is one of the most spectacular traditions of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral: eight tiraboleiros swing a 53 kg giant censer through the nave at speeds of up to 68 km/h.
Matthew gave this one an exclamation mark. It’s taken from a real picture of Mitch McConnell celebrating his recovery. Will he return to the Senate? He has not told us.
I came across the following post by Professor David Hillis of the University of Texas at Austin, an evolutionist I much admire for his perspicacity and malleability: his ability to contribute to several different fields, including herpetology. (He also breeds longhorn cattle on his Double Helix Ranch in the Hill Country.) Of course one reason I respect his work is because many of his conclusions agree with mine!
One of them is his adherence to the Biological Species Concept formulated by Ernst Mayr, which basically states that two populations belong to the same species if, when they contact each other in nature, they can produce fertile hybrids. If they can’t for any reason, then they are members of different species. Nearly all evolutionists adhere to some form of the BSC, but I won’t go into the concept in depth as it, its problems and problems with alternative species concepts are covered in detail in my book Speciation written with Allen Orr.
One long-standing question in evolutionary anthropology is whether Neanderthals were a different species from “modern” Homo sapiens. Some anthropologists say they were different species, the former called H. neanderthalensis and the latter H. sapiens. But there is ample genetic evidence for interbreeding of the two forms in Eurasia, and for fertility of the hybrids, for many people outside of Africa carry Neanderthal genes. I myself have a small fraction of Neanderthal genes in my DNA. This kind of data is prima facie evidence that when the two groups were in contact, that they produced hybrids and also that those hybrids were fertile, backcrossing to modern H. sapiens.
At best, then, I consider the two forms to be subspecies: somewhat differentiated populations that were members of the same species. Those who agree with this, like me and Hillis, see the subspecies as H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalensis.
The Neanderthals evolved from a hominin population that came to Eurasia out of Africa about 400,000 years ago. They persisted until about 40,000 years ago, when they (identifiable by fossil features; see below) mysteriously disappeared.
There have been several hypotheses accounting for the disappearance of the Neanderthals. They include demographic fluctuations or inbreeding leading to disappearance of the species, extinction due to inability to survive changes in the environment (there was glaciation when Neanderthals lived), competition (including aggression) from “modern” H. sapiens who left Africa to populate the world about 60,000 years ago, and “extinction through interbreeding”, which is the hypothesis supported by a new paper discussed below in Nature Scientific Reports. I should add that “modern” H. sapiens arose in Africa about 300,000 years ago.
Click both screenshots to go to the comment and the paper.
This paper, by Swiss and Italian authors, shows that “extinction via interbreeding” is at least possible under reasonable and conservative conditions obtaining at the known times of extinction. Successive waves of H. sapiens coming out of Africa, they posit, interbred with Neanderthals and eventually, because the sapiens were far more numerous than Neanderthals, the Neanderthal genome became absorbed into the modern population of H. sapiens. Click to read; it’s highly mathematical and you should read just the abstract, introduction, and conclusions:
Here are a few of the assumptions:
Neanderthals consisted of tribes of about 500-1000 individuals, subdivided into “bands” of 25-50 individuals.
The total population of Neanderthals was about 5000-7000 individuals
The population of H. sapiens was ten to a hundred times larger than this
Repeated waves of H. sapiens came out of Africa, comprising an effectively infinite reservoir of individuals and genes
The genetic data in modern H. sapiens shows repeated instances of introgression
The upshot: The “genetic dilution” or “extinction through interbreeding” hypothesis can be supported by a reasonable mathematical model that takes into account evidence of population sizes and times of migration, and accounts for the genetic data. This does not mean, of course, that this is why the Neanderthals disappeared. It could have been another scenario or perhaps a combination of this scenario with others. Mathematical models can only tell us what is possible, not what is true. But the paper does show that an interbreeding scenario cannot be ruled out.
And the genetic data we do have, including ancient DNA data from Neanderthal bones, shows that we and Neanderthals are brothers and sisters: members of the same species. There were other distinct biological species that arose during hominin evolution, but Neanderthals and modern humans were almost surely “conspecific.”
The paper’s conclusions:
The mathematical model we presented provides a plausible explanation for the gradual disappearance of Neanderthals, suggesting that their genetic assimilation with H. sapiens, a demographically much larger species, may have been a significant factor in their decline. Rather than sudden extinction, our model proposes that repeated cycles of H. sapiens immigration leading to the Neanderthal gene dilution, could account for the Neanderthals’ disappearance and the observed patterns of Neanderthal ancestry in modern human populations. Although this model provides a possible robust genetic explanation, it is important to note that it does not exclude other possible contributing factors that were not considered in our approach, such as environmental changes, competition, or demographic fluctuations. Evidence of interbreeding and genetic introgression supports the notion that H. sapiens and Neanderthals interacted extensively over thousands of years. Therefore, the interplay of genetic, demographic, and environmental factors likely contributed to the complex process of Neanderthal demise.
Future studies incorporating both genetic and archaeological data will be crucial in refining our understanding of this pivotal moment in human evolution.
Here’s a Neanderthal skull showing distinctive subspecific features (from Wikipedia):
Welcome to Thursday, July 6, 2026, and it’s Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
On August 6, 1945, at 2:45 a.m., the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, took off from Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands. It was flown by Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets—who had named the plane after his mother—and carried an atomic bomb called “Little Boy.” At 8:16 a.m., the bomb was dropped over the city of Hiroshima. It exploded at an altitude of 1,900 feet, above a hospital. It released the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT and destroyed over four square miles of the city, leveling about 62,000 of Hiroshima’s 90,000 buildings. Around 80,000 to 90,000 people were killed on impact, and another 60,000 died by the end of the year on account of radiation sickness and other injuries sustained from the blast.
Here’s a BBC dramatization (for an excellent historical documentary with contemporary filming, see here). Save for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, this was the last nuclear weapon used in a war. Fingers crossed that it won’t happen again (we’re looking at you, Iran):
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive and a vocal critic of Israel, edged Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate, early Wednesday to narrowly win the Michigan Senate Democratic primary, according to The Associated Press.
It was a high-profile victory for the ascendant political left — though the rancorous race was ultimately far closer than polls had suggested, with Dr. El-Sayed leading by less than a percentage point Wednesday morning. Dr. El-Sayed will face former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican, in a general election clash for an open battleground seat that could determine control of the Senate.
On Wednesday morning, Dr. El-Sayed and Democrats from across the ideological spectrum moved quickly to project party unity after a remarkably bitter and expensive primary campaign.
Speaking at a rally, Dr. El-Sayed hailed Ms. Stevens as “one of the most committed public servants” and said there was far more that united them than divided them. Seeking to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats, he also urged voters to support him if “you believe like me that you ought to be able to afford your groceries.”
Ms. Stevens called Dr. El-Sayed on Wednesday morning to concede the race, a spokesman for her campaign said.
Dr. El-Sayed and his allies argued that his populist rhetoric would energize voters across the political spectrum who are unhappy with the status quo, and he plainly tapped into simmering Democratic fury with the party establishment, and with President Trump.
But many Democratic leaders had rallied around Ms. Stevens, a centrist, fearful that the left-wing views espoused by Dr. El-Sayed, a former public health official and proponent of universal health care, could imperil the party’s chances of defending an crucial open seat.
The Michigan Senate primary now marks the most significant triumph for the political left this year — and the general election there could pose the movement’s biggest test yet, measuring whether left-wing candidates can energize enough voters to beat Republicans in swing terrain.
The Senate primary was defined by fierce debates over Israel. Dr. El-Sayed overcame $60 million in outside money supporting Ms. Stevens, including about $32 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israel group whose involvement became a source of frequent conflict in the contest.
I see this campaign as somewhat as a referendum on Israel, with supporters of Israel losing. To me, El-Sayed is the Senate equivalent of Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, but, if elected, he’ll have more power than either of them. What are the Democratic voters thinking—to elect a guy like this over a moderate Democrat? It’s very depressing. I’d put a black border of mourning around this item if I could.
Iran and Oman have agreed on the geographical coordinates of a proposed safe shipping route for commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Wednesday.
The two countries have held talks over the past two months covering the technical, legal, security and environmental aspects of the proposed route, Baghaei said in response to questions about the talks.
Baghaei described the negotiations as “professional” and “progressing,” adding that a joint statement setting out the main points of agreement is being reviewed and finalized.
“Provided that certain third parties do not obstruct the process, the joint statement of the two countries, including the principal considerations and points of agreement, is also in the final stage of review and drafting,” he said.
Baghaei blamed the closure of the strait on the US and Israeli attack on Iran. He said an agreement between Iran and Oman alone could not guarantee safe passage while a US naval blockade and “other aggressive and threatening actions” remain in place.
From the WSJ:
Iran’s leadership has made a high-stakes calculation in its showdown with President Trump: maintaining control over the Strait of Hormuz is a nonnegotiable red line.
By asserting authority over a critical waterway for global crude-oil flows, Tehran is betting that its ability to inflict pain on the American economy is its best leverage to avoid future military action from the U.S. and Israel. With gasoline prices and inflation elevated, Tehran believes Trump will ultimately accept its terms ahead of fast-approaching midterm elections that could determine the future of his presidency.
Centering strategy on controlling the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary gamble. It assumes Trump will prefer a messy, volatile stalemate over an all-out war. In playing this card so aggressively, Tehran risks miscalculating Washington’s breaking point and threatening its own economic survival.
“Their maximalism will contribute to their isolation in the long run,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy organization that opposes Iran’s rulers.
There are fissures from within Iran’s government on control of the strait.
The hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sees the control of Hormuz as its most important tool to exert pressure on the West following the degradation of its nuclear program and its militia proxies over the past few years, said Iranian and Arab officials and a Revolutionary Guard adviser. The Iranian military has suffered major losses since the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Feb. 28, but it has been able to bog Washington down by harrying shipping in the strait and targeting U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf.
If any ships have to pay one red cent in tolls (disguised as “monitoring costs” or something else) to Oman or Iran, the Strait will not have reverted to its pre-war condition, and Trump’s big demand will have failed. Iran is committed to having some control over the Strait, just as its committed to making nuclear weapons. Trump needs to understand this. He might already, but be ready to just withdraw and proclaim victory.
Ukrainian forces failed to shoot down a single Russian missile early Wednesday during Moscow’s latest aerial bombardment of Kyiv and the surrounding region — a consequence that President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed on a plunge in anti-ballistic systems supplied by its partners, including the United States.
Zelensky wrote on X that 17 people were killed and 44 injured, adding: “Ballistic missile interceptors could have saved the lives of those killed today. It is very important that our partners understand that delays in supplying them, or an unwillingness to provide anti-ballistic systems, lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction.” In a separate post Wednesday, he said that the number of air defense missiles supplied by partners “has dropped threefold compared with 2025.”
“Our partners do have the missiles,” Zelensky wrote. “It is important that the necessary political decisions on supplies and the acceleration of production processes are ultimately made.”
It was the third major ballistic attack on Kyiv in a week, and came only days after Zelensky warned that his country had run out of air defense interceptors. Russia launched 24 ballistic and four hypersonic cruise missiles overnight, along with 115 attack drones, most of which targeted the area outside of Kyiv, Ukraine’s Air Force said on social media. All of the missiles and 17 drones struck targets.
Russian forces also appear to be expanding their list of civilian targets to include Ukraine’s major supermarket chains.
In a statement posted on social media, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out a “massive strike” that resulted “in the destruction of transportation, logistics, and distribution centers in the city of Kyiv and the Kyiv region.”
Ukraine relies on the U.S.-designed Patriot air defense systems as its only means to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, and until recently, a large number were intercepted. However, the system’s interceptor missiles are in short supply, in part because of the large number used during the Iran war.
EU countries have some Patriots, but they don’t want to give them to Ukraine because they don’t want to weaken their own defenses. This is misguided; no other country in Europe is imperiled, and Ukraine is clearly the subject of a new Russian strategy to target civilians. That’s a war crime, of course, but do you hear people calling it out? I don’t think so. As I see it, we have a moral obligation to help Ukraine, an ally, as much as we can, even if we have to sacrifice something to do so. Putin will be heartened at the lack of U.S. and European help for Ukraine, and I wouldn’t put it past him to try invading more countries.
*At the Free Press, Yuan Yi Zhu discussed the Cambridge University fabulist in “Who had to lose for Jason Arday to win?” (Note previous post reporting that Arday resigned after this was published.)
There had been suspicions concerning Arday’s research for many years, but journalists and scholars who tried to investigate the issue were scared off by letters from one of England’s most fearsome libel law firms (who paid the firm is unknown), and some were reported to the police for harassment.
As the furor began, Arday and his allies initially accused his critics of racism and tried to portray him as the victim of a “lynch mob,” but he has admitted that he had made “mistakes” in his work, blaming it in part on his autism. An open letter in his support (which, contra Arday’s own words, claimed that his work was entirely beyond reproach) attracted thousands of signatures, including those of at least nine British legislators and that of acclaimed autism researcher Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, who accused Arday’s critics of potentially pushing him into suicide.
. . . Last week, as the uproar built and more and more outlets covered the story, The Guardian, which one might expect to be sympathetic to Cambridge’s argument that this was a race-based witch hunt, subtly took apart these claims one by one. The reporting led to an anguished complaint from Arday that “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.”
How did Arday get away with it for so long? There are many fantasists and cheats out there, but most do not reach the top of their profession. Academia, which prides itself on the rigor of our selection process (a process that is, in many ways, ritualized hazing), should have prevented him from achieving his exalted rank. In a context where a temporary entry-level job can attract as many as 800 applications, any flaw can be used to disqualify a candidate.
But the system failed. At every stage, Arday was waved through and showered with praise. His PhD supervisor allegedly held one formal supervision only with him during his course, which did not prevent him from hiring Arday for his first academic job. The University of Glasgow appointed him to his first chair in 2021, when he was 36 (Stephen Hawking got his first chair at the age of 35).
Then, after stints at several universities of increasing repute, he ended up at Cambridge. Normally, elections to Cambridge chairs are announced with a notice pinned to a notice board in the center of the city, followed by a note in the university’s internal newspaper. In Arday’s case, news of his appointment was splashed on front pages and homepages across the world. The story was simply too good to pass up, especially in the post-2020 racial reckoning.
The breathless release put out by Cambridge’s education department described him as “a leading scholar in his field” who “publish[ed] extensively,” both standard requirements for any senior academic post. But it also spoke of his role as “a platform he intends to use to inspire more people from underrepresented backgrounds into higher education, building on the university’s many initiatives in this area.”
It is hard to escape the impression that Cambridge wanted him as a visible symbol of its commitment to diversity, overlooking in the process his suitability for the job. He was, in blunter terms, hired to be the face of Cambridge’s diversity drive. Whether his work was any good or not was beside the point. He represented something that Cambridge wanted to show the world, and that was that.
It’s considered offensive to say that someone is a “DEI hire”, but that’s exactly what Zhu is saying here, and that’s what it looks like more and more every day. I wonder if Cambridge will fire the guy for plagiarism (his Ph.D. school exculpated him), and for serial lying (they can hardly fire him for poor scholarship, but if some of that is stolen, then yes, it’s unethical). I think he needs to be let go because he’s already painted a past that’s grossly wrong, I doubt he’s a substantial resource at Cambridge, and the whole story above is a slap in the face to serious scholars of color—at Cambridge and elsewhere.
I was a little less than 30 minutes into a video call with Sean O’Mara, the trim and handsome 63-year-old doctor who has reportedly been giving dietary advice to several members of the Trump cabinet, when he pulled up an image of two liquids the color of radiator fluid. This vibrant yellow-green, O’Mara explained, occupies a specific attention-getting wavelength. “Soda companies use that color to get people to buy,” he said, gesturing to the first liquid, which was Mountain Dew. “Your brain kind of lights up. You’re like, Wow, that’s cool stuff.” He directed my attention to the other liquid, roughly the same color, and in a jar.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“That’s urine,” he said. “That’s urine from a human being.”
The strong implication was that it was his. Passing urine this color is a good thing, O’Mara said, and it started happening to him six years ago: a byproduct of his diet, which comprises almost exclusively steak and fermented foods. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JD Vance, Howard Lutnick and Sean Duffy had all taken up the O’Mara program. Kennedy has credited it with reducing his visceral fat load by 40 percent; the president has reportedly taken notice of Vance’s slimming figure.
. . .So I joined the cabinet — for a week, anyway.
O’Mara calls it the Living Diet: You eat nothing but the flesh of grass-fed ruminants — cows, yes, but also bison, elk and venison — and as many different fermented foods as possible, because their bacteria help repopulate your gut, which he says improves your metabolism, leading to weight loss. Wild-caught seafood is cool, too, but ruminants are best, O’Mara says, because they ferment what they eat in their many stomachs.
He wanted me eating fermented beets, carrots and radishes; Roquefort and Parmesan; yogurt, kefir and kvass. He showed me a picture of his typical plate of food: It looked as if a steak had been dropped on a painter’s easel, studded as it was with multihued hillocks of fermented vegetables. “I have a refrigerator that has about 20 to 30 ferments, and I just get little bits of each one,” he explained. “I’m just rubbing this meat around in all that bacteria.”
. . . I ran the basics of the diet by Marion Nestle of New York University, whose views on nutrition are more mainstream than O’Mara’s. While she questioned his claims about fermented foods improving metabolism, Nestle agreed the diet would be effective as a temporary route to weight loss, provided you kept your caloric intake below maintenance. “I can’t think of any nutrients that would be missing from this,” she said. “But it just sounds boring to me.”
. . .To O’Mara, the diet is not just a temporary means of losing weight but a way to eat for good. He has been doing it for 10 years, and credits it with turning his life around. At one point in our conversation he pulled up the Bristol Stool Chart, which ranges from Type 1 (“separate, hard pellets”) to Type 7 (“watery, no solid pieces”). O’Mara is consistently delivering Type 4 (“smooth, soft, like a snake”), with pointed ends, indicative of healthy rectal function, he told me. “When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,” he claimed. “Animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus.” He described a proper bowel movement to me this way: odorless, wipe-free, over in three to seven seconds and “nearly orgasmic.”
“I could have a bowel movement behind a sheet at a dinner party in the corner of the room,” he said, “and nobody would know.”
Oy gewalt! I was surprised to learn that this diet won’t kill you, but is it that different from the diet of our ancestors? (Presumably their herbal and dairy stuff may have been somewhat fermented.) But we keep learning that what we “knew” about diets has been wrong. I probably eat a bit more ruminant meat (steak) than most readers here, and I do eat yogurt, but I don’t have access to venison or bison, and there’s a dearth of fermented food in the rest of my diet? Will I change it in light of this article? Probably not—it’s boring.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili discuss the origin of a very important species.
Hili: When did cats domesticate humans? Andrzej: According to archaeologists, about nine and a half thousand years ago.
Hili: That’s only a theory. The beginnings of civilization are certainly older.
In Polish:
Hili: Kiedy koty udomowiły ludzi?
Ja: Zdaniem archeologów około dziewięć i pół tysiąca lat temu.
Hili: To tylko teoria, początki cywilizacji z pewnością są starsze.
From Masih. Read the whole thing; she’s absolutely correct about how to construe “choice”. And what a way to swim!
To those who say “it’s her choice” I used to say the same thing about my own Hijab.
I was covered head to toe. Even on the beach. Even with my male relatives. And when people challenged me, I said: this is my choice. You know why? Because the other option was burning in hell,… pic.twitter.com/Apa9EpjreC
Crikey, my feed is filled with stuff about Jason Arday. Here’s one more; you might want to read the original article about how Arday used the cops to defend himself against academic and journalistic inquiries:
Cambridge University’s embattled “academic superstar”, Professor Jason Arday, reported fellow academic Dr David Harris, Professor Emeritus at Plymouth Marjon University, to the police after being challenged over apparent inconsistencies, errors and possible plagiarism in his…
— Committee for Academic Freedom (@ComAcFreedom) August 5, 2026
And one I reposted at The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Norwegian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was eight years old. https://t.co/cQiq1zt93I
From Dr. Cobb, who’s writing about the history of heredity. This is a real find. English translation:
Prelate Cyrill Napp briefly summarizes the course of the debate thus far and concurs with the view expressed by Director Liehr, pointing out that the discussion has strayed entirely from the actual subject—heritability; the issue at hand is not the theory of the breeding process, but rather the question: What is inherited, and how?
One of the most important questions in the history of biology, posed during an 1837 discussion of agricultural breeding in Brnö by Abbé Cyrill Napp, the man who recruited Mendel: "What is inherited and how?" (Transliteration, translation, reference and source in Alt)
As I reported two days ago, Cambridge sociology professor Jason Arday was the subject of several reports of unethical behavior as well as fabulism. Yesterday he resigned his position at The University of Cambridge after there were multiple credible accusations of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis and his scholarly papers (which didn’t seem so scholarly). He also told unbelievable tales about his life, including having raised £5 million pounds for charity, of having run 30 marathons in 35 days, and of having been threatened when there was no evidence of the reported threats. He sicced the police on journalists inquiring about his life, and blamed all the inquiries and criticism on racism. He said that he was diagnosed as autistic when young, did not speak until he was 11 years old, and could not read or write until he was 18.
The pressure on Arday grew sufficiently intense, and the accusations so numerous, that Cambridge finally announced they were investigating him. In light of this and other mounting investigations, he quit his job (see his resignation letter below); all this is reported in the New York Times (here and here; links free, h/t Keith) and the Guardian. His autobiography, scheduled to appear this coming week, is apparently still in the works, but I suspect it will be withdrawn. From the NYT:
His resignation came hours after Cambridge announced an investigation into Arday, and six days before the scheduled release of his memoir “Great and Unfortunate Things,” by the Simon & Schuster imprint 37 Ink, in the United States.
A representative of Simon & Schuster, which has so far stood by the book, told The New York Times on Wednesday that the publisher had no comment beyond the statement about Arday it released last week, citing “the professionalism and integrity he has brought to every stage of the publication.”
It is with profound sadness that I write to resign, with immediate effect, from my position at the University of Cambridge and Jesus College.
When I accepted the extraordinary honour of becoming Professor of Sociology at Cambridge, it was, without question, the greatest professional privilege of my life. To become the youngest Black professor in the University’s history was something I could scarcely have imagined as a child growing up with a diagnosis of autism, unable to speak until I was eleven years old.
The response from so many people across the world was overwhelming. Thousands celebrated not simply my appointment, but what it represented: that talent, perseverance and hope can triumph over even the greatest adversity. It has been the privilege of my life to teach my students, to learn alongside them, and to witness their curiosity, kindness and ambition. They have given me far more than I could ever have given them.
Sadly, the years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack. While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.
I have tried to continue because I believe deeply in the values of higher education, in rigorous scholarship, and in the transformative power of universities. I have tried because of my students, my colleagues and the countless people who have written to tell me that my journey gave them hope.
But there comes a point when the personal cost becomes too great.
I have a family. I want to be present for them. I want to reclaim some peace, some privacy and some semblance of an ordinary life. I no longer wish to feel as though I am living under a constant spotlight, where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgement.
For my own wellbeing, for my family, and for those who have stood by me throughout this difficult period, I have concluded that the only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away.
This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.
To my students: thank you. Teaching you has been the greatest honour of my academic career. Your brilliance, compassion and determination give me enormous hope for the future.
To my colleagues and to the many thousands of people, from every corner of the world, who have supported me, defended me, written to me, and believed in me when it mattered most, I offer my deepest gratitude. Your kindness has carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life.
This is not the end of my work. It is simply the end of this chapter.
I need time to heal. I need time to simply be myself again.
And when that time comes, I will return.
I will return stronger, wiser and with the same determination that has always defined my journey. There is still so much work to do, and I look forward to doing it alongside so many of you in the years ahead.
For now, however, I ask only for understanding, for compassion, and for the space to begin again.
With gratitude,
Professor Jason Arday
Again, he admits no guilt, but implies that “relentless accusations”, which he’d always attributed to racism or ableism, had made his life at Cambridge Uni intolerable. I feel a bit sorry for the guy, for, after all, his rise was promoted by people who bought into the oppressor/victim narrative. But he himself is responsible for telling apparently false stories about his academic career and life, and for stealing from other scholars. As I said, Arday’s meteoric rise, as well as the many people who defended him in light of credible accusations, constitute an insult to reputable black and minority scholars everywhere.
I doubt Arday will return to academics, for what university would hire him? He is tainted permanently, and the plagiarism and statements about his life are there for all to see. Let this be a lesson to Cambridge to hire solely on the basis of merit rather than to tick an identity box.
Here’s the take of philosopher Maarten Boudry; read the whole thing, and watch the video at the end:
It was inevitable that Jason Arday would be forced to resign from @Cambridge_Uni. But this was never about him. In fact, he has been a godsend, providing living evidence of the unbelievable level of corruption and sheer stupidity that has infected elite institutions.
