Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I have only three horrible words today, but I saw them all this week, and I want to get them off my chest before they tangle up my kishkes. Here they are, with examples. Two of them appear in just one article—at the New York Times.
1.) Tradwife: This word seems to have appeared recently, and is a shortening of “traditional wife”—that is, as AI sees it, “It refers to a woman who chooses to embrace traditional gender roles, centering her life around being a homemaker, raising children, and submitting to her husband’s role as the primary.” It’s an example of how the young people shorten phrases in order to look cool. I had to look it up the first time I saw it, but that’s the case for many odious neologisms.
2.) Cosplay. This has been around for a longish while, and yet I still don’t know whether to pronounce it with a short or a long “o”. And you’ll never hear me using it. But no matter, as it will never pass my lipes.
Again, here’s an AI definition:
Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costume” and “play.” It is a performance art and hobby where participants wear costumes and accessories to represent a specific character from a work of fiction, such as anime, comic books, video games, or movies.
In other words, it’s Halloween for adults.
Here are both of them used in a single piece from the NYT written by Lauren Jackson in her weekly column “Believing,” designed to tell the paper’s readers how wonderful religion is (Jackson claims to be a nonbeliever, but her lips are firmly affixecd to the posterior of faith).
The book “Yesteryear” has a fantastic, pithy pitch: A tradwife influencer named Natalie wakes up in the world she was cosplaying online, in the year 1855. It’s a thriller and a scathing critique of how women perform for the internet. It’s also a book all about religion, belief — and delusion.
It’s at the top of the Times best-seller list, and I bet it will hang out there for a while. Before it even came out, Anne Hathaway decided she’d adapt it into a movie.
I loved every page. So I called the author, Caro Claire Burke, to talk to her about it.
Both words in one sentence! Jackson thinks this kind of writing is au courant. Seriously, Jackson should jettison her breezy prose, which I guess is designed to lure sheep into the fold.
And my Worst Word of the Year:
3.) Bougie. I think this one is pronounced “boo-szhee”, and is a shortening of “bourgeois,” often used derisively to mock wealth and status. Here’s its usage in the Free Press by Suzy Weiss, the younger sister of Bari Weiss who was nepotistically given a slot as a writer for the FP. She hasn’t yet grown into her role:
Everyone who moves to the bougie Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope does so with big ideas about how their new life there will go. How they’re going to jog in Prospect Park; how their brownstone apartments will be an oasis in the concrete jungle, a place to read on-trend books and host delightful dinner parties for erudite neighbors.
Isn’t that so cool? She uses “bougie”. (I won’t go after “on-trend”, which is ridiculous; why not use “trendy”?) I can’t bear to go on. . .
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and his erstwhile friend Vincent van Gogh, are two of my favorite painters, though I like van Gogh’s work better. But nobody from the post-Impressionist era ever went off to Polynesia like Gauguin, bent on living and depicting what he conceived as the natural life, unspoiled by the trappings of the West. He produced some marvelous paintings (and sculptures, which he also was good at), though he was largely unappreciated and ignored during his life.
Gauguin is buried on Atuona in the Marquesas Islands, his grave sporting a bronze cast of one of his wood sculptures:
Gauguin’s grave. Attribution: makemake, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I just finished a recent biography of Gauguin: Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, written by Sue Prideaux and published by W. W. Norton in May of last year. You can see the Amazon version by clicking on the cover below, which shows a photo of the painter. It’s thorough and well documented but not academic: that is, the narrative is up to date, replenished by recently available sources, and it’s an engaging read. If you have any interest in art, I’d recommend it highly. Gauguin was an important figure in the history of art, sui generis in his work but influential in the work of painters like Matisse and Picasso.
One could characterize Gauguin’s life as that of the classic “tortured artist”—tortured not by mental illness (as was van Gogh) but by an endless search for a place to escape civilization, a tortuous marriage, an endless search for money to live on, and, in the latter part of his life, severe medical issues. (His heart was bad, he had chronic eye problems, and he suffered from open sores on his legs, the result of a stomping in France by clog-wearing bullies.) That, combined with his love of lots of red wine and an odious diet of tinned food, led to his death at only 54.
Yet he had moments of great joy and beauty, and this is expressed on his canvas. In that way he resembled van Gogh. His most pleasurable moments were at his easel, where he spent a lot of time, and his paintings from Brittany, but especially Tahiti and the Marquesas, are splendid. I show a few below.
Prideaux’s book recounts a tumultuous life, with four years of Gauguin’s infancy spent in Peru (he called himself “the Peruvian savage” for the rest of his life) and later a stultifying stint as a stockbroker in Paris. He was a self-taught painter who married a Danish woman. Circumstances forced her and their two children to move back to Denmark, where Gauguin joined them on occasion. Money was always an issue, and Gauguin, like van Gogh, simply couldn’t gin up much interest in his paintings. His need to sell his art to buy food, paints, and lodging persisted throughout his life.
In 1888, Vincent van Gogh, obsessed with the idea of starting a colony of artists, invited Gauguin to live with him at the famous “yellow house” in Arles, France. They didn’t get along well, and it was during this period that, after an argument with Gauguin, van Gogh cut off his own ear and deposited it at a brothel. After only nine weeks, Gauguin fled, but not before they had painted each other’s portraits. Here is van Gogh’s depiction of Gauguin:
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret), 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam:
via Wikimedia Commons
And Gauguin’s portrait of van Gogh as “The Painter of Sunflowers.” Gauguin really did love and admire van Gogh, but couldn’t tolerate his eccentricities and periods of lunacy; yet for the rest of his life he would sometimes paint a sunflower in honor of his friend, even in Polynesia, where Gauguin planted some (van Gogh committed suicide two years after Gauguin fled Arles).
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The rest is history—and in Prideaux’s book. Gauguin took off for Tahiti in 1891, returned to France for a few years, and set out for his second visit to Tahiti in 1895, where he took up residence with young Tahitian women (13 or 14 was the age of “marriage” for many of them) and produced many canvases. But dissatisfied with the fact that French colonialism was spoiling his “paradise,” Gauguin repaired to the Marquesas in 1901, where he spent the last three years of his life. After becoming integrated into local society, he eventually stopped partying and took seriously to painting. He was found dead in his bed on May 8, 1903.
Here are a few paintings I like from Gauguin’s stay in Polynesia. Click to enlarge them.
Below is his most famous painting. Gauguin captioned it Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, (1897, oil on canvas, 139 × 375 cm (55 × 148 in), Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is his vision of the span of life, starting with an infant on the right and moving an old woman on the left. Prideaux explains all the imagery of this and other paintings, which are reproduced in color in her book.
Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Maternity, 1899:
Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Spirit of the Dead Watching 1892, Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. This was apparently painted after Gauguin returned home at night, with his young mistress, left in the dark, scared to death. There is a lot going on here; note the iconography at the bottom and the weird figures at the upper right.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
Among the Mangoes (La Cueillette des Fruits), 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Gauguin loved color and lots of it; he was always sending back to Europe for more and different paints.
Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Tehura (Teha’amana), 1891–3, polychromed pua wood, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Public Domain, CCo, Wikimedia Commons
Here’s Gauguin about 1891. The book describes him as a handsome man, one who had no trouble attracting ladies either in Europe or Polynesia, where he lived with several women from the islands. But he was often laid low by his many maladies.
Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And here is his last self-portrait, painted only a year before he died. To me this image looks like the middle-aged Eric Clapton:
Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Below is the NYT review by Jennifer Szalai. Click the headline to read from the NYT site or find it archived here:
As you see, it’s laudatory. One excerpt from the review:
For much of his life, Paul Gauguin railed against the deadening effects of bourgeois domesticity. But as Sue Prideaux writes in “Wild Thing,” her terrific new biography of the artist, for about a decade early in his career the self-proclaimed “savage from Peru” enjoyed a stint as a happily married stockbroker in Paris. . .
. . . Given how eventful Gauguin’s life was, it’s remarkable how much Prideaux packs into this briskly readable volume, which clocks in at barely 400 pages. She elegantly recounts his artistic struggles and his persistent money worries. She offers lucid re-creations of key moments, like the time Vincent van Gogh, his friend and roommate in the south of France, ran at him with a razor. (The next morning, Gauguin learned that van Gogh had cut off his own ear and handed it to a brothel worker.)
But it’s Gauguin’s experiences in French Polynesia that have understandably become the most notorious. (The last major biography of Gauguin, published in 1995, called him a “syphilitic pedophile.”) By the time he died, at 54, on the tiny island of Hiva Oa in 1903, he had gotten two Indigenous girls — each about 14 years old — pregnant. Prideaux does not deny this fact, reminding us only that in France and the colonies, the age of consent at the time was 13.
“Wild Thing” is not a whitewash of Gauguin’s legacy; instead, Prideaux fills it in with more detail. As a Frenchman in a French colony, he excoriated himself for his moral hypocrisy and became a pamphleteer, taking a job writing for the opposition party’s newspaper. He also helped locals with their petitions against the colonial authorities. In a letter to the inspector of the colonies, he noted the “singular irony” of “the hypocritical proclamation of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” when it came to “men who are no more than tax fodder in the hands of a despotic gendarme.”
Toward the end of his life, Gauguin — who never fully healed from a nasty leg injury sustained in Brittany when he was almost kicked to death in a melee by a clog-wearing mob — hobbled around his island paradise, subsisting mainly on a calamitous diet of canned food. After his death, the administrator in charge of selling the contents of Gauguin’s home did not believe it would be possible to pay back creditors in full: “The liabilities will considerably exceed the assets, as the few pictures by the late painter, who belonged to the decadent school, have little prospect of finding purchasers.”
Again, I highly recommend Wild Thing. And tell us below what you’ve read and liked lately.
We have a short RWP today as there are more posts to come. First we hear from Robert Lang, who sees a surprising amount of wildlife near his home in the eastern LA “suburb” of Altadena. Robert’s intro is indented, and you can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.
Although every day sees another few housing starts in post-fire Altadena, it’s still mostly empty of people, but after a year that included plenty of rain, the vacant lots are lush with plants—a mix of native coastal sage scrub, invasive weeds, and landscaping gone wild. This temporary rewilding provides plenty of cover for the local wildlife to come down out of the hills and hang out. Yesterday the workers at our site reported that a bear had stopped by and done a walk-through of the framed house (fortunately, just lookie-looing, no damage). Today I did a short hike on the Gabrielino Trail above my old stomping ground of JPL and saw a different (younger) California black bear (Ursus americanus californiensis) just off the trail, and I shot the photo below. . .
. . . also this video.
This isn’t the bear species on the California state flag, which is the California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus); that was native to this area but was hunted to extinction in the early 20th century. In the 1930s, 28 “problem bears”, California black bears, were taken from Yosemite and released in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. The black bear species is highly variable in coloration, ranging from black through brown, blond, and even white (the so-called “spirit bears” of British Columbia). Most of the bears we see in Altadena are brown, like this youngster, all descended from the original Problematic Twenty-Eight.
JAC: Here’s the California state flag sporting a grizzly:
Original: Donald Graeme Kelley. Vectorization: Devin Cook, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to Sunday, May 31, Sabbath for goyische cats and World Parrot Day. I can do no better than show a great photograph of a very rare and unusual parrot, the Australian Golden-shouldered parrot (Psephotellus chrysopterygius), here photographed by Scott Ritchie. The parrot is endangered, with a total population of about 1000 birds. And it’s the world’s only parrot that lives in termite mounds. Further, it has a symbiotic relationship with a moth species!. From Wikipedia:
The golden-shouldered parrot breeding season occurs from March to August. They construct nests in termite mounds, with a strong preference for conical shaped mounds. A 50–350 mm (2.0–13.8 in) long tunnel is excavated into the mound, ending in the nesting chamber. The clutch size is between 3–6 eggs, which are incubated by the female for 20 days. The termite occupants of the mound use a natural form of air conditioning to preserve the climatic conditions of their colony and this process regulates the temperature of the parrot’s nest chamber at around 28–30 °C (82–86 °F). Temperature surveys have shown, however, a range of 13–35 °C (55–95 °F). These conditions have led to the parrots developing a habit of leaving the eggs at night beginning around the 10th day after hatching. A symbiotic relationship is present between the golden shouldered parrot and the moth species Trisyntopa scatophaga, the antbed parrot moth. Found in around half of parrot nests, the moths seek out the newly dug nest tunnels and deposit their eggs in the entrance. The hatching moth larvae consume the faeces of the nestling parrots therefore helping to keep the nest chamber clean. Whether the parrots receive any other benefits from the presence of moths is arguable as not all nests contain moth larvae.
Scott tells me that the moth larvae also line the parrot’s burrow with silk, giving an easier ride to the incubating eggs. Amazing! Here’s Scott’s photo:
I slept poorly last night, though I had a series of dreams. I remember only one, right before I awoke. My sister was leading me through some village that harbored dozens of cats that were underfoot. She pointed one of them out to me, a Siamese/tabby hybrid with an amiable expression and huge paws. I was told its name was “Pawsome.” That’s all I remember.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 31 Wikipedia page.
US forces attacked a cargo ship they claimed was attempting to breach their naval blockade of Iran on Saturday.
Centcom said Lian Star ignored over 20 warnings before its forces struck the Gambia-flagged vessel’s engine room with a missile, stranding it in the Gulf of Oman.
The incident came as Tehran awaits the US president’s response to a proposed peace deal, as efforts to bring an end to the war drag on.
A senior official accused Trump of “betraying diplomacy for the third time”. Mohsen Rezaei pointed at the continuing naval blockade and what he called the president’s excessive demands in negotiations as he blamed the White House for failure to reach a peace deal.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israeli troops pushed beyond the Litani river and seized the Crusader-era Beaufort fortress in their deepest invasion of the neighbouring country in over 25 years.
The military said it was prepared “to expand the operation if needed”.
On Friday morning, it issued a fresh evacuation warning for residents south of the Zahrani River in southern Lebanon.
And from the NYT on Lebanon:
Once again, there has been a cease-fire in Lebanon for weeks.
And, once again, the fighting has not stopped.
Israel is still bombarding much of the south and east of the country. Israeli drones are still buzzing low over the skies in Beirut, the capital. Hezbollah is still attacking Israeli troops occupying Lebanese territory, and firing rockets into Israel. The death toll is still rising.
And now — though a truce was declared in April, and there has been talk this week of a potential U.S. deal with Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor — resignation is setting in across Lebanon that a meaningful end to the war between Israel and Hezbollah is not coming anytime soon.
The blockade on ships leaving Iran, or trying to enter Iranian ports, is apparently still in effect, no matter what flag they’re flying, and Hezbollah is still refusing to disarm. (The chances of that are about equal to the chances that Hamas will disarm. Both are supposed to, but that ain’t gonna happen.) The war is going to continue for a while, and I don’t see a cease-fire in Lebanon.
A federal judge ordered on Friday that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remove President Trump’s name from the building’s facade and all official branding and temporarily blocked the institution from shuttering this summer for renovations.
Mr. Trump railed against the judge’s ruling in an incensed social media post, suggesting that he was considering casting theKennedy Center aside as one of his personal projects. The president wrote that unless he was free to decide the center’s trajectory, he had “no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey.”
“Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life,” he wrote.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper, of the Federal District Court in Washington, determined that the board’s decision to add Mr. Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center violated a law passed by Congress in 1964 that made “crystal clear” the institution was to be named for former President John F. Kennedy.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge wrote in a 94-page opinion. He ordered that the 18 letters added to the center’s front portico be removed within two weeks.
The center’s board of trustees, a vast majority of whom are allies of Mr. Trump, voted in December to add the president’s name to the performing arts center. Less than a day later, new lettering was added to the building’s marble facade, which now reads: “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Here’s the last big of Trump’s Truth Social post on the kerfuffle (link above; it’s too long to quote in full). It reads like the gibberish of someone who’s partly demented: full of caps and braggadocio. “Your favorite President, ME. . . “, “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else. . . “, etc.
Therefore, based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it. Judge Cooper was given a presentation by leading Building and Construction Experts as to how structurally dangerous the Building is, with rotting beams, parking areas that are subject to collapse, and various other Life and Safety problems, in addition to the fact that it also needs a MAJOR renovation, from an aesthetic standpoint, but he was not “swayed,” and said he wants the Building to, incredibly, remain open and, therefore, dangerous. Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight. Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into “NEVER NEVER LAND.” There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country. I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
I wonder if this one will go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Trump is both a narcissist and persistent, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
The United Nations on Friday added Israel and Russia to a U.N. blacklist of countries suspected of committing sexual violence in conflict zones, a move that prompted Israel’s foreign ministry to say it would sever all ties with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Guterres’ annual report to the U.N. Security Council on conflict-related sexual violence, opens new tab goes a step further than last year, when he put Israel and Russia “on notice” that they could be added to the list of parties “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence.”
The latest report does that and contains harrowing descriptions of abuses at the hands of Israeli and Russian armed and security forces.
Israel’s arch enemy Hamas, whose October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza, was already on the blacklist and in a post on X on Thursday, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said ranking Israel with the militant group marked a “new low”.
. . . “This is a political decision! Disconnected from the facts and reality!” Danon said in another post by the Israeli mission to the U.N. which said he was informed about it during a phone call with Guterres.
. . . The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, posted on X that it was “ridiculous for the UN to put a democracy like Israel — with robust rule of law that conducts investigations and holds criminals accountable — on the same level as terrorist organizations like Hamas.”
. . . Being added to the list does not automatically carry specific punitive measures such as sanctions, although public naming and shaming can cause significant reputational damage for the states involved, and those repeatedly listed are barred from U.N. peacekeeping operations.
. . . Danon said Israel had responded in detail to each allegation and had invited U.N. representatives to visit and examine the situation, but that they had chosen not to do so.
. . . This year’s report said that in 2025, “the United Nations verified multiple incidents of conflict-related sexual violence, including as a form of torture, inflicted against 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”
It said 13 of the cases occurred in 2025, and 18 in 2023 and 2024.
“Violations consisted of rape, including with objects, gang rape, attempted rape, physical violence to the genitals, instances of targeted shooting of the genitals, touching of breasts and genitals, strip and cavity searches conducted without apparent security justification, forced nudity and threats of rape,” it said.
“Rape and gang rape, in some cases repeated, were perpetrated against nine victims, the majority from Gaza,” it said, adding that perpetrators included Israeli armed and security forces and occurred primarily during detention and interrogation and across several sites, including military camps and also at checkpoints and during Israeli military operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
It said survivors included journalists and human rights defenders and that in some cases, the violations were filmed or photographed, including one case of rape.
What bothers me is the UN’s refusal to meet with Israel to discuss the evidence as well as hear Israel’s response to the allegations. Of course one can’t say that all the claims our false, but evidence is needed and it’s bothersome that the UN refuses to meet with Israel—especially after Israel issued a documented report on the many cases of sexual attacks by Hamas on Israelis.
That of course doesn’t mean that any victimization of prisoners by Israel is okay, for one is too many, and it’s against Israeli law. But if you assume that Israel has 20,000 prisoners, and that the UN is correct in claiming a total of 31 victims of Israeli sexual violence over three years (some were only threatened with sexual violence), and assume further that the U.S. has 2.2% annual allegations of sexual violence or abuse of prisoners by staff in a nationwide prison population of 1.25 million (all figures from AI)—then the U.S. has an annual rate of sexual violence/abuse of prisoners by staff 44 times higher than Israel’s. The UN should add the U.S. to their list.
President Trump “remains in excellent physical health,” according to a memo from his physician released late Friday by the White House, following the president’s physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center earlier this week.
The president’s physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, said in a memo that the Tuesday exam, Trump’s third since returning to office, included comprehensive and preventive laboratory testing “as well as consultations with twenty-two specialty providers from multiple academic institutions.”
Barbabella said in the report that “preventive counseling was provided, including guidance on diet, recommendation to take a low-dose aspirin, increased physical activity, and continued weight loss.” The president weighed 238 pounds, 14 pounds more since his 2025 exam, according to Barbabella, a career military doctor who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He added that the president’s “cognitive and physical performance are excellent” and Trump “is fully fit to carry out all duties of the commander in chief and Head of State.” The physician concluded after neurological and cognitive function tests that the president “demonstrated normal mental status.”
Trump, who will turn 80 years old on June 14, is the oldest person to ever assume the presidency. The results of his physical come amid increased scrutiny about presidential health. Former President Joe Biden faced questions about slipping physical fitness and mental acuity, which Trump bolstered on the campaign trail.
. . .Barbabella previously diagnosed Trump with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which valves inside the veins don’t work properly and allow blood to collect or transmit down the leg. The physician provided an update on the swelling in Trump’s lower legs, describing it as “slight” and an “improvement from last year.”
Barbabella reported that Trump takes two medications to treat high cholesterol, Rosuvastatin and Ezetimibe, as well as aspirin as a preventive heart measure. The physician noted that Trump benefits from “lifelong abstinence from tobacco and alcohol.”
Barbabella wrote that Trump’s “demanding daily schedule, including multiple high-level meetings, public engagements, and regular physical activity, continues to support his overall well-being.”
Aside from golf, Trump doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.
Given his horrible diet and sedentary lifestyle, I suppose he is in good shape for 80. I woiuldn’t wish illness or death on anyone, including Trump, and perhaps some may be glad that he stays alive for 2.5 more years because it keeps Vance from becoming President.
Over the course of his early tenure as mayor, Zohran Mamdani has filled out City Hall’s upper ranks with people he trusts to implement his democratic socialist-inflected agenda in New York City, the nation’s financial capital.
But one arm of city government continues to bedevil him: the Economic Development Corporation, whose mission is to leverage city real estate and tax incentives to attract private capital and drive job growth across the five boroughs.
Five months into the mayor’s tenure, the nonprofit corporation remains officially rudderless, with City Hall officials considering at least 10 candidates for E.D.C. president, including a consumer protection advocate and pro-business types. But the mayor’s team has been unable to coalesce around any of them, illustrating an internal debate over how to direct the organization.
The uncertainty surrounding the E.D.C.’s leadership and direction has fed the notion, widespread among business leaders and moderate Democratic politicians, that Mr. Mamdani is insufficiently attuned to the health of New York City’s economy, and that his inattention potentially comes at his, and the city’s, peril.
It also raises larger and more fundamental questions: What kind of economic policy does the mayor want to embrace? And is Mr. Mamdani quietly withdrawing from City Hall’s traditional role of courting business and using the E.D.C.’s power to support a thriving economic climate in New York?
“I have not heard one statement yet about how it is that the city sees industry growth, how the city wants to maximize talent, and, certainly, the absence of an E.D.C. head this far into the administration is a concern,” said Gregory Morris, the chief executive of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition.
When the mayor talks about the economy, he largely talks about his ambitious universal day care and housing programs, and how they will redound to the city’s economic benefit — a prediction that some analyses agree with.
But some business and work force development leaders argue that Mr. Mamdani cannot fulfill his vision for a more expansive government without a robust, tax-generating economy. They note that affordability requires not just cheaper goods, but also better-paying jobs. And they worry that he has yet to articulate what business growth in the Mamdani era will be, at a time when the challenges facing New York’s economy are legion.
The city’s job numbers are lackluster, even as office leasing has strengthened. Some financial sector jobs have migrated to Texas. The war in Iran continues to cast a haze over the country’s economic prospects. City officials are eyeing the coming disruptions from artificial intelligence with alarm. International tourism has declined.
Here’s Sam Harris’s take on Mamdani; and I agree with Sam’s take that the Mayor is a “none too closeted Islamist, or at minimum an apologist for Islamists.” As for his wife’s social media “likes”, it’s not clear that that is any reflection of Mamdani’s beliefs.
Szaron: Do you think it’s safe there?
Hili: I think so, it looks like the dog is locked up.
In Polish:
Szaron: Myślisz, że tam jest bezpiecznie?
Hili: Chyba tak, wygląda na to, że pies jest zamknięty.
*******************
From TherionArms, another great medieval letter with commentary:
Masih is still at war with AOC’s desire to “respect” local customs, which involved her wearing a hijab and speaking to a sex-segregated crowd (men in front, women in back):
You find hijab “fun.” #MahsaAmini called it a death sentence.
That’s not a custom. That’s not a fun learning experience. That’s a woman’s life. Women live under Sharia laws are not your cultural tourism. We are dying for the freedom you… https://t.co/bhGNSdbOFkpic.twitter.com/c2TsajV7SO
From Luana; Jonathan Kay continues his exposé of the paucity of empirical evidence for these bodies, which nobody has bothered to investigate thoroughly:
Today is the 5th anniversary of the 1st fake news reports that “bodies of 215 children” were found in Kamloops. (No bodies were ever found.) The 1st to report was local radio station CJFC. Here is the historic tweet that set off the biggest journalistic disgrace in Cdn history… https://t.co/aD2UMDtZ3s
Do not hurt opossums! They are wonderful! Look at all those babies holding on:
Don’t harm opossums! They’re harmless and actually really useful. They keep pests in check (eating ticks, roaches, rats, and scorpions), clean up dead animals, and help spread seeds. Basically, they’re nature’s cleanup crew pic.twitter.com/Qiz3jJYuJq
And one from Dr. Cobb. Look at those cute pink babies!
Deborah Sandidge Photography"A dedicated pair of Roseate Spoonbills watch over the nest, taking good care of the chicks. They spend time reinforcing the nest together. Each branch placement ensures the chicks stay safe, a process they continue as they grow up in their wetlands home."
Here’s the latest opinion/comedy bit from Friday’s Real Time show with Bill Maher, with the episode called “Let’s be frank.” Maher starts out by citing the recent Democratic Party Autopsy (here) about why the party lost the Presidency and Congress in 2024. But he then faults both parties for having politicians in office who won’t be honest (surprise!).
Honesty, he avers, can be found only in books politicians write after they have left office. Maher gives several examples, including Republicans who admit, after they leave office, that Trump is paying off the January 6 insurrectionists with a “slush fund.” And don’t forget, he adds, Eisenhower’s warning about the “military industrial complex,” issued just three days before he left office.
The key diagnosis, Maher says, was made by the late Barney Frank when he was in hospice. It’s cited in the Times of Israel:
“The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable,
Maher says, “And there, in one sentence, is the autopsy the Democrats have been so desperately searching for.” True! And of course this explains the capitalized “Frank” in the title.
The theme, then, is that Democrats say the truth about the party only when they have nothing to lose for speaking up.
Finally, Maher notes that some red states are better than his own “progressive” state—California—in education and in green energy. The last bit: “Democrats: these are your issues: education, race, the environment. And I say this with love: you’re losing to the Waffle House car-on-the-lawn states.” Well, we’ll see how the Democrats do in this fall’s midterms, though the most crucial election is in 2028.
The guests for this episode were astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, MS Now news correspondent Katy Tur, and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Tyson is not shown in this segment.
I don’t wholeheartedly embrace AI, for I think it will be the death of liberal education. In both the humanities and science, I fear that students will lose any ability they have to write, and will not improve their writing because they’ll be using bots. This will degrade their ability to communicate. (Scientists too need to communicate, and if they rely solely on bots, which can write papers for them, they’ll also degrade their ability to think.) Take-home assignments will vanish (AI can do them, and are doing them now), and all that’s left are in-class verbal participation and in-class exams. This is fine for students who just think of college as a way to purchase accreditation and not a chance to glory in the joys of learning, but so be it.
However, AI is good for some things, including analyzing data, doing statistics, doing preliminary literature searches, and, in the article from the WSJ screenshot below, solving difficult math problems. The article shows that a problem posed by the famous and eccentric Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös—the “unit distance problem” has been solved by AI. Open AI, which created the program that did it, describes it this way—but it’s not that simple:
For nearly 80 years, mathematicians have studied a deceptively simple question: if you place nn points in the plane, how many pairs of points can be exactly distance 1 apart?
This is the planar unit distance problem, first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. It is one of the best-known questions in combinatorial geometry, easy to state and remarkably difficult to resolve. The 2005 book Research Problems in Discrete Geometry, by Brass, Moser, and Pach, calls it “possibly the best known (and simplest to explain) problem in combinatorial geometry.” Noga Alon, a leading combinatorialist at Princeton, describes it as “one of Erdős’ favorite problems.” Erdős even offered a monetary prize for resolving this problem.
The “distance 1” thing confused me, and Wikipedia explains it a different way:
A problem posed by Paul Erdős known as the unit distance problem asks for the maximum possible number of unit-distance pairs determined by n points in the Euclidean plane; equivalently, it asks for the maximum number of edges in a unit distance graph on n vertices.
It gives a figure described as “a unit distance graph with 16 vertices and 40 edges”.
Wikipedia describes such unit distance graphs this way:
“In mathematics, particularly geometric graph theory, a unit distance graph is a graph formed from a collection of points in the Euclidean plane by connecting two points whenever the distance between them is exactly one.”
That’s what is confusing me, for if the theorem deals only with points in a two-dimensional plane, why aren’t unconnected dots not joined that are closer than some connected dots? (Look at the four dots around the center of the graph above. None of them are connected to each other, though more distant one are.) I presume some math-savvy reader will enlighten us.
Anyway, Open AI and the WSJ tells us that the problem has been solved by AI. If you want to see the solutions, open AI says this:
But the WSJ gives more comprehensible details. Click screenshot to read (if you subscribe):
An excerpt:
“If you are a mathematician,” one of the world’s leading mathematicians recently wrote, “you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.”
And you’ll definitely need to sit down if you’re not a mathematician.
Because a famous math problem that stumped humans for the better part of a century has finally been toppled—by AI.
Not long ago, the most advanced AI models couldn’t do basic math. By last year, they were performing at gold-medal levels at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Now they are solving classic problems in combinatorial geometry using algebraic number theory. In no time at all, artificial intelligence has gone from stupid to frighteningly smart.
But even mathematicians were astonished when OpenAI announced that one of its models resolved a puzzle known as the unit distance problem without the help of any humans scribbling a bunch of equations on chalkboards.
It was fed this prompt:
And produced this proof, giving the maximum number of unit-distance pairs:
Apparently the proof was accepted by mathematicians. More from the WSJ:
And everyone in math lost their minds.
For those who aren’t fluent in numbers, OpenAI helped translate its findings by presenting them alongside 19 pages of companion remarks from prominent mathematicians.
. . .Just looking at formulas is enough to hurt my brain, but I wanted to know more about what the AI found, how we humans missed it—and why this breakthrough matters to those of us who would like to permanently distance ourselves from math problems.
When I spoke with OpenAI employees, they told me this result would have sounded completely bananas one year ago.
“Forget one year ago,” researcher Sebastien Bubeck said. “A month ago.”
There are endorsements by mathematicians, and a history of the problem, which Erdös considered quite difficult. So difficult, in fact, that he offered what was then a pretty hefty sum for anybody who could solve it: $500. I think the money will be given to the OpenAI team.
OpenAI’s researchers were stunned. They had given this Erdős problem to an internal model as a test of its capabilities—to find out whether it was better than previous models. They found out how much better it was once they took a peek at the solution. “I initially didn’t believe it,” said Mehtaab Sawhney, a Columbia mathematician at OpenAI. So they searched for errors, verified the results with outsiders and checked the AI’s work using the company’s AI coding agent. “With enough reading and enough Codexing,” Sawhney said, “it seemed believable—and pretty remarkable.”
Long before AI, mathematicians who solved Erdős problems often framed their checks instead of cashing them. For them, the money was worth less than the glory. When I asked OpenAI researchers about their plans for the prize, they hadn’t given it much thought.
But they did have lots of thoughts about my next question: Why did AI succeed where humans failed?
The first explanation is that this particular solution happens to be highly counterintuitive.
Most people who tackled this problem tried to prove Erdős’s conjecture, rather than disprove it. Only by defying conventional wisdom and experimenting with seemingly improbable strategies did the model find an unexpected path forward.
The second is that humans specialize while AI synthesizes.
While mathematicians tend to focus on their specific areas of expertise, AI models use their vast knowledge to spot connections that we couldn’t possibly see ourselves. In this case, that meant pulling from both algebraic number theory and discrete geometry, which have about as much in common as the marathon and pole vault.
The third explanation is that AI has time, attention, patience, focus and the persistence to stick with methods that humans might abandon—and the solution to this Erdős problem demanded it.
“It’s the kind of idea that you try for a bit, it doesn’t work, and you think maybe you were just too hopeful,” said Mark Sellke, a Harvard statistician at OpenAI. “So you give up and move on.”
AI doesn’t move on. It keeps plugging away without taking breaks to eat, sleep, answer emails, pick the kids up from school and watch the Knicks.
And it can think coherently for so long that even an abridged version of the model’s “chain of thought” ran more than 75,000 words—the length of the first “Harry Potter” book.
Was it an elegant proof? Well, the article implies “no,” but it’s apparently a proof:
“It’s fair to say that we haven’t seen yet the spark of genius that you could attribute to some of the grandest proofs in the history of humanity,” Bubeck told me.
And how long did the computation take? Less than a day and a half:
After reading it, a former OpenAI researcher did some back-of-the-envelope math and estimated it took less than 32 hours and $1,000 in tokens, a bargain for a result of this caliber. The researchers wouldn’t confirm the exact amount of time and compute, but Bubeck described the costs as “really nothing crazy at all.”
At any rate, this is what AI is good for, and I wonder if, say, it could solve Fermat’s Last Theorem, which took Andrew Wiles eight years of work to solve (he was knighted for it). And I wonder if there are any seemingly intractable math problems that can’t be solved by AI, especially if they were or will be solved by humans.
Now I don’t think there are any practical implications of this results, but that’s true of much mathematical theory. I’m just amazed at what AI can do.
From People magazine (also at the UPI), we hear about a brave moggy whjo chased off a coyote. Click on the screenshot to read:
An excerpt:
A Pico Rivera, California, resident captured some surprising footage: a cat fighting off a coyote in the middle of the day.
“I was in shock,” Debbie Beltran, the cat’s owner, told KTLA-TV, after viewing the video. “It took me a while to see—is that our cat or somebody else’s? And no, it’s our cat.”
Beltran said she was at work on May 1 when a neighbor sent security camera footage of her cat ferociously fighting a coyote outside. The video shows the cat standing its ground outside the family’s yard on Manzanar Avenue before it climbs a tree and escapes the coyote.
“Coyotes usually come out when the sun goes down,” Beltran said. “So to see this happen in broad daylight, that was shocking.”
Beltran said her cat, named Mama, has been with her family for about 5 years and is believed to be about 10 years old. She notes that Mama has always been a courageous cat who doesn’t back down from a fight.
“She’s always been feisty, this type of cat, and has got into fights before, so it doesn’t surprise me,” the pet parent told KABC.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a coyote has attacked one of Beltran’s pets. She said that last year, one of her cats died in a coyote attack. Now, she’s giving Mama some extra attention since her caught-on-camera battle.
The video is below (turn off the closed captions, as they interfere with seeing the scrap). Mama is a brave cat: watch at her bristle, hump her back, and chase the d*g! However, cats should really be kept indoors because not all predators are so timorous.
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From IHeartCats, we here about a high-tech way Dubai has developed to feed street cats. Click headline below to read.
An excerpt with a video below:
As people stroll through Dubai’s carefully maintained parks and busy public spaces, a quieter sign of compassion is beginning to appear beside the city’s modern landscape. New feeding stations for stray animals are being introduced across several locations, giving homeless cats a cleaner and more dependable place to find food and water. For years, many residents relied on leaving bowls wherever they could stop to help, often hoping hungry street cats would discover them in time. Now, Dubai is taking a more organized approach that blends kindness, sanitation, and public care into one thoughtful effort designed to support both animals and the shared spaces around them.
Dubai has launched a pilot program featuring 12 feeding units placed in parks and other public areas. The project is designed to support stray animals while also improving cleanliness and organization in shared spaces. For years, many residents and volunteers have cared for street cats on their own, stopping to leave food and water wherever they could. While compassionate, those efforts often created scattered feeding spots that were difficult to maintain.
Now, the city is taking a more structured approach.
The stations aim to make feeding more consistent and sanitary while helping caretakers provide support in designated locations. It reflects a growing recognition that animal welfare is connected to a city’s overall health and appearance. Instead of treating stray-cat care as an informal act left entirely to volunteers, Dubai is weaving compassion into its public infrastructure.
For the cats wandering through busy streets and quiet parks, the change could mean something deeply important: reliability.
Street animals often survive day by day, never knowing when food or water will appear. Many endure extreme heat, exhaustion, and long stretches of uncertainty. Having fixed feeding stations creates a sense of stability for animals that spend their lives navigating harsh outdoor conditions. Even a simple sheltered feeding spot can offer relief and comfort.
Dubai’s decision also highlights how cities are beginning to rethink the relationship between urban development and animal care. Modern public spaces are usually designed around people first, but this initiative acknowledges that stray animals are part of the environment, too.
The feeding stations are intended to reduce mess and discourage random food waste while still allowing residents to help animals responsibly. By centralizing feeding efforts, the city can better manage sanitation concerns without removing the compassion that inspired people to feed the cats in the first place.
The idea transforms what was once a scattered, individual effort into something shared and supported at a civic level.
Not only that, but the station combines feeding with recycling: if you put a can or bottle into the station, cat food is dispensed into the station. See the video below. Great idea!
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From The Animal Rescue Site we hear of an unholy interspecific friendship between a cat and a d*g species: “Wild fox befriends cat“, by Malorie Thompson. Here’s an excerpt, with a video below:
Cats and foxes seem like two of the same, but it’s rare that we see them interact.
They’re both sly and cunning, playful and adorable. Yet, they’re different species and they likely rarely cross paths in a meaningful way.
However, a wildlife photographer managed to capture a sweet exchange between the two animals and you have to see it to believe it.
Turkish wildlife photographer Ali ihsan Öztürk (@aliihsanozturk.65) shared a video of a cat and a fox hanging out on Instagram and it’s really something special.
He captioned the post (translated): “Fox and cat’s friendship. I couldn’t believe even while taking the picture. what a beautiful friendship.”
In the video, you can see the cat come up behind the fox and nuzzle the wild animal. Surprisingly, the fox didn’t seem to mind one bit and took it as an invitation for friendship!
The two animals continued to nuzzle each other in a playful way. It’s easy to see why Ali was so surprised to witness it!
Below is the Facebook post, which you can also see by clicking on the picture. Here’s the entire text:
In January 2026, a story began spreading online that many people could not stop thinking about: two stray animals who soon became known as the “street brothers.”
A fox and a cat had somehow learned to survive together outdoors. They shared warmth, protection, and the feeling of not being alone. Life on the street was hard, but they always stayed close to each other. The fox, a little bigger and stronger, often let the injured cat lie right by his side. On cold nights, it almost seemed as if he was quietly keeping watch so nothing would happen to his small companion.
When rescuers finally brought them to safety, the cat received the medical care it urgently needed. But at the shelter, something became obvious right away: whenever the two were separated, both became visibly stressed. Restlessness, searching, whining — as if the most important support in their lives had suddenly been taken away. Their closeness had long become more than a habit. It was their home.
So the team did everything they could to keep them together. Eventually, their story reached a kindhearted person who did not want a half-solution. He did not adopt only the cat — he took in the fox too, so the two would never be torn apart again.
Their journey is a reminder of what loyalty really means. And that friendship sometimes appears where no one expects it. Family does not always have to be the same species — sometimes it is simply the same bond holding two hearts together.
Fox-and-cat-friends videos are not rare: here are two more. All of these, oddly, feature cats that are mostly white.
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Lagniappe: From Reese: “Our Michael” from Archaeology & Art on Facebook, featuring an old photograph that was apparently for sale on eBay but that has been sold. Lovely cat! Here’s the whole text and the dead link:
Oct, 1938: our Micheal [sic]
The love radiating from the phrase “our Michael” alone is enough to warm our hearts.
The photographer and story are unclear. The source of this vintage photo is an old eBay listing, but the link isn’t active:
