Another journal drinks the Kool-Aid

October 13, 2026 • 9:45 am

The American Journal of Biological Anthropology was formerly The American Journal of Physical Anthropology but, according to reader who sent me this link, the name changed, presumably to reflect the changing nature of the field. I quote:

It is the flagship journal of the AABA and it used to be rigorous science only.  The latest special issue is filled with this nonscientific nonsense.  “Queering Biological Anthropology: uses of LGBTQIA+ knowledge and queer feminism in research”. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing.
You can see the table of contents at the last link above. Yes, a compendium of biological anthropology on sex and gender could potentially contribute to human understand of our personas and social interactions, but this one ain’t it.  Here are a few select articles, and I’ll give a quote or two from each (click on the headline to read the free bits; excerpts are indented, and bolding is mine).

Here’s the phenomenon:

Callitrichids are equally notable as chimeras, a term referring to organisms whose cells are derived from two or more distinct zygotic lineages (Anderson et al. 1951). Among mammals, small numbers of chimeric cells (i.e., “microchimerism”) are thought to be present in all placental species (Gammill and Harrington 2017; Nelson 2012). In callitrichids, however, chimerism routinely occurs on a much larger scale. Within this taxon, chimerism occurs in conjunction with the production of fraternal twins and other multiples, which is the typical birth pattern for all but callimicos (Ah-King and Tullberg 2000; Harris et al. 2014).

That’s interesting, but in the hands of an ideologue the finding allows one to go wild with speculation:

This article demonstrates how queer monster theory can illuminate the cultural boundary-work that stabilizes biological categories of sex and reproduction as well as the kinship claims that often follow. Read as monstrous informants, callitrichid chimeras make visible how “monstrosity” is employed to police these categories in human and nonhuman primates alike, as well as what is at stake when that policing is normalized. When primatology defaults to inherited assumptions about sex and reproduction, it risks not only mischaracterizing its study species but lending scientific authority to the broader cultural machinery of queer monsterization and erasure.

The promises of monsters and monkeys therefore carry epistemic and ethical obligations. Meeting them is, in a sense, a monstrous practice; it requires connections and conversations across subfields and sustained attention to the entanglements of science and sociopolitical dynamics. Yet these obligations can also begin with small methodological choices: specifying the traits being measured rather than using “sex” as a silent binary proxy; defining and justifying what counts as “reproduction” and “fitness” within a given analysis; and acknowledging nonbinary sex and nonreproductive individuals without casting them as aberrant or without value. Practiced in these ways, primatology and biological anthropology can begin to unsettle naturalized bias rather than reproduce it.

In fact, the whole issue is permeated with the view that sex is nonbinary. Here’s another example, one of two article that bemoans the fact that “gender” (presumably how one identifies with respect to sex)

A quote:

Intersectional feminism and queer theories may also be used to challenge sexist and cisgenderist biases that can harm sex- and gender-diverse individuals. Striving to de-center patriarchal ideology, feminist history highlights the shared goals of gender equality and equity. Feminist anthropology, specifically, teaches cultural competence and limits patriarchal biases in forensic casework. A rich understanding of intersectional feminism can help forensic practitioners better understand sex and gender variability. A more feminist forensic anthropology could greatly improve the communal impact of medicolegal practitioners across the U.S. Queer theory aims to critique assumptions related to “atypical” bodies by normalizing the spectrum of human sex and gender diversity. Advocating against biological determinism, integrating queer theories in medicolegal investigations can help ensure that documents and datasets are reflective of individuals’ biological and cultural experiences. Discussions on queering bioarchaeology emerged around the start of the century, with scholars such as Sabrina Agarwal, Pamela Geller, Sandra Hollimon, and Julie Wesp outlining the importance and utility of queer theory and methods in skeletal assessments and conceptualizations of the human body (e.g., Geller 2005, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2019; Hollimon 1996, 2001, 2011; Wesp and Agarwal 2017). Failure to recognize both biological and cultural influences on the skeleton risks perpetuating scientism, presentism, and bio-colonialism (Geller 2005, 2009b, 2019; Hollimon 2011). Using queer theory in forensic anthropology can help improve medicolegal case resolution by broadening identification efforts and collaboration with living communities.

Another search for nonbinary sex in skeletons:

This author use sa bogus overestimateion of true intersex individuals, and then, since there are really no data showing what the skeletons of such individuals look like, they simply make predictions. Again, there’s a general denial that there are distinguishable sexes, as well as the usual emphasis on sex-related traits which, of course, we’ve long known are more variable than sex itself. We still have only two types of gametes.

Blackless et al. (2000) have estimated that approx. 1.7%–2.3% of all humans are intersex. Fausto-Sterling (2000a) similarly estimated that intersex people comprise 1.7% of the global population, revised from an earlier estimate of 4% (Fausto-Sterling 1993). If accurate, these estimates indicate that intersex is not rare in population genetics terms (Astorino 2019), since “rare” traits are exhibited by < 1% of individuals in a given population (Hartl et al. 1997; Jobling et al. 2013). Researchers in the social sciences have noted that this frequency estimate is comparable to the global frequency of humans with natural red hair—a trait that is generally not considered “rare” by medical professionals or many cultures (Dreger 1998; Karkazis 2008a; Davis 2015). In other vertebrates, it is unclear how common intersex is; while the frequency of other forms of sex diversity has been more comprehensively studied across higher vertebrate taxa (Ashman et al. 2014; Nemesházi and Bókony 2023), similar data on intersex are not available.

. . . . Given these frequencies, it may be inaccurate to characterize humans as sexually dimorphic (Blackless et al. 2000). Astorino (2019) suggested that humans may be conceptualized not as sexually dimorphic, but as sexually polymorphic. Dunsworth (2020) proposed referring to “sex differences” instead of sexual dimorphism. McLaughlin et al. (2023) argued that sex is multivariate, where many individual traits—each of which may or may not conform to a binary distribution—collectively constitute what is typically considered a single variable. Similarly, Smiley et al. (2024) asserted that individual sex variables each represent different aspects of sex, which may have complex, dynamic relationships with other sex variables, and suggested that researchers operationalize specific, measurable sex variables appropriate for a given study, each of which may be characterized as monomorphic, dimorphic, or multimorphic.

Despite the fact that sex variation has been noted to be complex in humans, sex is still most commonly defined as sexually dimorphic by biological anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.

Bonobos used to rectify the claimed erasure of lesbian and bisexual relationships:

The title of this paper “Just gal pals!” refers to the heteronormative tendency to erase lesbian and bisexual relationships and is a memeified response by the LGBTQ+ community online to such erasure (Warburton 2021). We believe it also encapsulates the way researchers over the decades have described bonobo GG rubbing: Wow look at those two female bonobos (gal pals) and their strong social bond or just two female bonobos (gal pals) reducing tension. Entrenched biases make the alternative—that two female bonobos are having sex—one of the last available explanations that researchers explicitly acknowledge in the scientific literature. This may be why sexual motivations are omitted from hypotheses for the function of GG rubbing (Hohmann and Fruth 2000; 2009; Waller 2016). Similarly, while GG rubbing in female bonobos has been emphasized, male–male sexual behavior in bonobos and other primates is often overlooked. Media portrayals of female–female sexuality in humans are often framed for consumption by the male gaze and/or imply that the women involved are “testing” or “experimenting” while not invalidating a heterosexual identity (Diamond 2005). Thus, female–female sexuality among humans, particularly for bi/pansexual women, is often not viewed as valid, and sexual relationships among women are viewed more favorably than those among men (Worthen 2013; Bettinsoli et al. 2020). As a result, recognition of female–female sexuality in our closest relatives may also be perceived as less directly threatening to patriarchal hegemony in humans.

Now I haven’t read the whole issue, or any article in great detail, as that would cause severe damage to my alimentary canal. Regardless, this issue, for which papers were solicited, appears to be driven not by a search for truth but by a drive to promote “progressive” ideology. Not only do we see the claim that traditional anthropology has caused great harm (see above about erasing lesbian and bisexual relationships), but that these papers will rectify that harm. The science is mission-driven rather than knowledge-driven.

Other harm appears to come from the claim that sex in humans is binary, with misguided biologists like me recognizing that humans have but two types of reproductive apparatus: those designed to produce eggs or sperm. I’ve defended that position assiduously while recognizing that there is a very low frequency (about 1/5000) of true intersex individuals.

Overall, this shows the growing tendency of biological anthropologists to distort science for ideological ends. The claim that there are more than two sexes, or that sex is a continuum, is of course made to buttress the idea that individuals who feel that they’re not of their natal biological sex will be harmed by the sex binary. It is a way of providing consolation to nonbinary people (I’m talking about gender, not sex.) That idea bogus, of course, but it’s these well-meaning but careerist scientists—those who infuse their “findings” with ideology—who do the real damage.

And of course I make no comment about the other papers in the contents that I haven’t looked at.

h/t: Callum

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 13, 2026 • 8:15 am

Yep, three people sent photos during the weekend, and today we have the second batch, arthropod photos contributed by regular Mark Sturtevant. Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures that were taken two summers ago. A surprise development here and in the next few posts is that I did a lot of traveling that summer, and of course the cameras came with me.

First, here are a few pictures from where I live: eastern Michigan. We start with a Jagged Ambush Bug (Phymata pennsylvanica). Ambush bugs are a specialized kind of assassin bug that sits on flowers in order to catch pollinating insects. Their prey can include insects that are far larger than they are. I was surprised to recently learn that there is a second species in my area, called P. americana (Tr*mp had nothing to do with that), but this one identifies as the first species:

Next up is a nymph of the ubiquitous Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys). These introduced insects are NOT a favorite of anyone since they tend to gather on and inside peoples’ houses for the winter, but the nymphs change their appearance with every molt and this particular instar is simply adorable. I mean, c’mon, this little guy reminds me of an awkward teenager trying to figure out if they should go for a punk rock look, with spikes and gold studs, or the glam rock look, with pink and white accents:

Bee flies are a family of flies that parasitize other insects. Here are two local species. The first is Anthrax georgicus,which parasitizes tiger beetles, and the second is our largest bee fly, the Tiger Bee Fly (Xenox tigrinus). They parasitize our large Eastern Carpenter Bees:

The next two pictures are of a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio cresphontes), but they are also the result of early experiments of mine in the more artistic sides of photography. I have been experimenting with multiple exposure, intentional camera movement, and some other techniques. These are early attempts at what is called the Pep Ventosa technique. Pep Ventosa is an artist from Spain who uses what are called “blending modes” to combine pictures to yield a more impressionistic kind of picture. He does landscapes and architecture, and you can see examples of what he does from here. My efforts are laughable by comparison, but it is a start and they were fun to do!:

During that summer the entire family flew to Italy, and this was my first time in Europe! We had a great time where we mainly stayed with in-laws in Lucca, a gorgeous historic walled city, but we also stayed for a time in Venice, and had a day trip out to Florence. The sites and food were amazing, of course, but what about the arthropods?? Well, of course Mark brought a stripped-down camera kit and spent a lot of time exploring local parks and botanical gardens.

First up are bees. Here is a Buff-tailed Bumble Bee, Bombus terrestris, followed by one of the Woolcarder Bees, Anthidium sp. The latter are a solitary species, and they are so-named because females gather hairs from fuzzy plants to line their nests:

Next up is an unidentified mayfly (Ephemeroptera), but I like how the jury-rigged diffuser on the flash gave an iridescent look to the wings:

The last insect here is a weird little planthopper nymph called the Black planthopper, Ricania speculum. The waxy ornaments on its rear are a deterrent that many planthopper nymphs do to ward off exploratory bites from predators. I had learned that this species was introduced from Asia, and that it’s an economic pest. I was sorry to not see an adult, though, since they look really interesting, but you can see that in the link:

Moving on to Italian spiders, here is a Cucumber Spider, Araniella sp. Much like a related species that I often see here, they typically build their small orb web across the concave surface of a slightly curled tree leaf:

As ever, jumping spiders earned a lot of attention, and I found two species. First is a female Half-edged Wall Jumping Spider, Menemerus semilimbatus. Following that is this really cool Hooked Striking Jumping Spider, Icius hamatus. This is clearly a male, and it will use its enlarged front legs and coloration during courtship displays:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

October 13, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 as well as National Yorkshire Pudding Day. I don’t have a picture of this delectable treat, always served in England with the Sunday roast, but here are two plump puddings from Wikipedia as part of the whole dinner:

Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Ada Lovelace Day, English Language Day, International Day for Failure, National M&M Day, and National No Bra Day.

And in Illinois we’re busy voting by mail:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ describes how the Houthis, proxies of Iran, are making big trouble for Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman started the year on a high note. He had just visited the White House where he was embraced by President Trump. Even after the war with Iran kicked off, Saudi Arabia looked relatively well positioned. It could export oil through a pipeline that bypassed the blocked Strait of Hormuz.

But the Saudis’ escalating fight with Iran-backed Houthi militants in neighboring Yemen now poses new challenges to the kingdom’s security and the crown prince’s ambitious but already struggling plans to transform the country’s oil-dependent economy.

On Saturday, at least one Houthi missile slammed into the Saudi capital’s international airport, killing at least 13 people and injuring hundreds more, many seriously. It was the single deadliest attack on the U.S. or its Gulf allies in the conflicts related to the Iran war. A 28-year-old Egyptian flight attendant bled to death after her arm was blown off, one of several victims to lose limbs, officials briefed on the attack said.

. . .As recently as this summer, Saudi officials briefed journalists that the Houthi situation was under control. But the militants’ escalating attacks, which they say are retaliation for Saudi actions against them, have hit airports and energy facilities—including the kingdom’s main east-west pipeline and refineries—showing the growing threat along the southern border.

The conflict is jeopardizing Saudi efforts to build travel and tourism into a pillar of the economy, including a marquee international investment conference scheduled for the end of the month that is now increasingly in doubt. The costs of the war have already widened the budget deficit and threaten to push the economy into contraction.

How Prince Mohammed handles this test will have consequences that stretch well beyond the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is a major source of funding for the global tech industry and artificial intelligence projects. It is also a crucial provider of basing and overflight rights to the U.S. military.

. . . The Saudi leader has few good options, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Persian Gulf expert and fellow with Rice University’s Baker Institute. “Any military response risks getting drawn in deeper to an asymmetric conflict in which the Houthis have shown they have the ability to inflict significant and symbolic damage.”

It’s surprising that the Saudis, with a big army and a crack air force, is the weaker side in an “asymmetric conflict”. It would become less asymmetrical if the U.S. joined with the Saudis, as Trump has intimated in the last few days. But we get very little of our oil from Saudi Arabia (most imported oil comes from Canada), so, given his concern for gas and diesel prices (driving him into the arms of Putin), Trump may not decide to help out the Saudis.  On the other hand, the oil market would react strongly to a closure of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal—something that the Houthis have the potential to do.

*Abdul el-Sayed, an Islamist Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, is well known for evading hard questions about his affection for Iran, is taken apart at the Free Press in a piece by Audrey Fahlberg called, “Abdul El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions.”

Few things seem to infuriate Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed more than questions about the Iranian regime.

During a press gaggle last Thursday afternoon in Grand Rapids, I asked him whether he regrets comments he made on a private campaign strategy call in March. That’s when he said, according to The Washington Free Beacon, that “I just don’t want to comment” on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today” about his death.

Before I finished my question, he cut in to insist that the topic is completely “irrelevant” to the Senate race. The leaked audio, he explained, is “not relevant to people’s lives,” and he’s “just not interested in this dog and pony show” solely intended to create media “clicks.”

. . .El-Sayed’s sensitivity to questions about the Iranian regime is revealing, as is his short fuse. This progressive Democrat’s campaign platform revolves around Medicare for All, getting corporate money out of politics, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. He insists that questions about Iran are a distraction from issues voters care more about, like healthcare and the cost of living, even though, as I reminded him during our roughly one-minute exchange, he spent the entire primary campaign talking about foreign policy—railing against Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Iran war.

Our exchange is part of a broader pattern for El-Sayed, who has repeatedly declined to disavow the Iranian regime. He dodged questions during a town hall last month about whether he would renounce people who held vigils for Ayatollah Khamenei and whether he stands “unequivocally against” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism. El-Sayed will not directly say whether he believes Israel or Iran is a bigger threat to America, calling it a “dumb question” to a News Nation reporter last week and a “ridiculous hypothetical”on the debate stage Thursday evening.

“Both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” he said during the debate when pressed by a moderator on Israel and Iran. “One at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”

And here’s a scary statement:

Progressives believe El-Sayed will be a bellwether for the future of the Democratic Party. “What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America—period,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at a recent New York fundraiser, according to The New York Times. “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere. Anywhere.”

Like a good politician, El-Sayed is skilled at evading questions that require him to make a moral judgment, like his refusal to say that Iran is a bigger threat to America than Israel, which is palpably true.  Like Mamdani, Omar (see below) and Tlaib, I think he’s a somewhat covert Jew-hater and Israel-hater—people who, when they’re not “progressive,” are siding with terrorists or dissing Israel. Here’s the tweet that links to “short fuse” above:

Here’s El-Sayed arguing with a t.v. interviewer at the “short fuse” link above.  Surely campaigning with the odious Hasan Piker says something:

He’ll win, though, for the Democrats have lost it.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes how Hamas (and the world’s media) are using dead Hamas terrorists as examples of Israel’s genocide.

It’s Monday, October 12, and it took a Holocaust scholar six days after October 7 to accuse Israel of genocide in print, and South Africa less than three months to take the charge to the International Court of Justice. The Gaza Ministry of Health beat both to the punch: its count began with the first Hamas gunman to fall in southern Israel.

So far, researcher Salo Aizenberg has identified by name 364 Hamas attackers killed on October 7. Eighty percent of them appear on the Health Ministry’s list, counted among the victims of the “genocide.”

This not-so-subtle sleight of hand has been there for anyone to see for years. Of the 692 Gazans the ministry lists as dying on October 7, 2023, 646, or 93 percent, were men of fighting age. Most of the children recorded that day were boys aged 14 to 17.

More recently, under the October 2025 ceasefire, Israel returned roughly 400 Palestinian bodies to Gaza. To help families identify them, the Health Ministry published photos of the bodies along with the names of those already identified. Of 396 bodies listed, 91 have been named.

All 91 are on the ministry’s casualty list. All are men between 18 and 60. Sixty-three of them, 69 percent, are listed as having died on October 7, 2023, the day they crossed into Israel.

. . . All of them, regardless, made it into the database as victims of a supposed genocide.

. , , ,Add this to the mounting blows against the genocide accusation, and the charge is faltering. On Friday, the Nobel Committee tried to shore it up by awarding its Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, the South African jurist whose U.N. commission accused Israel of genocide last year. The infinitesimal courage it took to condemn Israel from a U.N. commission does not earn her a place beside laureates like Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel and Yitzhak Rabin, though she would have a comfortable seat beside Yasser Arafat.

The committee honored her for her efforts to promote “peace and international law.” Yet few things have done less to advance peace and international law than the genocide libel. The accusation did nothing to hasten the end of the war or the suffering in Gaza. If anything, it prolonged both by generating American pressure that could not stop Israel, only delay it. As for international law, the genocide campaign degrades law’s most basic principle: impartiality. In the trial of international law, its blatant anti-Israel bias is Exhibit A.

The latest tally of the dead in Gaza is about 70,000 to 74,000, and on this Hamas and the IDF agree. Hamas can’t or won’t separate combatants from civilians, but the IDF estimates that 24,000 of the dead were combatants.  That give about a 2:1 ratio of civilian dead to combatant dead, which remains an extraordinarily low ratio, especially for urban warfare (the ratio of 2:1 is close to that of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam).

*A man entered the enclosure of an Siberian (aka Amur) Tiger in England by going around whatever barriers existed, and, as expected, he was mauled to death. It’s very sad, but I have to say that the guy should have stayed out of the tiger cage!  The good news is that the wildlife park announced that they would not euthanize the tiger, which apparently some people expected as a form of retributive punishment.

A man has died after he entered a tiger enclosure at an animal attraction and was attacked by a Siberian tiger in Yorkshire, England, on Saturday, according to the police and park officials.

South Yorkshire Police said in a statement that they received reports of a man entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park at 1:35 p.m. local time.

“The tiger subsequently attacked the man, resulting in serious injury,” the statement said, adding that “despite the best efforts of medical personnel,” the man died at the scene.

The man’s identity was not released, but the police said his family was aware and receiving support from the department.

Video surfaced on social media showing a man in a dark long-sleeve shirt and light-colored pants close to a tiger, which at one point grabs and bites him near the middle of his back. The tiger lunges at the man repeatedly and faces him before tapping him a few times with its front paws.

The police said they are aware of multiple videos of the event circulating online and encouraged people not to share the footage.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s website describes it as “the U.K.’s No. 1 walk-through wildlife adventure.”

I won’t share the footage, but here’s the park’s announcement. I’m glad they’re not going to kill the tiger, for what did it do besides acting like a tiger should act. There should be no punishing animals that act normally when somebody stupidly comes into their enclosure.  The guy was nuts to go into a tiger cage, of course, but it’s still sad that he was killed. But what did he expect? Regardless, there should be no euthanizing animals in cases like this.

*The WaPo recounts that the feds have searched Ilhan Omar’s home.

Federal authorities searched the D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday morning, three people familiar with the matter said, intensifying long-standing immigration-related accusations from Republicans regarding the nation’s first Somali American lawmaker.

Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, executed the search. The Justice Department confirmed that it secured a court-authorized warrant for a law enforcement action Monday morning, but it did not name Omar or confirm what investigation the search was connected to.

“Today in the Washington, D.C. area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the Justice Department statement said.

In a statement on X, Omar (D-Minnesota) said she “will not be silenced.”

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote. “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.”

Last month, U.S. officials said federal authorities were investigating whether Omar unlawfully entered the country by falsifying her immigration paperwork. Omar and her team have repeatedly denied accusations that she committed immigration fraud. Omar’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

The search of Omar’s home appears to be the type of action that law enforcement officials have typically avoided so close to an election in the past. Omar is up for reelection in November after winning the Democratic primary in her district.

The Wall Street Journal adds this:

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told a conservative podcaster in September that there was a continuing federal investigation into Omar, who he said “married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.” That is a claim she has denied for more than a decade.

Mullin said federal officials are investigating her past marriage as well as how her family immigrated to the U.S. In a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this year, Omar said she was never married to her brother and never committed immigration fraud.

Much as I dislike Omar as a Representative, an investigation only 20-odd days before the election violates the unwritten rule 60-days that federal investigative agencies like the DOJ have refrained from publicly announcing investigations that could influence an election. And lots of investigations have turned up no credible evidence that Omar married her brother to circumvent immigration laws. On the other hand, there remains that huge and still unexplained increase of the net worth of Omar and her husband, which jumped in one year from near zero to millions of dollars. Omar has said that is due to an accounting error, but there are also claims that there was money transferred from Omar’s campaign fund to her husband’s business. That may be worth investigating, but still, the DOJ should keep a low profile until after the election.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili notes with annoyance the coming of winter:

Hili: And the leaves are falling from the trees again.
Andrzej: The trees are getting ready for their winter sleep.

 

In Polish:

Hili: I znów spadają liście z drzew.
Ja: Drzewa układają się do zimowego snu.

*******************

From Things With Faces, a squash looking at you:

From Jesus of the Day:

From My Cat Is An Asshole:

An Iranian “honor killing” described by Masih. I can’t find details of what the woman’s so-called “crime” was, but the other stuff appears accurate.

From Simon. Larry, still recovering from surgery, makes a funny:

From Luana (the link to the NY Post article is wrong; the right one is here).

Two from my feed. First, the translation from the Spanish says this:

Not a single United Kingdom flag. Not one. That monument in the background there is the only clue to the location. London is now Palestine. That’s all I got out of this. Creepy.

And the poster  Medvin notes that “The image is from the pro-Palestine “National March for Palestine: End the Genocide” held on Saturday, 10 October 2026.”

Marina Medvin 🇺🇸

Whose idea was this?

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial.

Two from Doctor Cobb. A wet frog hopped here:

The most fun thing ever to randomly see

— Oregon 🕎🎲 (@oregonthedm.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T17:03:10.775Z

This poor bird could not catch a break!:

Today is World Migratory Bird Day. Please say hello to the Pfeilstorch (‘arrow stork’). In 1822 this bird was shot in the German village of Klütz. It already had a 30-inch arrow in its neck. The arrow was made of African wood, and this bird played a pivotal role in our understanding of migration.

— Lev Parikian (@levparikian.bsky.social) 2026-10-10T20:42:35.661Z

A royal scam, and one involving AI

October 12, 2026 • 9:40 am

If you have any kind of public presence, eventually you attract—like remoras to a shark—people who want money or publicity, though they l\often disguise their motives as being laudable or charitable.

A few weeks ago, for example, I got a letter from a woman who said she was organizing an online book club to read my book Faith versus Fact, and invited me to contribute if I wanted. Flattered, I said I’d be glad to, and could contribute a few discussion questions for the readers. The organizer said that was great, and shortly thereafter she asked me for $210 for a “participation fee”.  I was not participating, but contributing, and it became clear that the whole megillah was a moneymaking scheme. I didn’t answer, and have not heard back since.

In the last week I’ve received three letters similar to the following, telling me about the deficiencies of Faith Versus Fact, how it’s become outmoded, and how the sender could publicize it and increase the readership. (I wonder if the “independent” requests are really connected.) Note how thorough the analysis is, as if  the writer, John Ajala, had read and thought about the book. Well, as you’ll see below, there’s a reason for that. First, the email:

Dear Professor Coyne,

You wrote the book that made the incompatibility argument impossible to wave away. Before Faith Versus Fact, the accommodationist position was the respectable default. After your book, it had to defend itself. You did it as a working evolutionary biologist, not a philosopher or a journalist, and that gave the argument a weight it had not had before. Dawkins called it superbly argued. Kirkus called it important. That matters.

Here is the thing I cannot stop thinking about. A reader who searches for “science and religion compatible” will find ten thousand books telling them yes. A reader who is quietly losing their faith and does not know how to think about it is not finding yours.

Faith Versus Fact is filed under Religious Studies, Science and Religion, and Atheism. That is accurate. It is also a fence. Every piece of metadata around the book speaks to people who already know what the incompatibility thesis is. That matters because the people who most need this book are the ones least likely to pick it up. They are not browsing the atheism shelf. They are sitting in a pew, or a classroom, or a kitchen at midnight, trying to figure out whether the thing they were taught is true. Your book would answer that question. It is not the book that shows up.

The book has 1,808 ratings on Goodreads. On Amazon Australia, 159 ratings and 35 written reviews. On Amazon Mexico, 735 ratings and 252 written reviews. On Amazon US, the paperback ranks #290 in Religious Studies, Science and Religion. That is a strong niche position. It is not a general one. For comparison, Why Evolution Is True has 1,379 ratings on Amazon Brazil alone. Your earlier book is reaching a broader audience than this one. The argument that matters more is reaching fewer people. A reader who needs this book is finding your evolution book instead, and then wondering if there is another one.

Because the book is ten years old and the conversation has moved. The accommodationist position has reasserted itself in popular science writing. The new atheism moment has passed. The book that made the strongest case for incompatibility is now filed in a section that only the converted browse. If the argument is going to outlive the moment, it needs to be findable by the people who are just now starting to ask the question.

I believe this is fixable. Not by changing the book. The book is finished and it works. By changing the metadata around it, the description, the categories, the keywords, so that it is findable by the readers who do not yet know they are looking for it. The categories and keywords need to speak to the doubter, not the convert. The description needs to speak to the person who is afraid to ask the question, not the person who has already answered it. The reviews need to be refreshed so the page does not look like it stopped moving in 2016. None of that changes a word of what you wrote.

What it changes is who finds it. A doubting believer searching for “is my faith irrational” is not finding your book today. They would find it if the metadata spoke to them.

What I want for you is the version of this book that a doubting believer finds at 2 a.m. on their phone, when they have no one to talk to and no idea where to start. That is the reader who would be changed. That is the reader who is not finding it.

Picture a reader who has never heard of you. They are twenty-two, they grew up in a church, they are starting to have doubts they cannot say out loud. They search for something, anything, that will help them think about it. They find your book. They read the first chapter. And they realise that someone has already thought this through, with rigour, and without contempt for the person they used to be. That reader exists right now. They are looking. They are not finding you.

Right now, the book is being read by people who already agree. It is being cited in arguments that were settled years ago. It is not reaching the person who is still inside the question. A year from now, the book is the first result when someone searches for “science and religion incompatible.” It is the book that gets handed to a friend who is losing their faith. It is the book that a professor recommends not because it is on the syllabus but because it answers a question the student just asked. It is still the same book. It is just findable.

I am writing to you specifically because most authors with a landmark book are not in a position to act. They are retired, or they are done, or they have moved on. You are still in the fight. You gave a talk in Katowice in December 2024. You resigned from the Freedom From Religion Foundation board in December over a disagreement about free speech. That is rare at seventy-six. It is why I am writing to you and not to someone else.

I work with authors whose books carry real weight and are not reaching the readers who would be most changed by them. I do not fix books. I fix the gap between what a book is and what it could become. I am not going to send you a deck. I am going to tell you what I see, and you can tell me if I am wrong. What I see is a book that won the argument and lost the stranger. And I think you already know that, because you have watched it happen for a decade.

I can make that happen. Not with ads. Not with a campaign. With the specific, unglamorous work of fixing the categories, the keywords, and the description so that the algorithms that decide what a stranger sees decide to show them your book.

If you tell me what you think the obstacle is, and it matches what I see, I will tell you exactly what I would do about it. No pitch, no deck, no retainer. Just the answer.

The book is ten years old. The argument is not going away. The readers who need it are not going away either. But the window where a book can be repositioned without being republished is not infinite. It is open now. It will not be open forever.

When you look at where the book ended up, and who is still not finding it, what do you believe the actual obstacle is?

And a second question, which matters more. Twenty years from now, what do you want this book to have done? Not how many copies. Not which reviews. What do you want it to have done to a reader who picks it up cold, with no atheist blogger telling them to, and no Dawkins blurb on the cover?

Reply with whatever you actually think. One line is enough. If you would rather not, I understand. Either way, the work stands on its own.

With genuine respect for what you have written,

John | Founder, Book Insight Hub

Yada, yada, yada. Had I written Mr. Ajala back telling him what I think the “obstacles” to adopting the book were, I’m absolutely sure he’d offer to help publicize it, and of course for a fee. I wrote back and told him I was happy with the book and not to bother me again.

But I had become suspicious because of the short sentences and words like “metadata”, which are often signs that the writer has used AI. So I put the whole email through Pangram, the best AI analyzer, and one that’s been tested with both AI- and human-written texts. Pangram virtually never says that something is written by AI if it was written by a human. And, sure enough, Pangram told me this:

Sure enough, the “thoroughness” of the email came not from a human, but from a machine’s program.  What a fricking insult!

I would recommend Pangram if you want to see if what you’re reading was written by a human or a bot. In fact, it tells you which parts of a text (100% in this case) have been written by a human vs. AI.  You can have about three free tries with Pangram a day, or you can subscribe for more money, though I don’t use it often enough to warrant that. The effectiveness of Pangram has been tested pretty thoroughly, and you can see the analysis at the site below, clicking on the screenshot and then here to download the paper.

The authors tested four kinds of papers: pure AI-written papers, pure human-written papers. “hybrid” papers that were part Ai-written and part human-written, and “humanised” papers that were first written with AI and then made to look more “human-written” by “Using the AI-generated sections from HYB01, rewritten with a custom ChatGPT prompt to increase perplexity and burstiness (less predictable wording, more varied sentence structures) while keeping meaning and references intact.”

They used 40 papers per category, and judged the ability of five AI-detection programs to see how good they were at sussing out the source.

As you see, Pangram is the overall winner, especially at detecting purely AI-written papers. It also is good at detecting hybrid and “humanised” papers, which it detects about half the time.  But note at the extreme right: the papers that were written solely by humans. Nearly all the problems have a 0% false positive rate on Pangram, i.e. the analysis saying that a paper is AI when it was really written by a human.  That’s why I’m so sure that when Pangram tells me something is 100% AI, like the duplicitous email above (how dare a human sign their name to something written by a program?), I’m nearly sure it’s AI.

I’ve used Pangram to suss out authors of fiction and poetry who didn’t really write their published stuff (more on that later), as well as to analyze essays and articles written by people I admire, but that looked suspicious. After a while you develop a nose for the AI-stuff, especially when you learn what someone’s own personal writing style is like. Facebook is full of that stuff: if you see a post that comprises a number of short sentences, it’s more than likely written by a bot. I deep-six those sites immediately.

If you’ve found AI stuff that pretended to be written by a human, weigh in below.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 12, 2026 • 8:15 am

Glory be: three readers submitted photos over the weekend!  And today’s batch is from reader Thomas Webber. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is McCarty Woods, at 1.4 ha the last substantial remnant of native forest on the built-up part of the University of Florida’s 850 ha campus in Gainesville. For decades it has been designated a Conservation Area in the campus land-use plan. Five years ago we learned with a shock that the university’s board of trustees had voted to revoke the plan and cut down the woods to build – I am not making this up – a forestry teaching lab. (According to hearsay, the forestry department itself has not been lobbying to put the lab there.) But leadership in McCarty’s defense arose at the right time. Botany professors Douglas Soltis and Pamela Soltis took up the challenge of helping the UF authorities understand the importance of the forest, and galvanized public opinion in its favor. They have recruited a large, enthusiastic volunteer force that meets each month to remove invasive exotics and restore native species that have dropped out over the years as the grove was surrounded by development. For the time being the UF administration has agreed that the woods should stay.

Here are just a few of the flowering species in our reprieved McCarty Woods.

Cherry laurel, Prunus caroliniana. Native. Individual flowers 3-5 mm. Small trees, which turn snowy-looking with masses of tiny blossoms for a few weeks in the spring.

Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. Native. 7 cm long. Famous for being poisonous, though the leaves can be eaten for a short time in spring if cooked. I haven’t tried it:

Paintedleaf, Euphorbia cyathophora. Native. The complicated central part is 2-3 cm across. One of the few abundant inhabitants of the shady interior. At close range it’s one of the stranger-looking plants in the woods, with features that don’t correspond obviously to the familiar parts of typical flower-like flowers, such as petunias. The oval cups are nectaries. Holiday Poinsettia is a close relative:

Trumpet creeper, Campsis radicans. 7 cm long. A native that had disappeared from McCarty, which we are trying to restore:

Potato vine, Ipomoea pandurata. Native. 7 cm. The most visible of the native vines when it’s in bloom. We haven’t had to do anything for this one. As of early September it’s near its peak of bloom in the interior and on the edges.

Coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens. Native. 6 cm long. Another vine formerly lost from the woods. We’re now planting some in hopes of re-introducing it:

Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. Native. Individual flowers 3-5 mm. Most people know this plant from its large clumps of close-packed purple berries. Here is a less familiar close-up view of the flowers:

Nightshade, Solanum nigrum. Native. Individual flowers 1 cm.:

The colorful bases that remain after the nightshade flowers fall away, and the 6-8 mm berries:

Ironweed, Vernonia gigantea. Native. Whole flower head 7 cm across. A superior butterfly plant:

Carolina petunia, Ruellia caroliniensis. 3-4 cm. A native that is especially abundant this year:

Elephant’s foot, Elaphantopus tomentosus. Native. Whole flower head 3 cm across:

Sandmat, Euphorbia cf. hyssopifolia. Individual flowers 2-3 mm.:

Silkgrass, Pityopsis graminifolia. Native. Mature flower head 2-3 cm:

Frogfruit, Phyla nodiflora. Native. 1 cm. For some reason this has been more common around town this year than ever, and no more so than right at the edge of our woods. It is part of a spectacular example of convergent biological and cultural evolution:

Skunkvine, Paederia foetida. Native to southeast Asia. Flowers 1 cm long. This technically should not be welcome, since it is not native and is alleged to smell skunk-like when its parts are crushed. But there is only one here, it is small and behaving itself, and it doesn’t seem very foetid to me, so I have included it just because I like the way the picture look:

One of our teams of joyous forest restorers. This is a big crowd for July, when the heat and humidity and especially the sun hammering the east edge of the forest are brutal. On the summer days I assign myself a job in the shade of the interior, taking out the imperialistic, introduced vine called catclaw:

So we have kept the bulldozers away for five years. The right leadership was essential; as the expression goes, “It’s not what you say, it’s who says it.” When National Academy members  Doug and Pam Soltis speak, the administration pays attention; if lab-assistant Webber said the same thing, the sound would be like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. Regardless of the success so far, there are infinite opportunities to lose it all, for there will always be someone who will look at our woods as a blank space that’s just the place to put their construction project. Here we say, “What’s the difference in protection between a UF Conservation Area and a non-conservation area? The Conservation Area has a sign on it until it’s leveled.” Conservationists have to win every time, without end, but developers need to win only once, and the concrete is forever.

Monday: Hili Dialogue

October 12, 2026 • 6:45 am

It’s just another Manic Monday: October 12, 2026, and National Pulled Pork Day. Here’s a plate of the stuff at the Waiahole Poi Factory (it’s the Hawaiian version: kalua pig), along with beef laulau, a vegetable, and, my favorite, poi.  I love poi, though others can’t abide it, and the Waiahole Poi factory, where it’s made on the spot, is the best poi  I found in Hawaii. Sadly, I’ve never found the real stuff on the mainland.

It’s also Indigenous Peoples’ Day, National Gumbo Day, and in Canada it’s Thanksgiving.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Houthis attacked the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia, killing at least 12 people and injuring 309. Big time attack, requiring a big time response:

 A missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s international airport killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds more on Saturday, in strikes carried out by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants to which the kingdom’s military vowed a response.

The attacks, the deadliest in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade, shook the kingdom, which has struggled for weeks to fend off militant strikes amid a surge in cross-border tension.

Major General Turki Al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, said that the attack, which killed and injured civilian passengers and airport workers, amounted to a war crime by the Houthi militia and that coalition forces would respond.

Among the dead were one American, four Saudi nationals, a Palestinian and residents from Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Sudan, according to the kingdom’s civil aviation authority.

Missiles landed direct hits on Terminals 3 and 4 of the King Khalid International Airport, injuring more than 300 people, the civil aviation authority said. Several of them remained in critical condition, and the airport suffered extensive damage, with parts of the roof falling on people inside, Saudi officials said.

Ambulances and helicopters were sent to collect the wounded and take them to hospitals nearby, the officials said. Doctors were called in from other hospitals to help with the surge of patients, they said.

Saudi Arabia has vowed a big-time response:

Saudi Arabia said Sunday it would “respond decisively” against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen a day after a strike on Riyadh’s international airport brought the expanding Middle East conflict home for the Saudi capital and its residents.

The attack, which left 12 dead and 309 injured and came without warning, revealed the vulnerability of the U.S. ally and the ramifications of the Trump administration’s reluctance to openly help fight the Houthis more than seven months into Washington’s war with Iran. Riyadh’s airport is the country’s second largest for civilians and is frequently used by royals and visiting dignitaries, including President Donald Trump in his last visit to the kingdom.

The United States is providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence support, analysts and U.S. officials say. But the administration has so far stopped short of the direct military assistance that officials in Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen’s internationally recognized government have sought.

After Saturday’s attack, Trump told reporters he was weighing whether to join Saudi strikes on the rebel group, later adding that the U.S. “has communication with the Houthis.”

Trump has been reluctant to go after the Houthis, even though they’ve participated in blocking the Red Sea and impeding traffic through the Suez Canal by blocking the narrowBab al-Mandeb Strait. They’re also fundamentalist Shiite Iranian proxy and are trying to take over Yemen. Given that Saudi Arabia has a large army and an especially good Air Force, I wouldn’t mind them joining forces with the U.S. and Israel (see the next piece) to extirpate the Houthis.

UPDATE: Several places report a Saudi military response, but details are missing.  Yesterday, the Houthis struck the Riyadh airport again, killing one and injuring 11.

*In response to the Houthi attack, Amit Segal argues, on the It’s Noon in Israel site, that “The Saudis need to become Israeli.”

It’s Sunday, October 11, and last night at least 12 people were killed and 309 wounded in a Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. Saudi Arabia’s response is unlikely to prioritize the “protection of civilians, and self-control” as it encouraged Israel to do in the wake of October 7. But nor, to its great detriment, will it take the Israeli route: the one that leads to lasting security.

The strike comes a week into Operation Dawn of Yemen, a Saudi-backed offensive by Yemeni government forces against the Iranian-backed Houthis. With the help of some 100 Saudi jets, government-aligned forces have already retaken key stretches of coast along Bab el-Mandeb. But even as the Houthis are hard-pressed, and Yemeni officials talk optimistically of driving all the way to Houthi-held Sanaa, the Saudis are keeping one eye on the rearview mirror.

After joining the Iran war late and hesitantly, firing their first missiles at Israel only a month in, the Houthis largely held their fire against the Jewish state and found a much softer target in the Gulf monarchy. In July they declared a naval blockade on the kingdom. Riyadh’s response has typically been tepid: limited airstrikes and quiet diplomacy.

That has long been the Saudi playbook. Even at the height of its war on the Houthis, the kingdom kept one hand extended. In 2019, after Houthi-claimed drone strikes on its oil facilities, it said it viewed a Houthi truce offer “positively.” In 2020 it told the Houthis, through back channels, that it would sign a UN-brokered nationwide ceasefire in exchange for a buffer zone on its border. In 2021 it publicly offered a ceasefire and the reopening of Sanaa airport, with its foreign minister declaring “it is up to the Houthis now.” Since the 2022 truce, the kingdom has largely halted offensive operations even in the face of sporadic provocations. Even when the United States and Britain began addressing the Houthi problem in January 2024, Riyadh called for “self-restraint” from the sidelines. As recently as mid-September, with the Houthis fresh from seizing Mocha, the kingdom reportedly offered them a two-week ceasefire and direct talks through Omani mediators.

Rather than a new dawn for Riyadh’s Yemen policy, this war is simply a means to negotiate. After the Houthis’ advance last month, Riyadh concluded that it could not enter new talks while the Houthis held Bab el-Mandeb. Without U.S. support, it will likely declare victory if it simply pushes the Houthis off the Red Sea coast and restores quiet.

This is where the two countries [Israel and Saudi Arabia] diverge.

Surveying the destruction of its territory, Israel understood that such a threat could not be allowed to rebuild on its border, and, despite American misgivings, went about uprooting Hamas. The Saudis, looking at their burning tankers and smoldering oil facilities, also resolved that the situation had to be dealt with. So they called Washington for help, were rebuffed, and settled for a particularly aggressive round of mowing.

. . .That Israel has never had the luxury of the status quo lies at the root of what separates it from many of America’s allies, and from America itself. It is why the Houthis will happily strike King Khalid International Airport but now think twice about Ben Gurion. It is why the Saudis will not try anything without Washington holding their hand, while Washington grips Israel’s for dear life to keep it from upending the status quo.

. . . The Houthis in the mountains of northern Yemen present a different challenge from Hamas in its tunnels under Gaza, but the lesson of appeasing terror is the same. If the Saudis want to find themselves safer five years from now, they should start reading up on Zionism.

Indeed, for the Houthis have missiles and will have more if they’re not stopped. They’re just a short rocket flight from Saudi Arabia, and of course the Saudis have all the oil, oil that has to be moved.  Amit Segal is right: the Saudis need to do something, and do it now.

*More juvenile behavior from Trump: now he’s going after Ukraine’s President Zelensky, blaming him for the high price of diesel gas in the U.S. and saying that Ukraine should get a new leader.

President Donald Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to end his country’s war with Russia and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.

The president, who on Friday struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. He has also sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has elevated world energy prices.

“He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Trump said, before departing for Tennessee where he was set to rally Republican voters.

No, Zelensky just wants to survive in the face of a very real threat to his country. And he’s done a good job as leader, but all Trump can do is beef about gas prices. I don’t expect him to send more help to Ukraine, even though gas prices will not appreciably fall before the midterms.  And of course Trump made a deal with Putin to get more diesel, which is like making a deal with the devil. But here’s what he’s saying now:

Ukrainian and European officials on Saturday reacted to Trump’s diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia’s war efforts. Diesel prices have skyrocketed due to a collision of events, including the difficulty of getting oil out of the Middle East since the start of the Iran war, which has raised the price of all oil products.

Trump also suggested that if he had been U.S. president in 2022, “that war would have never started. There was no reason that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence.”

Whose incompetence is he talking about? Biden’s? Zelensky’s? Because he’s sure not talking about Putin.

*The pushback on the award of the Nobel Prize to Navi Pillay, an advocate of The Genocide Lie, has received surprisingly widespread pushback, though of course the liberal MSM won’t decry it (the NYT has an admiring profile of Pillay).  But the WSJ said what needed to be said, and I found a screenshot of their op-ed on Facebook (click to enlarge it):

Granted, Pillay did some good stuff, but it’s recognized that the Prize came largely from her work on a UN committee trying to prosecute Israel for genocide. I can’t figure out what’s the worse award: Pillay’s or Yasser Arafat’s.  In response to the award, Trump went into full Two Year Old Mode, saying that he should have won eight Nobel Prizes.   Here’s his self-aggrandizing Truth Social post. He’ll never get a Nobel Prize. Notice the misspelled “Nobel” in the last line. Does nobody check his tweets?

*Among a host of rare birds in New Zealand, the black robin (Petroica traversi), once reduced to a single breeding pair (4 males and one fertile female named “Old Blue”), has been named the country’s Bird of the Year after a striking comeback. There are now about 390 of them.

The black robin, once the world’s rarest bird before an extraordinary conservation project brought it back from brink of extinction, has been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, after record voter turnout.

The tiny bird is found only in the Chatham Islands, 800km east of mainland New Zealand. Called kakaruia in Māori and karure in Morirori – the language indigenous to the Chathams – the birds are also fondly known as the “goth” of New Zealand’s bird world, for its striking black plumage, black eyes and a little pointy black beak.

Habitat loss and introduced pests devastated its population, and by the 1970s there were five birds left. Just one breeding pair remained: Old Blue, the matriarch, and Old Yellow. A breeding programme that pioneered using other species to foster parent the robins’ eggs proved a success, and its numbers have steadily climbed to 350 adult birds, although it is still classed as “threatened”.

“They are really cute,” said Jess Mackenzie, spokesperson for the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust, adding that the black robin has been in the top five birds for the past few years but never clinched a win.

“It’s a bird that New Zealanders definitely love and know,” she said.

Despite the name, the black robin is not in the same family as overseas robins and is a distinct species. In the Chathams, they live in lowland coastal forest on two restricted, pest-free nature reserves.

While a conservation success story, the black robin is not “saved yet”, Mackenzie said. Habitat on their islands is is nearly at capacity, and a third pest-free island is needed.

. . .The 2026 competition attracted a record 105,000 votes. About 88% of the votes were cast from New Zealand.

The world’s heaviest parrot, the kākāpō, came second and the 2025 winner, the country’s only falcon, the kārearea, finished third.

Over the years, the contest has been subject to scandal, from crowning a bat the winner in 2021, to accusations of Russian interference in 2019, and claims Australians attempted to rig the contest in favour of the shag in 2018.

In 2023, British-American comedian and talkshow host John Oliver ran a global campaign for the threatened pūteketeke, which was then crowned the winner that year.

Only Kiwis should be allowed to vote in this contest. And a bat???

Here’s a photo from Wikipedia (they can’t say whether it’s male or female). Isn’t it cute?

frances schmechel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has cleaned house on the Listy website:

Hili: You look like something’s bothering you.
Andrzej: I threw out three trolls today. I’m afraid they might be upset.

In Polish:

Hili: Wyglądasz jakbyś miał jakiś problem.
Ja: Wyrzuciłem dziś trzy trolle, martwię się, że im może być przykro.

*******************

From Meow Incorporated:

From

From 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:

 

An odious man claiming that whipping of women in Iran is very gentle. The picture give the lie to that. From Masih.  If you can’t see the tweet, click here to see it. (Embedding is probably prohibited for reasons I’m not clear on.)

From Matthew. Larry was operated on, but it appears to be just a nonmalignant cyst. We love him!

The Number Ten Cat’s tweet:

Chicks dig the scar

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T17:59:49.878Z

From Simon: Larry on Trump:

John Cleese got reported to the coppers for “Islamophobia”!

Two from my feed. This first one is fantastic:

From a fellow squirrel lover:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Some music: a very famous jazz version of “Body and Soul” recorded by Coleman Hawkins (aka “Bean”) in 1939—nearly a decade after it was written by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton. It was intended as a pop song, not a jazz song, but Hawkins did the most famous version.

From Wikipedia:

One of the most famous and influential takes was recorded by Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra on October 11, 1939, at their only recording session for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. The recording is unusual in that the song’s melody is only hinted at in the recording; Hawkins’ two-choruses of improvisation over the tune’s chord progression constitute almost the entire take. Jazz critic Leonard Feather says, “This became his biggest hit and established him as a national name.”  Because of this, as well as the imaginative use of harmony and break from traditional swing cliches, the recording is recognised as part of the “early tremors of bebop“.  In 2004, the Library of Congress entered it into the National Recording Registry.

You can hear a more standard version, with the lyrics, in this recording by Frank Sinatra. It shows how much improvisation went into Bean’s version below.

Bill Maher on the uselessness of the Greeks (sororities and fraternities)

October 11, 2026 • 9:45 am

Starting with the recent accusations of gang rape against 7 denizens of a fraternity at Cornell University, Bill Maher’s latest real-time episode takes out after the Greek houses, including sororities. (Maher went to Cornell, with a double major in literature and history).  I agree with Maher: when I went to William & Mary, I participated in fraternity rush, but gave up after visiting two houses and seeing the “brothers” making cryptic notes on the freshmen. I’d prefer to find brothers using my own criteria rather than theirs, and many of the friends I made, most not in fraternities, are still friends today.

While he doesn’t conclude anything about whether there was a rape or not, but he does think that fraternities, with their hazing, drinking, and rowdiness, don’t conform to their mission to produce “gentlemen.”  I’ve never heard of the “elephant walk” he describes as a bonding event. but Grok (below) affirms that it has been a real thing.

The guests you see on the panel are U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Sara Eisen (financial reporter for CNBC). 

The “elephant walk” described by Grok (my quesiton in bold). I’ve left out the links.

Do fraternities really practice the “elephant walk”?

Yes, some fraternities have practiced the “elephant walk” as a hazing ritual, though it is not universal, is often illegal, and has become less common (or more underground) due to bans, lawsuits, and scrutiny.

The ritual typically involves pledges (new members) forming a single-file line or circle, frequently while nude or partially clothed. Each person holds the genitals of the person in front of or behind them and walks together. Variations include inserting a thumb into the anus of the person ahead (sometimes with a rule that if it slips out, the thumb goes in the mouth). The posture is said to resemble elephants linked trunk-to-tail. It is framed by participants as a bonding or loyalty test through shared humiliation.

Documentation and evidence

  • It is treated as a known practice in academic work. Folklorists Alan Dundes and Lauren Dundes analyzed it in their 2002 essay “The Elephant Walk and Other Amazing Hazing: Male Fraternity Initiation through Infantilization and Feminization,” placing it in the broader context of humiliating initiation rites.
  • Dictionaries and references record the slang meaning explicitly (e.g., Wiktionary).
  • News coverage has referenced it as an established form of hazing. A prominent 2019 case involved Sacramento State’s Delta Chi chapter: an anonymous tip with a photo of a “simulation” (clothed men holding objects) triggered an investigation. Participants described it as an educational skit about hazing rather than the real thing; the university treated the allegation seriously amid other Greek life issues. Other reports and student accounts mention similar incidents or rumors at various schools.

I still have trouble believing this!