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.
Leucism, the absence of pigment in all or parts of the body in animals, is a genetic condition often mistaken for albinism (leucistic animals havenormally pigmented eyes). It’s found in all sorts of animals, from reptiles to mammals, and Scott Ritchie has spotted it in Australian ducks. Scott sent some pictures, which you can enlarge by clicking on them, and his captions are indented:
The leucistic Plumed Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna eytoni), is back at Hasties Swamp, Queensland, the white one in in middle. We have seen it for at least 2 years running. And “he/she” appears to have busy, with at least one (several white light feathers head and breast), and perhaps 3 (2 based on “forehead” feathers) individuals showing leucicism traits. It’s interesting that they were hanging together at the log to the left of the hide.
Welcome to June’s first Hump Day (“Kuprio diena” in Lithuania): it’s Wednesday, June 3, 2026 and Chimborazo Day, celebrating the big mountain (an extinct volcano) in Ecuador, which I’ve seen. Wikipedia explains why it’s the highest point on Earth, if you measure from the center of the planet rather than from sea level:
Although not the tallest mountain in the Andes or on Earth relative to sea level, its summit is the farthest point on Earth’s surface from the Earth’s center due to its location along the planet’s equatorial bulge. Chimborazo’s height from sea level is 6,263 m (20,548 ft), well below that of Mount Everest at 8,849 m (29,032 ft).
Below: a diagram with the caption:
While Everest is Earth’s highest elevation (green) and Mauna Kea is tallest from its base (orange), Cayambe is farthest from Earth’s axis (pink) and Chimborazo is farthest from Earth’s centre (blue). Not to scale.
There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. Click screenshot below to see where it goes (it uses AI!):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 3 Wikipedia page.
It’s Tuesday, June 2, and last night, Donald Trump announced that Hezbollah had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” and that Israel was calling off its planned strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. The declaration followed a phone call between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu that Axios described in explosive terms. According to the report, the president called the prime minister “f—ing crazy” and yelled, “What the f— are you doing?” over Israel’s escalating operations in Lebanon, adding: “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your a–. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
However, a very senior source in the Prime Minister’s Office paints a completely different picture. According to the source, the conversation was significantly less dramatic—less Real Housewives and more actual strategic dialogue. The source insists Trump did not say anything personal to Netanyahu along the lines of warning him to stay out of jail, nor did he claim that Netanyahu or Israel is hated around the world. The conversation was indeed tense, the source says, but the friction came from mutual complaints over their dueling social media posts the night before, where both leaders were trying to publicly spin the outcomes of the ceasefire on their own terms. Ultimately, the discussion ended with Israel agreeing to the ceasefire conditions so long as Hezbollah upholds its obligations.
The conditions in question appear to be a quid pro quo: Israel will not strike Beirut and, in exchange, Hezbollah will not strike Israel proper. Meanwhile, the grinding war in southern Lebanon continues exactly as before, with ongoing IDF ground maneuvers and Hezbollah drone strikes. In short, it is a ceasefire for the cities and a continue-fire for the rest of southern Lebanon.
Here is the question everyone is asking: Is this a success?
If it works, then yes. Recall Israel’s position this past Sunday: locked into a low-intensity attritional conflict in the south, restricted from utilizing its full power or striking Beirut, even as the north of Israel faced ongoing bombardment. Ideally, an agreement would veer closer to the status quo preceding Operation Roaring Lion, keeping Beirut in the crosshairs while the IDF strikes Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the south—though this time with a significantly larger IDF presence. But the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good. Securing a full night’s sleep for residents of Israel’s north while continuing operations in Lebanon’s south is a major step forward.
That is if it works, of course. Last night, Hezbollah expanded its range, firing rockets deep into the city of Tiberias. We are now waiting to see whether this was just a final, face-saving volley before the ceasefire actually takes hold, or the first sign that yesterday’s diplomatic production was nothing more than theater.
Regardless, the reaction in Israel has been far from celebratory. Strategic success or not, this ceasefire does not expedite the end of the conflict in any substantial way. The ceasefire promises that the slow, attritional warfare in southern Lebanon will grind on, bringing with it daily casualties. Israelis are exhausted. Since the April ceasefire, the public has been forced to live with a deep and stressful unpredictability. They are stuck in a constant state of limbo where schedules can be scrapped at a moment’s notice, flying abroad means risking getting stranded, and you never quite know when the next siren will force you back into a safe room.
The IDF, meanwhile, is caught in its own limbo. Its mission in southern Lebanon is straightforward: dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure, expand the security zone, and prevent the terror group from recovering. Conspicuously missing from these objectives, however, is a comprehensive strategy to eliminate the group entirely. But it is hard to plot the destruction of the tentacle while the fate of the head remains undecided. A major geopolitical shift on the Iranian front could open new doors for the IDF—perhaps even prompting an intervention by the fabled Lebanese Armed Forces. Yet as it stands, the patron is alive and kicking. Until that changes, the military is relegated to the grueling, uncreative work of slowly degrading Hezbollah’s capacity.
. . . . What is unique about this ceasefire is that it achieves the exact opposite of the previous: it actively links two active fronts rather than separating them.
In this agreement, Tehran’s decision to suspend negotiations with the U.S., rather than Israeli military pressure, brought Hezbollah to the table. If true, Iran just scored a major strategic victory. It successfully shielded Hezbollah from further degradation while artificially extending the diplomatic timeline—likely hoping to outlast Trump’s attention span on the issue. Furthermore, it validates Tehran’s preferred narrative: the collapse of the U.S.-Iran talks is a result of Israeli military operations, masking the true cause of the deadlock: the regime’s obstinacy.
In the end, Segal says, “My take: Is this ceasefire a defeat? It’s too early to tell.” Two things seem certain: Trump doesn’t give a hoot about northern Israel, just his own standing. Further, I put this all of this trouble on the UN, whose Security Council ordered Hezbollah to disarm two decades ago, and there are 10,000 UN troops in Lebanon who could enforce it. They won’t. Why doesn’t anybody point this out?
The staff of “60 Minutes” didn’t exactly roll out the Welcome Wagon for new executive producer Nick Bilton on Monday.
During his first official meeting with the producers and on-air talent of the iconic CBS News Sunday news show, Bilton was greeted with open hostility from high-profile correspondent Scott Pelley, according to people at the gathering.
Bilton was named to the post last week, an announcement that caught many in the media industry by surprise.
Pelley took aim at Bilton’s qualifications for the executive producer job. Bilton, who is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, wrote for the Times and served as special correspondent at Vanity Fair. While he has worked as a producer and executive producer on several documentaries, Bilton hasn’t run a weekly TV news show.
On Monday, Pelley also criticized CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, who hired Bilton and wasn’t present at the meeting. The correspondent accused her of “murdering” “60 Minutes,” said people familiar with his remarks. Pelley’s comments were met with applause by some in attendance, they said.
Pelley’s remarks come days after the network parted ways with “60 Minutes” correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Both Alfonsi and Vega have been critical of Weiss’s involvement in “60 Minutes,” which had been accustomed to a fair amount of autonomy from the rest of CBS News.
Vega last week said that she and her producing teams experienced “efforts to insert political bias into our stories.” A CBS spokesman said those claims “are not based in reality.”’
. . . . The fireworks show the hurdles Bilton and Weiss face in winning over the team at “60 Minutes.” The news show has only had a handful of executive producers in its nearly 60-year run, and its staff can be wary of outsiders.
It looks like the fireworks all came from Scott Pelley, but the fact that others in attendance applauded shows that he is not alone. I am a fan of “60 Minutes,” though I haven’t watched it for a while, but I don’t remember any political bias in the show (there was a recent dust-up about Weiss’s changes in a segment about immigrants being sent back to that horrible prison in El Salvador, and some additional material was added before it was aired in the U.S.). But if it had remained independent from CBS News over the years, that’s the way it should stay. It isn’t news, but a hybrid between news and news analysis, with some human-interest segments thrown in.
*The Washington Post gives a good overview of the new Obama Center, his Presidential Library located only three blocks from my crib. (The article, with all the photos, is archived here.)
One end of the regulation-size basketball court that anchors the south tip of the Obama Presidential Center campus is emblazoned with the words “Yes We Can,” and at the other end, “Fired Up, Ready to Go.” The facility’s main tower, which houses a museum documenting the 44th president’s life and career, features a “Hope and Change Lobby,” and outside there is a playground (with a child-safe poured-in-place rubber surface), a women’s garden, barbecue grills, and a green roof with wheelchair-accessible raised beds for vegetables.
It would be easy to parody the Obama Foundation’s 19.3-acre complex, which opens June 19, and plenty of critics and politicians already have. The 225-foot-tall stone-clad tower, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, has been dubbed the Obamalisk, and architecture traditionalists, who have thrown their lot in with President Donald Trump, have savaged the design as stark, brutalist and fortresslike. Trump weighed in recently with a childish meme on social media: a monumental trash can surrounded by an urban clutter of cars and telephone poles.
This all feels a bit like trying to brand your political opponent before they can make a good first impression. And the Obama center makes a good first impression despite all the negative chatter. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects knows how to create buildings that feel welcoming and open while also cool and contemplative, public space that pulls one out of the fray and into new forms of communion. Like their design for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Obama center is both porous to its urban environment, but with a slightly cloistered sense of detachment once you are inside.
The Obamas chose a site in Chicago’s Jackson Park, near the University of Chicago, on land that was used in 1893 to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, a giant world’s fair that did not allow African Americans to mount exhibitions or celebrate their contribution to American life. A center honoring the nation’s first Black president will open close to where one of architectural marvels of the 19th century once stood, the expo’s “White City” of gleaming classical pavilions that celebrated America’s ambition to be a global power.
You’ll have to look at the photos yourself, but it looks okay, though the lettering on the outside of the building is hard to read. The building itself is pretty nice, architecturally, and when if opens to the public, and after the dust has settled, I’ll wander over for a visit. But really, Presidential libraries are passé, and this is just a variant of one. (All Presidential documents can be scanned and put online.) I cannot imagine what kind of architectural monstrosity Trump will demand, but you can be sure he’ll want a big one. I do think that Chicago should not have given land to the center between Lake Shore Drive and the Lake, as that land is supposed to remain pristine, and some greenery and the basketball courts (!) won’t for me replace the land that was there. There were many protests over the Obama Center’s location, with a lot of these coming from inconvenienced black residents of the South Side, but of course it was a fait accompli from the beginning. The lakeshore, a glory of the city, is being nibbled away.
here’s been a theft at the British Museum. Unlike the jewel heist at the Louvre last year, the story has not appeared on the covers of most Western newspapers. Its operation won’t be recreated in sensational detail on the daily news. And no one will be arrested. In fact, no one will ever be caught—though the silent alarm has been sounding for years. And that’s because the object of the theft wasn’t a painting or the Crown Jewels, but the history of an entire people. And the co-conspirators include an ever-increasing share of “elite” Western institutions.
Last week, the British Museum postponed a lecture that Paul Collins, keeper of the museum’s Department of the Middle East, was scheduled to deliver on the histories of ancient Israel and Judea. The ostensible reason for the postponement was the discovery that some 25 of those who had signed up for the lecture, which was planned for Jewish Culture Month, intended to disrupt the event. That seems like an odd reason to postpone a presentation about historical artifacts at a museum dedicated to preserving and illuminating the past.
Prominent research institutions—museums no less than universities—shouldn’t be in the habit of postponing or canceling events simply because a few miscreants might break the rules. We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.
More fundamentally, the postponement gives those who threaten violence a curatorial role in the very institution whose history, methods, and purposes they reject. The British Museum declares its commitment to “all fields of human knowledge.” It describes its role as encouraging “critical scrutiny of all assumptions” and “open debate.” That commitment is consistent with the traditional role museums have played in open societies. The first museum, the famous Mouseion of Alexandria (built around 280 BCE), was a center of philosophical debate and research—not merely (or even primarily) a repository of historical objects. Stifling speech—whether about controversial or long-settled topics—would seem like an odd way of fulfilling the museum’s core commitments.
Unfortunately, those commitments have already shown signs of crumbling. This past February, reports indicated that the British Museum anachronistically used the label Palestine in exhibits dedicated to periods that predate the first-century imposition of the name by the Roman empire. After a complaint filed by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) pointed these errors out, the museum corrected several panels—changing “Palestinian descent” to “Canaanite descent” on a panel in the Egyptian galleries. That fix unleashed a storm of controversy, inflamed by false reports that the British Museum had erased the term Palestine in response to Jewish lobbying, when the reality was that the museum had anachronistically used the name Palestine only because it had bought into the anti-Israel narrative. As UKFLI explained, the inaccurate use of Palestine had “the compounding effect of erasing the kingdoms of Israel and of Judea, which emerged from around 1,000 BC, and of reframing the origins of the Israelites and Jewish people as erroneously stemming from Palestine.”’
The British Museum did nothing to reclaim the historical high ground, insisting that “[w]e continue to use Palestine across a series of galleries, both contemporary and historic.” That response failed to identify the issue, which was not about using the term, but about using it accurately.
The author, Roy K. Altman contends that the Museum has deliberately downplayed the history of the Jewish people in the Middle East, and give examples. Here’s one below:
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. In all its many rooms and floors, covering thousands of years of human history—and featuring plenty of now-extinct peoples like the Etruscans (Room 71), the Lycians (Room 20), and the Anatolians (Room 54)—the British Museum doesn’t actually have a dedicated wing to the people who brought us monotheism, Jesus, and the Bible. There are, it’s true, individual items of ancient Jewish origin. They just aren’t displayed with descriptions that make clear the ancient and continuous connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Here’s a photograph I took of an absurd sign at the entrance to a room full of ancient Israelite artifacts:
Phoenician sign at the British Museum. (Courtesy of author)
That opening line should shock anyone who knows even a little bit of ancient Levantine history: “By the beginning of the first millennium BC,” the museum’s curators wrote, “the Israelites occupied most of Palestine.” But that’s a historical anachronism. There was no such thing as Palestine at the beginning of the first millennium BC. The Land of Israel wouldn’t be renamed “Palestine” until a thousand years later, after Rome crushed the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE, after which the Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea (Hebrew for land of the Jews) Palaestina for the Philistines—a Greek people who had invaded the area of modern-day Gaza in ancient times, who had gone extinct long before the Romans arrived, and who had absolutely nothing to do with Muslim Arabs, who wouldn’t exist for another 500 years. Palestine was thus a name Hadrian concocted to punish the Jews for their treachery and encourage the world to forget the Jews’ ancient connection to their homeland.. . . Last week, a widely admired federal judge told me that he’d read my book about ancient Israel. His only objection was that it felt as though I had spent 80 or 90 pages establishing that Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel—a proposition he compared to a lengthy chapter dedicated to the notion that two and two is four. “Who would believe this Jews-are-colonists-in-their-own-land garbage anyway?” he wondered. He evidently hadn’t spent much time in the British Museum.
There are more examples, but I have little doubt that the BM is indeed doing this, for Britain is full of Israel hatred, and museums can be considered part of academia. But read the piece for yourself (if you subscribe) and see if Altman’s thesis holds up.
*We’ve known for a while that some birds navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field, though we’re not sure where the detection of magnetism occurs; the beak, eye, or inner ear have been suggested. Now a new paper suggests that “Pigeons may be navigating with their livers.” The phenomenon of “homing pigeons” probably reflects this facility.
“The magnetic sense has been this mystery for almost 100 years,” said Martin Wikelski with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
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In a new study, Wikelski and other researchers decided to draw back the curtain on pigeons’ navigational secrets. They searched for magnetic clues in the birds’ organs and found a strong signal in an unexpected place: the liver.
Specialized immune cells in the pigeon’s liver break down red blood cells and store iron. When scientists temporarily stripped pigeons of those immune cells and let them fly, the birds “just couldn’t find their way,” said Christian Kurts with the University of Bonn in Germany. That suggested the iron-rich liver cells might play a role in their sense of direction.
The birds’ magnetic compasses only got scrambled on overcast days. That’s because they also use the sun as a navigational guide.
Scientists have previously wondered whether immune cells could be involved in magnetic sensing, but the new study published Thursday in the journal Science is the first to present a full-fledged theory.
“I would never have guessed it, but once it was explained to me, it makes sense,” said behavioral ecologist Albert Kao with the University of Massachusetts Boston, who had no role in the study.
AD
The immune cells are located near nerve fibers in the liver. That might be how they transmit their “magnetic sense” to the brain “and help the pigeons to navigate,” said study co-author Clivia Lisowski with the University of Bonn.
Well, we don’t know, but this is a clever study, though stripping immune cells from the liver might just mess them up in other ways. You can see the original Science paper here.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili asks an interesting question:
Hili: Why is there evolutionary psychology, but not evolutionary sociology yet?
Andrzej: Because the evolution of sociologists took a different path.
In Polish:
Hili: Dlaczego jest psychologia ewolucyjna, a nie ma jeszcze socjologii ewolucyjnej?
Ja: Bo ewolucja socjologów poszła inną ścieżką.
Masih is upset that the world is concerned almost exclusively with nuclear weapons and the Strait of Hormuz when they discuss the ceasefire; she wants the light shone on the oppressed Iranian people, murdered by the thousands by their own regime. Here’s part of her passionate speech at a meeting:
Here’s what the “pro-human rights” crowd won’t say: the UN is a joke. Guterres and his left and liberal fan club in America and Europe are the biggest embarrassment to democracy while Iranians are being slaughtered.
From Michael, who notes, “You mentioned the journalist RS a few days ago in a post about euthanasia. Her twitter feed is interesting. Here she critiques the new Canadian federal panel that has been formed to combat antisemitism. As she notes, the new panel has only one Jewish person. The others are progressive activists or Muslims (plus an Olympic speed skater). Only in Canada. . . .”
Carney has unveiled a new council to combat antisemitism in Canada. The lineup includes a former Liberal minister who is a Muslim, a DEI executive who is also Muslim, a progressive lawyer interested in social justice issues who represented pro-Palestinian encampment activists,… pic.twitter.com/bvfXhKyblv
One from my feed. Why do they give them ice cubes? Wouldn’t otters prefer fish or crabs?
At an aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes pic.twitter.com/isj4w8ENGk
Wait for it… This Peritrichia (Vaginicola?) extends out of its lorica (the ‘vase’) to use its cilia to feed. Then it snaps back in so quickly, blink and you’d miss it! #marineplankton 🦑 #protistsonsky
Last night on the NBC News (and also on the same station the night before) I heard a report on a new cancer drug touted as being almost miraculous. The drug was called daraxonrasib, was described as working by blocking a mutated promoter of tumor growth in people with metastatic pancreatic cancer—a notoriously fatal disease (the median survival period after diagnosis of this stage is about 3-6 months, and the five-year survival rate is 3.2%). But the news confused survival time with survival rate, saying something like “the drug doubles the survival rate. . . .from 6 months to 13.2 months”. (I may have gotten the figures wrong as I’m working from memory.) I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months.
Sure enough, this mistake, expressing the effects as a doubling of survival rate, was not only misleading, but widespread. It’s easy to find similar errors in the press; just google the drug name and “survival rate”:
From CBS News (click all screenshots to read):
An excerpt (all excerpts are indented). I’ve put the confusing bits in bold:
A new, experimental medication nearly doubled overall survival rates for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to the results of a study published Sunday.
Researchers say the findings are a significant marker of progress toward treating a notoriously deadly type of cancer, for which there have historically been limited effective options for therapies.
The drug is called daraxonrasib and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases — a target that had eluded treatment for decades.
“While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study.
The research team found that taking the medication, as a daily pill, reduced the risk of death by 60% for patients with metastatic, or spreading, pancreatic cancer who had previously received treatment. That was compared with survival rates of patients receiving standard chemotherapy, according to UCLA Health.
It randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic cancer had quit responding to prior treatment. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.
Those taking daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.
Note that while CBS says that it reduces the risk of death by 60%, there are NO DATA showing that. The risk of death is again nearly 100%, though survival time increases by a bit more than two. Also, “survival rates” have not been doubled. There are no data on that, at least not in the article.
From USA Today:
Excerpt:
An experimental drug nearly doubled the overall survival rates of pancreatic cancer patients, according to the results of its latest clinical trial.
The drug, daraxonrasib, targets the gene mutation behind most pancreatic cancer diagnoses.
It’s easy to find similar conflations. This one, less excusable because of the venue, is from The Clinical Trial Vanguard:
They give the results correctly but characterize them as showing “death risk”:
A 60% reduction in the risk of death—HR 0.40—in previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer is not a number the oncology community has seen before, in any phase 3 trial, in any line of therapy. That is the threshold RASolute 302 crossed. Revolution Medicines enrolled 500 patients, randomized them between once-daily oral daraxonrasib and investigator’s choice of standard cytotoxic chemotherapy, and watched median overall survival reach 13.2 months on the experimental arm versus 6.6 months on chemotherapy in the RAS G12 mutant population. Doubling median OS in second-line pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a disease where incremental gains have defined ambition for decades, reframes what the endpoint space for this indication even looks like.
Nope; the chance of dying within a year or two remains about the same, I’d guess.
. . . and a post from someone on Facebook (I won’t give a name), touting a “60% reduction in the risk of death”. That’s wrong: the risk of death is probably still about 100%
The BBC gets it right, however:
This is correct:
A pill has been found to almost double the survival time for advanced pancreatic cancer patients, with experts describing the trial as a game changer.
The drug, called daraxonrasib, appears to be a breakthrough in managing a disease that has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers.
It helps prevent the spread of cancer by locking onto and shutting off the mutated KRAS gene, which is in more than 90% of pancreatic tumours and spurs cancer growth.
The trial, which included 500 patients in North America, Europe, and Asia, found the average survival time for patients on chemotherapy was 6.6 months, compared with 13.2 months for patients on daraxonrasib. It also caused fewer side-effects.
One other point: if “death risk” is meant to say “death risk over the course of the study,” then that might be accurate. But then the journalists must clarify it.
There are two points to be made, and they’re obvious. First, more than a few science/medicine journalists, including some writing on medical websites, don’t understand statistics, mistaking “rate” for “time”. I asked a science-friendly doctor if this mistake is common, and he replied, “All the time. Sometimes, I’m not sure it’s an unintentional mistake.”
Which leads us to the second point: this kind of conflation could provide false hope for cancer patients and their families. Knowing that you will live, on average, 6½ months longer if you take the new drug is a very different thing from knowing that you will still die with near certainty. It’s easy for one to think—and this is what I thought when I heard the teaser on television—that the drug will reduce the chance of dying by half. Seriously, journalists, please brush up on your statistics, for this one is not rocket science!
Do send in your photos if you have good one; we are missing many regulars, though I won’t drop names.
But today we have some plant photos by Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions and IDs are indented, and, as always, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
Here are some pictures of a mushroom that isn’t conventionally attractive, but is interesting nonetheless. This Hairy Hexagonia ( Hexagoia hydnoides) has been growing on the stump of a Hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis) in my front yard for some time now.
This mushroom has no stem and hardens over time. I tapped on it, and it appears to have the density of balsa wood. The underside has striped bands and you can see the small cylindrical spores.
Before it hardened, the mushroom was soft enough for blades of grass to grow through, and poke out the top:
The cap is convex and in addition to being banded like the underside, is covered with small hairs:
This closeup makes the hairs look wet, but they are dry and brittle:
Another closeup gives the impression of a hilly, arid landscape:
The impulse to anthropomorphize must really run deep, because when I look at this picture of two Hairy Hexagonia caps touching I think of courtship and a gentle reaching out!:
I use the app Seek by iNaturalist to identify species, and the next mushroom shows the limits of relying on that app. These popped up on the ground next to the Hairy Hexagonia during a rainy spell. Unlike the Hexagonia, they lasted only a few days. iNaturalist consistently gave me two different answers depending on the vantage point I used when talking pictures. The choices it gave me were Pale Brittlestem (Candolleomyces candolleanus) and Coprinopsis strossmayer, for which I could find only the Latin name, but no common name. Of the two, I’d pick Pale Brittlestem because an image search shows mushrooms that look more like the ones I saw, but it serves a reminder that any identification made thru an app is provisional.
Anyway, I thought the gills on these two looked cool, so I accentuated them a little:
Welcome to the cruelest day: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 and National I Love My Dentist Day. Although I don’t love my dentist, he is honest, cautious, won’t do work that’s not needed, friendly, and loves to travel. He’s a pro, and is the official dentist of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. They have a clinic in the arena, and he has to attend every home game to repair any teeth that get broken, which is not infrequent. I asked him what could be done to prevent the frequent loss of teeth in hockey players, and he said it was easy: just make players wear plastic shields in front of their faces like the goalie does. I asked him why they don’t, and he responded that it was sort of a macho thing. Oy vey!
It’s also National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day, and National Rotisserie Chicken Day. The best deal for the latter is Costco, where the chickens are hot, big (about four pounds), cheap ($4.99 for years), and fresh (they’re taken off the spit and used for other dishes if they’re not sold within two hours). I always get one when I go to Costco. They are loss leaders: the store loses money on every chicken sold. I can make at least four meals out of one.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 2 Wikipedia page.
Iran launched two ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait early Monday local time, the U.S. military said, further rattling the already shaky cease-fire in the Middle East.
Both missiles were intercepted and no American personnel were harmed, the U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said in a statement on social media. The episode followed days of low-level skirmishes between Iran and the United States that have raised fears of escalation, and have strained negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran that began in late February.
The U.S. military said late Sunday that it had attacked radar and command sites in southern Iran over the weekend, in retaliation for Iran shooting down an American drone over international waters. Less than an hour later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on state media that its forces had targeted a military base from which a U.S. attack on a communications facility had originated.
While President Trump has claimed that the United States has obliterated Iran’s military capabilities, U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that Iran still has significant stockpiles of missiles and overall military power.
Talks to lift Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and gas shipments, and end the war have advanced in fits and bursts. Last week, officials familiar with the negotiations said that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had agreed on a document that had been sent to the two countries’ leaders for approval.
It is unclear whether Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader believed to be in hiding, responded to the proposal. But Mr. Trump has pushed to toughen the terms of the deal, sending a revised document to Iran, according to three officials who spoke anonymously because they could not discuss the matter publicly.
Drones are one thing, missiles another—and more serious. I suspect that Mojtaba Khamenei is dead (or in a coma) as he’s not made any videos or statements since he was injured. That means we’re dealing with IRGC hard-liners. I represent myself, not American as a whole, so though America is pushing Trump to end the war, I want him to do so in terms that let Iran know that it’s definitely lost, that they open the Strait of Hormuz without tolls or oversight, that they will enrich no uranium above levels needed for peaceful purposes, and that the U.S. bombs Kharg Island if Iran keeps trying to win.
Oh, and the fighting continues in Lebanon, though Netanyahu appears to have backed off his threat to strike Hezbollah in Beirut. This comes after Trump told Israel to back off and the UN security Council asked Israel to withdraw from southern Beirut.
*Over at the Free Press, Mitchell Robson tells us “What the spelling bee taught me about excellence.” (He participated in the Bee, and says it “may be the purest meritocracy America has left.”
This year’s competition, which featured nine finalists, was hosted by ESPN’s Mina Kimes, fresh off her recent Celebrity Jeopardy! victory. The winner of the night was California eighth-grader Shrey Parikh, who aced 18 rounds of regular spelling before shocking the crowd in the last lightning round by correctly spelling 32 words—including chikungunya and bromocriptine—in 90 seconds.
The lightning round, as well as Kimes’ role as host, are new additions to the spelling bee this year, made in an effort to boost viewership after years of declining audience numbers. It’s unclear if it worked—viewership last year was less than half of its 2012 peak of 1 million, and this year’s numbers haven’t been published—but those who did watch Parikh storm through the final round would find it hard to disagree with sports writer Rodger Sherman, who called it the “new greatest athletic accomplishment of 2026.” (Even if Bee purists, myself included, are critical of the newfangled lightning round.)
. . .Anyone who reaches the upper levels of competitive spelling knows that brute-force memorization of words is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient for success. Elite spellers must develop an understanding of roots, linguistics, and spelling conventions across dozens of languages of origin. Often, those patterns become the only lifeline available when confronting an unfamiliar word.
And that skill is just as vital—if not more so—in daily life as it has ever been.
. . .During this year’s finals, audience members gasped when Shrey correctly spelled the Welsh-derived word hwyl, pronounced “HOO-il.” But the spelling follows a recognizable linguistic pattern: In Welsh-derived words, the oo sound is frequently represented by the letter w. Once one knows that convention, hwyl becomes far less mysterious.
Why does any of this matter? In particular, why does it matter for someone like me, who later majored in physics and quantum engineering?
First, knowing the building blocks of language is relevant to every single field. In my college physics lectures, for example, the word bremsstrahlung might have sounded to others like an errant sneeze; I immediately recognized it as a type of radiation. That said, nowadays, medical or scientific terminology—along with words in virtually any knowledge sphere—can be defined or translated with a quick online search. Does this mean there is no utility in learning them?
. . .spelling bees offer no circumvention of merit. There are no referees making subjective judgment calls. No participation trophies. No second chances or mulligans. And no AI assistance. There are no points for almost getting a word right. There is only the contestant, the word, and his knowledge of the dictionary.
In other words, the Scripps National Spelling Bee may be one of the purest meritocracies American society has left.
The unforgiving structure of the Bee may sound harsh, but I have come to appreciate it deeply, gaining something much more enduring than a repository of obscure vocabulary and spelling skills. The Bee rewards preparation, composure, resilience, and intellectual curiosity in perhaps their most distilled forms. Because I maintain close friendships with some fellow competitors, I can speak for many of them by saying that these skills have proven endlessly valuable throughout the rest of our lives: in high school, college classes, and our now fledgling careers. Shrey Parikh, and the students who competed alongside him, will soon learn the same.
As the world tackles the academic, workforce, and societal changes brought on by artificial intelligence—as well as the generalized suppression of meritocracy—it is all the more critical to cling to arenas in which work ethic and curiosity remain foundational. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is one of those arenas. It teaches that meaningful achievement is forged not in moments of public recognition, but in long, mundane hours spent in silence and without applause, pursuing knowledge, rigor, and excellence.
I have mentioned this before, but if you look at this year’s contestants, or a list of past winners, you’ll see that since 2000 it’s been dominated by East Asians and East Asian Americans. I strongly suspect this reflects a cultural emphasis on diligence and study and not any genetic propensity for accurate spelling.
The White House memorandum describing President Trump’s recent physical examination lacks details of the results of tests to assess his cardiovascular health, according to physicians who read the report.
That is one of several areas of the report that doctors said stood out for its lack of specificity. Trump spent about three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday, where he underwent a battery of tests as part of his annual medical examination.
The president’s physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, wrote in a memorandum released late Friday that Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”
Barbabella’s description of Trump’s cardiac health cites results from a coronary CT angiography, typically done to check for narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart; an echocardiogram, which makes an image of the heart using sound waves; and an artificial-intelligence-enhanced electrocardiogram analysis. He said the AI analysis estimated the president’s cardiac age at 14 years younger than his actual age of 79.
Yet the White House memo didn’t include crucial information typically yielded from such tests that would provide evidence for Barbabella’s finding that Trump’s cardiac function is normal. Barbabella also said an ultrasound of the carotid arteries showed normal results without providing specific metrics.
“If I was creating a report to send to another physician, I would have mentioned a little bit more about the carotid ultrasound,” said Dr. William Shutze, a Texas vascular surgeon. “What amount of plaque there is going to be—because almost all of us are going to have some buildup there.”
To fully assess the president’s cardiac health, other doctors said they would want to see a calcium score, a description of any plaque in the arteries, and a CAD-RADS score to assess narrowing in the arteries. The report simply stated there is “no arterial obstruction or structural abnormalities” in the heart or major blood vessels, which could simply mean there isn’t a blockage, physicians said.
Additional detail from the echocardiogram, such as the ejection fraction—the percentage of blood pumped with each heart contraction—would also provide a fuller picture of the president’s health. Trump’s 2018 report did include a measurement of his ejection fraction.
. . .The report lacked detail in other key areas where Trump is known to have had health problems. He went to Walter Reed three times last year, including a trip to address the swelling of his lower legs, which his doctor diagnosed as chronic venous insufficiency. It is a common condition in older patients where one-way valves inside the veins don’t work properly.
Trump’s most recent report describes that he has “slight lower leg swelling” and notes “improvement from last year” when the chronic venous insufficiency was diagnosed. The report gives no reason for the improvement. Trump told The Wall Street Journal several months ago that he balked at wearing compression stockings—a typical treatment. Doctors said it is unusual for the condition to improve without treatment.
Lordy, isn’t that enough information? Does the public deserve a complete account of his health? Is nothing private? The WSJ also quotes a doctor saying that his cholesterol numbers were good–too good!: “The report said Trump takes rosuvastatin and ezetimibe for cholesterol control. ‘He’s got like the best cholesterol numbers you’ll see,’ said Dr. Daniel Torrent, a Georgia vascular surgeon, who added that it is unusual for medication to achieve such favorable numbers. ‘We don’t usually manage people to the point where they’re that good’.” Doesn’t that imply that the doctor is releasing false information? In my view, what has been reported is sufficient to show that the man has no major medical problems or signs of dementia.
A shareholder of The New York Times is demanding a full inspection of The New York Times’ Board and Audit Committee records, giving the outlet five days to respond or face court.
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a beneficial shareholder of the NYT Company, is requesting an inspection of certain books and records following the controversial May 11, 2026, Nicholas Kristof column, titled “The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians.”
The Kristof article claimed to report widespread sexual violence by Israeli prison guards against Palestinian prisoners, including the allegation that Israeli prison guards trained dogs to commit rape. Following publication, the Israeli government announced its intention to pursue a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and Kristof.
The purpose of the demand is also to determine whether these programs were followed or bypassed with respect to the Kristof article.For example, following the publication, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was named as an on-the-record source, said that his statements were misrepresented.
“When a columnist’s own quoted source publicly accuses the columnist of misrepresentation after publication, that is not a detail the company can wave away by noting the editors found no errors,” NJAC said.
It is worth noting that NJAC is not seeking reporter notes, unpublished drafts, confidential source identities, or attorney work. It is also not asking the NYT to justify its viewpoint (this is protected by the First Amendment). It is instead seeking to investigate possible corporate mismanagement, inadequate oversight, and incomplete public discourse.“The NYT said their biggest asset is trust. You can’t tell shareholders [that] credibility is your core asset and then hide records about your processes. We are just asking the board whether it did its job,” Mark Goldfeder, CEO of NJAC, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.In its most recent annual Form 10-K filing for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), The New York Times Company said, “Our brand and reputation are key assets; negative perceptions or publicity could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”
Note that this is not a request for the paper or Kristof to provide corrections, but to see if the paper is doing its fiduciary duty to shareholders, which is why a shareholder has standing to make such a demand. I’m curious to see what the NYT will do about this given that it’s stood firm on Kristof’s investigation that produced his controversial column. This will come to nothing as any shareholder could demand the same thing about any story they don’t like.
*Here’s a video from FB showing the nine times that Palestinians were offered a state, and refused. As anybody with two neurons to rub together knows, the Palestinians want only their own state and no Jewish state—i.e., the exterrmination of Israel.
And a chart put on FB by Andrzej. Both of these are presented without comment:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s having a chinwag with the gardener:
Andrzej: What are you guys talking about? Hili: About mowing the lawn, gnats, and music.
In Polish:
Ja: O czym rozmawiacie?
Hili: O koszeniu trawy, meszkach i muzyce.
*******************
Another gem of medieval letter interpretation from TherionArms:
Some reader whose name I’ve forgotten has put my face into Edvard Munch’s “The Scream“:
Reposted by Masih. First, the translation from Farsi:
#Masoud Piahoh, a citizen who had posted this video as a story from the peaceful protest of a Deymah protester in front of Aladdin Passage and face-to-face with the special unit, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
#مسعود_پیاهو، شهروندی که این ویدیو را از اعتراض مسالمتآمیز یک معترض دی ماه جلوی پاساژ علاالدین و رو در روی یگان ویژه، استوری کرده بود، به ۱۰ سال حبس محکوم شده pic.twitter.com/g9gv1a2zLD
— Maryam Moqaddam مریم مقدم (@MaryamMoqaddam) May 31, 2026
From Luana; you can read more about this here. The name is Sam BRINTON, and according to Wikipedia Sam was “the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy from June to December 2022,” but dismissed from that post after luggage thefts.
Sam Britton’s luggage theft is still one of the weirdest & funniest political scandals of the last five years. I still chuckle at the thought of a Tanzanian lady recognizing her own handmade dress being worn by Sam.
The organisers are pleased to announce the following additions to the bill:
– The Crazy Frog
– The kid who mowed Trump’s lawn
– The KKK singers
– An Ed Sheeran lookalike
– Pete Hegseth playing the spoons https://t.co/vCZezk7K5d
And two from Dr. Cobb. He also gave the answer: “The answer in the linked tweet is from the Arxiv article – 10^8 bananas needed to power a 1000kg probe to 10% of light speed…
Fabulous. Using the antimatter in bananas (yes!) to power an interstellar craft. How many bananas would you need?
This deep sea creature is as sharp & clear as broken class, & can grow as long as your hand. This giant amphipod, (Cystisoma) only has two colored body parts: the dense orange stomach/egg pouch, & two MASSIVE eyes, which are a glittering holographic orange layer completely covering its head.📽️ MBARI
There’s a dearth of news, or should I say there’s a dearth of news that I want to write about: the interesting news is relevated to the morning Hili post. But since it’s June 1, which marks for me the Day to Begin Wearing Hawaiian shirts, I present my garb for today. I have about 50 Hawaiian shirts, acquired when I went through an aloha-shirt phase, but I wear them only in appropriat weather. This one is semi-authentic, as it’s not old but has coconut buttons and a pocket matched with the shirt’s pattern—two features of an authentic Hawaiian shirt. (The real old ones from decades ago are made of rayon, not cotton. I got it from a now-defunct outfit that had gorgeous Hawaiian shirts: “Paradise on a Hanger” (great name). Sadly, it is not longer in business, but i have enough shirts.
This one has a lovely green-and-orange fish pattern. I wish that mainland Americans would take up this habit, for you see them all over the islands of Hawaii, especially on “aloha Fridays.” It counts as “business casual” garb, too. You can hardly be unhappy when all around you are colorful shirts.
And Matthew sent this short YouTube video about a new puggle (the name for a baby platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus) from ZoosVictoria, which really does seem to be interested in conservation. Note that the incubation for the egg is just ten days, but it’s four months until it emerges from the den. It’s okay to hold females, but remember that males have poison spurs on their hind legs, which can inflict a painful and slow-healing wound.
