Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I have a passel of new duckling photos and videos that I’ll post soon. In the meantime, I wanted to show how much the “babies” have grown. The first picture of Miss Duck’s brood was taken on the second day after hatching, July 20. You’ve seen this before:
And here they are in a similar pose a week ago (Sept. 6). They’re even bigger than than this now, and their wings and flight feathers have grown. I think they’ll be flying in some way within ten days.
And no, Miss Duck has not shown up after she abandoned her babies. We’ve rescinded her award of Best Duck Mother of All Time, though the orphan babies are doing very well.
You may have heard that the British government has announced sanctions against Israeli individuals and settlements in Israel’s West Bank—punishing individuals and companies doing business from what is apparently Area C of the West Bank as stipulated by the Oslo II accords. While areas A and B are under Palestinian authority and jurisdiction, and Jews cannot live there, Area C is under Israeli military control. Both Jews and Palestinians live there in roughly equal numbers, but the Jews, many of whom moved in after the area was won by Israel in the 1967 war, are all referred to as “settlers”. As for their status, Wikipedia says this:
In 2023, Area C was home to 491,548 Israeli settlers and 354,000 Palestinians. The Jewish population in Area C is administered by the Israeli Judea and Samaria Area administration, into which Israeli law is “pipelined”, whereas the Palestinian population is directly administered by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and is under military law. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for medical and educational services to Palestinians in Area C; however, infrastructure construction and supervision is done by Israel.
The status of the Jewish population in area C (the Jews of the West Bank) is disputed. While the status of this area was supposed to be resolved by negotiations between Palestine and Israel after Oslo II, those negotiations never took place. Much of the world regards the Jews in area C of being illegal settler-colonialists under the fourth Geneva Convention, but international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff argues in the videos below that Jewish residence in Area C does not violate international law, nor does it constitute, as the UK has just maintained, “ethnic cleansing.”
That said, there’s no doubt that some Israelis in the area are violating civil law by attacking and harassing Palestinians. As I’ve said before, that kind of behavior is reprehensible and should be punished. But I am unwilling to call for the wholesale removal of Jews from area C, nor for sanctioning them as the British government (and other countries) called for this week. Their fate depends on what negotiations will take place in the future to effect a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
But the British government under Labour (yes, the party renowned for antisemitism) has just declared not only that they’ll impose sanctions on West Bank Jewish companies, but that this is necessary to effect the ONLY and most urgent way to stop the enmity between Israel and Palestine: the “two-state solution.” First, from the NYT:
Britain, Canada and France on Tuesday announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a symbolic step by three once-staunch allies illustrating Israel’s deepening isolation after the devastating war in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank. [JAC: I now believe that eight more countries have signed on to these sanctions.)
. . .Britain’s package of measures was announced on Tuesday in Parliament by Ed Miliband, who became foreign secretary in July. It represents the clearest shift in British foreign policy since Andy Burnham became prime minister that month.
“Today marks the beginning of a new approach,” Mr. Miliband told lawmakers. He said that the British government “agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank — perpetrated by settler terrorists.” All too often, he added, “the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse.”
In a speech with an often deeply personal tone, Mr. Miliband said that he had made his announcement as a “proud British Jew” who was “unwavering” in his support for the state of Israel. He added, however, that Britain had concluded that the occupation was unlawful in line with a ruling by the International Court of Justice.
“So I can announce today that we will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories,” he said, adding that the measures would also cover those who provide services to settlements, including “construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.”
You can read the full statement by Foreign Secretary Miliband to the House of Commons here. I’ll give a few extracts; note that the British government has recognized Palestine as a state, though no such state exists:
So Madame Deputy Speaker, there is a deeply painful contrast between our professed commitment to a two state solution, and the reality on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.
. . . We should always be proud that it was a Labour government that took the historic step of recognising the State of Palestine.
What we seek today is to salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians – the two state solution.
. . .Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.’
The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.
To advance the two state solution, we also need viable and effective Palestinian governance.
So I urge the Palestinian Authority to accelerate reform and I urge Israel to lift its withholding of revenues that is financially crippling the provision of essential services in the West Bank.
The set of measures I have announced represents a clear message to the government of Israel, to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and to the world that we will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two state solution.
I have news for Secretary Miliband: the two-state solution is already gone, extinct, singing in the Choir Invisible. The Palestinians do not want two states, nor did they ever, as they’ve rejected a two-state solution many, many times, often with stipulations favorable to Palestinians. What Palestinians want is a one-state solution, a state that will be set up to contain Jews and Palestinians, but of course would soon be Judenrein due to Jews fleeing or being exterminated.
Nor does Israel want a two-state solution. October 7 killed that desire. Israelis now realize that there was a two-state solution before 2023: Gaza—right next to Israel. That didn’t work out so well, and Israel’s security concerns about terrorism have gone sky-high. Hamas is still in control of much of Gaza, has not yet laid down its weapons, nor have Hamas or the Palestinian Authority renounced terrorism Both groups glorify martyrs, and the PA has its infamous “pay for slay” program, euphemistically named the “Martyr’s Fund”, in which Palestinians jailed or killed for attacking Jews get a monetary reward (it can go to their families). And there are no moderate, non-Jew-hating Palestinians waiting in the wings to assume peaceful governance of a Palestinian state. Certainly the Palestinian Authority is not a candidate!
Only a fool would think that Palestinian terrorism against Israel would cease if two states were created, but Miliband & Co., ignorant of history, say stuff like this:
And this is in our fundamental national interest because if there is one lesson of recent decades, it is that we will never have stability in the Middle East without a two state solution.
Is the man serious? Does he think that a version of BDS, banning goods made in area C (often by Palestinian workers who will lose their jobs), will bring on the two state solution?
If you read the whole Miliband statement, you’ll see he blames all the woes of Gaza, including its “humanitarian catastrophe” and deaths of civilians, not on Hamas but on Israel. He and the British government have swallowed whole the line of Hamas apologists like the UN.
Now the argument that these sanctions won’t achieve the UK’s aims stands by itself, but it’s interesting to see that both Hamas and Iran have praised Miliband’s statement and the upcoming UK law it portends.
This is from the Torygraph; click on the headline below, find it archived here, or see it in full on yahoo! news
The terrorist group said the Foreign Secretary’s use of the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the actions of settlers in the West Bank was a “step in the right direction”.
It called for the prosecution of Israel’s leadership for war crimes.
On Tuesday, Mr Miliband said the occupation of Palestinian territory was “unlawful” – a first for a British government minister – and accused Israel of trying to make the two-state solution unviable.
He told the Commons: “The British Government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this.”
Britain will sanction companies and individuals supporting the settlements with finance, infrastructure, property or construction services.
The UK will also refuse all export licences for weapons that “materially contribute to the occupation”, said Mr Miliband.
Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist group by Britain, carried out the October 7 2023 attacks on Israel, in which 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals died.
Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said: “The imposition of sanctions by Britain and other European countries and Canada on goods imported from the settlements of the occupied West Bank, and the London foreign minister’s use of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to describe the crimes of the settlers, are important steps in the right direction – but they are not enough.
“What is needed to achieve stability and peace in Palestine and beyond is the immediate implementation of the relevant international resolutions and the prosecution of war criminals in Israel in a manner similar to the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in Germany.”
Typical Hamas palaver, with not a word about the prosecution of Hamas for its real war crimes, including kidnapping hostages and indubitable targeting of civilians!
Iran has also joined the pro-Milibandwagon. From The Jewish Chronicle (click to read):
A quote (I’ve bolded one sentence):
Britain’s sanction targeting settlements in the West Bank have been greeted in Iranian state media as a step towards “the end of Israel”.
The announcement yesterday by foreign secretary Ed Miliband of a raft of measures has been broadcast repeatedly by Islamic Republic propaganda outlets.
Iranian broadcasters claimed years of activity by regime-backed “resistance groups” have succeeded in persuading the “naïve UK government” to take action against Israel.
The reports quote Miliband as branding the settlers as “terrorists” supported by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and accusing them of “committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank”.
Iran Radio accused the foreign secretary of “plagiarism”, saying credit for branding “Israeli occupiers” as terrorists should go to the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Now you might be saying, “Well, just because Hamas and Iran have approved the UK’s new policy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” True, but the UK’s policy is not going to bring on a two-state solution, no matter how many times Miliband says it, and Iran just said the quiet part out loud: these anti-Israel sanctions are indeed a step towards the end of Israel.
But it won’t bring on the end of Israel, as that country is determined to continue existing. As the Hebrew phrase goes: עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי (Am Yisrael Chai): “The people of Israel live.”
*********************
On the other side we have is eloquent Natasha Hausdorff, international lawyer and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel. At 4:45 in the video below, Hausdorff explains why she doesn’t see Jewish settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law, and why the Israelis are not committing “ethnic cleansing.” Indeed, she says, the illegal settlement in the Israeli-administered territory of Area C is being done by Palestinian Arabs, which she calls “an inversion of authority” and “projection.” The error people are making hinges on mistaking voluntary settlement of this area by Israelis with “state transfer” of Israeli populations.
I’ve rarely seen Hausdorff so exercised, but she’s clearly gobsmacked and peeved by what she sees as an anti-Jewish agenda by her own government, and an agenda based on lies. (You can see a longer explication of her views in this other video and there’s a new video with Hausdorff discussing what will happen to the firms, both Israeli and British, who will be subject to the UK boycott.)
Here’s a sign to the entrance of part of area A near Jerusalem; I took the photo a couple of years ago:
At the end of September I posted about the BBC’s refusal to use the word “terrorist” when referring to Hamas. They could use it when quoting other people, but you can’t call a terrorist a terrorist when it applies to Palestinians who kill civilians for political, ideological, or religious aims. This also applies to other media outlets, as you can see in Bill Maher’s latest “Real Time” segment below.
A reader sent me a link to the 9-minute comedy-and-news bit, which this week was more news than comedy. And the reader noted that this was one of “his best ever” and that it “should be required viewing for every incoming college freshman in America.” It is indeed, as Maher calls out the young generation for coddling terrorism, valorizing Luigi Mangione, and touting America as the worst country ever.
The moral confusion afflicting the young and the “progressives” is most pervasive when discussing Israel’s response to terrorism emanating from Gaza, which, Maher emphasizes, is NOT a genocide but a “counterattack in a war. . . that’s been waged by Israel since 1948”. And he quotes a poll saying that 20% of Gen Z members have a “positive view of Osama bin Laden.” Seriously?
The genocide canard is the most infuriating lie told by progressives, even though it’s easily dispelled by citing the many things Israel did to protect Palestinian civilians from harm during its counterattack. But that doesn’t matter; the chuckleheads waving the “genocide” banner ignore both vocabulary and history, so eager are they to smear Israel. (You never hear them accusing Hamas of genocide.) As Maher says, that Big Lie is not only wrong, but also promotes antisemitism:
“Gaza equals genocide is a lie—an easily provable lie. And the fact that so many prominent Democrats get along with it is to me, the party’s worst moment since they ended Reconstruction after the Civil War.”
“This is where antisemitism is coming from. . . because if you really think someone is committing genocide, of course you have full permission to hate them. And history shows, for whatever reason, when it comes to hating the Jews, people don’t need a lot of permission.”
The guest whose faces and applause appear in this segment are Max Brooks, an author, actor, and historian, and Sarah Longwell:. a conservative publisher and political strategist.
I should add that I tweeted this segment yesterday, and the antisemites came out in droves. It’s scary, but also evidence that Jew hatred is more pervasive than we—or at least I—know. Have a look at the comments on this tweet (click on it):
Sometimes I feel that these people wouldn’t be happy unless either Israel never fought back against terrorism, or in fact disappeared from the face of the Earth.
Welcome to Sunday, September 13, 2026; it’s the last day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which ends at sunset.
It’s also National Peanut Day, celebrating a legume best eaten in two forms: peanut butter and as boiled green peanuts. It’s nearly impossible to get the latter anywhere besides roadside stands in the South, but if you see a sign like the one below, stop immediately and buy some. They taste nothing like regular peanuts, but are terrific. This was taken (and peanuts consumed) on a seminar trip I gave in early 2013. That was the trip when I had to have a bodyguard (packing heat) when I lectured on evolution at the Augusta Public Library. Sure enough, two people (unarmed) charged the stage. I was talking only about evolution!
Here’s a pastrami sandwich from the famous and overtouristed Katz’s Deli in NYC. It’s expensive and crowded, but their pastrami is excellent, and you get plenty of pickles. (Katz’s is of course the site of the famous “fake orgasm” scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally”. The woman who says to the waiter afterwards, “I’ll have what she’s having,” is Estelle Reiner, the mother of director Rob Reiner.
Notice the half sours dominating the pickles, as well as the Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray (celery-flavored soda), the must-have accompaniment to corned beef or pastrami.
If you haven’t read my essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Jason Arday and the corruption of science”, it’s no longer paywalled and you can read it on the Chronicle’s Substack here for free.
The Iranian-backed Houthi militia seized an island in a choke point of the Red Sea after days of fierce fighting, two Yemeni government officials said Friday, giving Iran and its allies sway over the two main routes for shipping oil out of the Middle East.
The capture of Perim Island came as Saudi Arabia announced that it had shut down a critical oil pipeline, a day after Houthi forces swept into the strategic port city of Mokha in Yemen. Both were major setbacks for the Saudi kingdom, which exports most of its oil through the Red Sea. The kingdom’s foreign ministry said the pipeline was hit on Thursday by drones launched from Iraq.
Perim Island sits in the middle of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow pathway at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Its seizure adds a new dimension in the war between the United States and Iran. The Islamic republic has already largely cut off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and leveraged that influence to demand concessions from Washington.
Now, the Houthi militia, Iran’s ally, has a foothold at a bottleneck in the Red Sea and could further disrupt shipping there.
The island’s capture came after intense ground battles in Yemen as the Houthis have staged a lightning advance against forces allied with the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has faced frequent Houthi attacks on its tankers and energy facilities, even as its leaders have tried to avoid a direct war with the group, analysts say.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia spoke to President Trump about the escalation in Yemen in calls this week, and urged the United States to take military action against the Houthis, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations. Mr. Trump told him he was not willing to do so, the officials said.
We don’t have the wherewithal to intitiate yet another war, but it would be nice if some of the allies helped, for, after all, they have to move their goods through the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Here from Wikipedia is a map showing Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, next to Cheikh Saïd peninsula of Yemen, with Djibouti and Eritrea to the west across the strait. A zoomed-out map is inset at the lower right. The distance from the island to Yemen is about 2-3 km, while that to the coast of Eritrea or Djibouti is about 26-30 km. Not much space.
Nearly 50,000 people have fled a sudden advance by Houthi forces in western Yemen, with entire villages emptied and families trapped near frontline fighting with depleting food supplies, according to aid workers.
Civilians in the Middle East’s poorest country have found themselves victims of a global struggle for control over one of the most important shipping routes in the world, which threatens to turn Yemen’s on-off conflict into a forever war.
In a lightning advance this week, the Iran-backed Houthi militants have seized a string of towns along the Red Sea coast from forces aligned with the US- and Saudi-backed Yemeni government. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. Many fear a return to the full-scale civil war that killed 150,000 and brought many others to the brink of famine.
The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday that 46,000 people had been displaced across the governates of Taiz and Hodeidah, where steep verdant mountain ridges give way to arid coastal plains. For many families, this was their second or even third time they had been forced out of their homes.
A significant number of people were observed to be leaving the city with their belongings. Fighting has cut key roads, while phone lines are down in some areas. “The scale of displacement is increasing rapidly,” said Joe Lowry, IOM’s Middle East and north Africa spokesperson in Cairo.
. . .By taking control of key areas this week, including islands off the coast, the anti-west Houthis hope to gain a direct presence near the Bab al-Mandab strait, a 20-mile stretch of water and vital trade and energy route that connects Asia with Europe.
The strait’s name is roughly translated as “the gate of tears” or “the gate of grief”, and its strong currents and winds made the passage between the Arabian peninsula and Africa’s east coast hazardous for centuries. Modern-day cargo ships have no physical issue passing through.
But if the Houthis were to close the natural chokepoint, the impact on the global economy could be disastrous. Ships would have to reroute around the southern tip of Africa, adding thousands of extra nautical miles. The fighting has already contributed to the price of oil rising above $100 a barrel after weeks when it was trading closer to $80.
More bad news, but we can’t let terrorists control the flow of shipping in the Middle East.
Before Iran carried out its attack that killed three U.S. troops in July, Tehran acquired high-resolution satellite images of the base in Jordan from Chinese entities, according to U.S. officials familiar with details of the incident.
It is the clearest evidence so far that Chinese support for Iran during the war has had lethal consequences for U.S. forces, according to the officials, who say the U.S. has connected the imagery to the attack.
The U.S. officials declined to identify the Chinese entities that supplied the imagery to Iran and didn’t allege direct involvement by Beijing. Tehran procured the images both before and after the attack.
But the finding could deepen U.S.-China tensions ahead of the planned summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sept. 24, after months of frustration with Beijing’s rejection of U.S. warnings about Chinese companies providing imagery to Iran.
Senior U.S. officials raised the imagery linked to the July 17 attack with their Chinese counterparts, who pushed back and demanded proof, the U.S. officials said. China has repeatedly dismissed Washington’s concerns, refusing to acknowledge that any Chinese companies are engaged in such activity, the officials said.
The strikes on the base came after senior Trump officials spent months warning their Chinese counterparts that Chinese companies were providing satellite imagery Iran could use to target U.S. personnel and assets in the region, officials say. The Trump administration sanctioned several Chinese companies in May, saying that supplying satellite imagery to Iran “threatens American and partner personnel.”
Within three days of the July attack, Iran released high-resolution images showing damage to three separate areas of the base. Publicly available lower-resolution satellite imagery analyzed by The Wall Street Journal showed damage to more than 20 structures across the three areas of the base.
Here are the images, with translation from the Farsi below:
New images of Iran’s damages to #America‘s assets in the region
Well if this doesn’t involve the government of China, I’d be very surprised. Do NGOs in China have spy satellites, and sold the photos to the Iranians? Even if they did they’d need permission of the Chinese government.
*Douglas Murray, now a correspondent for the Free Press, analyzes the victory of the “far right” Alternative for Germany (“AfD”) party in one small state. His article is called “Who’s afraid of the ‘far right?“, with the subtitle, “German leaders enabled the rise of a populist party through their failures. Now those leaders cling to power by branding their challengers as extreme.” As I suspected, the MSM has played down the role of immigration in Europe’s move to the right.
For people concerned with the future of Europe, the AfD is a vital as well as a special case. As such, it requires special attention. Unfortunately, most of the people writing about the party from outside Germany are intent on performing this feat of political analysis with all the care of a brain surgeon attempting to operate while wearing boxing gloves.
To start with, it is not the case that the AfD is a far-right party. Which is not to say that it does not have people within it who could be described as far right, or that it could not become such a party in the future.
There is a simple explanation for why the AfD has risen to become the leading opposition party in Germany: mass immigration, legal and illegal. But it took years for that issue to dominate. When the AfD was founded in 2013, it was mainly focused on addressing the fallout from the Eurozone crisis. The new party rejected the European Union’s extraordinarily optimistic belief that a single European currency could combine Greek balance sheets with German bookkeeping.
But in 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the gates of Europe and Germany to anyone from North Africa or the Middle East who wanted to walk in and call it home, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war. Normal border protocols were abandoned. More than a million migrants arrived in a matter of months. Germany, and in particular its welfare state, was overwhelmed by the surge and attempted, too late, to stem it. The vast majority of the arrivals from those years remain a net drain on the German state. In addition to this economic reality, a small but significant number of arrivals have brought extremism, terrorism, and petty as well as large-scale criminality. It might also be noted that the movement has brought a mass importation of antisemitism into a country that did not exactly need a boost in this area.
Given the extraordinary consensus that existed over the past decade among the mainstream parties of the right, center, and left, it was inevitable that some political movement would arise in Germany to point out and oppose the folly of Merkel’s policy. The AfD was well-placed to do so, and, in time, the economists who had dominated the party in its early years were replaced by people who believed that immigration was the number one challenge facing Germany.
Their success in the years since 2015 has been remarkable
. . .But in 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the gates of Europe and Germany to anyone from North Africa or the Middle East who wanted to walk in and call it home, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war. Normal border protocols were abandoned. More than a million migrants arrived in a matter of months. Germany, and in particular its welfare state, was overwhelmed by the surge and attempted, too late, to stem it. The vast majority of the arrivals from those years remain a net drain on the German state. In addition to this economic reality, a small but significant number of arrivals have brought extremism, terrorism, and petty as well as large-scale criminality. It might also be noted that the movement has brought a mass importation of antisemitism into a country that did not exactly need a boost in this area.
Given the extraordinary consensus that existed over the past decade among the mainstream parties of the right, center, and left, it was inevitable that some political movement would arise in Germany to point out and oppose the folly of Merkel’s policy. The AfD was well-placed to do so, and, in time, the economists who had dominated the party in its early years were replaced by people who believed that immigration was the number one challenge facing Germany.
Their success in the years since 2015 has been remarkable.
. . . It is for these reasons, among others, that the foreign coverage of Germany’s political shifts is so unsatisfactory. In the aftermath of this weekend’s election, the easiest thing in the world is to say—as almost every headline writer has—that “the far-right AfD” won the regional election. The fact that these same publications, from the BBC to The New York Times, rarely, if ever, use the same scary monikers to describe far-left parties gaining support across the continent is a matter for another day. But the hope appears to be that the public will be sufficiently uninterested in the details and that the prospect of the Nazis returning will be enough to spook readers into reflexive opposition.
. . . If all opposition to the migration crisis can be said to be the work of German neo-Nazis, then Europe is lost. Because no party of opposition will be untainted. If Germany can be saved, then Europe can be saved. But in order for that to happen, people—including the international press—need to listen to what is actually happening in Germany, take notice, and recognize the situation as it is, not the strange Nazi-haunted fever dream that they curiously seem to wish it to be.
The problem of course is that the Western MSM, at least of the liberal stripe, is afraid of saying the I-word, much less recognizing the effect on people of mass immigration, often of people who simply don’t integrate into European society. Ergo the movement of nearly every country in Europe to the right. If people don’t wake up and at least recognize the problems, including the drain on local economies and the erosion of Western institutions and values, Europe as we know it will be gone when the next generation of children grows up.
*When I was a kid, I was allowed to walk to and from elementary school starting when I was about 9 years old, and that was a longish walk along major roads. I was also allowed, when I got home, to get on my bike and go visit friends. Those days are gone: such unsupervised activity by children is regarding as endangering them, even though the rate of such endangerment has dropped as the rules get toughter. In early June a mother in Williamsburg, Virginia let her five-year-old walk alone a half mile to a pond in their gated and security-patrolled community in Virginia; his goal was to collect goose feathers. She was summarily arrested, charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor (!), and given a six-month suspended jail sentence. This is the subject of a WaPo op-ed called, “A 5-year-old’s nighborhood walk shouldn’t be a crime” (article archived here).
While everyone wants kids to grow up healthy and happy, people have different ideas about how to achieve that. Until the past generation or so, a sunny upbringing usually included a fair amount of free, unsupervised time. One book I cherish from 1981, “Your Six-Year-Old: Loving and Defiant,” provides a checklist of the things a neurotypical child was expected to be able to do upon entering first grade. “Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly?” and “Can he tell left hand from right?” Perhaps the most salient query: “Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?”
Compare that with a survey released this year by the Institute for Family Studies, which asked nearly 24,000 parents at what age they’d let their kids do things on their own. Eleven percent of 14-year-olds aren’t able to leave the house unsupervised. Fifty-five percent can’t go beyond their block. In other words, today’s high school freshmen have a fraction of the freedom that used to be given to first-graders. It’s little wonder they’re so anxious.
This new, limited idea of what kids are capable of explains why a 5-year-old walking around his neighborhood at lunchtime can look like a baby crawling along I-95 at midnight. Thanks to Karyann’s transgression — trusting her son — she was placed on Virginia’s child abuse and neglect registry for seven years. In court, she was found guilty of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” — a Class 1 misdemeanor — and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.
. . . over the years, parents started to contact me when they got penalized for giving their kids the same freedom they’d grown up with. That included Brittany Patterson of Fannin County, Georgia, who was arrested when her son, 10, walked to town without telling her. Mallerie Shirley received similar treatment when she was investigated after her son, 6, rode his scooter unsupervised in Atlanta. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were likewise investigated for letting their kids, 6 and 10, walk home from a park in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Those stories and others have thankfully given the public pause. They’ve helped move 13 states to pass “reasonable childhood independence” laws, which clarify that “neglect” happens only when kids are put in serious, obvious danger, not any time their parents take their eyes off them. Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) and Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Virginia) are seeking to enshrine that protection nationwide with their Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act.
When Karyann let her son collect feathers, she wasn’t ignoring danger. She was ignoring cultural norms that are keeping kids indoors, and parents in fear. For the sake of our families and our collective mental health: Let kids roam.
Let the kids roam!!!!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron isn’t going on the beat:
Hili: You were supposed to go on your rounds.
Szaron: I changed my mind, I’ll sit here with you for a while.
In Polish:
Hili: Miałeś iść na obchód.
Szaron: Rozmyśliłem się, posiedzą sobie tutaj razem z tobą.
And Bat sent this amazing image from the International Space Station showing the 9/11 attacks on New York City; it appeared on Space.com.
A quote:
Frank Culbertson had a birds-eye view of one of the most memorable and tragic events in American history.
The NASA astronaut was the only American off of Earth on Sept. 11, 2001. He was circling the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when terrorists flew commercial jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,700 people.
The ISS passed over New York shortly after the attacks took place, so Culbertson saw the devastation from an eerie remove. He shared his thoughts with Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in real time, chronicling the tragedy like no one else could.
The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trace Center in New York City, as seen by the astronauts onboard the International Space Station on Sept. 11, 2001. (Image credit: NASA)
“We could see New York City and the smoke from the fires,” Culbertson said. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there and everywhere else here — I’m looking up and down the East Coast to see if I can see anything else — and to the people in Washington.”
There’s more information at the site.
From Masih, who’s rightly pleased at the progress she’s inspired.
Translation from the Farsi:
There’s no greater pleasure than seeing your efforts bear fruit—watch closely, brave woman: you were alone and singular here, but now women like you have multiplied, because courage is contagious! From 2014 until today, I was cursed at and attacked for launching campaigns against compulsory veiling and calling on women to send videos of themselves unveiled. Thousands of women in Iran were attacked for removing their veils and engaging in civil disobedience. We faced mass assaults from all sides for “White Wednesdays,” for “Our Camera Is Our Weapon”—assaults from those who were the minority! They arrested us, beat us, threw us in prison, threatened us, sent assassins abroad to murder us, and said this resistance was pointless. But today, every woman who walks unveiled in the streets is a continuation of that same disobedience. This isn’t just about removing a piece of fabric; it’s about reclaiming control over a woman’s body, life, and dignity, and tearing down the wall of fear. Compulsory veiling may still be law on paper, but in the streets of Iran, women have been issuing its death sentence for years. We are the echo of each other’s voices, and we persist until the day of liberation. These videos are from the #دوربین_ما_اسلحه_ما [“our camera is our weapon”] campaign and are being reposted to humiliate the zealots who these days are rampant on Twitter and Instagram, railing against women’s free dress in Iran’s streets—so they can understand the rugged, winding path Iranian women have traveled, and that we never give an inch!
هیچ لذتی بالاتر از نتیجه دادن تلاشهایت نیست، خوب تماشا کن زن شجاع، اینجا یکه و تنها بودی ولی حالا زنانی مثل تو تکثیر شدند، چون شجاعت مسریه!
از سال ۲۰۱۴ تا امروز، من به خاطر راه اندازی کمپینهای ضد حجاب اجباری و دعوت از زنان برای ارسال ویدیوهای بیحجاب فحش خوردم ومورد حمله… pic.twitter.com/6T0GgLwkN6
From Luana; two tweets showing double-takes of people who learn that the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case was black (and male):
🚨 Stunning revelation: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin says the lone holdout who blocked an 11-1 insanity acquittal was the jury’s only Black member. The other 11 jurors were white.
A must-watch from Bill Maher. He dismantles the Gaza “genocide” canard in 9 minutes, holding it reponsible for the antisemitism sweeping the West—as well as the erosion through cowardice of the credibility of the Democratic party. https://t.co/W3j5Zc7IvQ
This is an educational and fun 53-minute episode on cats from NOVA, described by the series this way:
Worshipped as a goddess, condemned as satanic, and spun into a stunning array of breeds, cats have long fascinated humans. But did we ever really domesticate them? And what can science tell us about our most mysterious companions? (Premiered February 19, 2020)
Here are the various sections of the video; the links will take you to a given section. But it’s easier to watch the whole thing! It’s all about domestic cats, neglecting the other 40 living species of felid.
Chapters 00:00
Introduction 03:16
Why Are People Obsessed with Cats? 09:28 Why Aren’t Cats Expressive? 12:46
Can Cats Understand Our Emotions? 14:28
Domestic Cat Relative 18:13
Earliest Encounter Between Human and Cat 21:51
Cat Abilities 25:30
How Do Cats Differ from Their Wild Ancestors 28:30
Importance of Cats in Egypt 34:54
How Domestic Cats Spread Around the World 42:10
The Difference of Feral Cats 46:18
Can Cats Be Trained Like Dogs? 49:04
Breeding of Hybrid Cats 51:12 Conclusion 53 minutes
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For now I’m on a cat-grooming video kick, and here we have a very loud cat named Harley who doesn’t want to be groomed. One alert YouTube commenter noted that the cat meowed 101 times in this 5½-minute video. Sadly, he has to wear the Cone of Shame. However, the commentary is quite good.
Another commenter said this:
We just casually gloss over how this was without a doubt the single most well behaved cat she ever groomed. No swatting, no hissing, no running away, he stayed put IN THE BATH TUB. He can be as loud as he wants. That cat is any pet groomer’s dream.
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The Algonquin Hotel in New York City was famous for its daily “Round Table,” in which luminaries, wits, critics, and writers would forgather for lunch. The talk was copious and sharp; here’s the Wikipedia description:
The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of “The Vicious Circle”, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley.
In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations, both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.
The members (there’s a long list on the site) included Dorothy Parker (the most famous wit), George Kaufman, Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, and, from time to time, Tallulah Bankhead, Noël Coward, Edna Ferber, and Harpo Marx (yes, he spoke),
That legendary circle is now gone, but the hotel has harbored an uninterrupted series of cats, as described in the article below (click to read).
The Algonquin Hotel has kept a cat in its lobby since the late 1920s. The practice was formerly thought to have originated in the 1930s, but a book by Frank Case indicates that he had cared for a cat named Billy until the feline’s death in the 1920s. According to administrative assistant Alice de Almeida (the hotel’s “chief cat officer”), the current practice started when the hotel took in a stray male cat that was originally named Rusty. When a guest was sick, Rusty frequently went to that guest’s room and stayed there until they had recovered. Rusty was renamed Hamlet at the suggestion of John Barrymore, who at the time was performing on Broadway in the play Hamlet.Since then, all the male cats have been named Hamlet, while all the female cats have been named Matilda. It is not clear why female cats are named Matilda, but all the Hamlets are named after the original cat. The hotel has had eight Hamlets and three Matildas in its history. The Algonquin acquired its current cat, Hamlet VIII, in 2017. {JAC: See below.]
The hotel’s lobby contains two feline tree houses. The cat’s collar interacts with an electric geo-fence, which prevents the cat from leaving the lobby, because the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene does not permit animals in dining areas. The cat has received several gifts from visitors, including four oil paintings. Many people have visited the Algonquin specifically to see the hotel’s cat. One of the male cats was featured in the illustrated book Algonquin Cat; when that cat died in 1982, his obituary appeared in Variety magazine. Another cat, a female Ragdoll, was named 2006 cat of the year at the Westchester Cat Show.
Every August, the hotel holds a fundraiser with a feline fashion show featuring the hotel’s cat. The fashion shows started in the 1930s and have raised money for such initiatives as the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. In addition, the hotel hosts birthday parties for its cat; these events have also served as fundraisers, such as in 2010, when Matilda III’s fifteenth birthday raised money for North Shore Animal League America.[227]The Wall Street Journal wrote that the cat’s birthday party “is the kind of party where you would find […] $20 Purrtinis for sale, made of Grey Goose vodka, lychee juice, coconut, white creme de cacao and lemon juice and advertisements for Reiki treatments for cats. It is also a party where you would see a cat dressed as a fruit basket…”
Here’s the lineup over the past 40 years
You should stay there when you visit NYC (if you can afford it). If not, at least go visit and see Hamlet VIII
The Algonquin cats have an Instagram post here, and you can read more about the cats (and the Round Table) here (scroll down). Below is a FB post by Jen (“The Good News Girl”) about the latest Hamlet and his personal assistant (click on the arrow):
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Lagniappe:
Here’s a store in Istanbul with a hat-wearing cat that attracts business (cats are a GREAT way to pull in customers; see below).
I was taken by the several cats frequenting this Istanbul rug shop near the Hagia Sophia. In fact, over the next three days, I stopped by every day to pet the cats and bargain, and came away with several beautiful rugs. The owner admitted that the cats pulled in customers, and I was one of them!
From FB: cute cats sleeping (click on the arrow):
And the story of a cat who was summoned by mistake to serve on a jury. Click on the icon to see more.
Please send in your wildlife photos as this is the last batch I have!
Today we have bird photos from Jan Malik showing avian denizens in the “wilds” of New Jersey. Jan’s IDs and descriptions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Note the DUCKS at the beginning and in the penultimate photo.
I’d like to present my natural backyard, the Meadowlands in New Jersey. This is an expanse of tidal marshes and phragmites reeds, formerly used as city dumps. It was more or less that desolate swath of land where Pete Clemenza instructed his enforcer: “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” Nowadays, this land is in the process of active reclamation and on its way to becoming aquatic parkland.
In spring and summer, DeKorte Park is teeming with ducks; here are a male and a female Green-winged Teal (Anas carolinensis):
There is a large flock of Ruddy Ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) that stays each year in the same cove:
Every year, many Northern Shovelers (Spatula clypeata) visit the marshes. Their bills certainly look like spatulas:
American Black Ducks (Anas rubripes) also move through the area and possibly even breed in more secluded areas. They are close cousins of Mallards, and hybridization occurs fairly often (as evidenced by the green brow on this male); however, the species manage to stay separate due to their selection of nesting sites and preferred diets:
There are too many wading birds to list, but here is a Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus):
Midges and mosquitoes can sometimes be a nuisance:
But we have an efficient pest control crew, like this Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor):
Large wading birds are numerous; here is a Great Egret (Ardea alba).
A strong local colony of Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) has a prominent presence here. As long as nesting platforms are available and polychlorinated hydrocarbons are absent, these birds will thrive:
Among songbirds, we have native sparrows, like this White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis):
As well as introduced ones, like this male House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), which has taken up residence in an all-American nesting box:
We have too many songbirds to show them all, but as a final one, here is an American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis):
Every summer, we have our crop of youngsters, like these American Robin (Turdus migratorius) chicks:
Or these ducklings—I think they may be Black Ducks, not Mallards:
I’ve realized now that I have collected too many bird pictures from this region and have short-changed all our lovely mammals, insects, turtles, shellfish, and fish—the latter, sadly, largely inaccessible to a photographer. But I would be remiss if I didn’t include this view, which has been visible on this specific September day for the last 25 years. The World Trade Center site’s light beam tribute is visible across the Hudson, and its aesthetic quality must not cloud our understanding of what it means: that on one sunny September morning in 2001, we were deprived of Francis Fukuyama’s comfortable utopia of universalism and thrown into Samuel Huntington’s world, where others look at our treasured values with disdain and a desire to destroy them:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 12, 2026 and shabbos for Jewish cats as well as the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with the holiday ending tomorrow at sundown. The shofar, or ram’s horn, is blown at various points during the holiday; here’s an example:
There were plenty of memoriams and articles about the 9/11 attacks that occured 25 years ago yesterday. I will only mention one short piece from the NYT below, as you can find the pieces everywhere, and I have little to add to them. Like nearly all Americans, I watched the attacks on television (turning it o0n after the North tower was hit; we had a b&w television in the lab back then), and saw the South Tower hit live, which made clear it was a terrorist attack. Processing it mentally took days, like the JFK assassination, and I was glad they caught the perpetrators, though I would have liked to see Bin Laden captured alive and tried. The people jumping off the buildings to their deaths, the recordings of phone calls of people about to die, calling their loved ones to say goodbye—all this was ineffably heartbreaking. And because it’s ineffable, I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t been said by others.
*Yesterday’s New York Times morning newsletter discusses the “meaning” of 9/11, as if their lucubrations carried weight, but there is also a section about what remains unresolved about the attack:
What remains unresolved:
The forever war. Al Qaeda, the terrorist group American troops went abroad to fight in the weeks after 9/11, is still a force in Afghanistan. By one estimate, the war on terror cost more than $8 trillion and 900,000 lives. This collection of images from 25 years of conflict is sobering. (The photograph from a 2009 suicide bombing in Kabul, in particular, has stayed with me all this time.)
The site. A quarter-century after the attack, the apartment building designed to replace 5 World Trade Center still hasn’t gone up. Around the corner, the 9/11 Museum is struggling to stay afloat. About one in three Americans was born after Sept. 11; it may have shaped their lives, but their memories are not seared.
The historical significance. At the time, it seemed that something was ending and another thing, maybe worse, was beginning. But was it? Charles Homans argues that life does not divide into neat geopolitical demarcations. Instead, 9/11 “is a middle chapter in the story of American fracture rather than the pyrotechnic beginning.”
For more
The four previous presidents will observe the anniversary in silence at the Trade Center site. President Trump plans to deliver a speech at the Pentagon instead. Peter Baker, who has covered the White House for decades, says the juxtaposition tells us about the way each views terrorism.
I watched the NBC News last night, and the coverage of 9/11 lasted half an hour. They ended saying that we need to “learn the lessons” of that day, but they barely mentioned the cause of the terrorist attack, never mentioning “Muslim” or “Islam,” and mentioned “Al Qaeda” only once.
If you wish, please note in a comment where you were when you learned about the Twin Towers/Pentagon attack, and how it affected you.
When the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground 25 years ago, they triggered a seismic wave that seemed to smash the world order.
It was now “a different world,” President George W. Bush warned Congress. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: “It was before 9/11 and after 9/11.” Vice President Dick Cheney added: “That day changed everything.”
They were right, with a caveat. The attacks were a monumental tragedy. The world order did change. But it was the aftermath—the U.S. response to 9/11, not the terrorism itself—that made the difference.
Sept. 11 marked a shockingly successful attack by a stateless and relatively small group of Islamist militants. The U.S., though, launched a massive military response: a War on Terror. It attacked two countries, one uninvolved with 9/11. The rhetoric was so sweeping, Washington borrowed language from World War II and the Cold War. America was now confronting an Axis of Evil.
Consumed by the War on Terror, the U.S. had less capacity to address other global priorities such as the pivotal rise of China and an increasingly hostile Russia. That inattention to shifting global forces was what really changed the world.
U.S. leaders were “certainly distracted” and “we continually found ourselves sucked back into the morass of our misadventures in the Middle East,” William Burns, who served in several administrations and later became director of the CIA, said in 2019. “Imagine if a bigger part of the time, energy and resources spent on the Global War on Terror had instead been spent on giving form to an affirmative vision for America’s role in Asia.”
“China and Russia have welcomed” the War on Terror, the scholar Robert Kagan wrote in 2008, “because it has distracted the United States’ strategic focus away from them.”
And this is blamed on the U.S. response to 9/11:
“While the U.S. was heavily involved in the Middle East and South Asia…the geopolitical balance moved against the U.S. in both Europe and East Asia thanks to the emergence of a more aggressive Russia and a more capable and assertive China,” Richard Haass, former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in 2021.
When Russia invaded Georgia (during George W. Bush’s presidency) and then seized Crimea (during Barack Obama’s presidency), Western responses failed to prevent further expansionism. Russia later launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Many analysts say the West should have imposed much tougher sanctions on Russia, and done a better job arming vulnerable neighbors, among other measures.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is what failed deterrence looks like,” writes Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe. “We were not ready or united in recognizing that Russia was a real threat.”
Yes, this all may be true, but somehow I find it a bit unseemly to chastise America for getting into unwinnable wars in an attempt to strike back after the 9/11 attacks. We didn’t know the outcome at the time, nor did we know where the world was going. 9/11 was a huge punch in the national solar plexus, and it’s understandable that we had a strong and perhaps not totally thought-out reaction. But tut-tutting now when nearly 3,000 lives were lost seems like a cheap shot.
President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.
The dubious promise would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”
He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”
Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.
This is nothing more than a bribe to vote Republican, and I pity the fools who do so expecting to line their pockets. It’s a promise that won’t be kept, as so many of Trump’s other promises. I swear—every day, when I think he can’t do anything more stupid than he’s done, he goes ahead and crosses another line. Now he’s running scared because voter sentiment and his low approval rating portends bit Republican losses in the midterms.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked that question since Gloria Steinem and I teamed up with a group of other editors to start Ms. magazine and, in the process, launched our 55-year friendship. As opposed to, “What’s Gloria’s cell number?”, to which my usual reply was, “You’ve got to be kidding,” when queried about the “real” Gloria, I always answered: “What you see is what I get; only I get more of it, up close.”
People find it hard to believe that someone as famous as Gloria had spent most of her life trying to evade the spotlight. She hated her celebrity status and was plagued by stage fright. What most clearly defined her was not a quote, gift, gesture or anecdote. It was her intrepid, lifelong resistance to being made the face of the women’s movement. Cameras ceaselessly sought her out; interviewers behaved as if hers was the definitive voice to speak on women’s issues or American feminism. Instead, she consistently deflected credit to women who couldn’t command media attention for their urgent work in, say, women’s health, reproductive rights, academia, labor unions or rape crisis counseling.
Put plainly, for Gloria, the personal was political and the political was personal. The warm, eloquent, witty writer and activist the world came to know was the same person in every setting: at a friend’s dinner table, where she’d rattle off puns and remind us to lobby our Congress members on an anti-discrimination bill, or in her living room hosting a “talking circle” of young women, none of whom she’d ever met before.
I didn’t know she was half Jewish (her dad was, her mom wasn’t):
. . . . Gloria loved our seder’s boldly revisionist, women-focused ceremonies, starting with an opening ritual of introducing ourselves by our matrilineage. Gloria’s voice was as loud as the rest of ours when we called out contributions to our list of the Ten Plagues (or more) suffered by women and the Four Questions (or more) that women never got to ask. She used to say, “Never in my life have I identified myself as a Christian, but wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew.”
. . .She once told her friends the line she wanted engraved on her tombstone: “Wait! I’m not done.” Gloria showed us the virtues of building a movement one person, one new coalition, one rebellious action and one act of kindness at a time.
Last year, she gave her friends beaded bracelets that proclaimed, “We are linked, not ranked.” The message was directed at us, but also at everyone who might see it. We’re not done.
It is a lovely paean to a woman who avoided the limelight as much as she could.
→ AI will steal your work: After rumors swirled about a solution to a Millennium Problem, a set of famously unsolved math problems, OpenAI spun up all its resources to solve it first. And they did, I guess. Congrats! Or, um, how dare you? The internet is divided!
Sam Altman admits they solved the problem because they heard a solution was coming: “It is true that we tried this because there were rumors on the internet last week that Anthropic’s models had solved a [M]illennium [P]roblem and we were curious if ours could do it too.” Guys, don’t be jerks just for the fun of it. Like, let those weird professors whose names no one knows solve their one math puzzle across decades in peace so they can eventually go to the awards lunch and have a turkey sandwich. But no. And the best part is that the mathematicians were using OpenAI tools in some capacity, and so it’s possible these AI tools took their human knowledge and then borrowed it on the side to solve the equation in full. The company writes: “We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly—in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models.” OpenAI tools are one big mind. If you give them something, they know that information and will use it anywhere else. It is a collective consciousness. It would be like Google Docs deciding to publish that book you’re working on as a Google Doc production; like, I guess it’s technically true.
The sad, forgotten human names: Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster. Sorry guys. You can read Tristan’s statement about all this drama. It’s long and detailed and hard to parse, because he’s a brilliant mathematician and that’s kind of their thing. I’ll get ChatGPT to summarize it later.
→ Perhaps some of the asylum claims are less than genuine: Only about 1 in 100 asylum claims in the UK is credible, according to one UK Home Office official and whistleblower. The whistleblower, identified as “J” in The Times, says many asylum seekers arrive with what are called “package claims,” suspiciously similar asylum narratives. He says Iraqi Kurds, for example, often claim the same story of having had a romantic relationship with the daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan Region. So many claim this, he says, that it’s become a “running joke” among co-workers. I don’t judge the princess of Kurdistan, but I do have some logistical questions. Then tons of Pakistani asylum seekers, J says, have claimed they were in a homosexual relationship (yes, we’ve covered this before, but there’s a twist this time) with the same man! Who provided letters supporting their claims! The whistleblower said those homosexuality claims also featured photos from the same London gay hot spot, Legs 800 Club, which closed last year, of Pakistani men “standing there topless in the club with their arms around each other taking pictures to try and prove they are gay.” This is an amazing pitch for a Vogue centerfold editorial.
And what of the Bangladeshi asylum seekers? Many of those applicants allegedly claim they were part of a political party called the Awami League, but can’t answer basic questions about the party or their role in it. Weird!
→ Speaking of bogus asylum claims: This week in bizarro Daily Mail headlines: “Shameless failed asylum seeker who raped a 14-year-old girl is NOT bisexual—and must leave Britain, judge rules.” I guess if he were bisexual, he could stay. But not a straight man. It’s a bridge too far. The immigration tribunal found his evidence of bisexuality was suspect. Judge R. Abdar said in the immigration tribunal’s conclusion: “I am satisfied that the appellant has failed to rebut the presumption of the appellant posing a danger to the community. I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual.” I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual. Can you imagine a tribunal about your bisexual status? You have to place yourself on a spectrum of fruity to bland, name five women and five men you’re equally attracted to, demonstrate proficiency in mouth stuff to both sexes (hell), and then a verdict is delivered. I mean, my college co-op was a tribunal about bisexual status every night, but can you imagine like, a real British judge doing this? Do you think he wears the wig when he asks defendants which cast member they identify with most on Queer Eye? “I am not satisfied that the appellant is bisexual” sounds like the judge had a bad night with the appellant. Honestly, it sounds like the appellant is just experimenting in college and will probably grow out of it, which means deportation.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is checking out the situation:
Hili: Where are you going? Szaron: To make the rounds of the local reality.
In Polish:
Hili: Dokąd idziesz?
Szaron: Na obchód lokalnej rzeczywistości.
Masih turned fifty yesterday, and had some thoughts on turning a half-century old:
Today is my birthday. And somehow, I am beginning fifty suspended between earth and sky.
I had a flight to catch, so here I am, looking down at the world from an airplane window, thinking about the woman I have become and all the women we are still fighting to be free enough to… pic.twitter.com/8HqyoWQBFZ
From Larry the Cat about Trump’s offer of $5K dollars to Americans for, in effect, voting for Republicans. As Hamlet said, “The funeral baked meats/Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
From Malcolm. This is a bit grim, but it’s biology, Jake! Translation from the Turkish: “This snapping turtle uses its tongue like a live bait to catch fish.”
Bu kapan kaplumbağası, balıkları yakalamak için dilini canlı bir yem gibi kullanıyor. pic.twitter.com/l09gjHZiV1
Two from my feed. I don’t think this first one is AI or fake:
Mamdani and AOC are spotted laughing with each other as people cry while the names of those who died are read during the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. pic.twitter.com/Ib5lm57fmV
I love this one. It’s been so much fun controlling Hollywood!
Agents,
As the sun sets on 5786, we would like to thank you for another successful year of controlling the weather, the media, the banks, Hollywood, global shipping, your neighbor’s Wi-Fi and the price of eggs.
We have an ambitious operational schedule for 5787:
How do I explain to the psychologist that I saw a lost little kitten and its mom found her, scolded her, and after checking that she was okay, gave her a smack and took her home.
Cómo le explico al psicólogo que vi una gatita perdida y su mamá la encontró, le dió una regañada y después de ver que estuviera bien, le dió una cachetada y se la llevó a la casa. pic.twitter.com/5A15hxLo7Q
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three years old and would be 87 today had she lived. https://t.co/e2y6FgIvkE
