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.
Reader Enrico alerted me to last night’s “Real Time” with Bill Maher, whose guests were t.v. producer and writer Sam Levinson, California Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, and political journalist Jonathan Martin. Maher’s two-minute opening monologue, below, deals with the abject failure of the U.S. to achieve any of Trump’s aims in our war with Iran. As he says, “I just hope we play Iran in the World Cup so we can beat them at something.”
Below is the big (9-minute) monologue, this time celebrating America’s 250th birthday (“America is Ours”). His theme is that while Trump will try to make the anniversary about himself, we should resist it. Maher: “He [Trump] isn’t America—he’s the temporary caretaker of America—America’s employee.” He concludes, “For all of Trump’s nonsense, America is still here: Still incredibly prosperous by world standards, still the place where people want to get to, still free enough to let me put the word ‘nonsense’ next to the President’s name.” (Yay for free speech!)
Maher then lists some of Trump’s failures (court losses, no big changes in the budget, no name on the Kennedy Canter), and declares, “America may right now be the country Donald Trump is President of, but America is everything that keeps Trump from being the king he wishes he were.”
It’s a paean to American democratic principles. As Maher says, “The message that most threatens authoritarians isn’t ‘America sucks’: it’s ‘America is ours too’.” There’s a litany of progress that’s been made since America’s 200th anniversary in 1976, as if Steve Pinker became a comedian.
The upshot is that, as Maher maintains, there’s nothing embarrassing about being a patriot if you’re an American, and we should go out and celebrate on July 4. It’s not Trump we’re celebrating, but America, flawed but still the destination of many immigrants.
On May 9, the AP’s odd news site recounted a kitten rescue (click on screenshot to read):
An excerpt:
As storm chaser Ashton Lemley picked his way through a tornado-ravaged Mississippi trailer park, he heard the unmistakable meow of a kitten pierce the predawn darkness.
The homes were flattened just hours earlier as storms spawned at least three tornadoes across the bottom half of Mississippi, injuring a dozen at the trailer park in the rural community of Bogue Chitto.
Lemley had no idea where the kitten was, but he was determined to find it. After a few minutes, the meowing stopped, and Lemley feared the worst.
Then, five minutes later, he heard it again.
“I said, ‘Oh, he’s still alive!’” Lemley told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Lemley quickly dug under insulation from a flattened wall until his flashlight beam found the kitten — wet, scared and hiding between two wooden posts.
Lemley captured the moment on video: “Oh my goodness, I found him!” he says to the camera. “Are you OK? Come here – it’s OK. … We’ll get you cleaned up, baby. Don’t you worry.”
Lemley held the kitten in his arms for a few minutes before handing it off to the commander of the United Cajun Navy, a volunteer disaster-response group, who dried it off and took it to safety. Lemley marveled that it didn’t appear to be injured.“I’ve been in these situations so many times,” said Lemley, who has been chasing storms since 2010. “I don’t try to get overly emotional. But it is very heartbreaking to see any type of animal or human go through something like that.”
Lemley says there’s already a lot of interest from people who want to adopt the kitten if its owners are not located. Some, he said, want to name it Tornado.
It won’t be coming home with him, though: Lemley is allergic to cats.
Here’s a short video of the rescue. Look at that sodden little moggy! But it will be okay.
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From PetHelpful, we have a Tik Tok video and the video notes (indented below).
Little Bear Visits My Bedroom Window
An unexpected guest can make for a delightful surprise, and nothing illustrates this better than when I found a little black bear gazing curiously through my bedroom window. This moment was not only adorable but also a wonderful reminder of the beauty of wildlife right at our doorstep.
Bears are fascinating creatures known for their intelligence and curiosity. When a bear approaches residential areas, it often piques curiosity and concern among homeowners. Observing animals in their natural habitat can lead to valuable insights about their behavior. In this case, Little Bear seemed intrigued by what was happening inside the house, highlighting the need for a peaceful coexistence with wildlife..It’s important to remember that while these encounters can be entertaining, maintaining a safe distance from wild animals is essential for both human and animal safety. Living close to nature offers unique experiences, but it also requires responsibility. If you find yourself in a similar situation, enjoy the moment, take pictures if safe, but avoid feeding or trying to interact directly with wild animals.
In closing, this little bear visiting my window was a charming experience that reminded me of the vibrant wildlife that surrounds us. Have you had any wildlife encounters in your area? Share your stories or tips on safely observing animals in nature!
Here’s a very short video of the cat, safely inside, lashing out with its paw at the bear. Bear heads for the hills!
If you own a cat, you probably know that they can’t taste sweetness in food. This article from Space Daily (click on screenshot) explains why. Well, it’s not rocket science: cats don’t have the rcceptors to taste sweetness. Or rather, they have the genes that allowed their ancestors (and their living mammalian relatives) to taste sweetness, but the genes are broken. (This is, of course, proof of evolution: why else would a cat have genes that function in its relatives, but that are broken in felids?
An excerpt:
Cats are notoriously indifferent to sweet things. Pour syrup near a dog and the dog will investigate. Pour syrup near a cat and the cat will ignore it. Veterinarians and cat-food companies have long noted that cats show no preference for sugar in feeding tests, no matter how much sugar is presented. The reason is not a behavioural quirk or a learned aversion. It is genetic, and it traces back tens of millions of years to the point at which the ancestors of modern cats became obligate carnivores, eating only meat. The gene that produces a working sweet receptor on the tongue, called Tas1r2, has been broken in cats for so long that it no longer functions at all. A cat looking at a sugar cube is in the same sensory position as a human looking at an ultraviolet light source: the signal exists, but the receptor that would detect it does not.
The molecular discovery came in 2005 from a team led by Xia Li and Joseph Brand at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, in collaboration with colleagues at the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition in the United Kingdom. Their paper in PLOS Genetics, titled “Pseudogenization of a Sweet-Receptor Gene Accounts for Cats’ Indifference toward Sugar,” established that the cat sweet receptor is not just inefficient. It is, at the genetic level, non-functional.
. . . The animals affected included the California sea lion, the southern fur seal, the Pacific harbor seal, the Asian small-clawed otter, the spotted hyena, the fossa (Madagascar’s largest carnivore), and the banded linsang. Crucially, the disabling mutations in each of these species occurred in different places within the Tas1r2 gene, indicating that the losses happened independently in each lineage, not via inheritance from a common ancestor. The same evolutionary pressure that turned off the gene in cats turned it off, separately, in at least seven other carnivorous lineages over the same broad timeframe. Behavioural testing of two of the genotyped species — the Asian small-clawed otter (broken Tas1r2) and the spectacled bear (intact Tas1r2, and predominantly herbivorous despite its order) — confirmed the pattern. The otter showed no preference for sweet compounds. The bear preferred sugars and even some non-caloric sweeteners.
. . . The animals affected included the California sea lion, the southern fur seal, the Pacific harbor seal, the Asian small-clawed otter, the spotted hyena, the fossa (Madagascar’s largest carnivore), and the banded linsang. Crucially, the disabling mutations in each of these species occurred in different places within the Tas1r2 gene, indicating that the losses happened independently in each lineage, not via inheritance from a common ancestor. The same evolutionary pressure that turned off the gene in cats turned it off, separately, in at least seven other carnivorous lineages over the same broad timeframe. Behavioural testing of two of the genotyped species — the Asian small-clawed otter (broken Tas1r2) and the spectacled bear (intact Tas1r2, and predominantly herbivorous despite its order) — confirmed the pattern. The otter showed no preference for sweet compounds. The bear preferred sugars and even some non-caloric sweeteners.
And since people here should know some science, you’ll be able to understand this from the paper’s abstract:
Because the mammalian sweet-taste receptor is formed by the dimerization of two proteins (T1R2 and T1R3; gene symbols Tas1r2 and Tas1r3), we identified and sequenced both genes in the cat by screening a feline genomic BAC library and by performing PCR with degenerate primers on cat genomic DNA. Gene expression was assessed by RT-PCR of taste tissue, in situ hybridization, and immunohistochemistry. The cat Tas1r3 gene shows high sequence similarity with functional Tas1r3 genes of other species. Message from Tas1r3 was detected by RT-PCR of taste tissue. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemical studies demonstrate that Tas1r3 is expressed, as expected, in taste buds. However, the cat Tas1r2 gene shows a 247-base pair microdeletion in exon 3 and stop codons in exons 4 and 6. There was no evidence of detectable mRNA from cat Tas1r2 by RT-PCR or in situ hybridization, and no evidence of protein expression by immunohistochemistry. Tas1r2 in tiger and cheetah and in six healthy adult domestic cats all show the similar deletion and stop codons. We conclude that cat Tas1r3 is an apparently functional and expressed receptor but that cat Tas1r2 is an unexpressed pseudogene. A functional sweet-taste receptor heteromer cannot form, and thus the cat lacks the receptor likely necessary for detection of sweet stimuli. This molecular change was very likely an important event in the evolution of the cat’s carnivorous behavior.
The upshot: tasting sweetness in mammals requires a protein that is a dimer made from the product of two genes. In house cats (and some other carnivores), one of the genes is expressed normally but the other is nonfunctional because of a large deletion of the DNA sequence, so that the dimer itself isn’t formed. Ergo cats can’t detect sweetness, and thus you shouldn’t expect your cats to like sweets (they shouldn’t get them anyway). If your cat licks ice cream, it is tasting not the sweetness but the dairy-ness: fats and proteins. Cheetahs and tigers also lack the dimeric protein.
Why do dogs taste sweetness and cats don’t? Because dogs produce the dimer and cats don’t. Somewhere in the ancestor of all felids, the gene for Tastr2 experienced a deletion. Because all cats are obligate carnivores, and don’t eat stuff like berries, they have no “need” to taste sweetness, so a deleted gene is not a deleterious gene. It just continued to mutate, staying in the DNA but doing nothing.
I suppose d*g ancestors, and mammals like bears and hedgehogs, do benefit from sugar in their diet and so have retained the genes to detect it. (We do, too: sugars were valuable components of the diet in us and our primate relatives, and so our taste chemistry evolved to not only detect sweetness, but also find it pleasurable so that we seek out a needed nutrient. Unfortunately, sugars are much more common now than in the millions of years of our ancestry since we diverged from the chimp/bonobo lineage; and so we eat too many of them and get cavities and grow obese.)
The alternative theory is that God decided to make cats obligate meat-eaters, and so he left out their ability to detect sugar. But that doesn’t work because why would God give cats genes that are very similar to those of their sweetness-tasting relatives, but don’t work? The creation-by-God theory fails, and we’re left only with common ancestry, i.e., evolution.
We have a similar broken gene, as I describe in Why Evolution is True:
The most famous human pseudogene is GLO, so called because in other species it produces an enzyme called L-gulono-γ-lactone oxidase. This enzyme is used in making vitamin C (ascorbic acid) from thesimple sugar glucose. Vitamin C is essential for proper metabolism, and virtually all mammals have the pathway to make it—all, that is, except for primates, fruit bats, and guinea pigs. In these species, vitamin C is obtained directly from their food, and normal diets usually have enough. If we don’t ingest enough vitamin C, we get sick: scurvy was common among fruit-deprived seamen of the nineteenth century.
The reason why primates and these few other mammals don’t make their own vitamin C is because they don’t need to. Yet DNA sequencing tells us that primates still carry most of the genetic information needed to make the vitamin.
It turns out that the pathway for making vitamin C from glucose involves a sequence of four steps, each promoted by the product of a different gene. Primates and guinea pigs still have active genes for the first three steps, but the last step, which requires the GLO enzyme, doesn’t take place: GLO has been inactivated by a mutation. It has become a pseudogene, called ¯ψGLO” (ψ is the Greek letter psi, standing for “pseudo”). ψGLO doesn’t work because a single nucleotide in the gene’s DNA sequence is missing. And it’s exactly the same nucleotide that is missing in other primates. This shows that the mutation that destroyed our ability to make vitamin C was present in the ancestor of all primates, and was passed on to its descendants. The inactivation of GLO in guinea pigs happened independently, since it involves different mutations. It’s highly likely that since fruit bats, guinea pigs, and primates got plenty of vitamin C in their diet, there was no penalty for inactivating the pathway that made it. This could even have been beneficial since it eliminated a protein that might have been costly to produce.
A dead gene in one species that is active in its relatives is evidence for evolution, but there’s more. When you look at ψGLO in living primates, you find out that its sequence is more similar between close relatives than between more distant ones. The sequences of human and chimp ψGLO, for example, resemble each other closely, but differ more from the ψGLO of orangutans, which are more distant relatives. What’s more, the sequence of guinea pig ψGLO is very different from that of all primates.
Only evolution and common ancestry can explain these facts.
Inactive pseudogenes that are functional in relatives constitute some of the strongest evidence for evolution, as there is no alternative theory that explains them. The article above alludes to the gene loss being a product of evolution, but doesn’t mention something that I see as crucial given Americans’ reluctance to accept evolution: the nature of the gene loss and the sequence similarity among pseudogenes is strong evidence for evolution.
On my way to the grocery store early this morning, I came across a guy sitting on a low wall on 57th Street, and there was a wet gosling lingering around his feet. Of course I asked him what was going on, and he told me, in a foreign accent, that the gosling had followed him to the street from Botany Pond. I asked him if there were any others in the Pond, and he said “no” (of course I verified that later). He told me he didn’t know what to do with the gosling, who was lively and, as I found out when I picked it up, strong.
But I knew what to do; I’m a veteran of waterfowl orphan rescues. I told him I could have it taken to rehab and that would save its life. He readily agreed, and I told him I was a biologist and would take the gosling upstairs into my lab, where there are several “duckling boxes” prepared for such an emergency: small cardboard boxes with a couple of my old (clean) teeshirts in the bottom.
The gosling peeped (and even seemed to make a tiny honk) as I boxed it and, within five minutes, it was taken to the apartment of the lovely woman who works for Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (I had called her to get an okay). She took the box, and I continued on to the grocery store.
I feel better now that I’ve helped save a life, but these things are still emotionally taxing. It was peeping and had followed the guy to the street because it wanted its mom. But it is Father’s Day, so this is one of my many offspring.
Here are two pictures; one of me taken by the guy who found the bird, and a gosling selfie. I am disheveled and unshaven because it’s the weekend and I ain’t going to see anybody.
It really was a beautiful baby; it’s a pity that these fluffballs grow up into big, mean honkers:
That’s the second gosling rescue this year, making a total of eight ducklings and two goslings taken to rehab. I hope the days of rescue are over for the summer, but they seem to go on and on. . .
Welcome to CaturSaturday, June, 20, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats, and World Juggling Day. Here’s a short performance by a man who’s been called “the best juggler in the world”:
There’s another Google World Cup Doodle today. Click to see the results of yesterday’s games and today’s upcoming games:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: The U.S. beat Australia 2-0, winning its second game and advancing to the knockout stage in the World Cup. From yesterday’s ESPN:
The United States were back in FIFA World Cup action today in Seattle as they took on Australia.
Following its impressive 4-1 win last week against Paraguay in its group stage opener, Mauricio Pochettino’s team continued their winning streak by defeating the Socceroos 2-0, with an own goal from Cameron Burgess and another from Alex Freeman as they have now booked their spots into the next round.
The highlights (the two U.S. goals are at 2:22 and 5:35):
Black smoke from a burning oil refinery filled the Moscow sky. The city’s four airports were urgently closed. And part of the busy highway that rings the Russian capital, a metropolis of 13 million people, was shut down.
As Ukraine escalated its effort to bring the war home for Russians, the strikes on Thursday appeared to be the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the war more than four years ago.
No deaths were immediately reported. But the large-scale assault seemed likely to feed fears among Russians that the Kremlin’s ability to isolate society from the impacts of the war was sharply eroding. That would usher in a new stage for a conflict that has now run longer than World War I.
For days, lines have formed and rationing has been implemented at gas stations in dozens of Russian regions, as persistent Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries and processing facilities have threatened a fuel shortage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in a voice memo shared with journalists on Thursday, warned, “If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.”
I wonder where Zelenskyy is getting his drones, but I had no idea they would go so far: the distance between the Ukrainian border and Moscow is over 11oo km. The Russian invasion was over four years ago, and scrappy Ukraine is striking back hard. I had no idea that the fightiong would go on this long; as I recall, I predicted that Russia would take over all of Ukraine within a year or two.
Four IDF soldiers were killed overnight in a Hezbollah attack in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Tebnit, and five soldiers were wounded there hours later, the military said Friday.
Lebanon’s health ministry, meanwhile, reported at least 18 people killed by Israeli strikes. The tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The violence was the latest in deadly clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group that have continued in Lebanon since the US and Iran this week reached a memorandum of understanding that committed them and their allies to halt hostilities in the country.
Israel, which was not party to the MOU, has rebuffed Iranian demands that it withdraw from a buffer zone in south Lebanon meant to protect border towns against Hezbollah attacks. A US official told Axios that Iranian anger over Israeli military activity there may be the reason US-Iranian talks scheduled for Friday were canceled.
In the Hezbollah attack shortly past midnight, a suspected drone or anti-tank missile struck the tank of Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, commander of the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, killing all four crew members, the IDF said.
The names of the three other soldiers killed in the incident will be published later. The exact cause of the explosion is under further investigation by the IDF.
All the news I get implies that Hezbollah struck first and Israel was retaliating, but I’m pretty sure that Israel is not going to listen to Trump’s demands that it stop attacking Hezbollah as it could scupper the misguided “MoI.” This is an existential fight for Israel, and it won’t tolerate the northern part of the country being under continuous attack. Yesterday a cease-fire was supposed to go into effect, but it is not holding in Lebanon.
From the NYT:
Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.
It accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.
Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. The deal’s requirement that American forces retreat from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days means that Iran can boast that it has chased the U.S. military out of the region.
Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran’s missile arsenal or its support of Israel’s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Worse still for Israel, by constraining its military in Lebanon — indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country — the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war.
The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran may receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran’s militia allies around the Middle East.
And from Amit Segal:
It’s Friday, June 19, and overnight Hezbollah has continued its campaign against IDF forces in southern Lebanon. A commander’s tank was struck by a drone or missile, killing four—among them the battalion commander, while in another sector of the front five Israeli soldiers were badly wounded by an explosive drone. In response, the Israeli Air Force has carried out an extensive bombing campaign across numerous villages.
The fallout was swift. Talks scheduled for today in Switzerland between the United States and Iran—meant to implement the peace deal—were canceled, with Iran citing the IDF’s actions in its fiefdom in southern Lebanon.
This confrontation was inevitable from the moment digital ink hit digital paper on the Memorandum of Understanding. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel is a signatory to the agreement, and the two have been touting entirely different versions of it. Iran has assured its proxy that an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon is written into the U.S.-Iran MoU, to unfold over a phased 60-day period. Israel, meanwhile, has declared that it will not evacuate its positions in southern Lebanon—and insists it has not been asked to—while U.S. officials have reportedly told it that its right to respond to threats will not be infringed.
The larger question—whether Israel may strike “emerging” threats—isn’t addressed here directly, since this was a response to an attack, not a buildup of Hezbollah forces. But if the Trump administration won’t tolerate an Israeli reprisal to a Hezbollah strike, it certainly won’t stomach Israel hitting a growing missile storage facility on its border.
Trump’s own comments have been ambiguous. Beyond an endorsement of the “precise and humanitarian” warfighting style of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa—the former ISIS leader—he has not told Israel to stop outright. Most of his remarks echo the sentiment he offered two days ago: “I want Israel to be able to protect themselves, but I do want them to use good judgment.” “Good judgment,” one suspects, means Trump’s judgment—a phrase I’ve lately found hard to pair with so flattering an adjective. When the president wakes up, I imagine Truth Social will feature a more profane word for Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision-making.
For all that, the recent conversation between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was surprisingly friendly. On the outside, they reported—and quite rightly so—a rift in relations, about throwing Israel under the bus, but between the driver and the one being run over, a calm and quiet conversation took place. For listeners, it brought to mind the story of King David, who fasted and prayed for his sick son. Precisely when the son died, he arose and shook off his mourning: “Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?”
Trump’s MoI and his behavior is unprecedented, as it demands that an (erstwhile) U.S. ally stop defending itself against terrorists who aren’t even soldiers of a sovereign nation. And it tacitly allows Iran to keep funding terrorism against Israel. I keep saying that Israel is the only country on earth that is prevented from winning a defensive war, and that’s what we see now.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Thursday lashed out at members of Israel’s government, saying that the country is deeply isolated and its leaders have failed to appreciate American diplomatic and military support.
“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said during a a news briefing at the White House. “The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
Israel and the U.S. jointly launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28, closely coordinating the more than monthlong military operation.
AD
But disagreements quickly emerged following a preliminary April 8 ceasefire agreement, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushing to continue the campaign and Trump moving to wind down a war that was deeply unpopular in the U.S. and rattled the global economy.
Vance of course is acting on Trump’s orders, but I’m sick of him rebuking Israel, just as he rebuked Zelensky for not being “grateful enough” for U.S. aid. It’s like Roosevelt demanding that Churchill show gratitude to the U.S. during WWII for the huge amount of aid we gave the Brits.
But just wait what you see if a Democrat becomes President in a few years. I suspect that Israel will become our enemy and Palestine our ally. (I’m not a one-issue voter, but where the Democrats stand on Israel is pretty clear.) And Israel is isolated because of antisemitism and ignorance, not because of Netanyahu, who, while he has serious political problems, will be replaced by some other PM who will be equally demonized and made the focus of the world’s ire. Are the Palestinian territories “deeply isolated”? I don’t think so. Hamas, as you know, is still in control of Gaza despite Trump’s “peace plan” there. That plan called for them to have disarmed and disbanded by now.
→ Now you’re just gay-baiting: Sometimes I think President Trump reads TGIF and wants to give me fodder—I call this joke laundering—then I remember he only consumes visual media (animated videos of smiling jumping vegetables, Megyn Kelly’s podcast, and Rosie O’Donnell’s Instagram stories). But here is Trump talking about Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi: “He was in a hotel and I met him, and we fell in love, deeply in love. . . . we didn’t know each other before that. We had great chemistry, and I stayed twice as long as I was supposed to.” Are you sure you’re not just sprinkling in these quotes every week to taunt me? If you’re reading this, T, how many Big Macs am I holding up?
→ Nick Kristof investigation: Nicholas Kristof—beloved mascot of The New York Times, moral beacon for all young writers who wonder if they, too, could claim that Israel is training dogs to rape humans—is in trouble. Remember how he briefly took a hiatus to run for governor of Oregon? Well, people donated to that campaign. And now he’s back at TheNew York Times paying those donors back by quoting them, a ton, very positively, in the newspaper of record. A little tit-for-tat, if you will. “Previous political donations made by some people Nick Kristof mentioned in his columns should have been made more clear to readers,” the paper’s spokesperson told Semafor when called on to comment. Nothing will happen. This scandal will disappear. If your politics are seen as good by America’s intelligentsia, you can literally be a journalist taking money from sources. . . and it won’t touch you. Me, I do no crimes, and I give it a 50/50 chance I end up in literal jail when this is all over.
→ I wonder what they have in common?: The Zohran Mamdani–endorsed candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District is socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier. She has fun hobbies, like championing a convicted terrorist behind an Israeli supermarket bombing that killed two people. Oh, and she co-founded the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group that posted things like “Death to America.” At their debate this Tuesday, she also had to apologize for posting “fuck Kamala Harris” and attempted to explain why she attended a Times Square rally celebrating the October 7 massacre (she got lost on her way out of the M&M’s store after the purple M&M’s turned hallucinogenic). And just a million posts like this:
Soon, she’ll be paid by those taxpayers she hates so much. It’s perfect.
→ The rape commission: The independent rape gang inquiry report, spearheaded by United Kingdom MP Rupert Lowe, was released this week and it’s a very tough read. It claims that 250,000 British girls have been abused by these grooming gangs since the 1950s, that Prime Minister Keir Starmer let off 13,000 alleged rapists with just a warning letter, and London mayor Sadiq Khan was made personally aware of the rape gangs but publicly denied their existence. At one point, when a victim’s mother called the police, they reportedly told her: “You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” It’s a very imperfect document, relying on unverified testimonies from victims. Still, it’s damning.
Labour doesn’t want to release data on who occupies social housing, fearing that the information will lead to “racism” on social media. And according to this Daily Mail article, the UK’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit (RICU), which was originally created in 2007 to help monitor and curb al-Qaeda and Islamist propaganda, is now being used to influence public opinion around immigration. The agency allegedly handed out flowers in the wake of the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attacks to promote an environment of “grief” instead of anti-Muslim anger. Aww. . . so thoughtful. And by “thoughtful” I mean tactical and villainous. The group influences families of the rape gang victims not to reference race or religion in their statements. And as recently as last week, when protests spread across Northern Ireland after the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, allegedly by Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, RICU allegedly advised police to remove any mention of Alodid’s background from their messaging and to paint the protesters as thugs.
Three other Vermont towns [besides Bristol]—Hardwick, Hartford, and Underhill—also passed the four-part resolution this spring. It states:
WE AFFIRM our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people;
WE OPPOSE all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and
WE DECLARE ourselves an apartheid-free community and to that end,
WE PLEDGE to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.
The ultimate goal of the campaign, according to both public and internal materials reviewed by The Free Press, is to build support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and ultimately isolate the Jewish state financially, politically, and culturally.
Since the October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, American entities have embraced BDS with open arms. In May, a Brooklyn food co-op voted to strip Israeli products from the shelves after a push that dates back to 2009. More than a thousand artists and labels, including Björk, Lorde, and Paramore, have pledged to block and remove their music from “genocidal Israel,” since September 2025, according to No Music for Genocide organizers. Earlier this month, a group of Stanford students walked out of their graduation ceremony while Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered the commencement address in protest of the company’s $1.2 billion contract with Israel.
“This is BDS on steroids,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former counterterrorism analyst for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, who now runs the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s happening on Main Street, Wall Street, and college campuses. There is a breathless effort to isolate Israel at this moment.”
. . . Vermont, a state estimated to have fewer than 17,000 Jews, is an unlikely epicenter for the anti-Israel grassroots movement. Ten out of the 12 U.S. towns that have passed anti-apartheid pledges are in Vermont. And it’s already spreading beyond New England. Hundreds of unions, houses of worship, and businesses across the country have adopted the pledge, according to the Apartheid-Free network, an anti-Israel coalition led by the American Friends Service Committee. That includes an animal hospital in Florida, an Emmy-winning production company whose founder directed Taylor Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, and NYU Women Founders, a student club at New York University dedicated to ending “gender inequality in the business sphere.”
Many Vermont residents I spoke with said these abstract pledges about a faraway conflict have created a tense environment in the towns they once loved for their progressive values.
But the question of “why Vermont’ has been asked and answered. “Progressive” values now include demonization of Jews and Israel, masquerading as “anti-Zionism” or “Netanyahu is evil.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili both miss Malgorzata, who died just a bit over a year ago:
Hili: This is Małgorzata’s phone. Andrzej: Yes, sometimes people call her.
In Polish:
Hili: To jest Małgorzaty telefon.
Ja: Tak, czasem do niej ktoś dzwoni.
I’ve been following this but haven’t written about it. Luigi Mangione, accused murderer, changed his plea from “not guilty” to a “psychiatric” defense: a tacit admission that he did indeed kill Brian Thompson. But a day after that, they withdrew the psychiatric defense. Can they withdraw the public impression that Mangione in effect pleaded guilty?
In a stunning reversal, Luigi Mangione’s lawyers told a judge that he will no longer be asserting a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. https://t.co/hOw4AvaC0U
The Number Ten Cat calls attention to algae in D.C.’s reflecting pool. I suppose it’s from Trump ordering the pool’s bottom to be pained dark blue, which makes the water warmer, but I’m not sure. (We have a refractory algae problem in Botany Pond).
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old. She would be 92 today had she lived. https://t.co/o4NVRhOkhr
Two from Doc Cobb en France. First, a cave-adapted wasp, already evolutionarily losing wings and eyes:
Introducing the world's only known cave-adapted spider wasp… Troglopompilus miracaecatus (Pompilidae) from the caves of the Nullarbor, Australia.A world first: Eyeless, long limbs and antennae, highly reduced wings.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/…#cave #wasp #biodiversity
A very weird plant, but one related to “regular” plants including rhododendrons and cranberries.
Dried Ghost pipe – Indian PipeThis fascinating plant (Monotropa uniflora) is definitely one of nature’s weird wonders. Because it has no chlorophyll and doesn’t depend on photosynthesis, this ghostly white plant is able to grow in the darkest of forests.
For many of you it’s been a three-day weekend; have you considered sending me photos? This is the last batch I have.
And today’s batch comes from reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
My home state of New Jersey is, for the most part, nothing to write home about, but it does have a few redeeming features, and one of them is the spring migration of birds (the fall migration is also good). Cape May, on the Delaware Bay side of the peninsula, is a particularly good spot to observe birds migrating from far south toward the Arctic. During my visit at the end of May, I took a few pictures of common bird species. I did my best to identify them, but small shorebirds can be difficult to pin down exactly to a species.
First, a pair of Willets (Tringa semipalmata), which may not be migrating too far but are rather already on their nesting grounds—they breed in Atlantic coastal marshes. Their calls are quite similar to those of oystercatchers, but a little less piercing:
Next, a Dunlin (Calidris alpina) in breeding plumage. They are fairly widespread in North America and may fly as far as Greenland or Nunavut. The spring coloration is far more striking than it is in winter;
A Red Knot (Calidris canutus) with its unmistakable cinnamon-orange breast and belly. These are long-range migrants; American birds winter in Tierra del Fuego and fly up to 9,000 miles to breed in the High Arctic. A good portion of their lives is spent along migration routes:
This is what Cape May beaches can look like during the peak of Red Knot migration. I think I took this picture in 2013. There was a fear that Red Knot numbers would decrease drastically, even to zero by some extrapolations (meaning complete extinction). Lately, their numbers seem to have stabilized, but their future is not secure. They rely heavily on horseshoe crab eggs in the Delaware Bay area, and these interesting animals are also under a lot of pressure—a perfect example of the ecological dependence of one species on another:
A Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) in full breeding plumage. They also travel to the High Arctic but winter closer to home, in South America or the southern US states:
A Semipalmated Sandpiper (Calidris pusilla). It is a small American bird that spends its winters primarily along the northern coast of South America, as well as the Caribbean:
A Sanderling (Calidris alba) in full breeding plumage. These are cosmopolitan birds, present everywhere except Antarctica:
I suspect this is also a Sanderling, but still in winter plumage. Transitional plumage is exactly what makes shorebird identification tricky:
Coastal marshes had several nesting Seaside Sparrows (Ammospiza maritima). I think I could only see the males, who were singing from conspicuous perches, while the females stayed low. I consider these sparrows to be honorary shorebirds—they also probe mud for invertebrates with their large, sharp bills:
Another local, a Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla), eating a cluster of horseshoe crab eggs (together with a few beach pebbles). These “crabs” play an oversized role in the New Jersey coastal ecosystem:
Here, I suspect a Short-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus), almost identical in bill length to its “long-billed” cousin. Their bills are sensitive and tactile, allowing them to probe mud and sand fast, relying entirely on the sense of touch and feeding even in darkness:
During the peak of the spring migration, the birds continue their flight well after sunset. Living in the ‘Armpit of America’ has its moments:
Welcome to Friday, June 19, 2026, and it happens to be Juneteenth, celebrating what’s considered to be the end of slavery in the U.S.:
Planters and other slaveholders from eastern states had migrated into Texas to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them, increasing by the thousands the enslaved population in the state at the end of the Civil War. Although most lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in Galveston or Houston by 1860, with several hundred in other large towns. By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas.
Despite the surrender of Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the western Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not formally surrender until June 2. On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free.
The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued Jan. 1, 1863, and the Confederate Army surrendered on April 9, 1865, but people were still enslaved over two months later. Here’s a photo of a celebration in Texas 35 years later from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture with the caption, “Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 held in ‘East Wood’ on East 24th Street in Austin. Credit: Austin History Center.
There’s a Google Doodle for the holiday; click the screenshot below to see where it goes:
Jonathan David‘s hat trick propelled Canada to a historic 6-0 rout of Qatar in Vancouver on Thursday to go to the top of their World Cup group.
It was not only Canada’s first victory at a World Cup but also equaled the record margin of victory for a tournament host, matching the six-goal wins for Italy in 1934, Brazil in 1950 and Argentina in 1978.
Canada’s tally against Qatar also doubled the number of goals they had in their World Cup history coming into the game.
“No one will forget this, and no Canadian will forget this day,” said coach Jesse Marsch, who held up six fingers as he walked off the field. “It’s an incredibly seminal moment for everyone to understand that there’s talent in this country, that there’s mentality, that there’s desire, that there’s a lot of things that make this country special.”
The preliminary deal to end the war between the United States and Iran faced fresh challenges on Friday after Switzerland said the next phase of talks had been postponed and Israel launched new strikes in Lebanon.
Vice President JD Vance had been expected to fly to Switzerland for talks with Iranian officials but the White House said late Thursday that his trip had been delayed. The United States was looking forward “to beginning technical talks as soon as possible,” it said in a statement.
The preliminary U.S.-Iran deal, which President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran signed this week, has been strongly criticized by Israeli lawmakers in Israel as well as some Republicans, who argue that it gives Iran economic relief while punting more difficult negotiations, including on Tehran’s nuclear program, down the road.
It’s Thursday, June 18, and the official terms of the U.S. Memorandum of Understanding are out—and it’s worse than anticipated. The official signing ceremony isn’t until Friday, but the agreement was already signed digitally last night during a dinner at the Palace of Versailles. Anyone familiar with the palace’s history knows this makes the MOU the second great surrender signed at Versailles. Except this time, the U.S. is the one capitulating.
Here’s why it’s worse than we thought. As the details slowly leaked, it became clear that this agreement is not a pause—the status quo held in place while negotiations ran their course. It was a rewind, actively restoring the Islamic Republic. The only question left was how fast it would run, and according to these clauses, faster than we would like.
U.S. officials, including the vice president, previously assured reporters that the agreement provides a “dial,” with economic and sanctions relief increasing only as Iran demonstrates good behavior and compliance. The text is less specific. The clearest financial concession involves the issuance of oil waivers in Section 10, which on their own will return monthly revenue of $5 billion; meanwhile, Section 11 seems to imply that all of the regime’s assets will be made available immediately—best case, that remains credit the Islamic Republic can use only for humanitarian purchases; worst case, it is transferred to them directly. Either way, money is fungible, and besides, I’m not sure exactly what leverage the U.S. assumes it will retain once it has surrendered Iranian assets up front.
As has been clear for the past couple of months, two of the conflict’s four goals—the funding of proxies and the ending of the ballistic missile program—have been abandoned. In fact, Trump defended the omission. “If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump said in France, where he held a press conference on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit. “If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say that in relative proportion, I think it’s okay” for Iran to have ballistic missiles as well. I haven’t seen Saudi Arabia firing those missiles at the U.S. recently, but I digress. The JCPOA famously made the same omission—but at least it didn’t promise the removal of all primary and secondary sanctions on the ballistic missile program and on terror sponsorship. Section 7 provides for the removal of all sanctions pending a final deal—so even if Trump somehow clutches victory from the claws of defeat and secures a strong nuclear deal, Iran’s other malign activities can continue without sanction. Indeed, Lebanese and regional sources told Reuters that Iran has promised to increase Hezbollah’s funding “as soon as possible” once the United States unfreezes Iranian assets. Chalk up a point for the JCPOA.
The third of the original four goals fares no better: the MOU codifies the abandonment of the protesters, enshrining noninterference in Iran’s “internal affairs”—those hoping for an uprising in the next 60 days are likely to be disappointed. That leaves only the nuclear front—the last remaining goal, and one whose outcome remains entirely unclear. Zero enrichment was already abandoned by Trump last week, but the MOU goes further, defining the new U.S. minimum not as exporting its enriched uranium, but as on-site down-blending under IAEA supervision. In the case of uranium, what goes down can also go up. Without the material in friendlier, less fanatical hands, “good” is not an applicable adjective for the deal.
Not only that, Clause 5 gift-wraps the regime’s trump card—the one it has played to such great effect against the U.S. Iran’s leverage over Gulf shipping was always its readiest threat, the valve it could squeeze whenever it needed the world’s attention. A serious agreement would have taken that card out of their hands. Instead, the MOU merely gestures at “negotiating the status” of the waterway with other states in the region—language that quietly abandons the prior baseline of freedom of the seas and hands the question to bilateral talks between Tehran and its neighbors. That is not a settlement; it is leaving the shopkeepers alone with the mob and telling them to work it out among themselves. The U.S. assiduously avoided the word “tolls,” so Iran rebranded them “service fees.” The honest term is protection money—and the only thing Iran is offering protection from is itself.
Clause 6, the reconstruction fund, must come as an even more bitter pill for the Gulf allies—particularly those who took the U.S. at its word two weeks ago, when it pledged to make “Iranian assets [available] to its Gulf allies to support, repair and mitigate future damage that Iran may cause.” That promise has been inverted. Rather than Iran paying for the damage it inflicts, the MOU drafts a Marshall Plan while the Nazis are still in power—and leaves France and Britain to foot the bill for German reconstruction.
The most immediate problem for Israel is the first clause: Lebanon, whose status is left unclear by the MOU. . .
Supposedly Iran has told Hezbollah that Israel will withdraw from Lebanon within two months, but of course Israel didn’t sign the agreement. In fact, I don’t see that the U.S. is guaranteed to get anything from Iran that we didn’t have before the war. The deal stinks, and even Trump’s Republican cronies know it. He just wanted to be rid of the war so he wouldn’t have to suffer from the economic repercussions of the fight, and so he gave away the shop. Unfortunately, the Democrats don’t seem to care about the terms of the deal save that a war they didn’t like will be over.
At present the Trump administration seems to have united its critics from left and right, foreign and domestic, over the deal to end current hostilities.
Three aspects of the deal symbolize the problem.
The first is that one of the initial steps in the process insists that the regime in Tehran allows the Strait of Hormuz to be open to international shipping and the free flow of oil carriers and other vessels through the region.
The trouble is that the Iranian regime has for decades used this strategic vantage point to blackmail the world.
Whenever the Iranian regime wanted to put pressure on other countries—for instance, to lift sanctions against the regime—the regime sent its vessels to go poaching in the straits. Even during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, Iranian military vessels repeatedly harassed and threatened American warships, flying drones at them and provoking them to fire warning shots at Iranian attack crafts.
. . . That’s what the Iranian regime was doing in relatively normal times. So why should anyone believe that after the past year of war they will start to be generous in their treatment of international waters?
The second aspect of the reported deal, which is surprising critics and supporters of Trump alike, is the suggestion that the agreement would allow a vast flow of cash to enter Iran. In a CBS interview on Monday morning, Vice President J.D. Vance seemed to confirm that Iran would get “access” to an inflow of funds worth somewhere in the region of $300 billion within months of the striking the deal. The vice president was at pains to say that this “reconstruction fund” would not come from American taxpayers but rather investments from various Gulf countries.
Whatever the source of the funds, payouts to Tehran have been tried before. The results were disastrous, which Trump knows very well. . .
. . . Thirdly, of course, there is the issue that kicked off this latest round of conflict in the first place: the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.
Whatever the source of the funds, payouts to Tehran have been tried before. The results were disastrous, which Trump knows very well.
If the remainder of the Iranian regime has come to the negotiating table in order to give up their residual fissile material for good, then that would be one thing. The enriched uranium—which is believed to be buried deep underground at facilities in Isfahan, Fordow, and other sites—would need to be manually removed. If an agreement can be reached to extract that uranium in order to ensure that the sites do not leak and that the regime cannot restart its program at a later date, then Trump can boast of a victory.
But here is what is, for many observers, the most disturbing alleged part of the peace deal: the“promise” from the Iranian regime that they will not restart their nuclear weapons program. They have lied about their nuclear program for decades. And this lie started from the very top.
Those who claim that Iran has been abiding by its agreements should read about the Israeli capture of Iranian documents (another amazing feat of Israeli intelligence), which “showed beyond any doubt that Tehran had for years been hiding its nuclear weapons program and lying, dissimulating, and hiding that program from the international community.” This also covered the period when Obama was President.
. . .the issue with the present MOU is not whether the Iranians fear Trump. It is that they look set to receive the funds and freedom to survive and then weapons-develop another day. When Trump first sent the B-2 bombers to Iran, he was fulfilling a historic mission: to ensure not only that the Iranian regime could not create a nuclear weapon on his watch, but that they could not create such a weapon on any successor’s watch. After all, as the president knows, there can always be another Obama, Biden, or even Kamala Harris in the future.
That’s the good thing about agreements that aren’t worth the paper they’re not even written on. The Iranians won’t take it seriously. Neither should we. There is still time to correct this looming mistake.
Of course to “correct” this we have to start attacking Iran again, and does anybody but zealots like me have the stomach for anything like that? Finally, any Democratic administration could (and probably would) allow Iran to violate a nuclear agreement. (Note that Murray says “even Kamala Harris,” suggesting she would be the least likely to be a hard-liner on Iran, which is true.)
An Israeli flag was removed from a fan at a FIFA World Cup match between Iran and New Zealand while Palestinian flags nearby were reportedly left untouched, Hebrew media reported Wednesday.The incident, filmed inside the stadium and circulated on social media, showed stewards asking a fan to hand over an Israeli flag during Iran’s opening match of the 2026 World Cup, Israel Hayom reported. The fan pointed to Palestinian flags being held a few rows away and accused the stewards of applying the rules unevenly.
“Why don’t you tell them to take down their flag?” the fan said, according to Israel Hayom. “This feels like antisemitism. When you take that flag down, I’ll take mine down.”
The stewards reportedly told the fan the Israeli flag had to be removed for safety reasons and said the order did not come from them personally. Israel Hayom reported that the fan eventually handed over the flag after being told he would receive it back later. In another part of the video, a steward reportedly told him flags of teams playing in the match were allowed, a rule that would not explain why Palestinian flags were left visible.
I suppose that the Israeli flags were there displaying Israel’s solidarity with the people of Iran, though I don’t know for sure. It’s okay to ban all flags, or even to allow the flags of the two teams in the match, be selective enforcement of flags in this way is a no-no, “security” conditions or otherwise.
The coach of Iran’s World Cup team said it was ordered to leave the U.S. and return to its training base in Mexico only a few hours after opening its politically charged tournament by playing to a 2-2 draw with New Zealand on Monday night.
Coach Amir Ghalenoei didn’t say who ordered the Iranians to leave earlier than planned. The team had expected to spend the night in California to maximize the normal recovery process after its opening game, only to be told after the match that everyone must immediately get on a plane for the 140-mile trip back to Tijuana.
“They didn’t even give us time to recover,” Ghalenoei said through an interpreter. “After the game today, they said to us, ‘You have to leave immediately.’ It’s very important for us to have time for recovery, (but) we are asked to get on a plane and return to our camp in Tijuana, and we are really troubled by that.”
Speaking to CBS News on Monday, Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force, said that Iran’s team would be allowed to enter the U.S. one day before each match, but would be required to leave on the evening of their matches.
I presume Iran agreed to go across the border for safety reasons; after all, we’re at war with them. But if they didn’t agree, then it’s American responsibility to keep its team safe in the U.S.. And ordering the Iranian team back to Tijuana prematurely is a no-no.
Former President Barack Obama, joined by three former presidents, celebrated the opening of his presidential museum in Chicago in an extraordinary event Thursday that brought together world leaders, A-list celebrities, athletes and other internationally known figures.
Bono, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony and Eddie Vedder took turns on the stage ahead of planned performances by Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.
Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters were seated on stage with former presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton along with former first ladies Jill Biden, Laura Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was also in attendance.
President Donald Trump was not in attendance. He called the $850 million center a “total disaster” in a social media post in February.
. . . . Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem and Aguilera delivered a rousing rendition of “What a Wonderful World.” Pearl Jam’s Vedder, joined by Chicago teenagers in the nonprofit Guitars Over Guns program, sang an original song called “Better Believe,” written just for the dedication.
Legend sang “Someday We’ll All Be Free” and was joined by the rapper Common and Uniting Voices Chicago for their Academy Award-winning song “Glory.”
Bono, who said he was there representing the Irish, joined with The Edge in singing the U2 song “City of Blinding Lights.” The Roots served as the house band.
Those at the event included California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate; civil rights leaders Andrew Young and Al Sharpton; Oprah Winfrey; comedians David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert; actor Tom Hanks; tennis legend Billie Jean King and Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts.
Here’s a long video of the Grand Opening. Michelle Obama’s talk praising her husband starts at 2:25:40, and Barack wiped away a tear. I should add that the Center has a full-sized basketball court in honor of the ex-President’s favorite sport.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej again discuss the Meaning of Life:
Hili: Everything has already happened. Andrzej: In a way, you’re right, but these are repetitions with variations.
In Polish:
Hili: Wszystko już było.
Ja: W pewnym sensie masz rację, ale to są powtórzenia z wariacjami.
As I expected, Masih doesn’t like the U.S./Iran “peace deal” very much.
President Biden replaced the Taliban with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now President Trump is replacing the Islamic Republic with… the Islamic Republic.
From Luana. Eman Abdelhadi is an assistant professor in Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development, and appears to be here solely so she can indoctrinate our students. “F- the University of Chicago; it’s evil,” she starts. I don’t know squat about El-Sayed, but I see that he’s a “progressive” and shares some of his half-sister’s views. That doesn’t bode well for Democrats.
When @TradeUnionJake told me Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was the half-brother of the infamous Eman Abdelhadi, my jaw hit the floor.
I am so glad this article is finally live because this has been a wild secret to sit on.
Two from my feed. First the “new regime” in Iran is worse than the old regime, since it’s made up of hard-line Revolutionary Guards. And it’s still arresting women for singing:
The “new regime” in Iran that Trump claims is so much better than its predecessors just sentenced singer Parastoo Ahmadi and eight musicians to 74 lashes, a two-year travel ban, and a two-year ban on artistic activity.
— Navid Mohebbi نوید محبی (@navidmohebbi) June 17, 2026
I’ve seen this in Botany Pond. Note that the female is larger:
This turtle behavior, often called “claw fluttering,” is a courtship ritual where a male rapidly vibrates or waves his long front claws near a female’s face to attract her pic.twitter.com/1K8MGxHSQh
Homeopathy is one of the biggest scams I know of. The products have no curative properties and yet people spend billions on them. And, as Dara O’Briiain says in the bit below, “It’s JUST WATER.” (h/t Andrew Petto:
What do we know about the effectiveness of homeopathy?
There’s little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific health condition.
What do we know about the safety of homeopathic products?
Some products labeled as homeopathic may contain substantial amounts of active ingredients and could cause side effects and drug interactions.
What Is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy, also known as homeopathic medicine, is a medical system that was developed in Germany more than 200 years ago. It’s based on two unconventional theories:
“Like cures like”—the notion that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people.
“Law of minimum dose”—the notion that the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness. Many homeopathic products are so diluted that no molecules of the original substance remain.
Homeopathic products come from plants (such as red onion, arnica [mountain herb], poison ivy, belladonna [deadly nightshade], and stinging nettle), minerals (such as white arsenic), or animals (such as crushed whole bees). Homeopathic products are often made as sugar pellets to be placed under the tongue; they may also be in other forms, such as ointments, gels, drops, creams, and tablets. Treatments are “individualized” or tailored to each person—it’s common for different people with the same condition to receive different treatments. Homeopathy uses a different diagnostic system for assigning treatments to individuals and recognizes clinical patterns of signs and symptoms that are different from those of conventional medicine.
There is no empirical basis for either of these two “theories”, and many homeopathic products are basically water, since the “like” substance has been eliminated through multiple dilutions (see below), and in principle can have no curative properties.
According to Grok (data from S&S insider), billions are spent on this scam, and the market is growing as people buy into “natural” remedies:
The U.S. Homeopathy Market was valued at approximately USD 4.12 Billion in 2025 and is expected to reach approximately USD 13.38 Billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 12.50%.
The U.S. is the second largest market for homeopathic drugs globally in terms of revenues. OTC homeopathic remedies for symptoms such as cough, cold, pain, sleep aid, and pediatric use can be found at major retail outlets like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart as well as natural food stores. Hyland’s Homeopathic and Boiron are the leading brands. The FDA regulation of homeopathic products under the OTC drug paradigm has been increasingly progressive. The FDA’s risk-based regulatory strategy enhanced product regulation without taking out commercialized products from store shelves.
The world market for homeopathic remedies is $12-15 billion per year, but Americans spend more on this scam than any other nationality (India is second with about $1 billion/year). I’ve seen homeopathic remedies in most of the U.S. chains mentioned, and if you want to see the big array of homeopathic remedies in Whole Foods, go here. (You can go to any of the chains and simply insert “homeopathic” into their search function.)
It would be nice if the quacks health experts in the Trump administration would denounce these products as useless, but you know that ain’t gonna happen. In fact, people are still publishing papers touting homeopathic remedies, as recounted in the article below from the (usually) rational site Science Based Medicine (SBM). The author’s description shows he has cred:
The author is described in the article: “Mark Crislip, MD has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon, from 1990 to 2023. He has been voted a US News and World Report best US doctor, best ID doctor in Portland Magazine multiple times, has multiple teaching awards and, most importantly, the ‘Attending Most Likely To Tell It Like It Is’ by the medical residents at his hospital.”
His Wikipedia page also says that Crislip is a co-founder of SBM. Click headline to read:
It’s a bit of a strange article, disursive, and with the author bent on getting attachment to homeopathic remedies classified as a “delusional disorder.” It really is, but I doubt it would make the DSM given that many of us are subject to delusions like this. The problem is that this delusion involves not only a huge waste of money, but also potential damage to health. People should not be diagnosing themselves and buying nostrums when there are doctors around. And so Crislip reminds us again to stop using these fricking remedieds.
A few of the papers that Crislip mentions.
. . . . homeopathy continues to be inflicted on patients by homeopaths and naturopaths in lieu of useful therapy. Much to my ongoing wonder, research on the fiction continues with around 200 papers indexed on the PubMeds in the last year. Like my recent journey down the rat hole that is chiropractic, let’s see what those delusional homeopaths have been up to in the last year or so. Of course I am not going to discuss all 200 plus papers, just those of interest to me. You know, the crazy stuff.
And right of the chute, first reference, first paragraph, is gibberish in Homeopathy at a Turning Point [JAC: this is in the journal Homeopathy as a “letter to the editor” so it’s not a paper]:
In the Hippocratic conception, medicine is a synthesis of technique, philosophy and humanism, but in essence it is nothing more than the expression of the living being to counter predestination. Its foundation is the dose–response relationship that a living organism expresses when perturbed by an external agent. In practice, however, this interpretation is defined by the knowledge, thought, economic means, politics and religious sentiment of the community to which the organism belongs.
The author is out of Italy and perhaps this is the best translation ChatGPT could do, although the paper does not get much more coherent. For example, what to make of
These findings lead me to define a homeopathic remedy as a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles.
Well, I doubt that “peer review” in this journal means anything, though it looks as if the letter was reviewd, but the letter is long and typical of the word salad involved in defenses of homeopathy.
The Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine has a big summary of all the theoretical underpinnings of homeopathy:
Not everyone agrees that homeopathy is a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles and there have been numerous attempts to justify the delusion by a variety of mechanisms by which water could have a therapeutic effect. Some are summarized in Mapping the Theories and Models on the Mode of Action of Homeopathy: A Scoping Review and found 72 theoretical approaches to justify homeopathy but reduced them to 14 largely nonoverlapping frameworks. Those frameworks are water structures, general physics, nanostructures, mathematical models, chemistry, quantum physics, biochemistry, weak quantum theory, hormesis, quantum analogie, biophotons, complex systems, electrodynamics, and humanities.
Another tendentious paper from the journal Homeopathy. I quote the SBM article:
Why does homeopathy fail to show efficacy in clinical trials? Not because homeopathy doesn’t work, but that
In homeopathy, however, where treatment is individualised, past and present context-sensitive, and closely related to the therapeutic encounter, RCTs cannot readily capture the core principles of practice.
While it’s important for us to understand how homeopathy works, it’s equally important to demonstrate that homeopathy does work
This paper is a “special editorial”, and tries to dismiss randomized control trials as ways to test homeopathy. From the article (bolding is mine):
Reading these pages and having attended the recent congress of the Homeopathy Research Institute, I’ve been heartened to see an increasing quantity and quality of scientific research in homeopathy being conducted from around the world. While it’s important for us to understand how homeopathy works, it’s equally important to demonstrate that homeopathy does work and I would like to see more practice-related research submitted to Homeopathy.
As readers are well aware, clinical trials are regarded as the gold standard in medical evidence and randomised placebo-controlled trials (RCTs), in particular, are central to the concept of evidence-based medicine. In homeopathy, however, where treatment is individualised, past and present context-sensitive, and closely related to the therapeutic encounter, RCTs cannot readily capture the core principles of practice.
Indeed, the RCT model is built on assumptions that directly conflict with homeopathic principles, focusing on uniform interventions and outcomes, imposing strict eligibility criteria that exclude many potential beneficiaries, and minimising interaction between the patient and the practitioner. Such demands for homogeneity strip away the features that define homeopathy and create an artificial clinical environment for the sake of trial design,[1] a mismatch that helps explain why results from homeopathy RCTs are often equivocal or contradictory. Two systematic reviews led by this journal’s esteemed Editor found only limited convincing efficacy after methodological flaws were accounted for.[2] [3] Does this mean homeopathy is ineffective…or rather that the RCT method is an inadequate basis for forming such a conclusion?
Note the list of reasons why the “gold standard” of testing medicines cannot be used here (e.g., it “minimizes interaction between the patient and the practitioner”, which of course you want to do so there is no placebo effect). Indeed, the author (Lee Kayne) says that homeopathy has its own methods of demonstrating efficacy (they suggest case studies and “long-term cohort studies”. That, of course, is a red flag indicating quackery. From the paper:
Opponents argue the former and that, by virtue of our claim that homeopathy cannot be forced into a conventional trial framework that seeks to measure efficacy within tightly controlled parameters, we are admitting it does not work. Yet at the same time, they refuse to accept that alternative methods of investigation and reporting might better reflect the effectiveness of homeopathic practice and outcomes in the real world. So it’s not evidence unless it’s ‘their’ evidence? Except when their evidence does not produce the outcomes they desire – then they may fail to publish the results or simply note that “many RCTs can render…results of little relevance to clinical practice”.
To be sure, the journal does publish failures of the method. From the SBM article:
No specific effect of the Lumbar Vertebra LM2 biotherapic was demonstrated. Improvements are likely due to non-specific effects such as the therapeutic environment, patient expectations and placebo response.
Although I could not find what the standardized homeopathic biotherapic (Lumbar Vertebra, LM2 potency) was. I was curious what was used applying the so-called Law of Similars. How does one use, say, chopping wood (gives me low back pain) as a homeopathic remedy. Not out of the question for a delusion that can prescribe moonlight. And homeopaths want to be taken seriously.
Here’s one in which Crislip cites a paper in the Journal of Ayurveda and integrative Medicine. It’s a case study, of course:
I do not think homeopaths are intentionally funny, but you have to wonder with articles like
Following a thorough case evaluation, the patient was prescribed Ruta graveolens 200CH, followed by Thuja occidentalis 200CH. The anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and anti-cancer properties of both these medicines have been thoroughly demonstrated via many scientific experiments.
One invitro paper each, both evaluating actual chemicals, would be two, so technically many. And where is the like cures like in the treatment?
The paper above touts homeopathy as a cure for cancer, and I believe “200CH” means the “curative” substance is diluted 1:100, and this is done 200 times in succession. Nothing remains of the original “curative” substance. This is considered “high potency”! Be sure to look at the dilution factor if you are foolish enough to buy homeopathic remedies. Also be sure to see what else is in there.
Cancer and tuberculosis? No problem for homeopathy. The last quote from the SBM paper:
Some papers seem to be written to scare those attached to reality:
And that’s what I could suffer through, er, I mean, found for homeopathy in 2025.
I get angry when I see homeopathic “remedies” sold in presumably reputable stores, and think about the waste of money involved when poor suckers (and I include the ignorant) buy the stuff. And ignorance of science is no excuse, because it takes only a few minutes to find reputable sources online that tell you why homeopathy is worthless (e.g., here and here).
