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 just finished a long (843-page) novel in my two-person book club with my friend Wendy. (We alternate choosing propitious books, read them at the same time, and discuss them online.) This one, Lonesome Dove (1985) by Larry McMurtry, turned out to be not only a page-turner, but also one of the finest modern novels I’ve read (it won a Pulitzer for fiction). In fact, I’ve put it in consideration with a few others as The Great American Novel.
What, you ask, are the characteristics of a candidate for the Great American Novel? This is purely subjective, but I’ll give my criteria. It has to be set in America, of course, and display diverse aspects of America and Americans themselves. It has to be epic (i.e., longish and involved), not hew too closely to a heavy-handed theme, contain tragedy and sorrow as well as joy, along with a soupçon of humor. It has to be so American that it could not be set in any other country. And when you finish it, you will have not only a sense of what America was like at a given time, but also a need for your own time to process what you’ve read.
Another novel that I’ve considered as a possible Great American Novel is The Great Gatsby, which we’ve all read in high school. (It’s short, has well-delineated themes, and portrays American ambition.) But it’s not a good candidate as it portrays only a small slice of American life (rich people and obsessive love) and is not an epic, having as it does only a few characters. Another, also by Larry McMurtry, is The Last Picture Show(1971), a fantastic book and an equally fantastic movie—in fact, I think the eponymous movie is the best American or English-language movie ever made. Below is one scene from the movie, which I see as not only archetypically American but full of low-key but intense emotion. (McMurtry co-wrote the screenplay with director Peter Bogdanovich.)
Here Sam the Lion (played by Ben Johnson), who runs the picture show, restaurant, and movie theater in the tiny oil town of Anarene, Texas (modeled on Archer City, pop 1070, where McMurtry lived), takes young Sonny (played by Timothy Bottoms) fishing along with Sam’s mentally disabled son Billy. Sam reminisces about his love for Lois Farrow (played by Ellen Burstyn), who was married when they had an affair.
I think this is the modern and American equivalent of Shakespeare. No, the language isn’t fancy, but the emotions are real and deep. I can’t imagine any non-American equivalent. Johnson won the Oscar that year for Best Supporting Actor:
But I digress, except to say that one of the themes of this movie is similar to that in the novel Lonesome Dove: the attempt of people to stave off loneliness by trying to connect with others, and their inevitable failure to do so.
The plot of Lonesome Dove (which was also made into a 6-part t.v. miniseries) can be seen in extenso at the Wikipedia page. In short, it’s about a group of cowboys who run a livery stable and a horse- and cow-selling operation in the eponymous Texas town. (Time: mid-nineteenth century.) The leaders of the group are a pair of retired Texas Rangers, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, played respectively in the miniseries by and Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (great casting!). There’s a shortage of women in Lonesome Dove, and the men patronize :Lorena, the town’s only prostitute—the word in the book is always “whore”—when they need a “poke.”
There are a number of adventures, including a cattle-stealing jaunt to Mexico, but the meat of the plot comprises delineation of the characters, which include a black cowboy, Deets, the moral center of the book and the only man who is wholly admirable. Gus and Call decide to take a big herd of cattle to the distant but lusher plains of Montana, where they envision building a ranch. They take with them all the Hat Creek outfit men, as well as Lorena, who eventually falls in love with Gus. Along the way several other women appear, all having, like the men, frustrated relationships. One woman, Clara, who lives in Nebraska, is the female equivalent of Deets: a moral center, though she’s immensely unhappy.
At any rate, tons of adventures ensue: there are fights with bears and Indians, murders, hangings of horse thieves, duststorms, locust plagues, and moments of happiness. If nothing else, McMurtry shows us that the life of a cowboy was far from romantic. It was hard, dirty, and exhausting.
There are also tragedies and some very sad deaths. The ending just sort of tapers off. . there is no satisfying denouement, and that is good. (McMurtry wrote three other books in the series with prequels and sequels to this book, but I’m not interested in reading them.)
It’s a good candidate for the Great American Novel because, first, you can’t get more American than cowboys depicted at the height of Cowboydom in the mid- to late nineteenth century. But much more than that is the diversity of emotions and characters that make the book as rich as a novel by Dickens—if he wrote a novel with Americans rather than Brits. As my friend Wendy wrote about Gus and Call, “They all were so human, deeply flawed, stubborn, and yet had their own standards and principles. And they kept going, which I think is the American bit of it.”
All I can do is recommend that you read this book, pronto. Its length may overwhelm those who can’t read even short books, but it’s involved, engaging, and wonderful, right up there with All the Light We Cannot See (another Pulitzer winner) as the best piece of modern fiction in English I’ve read in years.
Are there other candidates for the Great American Novel? Yes, Huckleberry Finn is a good one, embodying the characteristics of the genre shown above. I have heard that East of Eden, by Steinbeck, another wholly American epic, is another one, and I plan to read it soon.
Here’s the book that you must read:
Here is McMurtry talking about the book. Note that the cowboys in Lonesome Dove were older than McMurtry describes as typical of the era, with Gus and Call being seniors.
If you click on the screenshot below, you’ll go to a short video showing Robert Duvall claiming that the role of Gus was his favorite—and he had many great roles. Note that he compares Gus to a Shakespearian character. There’s also a scene from the miniseries showing Gus and Call, in which, curiously, Gus reminisces about his lost love Clara. (I haven’t seen the miniseries.) There are parallels with the Sam the Lion scene above.
Now I’ve made my recommendation, but I’m sure I’m missing candidates for the Great American Novel. What would you recommend as the book who takes the title?
“How is the Duck Family doing?”, you ask. They’re peachy—couldn’t be better. Today is the two-week anniversary of when they came to Botany Pond, and Miss Duck and her Brood of Four are healthy, happy (as far as I can tell), vigorous, and certainly well fed. You’ll see below how the babies have grown: they now have pointy tails, are at least twice as large as when they came to the Pond, and soon will enter their awkward teenage phase as their feathers start to come in.
All the ducks know me and come to me when they see me at the pond; I don’t even have to whistle for them. I am their Human Food-Vending Machine.
For two of the last three mornings, they were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs leading from my building to the Pond, and when they saw me they came waddling and strutting up. As you can see below, the babies were peeping and Miss Duck was making soft quacks because she wasn’t quite sure of my intentions. I herded them to the water in the channel, as I always feed them in the water—it makes less mess if there is uneaten food. (The fish and turtles get it quickly in the water.)
Miss Duck, unlike other hens I’ve tended, is frightened of the large turtles, quacks when they approach (the babies don’t care), and swims away from them. She feints at them with her bill, and sometimes at the fish as well. But I manage to get enough food in them all to keep them fat and growing. (They get fed three or four times per day).
So here’s what greeted me yesterday morning when I came to the Pond about 6:30 a.m. You can hear me speaking to them, as a duck expert told me that they will also recognize my voice. Although my vocal timbre changes, I don’t speak to them like one who speaks to a child, for I think animals should be addressed as adults.
Sound up on all videos.
After breakfast in the channel, the family invariably swims back to the main Pond, deciding to settle on one of the three or four rocky spaces where they can dry off, rest, and digest. Here they first try the “Sacred Rock” in the NW part of the pond, and then settle on the big flat rock between the benches.
Look how they’ve grown!
Yesterday morning there were fairly heavy rains, but the ducks were all dry when they came for food after the rain stopped. I have no idea where they go to stay dry, as when it rains heavily you simply can’t look over the Pond in person without getting drenched. Here they are after the rain in a screenshot from thePondCam. Can you find Miss Duck and her ducklings?
Finally, a first yesterday: a rabbit appeared at the Pond. Though Hyde Park is full of Eastern Cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus), I have never seen one at Botany Pond. If it hangs around I may try to feed it, though I’m wary of that Cooper’s Hawk who sometimes comes by. The arrow points to the bunny.
I’ll do my best to provide updates, but I just changed Big Computers and that always causes problems and stress, in this case with uploading pictures and videos. Stay tuned: you will not miss the ducklings growing up!
Welcome to the sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, August 2, 2026 and National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, a treat appearing in its American form (chocolate wafers enclosing a vanilla ice cream sandwich) in the 1890s. But my favorite subspecies is California’s “It’s-It”, devised in 1928. Here the ice cream is sandwiched between two oatmeal cookies dipped in chocolate. There are now many varieties. If you can buy these in your area, feel lucky, for I can’t get ’em!
A 2017 survey of approximately 5.7 million clovers in six European countries found the frequency of 4-leaf clovers to be around 5000 to 1 (one 4-leaf clover for every 5076 normal 3-leaf clovers), almost twice the commonly stated probability of 10,000 to 1. According to this survey, the frequency of a 5-leaf clover is 24,390 to 1, and that of a 6-leaf clover is 312,500 to 1.
Here’s a rare six-leaf clover (pressed and dried) of Trifolium repens, the common white clover:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
UPDATE: Trump has called off the attack on Iran reported right below. The man cannot make up his mind, though this may be a strategy (I think it’s dithering, though):
President Trump called off a new attack on Iran on Saturday night, saying “the perimeters of a deal had been agreed to” that would open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic and end Iran’s nuclear threat.
The abrupt announcement on Truth Social de-escalated the rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran over control of the strait, Iran’s attacks on U.S. troops in recent days, and Trump’s own threats to rain more American bombs and missiles on the Islamic Republic.
He said Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked him to pull back on the strikes, which he ordered Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported, to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table.
“Based on this request, I have agreed, for the further benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,” Trump said on Truth Social.
DEAL! I don’t buy it.
*The WSJ reports that Trump is once again ready (or says he is ready) to attack Iran big time.
President Trump has ordered the military to launch a fresh attack on Iran that could begin as soon as this weekend and last a few days, U.S. officials said.
Earlier Friday, he told reporters that he planned to resume heavy military strikes to force the regime to come to the negotiating table. He predicted that if the U.S. hit Iran hard enough, the hard-line regime would eventually “peter out.”
“We will be hitting them very hard,” Trump said Friday at a televised cabinet meeting at Camp David. “And you know at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’”
Trump authorized the new attack plan presented to him at the presidential retreat, U.S. officials said. But, they noted, any immediate progress on the diplomatic front could convince Trump to halt the planned strikes and return to negotiations. He also could simply change his mind.
“As President Trump said at his cabinet meeting today, the United States will win, and Iran will not have a nuclear weapon under his watch,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump’s threats Friday contrasted with his insistence earlier this week that “very friendly negotiations” were under way, enabling a pause on military operations. Since then, Iran launched a surprise attack on troops in Jordan, triggering a U.S. retaliatory attack on Wednesday.
For weeks behind closed doors, Trump has been telling aides that the Iranians are “crazy,” according to U.S. officials. He also has complained to confidants that the interim peace deal was ultimately meaningless, officials said, and that he always knew it wasn’t going to work.
His frustration was on full display during the meeting at Camp David when the president accused Iranian diplomats of being “very dishonorable” to deal with and suggested more violent military strikes were needed to break Tehran’s will.
This just goes back and forth endlessly, with Trump hinting that negotiations are proceeding smoothly, and providing hope for peace, and then he seems to realize that the Iranians are mendacious (surprise!). It may just be a ruse on his part to destabilize Iran, but I don’t see how pausing attacks would destabilize Iran, and we know by now that either attacking or pausing will not affect what that regime does. I still think he should attack Kharg Island heavily.
*Surprise! Trump backtracked on two statements this week. The first was his claim that the Reflecting Pool renovation in Washington, D.C. was sabotaged by vandalism, causing an Olympic athlete to be arrested. The other was that he’d allow Ukraine to make Patriot missiles. He now admits that the Reflecting Pool job was botched by contractors (the accused felon had his charges dropped), and he says he’s reneging on his promise to Zelensky.
Federal prosecutors on Friday said that contractors hired by the Trump administration had botched the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, leaving behind “widespread damage” in the pool’s new blue lining, and that the Interior Department had then falsely blamed that damage on vandals.
In an extraordinary motion filed Friday evening, the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, said she was seeking to dismiss a felony charge against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist who was accused of pulling up a piece of the pool’s lining two feet square.
In doing so, Ms. Pirro — a longtime ally of President Trump’s — directly contradicted the president’s repeated claim that the Reflecting Pool’s peeling liner was caused by people slashing its coating with knives. Instead, she said, “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”
Earlier this month, Ms. Pirro herself had echoed the president’s claims, calling a news conference to announce Mr. Hearn’s indictment on July 2. She said that she had “tremendous evidence” that Mr. Hearn had committed a felony, and noted that he faced up to 10 years in prison.
But on Friday, Ms. Pirro said that her prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department, which had awarded a no-bid contract to a first-time government contractor to repair the iconic landmark.
Someone is asleep at the wheel at the Interior Department. A felony? What was the previous “evidence”? As for those missiles, here are a couple of paragraphs:
President Trump backtracked on Friday from a promise earlier this month to let Ukraine make Patriot missiles, weapons that were sorely needed as a defense interceptor against Russia’s deadly ballistic missile attacks.
On July 8, Mr. Trump had unexpectedly assented to sharing technology behind the missiles to allow Ukraine to build them, saying that “we’ll give them the right to make Patriots” during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the sidelines of the NATO summit meeting in Ankara, Turkey. He added: “We’ll show them how to do it.”
When asked about the agreement during a meeting with his cabinet on Friday, Mr. Trump said “we have not agreed to that,” suggesting that he had changed his mind because “it is a hard thing to give away that kind of technology” and because of the risk that “those people you give the technology, they could someday turn on you.”
Yeah, right; I’m really worried about Ukraine firing missiles at U.S. troops in Europe! How many countries have we already shared that technology with?
*I doubt that many of us read about the invasion of Ceuta by Moroccans without thinking, “This is going to happen all over the West,” though it won’t happen on this scale in many places. Douglas Murray has warned for years about how Western values could be changed for the worse by massive immigration, and he does so this week in The Free Press in a piece called “Europe’s borderless dream becomes a nightmare.”
Eleven years ago, almost to the day, Europe was experiencing a migration wave that threatened to make the continent buckle. In the space of a matter of weeks, more than a million people from Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East made their way into Europe, principally by crossing to the islands of Greece and Italy: “the soft underbelly of Europe.”
As various European countries started to panic, it was German chancellor Angela Merkel who decided to control the day. “Wir schaffen das,” she said in August 2015. “We can do this.” Merkel and some of her counterparts in the EU effectively suspended normal immigration procedures and opened the borders of Europe to anyone who wanted to come.
. . .This week, Ceuta finally did explode—and into a wider global awareness. Footage of migrants pushing by the thousands to get into the territory has caused many people to say that the subject of my 2017 bestseller, The Strange Death of Europe, seems to have been made into a film. In reality, it didn’t need to be. What I wrote about in that book was based on what I had seen with my own eyes. In a way, it is a good thing that the wider world is getting an opportunity to see again what I tried to describe and warn about. By late Friday, Spanish authorities claimed that most of the migrants had either left willingly or been pushed out by security forces. They were much less forthcoming about the many ways their government invited the crisis.
The immediate cause of the crisis in Ceuta is a decision by the Spanish government to normalize the status of migrants who have already broken into Spain illegally. The far-left Spanish government—which receives far less international attention and criticism than it deserves—has been stoking this situation for years. As well as corrupting and politicizing the Spanish justice system, the government of Pedro Sánchez has advertised itself as open to illegal migration. Perhaps Sánchez, like many left- and right-wing leaders in Europe, underestimated the number of people who wanted to come into his country. But by failing to deport illegals and, in fact, normalizing their status, he has done as much as any European leader could have done to increase the draw and thus the flow of people into Spain and therefore the rest of Europe.
. . .As my repeated trips to southern Europe have proved to me, most of the migrants who arrive in Greece, Italy, and Spain will not stay in these countries. They are merely a doorway into Europe. Most of the migrants want to head north for the larger welfare payments. Germany and other northern European countries will therefore be the ones who will end up paying the most for the decisions made by Pedro Sánchez.
The situation is, of course, unsustainable. Like many other European countries, Spain has a national debt that exceeds its annual gross domestic product. It cannot afford to pay to house illegal migrants. The migrants themselves will never put back in taxes what they take out in welfare. The vast majority of those who arrived illegally in the past decade remain a net drain on the state. And that is before you even begin to address the social and civilizational challenges that such movement brings. But Spain—like the rest of Europe—will continue to try to sustain the unsustainable. Something that I have come to realize can go on for a very long time. It has gone on for more than a decade already. Only four days ago in these pages, I described the spate of terrorist attacks conducted in Europe by Islamist migrants. And just as every week’s news includes stories of the worst effects of Europe’s illegal migration, so each week’s news ignores the long-term unsustainability of the economic migration model Europe has put in place.
Pro-migration activists like to talk about figures. Figures which, as I showed in my book, they either invent or actively lie about. But Europeans know that the official figures are baloney. They use their eyes and see what is going on. And they have long come to the conclusion that, in fact, “We can’t do this.” Whether the political leaders in Europe catch up with what the voters can see with their own eyes will decide no less a question than whether the continent of Europe lives or dies.
People will say—and said this about Murray’s book—that he was grossly exaggerating. And immigration itself isn’t inherently bad: it’s been great for the U.S. But unrestrained immigration, particularly from areas where the cultural is refractory to integrating in the West, is not good; and that’s what will degrade Europe. No-go zones, grooming gangs, economic burdens, and so on: these things are already affecting the quality of life in Europe.
In media circles, this week’s hire of a prominent New York Times columnist as a correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes was greeted with disbelief.
The collective response went something like this: “What?!”
Ross Douthat would not have been high on anyone’s list to replace the likes of Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, all experienced reporters who were let go in recent weeks from the venerable news show. Or the likes of Anderson Cooper, who left of his own accord amid the months-long tumult and internal complaints that political bias was being injected into 60 Minutes news reports.
Yes, it seemed downright odd. After all, Douthat has no broadcast television experience and he is – in the journalistic vernacular – an opinion guy, not a news guy. He’s certainly not a practitioner of investigative journalism, the longtime calling card of 60 Minutes.
Douthat is known for his lofty takes on national politics and religion – not for the usual reporting skills of grilling reluctant sources with tough questions and digging out information that somebody important doesn’t want you to have.
His Times boss, the top opinion editor, Katie Kingsbury, had kind words for Douthat in a staff memo, according to a Times article.
As a columnist, Douthat argued for “a religiously serious, intellectually restless conservatism”, Kingsbury wrote. “He was right about things early, wrong about things honestly and never, not once, boring.”
Terrific qualities in an opinion writer, certainly, but not exactly a great fit for a job defined decades ago by the bulldog tenacity of the investigative reporter Mike Wallace.
. . .But at the all-new 60 Minutes, the hire is being positioned as a coup. And, in fact, it lines up surprisingly well with the new leadership.
Like Douthat’s hire, it didn’t seem to make much sense on the surface.
She too lacked television experience, and she too had made her name on the opinion side of journalism, where she leaned right. She founded the Free Press, a successful digital media company that concentrates on opinion journalism, especially with an “anti-woke” flavor. Before that, she’d been an opinion editor at the New York Times, where she and Douthat had overlapped. Weiss quit the Times, complaining about its internal culture.
Her conservative profile, and her disagreements with legacy media, was just what Ellison wanted, as he tried to cozy up to Donald Trump and others in the administration. After all, Ellison was trying to get big corporate mergers approved and needed federal approval.
When it came time for Weiss to appoint a new executive producer for 60 Minutes, she chose Nick Bilton – another surprising hire who had no TV news experience and who shared roots at the New York Times.
If broadcast networks are judged by ratings, things aren’t going well so far. They have plummeted at CBS News, including at its evening news show, where Weiss had quickly installed a new anchor, Tony Dokoupil, to great fanfare.
Douthat has neither television experience, nor, perhaps more important, any experience in investigative reporting. Most of the times I’ve discussed him is to criticize his credulous defense of his Christianity. And really, how good can an investigative reporter be (for that’s what “60 Minutes” is about) is they can’t even question a belief in unevidenced superstition. I have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards Weiss at CBS, but right now, in light of Douthat and the lower ratings of CBS News, I’m not optimistic.
*Although I no longer subscribe to Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish, I still get emails containing an excerpt from his main post. This week it’s on Fauci, and called “Neither Saint nor villain,” with the subtitle, “The all-too-human story of a masterful operator, Tony Fauci.” From the excerpt:
By the looks of him, Tony Fauci is broken. His expression in this week’s hearings was flat, a little haunted, done. The man who once leapt at every chance to testify in public as “Mr Science” suddenly found himself mute, humbled even, leery of “perjury traps.” You’d think a whopping, unprecedented, retroactive pardon might have the benefit of at least liberating the man to tell us everything, good and bad. But nope.
This is life in a broken republic.
Senator Rand Paul bears some of the blame. He’s been engaged in a campaign not just of public accountability but recklessly spittle-flecked demonization. Fauci is not responsible for “probably more deaths than any other individual in the medical world.” Please. There is no context in which any senator should ever be saying “Who the fuck do you think you were?” to a public servant who had been tasked with handling a once-in-a-century plague. And the meretricious leaking of Fauci’s private diary — to add to his public humiliation — is another appalling, gutter low.
But the media and Democratic lionization of Fauci — the near worship of him — may have hurt Fauci more in the end. The diary reveals a truly decadent Washington dynamic: journos and public figures in a mutual “resistance” tongue-bath of dinners and book parties. Yes, it’s fine to maintain contacts, even transactional friendships, with sources. But the chummy to and fro between Fauci and Tapper, for example? Very late republic.
Fauci, on the other hand, seemed to be huffing it:
After being honored at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery (“it was the highest level of AAA list you could imagine in Washington DC”), he writes about hanging out with Venus and Serena Williams, Clive Davis and the celebrity chef Jose Andres. “We were invited to go across the street by Jose to his restaurant Zaytinya for after hours champagne.”
Fauci, for all his academic achievement, was still, beneath it all, an insecure, dorky science nerd from Brooklyn whose life was finally made whole by a call from Barbra Streisand. All too human. The obsession with Hollywood celebrity in DC still amazes me, and the nerd prom, of course, is its apotheosis. But et tu, Fauci? You kind of hope a generationally great scientist would be above that kind of thing. But nah:
A FEW DAYS AGO, Julia Roberts sent me beautiful flower arrangement. mailed her my thanks. Scott Atlas still causing problems with his “herd immunity” issue.
It would have been perfectly ok, for example, if Fauci had simply said from the very beginning, “We don’t know the virus’ origins.” Because we didn’t. In fact, most of the scientists looking at the virus first thought it was “friggin’ likely” engineered. Why? Because it was a bat coronavirus with something called a “furin cleavage site” inserted, and “they were already doing this type of work” at Wuhan, a lab with a woefully inadequate security regimen. Hence one scientist’s dry, subsequent remark to Matt Taibbi:
If someone proposes to insert a furin cleavage site in a bat SARS coronavirus in Wuhan, and then one year later we see a bat SARS coronavirus with a furin cleavage site in Wuhan, that is highly unlikely to be a natural event.
And yet almost immediately, Fauci corralled these same scientists into publishing a paper casting a possible lab leak as definitively debunked and a fringe conspiracy theory. Why that certainty so fast? You might well ask.
Yes, I was somewhat appalled by Fauci’s celebrity worship, but a bit of narcissism isn’t a crime. But his twisting the arm of scientists to support one’s favored hypothesis is unethical. Fauci isn’t a god, but neither is he malicious. He’s human, and he just got called out for his failings. In his case, though, some of his failings affected a lot of people.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sees “vanity of vanities,” but Andrzej doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Andrzej: What do you see there? Hili: Vanity of vanities.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Marność nad marnościami.
The best way for academia to persuade the public that its not a partisan institution…is for the American Association of University Professors to break over 100 years of precedent and endorse a progressive Democrat for the Senate. pic.twitter.com/eMcO8bOMKs
The Southern Three-Banded Armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus) is one of the two only armadillo species capable of rolling into a completely sealed sphere. pic.twitter.com/Vbl9plhjR1
On this day and the next in 1944, the Nazis gassed about 4300 Roma to death in Auschwitz, including this family: In the picture, the Emmler Sinti family deported to #Auschwitz. From the left: Wally (b. 1936), Elisabeth (b. 1917), Ali (b. 1938) and Oscar (b. 1935) https://t.co/NOYGh3Bbkv
Okay we’ll have a Caturday this week, but we’ll see about forthcoming weeks. If you have a cat-related item for me to consider, by all means send it along.
First, we have an eight-minute video of a real “cat lady”, who has over a thousand moggies. She’s turned her house into a sanctuary/rescue center/adoption center, so that’s not so “crazy.” They’ve saved 28,000 cats.
You can read more about “The Cat House on the Kings” by clicking on the link below:
Here’s a seven-minute video of a day in the life of the Cat House on the Kings:
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As you must know by now, Larry the Cat, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, turned nineteen, and has been at 10 Downing Street for 15 years, serving under seven Prime Ministers. Still he abides. Here’s a video of Larry “causing mischief,” though not everything it shows is “mischief”.
And here’s a short video of Larry chasing a rather emaciated fox from Downing Street. He may be a poor mouser and bad at catching birds, but he’s good at chasing off d*gs and other canids.
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Now it’s time to learn some cat evolution by reading about Proailurus, the earliest known “true cat” (i.e., an animal placed in the family Felidae). We find its fossils from about 30 million years ago, and you can read about it in this article by Will Newton from Discover Wildlife. It may have been the common ancestor of all cats today, but I consider that unlikely; it was probably related to the ancestor of all living felids, but finding THE “missing cat link” would be nearly impossible. But it does show us what a very early felid was like.
Click the screenshot to read.
A few excerpts (indented):
What was Proailurus?
Proailurus is an extinct cat that lived in Europe and Asia from the Late Oligocene (30 million years ago) to the Early Miocene (25 million years ago). It’s widely considered to be the first ‘true’ cat and the ancestor of the entire cat family, which includes everything from extinct sabre toothed cats to living lions, tigers, and leopards.
Proailurus is known from three different species, two of which – P.lemanensis and P.bourbonnensis – were roughly the size as a house cat, weighing in at 7-10kg. The third species, P.major, is thought to have been more than twice as large, but it’s only known from a single specimen and, as a result, is shrouded in mystery.
What did Proailurus look like?
Looking somewhat like a miniature cougar, Proailurus had a lengthy, low-slung back, relatively short limbs and a long, flexible tail. These features suggest it lived an arboreal lifestyle, hunting, resting, and perhaps even playing high up in the tree canopy. It may have also hunted on the ground, just like the modern Geoffroy’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi).
This bodyplan and arboreal behaviour bears remarkable similarity to the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) – a cat-like predator found only on Madagascar.
. . . Where did Proailurus live?
The first remains of Proailurus were described in 1879 by French naturalist Henri Filhol who found a handful of small, cat-like fossils at a site in Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, Central France.
Since this discovery in the late 19th century, fossils of Proailurus have been unearthed in neighbouring Spain and Germany and, surprisingly, Mongolia. This suggests Proailurus had a very wide range and occupied a niche that had very few, if any major competitors.
Several fossils believed to belong to Proailurus, or at least a Proailurus-like animal, have been found in North America, including the famous Ginn Quarry cat. This specimen is represented by a complete skull, which has dentition very similar to the type species (P.lemanensis) originally described by Filhol.
The jury’s still out on whether the Ginn Quarry cat was truly a Proailurus, but its discovery suggests that cats – or at least cat-like animals – had already dispersed from Eurasia into North America, establishing a lineage that, millions of years later, would give rise to some of the largest cats that ever lived.
What did Proailurus originate from?
Proailurus is widely considered the first ‘true’ cat and the basal member of a family known as Felidae. This furry family is nestled within a larger mammalian order known as Carnivora, which includes everything from cats and dogs, to bears,mustelids, hyenas, and seals.
The earliest carnivorans would have resembled small weasels or genets and, like many living carnivorans, would have likely been nocturnal. From these small, stealthy predators, two large sub-groups emerged: the feliforms and the caniforms.
While the caniforms diversified into an astonishing array of shapes and lifestyles (just look at how different skunks are from walruses, for example), the feliforms largely retained a sleek, agile body plan and exhibited far less diversity in terms of their morphology, diet, and behaviour.
And it’s from Feliformia that Proailurus, and its lineage Felidae, eventually emerged 30 million years ago.
Again, we don’t know whether Proailurus is the ancestor of all living felids, or a pretty close relative of that common ancestor. Nor do we know that it was brownish and unmarked, as depicted in the drawing above. What we have are fossil skeletons, and that can’t tell us about color, or whether these animals were spotted or striped.
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Lagniappe: Several items today, starting with this Facebook entry about a cat image being used to sell gin (see the text below the photo):
I’ve often shown medieval images of cats, asserting that for some reason artists of that era simply couldn’t draw even a decent moggy. Here’s a FB video showing some pathetic attempts to paint or draw cats. You can see more here and even more in the panoply of hilarious images at the Google Search page for “medieval cat paintings.”
Bill Maher’s back after his summer vacation, and his latest “new rule” bit starts in with some hard criticism of the “far far Left”—the progressives—for being close to Communists, and the Democratic Socialists of America for using Communist jargon. I’ve talked before about the DSA’s platform, which includes abolishing the Senate and ditching the President and Supreme Court. as well as getting rid of the police and jails. But some of them go further, advocating seizing private property and “seizing the means of production”—straight out of Marx.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) — Co-leading the initiative
Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) — Co-leading the initiative
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)
Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV)
Rep. Don Davis (D-NC)
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D-TX)
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY)
Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR)
Rep. Kristin McDonald Rivet (D-MI)
Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH)
Jessica Killin (candidate)
Marlene Galán Woods (candidate)
Bobby Pulido (candidate)
The pledge is not some kind of right-wing manifesto, but a reasonable centrist Democratic view. I’m appalled that more Democrats in Congress wouldn’t sign it.
Oh, and my favorite Democratic curmudgeon, James Carville, appears with a quote about the “progressives”:
“There’s just some shit that I can’t be in the same tent with. . I”m done. I’m not in that fucking political party.”
Welcome to CaturSaturday, August 1, 2026, and the new month is on us! Soon it will be Back to School Time, a time that always filled me with great dread when I was a child.
Here are the famous “Four Yorkshiremen” from Monty Python:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Thousands of Moroccans have suddenly decided to enter Spain via Ceuta, a Spanish city on the African mainland.
Spanish officials said on Friday that tens of thousands of migrants had entered Ceuta, the small Spanish territory in North Africa where a surge of people crossing the border from Morocco has left nearly three dozen people dead and created a political crisis for Spain’s pro-immigration government.
Some 60,000 people were estimated to have entered the territory since Thursday, said Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s government. He called the situation “absolutely unsustainable” in a territory with about 83,000 residents. In the fast-moving situation, Spain’s interior ministry had a somewhat lower estimate, saying that about 50,000 people had entered the territory.
Many of them have since returned to Morocco. The interior ministry said on Friday afternoon that more than 25,000 of those who entered Ceuta in the surge had left.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, arrived in Ceuta on Friday to address what his conservative opponents have called an invasion of Spanish soil. At a border crossing, he condemned “mafias involved in human trafficking that deceive many young people, many of whom ultimately lose their lives.”
Mr. Sánchez has developed an image as a pro-immigration liberal and Europe’s most prominent critic of the Trump administration’s hard line against migrants. He made global headlines this year by allowing more than a million migrants to apply to formalize their status.
Migrants began crossing into Ceuta (pronounced say-YOU-tah), a six-mile-long peninsula on Morocco’s coast that Spain has governed for centuries, in large numbers on Thursday. They climbed over border fences or swam, sometimes for hours, to its shores. At least 34 people died trying to enter Ceuta, Mr. Vivas said on Friday.
On Friday, hundreds if not thousands of young men were lingering on the beach in Ceuta, some carrying satchels and plastic bags. “You ask why everyone came — because there’s no work in Morocco,” said Ajoub el-Arrot, 24, a Moroccan arrival.
Several people said they had been encouraged to enter Ceuta by the Moroccan authorities. “They just kept saying, ‘Go that way, go that way,’” said Youssef Alaoui, 26, referring to police officers who he said pointed them in the right direction. He ultimately swam across the maritime border, he said, encountering several dead bodies in the water.
In recent years, as Morocco became a key staging ground for migrants seeking to reach Europe, Spain has depended on Moroccan border guards to stem the flow of arrivals. Tensions have spiked in the past when Morocco appeared to let more migrants move toward Ceuta, to exert political pressure on Spain. In 2021, more than 10,000 people crossed into Ceuta in two days.
UPDATE from the NYT: most have returned to Morocco but there were quite a few deaths:
An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 migrants entered a small Spanish territory alongside Morocco on Thursday and Friday, according to Spanish authorities. Although at least 48,300 had returned to Morocco by Friday afternoon, the mass crossing prompted an immediate backlash from far-right politicians in Europe that seemed poised to linger.
Scenes of chaos in Ceuta (pronounced say-YOU-tah), the North African exclave that Spain has held for centuries, splashed across news networks and social media. Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s government called the situation “absolutely unsustainable” in a territory with about 83,000 residents. At least 60 people died trying to enter the area, according to local officials.
Local authorities said they would not feed or shelter migrants who remained in Ceuta. Many said they hadn’t eaten in nearly two days.
On Thursday, shocking footage spread online of droves of primarily young male Moroccans storming Ceuta, a small Spanish territory on the North African coast. Thousands of them swam around breakwaters and climbed fences to enter the tiny enclave. An estimated 60,000 people are believed to have arrived in Ceuta—where the permanent population is 84,000—in 24 hours. Eighteen immigrants have died during the crossings. Meanwhile, local bars and shops are closed for fear of looting. The chaos has caused the leader of Ceuta to appeal to Madrid to send in the army.
The Spanish government has done so, but it should never have come to this. It was bound to, though, because Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist, oversees one of Europe’s most permissive migration regimes. In January, Sánchez announced a blanket amnesty program to regularize the immigration status of half a million migrants living illegally in Spain. In a New York Times op-ed published in February, Sánchez characterized the move as both humane and economically necessary, and contrasted his policy to the restrictive ones of “MAGA-style leaders” (read: Hungary’s former prime minister Viktor Orbán).
Here’s a tweet from Luana, who tells me an asylum seeker who enters any part of Spain is entitled to a hearing, which can take two years or more. If this continues, the situation will be a big crisis, if it isn’t already. English translation:
“Thousands of Moroccans arrived in trucks and buses at the Ceuta border. It’s not a migration crisis; it’s a Green March orchestrated by Mohamed VI.”
Miles de marroquíes llegaron en camiones y autobuses a la frontera de Ceuta.
It’s Friday, July 31, and “I will tell them no.” That’s what Netanyahu reportedly told his ministers days before flying to Washington, in response to reported U.S. pressure for a “series of withdrawals” across Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. He later denied the issue even came up in the meeting—a denial that now appears to have been a lie.
Yesterday the Board of Peace published its plan. Under the roadmap, Hamas surrenders everything it holds—weapons, light and heavy, tunnels, depots and production facilities. The handover runs in stages beginning within weeks: police weapons first, then the heavy arms and tunnels are decommissioned under the International Stabilization Force, stored in designated sites and taken out of use, while personal weapons fall “under Palestinian law.” None of it goes to Israel. At the end, only the Palestinian technocratic committee administering Gaza holds any authority over arms.
In the board’s words: “At the end of the process, Hamas will have no governing role in Gaza, neither openly nor behind the scenes, and the Gaza Administration Committee will hold full authority in accordance with the principle of one authority, one law, and one weapon.”
And, as is inevitably the case with Trump’s deals, the other side reads it differently. Hamas has claimed: “We will not take any steps regarding disarmament before Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.” Don’t take that at face value—they are almost certainly preparing to give up some portion of their arsenal. Expecting Islamists to publicly announce the end of armed resistance is unreasonable, even once they’ve agreed to it in practice, but don’t read their rhetoric as entirely empty either. Israel has told envoy Tony Blair that the reported 15-point document does not adequately address its demands. Translation: There is a withdrawal somewhere in the agreement before disarmament is completed. Though I doubt it’s total.
More likely this is a fight over symbolism. Hamas will not want a photograph of its men handing weapons to Israel—hence the international forces. Meanwhile, a single foot is 12 inches more than Netanyahu is willing to give back before elections.
My Take: they won’t get every weapon. But so long as Israel doesn’t have to withdraw completely and keeps the freedom to go back in when it needs to, 20,000 disabled rifles are worth entertaining the process.
It’s hard for me to believe that Hamas is going to surrender its weapons, but, as Segal says, there’s no guarantee they’re giving up all their weapons, nor is there a guarantee that Israel will withdraw completely from Gaza. Still, this looks like a step forward.
*You can read the full text of the Gaza “deal” at the AP site. Here are a few of the 15 stipulations:
2. Israel shall fully complete, without delay, all remaining commitments under Sharm Sheikh Protocol, particularly the cessation of military operations as detailed in annex (1). Hamas and the Palestinian factions shall complete the cessation of all military operations in accordance with Sharm Sheikh Protocol and the Peace Plan. In parallel, the timetable and implementation mechanisms of this Roadmap (“Implementation of Phase 2”) shall be prepared within 14 days after all parties approve the Roadmap, which could be extended by a decision by the International Verification Committee (IVC). Upon the completion of the timetable and implementation mechanisms, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) shall enter the Strip and start to assume its responsibilities. The IVC, that shall be established by the Board of Peace (BoP), comprising representatives from the guarantors, BoP and the International Stabilization Force (ISF), shall certify that both parties fulfill their commitments under the Roadmap before proceeding to the implementation of Phase 2.
3. Progression from one phase to the following one shall be contingent on the verified completion of the commitments of the previous phase. This verification shall be done by the IVC, which shall also observe any violations by either party through an enhanced monitoring mechanism.
4. Hamas and other factions agree that all civilian governance and security functions in Gaza shall be handed over to NCAG in accordance with President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza. They also assert that NCAG shall enjoy full independence in carrying out its responsibilities and that the factions shall not interfere in NCAG affairs during the transitional period, in accordance with UNSC Resolution 2803 (2025).\
. . . 6. Gaza shall be governed according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon. NCAG shall operate in accordance with Palestinian laws, relevant international standards and the principles of good governance.
. . . 8. A process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels, shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under Sharm Sheikh Protocol, the entry of NCAG and deployment of ISF. This process shall be administered and implemented by NCAG in a gradual, sequential and time-bound manner according to an implementation timetable that shall be completed within 14 days after all parties approve the Roadmap, which could be extended by a decision by IVC. This process shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of armed militias in accordance with article 10 of this Roadmap. This process shall be monitored and verified by IVC and supported by ISF. The Palestinian factions shall take part in this process, and no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties. At the end of the process mentioned in articles 7 – 10 of this Roadmap, only NCAG shall hold, store or control weapons in Gaza. The implementation of this Roadmap, including the issue of weapons and other articles of the comprehensive peace plan, shall create appropriate conditions for a credible pathway towards achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
This all sounds good, but of course if there is governance in Gaza, it must eventually be Palestinian, and Palestinian moderates who can govern are thin on the ground. Without weapons, Hamas will be toothless as a terrorist organization, but what would prevent them from getting more weapons.
→ HRH Fauci!: Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, kept a journal. A diary filled with love notes to himself. Which I’ve literally never heard of a man doing, but that’s beside the point. I guess he also did it on his work computer, because Senator Rand Paul obtained and released it. I’m not sure where to begin. First, let’s get a sense of the tone. He carefully documents all the glitzy celebrations of himself, lists all the “movie stars and athletes” he has a Zoom call with, and carefully logs all the celebratory news stories about himself. It’s like an Excel spreadsheet of compliments. For a sense, here’s Anthony Fauci on Anthony Fauci:
Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson in the world. (Countless profiles on me in multiple media. I cannot even read all the things that are written abuyt me since I am so busy . . . seriously. POTUS seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him. We are developing a very unique and interesting relationship. The entire secret service corps is coming over to me and chatting. They let me into the first gate without even checking ID. Everyone is worried about my health and welfare, probably because it is all over the place that I am almost 80 years old.
He loved being a celebrity. The thing about it is, he really was being worshipped! There was a cult of Fauci. People were getting Fauci tattoos and dancing with images of Fauci. He really was on the cover of every magazine, which, if you think about it, was weird! If millions of Americans suddenly made me their cult leader, and I had previously just been an unknown short man in the back of an HIV press conference, I would go insane with power too. So would you. And when you see lockdowns in the context of a power-drunk elf getting turned on by the idea of canceling Easter—he’s typing so fast he can barely keep up—you can understand better what we all lived through. For him, the pleasure was canceling things, especially things he felt gave power to the right (sports, family gatherings, religious events). We can never forget the freaks who gain power in a centrally controlled system. Also: no diaries, ever, certainly none in Google Docs. I write my grocery lists on Signal, and you should too. Love letters via email have been forbidden until further notice. I will be dragged up in front of Congress one of these days, but so help me God, they aren’t going to know about one brunch I attended. Next up, the lab leak. . .
→ The DNC is in big trouble: The Democratic National Committee is broke. They’ve made their whole thing about hating rich people, and now they want some of those rich people to help them out. Like a temperamental kid who runs away from home with four dollars and a guinea pig, now they’re broke and they’re hungry. The DNC is asking vendors not to send invoices until after the midterms. And the DNC chair was described throwing his phone at a staffer’s desk. “As Democrats, the only solution is to acknowledge the problem and fix it,” writes longtime DNC fundraiser Rufus Gifford. But can they articulate the problem? No one seems able to. Top Dems are doing promotional videos outside rich people’s homes being like, we hate this specific family, whose names are Todd, Kat, and Blake. And then they get confused why Todd’s not writing a big fat check this year.
→ And how is the progressive New York publishing world? Well, here is Simon & Schuster’s star author. (Her first two books are getting reissued in September, yay!)
Just in case you didn’t know what she was implying . . .Susan is commenting here on Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who went on a podcast and said that if his family hadn’t left Germany, he’d be a lampshade. Anyway, Susan decided to weigh in a totally normal way: “First of all, he’d be more useful to humanity as a lampshade. Second, how long do we have to keep listening to this nonsense?” She adds: “Or a bar of soap. I forgot to add that perfect utility for Alex Karp, mass-murdering demon.” It’s probably not relevant, but New York’s First Lady, Rama Duwaji, illustrated one of Susan’s essays. They’re artistic collaborators. How special is that?
Zios!!!!! You can read about Abulhawa here, and here’s an excerpt from her Wikipedia bio (note that even Mamdani criticized her!):
Abulhawa has referred to Israelis as “rootless, soulless ghouls” in her writing, as well as describing the October 7, 2023 attacks as a “spectacular moment that shocked the world”.[16] She described the Gaza war as a “Jewish supremacist slaughter”, writing, “these sons of Satan will taste what they meted to us”.[17] New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani criticized her comments as “reprehensible” and “patently unacceptable”.[17][16] Mamdani was criticised by some of his supporters for “reinforcing harmful narratives that conflate support for Palestinians with anti-Jewish sentiment”. Abulhawa said that her comments were not antisemitic or anti-Jewish and that she was responding “to a Zionist power structure and its proponents from the perspective of a Palestinian who has experienced the ravages of that system”.
*Both the NYT and the WaPo have weekly religion-and-faith newsletters; the former is called “Believing,” the latter “Awakenings.” That alone would make you think that the answer to the query in the latest WaPo column, “Is America becoming more religious?”, would be “yes.” But it ain’t so. The proportion of religious people in America is not rising, but the importance of religion to those who already embrace faith is increasing. I’ll quote:
The idea that the United States is becoming more religious has come to be widely accepted, particularly in conservative media. But the statistical measures of American religiosity don’t actually point toward a significant uptick in religious belief and practice. Instead, a number of data points seem to support the notion that what the U.S. is experiencing is a vibes revival. The public’s sense that religion is roaring back is completely disconnected from what’s actually happening in America’s pews.
The Pew Research Center has been asking respondents if religion has been gaining or losing influence in American life for more than 20 years. In 2024, only 18 percent said its influence was growing — the lowest number the survey has recorded. But in just over two years, that share doubled to 37 percent, while the share saying that religion is losing influence fell from 80 percent to 61 percent.
The graph below shows a rise in perception but not religion itself:
. . . In April, Gallup released new polling data about the religiosity of America’s young adults. One finding dominated headlines: Among young men, the share who said that religion was very important in their lives was 28 percent in 2022-23 but rose to 42 percent in 2024-25. That’s a 50 percent increase in two years. (Among young women, there was a modest decline, with the share saying that religion is very important in their lives falling from 32 percent to 29 percent.)
Notice that the “surge” is only among young men, and not young women:
But the report’s other findings received less attention, even as they undermined the conclusions being drawn from the most widely discussed finding. According to that Gallup survey, the share of young men who identified with any religious group in 2022-23 was 61 percent. In the most recent data, it was 63 percent. That shift is statistically insignificant. Data about monthly religious attendance shows a seven-point gain among young men, compared with a 14-point jump in religious importance — twice the size.
When social scientists measure American religion, they often talk about it in three dimensions: behavior, belief and belonging. The most widely regarded datasets that track American religion do not point to a significant increase in the religiosity of young adults — in fact, it’s just the opposite. When it comes to religious behavior, the General Social Survey reports that 38 percent of Gen Z never attends religious services. That’s seven points higher than millennials and 19 points higher than Gen X when they were 18-29. Gen Z is also six percentage points less likely to report weekly attendance compared with baby boomers (19 percent versus 25 percent).
. . . When it comes to religious beliefs, 18 percent of Gen Z expressed an atheist or agnostic view of God, and 40 percent said that they believed in God without a doubt, according to the General Social Survey. For comparison, 15 percent of millennials were atheist or agnostic, and 48 percent were certain believers. And when it comes to religious belonging, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Survey reports that about 44 percent of people born in 1990 or later claim no religious affiliation. Young adults are more than twice as likely to be nonreligious as those born in the 1960s.
So religion is “having its moment.” But why? Don’t ask me! Perhaps you can weight in below. (One might say that present circumstances have led to people having a “god-shaped hole” in their heart, but what is drilling that hole?) But what’s happening is clear: people think that religion is increasing in influence and number of believers, but it isn’t happening. In fact, young people are getting less religious as “nones” are on the rise. There may have been a slowdown in that rise, but people are mistaking a pause for an increase.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s making wisecracks about progressives again:
Hili: Apples are falling, which means gravity is still in effect. Andrzej: Were you ever in doubt?
Hili: I visited some progressive students’ websites. They give the impression that they’re constantly levitating.
In Polish:
Hili: Jabłka spadają, czyli grawitacja nadal działa.
Ja: Miałaś wątpliwości?
Hili: Zaglądałam na strony postępowych studentów, sprawiają wrażenie jakby cały czas lewitowali.
Masih has to be accompanied by the Berlin police to the site of an Islamist killing:
Did the Muslim community and Pro Palestine activists, took to the streets to show their solidarity and condemn the Islamist terror in Berlin that has killed a mother.
Thanks you to the Berlin Police for accompanying me to the site of the attack, where an Islamist screaming… pic.twitter.com/h5fwScZXWD
I checked J. K. Rowling for juicy tweets, but got a page full of levitating balloons. Why? Because this was at the top. THEIR????? Is that her way of joking?
One from my feed; I wonder if it really is a brand-new puzzle:
The crow solved a brand new three-step puzzle in 30 seconds to get a bedtime snack! He even had time to make sure he didn’t miss any cashews. That’s really amazing! 🐦⬛👏 pic.twitter.com/scPn2mZfre
— Nature is Phenomenal (@AnimalGeoLife) July 31, 2026
One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl, arrested while trying to escape to Spain, was gassed to death as soon as her transport reached Auschwitz. She was ten years old. https://t.co/VTDWwsO1o4
And two from Doctor Cobb. First, the only taxidermied blue whale in existence, now off limits because of two salacious people (I don’t blame them):
The only taxidermied blue whale in the world, 1865 CE, now housed at the Natural History Museum in Sweden. The public was allowed to enter the whale up until a couple was found having sex inside it.Now the whale’s jaws are opened only for special occasions, such as Swedish election days.
