A federal judge takes apart Nicholas Kristof’s controversial accusations against Israel

May 19, 2026 • 9:45 am

If you’re getting weary of the endless but necessary attacks on Nicholas Kristof for his misleading and almost antisemitic column about Israel’s “policy” of sexually assaulting Palestinian prisoners, Roy K. Altman has written in the Free Press the definitive critique of Kristof’s column—that is, until investigations by Israel reveal more information.

Wikipedia identifies Altman as “a Venezuelan-American lawyer and jurist who serves as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida” and also identifies him as Jewish.

You can read Altman’s column by clicking below—if you subscribe to the Free Press.

The “miscarriage of journalism” is, overall, the promulgation of “fake news” by Kristof: accusations that are improperly vetted (if at all), which come from questionable sources, and which are contradicted by existing Israeli policy and behavior. Altman’s thesis is that this kind of journalism subverts the “marketplace of opinions” that, it’s been said, is necessary for the American public to judge what is true. Excerpts from Altman and others are indented; prose that is flush left is mine:

. . . we entrust our fellow Americans with the power to make these choices because we believe that a virtuous people will be equipped to make the right choices—principally because we assume that our citizens will be prepared to discern truth from fiction. And we feel comfortable in that assumption because we’ve devised a system of laws—based on evidence, burdens of proof, and a time-tested set of rules—to help us assess the veracity of contested claims. In this way, the jury system isn’t simply a means of ensuring fair trials. Rather, it’s a way of training free citizens to make difficult decisions for themselves.

Today, this whole system is being undermined by the proliferation of false information—especially on the internet. But it’s one thing to have our geopolitical and ideological enemies—whether China, Russia, or the Muslim Brotherhood—pushing unverified claims about our closest allies into our cell phones. It’s another thing entirely for The New York Times, a supposed “paper of record,” and one of its Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to offer a story that—in its disregard of basic evidence-gathering norms, its unwillingness to investigate the opposing side’s position, and its inversion of common sense—violates the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.

In his explosive essay, Kristof accused Israel of using sexual violence against detained Palestinian prisoners as a kind of “standard operating procedure.” Kristof’s claim is thus not merely that a few rogue Israeli prison guards sometimes behave illegally—as happens in all Western democracies, including our own. It is, instead, that the Israeli government has implemented a systemic policy of deploying sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners on a massive scale.

Altman also faults the timing of the column, which came out the evening before the Civil Commission’s issued its 298-page report on sexual violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says that the Commission offered this report to the paper but the paper wasn’t interested.  The paper denies this, so for the time being we have a “he said/she said” situation. Regardless, Altman avers that the “psychological doctrine of primacy” argues that “a fact finder is often most persuaded by the story he hears first”, implying that Kristof, regardless of the deficiencies of his piece, should at least have held off publishing it until the Civil Commission’s report came out.  We won’t go further into this issue, as Altman finds three major faults with the column:

On the merits, Kristof’s article violates three central precepts of our legal system: It disregards basic rules of evidence gathering; it refuses to investigate the opposing side’s views; and it ignores logic and common sense.

Within this list of three there are buried two other sub-lists, which makes the piece a bit confusing. But Altman’s claims and his accusations of Kristof are pretty clear.  I’ll number the main claims as 1, 2, and 3, with sub-lists given letters as well as numbers.

1.) The column is unfair by making uncheckable claims.  

Let’s start with fairness. One of the fundamental rules of our justice system is that a man should be permitted to confront his accuser. Whether in civil or criminal cases, we have for hundreds of years rejected the English Star Chamber’s technique of allowing anonymous witnesses to advance salacious claims in secret. This principle is so essential to any basic system of fairness that it appears repeatedly throughout our laws—from the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause and its guarantee of public trials to our hearsay rules, which preclude out-of-court statements the accused never had an opportunity to cross-examine. But Kristof’s article relies mostly on anonymous sources whose credibility—much less their political or ideological affiliations—cannot be tested and thus cannot be known.

Here we have four sub-points that expand on this claim:

Kristof justifies his reliance on anonymity by suggesting that his sources would face retribution, either from Israeli authorities or from their own communities, if they came forward. But there are at least four major problems with this excuse.

1a. There is no evidence of retribution against prisoners who claimed to be sexually assaulted, and some claims changed over time:

Kristof provides no evidence of any similar retribution against one of the men he spoke with who has publicly accused Israeli guards of sexual assault. For months now, Sami al-Sai has repeatedly and publicly claimed, including to major news outlets like NPR and the Times, that he was sexually assaulted while in Israeli detention. There are real problems with al-Sai’s claims. For one thing, soon after his detention, he filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court, arguing that he was wrongly detained and asking for his immediate release. In that petition, he complained about the quality of the food he was given and said that he was treated badly,but he notably never mentioned any of the sex allegations he’s now advancing.

. . . But the point here is that, far from suffering any retribution for complaining about his detention, al-Sai was later freed, and Kristof never suggests that he’s since been subject to any form of punishment.

1b. Israel has in place an often-used system for registering and adjudicating prisoner’s complains about mistreatment

Two,any cursory review of Israeli legal databases would reveal that Israeli prisons allow Palestinian prisoners to file complaints about the conditions of their confinement—and that these complaints do get filed. Indeed, since 2023, Israel has received 182 such complaints filed by Israel Prison Service detainees from the Gaza Strip. . . But the point is that Kristof offers not a single shred of evidence that any of the Palestinian prisoners who filed complaints has ever been subjected to retribution—much less that this speculation about retribution has ever been a feature of the Israeli prison system.

1c. Kristof’s insistence on anonymity makes his allegations uncheckable. 

Kristof’s reliance on anonymity ensures that no one—most especially the Israelis—can ever prove him wrong. That’s because he not only tells us very little about the accusers, he tells us nothing about the offenses. No locations. No dates. No perpetrators. Israeli prisons, like many of our own, are often videotaped, and those recordings are reviewed not just by prison guards but by prison officials and lawyers. If Kristof had conducted anything resembling a fair analysis, we would have expected him to have asked to review some of this footage. But there’s no indication that he ever did. Nor can anyone else do so now because Kristof gave us no details to check against his claims.

1d. The accused has a right to the details of accusations, which gives them a chance to defend themselves. “The accused” here include onot just IDF soldiers and prison officials, but Israel itself, which is threatening to sue the paper.

Four, we should acknowledge that it’s always hard for victims of sexual assault to advance their claims publicly. But any system committed to basic fairness recognizes that the accuser’s preference for anonymity must bend to the accused’s right to confront the claims against him. And that’s not just because we want to allow the accused to test the reliability of the accuser’s claims. It’s also because we presume that the mere act of declaring something publicly itself evinces some degree of credibility.

Kristof fails to mention, for example, that Euro-Med, one of his principal sources, is  an organization with known ties to Hamas and has made false claims about Israel before, including the blood libel that Israel harvests organs of prisoners.

On to the second major point:

********

2.) Kristof failed to investigate “the opposing side’s position”, including systemic aspects of Israeli law that would make widespread abuse improbable.  Again Altman breaks this down into a sublist of three items:

2a. Kristof doesn’t mention Israeli laws prohibiting sexual abuse of prisoners. 

First, in advancing his claim that Israel permits or encourages sexual abuse of detainees as a matter of state policy, Kristof fails even to mention that sexual offenses are strictly prohibited under Israel’s penal code. Indeed, the Israeli legal system imposes enhanced penalties when sexual offenses, including by security personnel, are motivated by race, skin color, or national origin. And Israeli military forces are bound by a host of additional directives, which further protect prisoners from state-sponsored violence, including sexual violence.

Altman implies that Kristof was trying to hide this fact.  Well, yes, probably, but shouldn’t we know that this conduct is against the law? What’s worse is that Kristof also fails to mention that similar Palestinian prisoners’ allegations of abuse have led to serious prison sentences for over a dozen Israeli abusers.

2b. Kristof fails to mention that there’s a special unit of Israeli police designed to investigate claims of prison misconduct. 

Kristof likewise fails to disclose that there’s an elite unit in Israel’s police force, called Lahav 433, tasked with investigating misconduct by the Israeli Prison Service. Now, it’s entirely possible that Israel created this unit inside what’s known as the “Israeli FBI” and filled it with elite servicemembers who do nothing but sit in an office all day, twiddling their thumbs and happily allowing misconduct to go unchecked. The far more plausible inference, I submit, is that Israel didn’t create this elite investigative unit simply to do nothing. But the point is that we don’t know—and cannot know—the answers to any of these questions from Kristof’s “opinion” piece because he never bothered to mention this unit, never thought to interview its members, and never investigated the extent to which it actually enforces Israeli law.

Well, the existence of such a unit doesn’t prove that there wasn’t misconduct, but it does show that there were quite a few deterrents to misconduct.

2c.  A quote from a former Prime Minister of Israel was presented, but a later clarification of that quote by the PM was ignored. Perhaps worse than the two omissions above is Kristof’s shoddy (indeed, slimy) treatment of a comment by a former Israeli Prime Minister. Here’s what Kristof said.

To try to make sense of what I found, I called up Ehud Olmert, who was Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009. Olmert told me he didn’t know much about sexual violence against Palestinians but was not surprised by the accounts I had heard.

“Do I believe it happens?” he asked. “Definitely.”

“There are war crimes committed every day in the territories,” he added.

Of all people to ask! Olmert had been convicted of corruption and bribery as Israel’s finance minister and served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence. Kristof doesn’t mention this, and Kristof might have added, post facto, this clarification by Olmert:

Olmert clarified, in a statement to The New York Times and obtained by The Free Press, that “Mr. Kristof’s article includes claims of extraordinary gravity: that Israeli authorities have directed the rape of children, that dogs have been used as instruments of sexual assault, that systematic sexual torture is state policy. I did not validate these claims.”

Surely this should have been an addendum to Kristof’s piece. It wasn’t, The NYT hasn’t responded directly to this clarification save to say that Olmert’s statement was tape-recorded and presented accurately “in context”. But when when Olmert later denied that he was not validating claims of sexual abuse, that was no deemed worthy of a mention or correction by the NYT.

********

3.) The “dog rape” claims is pure blood libel, in line with previous anti-Israel claims. (And there’s no evidence for it. Indeed, many have deemed the “trained dog rape scenario” to be impossible (I’m not ruling it out with complete certainty, and it will surely need investigating. But I do find it stupid.)

Which brings us to Kristof’s final departure from our fundamental precepts: his lack of common sense. The most salacious claim in Kristof’s piece is the allegation that Israel is now systematically training dogs to rape Arab Muslim men. This claim used to live only on the fringes of the wildest internet conspiracy theories. In 2010, there was a spate of shark attacks in the Red Sea, situated between Israel and Egypt. For whatever reason, most (if not all) of these attacks occurred on the Egyptian side of the border. I happened to be in Israel that summer and heard an Egyptian minister wondering whether the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, was systematically training sharks to eat only Arab flesh. My father and I, hearing this over the radio in a cab, laughed at the absurdity of the claim.

What we’ve seen over the last few years is that wild and illogical conspiracy theories that used to reside only on the internet and in the anti-Israel Arab street now circulate in the mainstream media, brought there by irresponsible journalists who flout evidentiary standards, ignore basic notions of fairness, and disregard common sense and the truth. What kind of a society will we be if we don’t reverse this disturbing erosion in our ability to tell truth from falsehood?

Altman’s claims add up to a serious indictment of Kristof’s column, which, though presented as an op-ed piece, could easily have run as a news piece, but the paper was apparently too lazy to check its claims. To me, the most serious accusations are twofold: the failure of Kristof to document the accusations so they could be checked, even making the complainers anonymous; and also Kristof’s failure to mention the anti-Israel jostpru of some of the individuals and organizations (especially Euro-Med) making the claims.  It is a one-sided column, even for Kristof, who in the past hasn’t done due diligence in checking claims.

The more I think about this, the more I think Kristof should be fired, as the op-ed is a serious lapse in standards, even for an op-ed. If op-ed editor James Bennet could be fired (as he was) for allowing Senator Tom Cotton to write an op-ed arguing that the military might be used to quell post-George Floyd riots, surely Kristof should also be forced to resign. After all, Cotton was just giving an opinion that didn’t rest on facts, while Kristof made many allegations that he didn’t bother to either qualify or investigate.

But of course Kristof is a golden boy for the NYT, and the his column buttresses the NYT’s well known stance against Israel. The NYT is standing behind his column (it has no public editor), and don’t expect it to fact-check his claims. That will be up to Israel.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 19, 2026 • 8:15 am

This is the last full batch of photos I have save a few singletons and doubletons. But I ain’t too proud to beg. . .

Today we have some lovely photos by Ephraim Heller on, of all things, herring. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) spend most of the year dispersed across the open North Pacific, but each spring they converge on Sitka Sound to spawn. The 2026 spawning biomass was estimated at roughly 233,000 tons of mature herring. This attracts commercial fishermen, fishing birds, Steller sea lions, gray whales, humpback whales, and. . . me. My last post featured humpback whales.

Today’s post features the mayhem taking place off the coast of Sitka on the opening day of commercial herring season. The fishing boats employ purse netting, a form of seine netting, in which a school of fish are surrounded by a net which is pulled tight around them. As the net closes and the herring are forced to the surface, a buffet is created for glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) and bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

A commercial fishing boat hauling in a seine net filled with Pacific herring:

The herring are forced to the surface by the seine:

Glaucous-winged gulls at the buffet:

It was impressive to watch the gulls catch a herring, quickly reposition the squirming fish in their bills, and swallow them in flight in a matter of seconds:

Such speed seems necessary because kleptoparasites abound:

Now for the bald eagles:

Air traffic control is kept busy:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 19, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 19, 2026 and once again it’s Malcom X Day (he was born on this day in 1925, and was assassinated at 39).  May 15 was also Malcolm X Day, but today is the biggest one as some cities give people the day off. In fact, according to Wikipedia “As of present, only the cities of Berkeley and Oakland in California observe the holiday, with city offices and schools closed.”

Here’s a 4-minute video made by CBS News, which includes his famous statement about gaining freedom “by any means necessary,” a phrase that figures largely at the end of Spike Lee’s biopic about Malcolm When asked by Mike Wallace if he wasn’t afraid of being attacked, he responds, “Oh yes. . . I am probably a dead man already.” Seven months later, he was.

There’s a good 60 Minutes report on Malcolm and his death here.

It’s also Dinosaur Day and National Devil’s Food Cake Day. Why is the cake named that?  Wikipedia says this:

The origin of the name may reference the angel food cake, a light, airy sponge cake, which was popular in the late 19th century as the first recipes for devil’s food cake were being published.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As America turns 250 years old, the Trump administration is pushing very hard on a narrative that this is a Christian national founded on Christianity. This was clear from a Christian-themed prayer event held Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (article archived here).

A crowd of thousands transformed a block of the National Mall into an evangelical-style worship service Sunday at an event backed by President Donald Trump and funded with millions of taxpayer dollars.

In an eight-hour lineup, speakers including top government officials framed America as a country founded to be explicitly Christian — and in danger if its population turns from their version of that religious faith.

Sitting, standing, dancing and praising with hands raised toward a blazing sun, attendees appeared riveted as speakers took the stage during “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving.” Many said they were thrilled to see an event that tied the nation and its government so overtly to Christianity.

“We welcome Jesus into this place!” worship leader Andy Frank said at the start of the event, belting from a stage with ivory-colored pillars that evoked the neoclassical architecture of the capital’s federal buildings.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking by video, said civilizations before Christianity saw history as a “wheel to nowhere,” and that “our faith” of Christianity has always been the “soul of our nation.”

Trump, who is not known for quoting the Bible, read a passage from Scripture in which God promises to heal the ancient Israelites if they agree to pray and humble themselves before God.

Until Trump’s second term in office, it had been virtually unheard of in modern times for U.S. government officials to publicly tie the nation to a specific set of religious beliefs. Trump’s cabinet members have changed that norm.

On Sunday, aside from a couple of small groups of protesters outside the event, attendees at the jubilee seemed unfazed by or grateful for the government imprimatur on their faith system.

“It’s about time and sorely needed,” said Richard Nuccitelli, 87, a real estate agent from New Fairfield, Connecticut, who traveled to D.C. with four friends from his Bible study group. The Constitution, he said, doesn’t work without a “moral and Christian population.”

That is complete bullpucky.  Does Israel not work because its population is not Christian?  Do the Scandinavian countries not work because they are not “Christian” in any meaningful sense, comprising a populace that is largely atheistic?  Talking about the Constitution, what is the very First Amendment in it? One that guarantees, among other things, freedom of religion.  Many of the founders, like Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Madison, were either non-Christian deists or atheists.  It’s very sad that every atheist, Jew, Hindu, and Muslim are disenfranchised from the new Trump-approved narrative.  And I suspect that Trump is really an atheist, too: the only God he believe in is the one he sees in the mirror.

*In a NYT/Siena poll (figures here), Trump appears to have low approval on almost everything, including his overall rating as President (37% approval, 59% disapproval). The article is archived here.

Most voters think President Trump made the wrong decision to go to war with Iran, a New York Times/Siena poll found, leaving the Republican Party on rocky political footing heading into the midterm elections as his approval rating sinks and economic concerns rise.

Majorities of voters said that the war was not worth the costs and held deeply pessimistic views about the economy.

Mr. Trump’s approval rating — a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election — has sunk to a second-term low in Times/Siena polls of 37 percent amid the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict.

Nearly two-thirds of voters said that going to war had been the wrong decision, including almost three-quarters of politically crucial independents. Less than a quarter of all voters thought the conflict had been worth the costs.

Republicans broadly approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance and the war. But most other voters showed serious skepticism of his leadership on other top issues, including the economy and the cost of living. Sixty-four percent of all voters disapproved of his handling of the economy, long a strength for him, and majorities expressed negative views of how he was managing the cost of living, immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Independent voters in particular have become unhappier with Mr. Trump. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of his job performance, up from 62 percent in a January Times/Siena poll. Forty-seven percent of independents said his policies had hurt them, up from 41 percent in fall 2025.

Overall, 44 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had hurt them personally, up from 36 percent last fall.

Here’s an overall (national) view of Trump (from the NYT; credits at bottom):

If you look at the linked page with all the states, you’ll see that 7% of Democrats approve of Trump’s performance compared to 82% of Republicans. For disapproval, the relative figures are 92% and 15%. For independent voters, 26% approve and 62% disapprove: not a hearty endorsement.

The NYT also gives the overall view on the economy over time; the ratings today aren’t much different from those in 2023, when Biden was President.

Overall, given the next item, while Trump might not be re-elected if he ran again, that in fact won’t happen. What Republicans should worry about are the midterms, but see the next piece and remember that whoever runs Congress, Trump still has veto power over new bills.

*It’s usual for a President’s administration to lose seats in both the House and the Senate during the midterm elections, which take place this November. Right now the balance is precarious in the House:

House of Representatives: Republicans 220, Democrats 215

Senate: Republicans 53, Democrats 45, Independents 2 (both caucusing with Democrats).

But redistricting is starting to favor the GOP, especially after the recent Supreme Court decision to prohibit race-based gerrymandering.

From the AP:

apnews.com/…/redistricting-house-congress-gerrymander-voting-rights-f78310aed323bfeec3430f236f7b6e03Republicans have opened up an advantage in a national redistricting battle among states after court rulings that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities and invalidated a key Democratic redistricting effort.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander has provided grounds for Republicans in several Southern states to try to eliminate House districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

Meanwhile, a Virginia Supreme Court ruling invalidated a voter-approved congressional map that Democrats had been counting on to deliver as many as four additional U.S. House seats. The court said Democratic lawmakers had violated the state constitution when placing the proposal on the ballot.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn based on census data after the start of each decade. But an unusual spate of mid-decade redistricting broke out after President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to reshape U.S. House districts to give the party an edge in the midterm elections. Democrats in California countered with their own political gerrymandering. More states followed.

But Republicans, egged on the the Supreme Court’s decision banning race-based redistricting, are fighting hard to retain control of the House.

And it’s going on in South Carolina right now:

An effort to reshape South Carolina’s congressional districts is getting its first full airing Monday in the state House, as lawmakers launch what could become a lengthy and potentially testy discussion on whether to accede to President Donald Trump’s desires for a U.S. House map that could yield a clean sweep for Republicans.

Tense debates already have played out in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as Republicans push aggressively to leverage a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts. The ruling has opened the way for Republicans to redraw districts with large Black populations that have elected Democrats.

In South Carolina, that means targeting a seat long held by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat among the state’s seven House representatives.

I asked Grok what the consensus view was about who would constitute the House majority after the midterms, and of course it was undecided:

Expert ratings (Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, etc.) and models generally show:

  • Baseline/”solid-to-likely” projections before allocating tossups: Democrats around 207–227 seats; Republicans around 202–217 seats.

  • Tossup/competitive seats: Typically 10–20 (highly variable by rater). These will largely decide the majority.

  • Consensus-style view (e.g., 270toWin aggregating ratings): Roughly 207 D / 209 R baseline + ~19 competitive.

It looks like the Dems have a slight edge at this point, but it’s by no means certain.

*In a post called “Roaring lion plan revealed” at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal, along with other venues, hint that the fighting between Iran and Israel may be about to resume (Trump has also warned Israel that “the clock is ticking”.

t’s Monday, May 18, and both the Israeli government and the IDF are hinting, through statements and actions, that they are preparing for the renewal of American strikes in Iran. Tehran has just submitted its latest diplomatic proposal: a commitment of highly questionable value to refrain from producing nuclear weapons. Conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of halting uranium enrichment or opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Diplomacy appears to be faltering, but before the next Lion-themed operation, it is worth assessing the success of the last campaign.

Yesterday, Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies and a former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, published an article with several previously unknown details about the course of the war. Along with the revelations, Hayman gives an assessment: “Despite tactical achievements, the campaign’s two main centers of gravity—the Iranian regime and the nuclear project—remain without fundamental change.”

According to Hayman, Operation Rising Lion in June 2025 “did not pave the way for a permanent solution, and Iran demonstrated a rapid and dangerous recovery capability.” In the nuclear arena, the Iranians rehabilitated the Fordow nuclear facility and accelerated the construction of “Pickaxe Mountain,” which is (allegedly) immune to airstrikes. In the missile domain, they reached a production rate of about 125 ballistic missiles per month and had accumulated a large stockpile of about 2,500 by the start of Roaring Lion. Tehran also led a rapid rehabilitation of Hezbollah by doubling its budget and renewing supply routes through Syria, despite the fall of the Assad regime.

Hayman notes a significant disconnect between the political and military echelons at the outbreak of the war. Israel’s political ambition was the overthrow of the Iranian regime, whereas the IDF’s stated military objective was limited to the attrition of its capabilities. Despite this gap, the first stage of the campaign—spanning from the initial decapitation strikes against senior leadership to the eventual cancellation of the Kurdish incursion—focused heavily on the political aspiration of regime change. The decisive factor of this phase was meant to be an incursion by Kurdish fighters, designed to inflame interethnic tensions, destabilize the government and pave the way for a new, moderate leadership. This maneuver was also intended to serve as the keystone for a broader series of covert operations with similar objectives.

However, the plan was derailed when the Kurdish operation was canceled, likely due to pressure from Turkish and Arab allies. As Hayman puts it, “Once the covert operations were removed from the equation, the primary mechanism for destabilizing the regime’s stability was eliminated.”

Following the high-level assassinations, the campaign’s second phase pivoted to degrading Iranian capabilities. A central objective here was “the destruction of the nuclear project through an innovative and unique approach”—likely requiring a widespread ground maneuver. However, Iran had anticipated the decapitation strikes and proactively decentralized its military command structure before the war. Field officers were granted preauthorization to launch ballistic missiles and close the Strait of Hormuz without waiting for top-down orders. Furthermore, a governing vacuum was averted when Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed supreme leader at the behest of the IRGC.

This decentralized authority allowed Iran to successfully close the Strait of Hormuz, securing global leverage that altered American priorities and redirected attention toward the energy markets. Meanwhile, the campaign exposed the limitations of airpower; by Hayman’s assessment, most of Iran’s nuclear and missile assets survived by being housed in deep-underground bunkers. Consequently, the ultimate “crown jewel” of the military campaign—the destruction of the nuclear program—was not fully realized before the first ceasefire took effect.

This is all depressing: not just the failures to achieve these objectives, but the sidelining of regime change in Iran, which is necessary to secure the freedom of its people. However, Trump gave Iran yet another extension to come up with a reasonable peace plan.

*Men don’t excel in all strength and endurance sports: an exception is the ultramarathon. And a big one—250 miles long—was just won by a 34-year-old woman named Rachel Entrekin, who beat the women’s course record by seven hours and the men’s record by several hours. This shows that either ultramarathons should be run with bot sexes together, or, if women have an average advantage, with winners in two categories.

Then the 250-mile race started. Entrekin, a two-time women’s champion in the event, found herself running again with the elite males, and she began wondering: “Why not you?”

Then she pulled away, crushing the course record by seven hours, beating every man and woman in the field and providing another example of how multi-day races have erased gender lines.

Now, at 34, Entrekin’s the king of Cocodona, too, or maybe something more than that.

“One of my pacers has determined that I must be from another planet,” Entrekin said in an interview, still buzzing from her historic win.

Entrekin began running in 2009, as a student at the University of Alabama, before starting a career in physical therapy. She eventually started competing in half marathons, then full ones, before hitting longer ultramarathons in the Southeast and descending into what she called “insanity.” When she moved to Washington state and looked up at the vistas, she found her calling.

“I love running up mountains,” she told the “For the Long Run” podcast in February.

Today, Entrekin is fully sponsored and has won or placed in about 100 ultras, regularly beating men. At Cocodona, that meant finishing in 56 hours, nine minutes and 48 seconds. Kilian Korth, the men’s winner, finished 78 minutes behind her.

Here’s a video of Entrenkin after the race:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is anxious again:

Hili: How not to be afraid when everything scares you?
Andrzej: And what are you afraid of now?
Hili: The headlines in the papers.

In Polish:

Hili: Jak się nie bać, kiedy wszystko przeraża?
Ja: A czego się teraz boisz?
Hili: Tytułów gazet.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices. With EVIDENCE! (I can’t even count the errors in this one.)

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From The Dodo Pet:

Masih calls out Keir Starmer for celebrating the anniversary of the Islamic Republic, and the UK for failing to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

From Luana; little kids spew religious hatred during last week’s anti-immigration march in London.  It’s free speech, but it’s no more palatable than “from the River to the sea,” or “globalize the intifada.”

From Barry, and yes, this is a real picture. I think both animals survived.

Photographer Martin Le-May was walking through a London park with his wife, hoping to show her a green woodpecker for the first time, when he snapped this incredible photo: a weasel riding a flying woodpecker.

— ContempraInn 🌹 (@contemprainn.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T09:03:21.846Z

From the Number Ten Cat, with pride:

One from my feed, and it’s adorable (there’s music):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. Sound up on this first one!

Trying to explain to your wife how you went out for a beer with your friends on Saturday night and came home on Sunday afternoon.

— Paul Bronks (@slendersherbet.bsky.social) 2026-05-17T18:11:52.901Z

A lovely roadrunner. I once had such an encounter while camping in Death Valley. I fed it lettuce.

RoadrunnerPalooza continues… I had a nice encounter with a juvenile yesterday morning. Note nictitating membrane covering its eye.

— Mike Henry (@onlyveesaz.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T13:34:46.913Z

Beauty is in the (evolved) eye of the beholder

May 18, 2026 • 9:45 am

Right now I’m reading Steve Stewart-Williams’s new book: A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. It is neither a pure blank-slate social-constructivist book nor a hereditarian, genetic-deterministic book, but takes an evidence-based middle ground, asking to what extent behaviors and mindset are molded by evolution and to what extent social conditioning plays a role.  I won’t give a take on the book as I’m not yet finished, but it does make many arguments I’m familiar with.  One of these is the familiar and well-documented claim that, based on different degrees of parental investment, men concentrate more than women on beauty when looking for a mate, while women are less interested in appearance than are men but more interested in paternal behavior, status, and wealth of a prospective mate. These are not absolute differences, of course: many men want women who will invest a lot in their offspring (we are, after all, generally monogamous), and many women want men who are pleasing to the eye. This is a difference in average preferences, not absolute ones characterizing all individuals.

Although some of this average sex difference in behavior may reflect social conditioning, its evolutionary background is likely based in part on the differential investment between the sexes in offspring: although many societies are polyandrous and monogamous, on average males still have a potentially larger number of offspring than do females. This appears to be true in many societies, as well as in our closest relatives, the apes and in most species of animals. Women, who by virtue of their reproduction (as well as by both the evolutionary and social impetus to do most of the childcare) need fathers who will do their share of parental duties and provide for the offspring.  And of course men do share some of those duties, but are also more interested in casual sex and adultery—a way to spread more of their genes when they don’t invest as much in offspring.

If you want the evidence for this, read Stewart-Williams’s book or the references he cites.

Why am I pondering this? Because when I went to the library the other day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the entry door and thought, “Geez, look at that ugly old man!”  Whatever attractive physical features I once had—and I was never close to being a Robert Redford—have vanished, carried away by time’s wingéd chariot.  Women, too, worry about ageing, and are even more concerned about it because of a key difference between men and women: as women get older and become unable to reproduce, they become less desirable faster than do men.  A man can have offspring even in his eighties, while in their early fifties most women hit menopause, which means no more kids. Since men have largely evolved to be physically attracted to women who can give them children, women try harder than do men to retain the signs of youth: hair color, plastic surgery, botox, and the like. On average, they try harder to retain physical attractiveness because it is that rather than status that is a dominant way of attracting partners—and most people want a partner.

Which brings up a tangential point: what about gay men and women?  I don’t know their preferences but it would be interesting to study (and I’m sure people have) whether men attracted to other men for lasting partnerships are less concerned with looks than are women attracted to other women for partnerships.

Back to the point, which is this. It is my theory, which is mine (and likely many other people’s) that there is really no objective difference in physical attractiveness with age, in either men or women.  Old men and women look different from their younger selves (I now refrain from looking in mirrors), but the beauty associated with youth and the loss in attractiveness associated with age are not anything objective (beauty never is, of course).  We are simply evolved to think that those features associated with having more offspring on us are more “beautiful”, as those mindsets are the ones promoted by natural selection. This explains why women are more concerned with the physical ravages of time then are men, for their physical attractiveness to the other sex wanes faster with time. I’ve often heard older actresses say that by the time they hit forty, Hollywood no longer wants them, while that doesn’t happen so much with male actors.  Why is this difference retained past the age of reproduction in women? I suppose it’s because it’s largely innate and most women didn’t live past menopause during most of our evolution.

Thus beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it is subjective, like all standards of beauty, but the subjectivity is molded in certain directions by natural selection.

I am not, of course, saying that this is good—only that much of it is natural. I do not want to commit the naturalistic fallacy here, but simply consider what aspects of our minds and behaviors might be based on genes, to what extent, and whether those evolutionary bits have been molded by natural selection.

This parallels a point I’ve made before: other aspects of our senses, like tastes, are clearly molded by natural selection.  I have said, for example, that to a vulture rotten meat tastes as good as an ice-cream sundae does to us.  Animals have evolved to search for food that tastes good because, over time, our senses evolve to find the food we need to grow and reproduce to be tasty. In other words, natural selextion has molded our taste buds and our brains so we prefer what is nutritious and fosters reproduction.  This can be hijacked: we now eat too many fats and sweets because those substances were desirable to our ancestors as they were rare but promoted reproduction.  Now they no longer do so because of the surfeit of “bad” food on tap.  But our taste buds haven’t yet caught up to our health.

Why do feces and vomit repel us, smelling foul? It’s very likely that these substances were evolutionarily associated with the spread of disease, and so we evolved smell-detectors that find them repugnant. After all, dung beetles love the odor of feces!

I’ll draw one more parallel here. Anybody who thinks about it seriously must admit that male orgasms, intricate and immensely pleasurable physiological mechanisms associated with ejaculation, have evolved as a way of promoting reproduction (the evolutionary basis of female orgasms is more speculative, but there is no shortage of adaptive hypotheses).  Orgasms are a way of getting men to produce offspring, just as sweetness is a way of getting us to eat sugar. And, like eating too many sweets, orgasms can be hijacked—severed from their reproductive function by condoms, chemicals, or medication. Organizations like the Catholic Church have tried mightily to try to reconnect sex and reproduction, but it is largely in vain.

I have undoubtedly written this too fast, as I just had some thoughts and wanted to get them down on paper before I forget them. I’ve considered that I’m trying to dispel my idea that I’m unattractive, and in so doing thought about physical attraction in general. And yes, I’m also reading Stewart-Williams’s book, which considers in detail this and other aspects of human (and animal) mentation and behavior.

Once you get an evolutionary mindset, all sorts of behaviors now become more interesting. That doesn’t mean we should make up adaptive stories and consider those stories to be true, but neither should we ignore possible evolutionary explanations. To explain the evolutionary basis of human behaviors and minds will be hard, as most of them evolved in the unrecoverable distant past—in our ancestors.  But some of the explanations are testable, and here I must stop.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 18, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today we have some plant photo sent in by Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can click on his photos to enlarge them.  I have left the numbering of the photos to identify them since there is only one species.

I recently transplanted some Common onions (Allium cepa), and was thrilled to see them starting to bloom, but soon learned that a blooming (or bolting) onion has stopped growing the bulb and has put it’s energy into seed production. I guess that makes these onions food for the eyes rather than the stomach.

Prior to blooming, the stem (1) develops a bulge, and as the bulge gets larger it becomes translucent and you can see the umbel, or flower cluster starting to show thru (2). This made me think of the old Jiffy Pop popcorn pans!. Sometimes the flowers emerge with the petals closed (3 &4) and sometimes they seem to emerge in full bloom (5).

Photo 1:

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Photo 4:

Photo 5:

I don’t know what the deal is with this little yellow flower (6), but I thought it looked pretty. Here is a flower prior to blooming (7), and another that is a little further along (8). The blooming flower reveals the fruit capsule (9).

Photo 6:

Photo 7:

Photo 8:

Photo 9:

No sooner do the stamens emerge to attract pollinators than spiders lay out their silk in order to trap and feast upon the unsuspecting pollinators (10). Here is the inflorescence in full glory (11).

Photo 10:’

Photo 11:

These plants have a deep emotional significance for me, since they are transplanted from the garden of a dear friend who passed away recently. I’ve never gardened before, but I started this garden in his honor and as a way to continue the spirit of his friendship. I hope you will indulge me in a tribute to my friend.

Ron Akin was a one of a kind human being (Homo sapiens) who was a free spirited cosmic cowboy, Texas hippie, and an old fashioned Southern gentleman. He dropped out of the naval academy in Annapolis to spend years hitchhiking around the country, picking fruit, performing odd jobs and starting Just For Fun parades in various locations. The parade he started in San Marcos, TX just celebrated its 49th year, and was held in his honor. He also played bass with garage band par excellence, The Callous Taoboys. I met Ron at The Dell ‘Arte School of Mime and Comedy in Blue Lake, California in 1982, and after that we spent five freewheeling summers performing as clowns at the Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, TX. We remained friends for the rest of his life, and I used to visit him at his home in the country where he had a garden full of onions, garlic, and all sorts of peppers. We’d spend days smoking the harvest from his garden on his grill, as well as all sorts of meats, and sit on the porch until late at night stuffing our faces and enjoying life. I never met a more free spirited, true-to-himself human being.

Here is Ron as The FreeDumb Fairy (alter ego of the lowly janitor Freiheit Gazoontite) at Schlitterbahn, participating in the Just for Fun parade, and down home on the porch. You can also see his prodigious onion harvest!:

Ron:

I call my new garden a friendship garden, though I have to admit that it feels a little lonely right now. Hopefully the onions will be the bridge to new friendship.

Monday: Hili dialogue

May 18, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to another damn work week: it’s Monday, May 18, 2026, and I Love Reese’s Day, celebrating one of America’s great candies: the Reese’s Peanut butter cup.  They keep them in the office as treats for the department, and I have one now.  See?

And here is my heartthrob Gal Gadot on Jimmy Fallon’s sho trying a Reese’s for the first time w.  She likes it! (I’m told that the Trader Joe’s own version with dark chocolate is even better.

It’s also International Museum Day, Mother Whistler Day, celebrating the great painting, National Cheese Souffle Day, and No Dirty Dishes Day (I never have any; I wash up by hand as I cook, and deign to use my dishwasther as it’s lazy.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A vaccine-and-treatment resistant strain of the deadly Ebola virus has emerged in Africa, killing dozens and leading the WHO to declare a “public health emergency of international concern.”

The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths.

The WHO said the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders.

The WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the patient had visited Ituri and that other suspected cases have also been reported in North Kivu province, which is one of Congo’s most populous and borders Ituri.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.

The WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to spur donor agencies and countries into action. By the WHO’s standards, it shows the event is serious, there is a risk of international spread and it requires a coordinated international response.

. . .Health authorities say the current outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines. Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, this is only the third time the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.

Congo accounts for all except two of the cases, both of which were reported in Uganda, the WHO said.

The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.

. . .The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be transmitted to people from wild animals. It then spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing contaminated with these fluids.The disease it causes is a rare but severe and often fatal illness in people. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

The virus was first discovered in 1976, near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The first outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests.

You can read about Ebola at Wikipedia, but it ain’t pretty. It’s thought to have been transmitted to humans by bats. Here’s a photo of the virion, the complete infective RNA virus particle, which does its damage by glomming onto and entering cells:

Cynthia Goldsmith,. CDC.  This colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. See PHIL 1832 for a black and white version of this image. Public domain via Wikimedia commons. 

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal explains why he thinks the Iranian regime has endured. It’s the shadow economy, Jake!

It’s Sunday, May 17, and despite decades of crippling international sanctions, a collapsing domestic economy, and an ongoing blockade, the Iranian regime continues to function. The secret to its endurance, according to Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs researcher Ella Rosenberg, lies in a fundamental disconnect between the Iranian state and the ruling regime itself. While ordinary citizens face skyrocketing prices, severe infrastructural decay, and a genuine possibility of starvation, the regime relies entirely on a robust shadow economy to survive and bypass formal global banking systems.

To maintain this hold on power, the regime sustains itself through a sophisticated web of gray banking and illicit oil sales. Funds are systematically laundered through exchange houses and shell companies situated in free-trade zones in the UAE and Turkey before seamlessly reaching European markets. The problem is that a vessel or shell company can operate cleanly for months, passing basic sanctions screening, only to be officially designated by the Treasury Department long after the illicit funds have been moved and new shells have opened to replace them.

A critical vulnerability in the West’s current approach, Rosenberg argues, is weak enforcement. “Sanctions are like schoolyard bullying,” she explains. “If there is no real enforcement, it’s like a bully who cannot throw a punch. He loses effectiveness.” But things appear to be changing: The UAE has recently taken preliminary steps to close its secrecy banking loopholes, threatening to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets flowing through Dubai.

A critical node in this underground economy is the maritime “shadow fleet”—a covert armada of vessels systematically evading global maritime law. To smuggle oil undetected, the regime routinely executes ship-to-ship cargo transfers in open-ocean hotspots like the Gulf of Oman and the coast of Malaysia. Recently, monitoring agencies tracked a sudden, coordinated reappearance of these ships on Automatic Identification System (AIS) radars, only for them to vanish into the shadows mere hours later. This phantom-like behavior is part of a broader, highly sophisticated doctrine of maritime deception: to obscure the movement of sanctioned cargoes, the regime clones tracking numbers, simulates fake port calls, and even deploys “zombie tankers” using the stolen identities of scrapped ships.

Meanwhile, the regime is attempting to project an illusion of macroeconomic stability. After a three-month suspension, Iran will reopen its stock market on Tuesday. “The suspension of stock market activities from the start of the war was aimed at protecting shareholders’ assets, preventing panic-driven trading, and allowing for more transparent pricing conditions,” says Hamid Yari, deputy supervisor at the Securities and Exchange Organization. “Now, with the reopening of the stock market, we will see the full resumption of all capital market sectors.” Beneath this bureaucratic optimism, however, the market threatens to collapse the moment trading floors open. Key industries like petrochemicals and steel—already struggling before the war—have seen their facilities reduced to rubble.

Domestically, the regime has largely abandoned its populace. Decades of zero investment in civil projects have left the country facing severe, preventable water shortages—an ecological crisis the state absurdly blames on Israel using “atmospheric modifier weapons” to make Iranian clouds barren and steal the country’s snow.

While domestic anger is palpable across all demographics, Rosenberg cautions against expecting an imminent revolution. After enduring brutal, militarized crackdowns, Iranian citizens are unlikely to risk their lives again without guaranteed, active backing from the West. Ultimately, the West must understand that the Iranian state isn’t functioning normally; it is merely surviving, and the regime is singularly focused on protecting itself at the expense of its people.

Yep, the Jews are causing a drought, probably using their spaces lasers. Joshing aside, this isn’t good news unless the U.S. understands it. But since Trump seems to have abandoned the Iranian people, he doesn’t care that they’re suffering. We can hope only that his insistence that Iran not have nuclear weapons still holds. Leaving China, he told a reporter that he’d be satisfied if a 20-year prohibition was agreed on. All that means is that the death of Israel and nuclear turmoil in the Middle East will be delayed for a few decades.

*Sadly, Timmy the humpback whale didn’t make it. After being stranded in Germany and towed in a water-filled barge to the North Sea to be released, they found his carcass was found on Friday (h/t Jay).  The Guardian reports:

Timmy the whale has been confirmed dead by Danish authorities two weeks after the beached humpback was transported to the North Sea in a rescue attempt criticised as “pure animal cruelty”.

Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near ​the small ⁠island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.

Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement: “It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts.”

She added that conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale’s back, and “the position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters”.

The 10-metre-long calf became a global sensation after it was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters off the coast of Germany, nearly two months ago.

As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.

But after a national outcry, two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the creature.

The rescue attempt – which is believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – involved floating Timmy away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of Lübeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.

It was criticised as “inadvisable” by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile, nicknamed Timmy after the beach where he was stranded, appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.

Well, the rescue may have been ‘inadvisable,” but I can’t impugn the two millionaires who funded the rescue. After all, Timmy might have lived.

*Theo Baker, a senior at Stanford University, explains how AI is destroying his well known school in a NYT op-ed called, “What A.I. did to my college class” (article archived here under another title).

Stanford already had a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (now serving a 10-year prison sentence), the crypto fraudster Do Kwon (now serving a 15-year prison sentence) and the founders of Juul (which was forced to pay billions for getting kids hooked on vapes). All of these scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life. Now A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.

Cheating has become omnipresent. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become. As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the “nuclear option” might be called for: allowing faculty to proctor in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate “confidence in the honor” of students.

In our tech-enabled, newly A.I.-powered world, students were increasingly fudging just about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the UberEats credits that the school offered to those in quarantine. Some kids I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. advancement. Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.

In junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail. A friend of mine captured the school’s ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors. It was all, I recall her saying, “just a little bit of fraud.”

About halfway through freshman year, some coding classes started requiring students to sign a declaration — “I did not utilize ChatGPT” — to submit each assignment. During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists. The incentive structures were not aligned toward honesty. One could get ahead, quickly, by cutting corners, by focusing on self-presentation.

The money is a big part of it. A.I. has merely accelerated a trend that was already underway at Stanford and has been reflected by many of the country’s most corporatized universities: Education itself can be seen as a secondary goal to enabling future success, frequently defined as a future windfall.

I like to think that AI can be licked with proctoring in-class exams, but as for term papers or take-home exams, fuhgedaboutit.  And remember, the future leaders of American are not only fine with big-time cheating, but won’t learn to write or think. Oy!

*After an article about antisemitism prompted by Nicholas Kristof’s “dog rape” column, Eli Lake recounts the latest antisemitic incidents in Europe and America. Here are just the ones from America:

Pro-Palestinian Mob Besieges Brooklyn Synagogue

Roughly 200 protesters organized by PAL-Awda surrounded Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn on Monday—the same group that targeted Park East Synagogue in Manhattan last week—chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” and waving a Hezbollah flag through the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Police arrested four people after clashes. Department of Justice civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon said federal officials were “working with colleagues in NYC to collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Leaves Democratic Party, Citing Antisemitism

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, who is Jewish and previously served as the state Democratic Party’s vice chair, announced Monday he was registering as an independent, saying “acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders, and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”

Kentucky PAC Ad Targets Jewish Donor with Rainbow Star of David

A political action committee supporting Representative Thomas Massie’s Kentucky primary campaign aired an ad depicting Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer—overlaid with a Star of David colored in rainbow Pride flag colors—claiming he would bring “trans madness to Kentucky.”

Rand Paul’s Son Goes on Antisemitic Tirade at D.C. Bar

William Paul, son of Senator Rand Paul, accosted New York representative Mike Lawler at a Washington bar Tuesday night, telling him that if Representative Massie loses his Kentucky primary, it will be because of “your people”—then launched into what Lawler described as a “roughly 10-minute diatribe about Israel, about Jews.” Lawler clarified he wasn’t Jewish, to which Paul apologized—“I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.” Paul issued an apology the next day, attributing the remarks to a drinking problem.

New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Ramming Chabad Headquarters

Dan Sohail pleaded guilty Wednesday to ramming his vehicle into Chabad’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. called it an intentional attack on “a globally significant Jewish religious institution,” citing the case as part of increasing violence aimed at Jewish institutions. Sohail faces up to three years in prison.

California Judge Removes Jewish DA from Case for Fighting Antisemitism

A Santa Clara County judge disqualified District Attorney Jeff Rosen—who is Jewish—and his entire office from retrying five pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for occupying the office of Stanford University’s president, ruling that Rosen had created a conflict of interest by calling the case an act of antisemitism on a campaign website. “This case is not a hate crime,” Judge Kelley Paul said. “The characterization of the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism runs afoul of case law.” The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the ruling “uniquely targets minority prosecutors.” The case now passes to California’s attorney general.

Swastika Flag Raised Above NYU Building During Graduation Week

As hundreds of students and families gathered for NYU’s annual Grad Alley block party Wednesday evening, a flag bearing two swastikas, a Star of David, and “NYU” was raised above the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development—named for Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy Steinhardt. Michael is the co-founder of the organization Taglit Birthright Israel. Campus Safety removed the flag after about 15 minutes, and the NYPD has announced its Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.

There are more from Europe, but you get the point.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is rebuking Andrzej and protecting the garden:

Hili: Don’t do it.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You take flowers for the vase first, and then you get upset with yourself for having done it.

In Polish:

Hili: Nie rób tego.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Najpierw bierzesz kwiaty do wazonu, a potem się złościsz, żeś to zrobił.

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

From Stephen, properly cited:

From The Dodo Pet:

From the Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society:

From Masih: two Iranian women shot in the eyes for protesting; one is completely blind. The caption is heartbreaking:

From Luana, the Haidt saga continues as he’s booed during an NYU commencement speech. You can see some of the booing here, along with an analysis by Jonathan Turley.

From Jay, a cat/serval hybrid explains the fact to a domestic cat. Sound up!

From Keith, a cute, fluffy butterfly. You can see a video of it walking here.

From Luana; the gross exaggeration of indigenous children’s death in Kamloops, British Columbia. It’s driven some Canadians into a frenzy, but there are no more deaths than expected in the cohort: 11 total. (It’s a thread.)

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She was four years old and would be 88 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T09:21:12.252Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the rarely observed larval stage of a fish:

This is the first ever video footage of the larval stage of an extremely rare Groenveld’s Stingfish (Minous groeneveldi).Shot on scuba, over very deep water, far offshore, while drifting with the plankton, at night. #groenveldsstingfish #blackwaterdiving #larvalfish #tulamben #stonefish

— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2026-05-15T15:52:56.516Z

Orphaned negatives (a thread):

We hope this post about orphaned negatives makes you gruntled.An ‘orphaned negative’ is a word that SHOULD feel like it has a related word, but doesn’t.‘Nonchalant’ is an orphaned negative because there is no ‘chalant.’

— Merriam-Webster (@merriam-webster.com) 2026-05-12T15:26:27.338Z

Here are some more unpaired words with the ‘word’ that one would think would be related.disgusting / gustingincognito / cognitoinnocent / nocentnonplussed / plussedoff-putting / puttingrepeat / peat

— Merriam-Webster (@merriam-webster.com) 2026-05-12T15:26:45.816Z

Cat food in Chinatown

May 17, 2026 • 12:00 pm

I did one of my favorite shopping expeditions today, stocking up on groceries in Chinatown. A giant supermarket opened there in the last couple of years, and it has everything one would want for Chinese food, including the hoisin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, and Botan Calrose short-grained rice that I favor.  But there are many, many aisles of things that aren’t even labeled in English, and tons of goodies like the first two shown below. I love wandering the aisles (usually I’m the only white guy there, and certainly the only Jew), so it takes me much longer to shop than I usually do.  They also have Chinese pastries, including various buns and cakes that are perfect for a weekend breakfast.  Also congee and crullers.

About the title above: no, this, it isn’t food for cats, but cat-shaped food for humans, plus a “veggie cat” nail salon downstairs.  The Chinese do love their cats, and it shows in the many products emblazoned with moggies.  The “good luck cat”  (maneki-neko in Japanese), raising its hand to wish you prosperity, is ubiquitous, and is on this first group of cat pastries:

I have a reclining maneki-neko in my office that is solar powered, so it waves its paw when the sun is out.  No good luck on overcast days!

I’d never seen this one before: cat-shaped butter-and-cheese cookies in a great package. Now I’m sorry I didn’t buy them:

And this was downstairs, but closed on Sunday. What on earth is a “veggie cat,” and what does it have to do with fingernails?