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.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, December 14, 2024, and National Bouillabaisse Day, a fish soup that I largely disdain. Here’s one below, but it would be better if they left out the fish and serve the gastropods and crustaceans separately without any broth. The broth just hides the flavors of the seafood.
“bouillabaisse” by stu_spivack is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
No matter who won the presidential election, the war in Ukraine was likely to end next year. Both Ukraine and Russia are running out of troops and struggling to call up more young men for the front lines. That reality always meant that 2025 would be a year of negotiations.
Donald Trump’s victory will hasten those peace talks. During the campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine even before his inauguration. Maybe that was a bit of exaggeration. But it’s clear he wants negotiations to begin soon.
That’s bad news for Ukraine. Russian forces are advancing in the east. They’ve also reclaimed some of the Russian territory that Ukraine captured this past summer. Ukraine still has weapons, but its troops are spread thin. Intelligence agencies think it will run out of soldiers soon.
The article considers four questions:
1.) Can Ukraine keep fighting? The article says probably not given that the U.S. won’t provide aid to Ukraine and, given that, Europe will be loath to.
2.) What about the territory Russia seized? The article suggests that Russia will probably keep a substantial portion of the territory it’s gained, shown in this NYT graphic below:
3.) What guarantees can Ukraine get? The article notes that Trump will not approve Ukrainian membership with NATO, but is likely to offer some “integration with Europe” for the beleaguered country.
4.) Could Putin take Kyiv? The article says, “Maybe” in these words:
Republican defenders of Ukraine, a dying breed, argue that Trump never likes to look weak and won’t settle for a deal that gives Putin a free hand. But it’s hard to envision that Putin would make a promise to stay away that Kyiv could count on. (Past promises by Russia to respect Ukrainian sovereignty were worthless.) So protecting Kyiv will be the most difficult, and most important, part of the Trump negotiations.
Of course if Putin gains the whole country, will China be emboldened to attack Taiwan? Granted, we have more treaties to protect Taiwan than we do to help Ukraine (including treaties with Japan), but I believe 2027, during Trump’s Presidency, is the target data China bandies about for taking the island back.
*Speaking of Ukraine, Andrew Sullivan notes that Trump has an unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of Russia’s economic collapse, and that includes getting a better settlement for Ukraine:
But it’s with Russia that an opportunity now beckons. Yes, it’s the economy, stupid. Militarily, the Kremlin has been sustaining minor momentum in the Donetsk region, and will likely consolidate some territorial gains before Trump’s inauguration. But for the first time, after the disappointment of the last two years, the “crippling” economic consequences of Western sanctions are beginning to limit Putin’s ability to keep fighting indefinitely.
Russian inflation, fueled by massive war spending, is now 8.9 percent and rising. To counter this, interest rates are now over 20 percent and may go higher before too long — a death spiral for almost any business. Economic growth, which held up remarkably well until now, is forecast to plunge to a meager 0.5 percent in 2025. Far from reducing military spending by 21 percent for 2025 as they had planned, the Russians are now having to raise it by 25 percent, to a full 6 percent of GDP.
Conscription — along with more than 600,000 casualties — has made labor shortages intense in Russia. The labor crisis has even hit the militarily critical arms industry.
. . . .How to handle this sudden collapse of Russian economic resilience? With nimbleness and pragmatism, it seems to me.
I’ve long been more in line with Trump’s instincts here than I am with the Biden neocons’, and I’d like to see a settlement of the Ukraine border and an end to the gruesome slaughter before too long. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take advantage of Russia’s new weakness to get the best deal for Ukraine that we can. There may be a way, in fact, to intensify the sanctions that have begun to bite:
In recent months, more than 90 percent of Russian crude oil exports have been transported to China and India via a shadow fleet of more than 400 tankers. […] The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) could take this fleet offline by sanctioning individual ships, as it already has with 53 oil tankers. […] Together, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have sanctioned 118 tankers, and officials have enough information on the rest to take quick action.
With Orbán set to be replaced as EU president by Poland’s Donald Tusk next month, the last restraints protecting Putin’s economy will go. And there’s another way to weaken Russia. If the Saudis were to use this moment to increase oil production and drive gas prices down — and they’ve made some noises to that effect — Moscow would really be in the shitter. And we could drive a much harder bargain for Ukraine.
My only response to this is “yes, perhaps we could, but we don’t know.” It depends on how Russia values retaining Ukrainian territory versus being hit with loss of gas revenue.
*As usual, I stole three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: It all comes out.”
→ Overbilling is good now: Some clever anesthesiologists jumped on the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO to push their agenda.
So: Private health insurance companies were trying to stop anesthesiologists from scamming—and were relying on Medicare and Medicaid policies. Anesthesiologists could say a surgery went longer than average and apply for further reimbursement, but it involved a little more paperwork. No, screamed the anesthesiologists! No. And our silly, sweet leftists know health insurance companies bad, so they began to parrot propaganda from anesthesiologists, a group of very rich private doctors.
The activists can’t take in too many data points. They cannot imagine a situation where both parties (the health insurance companies and the anesthesiologists) might be a little bad. Their minds are tiny pistachios, and we cannot imagine how simple arguments need to be.
Amid uproar, senators and governors chimed in, and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield revoked the policy. Yes, the policy to rein in costs and keep premiums down. I have to say, Vox did a fabulous story about this explaining that a scam just happened. Even after it was explained to them by Vox, people were still mad, because vibes. Because health insurance evil. Because Luigi hot. Anyway, America, with these as our fighters, let’s just be real: We are never getting lower premiums. It’s over.
→ Poor Rudy: Lest we forget what Trump does to people after he tires of them or gets what he needs, let’s check in on former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. “I have no cash,” Giuliani said in a press conference. “Right now, if I wanted to call a taxicab, I can’t do it. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have a checking account.” Yikes.
See, Giuliani led the campaign to claim that Trump won Georgia in 2020. And in doing so, he defamed some Georgia election workers and owes them a huge sum ($148 million). Rudy, you served your purpose. Now you’re broke and probably going to jail. Do we think Trump cares? Trump does not care. Trump is selling perfume this week. Trump says if you don’t have money for a cab, it’s called use your feet and walk. Trump says, “Did you say Ruby? I don’t know a Ruby.”
→ Democracy is what I say it is: Barack Obama came out again this week to scold American voters for voting but doing it badly, which means doing anti-democracy. Here’s Barack: “The election proved that democracy is pretty far down on people’s priority list.” Everyone knows that democracy is when there is one good party and you vote for that one. One idea for Democrats is they could try to have policies and make arguments for why they’re better (I will literally write these for you, just call me). In other signs that Democrats are learning deep, important lessons from the shellacking in this past election, they are still beginning meetings with land acknowledgments.
I swear to god, Republicans are going to funnel our Social Security money to President Tiffany Trump’s new shoe line, and Dems will still complain that Joe Rogan once made a joke about lesbians. Republicans will be gearing up to elect a Trump steak as the next president, and Dems will be like, please, Latinxs, join us while we lie in the street to stop fracking. Republicans will start deporting people who still use seed oils, and Dems will just attack them for not being body positive enough.
*And some cool (and scary) science: the production of “mirror cells” in the laboratory (archived here, h/t Peggy). These cells would have left-handed instead of right-handed DNA and would make right handed instead of left-handed proteins. They don’t of course exist in nature, but we might be able to make them in the lab in a decade or two. There’s both an upside and a downside to this:
In recent decades, chemists have discovered how to make mirror proteins. Researchers have welded together right-handed amino acids to create mirror versions of natural proteins made by our own bodies.
Mirror proteins behave much like their natural counterparts, with one important difference: They take much longer to break down. That’s because the natural enzymes that normally degrade proteins have shapes that are adapted for attacking left-handed proteins.
They cannot grip mirror proteins and cut them into fragments. Their failure is akin to what happens if you try to twist open a lid from a jar by turning it counterclockwise, only to discover that the threads on the jar twist in the opposite direction.
Chemists are now trying to exploit mirror proteins, hoping they can be used to create long-acting drugs for diseases ranging from H.I.V. to Alzheimer’s.
Proteinaceous drugs would act longer because enzymes, adapted to attacking left-handed proteins, wouldn’t work well at destroying them, and so beneficial protein treatments, like those used in cancer, might be more effect (moreover, existing cells couldn’t evolve to make them). But there’s a big downside:
But [Jonathan Jones] eventually recognized the potential for a planet-wide catastrophe if a mirror cell escaped containment — either accidentally released from a lab, or set free as a biological weapon.
The researchers then spent weeks plowing through the scientific literature to see if they could falsify their hypothesis.
“We’ve all done our best to shoot it down,” said Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “And we failed.”
The trouble with mirror cells is that they could probably evade most of the barriers that keep ordinary organisms in check. To fight off pathogens, for example, our bodies must first detect them with molecular sensors.
Those sensors can only latch onto left-handed proteins or right-handed DNA and RNA. A mirror cell that infected lab workers might spread through their bodies without triggering any resistance from their immune systems.
There wouldn’t be many organic molecules inside a human body for a mirror cell to feed on. But Dr. Cooper and his colleagues suspect that it might find enough to grow slowly. And if the immune system did not detect the growing infection, it could spread without limit.
“Ultimately, that host will be overrun, and that will be fatal,” Dr. Cooper said.
A victim of mirror cells would harbor a vast supply of the microbes, which could spread to other people and start a pandemic. And it would be one that medicine would be unlikely to stop.
Serious people are taking this possibility seriously, and the way to stop bioweaponed mirror cells is through treaties between countries (they are too hard to make for terrorist individuals working without governmental help). Further, once these things are released there’s no stopping them, so any country or person releasing them could also be their victim.
*Reader Maarten sent me this Economic Times video noting that this clip was insane because Ted Cruz rather than a woke judge appears to be the voice of sanity on the question of putting transgender women convicted of sexual offenses into women’s prisons (well, he can be right sometime). Here are the Youtube notes:
At the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senators John Kennedy (R-LA) and Ted Cruz(R-TX) questioned Sarah Netburn, a nominee to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, about her record with a transgender inmate.
From Masih; another protester scheduled for execution based on trumped-up charges:
🚨 Mohammad Amin Mahdavi Shayesteh has been transferred to solitary confinement for execution.
He is accused of “insulting Islamic sanctities” and “collaborating with Israel,” based on confessions extracted under torture.
The regime is using these fabricated charges to silence… pic.twitter.com/6h6936RfU0
This commutation has a lot of people in Chicago very angry. The comptroller of nearby Dixon, Illinois stole $53 million from the taxpayers and yet was released eight years early from a 20-year sentence. There’s no good reason for such a commutation
BREAKING: President Biden commuted the sentence of Rita Crundwell, the woman who embezzled over $53 million from a small Illinois town and spent it on luxury goods, real estate, and a horse breeding business, per Yashar Ali of Huff Post.
Piers Morgan asked Antichrist Peter Thiel what he would say to people who celebrated Luigi Mangione — who was a fan of Peter Thiel & Elon Musk — for murdering an insurance CEO.If someone can find a worse answer to any question, I’d love to see it. This is excruciating.
Ok I’ll bite. I miss a lot in the world, and while I had often heard the name, Peter Thiel, I must admit that I had never really seen him or paid attention to anything he had said…at least to the point where it made any lasting impression on me…until I watched a recent Bari Weiss interview with him. I told my wife after watching a good bit of that, that I was amazed that Peter Thiel was famous because as far as I could tell, he seemed unable to put together a noun and a verb to create a coherent sentence. I see the same thing in this snippet with Piers Morgan. Is it an affectation? Is it normal for him? Is it a speaking or communication disability? Does he write more coherently than he speaks?
He has a lot of money that he spends to get people like J.D. Vance into government office. In that sense he is coherent.
It is really unfair to judge people by how glib they are.
John Bardeen, the only person to win two Nobel prizes in physics, was famously un-glib. Often, after someone asked him a question, he would think quietly for several minutes before saying a word.
It’s perfectly fair to judge people’s glibness by how glib they are, which was all that happened there.
Re: “mirror” proteins. Ice-9, anyone?
Lucky me, lucky mud.
Woah, clever call!
Love that story! I read it because the cover looked cool and retro.
Jerry, you should look out a cotriade, the Breton version of a fish stew. It doesn’t have all the tomatoes, adds potatoes, as many kinds of fish and seafood as you can find, and is flavoured with garlic, peppercorns, white wine and cream. Enjoy with chilled Pouilly-Fumé.
So very interesting to watch the media manipulation about the anesthesiologist story. Something seemed fishy right away with that – I cannot imagine any situation in which anesthesia would be cut off mid-operation, but the doctors, with the help of the media, successfully manipulated the narrative. Whether it is private insurance or government insurance, there are and always will be limits to payment for medical services.
Regarding the Biden pardons, at what point do the Biden apologists on Bluesky stop defending him? A quick scan there shows lots of “well, Trump’s corrupt, so it’s OK for us to play the game too”. Why can’t we just admit that he’s letting a lot of bad people off and say that it’s wrong? And then, when Trump does it, we can say he’s wrong too?
Biden got a lot wrong, but nowhere has he failed so miserably as in international affairs:
Abandoning Bagram Air Force base in 2021, turning a blind eye to Putin’s imminent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and his continued interference in Israel. Dismal.
Sarah Netburn was NOT confirmed, largely because of the hearing clip you posted.
Ok I’ll bite. I miss a lot in the world, and while I had often heard the name, Peter Thiel, I must admit that I had never really seen him or paid attention to anything he had said…at least to the point where it made any lasting impression on me…until I watched a recent Bari Weiss interview with him. I told my wife after watching a good bit of that, that I was amazed that Peter Thiel was famous because as far as I could tell, he seemed unable to put together a noun and a verb to create a coherent sentence. I see the same thing in this snippet with Piers Morgan. Is it an affectation? Is it normal for him? Is it a speaking or communication disability? Does he write more coherently than he speaks?
He has a lot of money that he spends to get people like J.D. Vance into government office. In that sense he is coherent.
It is really unfair to judge people by how glib they are.
John Bardeen, the only person to win two Nobel prizes in physics, was famously un-glib. Often, after someone asked him a question, he would think quietly for several minutes before saying a word.
Here is Bardeen: https://youtu.be/wY3oO7bBdoQ?si=30DWd17U3kxwR_Nc
It’s perfectly fair to judge people’s glibness by how glib they are, which was all that happened there.
Re: “mirror” proteins. Ice-9, anyone?
Lucky me, lucky mud.
Woah, clever call!
Love that story! I read it because the cover looked cool and retro.
Jerry, you should look out a cotriade, the Breton version of a fish stew. It doesn’t have all the tomatoes, adds potatoes, as many kinds of fish and seafood as you can find, and is flavoured with garlic, peppercorns, white wine and cream. Enjoy with chilled Pouilly-Fumé.
So very interesting to watch the media manipulation about the anesthesiologist story. Something seemed fishy right away with that – I cannot imagine any situation in which anesthesia would be cut off mid-operation, but the doctors, with the help of the media, successfully manipulated the narrative. Whether it is private insurance or government insurance, there are and always will be limits to payment for medical services.
Regarding the Biden pardons, at what point do the Biden apologists on Bluesky stop defending him? A quick scan there shows lots of “well, Trump’s corrupt, so it’s OK for us to play the game too”. Why can’t we just admit that he’s letting a lot of bad people off and say that it’s wrong? And then, when Trump does it, we can say he’s wrong too?
Biden got a lot wrong, but nowhere has he failed so miserably as in international affairs:
Abandoning Bagram Air Force base in 2021, turning a blind eye to Putin’s imminent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and his continued interference in Israel. Dismal.
Sarah Netburn was NOT confirmed, largely because of the hearing clip you posted.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/first-us-senate-panel-rejects-biden-judicial-nominee-new-york-2024-07-11/
Thanks for that pickup. I presume a District Judge (which Judge Netburn was being considered for) outranks a Chief Magistrate Judge, which she is now.
https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1867916465447612506 🐱
https://x.com/SusanSarandon/status/619155767866863617 🍩
https://youtu.be/QEwwhklDbVo
Here’s a video of 8-year-old Ariana Grande singing “The American National Anthem.” 🇺🇸🎤🎶