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, January 4, 2025, and National Spaghetti Day. Here’s how they grow it in Switzerland:
Yes, of course it’s a hoax—by the BBC. The YouTube notes say this:
The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools’ Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.”
Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday won re-election to the top post in the House, salvaging his job in a dramatic last-minute turnabout by putting down a revolt from conservatives who initially voted to block his ascent.
Mr. Johnson barely mustered the majority he needed to win re-election on the first ballot, with help from President-elect Donald J. Trump, who interrupted a golf game to lobby holdouts by phone. That allowed the speaker to avoid the humiliation of a multiday slog of failed votes like the one his predecessor Kevin McCarthy suffered through before ultraconservatives relented and elected him two years ago.
Mr. Johnson won with just enough votes to clinch the gavel, 218 to 215.
But the chaotic scene that played out on the House floor — with three Republicans initially opposing Mr. Johnson and six more abstaining until it appeared he would lose before voting for him — reflected the same divisions within G.O.P. ranks that had plagued Mr. McCarthy.
It was a grim portent for Mr. Johnson at the start of the new all-Republican Congress, and for Mr. Trump as he embarks upon his second term with an ambitious and crowded agenda that will require his party to stay almost entirely unified.
It is theoretically possible that a Democrat could be Speaker in a Republican-majority House, and indeed, the Democrats nominated Hakeem Jeffries, but that didn’t work. If two Republicans hadn’t changed their vote at the last minute, the House would be in a mess and might even not have been able to certify Trump’s election on January 6.
*And of course Trump isn’t going to jail, but even if he wasn’t President he probably would not have received jail time for his felony conviction:
President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records ahead of his swearing-in Jan. 20 but is not expected to face jail time, a judge ruled Friday.
The decision touphold Trump’s conviction and schedule the sentencing for Jan. 10 almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail. He said heplans to order an “unconditional discharge,” a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.
The U.S. surgeon general said alcoholic beverages should carry cancer warnings to increase awareness that the drinks are a leading cause of preventable cancers.
An act of Congress would be required to change the existing warning labels on bottles of beer, wine and liquor. Today, federal rules require only a warning against drunken driving and drinking while pregnant, as well as a general warning that alcohol “may cause health problems.”
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said in his advisory issued Friday. “Yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.”
Alcohol industry groups didn’t immediately comment Friday.
Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., after tobacco and obesity. The link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk has been established for at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colorectum, esophagus, liver, mouth, throat and voice box, Murthy said.
“I’m not sure if we truly know the answer to that question,” said Dr. Jamie Koprivnikar, an oncologist at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, who often advises patients to cut back on their alcohol consumption. “There is data that links even one drink per day to increased risks of cancer.”
For nearly three decades, federal dietary guidelines have said it is safe for men to have two or fewer drinks a day, and for women to have one. That could change this year when the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments update recommendations that are part of federal dietary guidelines.
Well, that’s just peachy! Now I have something else to worry about. But I swear, I will not give up my glass or two of wine with dinner. I don’t smoke cigars any more, so what gustatory pleasure is left for me? Eggs, I suppose (see below), but eggs are no substitute for a glass of good Rioja or a gutsy Rhone. Live isn’t worth living. HOWEVER, a new review by the National Academies of Science gives an opposite result; moderate drinking is good for you:
A report that is intended to shape the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has broken sharply with an emerging scientific consensus that alcohol has no health benefits.
The evidence review, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December, revived a once-dominant hypothesis that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.
The Pecksniff Scientists are up in arms, however, as they don’t want anybody to enjoy themselves. I’m going with the National Academies.
→ Trump is the CCP’s cheapest date: Trump is scrambling to save TikTok. He’s filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking them to treat him like he’s already president and to stop this terrible ban of his favorite piece of Chinese spyware. As The Wall Street Journal editorial board puts it: “The brief is extraordinary in several ways, none of them good.”
As background, Trump was against TikTok until. . . TikTok investor Jeff Yass and his wife Janine dropped about $100 million into Republicans in recent years. And then, what do you know, he’s all in for TikTok! Trump asked the Supreme Court not to act all sus on TikTok’s rizz.
Shadow president Elon Musk has deep business entanglements with China, so it’s a given he’s going to be compromised on this. But Trumpo—Mr. CHYNA—made nationalism his whole thing. And all it took was one Republican donor with cash, but not even that much for China, to continue the colonization of teenage American minds through the infectious disease known as TikTok. Democrats at least genuinely believe in the CCP. Like, they prefer it on an intellectual level. Republicans don’t; they’re just for sale, and cheap.
→ Release all the corruption pictures, quick: This week, the National Archives released a ton more pictures of Joe Biden hanging out with Hunter and Hunter’s business associates. The business is obvious: Hunter was clearly paid to give foreign business interests access to Joe. Joe Biden has, for years, denied it quite strongly. “They’re lies,” he has said. (Here’s a helpful list of all the times he totally denied these meetings ever took place.) Nevermind that Hunter himself wrote that his father was involved in the business, that Hunter would text “sitting here with my father” and then get multimillion-dollar wire transfers. I’m sure that was just because of his very fine work.
Now here we have a bunch of pictures showing Joe Biden meeting Hunter’s business associates:
It’s so kind of the National Archives to release these pictures from 2013 now that the election is over. I guess they were hiding under a cabinet or something!
→ Eggs are now healthy: America received a wild revelation last week. Not that Santa isn’t real (he is), but that the FDA thinks that eggs are healthy again. Talk about whiplash. Just yesterday, if my kids had asked for eggs for breakfast, I’d slowly wag my finger at them and say, “FDA says nay.” But the cholesterol in eggs does not pose the risk our health overlords once thought it did. So, eggs galore! The President of the American Egg Board (I love that this exists—more Egg Presidents, less Reality Czars in 2025, please) couldn’t be happier:
Whether you’re scrambling them for breakfast, grabbing them hardboiled for a quick lunch on the go, or enjoying some egg-and-veggie fried rice at dinner, Americans now know for certain that eggs are one of the healthiest foods for your family.
Amen, Egg President. Beef is back in vogue too, apparently. Expect cigarettes to be next; gin martinis too. I’m waiting for the Chair of the Office of Amphetamines to declare victory. The year 2025 just dropped, and it’s time for our diets to get with the times.
I’m not scared of eggs! And if they weren’t so damn expensive I’d eat a lot more of them!
*The AP reports that the Bidens, but especially Jill, got tons of expensive gifts from foreign leaders this year. They still have to pay taxes on them, though:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and his family were given tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from foreign leaders in 2023, according to an annual accounting published by the State Department on Thursday, with first lady Jill Biden receiving the single most expensive present: a $20,000 diamond from India’s leader.
The 7.5-carat diamond from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was easily the most costly gift presented to any member of the first family in 2023, although she also received a brooch valued at $14,063 from the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States and a bracelet, brooch and photograph album worth $4,510 from the president and first lady of Egypt.
The U.S. president himself received a number of expensive presents, including a commemorative photo album valued at $7,100 from South Korea’s recently impeached President Suk Yeol Yoon, a $3,495 statue of Mongolian warriors from the Mongolian prime minister, a $3,300 silver bowl from the sultan of Brunei, a $3,160 sterling silver tray from the president of Israel, and a collage worth $2,400 from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Federal law requires executive branch officials to declare gifts they receive from foreign leaders and counterparts that have an estimated value of more than $480. Many of the gifts that meet that threshold are relatively modest, and the more expensive ones are typically — but not always — transferred to the National Archives or put on official displays.
What’s your guess: will that diamond and the brooch wind up in the National Archives or Smithsonian?
Apple has agreed to pay $95m in cash to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant Siri violated users’ privacy, listening to them without their consent.
iPhone owners complained that Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers. A preliminary settlement was filed on Tuesday night in the Oakland, California, federal court, and requires approval by US district judge Jeffrey White.
Voice assistants typically react when people use “hot words” such as “Hey, Siri”. Two plaintiffs said their mentions of Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants triggered ads for those products. Another said he was served ads for a brand name surgical treatment after discussing it, he thought privately, with his doctor. The plaintiffs alleged Apple did not receive consent before recording their conversations and in fact could not receive consent from one of the plaintiffs because they were a minor without an Apple account at the time of the recording.
The lawsuit alleged the violations ran from 17 September 2014 to 31 December 2024. It began when Siri incorporated the “Hey, Siri” feature that allegedly led to the unauthorized recordings. Class members, estimated in the tens of millions, may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches.
Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. The company has persistently emphasized the importance it places on privacy. In 2018, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, accused other tech companies of surveillance and said “[t]he desire to put profits over privacy is nothing new.” The company furthered contended in a letter to Congress in 2018 that Apple’s iPhone devices do not “listen” to users except to detect the audio trigger “Hey Siri.”
A whistleblower turned in the company for this nefarious behavior, which is nothing more than violation of privacy in the interests of profit. But get this: “The $95m is about nine hours of profit for Apple, whose net income was $93.74bn in its latest fiscal year.” Nine hours of profit!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili still hates Kulka, who is sitting on the outside windowsill. I don’t understand this animosity since Hili loves Szaron. Cats are unfathomable:
From Masih; Iranians sing and dance in the streets to music (all three forbidden) to usher in the New Year. Can we hope for the regime to disappear this year?
Iranians dance in the streets to welcome 2025
This video was sent to me by a citizen in Tehran. Dancing and joy are everyday occurrences in most parts of the world, but in my beloved homeland, Iran, they serve as a manifesto against the backwardness and hollow authority of the… pic.twitter.com/iWrihP54yf
A phenol injection in the heart was used to kill people in addition to the gas chambers. Phenol is a rough way to go, and here's a family murdered both ways.
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a beautiful seed, but you’d need a microscope to see its beauty.
Today my colleague shared with me the most EXQUISITE image of a seed the size of a dust particle, collected from a rare plant called Xylanche in Nepal, and photographed using scanning electron microscopy. Wow.
Given the rising tempo of articles about the benefits of going alcohol-free, the illnesses caused by not doing so, Dry January, Sober October etc etc I am fully prepared for prohibition to be announced, again. No doubt someone will declare that last time, just like communism, it wasn’t done right.
However, there is a mountain of good evidence that moderate alcohol consumption reduces death rates—which it may well do at the same time as increasing some cancers. That might mean a ban on alcohol means more people die. But all of this ignores the elephant over in that corner: it is a discussion of ordinary drinkers dying slightly earlier or slightly later, and not mentioning the far greater problem of deaths and disease from excess consumption. We would do better to think about that issue rather than torture our host about the odd glass of red.
Meanwhile:
What is the Surgeon General’s warning on Marijuana or shrooms?…
… Oh – oh, I get it now!
I looked up the increased risk, and the HHS data says that for a man the risk of cancer goes from 10% for a non drinker to 13% for a man who drinks 2 per day. For women the risks are 16% and 22%, respectively, unless she declares she is a man then the risks are 16% and 22%, respectively. Funny how that works.
So for a man the risk goes up 30%, which sounds really bad, but in reality 3 more men out of 100 will develop cancer if they drink. That is a 3% increase. Not nothing, but it won’t make me quit drinking.
If I am misreading this data, please someone with more knowledge chime right in!
I haven’t laughed out loud at an internet post in a long time; thanks so much for your second sentence!
I’ve stopped listening to noise about what foods are good and bad for you unless they are actually toxic. It seems to be all political. Eat and drink what you want in moderation.
Giving up alcohol may not make you live longer, but it will certainly feel longer 😉
+1
Many commenters on this website are of an age where abjuring alcohol or other drugs that impair the function of the central nervous system is probably a good idea just so you don’t fall down and maybe never get up. Fractures and brain injuries from falls are devastating for older people and many of them are due to sedatives acting on the deteriorating brain and postural reflexes. Pushing the age of the first fall — all falls are “serious” — as far into the future as possible seems sensible.
Most of us are probably beyond the age where we drink companionably in order to seduce women, or at least to appear passably attractive to them.
/PSA
You can pry my ale from my cold, dead hands.
Good point, especially for older women who may have some osteoporosis.
Yes Leslie – the old, alcohol, meds combination of risk is under appreciated I often think.
D.A.
NYC
Like any other risk, it merely needs to be managed: take what you want and drink what you want. Just ensure that you crawl, rather than walk, to bed. I’ve performed a good deal of self-experimentation on this over the years, and I can confirm that when one crawls, falling hard enough to do yourself any damage is highly unlikely.
In the past, I fell down with no adverse effects. Conversely, a friend died after a fall. I am sure that alcohol played no roll in my fall (I blame it on the Flu). I don’t know about my friends fatal fall.
Zero commenters on the WSJ article are planning to give up alcohol in light of this information.
I drink hardly at all so it’s pretty irrelevant to me.
I understand the health effects are worse for women so that’s just as well.
My gastroenterologist told me that doctors now believe that alcohol is toxic and there is no safe level of consumption. He explained that earlier studies showing a health benefit to moderate alcohol consumption were skewed due to improper controls: the majority of teetotalers are people who have stopped drinking because of alcohol-related health issues, so they tend to have worse outcomes than a teetotaler who has never consumed alcohol at all.
On that note, I’m going to pour myself another glass of wine. In these troubled times, I’ll take joy wherever I can find it.
The comments on the wave are suggesting it is shorter than one from Nazare, Portugal – a 115 footer (this went viral a while ago).
Damn cool anyway, but I think there’s a video of waves Portugal and yes they are next level waves.
I have no idea if there is a physical or legal eagle distinction, but it seems to me that even listening for “Hey, Siri” is still listening. Yes?
When I worked at the National Archives in the late 80s, gifts to the President and First Lady (and other office holders) valued at more than $50 were considered gifts to the United States, and the individuals were not allowed to keep them. There was a whole room at the Suitland Federal Records Center in Maryland (where the Nixon Papers were also stored) that was full of these gifts. Some were humble and some were museum quality. I don’t know when the law changed. Obviously, the intent was to forestall corruption. I guess we stopped caring at some point.
“And if they weren’t so damn expensive I’d eat a lot more of them!”
Aren’t eggs scheduled for a major price drop starting January 20? Someone said that would happen.
The new sensibility on egg and diet should drive egg prices down if demand increases enough.
The idea being that everyone who thought eggs = bad now think eggs = good.
That means egg production has a good reason to increase.
But my point is Herbert Marcuse’s thought reform is at work, which has an expected result.
In NZ a 1st of April hoax early 60 maybe. Anyhow an a.m. radio host Merv Smith told his listeners that there was a massive swarm of bees converging on Auckland from the south and to slow them down smother bread with raspberry jam over the southern side of the house. That advice should have killed it BUT NO, it sucked in thousands as he also gave regular updates on the incoming swarm.
No-one will see this, because the d*g has barked and the caravan moved on, but the story of the the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment known as the Night Witches, founded by its commanding officer Marina Mikhaylovna, who died on this day in 1943, is remarkable. https://x.com/TheAttagirls/status/1875446181729304931
There are some of us who usually follow behind the caravan. In my case, I use an RSS reader and read all its content in chronological order. WEIT competes with some very busy news sites, so I end up reading these posts well after the crowd’s moved on. That’s one of the reasons why I only very rarely comment.
This time, however, I had a few minutes to spare and clicked on the link to your comment in the left column to see what you had to say, and was richly rewarded. Thanks for the link to the fascinating story of the Night Witches. I’d never heard of them before.
βPer
The Economist ran the obituary of one of these outstanding women on its back page a few years ago, possibly the last known survivor, which is how I first heard about them.
Those who like historical fiction might like this novel that features a fictional night witch, The Huntress, by Kate Quinn, 2019. (The title describes someone else, not the pilot or her colleagues.) I didn’t include the Goodreads link because the synopsis has plot spoilers. The author includes an appendix where she comes clean about what parts are documentary and what parts she invented in order to tell her story.
Re: the silver-medalist’s on-podium reaction.
Why do athletes bite their medals? It seems odd.
I completely agree. Totally bizarre.
They have likely spent most of their life pursuing that goal and to get there they have worked harder than most people could imagine.
I was an international athlete, and while I never won an Olympic medal, I won plenty of other medals and trophies. Achieving such an important goal after years of striving, sacrifice and punishingly hard work is a fantastic experience, I wish everybody could feel it.
However, it’s so amazing it can feel unreal and unbelievable, and the sense of achievement and unreality can be intense. Biting the medal is merely a reflection of those emotions.
Thanks everybody for replying to my medal-biting question.
This reminds me of a Simpsons episode in which Homer receives the key to Springfield. He starts biting it. Mayor Quimby asks him why he is doing that. Homer replies, sadly, “I thought it might be chocolate.”
BTW, these photos are from the balance beam medal ceremony. The gold and bronze medallists are Italians, Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito, respectively. With her beam gold, D’Amato won Italy’s first Olympic gold in women’s artistic gymnastics. The silver medallist is Zhou Yaquin from China.
Given the rising tempo of articles about the benefits of going alcohol-free, the illnesses caused by not doing so, Dry January, Sober October etc etc I am fully prepared for prohibition to be announced, again. No doubt someone will declare that last time, just like communism, it wasn’t done right.
However, there is a mountain of good evidence that moderate alcohol consumption reduces death rates—which it may well do at the same time as increasing some cancers. That might mean a ban on alcohol means more people die. But all of this ignores the elephant over in that corner: it is a discussion of ordinary drinkers dying slightly earlier or slightly later, and not mentioning the far greater problem of deaths and disease from excess consumption. We would do better to think about that issue rather than torture our host about the odd glass of red.
Meanwhile:
What is the Surgeon General’s warning on Marijuana or shrooms?…
… Oh – oh, I get it now!
I looked up the increased risk, and the HHS data says that for a man the risk of cancer goes from 10% for a non drinker to 13% for a man who drinks 2 per day. For women the risks are 16% and 22%, respectively, unless she declares she is a man then the risks are 16% and 22%, respectively. Funny how that works.
So for a man the risk goes up 30%, which sounds really bad, but in reality 3 more men out of 100 will develop cancer if they drink. That is a 3% increase. Not nothing, but it won’t make me quit drinking.
If I am misreading this data, please someone with more knowledge chime right in!
I haven’t laughed out loud at an internet post in a long time; thanks so much for your second sentence!
I’ve stopped listening to noise about what foods are good and bad for you unless they are actually toxic. It seems to be all political. Eat and drink what you want in moderation.
Giving up alcohol may not make you live longer, but it will certainly feel longer 😉
+1
Many commenters on this website are of an age where abjuring alcohol or other drugs that impair the function of the central nervous system is probably a good idea just so you don’t fall down and maybe never get up. Fractures and brain injuries from falls are devastating for older people and many of them are due to sedatives acting on the deteriorating brain and postural reflexes. Pushing the age of the first fall — all falls are “serious” — as far into the future as possible seems sensible.
Most of us are probably beyond the age where we drink companionably in order to seduce women, or at least to appear passably attractive to them.
/PSA
You can pry my ale from my cold, dead hands.
Good point, especially for older women who may have some osteoporosis.
Yes Leslie – the old, alcohol, meds combination of risk is under appreciated I often think.
D.A.
NYC
Like any other risk, it merely needs to be managed: take what you want and drink what you want. Just ensure that you crawl, rather than walk, to bed. I’ve performed a good deal of self-experimentation on this over the years, and I can confirm that when one crawls, falling hard enough to do yourself any damage is highly unlikely.
In the past, I fell down with no adverse effects. Conversely, a friend died after a fall. I am sure that alcohol played no roll in my fall (I blame it on the Flu). I don’t know about my friends fatal fall.
Zero commenters on the WSJ article are planning to give up alcohol in light of this information.
I drink hardly at all so it’s pretty irrelevant to me.
I understand the health effects are worse for women so that’s just as well.
My gastroenterologist told me that doctors now believe that alcohol is toxic and there is no safe level of consumption. He explained that earlier studies showing a health benefit to moderate alcohol consumption were skewed due to improper controls: the majority of teetotalers are people who have stopped drinking because of alcohol-related health issues, so they tend to have worse outcomes than a teetotaler who has never consumed alcohol at all.
On that note, I’m going to pour myself another glass of wine. In these troubled times, I’ll take joy wherever I can find it.
The comments on the wave are suggesting it is shorter than one from Nazare, Portugal – a 115 footer (this went viral a while ago).
Damn cool anyway, but I think there’s a video of waves Portugal and yes they are next level waves.
I have no idea if there is a physical or legal eagle distinction, but it seems to me that even listening for “Hey, Siri” is still listening. Yes?
When I worked at the National Archives in the late 80s, gifts to the President and First Lady (and other office holders) valued at more than $50 were considered gifts to the United States, and the individuals were not allowed to keep them. There was a whole room at the Suitland Federal Records Center in Maryland (where the Nixon Papers were also stored) that was full of these gifts. Some were humble and some were museum quality. I don’t know when the law changed. Obviously, the intent was to forestall corruption. I guess we stopped caring at some point.
Aren’t eggs scheduled for a major price drop starting January 20? Someone said that would happen.
The new sensibility on egg and diet should drive egg prices down if demand increases enough.
The idea being that everyone who thought eggs = bad now think eggs = good.
That means egg production has a good reason to increase.
But my point is Herbert Marcuse’s thought reform is at work, which has an expected result.
In NZ a 1st of April hoax early 60 maybe. Anyhow an a.m. radio host Merv Smith told his listeners that there was a massive swarm of bees converging on Auckland from the south and to slow them down smother bread with raspberry jam over the southern side of the house. That advice should have killed it BUT NO, it sucked in thousands as he also gave regular updates on the incoming swarm.
Your post reminded me of the “so bad it’s good” film The Swarm – inexplicably starring Michael Caine and Henry Fonda! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(1978_film)
No-one will see this, because the d*g has barked and the caravan moved on, but the story of the the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment known as the Night Witches, founded by its commanding officer Marina Mikhaylovna, who died on this day in 1943, is remarkable. https://x.com/TheAttagirls/status/1875446181729304931
There are some of us who usually follow behind the caravan. In my case, I use an RSS reader and read all its content in chronological order. WEIT competes with some very busy news sites, so I end up reading these posts well after the crowd’s moved on. That’s one of the reasons why I only very rarely comment.
This time, however, I had a few minutes to spare and clicked on the link to your comment in the left column to see what you had to say, and was richly rewarded. Thanks for the link to the fascinating story of the Night Witches. I’d never heard of them before.
βPer
The Economist ran the obituary of one of these outstanding women on its back page a few years ago, possibly the last known survivor, which is how I first heard about them.
Those who like historical fiction might like this novel that features a fictional night witch, The Huntress, by Kate Quinn, 2019. (The title describes someone else, not the pilot or her colleagues.) I didn’t include the Goodreads link because the synopsis has plot spoilers. The author includes an appendix where she comes clean about what parts are documentary and what parts she invented in order to tell her story.
Re: the silver-medalist’s on-podium reaction.
Why do athletes bite their medals? It seems odd.
I completely agree. Totally bizarre.
They have likely spent most of their life pursuing that goal and to get there they have worked harder than most people could imagine.
I was an international athlete, and while I never won an Olympic medal, I won plenty of other medals and trophies. Achieving such an important goal after years of striving, sacrifice and punishingly hard work is a fantastic experience, I wish everybody could feel it.
However, it’s so amazing it can feel unreal and unbelievable, and the sense of achievement and unreality can be intense. Biting the medal is merely a reflection of those emotions.
Thanks everybody for replying to my medal-biting question.
This reminds me of a Simpsons episode in which Homer receives the key to Springfield. He starts biting it. Mayor Quimby asks him why he is doing that. Homer replies, sadly, “I thought it might be chocolate.”
BTW, these photos are from the balance beam medal ceremony. The gold and bronze medallists are Italians, Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito, respectively. With her beam gold, D’Amato won Italy’s first Olympic gold in women’s artistic gymnastics. The silver medallist is Zhou Yaquin from China.
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/schedule/artistic-gymnastics?day=5-august&medalEvents=true
USAnians Simone Biles (of course!) and Suni Lee were the medal favorites, but they both fell in the finals. D’Amato was a very surprise winner.
Congratulations on all your success, wetherjeff!
https://olympics.com/en/news/olympic-winners-athlete-bite-medal
“Because the photographers ask them to.”
It’s tradition, but is only historical for the gold medals.
Thank you, GordonC!
https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1875525060905332862 🐱
https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1875261617849713143 🏄
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Break
https://youtu.be/HpDC-mqxZUY
Here is a surfing and skydiving movie that I really love. 🇺🇸🎬🪂🏄✨