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, May 3, 2025, and besides being shabbos for Jewish cats it’s Kentucky Derby Day. Put on your hat and have a mint julep! Be;pw is the fabulous Secretariat, Triple Crown winner, setting the 1.25-mile record for the track in 1973, a record that still stands after more than 50 years: 1:59.4—less than two minutes. He was euthanized at 19 because of an intractable hoof condition.
Some frat guys at the University here were playing Beer Pong two days ago. Here’s a short video about how it’s done:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The new Trump budget looks uber-dire, but, you know, it’s going to pass because Congress is majority Republican. Less help for people and more weapons! But there’s some hope that the courts will put a damper on it.,
The White House released a partial budget proposal Friday calling for $163 billion in cuts to federal spending in the next fiscal year, pushing reductions to health care, education and many other government programs while boosting spending on defense and homeland security.
The White House’s 2026 fiscal budget plan would codify for next year many of the spending cuts already unilaterally implemented this year by President Donald Trump or billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. The administration has struggled to convince Republicans in Congress to enshrine even a small portion of those cuts into law, and the courts have also ordered the White House to resume much of the spending, leaving the fate of the changes unclear for now.
The $163 billion in requested cuts amount to nearly 23 percent. They would come from a portion of federal outlays known as “nondefense discretionary” spending, which excludes the Pentagon as well as programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which collectively make up the bulk of what the government spends every year. The cuts would fall on child care, education programs, climate assistance, funding for research and development and a range of other government functions.
The budget also proposes $1 trillion in defense spending, a 13 percent increase, as well as more money for charter schools and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.It would also increase funding for immigration enforcement by $175 billion.
“The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche nongovernmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said in a letter to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican appropriator.
Trump’s budget would bring nondefense discretionary spending to the “lowest level on record, by far,” said Bobby Kogan, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank.
Damn military-industrial complex is taking over everything. Libraries will close, science will be squeezed, and the quality of American life will be dragged down. The solution? See the next item!
*In his new column “How to survive the Trump years with your spirit intact“(article archived here), NYT columnist David Brooks suggests either religion of spiritual humanism. And once again he touts the “religious revival” in America for which the evidence is thin (and he admits that):
. . . . Apparently, I’m not alone. Something’s going on in our culture. The decline of religious participation, which was so rapid between 2010 and 2020, seems to have stopped. There has been a relative surge in religious interest among young men. According to research by the evangelical Christian polling group Barna, 66 percent of Americans say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus — a 12-percentage-point jump since 2021.
. . .In his book “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God,” Brierley notes that the New Atheists were all the rage several years ago, but now it’s unlikely believers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson and the rock star Nick Cave. Vanity Fair recently ran a story headlined “Christianity Was ‘Borderline Illegal’ in Silicon Valley. Now It’s the New Religion.”
This movement was already underway before Trump was elected to a second term. It’s a response to a series of gods that failed: The belief that science and tech could solve our quest for meaning. The belief that we can live like hyperindividualists and still experience a sense of communal belonging. The belief that the right B.M.I. could lead to purpose and peace.
Are we on the cusp of a new religious revival? The evidence is still much too flimsy and fresh to justify that kind of sweeping assertion, so color me skeptical. I think it’s more accurate to say that there is currently a great spiritual yearning in the populace, which the religious institutions have not yet risen to meet.
But I do think we’re on the cusp of a great cultural transition. On the one hand, the eternal forces of dehumanization are blowing strong right now: concentrated power; authoritarianism; materialism; runaway technology; a presidential administration at war with the arts, universities and sciences; a president who guts Christianity while pretending to govern in its name.
On the other hand, there are millions of humanists — secular and religious — repulsed by what they see. History is often driven by those people who are quietly repulsed for a while and then find their voice. I suspect different kinds of humanists will gather and invent other cultural movements. They will ask the eternal humanistic questions: What does it mean to be human? What is the best way to live? What is the nature of the common humanity that binds us together? As these questions are answered in new ways, there will be new cultural movements and forms.
As the theologian Dallas Willard put it, there has been, over the past decades of neglect, a loss of moral knowledge. We came to a spot in 2024 in which 77 million Americans took a look at Trump’s moral character and didn’t have a problem with what they saw. But the consequences of those character failings are becoming evident in concrete ways.
New winds are going to blow.
Is there really a new spiritual yearning, or just a yearning to stop the madness that’s infecting our society? Are we a society of Hirsi Alis who need to fill our God-shaped hole? I for one, feel no divine lacuna in my body, but stay tuned. Already the pundits are blathering about how religion is coming back, or at any rate things that can substitute for religion.
*There’s no doubt that China exports fentanyl precursors throughout the world, and that many of them, made into the deadly drug, find their way into Americans. That’s the excuse Trump has used to impose stiffer tariffs on China, but now China itself is feeling squeezed, and has proposed talks around the drug (article archived here.) These may lead to an easing of the trade war.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s security czar, Wang Xiaohong, in recent days has been inquiring about what the Trump team wants China to do when it comes to the chemical ingredients used to make fentanyl, the people said. Chinese companies produce large quantities of the chemicals known as “precursors.” These are sold over the internet, flowing from China to criminal groups in Mexico and elsewhere that produce fentanyl and traffic it into the U.S.
Part of Beijing’s thinking involves dispatching Wang, who is the minister of public security and a senior leader within the State Council, China’s cabinet, to the U.S. to meet with senior Trump officials, the people said, or have him meet with U.S. officials in a third country.
The discussions remain fluid, the people cautioned, while adding that Beijing would like to see some softening from President Trump on his trade offensive against China.
The latest development in Beijing comes as its trade war with the U.S., which has led to both sides essentially imposing trade embargoes on each other, is starting to take a toll on a Chinese economy already struggling with a multiyear property crisis, deflationary pressure and weak consumer and business confidence.
While the Xi leadership is preparing the nation for a long struggle against the U.S., continuing to strengthen central control over the economy and overall society, the intensifying economic pain also provides Beijing with incentives to engage with Washington to alleviate the near-term pressure.
In a clear shift in tone Friday, China’s Commerce Ministry said it was weighing starting talks with the U.S. to halt a trade war while expressing Beijing’s wish for the Trump administration to “show sincerity” to talk. Previously, the ministry had demanded that Washington slash its steep tariffs on China first as a condition for negotiations.
“Fentanyl can be the icebreaker for the two countries to start with a more positive tone,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “Both sides are eager to get some negotiations started.”
This shows what everybody knows: tariffs and trade wars are bad for everyone. The U.S. is going to be suffering big time soon, and China is already suffering. If Trump had any smarts, he’d simply back off on the tariff wars, but of course that would mean he’s admitting he was wrong, and narcissists don’t do that.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s snarky and weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Gangster Government.”
→ Plague season: Measles is likely to become endemic in the U.S. within the next 25 years if current vaccination rates hold, according to a new study out of Stanford University. Predicted rates of infection would lead to 170,000 hospitalizations and 2,500 deaths over this time. Millions of cases are expected should vaccination rates drop, as they have over the past few years. See, right now the anti-vaxxers (most of my friends) can rely on vaccinated sheeple like my children and me. We are the herd providing broad immunity, we bags of aluminum, we duffels of autism shots and yogurt pouches. I get vaccines I don’t even need. Once, before a big backpacking trip, my doctor asked if I wanted the rabies vaccine, and do you know what I said? “Hell yeah.” I got three rabies shots over three weeks, and each time I’d get a rabies sweat fever that told me it was working. When the injection spot gets inflamed, I know the science is being followed. I look up new vaccines on ChatGPT to ask my doctor if I qualify. But you people. As more and more join the unvaccinated few, y’all are gonna bring back measles and I’m not going to help. I’ve told you so many times, over brunch after brunch, and now here we are: I’m having quiche and you’re covered in shingles.
→ The U.S. economy contracts: Our GDP has started contracting at an annualized rate of 0.3 percent, after three years of robust growth. Usually there’s a logical reason for something like that (a pandemic? A housing market collapse? I take a week off from this column?), but this time it’s just a group of the most gin-drunk, sunburnt-from-golf economists and one stone-cold sober president who has decided to give chaos a try. One day, it’s big tariffs! The next day, maybe not. The day after, big tariffs but special exceptions for companies that donate to something helpful for Republicans. Then after that, it’s tariffs? Are you drunk? But yes, tariffs on China for sure.
Trump, who previously took credit for the stock market jump after the election, is now saying the economic slump is entirely on Biden: “This is Biden’s economy because we took over on January 20th. And I think you have to give us a little bit of time to get moving.”
Also, people need to stop complaining about rising costs due to tariffs, and simply buy less from China: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” said our degrowth president. Personally, my children only have simple toys made by Norwegians—hits such as a single unpainted wooden ball, and “books”—so I do support this part of the agenda. But the trouble is, the tariffs are on everything and everyone, even on the felted wool puppets I buy for my children that are itchy and stiff. That wooden ball already costs, I don’t know, $80? I already cannot justify this. . .
→ BBC for the win: Several BBC Arabic journalists have been openly calling for the death of Jews, according to a new Telegraph investigation. To take one example, Samer Elzaenen, a Gaza-based BBC contributor, once posted to Facebook that his message to “Zionist Jews” is: “We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.” He posted to Facebook in 2022: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.” What an interesting policy point! He has appeared on the BBC’s Arabic channel more than a dozen times as a balanced newsman, posting pics in a press vest, reporting soberly from Gaza. It remains to be seen if a statement so subtle and clearly just related to Zionism will impact his role with the network. He simply wants to burn Jews, like Hitler did. What, now that suddenly crosses a line with you snowflakes? What did you think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers?
Mohsen Mahdawi, who has been one of the people at the center of Trump’s terror-sympathizer deportation battle, was flagged a decade ago by a gun store owner as an alarming guy with genocide on the mind. The gun store owner apparently told Vermont cops that Mahdawi said he “had considerable firearm experience and used to build modified 9mm submachine guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine.” Mahdawi also allegedly told a museum volunteer: “I like to kill Jews.” (Mahdawi later denied saying these things, according to court documents, but I will say, things must be bad for a Vermont gun shop owner to talk to the cops.) Or, as The New York Times put it in their coverage:
*Everybody who lives a very long time, say 100 years or more, is asked what the secret is to such a long life. For cats or 30+ years, it’s a diet of asparagus, bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee with cream. For humans, it’s simply their recounting how they lived, and every “secret” is different. Here’s one from the world’s oldest living person.
For Ethel Caterham, the trick to a long life — and in her case, it really has been — is not to argue.
Caterham, who is 115, became the world’s oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group, after Sister Inah Canabarro, a Brazilian nun and teacher, died on Wednesday at the tender age of 116.
“Never arguing with anyone, I listen and I do what I like,” she said from her nursing home in Surrey, southwest of London, on the secret to her longevity.
She was born on Aug. 21, 1909, in the village of Shipton Bellinger in the south of England, five years before the outbreak of World War I. She was the second youngest of eight siblings.
Travel has been in her blood, it’s clear. In 1927, at the age of 18, Caterham embarked on a journey to India, working as a nanny for a British family, where she stayed for three years before returning to England, according to the GRG.
. . .Hallmark Lakeview Luxury Care Home in Camberley, where Caterham is a resident, posted pictures of her cutting a cake and wearing a “115” tiara in a Facebook post on Thursday.
“Huge congratulations to Lakeview resident, Ethel on becoming the oldest person in the world! What an incredible milestone and a true testament to a life well-lived,” it said in an accompanying statement. “Your strength, spirit, and wisdom are an inspiration to us all. Here’s to celebrating your remarkable journey!”
The title of the oldest person ever is held by French woman Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122 years 164 days, according to Guinness World Records.
Here’s a short news clip of Ethel, who’s characterized only as the “oldest living person in the UK.” True, but incomplete:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fed up and doesn’t want to take it anymore:
A: What are you doing here?
Hili: I’m hiding from the news.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tu robisz?
Hili: Ukrywam się przed wiadomościami.
And a picture of Baby Kulka. I think she’s yawning:
Masih is STILL quiet, but JKR retweeted this gasbag emitting helium on Triggernometry. “These are my ideas, which are mine, and they are from a book of ideas.”
This is, without a doubt, the most (unintentionally) hilarious, stupid, long winded, nothing response to “are transwomen women?” that I’ve ever heard. It deserves a prize for the sheer brilliance of its nonsense. A+. No notes. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/Ow5O2UTgLS
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. The first one shows something I’m sure nobody knows here (or only one or two people):
Water buffaloes act as giant buffets for marsh frogs, who forage on the flies from buffalo fur. Buffet-loes.Research by Piotr Zduniak, Kiraz Erciyas-Yavuz and Piotr Tryjanowski:oaj.fupress.net/index.php/ah…🧪🐸🐃
This really is a milestone. Kakapos, the world’s only flightless parrots, have all heretofore been placed on a predator-free island off New Zealand. Now they’re established in a fenced sanctuary on the North Island! Sound up to hear the booming:
A milestone: #kakapo mating calls have been heard on the North Island of NZ for the first time in over a century. At least 2 of the 3 #kakapo males at the fenced sanctuary of Maungatautari have "boomed" this summer. #conservation http://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-r… Video: http://www.scienceagency.co.nz
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. -Niccolo Machiavelli, political philosopher and author (3 May 1469-1527)
I also have always liked this from Machiavelli:
He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
Yes, that is a good one. It is a lesson that Vladimir Putin has put into practice. And of course we all know who is one of his biggest fans.
Another lesson from Machiavelli that Putin embodies is that it’s advantageous for a ruler to be feared rather than loved, as subjects can withdraw their affection but not their apprehension.
I wonder if Putin plans to form a military alliance with, say, Mexico, and if (among other U.S. politicos) George Herbert Walker “What We Say Goes” Bush (V-P during the U.S. invasion of Grenada and POTUS during the U.S. invasion of Panama) ever read Machiavelli.
Darryl R’s Machiavelli quote about appearances reminds me of Mark Twain’s (off the top of my head): “Good manners are the means by which we hide how highly we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.”
Well of course people will look to religion as we return to a pre-enlightenment early 15th century society as illuminated by the administration’s recently published planned budget cuts to basic science research. Nice picture from James Webb Space Telescope.. enjoy…it may be among the last and we will have no idea what the image means as this is one of the research activities in the NASA “science” budget that is being halved in the administration’s new budget proposal. This is part of “nondefense discretionary” spending as is the entire NASA budget.
Basic science research happened before government funding, and it would happen if government funding goes away. Personally, I wish the Defense budget and almost every other budget would be cut, but the GOP sucks.
It did exist for sure, but not as much. The DoD had its own pocket of basic (used to be called “6.1”) research in each of the service branches. Do not know if they still do. It is surely a federal policy issue and where it was going for this administration was clear among the 900 pages of the Project 2025 tome. We are just now seeing the execution of these teed up policies. What is unusual is that no coalition of republican congressmen have stood up to defend funding in their districts.
Eisenhower:
research has become central . . . more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
. . . the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. . .
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
The shocking amount of importance university administrators attach to “research expenditures” is deeply inimical to scientific excellence.
Back in the days of, say, Michael Faraday, it was possible to do cutting-edge research with the resources that a keen amateur could rustle up themselves. These days, science has progressed so far that, in most areas, that simply isn’t possible, and government funding is the only realistic way of making further progress.
I wonder if things that folks my age have got used to over the last 60 years (like government spending on scientific research) are just temporary consequences of the destruction & rearrangement of capital by the world wars starting 100 years ago. The books by Piketty convinced me this is probably the correct lens thru which to view things like our expectations about economic growth and personal wealth. Maybe like personal wealth our expectations about other parts of our economic lives (like spending on scientific research) should also include an overall average decline as capital recovers its dominance over labour and individuals, and as capital spreads over more of the developed world. Piketty argues that the 1960s thru the 80s was as good as it gets for people in the bottom 90% in Europe and North America. Maybe he’s right.
+1
That’s so depressing.
That response on “are transwomen women” is truly dire. First of all, the Rise of the West is a complicated discussion. “Are transwomen women” is not. Second, in the days when I rode the bus, I absolutely noticed bus drivers. Finally, is being dressed like a clown a helpful comparison for the trans side of the issue?
Finally, is being dressed like a clown a helpful comparison for the trans side of the issue?
As the activists really want to stand out, perhaps.
Meanwhile in the neighbouring western Slavic languages Hili’s “Ukrywam się przed wiadomościami.” sounds like “I’m hiding from knowledge.”
Knowledge in Polish is “wiedza”. But “to know” is “wiedzieć”. The two are probably closely related but I’m not a linguist and I can only guess.
Makes sense, in Slovak veda = science (náuka is more like subject, studies, or teaching), and to know = vedieť.
I also laughed at one of the previous dialogues where Hili was pondering on the superiority of beef (O wyższości wołowiny) since wyższośc sounds like Slovak výsosť = highness as in “Your highness” and wołowina like volovina which means a stupid thing, or bullshit (Czech has similar words with the same meaning as the Slovak ones).
Comparison of closely related languages is quite fun. There are many jokes about misunderstanding when a word which sounds exactly the same in both languages means something different. BTW, for science we use the word “nauka” and “Your Highness” is “Wasza Wysokość”.
The silly thing about thinking that this supposed “loss of moral knowledge” helped lead to the election of Trump is the fact that religious people are some of Trump’s strongest supporters. A Pew poll from April shows that among White evangelical Protestants,
72% approve of the way Trump is currently handling his job as president.
69% rate the ethics of top Trump administration officials as excellent or good.
57% say they trust what Trump says more than what previous presidents said.
So much for the idea that religion promotes morality.
If you hold one superstitious belief you are likely to hold more. Hence anti-vaxxers can be nature worshippers or fundamentalist Christians.
Trump’s stated purpose for the China tariffs were to bring manufacturing back to the US and to stop fentanyl, and he has really focused on fentanyl. Many, including myself, have viewed the fentanyl issue as being unsolvable via tariff action, and I saw that as an excuse to enact huge tariffs on Chy-na.
But now that China looks to be moving to do something vis-a-vis fentanyl, it’s looks like Trump may have been on to something. If the negotiations settle on a crackdown for fentanyl precursors exported from China and a reduction in tariffs, that would be a positive outcome.
Eisenhower’s farewell speech warning against the military-industrial complex was prescient. DOGE focused heavily on USAID; I hope they take aim at this as well. For Trump supposedly being against war, he sure likes spending money on weapons.
That poor Vermont Man. He was only trying for peace, he just had his own way of going about doing it.
I don’t suppose there will be any substantive solution for the fentanyl problem, or any other drug problem, as long as the US is acting like a vacuum cleaner for drugs. As long as there is strong demand, various actors will fulfill it.
If drugs become more expensive as a result of supply constraints, all Hell will break loose. Back in the 1970s, a heroin habit cost $100 a day, 1970s dollars. Can you imagine how much a junkie had to mug and steal and break into houses to raise that kind of money? Every damn day? Word is that $5-10 in current dollars will see you through a day of fentanyl or meth today. You don’t need to hustle hardly at all to raise that money. Shoplift a decent steak, as the addicts do in the town my in-laws own a grocery store in, and an unscrupulous restaurant will give you enough cash for a hit. What Mad Max scene would await us if every addict, on his way to dreamland, first had to find 10 x that, much less whatever $100 is worth today? What we wouldn’t see is addicts forgoing narcotics just because they got expensive. Not on your life. They would (and did) do anything to get it, and feel fully justified in that self-serving addict way in doing so.
But do you think if fentanyl became that expensive it would at least mean fewer people would begin using it? I need some hope here.
Me too.
On the supply side, restricted supply -> more-desperate demand -> higher prices -> more suppliers taking more risks -> ….
AIUI this latest prohibition will have the same kind of effects that have been consistently seen since the original capital-P one. These effects do not include winning the war on whatever. They do include more violence, more organised crime, more corruption, etc. etc.
I wonder how the Hindu God-shaped hole looks like. Maybe like a colander?
🙂
Cry me a river on Trump’s budget. $160 billion in cuts is peanuts. We had a $1.8 trillion deficit last fiscal year. Defense spending is atrocious. A freeze would be more appropriate forcing the generals and admirals to tighten their belts.
David Brooks? He’s as big a narcissist as Trump. Anyone who pays attention to Brooks might as well turn to Brittany Spears for financial advice.
I’m with ya where the schmaltzy David Brooks is concerned. He needs to retire. He could go live on an island with Thomas Friedman.
I don’t think that there is a new religious awakening coming to America. My guess—which would be testable if there were research funds to test it—is that Americans are seeking community and a sense of belonging, and that religion is a surrogate for those basic human needs. Since organized religion is already out there and available—hanging on by a thread—people are gravitating toward it to some extent.
This doesn’t mean that people are necessarily turning to the supernatural. I’m have no doubt that many are atheists. If American research survives, we may eventually know why—for a brief moment—in the 21st century, organized religion re-emerged as a potential source of comfort.
Net, however, I do think that we’re heading the right direction—away from religion—and that the current moment is just that: a moment.
+1
Connection and community. Not religion.
Edit: I’ll add while I’m here so as to not monopolize the comments: I love 115 year old Ethel’s key to happy living, don’t argue AND do what you want. I got a kick out of that.
Isn’t it fascinating that some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs—like Newton’s laws or Darwin’s theory of evolution—emerged long before government funding was even a concept? If curiosity alone drove early pioneers to explore the unknown, what does that say about the true roots of discovery? Could it be that passion and personal drive are just as powerful as institutional support? And if public funding were to vanish tomorrow, wouldn’t the spark of human curiosity still find a way forward, perhaps in new, decentralized or community-driven forms?
Is this true though? Newton was a theorist and his laws and the theory of gravity benefited greatly from reference experiments and observations, for example the astronomical work of Tycho Brahe who had kings and emperors building observatories for him. Newton himself held a funded position at Cambridge. Similarly, while Darwin self-funded his membership on the Beagle, the voyage was government funded and his theoretical work built on previous expeditions and collections made possible only through royal coffers. Sure, there were many lonely thinkers and tinkerers but it seems to me that scientists (and their precursors) often worked under some sort of patronage equivalent to modern government funding and grants.
Science as a whole is a social enterprise, arguably the most successful one ever. Even mathematics as a field, which today can be and often is done by lone practitioners, absolutely needs a community to sift the wheat from the voluminous chaff.
If you doubt this, have a look at any of the unmoderated social-media groups that deal with mathematics, and experience the large volume of crackpottery for yourself; in particular, any topic that touches on “infinity” is crackpotnip; many (most?) people strenuously resist things that clash with their intuitions and feelz.
Examples: 0.9999… = 1; there are as many even integers as there are all integers; there are different orders of infinity. For some plausibly-ethical entertainment, try posting “Does 0.9999… really equal 1?”, and watch the fireworks, pro and con.
The Washington Post: ‘They would come from a portion of federal outlays known as “nondefense discretionary” spending, which excludes the Pentagon as well as programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which collectively make up the bulk of what the government spends every year.’
Why does the WaPo and other media insist on thusly lumping Social Security and Medicare with Medicaid and DOD? Does the WaPo think that federal income tax funds SS and Medicare? (I doubt it.) From such reportage how many Americans (who do not have some minimum baseline knowledge of SS and Medicare) think that’s how SS and Medicare are funded?
It is certainly true that SS and Medicare are not part of “nondefense discretionary” spending. (Why doesn’t the WaPo say specifically why?) They are non-discretionary because, unlike Medicaid and DOD, they are funded by separate “pay-as-you-go” taxes, not by federal income tax (and therefore are earned benefits, not “entitlements”). Minor exception: by law since 1984, income tax levied on recipients’ SS payments is put in the SS Trust Fund. I speculate that this was a quid pro quo in exchange for the taxing of SS payments.)
In any event, whatever the Fund’s sources of revenue, by law any Fund excess of receipts over payments is put into U.S. securities, the federal government using the money for other government expenses, to that extent not raising income taxes, and currently owing the Fund $2.77 trillion.
Your last paragraph is spot on, but I beg to differ with some earlier statements. SS expenses are “non-discretionary” not because of the indirect funding accounting but because they are “entitlements”:
[count noun] US English a government scheme that provides benefits to any individual meeting certain eligibility requirements: Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements are going broke.
There is no administrative discretion whether to pay or not. This is something the current administration has plans to change.
Among other Gov’t Efficienty actions that probably haven’t leaked out, an OSHA istallation in Morgantown WV was shut down, by firing workers and denying ability to buy food for lab animals. Some of the latter were given to university labs and the others were euthanized. There were apparently non-human primates involved and it’s unclear which category they fell into. Cf. first 5min here; there’s a link to a NYT piece below the video.
Then later, around 26:00 in the above link, while the Orangeman’s gov’t is all about promoting US companies, it appears at the same time to be placing unrealistic hurdles on NovaVax to conduct trials as if it was an entirely new vaccine for its updated version of the COVID vaccine, and may well be doing that with Pfizer and Moderna as well. If you dig into the CIDRAP link (the one labelled FDA uncertainty), going down to the 9th link in that, you learn that the gov’t is planning to spend $500M on their own “universal” vaccine, to be ready by 2029. So there you have it.
Screw the US manufacturers, we’re going to plow ahead with an approach that apparently has been tried but failed, and we’ll have it in 4yrs.
Malignant incompetence!
Poor wee lion cub. That rescue looks painful.
“Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic”
Excuse if I have thus wrong but from what I’ve read on fentanyl it became a scurge in the rust belt areas of the US for pain relief( Australia too I believe) When it was realized it was a problem and was placed under restricted access, these workers turned to Mexico, ex China, for supply. Death rates beat all other drugs and well intentioned doctors were part of the problem.
For these people they need help not incarceration and the strength of the hit I struggle with something for physical pain is now a mental psychological high like heroin or cocaine for kicks.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. -Niccolo Machiavelli, political philosopher and author (3 May 1469-1527)
I also have always liked this from Machiavelli:
He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
Yes, that is a good one. It is a lesson that Vladimir Putin has put into practice. And of course we all know who is one of his biggest fans.
Another lesson from Machiavelli that Putin embodies is that it’s advantageous for a ruler to be feared rather than loved, as subjects can withdraw their affection but not their apprehension.
I wonder if Putin plans to form a military alliance with, say, Mexico, and if (among other U.S. politicos) George Herbert Walker “What We Say Goes” Bush (V-P during the U.S. invasion of Grenada and POTUS during the U.S. invasion of Panama) ever read Machiavelli.
Darryl R’s Machiavelli quote about appearances reminds me of Mark Twain’s (off the top of my head): “Good manners are the means by which we hide how highly we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.”
Well of course people will look to religion as we return to a pre-enlightenment early 15th century society as illuminated by the administration’s recently published planned budget cuts to basic science research. Nice picture from James Webb Space Telescope.. enjoy…it may be among the last and we will have no idea what the image means as this is one of the research activities in the NASA “science” budget that is being halved in the administration’s new budget proposal. This is part of “nondefense discretionary” spending as is the entire NASA budget.
Basic science research happened before government funding, and it would happen if government funding goes away. Personally, I wish the Defense budget and almost every other budget would be cut, but the GOP sucks.
It did exist for sure, but not as much. The DoD had its own pocket of basic (used to be called “6.1”) research in each of the service branches. Do not know if they still do. It is surely a federal policy issue and where it was going for this administration was clear among the 900 pages of the Project 2025 tome. We are just now seeing the execution of these teed up policies. What is unusual is that no coalition of republican congressmen have stood up to defend funding in their districts.
Eisenhower:
research has become central . . . more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
. . . the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. . .
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
The shocking amount of importance university administrators attach to “research expenditures” is deeply inimical to scientific excellence.
Back in the days of, say, Michael Faraday, it was possible to do cutting-edge research with the resources that a keen amateur could rustle up themselves. These days, science has progressed so far that, in most areas, that simply isn’t possible, and government funding is the only realistic way of making further progress.
I wonder if things that folks my age have got used to over the last 60 years (like government spending on scientific research) are just temporary consequences of the destruction & rearrangement of capital by the world wars starting 100 years ago. The books by Piketty convinced me this is probably the correct lens thru which to view things like our expectations about economic growth and personal wealth. Maybe like personal wealth our expectations about other parts of our economic lives (like spending on scientific research) should also include an overall average decline as capital recovers its dominance over labour and individuals, and as capital spreads over more of the developed world. Piketty argues that the 1960s thru the 80s was as good as it gets for people in the bottom 90% in Europe and North America. Maybe he’s right.
+1
That’s so depressing.
That response on “are transwomen women” is truly dire. First of all, the Rise of the West is a complicated discussion. “Are transwomen women” is not. Second, in the days when I rode the bus, I absolutely noticed bus drivers. Finally, is being dressed like a clown a helpful comparison for the trans side of the issue?
As the activists really want to stand out, perhaps.
Meanwhile in the neighbouring western Slavic languages Hili’s “Ukrywam się przed wiadomościami.” sounds like “I’m hiding from knowledge.”
Knowledge in Polish is “wiedza”. But “to know” is “wiedzieć”. The two are probably closely related but I’m not a linguist and I can only guess.
Makes sense, in Slovak veda = science (náuka is more like subject, studies, or teaching), and to know = vedieť.
I also laughed at one of the previous dialogues where Hili was pondering on the superiority of beef (O wyższości wołowiny) since wyższośc sounds like Slovak výsosť = highness as in “Your highness” and wołowina like volovina which means a stupid thing, or bullshit (Czech has similar words with the same meaning as the Slovak ones).
Comparison of closely related languages is quite fun. There are many jokes about misunderstanding when a word which sounds exactly the same in both languages means something different. BTW, for science we use the word “nauka” and “Your Highness” is “Wasza Wysokość”.
The silly thing about thinking that this supposed “loss of moral knowledge” helped lead to the election of Trump is the fact that religious people are some of Trump’s strongest supporters. A Pew poll from April shows that among White evangelical Protestants,
72% approve of the way Trump is currently handling his job as president.
69% rate the ethics of top Trump administration officials as excellent or good.
57% say they trust what Trump says more than what previous presidents said.
So much for the idea that religion promotes morality.
If you hold one superstitious belief you are likely to hold more. Hence anti-vaxxers can be nature worshippers or fundamentalist Christians.
Trump’s stated purpose for the China tariffs were to bring manufacturing back to the US and to stop fentanyl, and he has really focused on fentanyl. Many, including myself, have viewed the fentanyl issue as being unsolvable via tariff action, and I saw that as an excuse to enact huge tariffs on Chy-na.
But now that China looks to be moving to do something vis-a-vis fentanyl, it’s looks like Trump may have been on to something. If the negotiations settle on a crackdown for fentanyl precursors exported from China and a reduction in tariffs, that would be a positive outcome.
Eisenhower’s farewell speech warning against the military-industrial complex was prescient. DOGE focused heavily on USAID; I hope they take aim at this as well. For Trump supposedly being against war, he sure likes spending money on weapons.
That poor Vermont Man. He was only trying for peace, he just had his own way of going about doing it.
I don’t suppose there will be any substantive solution for the fentanyl problem, or any other drug problem, as long as the US is acting like a vacuum cleaner for drugs. As long as there is strong demand, various actors will fulfill it.
If drugs become more expensive as a result of supply constraints, all Hell will break loose. Back in the 1970s, a heroin habit cost $100 a day, 1970s dollars. Can you imagine how much a junkie had to mug and steal and break into houses to raise that kind of money? Every damn day? Word is that $5-10 in current dollars will see you through a day of fentanyl or meth today. You don’t need to hustle hardly at all to raise that money. Shoplift a decent steak, as the addicts do in the town my in-laws own a grocery store in, and an unscrupulous restaurant will give you enough cash for a hit. What Mad Max scene would await us if every addict, on his way to dreamland, first had to find 10 x that, much less whatever $100 is worth today? What we wouldn’t see is addicts forgoing narcotics just because they got expensive. Not on your life. They would (and did) do anything to get it, and feel fully justified in that self-serving addict way in doing so.
But do you think if fentanyl became that expensive it would at least mean fewer people would begin using it? I need some hope here.
Me too.
On the supply side, restricted supply -> more-desperate demand -> higher prices -> more suppliers taking more risks -> ….
AIUI this latest prohibition will have the same kind of effects that have been consistently seen since the original capital-P one. These effects do not include winning the war on whatever. They do include more violence, more organised crime, more corruption, etc. etc.
I wonder how the Hindu God-shaped hole looks like. Maybe like a colander?
🙂
Cry me a river on Trump’s budget. $160 billion in cuts is peanuts. We had a $1.8 trillion deficit last fiscal year. Defense spending is atrocious. A freeze would be more appropriate forcing the generals and admirals to tighten their belts.
David Brooks? He’s as big a narcissist as Trump. Anyone who pays attention to Brooks might as well turn to Brittany Spears for financial advice.
I’m with ya where the schmaltzy David Brooks is concerned. He needs to retire. He could go live on an island with Thomas Friedman.
I don’t think that there is a new religious awakening coming to America. My guess—which would be testable if there were research funds to test it—is that Americans are seeking community and a sense of belonging, and that religion is a surrogate for those basic human needs. Since organized religion is already out there and available—hanging on by a thread—people are gravitating toward it to some extent.
This doesn’t mean that people are necessarily turning to the supernatural. I’m have no doubt that many are atheists. If American research survives, we may eventually know why—for a brief moment—in the 21st century, organized religion re-emerged as a potential source of comfort.
Net, however, I do think that we’re heading the right direction—away from religion—and that the current moment is just that: a moment.
+1
Connection and community. Not religion.
Edit: I’ll add while I’m here so as to not monopolize the comments: I love 115 year old Ethel’s key to happy living, don’t argue AND do what you want. I got a kick out of that.
Isn’t it fascinating that some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs—like Newton’s laws or Darwin’s theory of evolution—emerged long before government funding was even a concept? If curiosity alone drove early pioneers to explore the unknown, what does that say about the true roots of discovery? Could it be that passion and personal drive are just as powerful as institutional support? And if public funding were to vanish tomorrow, wouldn’t the spark of human curiosity still find a way forward, perhaps in new, decentralized or community-driven forms?
Is this true though? Newton was a theorist and his laws and the theory of gravity benefited greatly from reference experiments and observations, for example the astronomical work of Tycho Brahe who had kings and emperors building observatories for him. Newton himself held a funded position at Cambridge. Similarly, while Darwin self-funded his membership on the Beagle, the voyage was government funded and his theoretical work built on previous expeditions and collections made possible only through royal coffers. Sure, there were many lonely thinkers and tinkerers but it seems to me that scientists (and their precursors) often worked under some sort of patronage equivalent to modern government funding and grants.
Science as a whole is a social enterprise, arguably the most successful one ever. Even mathematics as a field, which today can be and often is done by lone practitioners, absolutely needs a community to sift the wheat from the voluminous chaff.
If you doubt this, have a look at any of the unmoderated social-media groups that deal with mathematics, and experience the large volume of crackpottery for yourself; in particular, any topic that touches on “infinity” is crackpotnip; many (most?) people strenuously resist things that clash with their intuitions and feelz.
Examples: 0.9999… = 1; there are as many even integers as there are all integers; there are different orders of infinity. For some plausibly-ethical entertainment, try posting “Does 0.9999… really equal 1?”, and watch the fireworks, pro and con.
The Washington Post: ‘They would come from a portion of federal outlays known as “nondefense discretionary” spending, which excludes the Pentagon as well as programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which collectively make up the bulk of what the government spends every year.’
Why does the WaPo and other media insist on thusly lumping Social Security and Medicare with Medicaid and DOD? Does the WaPo think that federal income tax funds SS and Medicare? (I doubt it.) From such reportage how many Americans (who do not have some minimum baseline knowledge of SS and Medicare) think that’s how SS and Medicare are funded?
It is certainly true that SS and Medicare are not part of “nondefense discretionary” spending. (Why doesn’t the WaPo say specifically why?) They are non-discretionary because, unlike Medicaid and DOD, they are funded by separate “pay-as-you-go” taxes, not by federal income tax (and therefore are earned benefits, not “entitlements”). Minor exception: by law since 1984, income tax levied on recipients’ SS payments is put in the SS Trust Fund. I speculate that this was a quid pro quo in exchange for the taxing of SS payments.)
In any event, whatever the Fund’s sources of revenue, by law any Fund excess of receipts over payments is put into U.S. securities, the federal government using the money for other government expenses, to that extent not raising income taxes, and currently owing the Fund $2.77 trillion.
Your last paragraph is spot on, but I beg to differ with some earlier statements. SS expenses are “non-discretionary” not because of the indirect funding accounting but because they are “entitlements”:
There is no administrative discretion whether to pay or not. This is something the current administration has plans to change.
Among other Gov’t Efficienty actions that probably haven’t leaked out, an OSHA istallation in Morgantown WV was shut down, by firing workers and denying ability to buy food for lab animals. Some of the latter were given to university labs and the others were euthanized. There were apparently non-human primates involved and it’s unclear which category they fell into. Cf. first 5min here; there’s a link to a NYT piece below the video.
Then later, around 26:00 in the above link, while the Orangeman’s gov’t is all about promoting US companies, it appears at the same time to be placing unrealistic hurdles on NovaVax to conduct trials as if it was an entirely new vaccine for its updated version of the COVID vaccine, and may well be doing that with Pfizer and Moderna as well. If you dig into the CIDRAP link (the one labelled FDA uncertainty), going down to the 9th link in that, you learn that the gov’t is planning to spend $500M on their own “universal” vaccine, to be ready by 2029. So there you have it.
Screw the US manufacturers, we’re going to plow ahead with an approach that apparently has been tried but failed, and we’ll have it in 4yrs.
Malignant incompetence!
Poor wee lion cub. That rescue looks painful.
“Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic”
Excuse if I have thus wrong but from what I’ve read on fentanyl it became a scurge in the rust belt areas of the US for pain relief( Australia too I believe) When it was realized it was a problem and was placed under restricted access, these workers turned to Mexico, ex China, for supply. Death rates beat all other drugs and well intentioned doctors were part of the problem.
For these people they need help not incarceration and the strength of the hit I struggle with something for physical pain is now a mental psychological high like heroin or cocaine for kicks.