Welcome to a Hump Day (“Araw ng umbok” in Filipino): September 24, 2025, and its National Punctuation Day (see what I did there?) I highly recommend always using the Oxford comma lest you make mistakes like these (yes, I got them from AI, so sue me):
- Without the Oxford comma: “We invited the strippers, Stalin and Lenin.”
- With the Oxford comma: “We invited the strippers, Stalin, and Lenin.“
- Without the Oxford comma: “I want to thank my parents, Oprah Winfrey and God.”
- With the Oxford comma: “I want to thank my parents, Oprah Winfrey, and God.“
You can change the meaning of a sentence by omitting the Oxford comma, but I can’t think of a case where you can go wrong using it.
It’s also National Bluebird of Happiness Day, National Cherries Jubilee Day, Kiss Day, and National Horchata Day (I love it, but they never give you enough: you should have at least a quart with a good Mexican meal).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 24 Wikipedia page.
I am a ball of fire today because I went to bed at shortly after 9 pm and woke up at about 6 am, giving me an unheard-of nine hours of sleep. That is balm to an insomniac. My pre-waking dream involved me making friends with a giant white squirrel, and then discovering that its den was an underground hole right next to the steps into a house where I do not live. Readers are free to interpret this dream if they wish.
Da Nooz:
*Jimmy Kimmel is back on ABC, and tendered a sorta apology (I don’t think they should have taken him off the air), but he also mounted a defense of free speech in his first show.
Jimmy Kimmel broke his silence on Tuesday night in an emotional return to ABC’s airwaves, by turns defiant, joking and somber as he addressed the controversy that temporarily sidelined his late-night show and set off a national debate over free speech.
His voice breaking at times, Mr. Kimmel said he understood why his comments last week about the suspected shooter of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk seemed “ill-timed, or unclear, or maybe both.” He added, “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”
But Mr. Kimmel also had harsh words for President Trump and the government regulator who suggested that the Trump administration would punish ABC because of his remarks, saying that “a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.”
“This show is not important,” Mr. Kimmel said in his opening monologue. “What’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
. . . On Tuesday, Mr. Kimmel said he disagreed with Disney’s decision to pull his show. But he also credited the company, where he has worked for 22 years, for defending his right to poke fun at the powerful.
“Unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk,” Mr. Kimmel said. “The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”
Here are some excerpts and an ET report:
*This link, which came from reader Barry, is the first of two pieces laden with irony. Click screenshot to read.
An excerpt:
On Friday, CBC News reported that a major education reform document prepared for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador contains at least 15 fabricated citations that academics suspect were generated by an AI language model—despite the same report calling for “ethical” AI use in schools.
“A Vision for the Future: Transforming and Modernizing Education,” released August 28, serves as a 10-year roadmap for modernizing the province’s public schools and post-secondary institutions. The 418-page document took 18 months to complete and was unveiled by co-chairs Anne Burke and Karen Goodnough, both professors at Memorial University’s Faculty of Education, alongside Education Minister Bernard Davis.
One of the fake citations references a 2008 National Film Board movie called “Schoolyard Games” that does not exist, according to a board spokesperson. The exact citation reportedly appears in a University of Victoria style guide, a document that teaches students how to format references using fictional examples. The style guide warns on its first page that “Many citations in this guide are fictitious,” meaning they are made-up examples used only to demonstrate proper formatting. Yet someone (or some AI chatbot) copied the fake example directly into the Education Accord report as if it were a real source.
Aaron Tucker, a Memorial assistant professor whose research focuses on AI history in Canada, told CBC he could not find numerous sources cited in the report despite searching the MUN Library, other academic databases, and Google. “The fabrication of sources at least begs the question: did this come from generative AI?” Tucker told CBC. “Whether that’s AI, I don’t know, but fabricating sources is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence.”
Since the inception of AI language models, generating fabricated citations has been a continuous problem. The tendency to confabulate academic citations often causes particular trouble in academic and legal contexts, where fabricated sources can easily slip past lazy human review because they appear properly formatted and contextually appropriate.
Yep, AI does that. If you use AI (and I have done so and will in the future) BE SURE TO DO AN INDEPENDENT CHECK OF A CLAIM OR FACT YOU FIND. It is a way to get tentative responses, but should not be used as a sole source.
*More irony, and this is too rich; thanks to Luana for sending me the link. The other day I read that Greta Thunberg was replaced as a member of the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla, the group of ships bringing a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza. That puzzled me, but now we understand, thanks to this article at Break Free Media (click below to read):
It’s because of a clash of values: the flotilla is pro-Palestinian and (as the article shows) also pro-Hamas, but the flotilla also had LGBT+ members, so there was a clash of values. The pro-Pals won, and Greta was removed, presumably for hiding the identity of the non-cis sailors:
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was reportedly removed from the Global Sumud Flotilla’s (GSF) leadership team amid growing rifts over its “woke” political agenda, including the inclusion of LGBTQ activists.
Outrage erupted when it was discovered that participants like Saif Ayadi, who defines himself as a “queer activist,” were a part of the expedition. The controversy led to the resignation of a key coordinator and other activists.
Wael Navar of the flotilla steering committee has close ties with Hamas terrorists. “The war against Israel cannot be mixed with the LGBT crusade,” he said.
Why the big surprise? Don’t they know that despite what we are told in the West, any gay person should be killed in Islam? The flotilla was supposed to be for a Muslim cause, closely tied to Hamas, not the LGBTQ community.
The flotilla committee had many members with close ties with Hamas.
In June, Greta denied any knowledge of members of the flotilla having ties to Hamas. Now, she is being accused of hiding her LGBTQ activists from her flotilla partners.
What are we to believe anymore, little Greta?
Other participating activists, including Mariem Meftah and Samir Elwafi, referred to LGBTQ activism as a “red line” that crossed their “societal values.”
Samis Elwafi: “Palestine is first and foremost the cause of Muslims, and this cause cannot be separated from its spiritual and religious dimension. What do you expect a Muslim to think when he hears the slogans of this queer movement during a mission launched in the name of a sacred and central cause? It cannot be degraded in this way”.
. . . Do you think the “woke” activists in the West will stop? Of course not. They will sweep this under the rug and keep on fooling the man on the street that they are supporting some righteous cause, when they are actually promoting the worst death cult on earth.
This is the instantiation of the lunacy of groups like “Queers for Palestine”: it is a living oxymoron. But remember that a more serious clash may come when the Flotilla comes up against the Israeli Navy.
*Trump has now reversed his stand on the Ukraine/Russia war, declaring that, in his view, Ukraine is entitled to take back all the territory occupied by Russia (save Crimea, I guess), which means that the country returns to its pre-war borders. Should that happen, Russia would lose the war.
President Trump said for the first time that Ukraine could win back all of its territory and encouraged allies to shoot down Russian aircraft if they entered North Atlantic Treaty Organization airspace, an extraordinary shift that raised pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as world leaders gathered Tuesday at the United Nations.
After meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the U.N., Trump in a social-media post said Moscow’s conduct of the war was aimless.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” he said.
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”
Trump’s remarks offer the latest twist in his efforts to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine. Kyiv and NATO allies have fretted for months over his intentions and whether he would continue to embrace diplomacy with Putin or turn the screws on him.
On Aug. 11, Trump said Russia and Ukraine would engage in “land swapping” to bring about an end to the war, and that it would be “good” and “bad” for both sides.
Of course if you think Putin will heed Trump’s words, I have some land in Florida to sell you. There is no way that the Russian autocrat would admit that his invasion of Ukraine was fruitless, especially after so many of his soldiers have been killed. Nor, given his possession of nukes, do I think that NATO allies would shoot down Russian aircraft entering their airspace. But this does show that the U.S. will not broker any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that gives away Ukrainian land to Russia. I fear, though, that without US endorsement of a “land swap,” Putin will go ahead and conquer all of Ukraine, something that is a distinct possibility. Will the US and NATO prevent that with military action? I doubt it. But what do I know? I’m a retired biologist, not a pundit.
*Ghost, the Giant Pacific Octopus who is starving herself to death while brooding a batch of infertile eggs in a California aquarium, is still alive. At least I have no reports of her death. It will be a sad day for me when she goes. Again, do watch the fantastic movie, “My Octopus Teacher,” which ends that way and will make you cry. But it is a wonderful documentary, and won an Oscar.
*Benny Gantz was a former defense minister, deputy prime minister of Israel, and member of the War Cabinet who ultimately resigned. He is no fan of Netanyahu. Nevertheless, he has a new op-ed in the NYT supporting Israel’s war aims. “What the world gets wrong about Israel.”
Too often, Western leaders view our policies in this war not through the lens of national security, but through the prism of individuals — and, in particular, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The conversation is often framed as a question of what serves the prime minister, as if Israel’s national security begins and ends with one man. This view is mistaken and counterproductive to global stability, regional normalization and Israel’s own security.
There are deep political divisions and disagreements in Israel. I myself have been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu. But the nation’s core security interests are not partisan property. Today more than ever, they are anchored by a national consensus that is rooted in the hard realities of our region. Opposition to the recognition of Palestinian statehood stands at the heart of that consensus. Any path forward for broader Palestinian civil autonomy must first incorporate a proven long-term track record of accountable governance, comprehensive de-radicalization reforms and a successful crackdown on terror elements targeting Israelis.
The growing support in the West for recognition is too often framed as a rebuke of both Mr. Netanyahu and his war policies. More and more states’ recognition of Palestinian statehood is propelled not merely by domestic political pressure, but also appears to be driven in part by personal animosity between leaders. The truth is that international recognition of Palestinian statehood under current conditions is not a rejection of Mr. Netanyahu. It is a rejection of Israel’s bipartisan security consensus.
Gantz is right and the many countries who have okayed a Palestinian state are wrong. What on earth do they think they’re accomplishing besides giving confidence to Hamas. There will be no two-state solution unless and until Hamas is no more and the Palestinians can confect a government that recognizes Israel and rebukes Islamic terrorism.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are beset with futility:
Hili: We have to admit we won’t change the world.
Andrzej: I’ve been leaning toward that opinion for some time now.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy przyznać, że świata nie zmienimy.
Ja: Od pewnego czasu przychylam się do tej opinii.
*******************
From Give Me a Sign:
From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:
From Cat Memes:
From Masih, a lament for the death of Fereshteh Ahmadi, another woman shot by the Iranian authorities for no good reason. Let her death be a spur to revolution:
A mother of two 32 years old stood up for young protesters in Mahabad. They shot her in the chest to silence her. Her daughter, only in first grade, saw her fall. but every mother, every child, every Iranian echoes her name now.
Say her name:#FereshtehAhmadi#فرشته_احمدی pic.twitter.com/kkujTTUklb— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 21, 2025
This was retweeted by Masih’s stand-in, J. K. Rowling, who issues a lot of tweets decrying the oppression of women by Muslim theocracies:
Today 1465 days which Afghan girls are still banned from school by the Taliban.
And world leaders watching.
Please help Afghan women 🙏💔 pic.twitter.com/SYuJKUCswg— WDI.Afghanistan (@WDIAfghanistan1) September 22, 2025
From Luana, a good example of self-censorship (I’m assuming it’s real as there are no “community notes” below it):
“How many genders are there?”pic.twitter.com/gW6dRrvnG7
— Community Notes & Violations (@CNviolations) September 21, 2025
From Michael, an accurate cat-map:
The purr-fect map pic.twitter.com/0ywxIRU8KE
— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) September 21, 2025
From Simon: Nature imitates academia, or is it the other way round?
"It's not the end of the world, let's just send it to another journal"
— Oded Rechavi (@odedrechavi.bsky.social) 2025-09-03T15:07:30.191Z
From Malcolm, a view of Dubai from way high: the world’s tallest structure: “with a total height of 829.8 m (2,722 ft, or just over half a mile) and a roof height (excluding the antenna, but including a 242.6 m spire)[2] of 828 m (2,717 ft).”
View of Downtown Dubai from the tallest building on Earth, Burj Khalifapic.twitter.com/ncYjivFYjp
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 2, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Polish woman, apparently not Jewish, lived exactly two months in Auschwitz before she died.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-24T11:46:00.064Z
And one from Matthew, whose biography of Francis Crick is coming out in the U.S. on November 11 (buy it!). This is the Onion mocking reports that the Rapture was going to happen yesterday. Needless to say, it didn’t (I wonder if they took bets in UK betting parlors? But those betting on the Rapture couldn’t collect if they won!
Returning Jesus Christ Downed By U.S. Missile Defense 30,000 Feet Before Making Landfall
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit and seldom draw to their full extent. -Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (24 Sep 1717-1797)
Kimmel’s return after five days (including a weekend) is truly a victory in the fight against censorship. In other censorship news YouTube has admitted that they blocked videos and banned creators at the behest of the Biden Administration. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed the Twitter Files.
That piece about the Gaza flotilla is rich, indeed. I’d love to see Ricky Gervais do a spoof of it. 🙄
It may have been in reading “All the Knowledge in the World: the extraordinary history of the encyclopedia” by Garfield, that it dawned on me that all reference compendiums (ia?) of knowledge contain a certain amount of what might be called “measurement error”. As a child I accepted what was written in our twenty volumes or so of The World Book encyclopedia as gospel and never thought that the scholars who labored over the entries to this marvel that sat in our bookcase starting when I was in the third grade might have erred, either through purpose of viewpoint or accident. I learned soon after wikipedia came out that through meticulous editorial oversight, its error rate was kept to about the same as that of the Britannica…error rate? Britannica? I knew that Wikipedia was crowd-sourced and its content was only a start for me to find primary source material, but Britannica? Trust but verify as they say with Wikipedia.
Now comes AI. Though I trusted Wikipedia to first order (in the old days because yes I realize that some entries today may originate in AI themselves), I do NOT trust AI to first order, simply because it often offers its results in such convincing sounding prose. Sounds like every smooth-talking car salesman, politician, or public information flack I have run into. My familiarity with the guts of ai goes back to the 1980’s when it emerged under the already questionable description of “neural networks”. To a flight controls guy, it was simply a curve fitting program which interpolated an existing dataset for decision-making…and one with no formal mathematical basis guaranteeing stability. I hated neural networks then, though I did support research on them because…well..there were things to learn and the government invests in things that are not yet fully understood. But over the years, I never gained confidence in nn/later ai results as guaranteed solid.
So I do not use ai except when forced to grudgingly in an ai web search summary. I like it that Jerry seems to always make it clear on this site when he is sourcing from Wikipedia and ai. I try to do the same if publishing something before running down some better primary source material.
Jim, did you see the recent integration of Copilot in Excel? Microsoft’s own support says not to use it “for any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility.” I know professionally that there have been successful use-cases for A.I., but I find it a waste of time if I have to go and double-check its work. There is definitely an A.I. bubble.
Thanks DrB. A friend of mine sent me a note of apology following a nonsensical text that his new “co-pilot” had quietly helped him with. I never use a co-pilot on purpose, and am annoyed enough having to go through messages I write these days to try to assure myself that words have not been re-spelled, added, or subtracted by a background editor that thought it knew better than I, what I wanted to say.
Of course you know that proof by example is not valid, though disproof by example (counterexample) is. So just because ai sometimes works is of zero value especially in critical safety decisions. My guess is that had ai made a decision for Sully, his aircraft would have crashed and all souls onboard would have died short of some ny or nj runway rather than just cold and wet on the Hudson.
I agree that checking and double checking is no way to go through life, especially as we get on in years and the minutes we have become more precious…and some of us get even more cantankerous!
On the subject of the comma.
Loved the Onion hwaline.
Someone yesterday said “what if the rapture happened but nobody was eligible?” which I guess is plausible.
Allegedly there was once a bumper sticker that read, “In case of rapture, I get your stuff.”
The flotilla kerfuffle is hilarious and deeply satisfying to me. “Intersections” of trans/queers and murderous Islamic jihadists is comedy too funny to parody. Without their Swedish truant mascot a lot of the flotilla’s “publicity power” is… castrated.
Speaking of which – the street gender questioning/arguing teen girls are hilarious: “No Sarah, stop stop!”
In local news (I like to think NYC news is default world news :-)…. Midtown Manhattan is snagged and snarled by legions of third world big shots busying our City Stockpile of Prostitutes* and buying brand name baubles on 5th Ave for their mistresses back home. So many private jets they park many at Andrews AFB.
I lived on the Upper East Side for years, this frequent routine at the UN is a pest to the locals. Downtown here it is un-noticeable, thankfully.
D.A.
NYC
*I kid, but there was an article some years ago about the increase in the city’s …”night life” during UN season.
I work in midtown. It’s times like this that I wonder why we have the UN here. This organization seems to do some good (?), but mostly is a haven for grifters and degenerates.
I’m just glad to know that the flotilla has a steering committee and a leadership structure. How else would we know it’s organized by leftist wordcels who value symbolism over all?
I do feel a bit bad for Greta, but she should have seen this coming. To paraphrase the journalist and Gaza theorist Najma Sharif, “What did y’all think the flotilla meant? trans? nonbinary? genderqueer? losers.”
https://x.com/NajmaAlawi/status/1710689657757769783?s=20
“When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon.”
I suspect the gender questioning girls are actors, but it has truthiness.
There is an amusing story about president Macron being held up by the UN traffic in the Big Apple.
https://apnews.com/article/macron-trump-phone-call-new-york-street-7f90a938296d0411368ed007c7c79f14
President Trump is so inconsistent regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine—wildly making statements one way and then the other—that he has led Putin to believe that he will not be a decisive impediment. Now Putin is testing NATO as a whole by sending drones into Poland and fighter jets into NATO territory. He is coming to conclude—or has concluded—that he can continue to pursue the war, if not without consequence, then at least for a while longer. We’ll see if the west, including Trump, takes any meaningful action to stop him. Until they convince Putin that he will pay a massive price for his war, he will keep going. He is patient.
Regarding Benny Gantz’s statement… . Quite a few of my friends—Jewish and not Jewish—play the tired old record that Netanyahu is only out for himself, and that his only goal is to retain power. I push back, telling them that I do not believe that this is the case, that the Prime Minister of Israel must balance the interests of his or her governing coalition in order to have a functioning government, and that this would be the case no matter who was in charge. Israel needs a functioning government in order to fight Hamas, and Netanyahu has managed that critical task quite well.
I also tell my friends that any Israeli leader in power would for the most part have the same policies as Netanyahu. There would be differences in important ways—whether to take a partial deal for the hostages or not—but the elimination of Hamas as a political and military force would be the policy of any Israeli leader. The first job of a national leader is the national defense, and the Israeli public demands the end of Hamas. This is not about Netanyahu. Unfortunately Netanyahu is the excuse people use to criticize Israel for doing what it needs to do.
I can say this :
A chipmunk just peed on my arm.
That mean you are theirs.
I’ll get a furry suit TODAY 😆
I don’t quite understand just how Britain manages both the queer/trans folk and the rabid Muslims. The woker than woke British cops feel they must assist Pakistani groomers and rape gangs. Yet they also must arrest those who hurt the feelings of a man who wears a dress. You would think conflicts of duty would arise.
I wonder what would happen if a gay/trans pride march went through an exclusively Islamic neighborhood in the UK. Civil war?
Trump has been playing both sides of the russian invasion of Ukraine. He couldn’t decide who was going to be the winner and that matters to him, he loves winners.
Ukraine are conducting a well orchestrated strategic plan that is slowly choking the russian economy. (Los8ng money also registers with Trump) hitting oil refineries, pumping stations, well inside russian territory ( it feels like David’s slingshot against Goliath’s might) and given time the russian economy will tank enough to make it dangerous enough for Putin to make a toilet stop. The signs are there, all go8ng well for the Ukrainians. But this is war.
I suspect after the briefing Zelenskyy gave Trump (UN) that perhaps he is now seeing
that it is more than possible. The russians simply can’t defend all these facilities. Ukraine are holding the front lines by drones and playing smart. 3 years and russian advances make 5kms, WTF! it is WW1 stuff, depressing shit and for nothing. Putin is a common murderous thug, child trafficker, war criminal and deserves no less than humiliation and defeat. More’s the pity for the russian people.
Gantz is correct: “Too often, Western leaders view our policies in this war not through the lens of national security, but through the prism of individuals.”
Usually, this prism does little more than illuminate who liberals don’t like, whether that be Netanyahu in Israel, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Trump in the United States. We would easily add Marine Le Pen to the list if she were ever elected. It is every bit as misguided a focus in the other countries as it is for Israel. That is, if the goal is to understand rather than to castigate and win moral points with one’s own crowd. With Russia, especially, the perseveration over Putin is counterproductive and overlooks the continuity in Russia that would likely follow his passing.
The overwhelmingly liberal lean of the press and policy academics makes it seem as if this were solely a liberal malady. But, if we flipped the tables and put conservatives in charge of writing and pontificating, then we would see the personalization of policy critiques and the simplification of complex issues through the likes of endless hate pieces on AOC, Starmer, Macron, and well, Trudeau might have topped the list. The right already has this personal focus on Giorgia Meloni, but that is less about policy and more because she is a bit of a hottie—at least in leadership circles.
Re One Strawberry per Child, what are those deformed things? I hope not hot peppers.
Very hot peppers. Reaper chilis, 1.4 – 2.2 million Scoville Heat Units. Jalapenos have a large variance so comparisons do as well, but the Reaper can be over 800 times hotter than a jalapeno.
!!!
When I severely overdo the hot sauce, or get some splashed in my eye, I chant to myself this isn’t really tissue damage it just feels like it….. I find it helps, only a little, but enough to stave off panic.
The Steamed Broccoli typeface looks like what Whole Foods uses.
Re AI sources: a few years ago a student submitted a final paper to a course I was teaching on a topic that I was currently working on. I had told the students that they only needed to cite a few sources, but this paper contained 18 references! At first I was impressed, but when I looked up these references, every one was fake. Yet each one had plausible author names (fake), publication years, journal or book titles (fake), volume and issue numbers, and page numbers. I confronted the student, who admitted they’d used ChatGPT to write the paper, complete with references. I’ve always been very careful in academic work about checking claims against referenced sources, but I’ve become even more careful since then.
Yeah before I retired recently I was routinely checking the references to see if AI had been used in student essays. Another way was to have each student give an oral presentation of what they had learned in doing the research for their essay, and ask them detailed questions to check their knowledge (or lack thereof – another giveaway).