Good morning on Sunday, October 26; it’s the Sabbath for goyische cats and National Mule Day. Let us pay homage to these largely sterile hybrids, who have historically done a ton of hard work. (They are often cited in textbooks as THE example of hybrid sterility, but a few fertile mules have been described.)
The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey and a horse. It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes; of the two possible first-generation hybrids between them, the mule is easier to obtain and more common than the hinny, which is the offspring of a male horse (a stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny).
Here are five reasons why mules are better than horses for some purposes:
It’s also National Pumpkin Day, National Mincemeat Day, and Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day. Here I am eating the steak—in Texas—two decades ago. Note that the sweet tea is served on one-quart Mason jars, the only appropriate kind vessel. And, of course, the steak is gigantic (I did finish it).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The U.S. government shutdown is now nearly a month long, the second longest in history (so far it’s shorter than the 34-day shutdown involving the border wall during Trump’s first term). The issue this time, of course, is extending health-insurance subsidies that were supposed to end this year, and the Democrats won’t sign on to the end until they’re renewed. The WaPo’s morning email (not online) answers questions about the shutdown, and here are a few:
Do members of Congress get paid during a government shutdown?
Yes, members of Congress are paid during a government shutdown — because the Constitution says so. Article I, section 6 states: “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.” Some lawmakers choose to have their salaries withheld during shutdowns.
Do government shutdowns save money?
Government shutdowns actually cost money — and a lot of it. The longest shutdown in U.S. history lasted 34 days, and it shaved $11 billion off the U.S.’s total economic output. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, citing research from investment bank Goldman Sachs, says the current shutdown could cost the U.S. economy $15 billion per week.
When shutdowns end, it’s also expensive to get the government fully operating again. Furloughed workers are entitled to back pay. They have to dig out from a mountain of tasks that piled up while they were away. The federal government may have forfeited fees or revenue when it was closed. And because the government didn’t make some payments during the shutdown, it could owe late fees and interest.
Does Trump actually have more authority to fire federal workers during a shutdown than he otherwise would?
Good question. The answer is a firm no.
Trump already has a lot of power to fire federal employees, provided the administration follows the process necessary to conduct government layoffs, also called “reductions in force” or RIFs. A shutdown makes that more difficult. It’s harder to follow the steps to conduct a RIF since many employees are furloughed. Plus, laying people off costs money — and the government generally isn’t allowed to take on new spending during a shutdown.
A good way to think of it: A shutdown doesn’t give Trump any additional power to fire federal workers, but it doesn’t take away from his already substantial power, either.
Is the shutdown slowing or stopping the president’s priorities, such as construction of the White House ballroom, domestic military deployments or immigration raids?
Nah, those aren’t stopping. The ballroom is being funded by private donations, not taxpayer funds. The personnel deployed to U.S. cities are considered “essential” and during most shutdowns would work unpaid. The same goes for the officers conducting immigration raids. The White House repurposed funds from the Defense Department and Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” to compensate those service members and officers, though it’s unclear if those moves were legal.
The last point is important, and I assume there’s a lawsuit pending about the legality of paying cops and National Guard troops and other federal agents. So far it looks like this is going to become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, as there’s no sign of Dems or Republicans wanting to forget a compromise—or even meet.
*Now that it’s clear that Hamas has no intention of disarming, as it agreed to do, what will happen next? Well, Vice President J. D. Vance announced that the disarming will be effected by an “international security force.”
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that an international security force that has yet to be formed would take the lead on disarming Hamas, which has been one of the thorniest issues when it comes to reaching a lasting peace in Gaza.
The vice president spoke from Israel, at the end of a visit aimed at shoring up a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. In remarks to reporters, Mr. Vance cautioned that the task of disarming Hamas — which the militant group has long opposed — was “going to take some time and it’s going to depend a lot on the composition of that force.”
The cease-fire deal that came into effect earlier this month was based on a proposal outlined in September by President Trump, which includes a stipulation that a “temporary International Stabilization Force” be deployed in Gaza. But several countries have hesitated to commit troops to such a force because its exact mission in the devastated Palestinian enclave was unclear. The possibility that such a force might be drawn into direct conflict with Hamas fighters has also been a worry.
While Mr. Vance did not address that concern in his brief remarks on Thursday, he reiterated that there would be “no American troops on the ground” in Gaza. Instead, he said, American personnel would be “supervising and mediating the peace.”
The 20-point peace proposal did not specify that the security force would be tasked with disarming Hamas, and a timeline for doing so has not been laid out. The force was originally envisioned as a way to secure areas of Gaza where Israeli troops have withdrawn, prevent munitions from entering the territory, facilitate the distribution of aid and train a Palestinian police force.
, , , , The vice president departed Israel just hours before Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the country. Mr. Rubio met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Thursday night.
On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio addressed the proposed creation of an international force. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before he flew to Israel, he said that the Trump administration may seek a United Nations “mandate” for the force.
The back-to-back visits by Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio underscore the administration’s keen interest in preserving the cease-fire. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have also been in Israel this week.
*This week Andrew Sullivan muses on NYT’s next mayor in a column called “Magic Mamdani theory,” with the subtitle, “Doing politics the right way, he offers a woke, far-left future for the Dems. Fuck.” The last word reflects Sullivan’s dismay at a candidate who is appealing but likely not effective.
I get why Mamdani is popular. And I have little doubt he will be the next mayor, as well as a major national figurehead for the Democrats — a nice dose of youth to a party debilitated by seniorityitis. He will define the Democrats nationally — certainly if the GOP has any say in it. And in many ways, he is the perfect candidate for today’s Dem elites: wealthy, woke, with a degree in “Africana studies.” His only problem is not being female — but since he denies that the category of female exists, no big deal I suppose. He will give the MSNBC/Bulwark crowd a new lease on self-righteousness.
But to be honest, when I read his proposals, at first I thought I was reading a high-schooler’s essay. Free everything! I mean: why not? Free universal childcare for kids as young as six weeks old.Free buses for everyone. Rent control for everyone already privileged by it. Subsidized collective supermarkets. $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030 — up from $16.50. Woohoo! And arresting Bibi as an added bonus. (I have to say the last plank might even tempt me to vote for him.)
The problem, of course, is how to pay for it. And a NYC mayor, quite simply, cannot. Mamdani simply won’t have the power. None of the tax hikes he proposes — a new 2 percent tax on everyone earning over $1 million a year, and jacking up the corporate tax to 11.5 percent — can be passed by his council. Albany has the final say, will almost certainly say no, and the Democratic governor, Hochul, opposes the hikes.
So a lot of this is purely performative, no? He has a good chance to create his Soviet bodegas and, in all likelihood, freeze rents if he replaces members of the board. (That will, of course, make housing availability and expense even worse.) He may be able to wangle some increase in NYC’s minimum wage — by trying to bypass Albany. But doubling it in five years? Meh. All of the economic stuff is iffy because of the very probable lack of funding. Maybe a big victory will change the dynamics and allow a big tax hike in one of the most highly taxed cities on earth. But it’s hard to believe it.
So what’s left? What’s left is cultural leftism on hormones. You may get daycare — but it will come with full woke indoctrination of kids from the earliest years on. No more “boys”or “girls” allowed! Mamdani, as we all know, regards the police as the enforcers of “white supremacy,” supports the end of Israel as a Jewish state, will subsidize the transing of children with no safeguards, and has erased gays and lesbians from our own history, re-marginalizing us as “queers”. There’s no one the woke left hates more than an empowered and integrated person who just happens to be gay or lesbian.
Like all good critical-theory racists, Mamdani believes in a racial hierarchy with whites, Jews, and Asians as oppressors, and blacks and Hispanics and “queers” as victims;he wants to make NYC “the strongest sanctuary city in the country” — i.e. go to war with ICE — and kill the educational programs that help gifted poor kids in kindergarten — because most turn out to be of the oppressor races. A racist, in other words — to his fingertips.
. . . In 2022, Mamdani declared of his political career: “For me, there’s no point in doing this without D.S.A.” The Democratic Socialists of America favor full amnesty for all illegal immigrants, abolition of the Senate, voting rights for noncitizens, and public ownership of major corporations. Since he won the nomination, he has softened on some of these points, but remains a DSA member and fan. New Yorkers can decide if he’s sincere. Obviously I don’t believe a word he says about moderation.
Mamdani cannot be President, of course (he was born in Uganda), but he could be–and probably wants to be–a Senator or Representative. I don’t like his stand on Israel, of course, and I also think that Sullivan and many others are right; he will not be able to fulfill his economic promises. But that doesn’t bother many Democrats, who want a “progressive” rather than someone who actually creates positive change. I don’t believe Mamdani cares about the welfare of New Yorkers, but that’s just my take. I think he cares about advancing a DSA ideology. BUT, if he can do what he says, more power to him.
*ICE has conducted many of its immigration raids in Chicago in Hispanic communities, and that always made me wonder if people can be stopped and questioned solely on the basis of their race. I thought that there either had to be either a warrant, illegal activitise during a demonstration or other other infractions, like running street signs. It turns out that although the law says people can’t be stopped because of their race, Trump’s goons may be violating that policy.
Again and again in Chicago and elsewhere in recent weeks, masked federal agents have accosted people who appear to be Latino, and have confronted them with questions about their immigration status.
Targeting people for immigration enforcement based on race or ethnicity alone was forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision 50 years ago. After all, it’s impossible to determine the immigration statuses of people simply by looking at them. So for decades, agents seeking to question people about their citizenship were supposed to rely on more than just appearance.
But as President Trump has intensified his mass deportation campaign, roving patrols that have targeted predominantly Latino communities have become a key part of the administration’s playbook. And whether the tactics are legal appears to be an open question, one likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Lawsuits challenging the administration’s sweeps in Los Angeles and elsewhere are making their way through the courts. The outcomes could redefine the limits on the discretion officers have to stop, question and detain people over their immigration statuses and how much race and ethnicity can play into those decisions.
. . . . Last month, in an emergency ruling in the Los Angeles suit, the Supreme Court said federal agents there could question people about their immigration statuses based solely on factors such as race or ethnicity or another spoken language or accented English.
The decision isn’t final, as it overturned the temporary prohibition imposed by a federal judge on officers while she hears arguments on the case. But like many of the justices’ emergency decisions since the start of the new administration, the ruling appeared to signal substantial deference to the executive branch under President Trump and the possibility that the court would ultimately side with him should it ultimately issue an opinion on the case.
. . . During the mass deportation campaign, Latinos have been stopped while driving gardening and landscaping trucks. They have been questioned and detained at bus stops and street corners where laborers gather to wait for work. They have been rounded up at farms, carwashes and construction sites.
. . . In Chicago, where ICE tactics have escalated in recent weeks, lawyers say they have identified dozens of arrests that have violated a 2022 consent decree that covered six Midwestern states. The order — stemming from a 2018 class-action lawsuit that immigrant and civil rights groups filed against the first Trump administration on behalf of five immigrants — restricted federal immigration agents from apprehending and holding people without a warrant.
I can’t believe the Supreme Court won’t revisit this case if the judge in Los Angeles decides the detentions are illegal. The latest Supreme Court term, which began this month, is going to be an interesting one as well as a busy one for the judges. All we can do is wait and see, while in the meantime people get detained and deported, perhaps illegally.
*The World Series this year, with game 2 on deck, pits the Toronto Blue Jays against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with the Dodgers harboring the deadly Shohei Ohtani. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost last night, despite one homer from their star.
Shohei Ohtani followed his two-way show for the ages with a homer in the Dodgers’ World Series opener, but he also grounded out with the bases loaded in Los Angeles’ 11-4 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night.
With LA trailing 11-2 in the seventh inning, Ohtani hit a soaring two-run shot to right field off Braydon Fisher. It was his fourth homer in two games after connecting three times and striking out 10 as a pitcher in a Game 4 win to clinch the Dodgers’ NL Championship Series.
Ohtani’s homer Friday didn’t do much for Los Angeles’ chances after a flop by the Dodgers’ pitchers. Starter Blake Snell was knocked out of the game before getting an out in the sixth inning, and Toronto then pummeled the bullpen during a nine-run sixth highlighted by Addison Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam and Alejandro Kirk’s two-run homer.
Ohtani also missed an earlier chance to impact the game with his two-out, bases-loaded groundout in the second inning. Los Angeles led 1-0 at that point. He finished 1 for 4 with two strikeouts.
Blue Jay fans booed Ohtani loudly during pregame introductions. Before signing a $700 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the two-way star met with Blue Jays officials on Dec. 4, 2023, at the team’s spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida. Toronto manager John Schneider joked Thursday that he wanted Ohtani to return a Blue Jays hat and a jacket for his dog, Decoy, that he took after that meeting.
Booing Ohtani? That’s not sportsmanlike, but Toronto is mad they didn’t get him. He not only grounded out, but he also whiffed twice. Here’s one of his strikeouts. Look at how the ball drops at the end!
Well, the guy ain’t perfect, and there are at least three games to go. UPDATE: Yesterday the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-1,
UPDATE: Yesterday the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-1, tying the Series at 1-1. Pitcher Yoshinabu Yamomoto went the full nine innings (a real rarity these days), allowing four hits but only one run. Ohtani scored one run, and is surely being saved to pitch a later game.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss an “artificial civilization,” whatever that is.
Hili: What will an artificial civilization look like?
Andrzej: Fortunately, I won’t be around to find out.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak będzie wyglądała sztuczna cywilizacja?
Ja: Na szczęście ja się już tego nie dowiem.
*******************
From The English Language Police 2 via Meriliee:
From Stacy; the TRUTH!
From The Language Nerds:
Masih and JKR are both quiet (Rowling hasn’t tweeted in at least a week), but Titania did! Here’s her tweet. According to an appended “Community note,” the BBC got it wrong:
The perpetrator is not just “a man who lived in a hotel”, he is an illegal migrant called Qais Al-Aswad. He is originally from Syria.
I’m delighted to see that my headline-writing workshops for BBC sub-editors have yielded excellent results. https://t.co/Iwe8mwg1Sm
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) October 23, 2025
The BBC story is archived here (is the Beeb paywalled now?). One bit:
During sentencing, the judge told the court that Al-Aswad, who will now reside in Essex, claimed to be unfamiliar with UK laws regarding physical contact and suggested the brakes on his bicycle were faulty.
From Malcolm, a golden tree. 2 billion Hong Kong dollars is $257 million US.
The Tree of Prosperity in Wynn Palace Macau
With 98,000 leaves of 24-karat gold, it cost HKD 2 billion to be made.pic.twitter.com/oFazC4dQ1E
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 16, 2025
From Simon. The guy dissing Larry the Cat is apparently, as Simon explains, “Andrew Marr – long time hournalist and broadcaster. I suspect his comments re Larry are somewhat tongue in cheek furthering a broader political agenda.”
You’ve made a mortal enemy @AndrewMarr9…pic.twitter.com/q0QhSmg98u
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 25, 2025
Also from Simon, a tweet from Lawrence Krauss. Some atheist-hater, no doubt:
From Colin Wright via Luana:
🚨BREAKING: A federal court has struck down the Biden-era rule redefining “sex” in federal law to include “gender identity.”
The judge ruled that only Congress—not federal agencies—can change the meaning of “sex,” restoring its original biological definition under the Affordable… pic.twitter.com/aa5GRdf8KI
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) October 23, 2025
One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five years old, and had he lived he's be 89 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-10-26T10:22:47.525Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. One of these would do well for my morning coffee:
Marvellous Minoan cups made by Bronze Age potters about 3,800 years ago!Which is your favourite? ❤️ Heraklion Archaeological Museum 📷 by me 🏺#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-10-25T13:03:53.273Z
This is an illusion: the figures neither move nor change shape:
For your enjoyment (by @jagarikin)
— Gavin Buckingham (@drgbuckingham.bsky.social) 2025-10-25T11:58:58.073Z
I made a crude measuring stick with my fingers and looked at one of the lines in the illusion. I also blocked out most of the other parts.
The line appears fixed for a while, but I am noticing shift in position at some point.
I’ll try to look more carefully later.
There’s another similar “illusion” out there that has – I think – flashing colored arrows that are said to be fixed, but if I hold my finger on the tip to measure, they are not. Word is the “illusion” is not, in fact, an illusion.
I still always wonder about that one too – it’s like an illusion-of-an-illusion – which is still fun!
When holding two thumbnails to an edge of the box at two points, I saw no movement. The illusion of movement seems to happen because the black and white transitions sweep across the objects, and our brains see that as movement.
Here’s the other “illusion”
https://x.com/apelreddot/status/1719115791436599426?s=46
I used some rulers roughly (it’s hard with a touchscreen because the metal rulers conduct and it moves the display!) and yeah, I agree the lines stay.
I did notice an inside corner though where with the way the colors cycle through can sort of shift the point of the corner. I think it might be a small part of how the illusion works – the convergence of the lines of color…
I fixed my eyes on one set of dots inside one part of the box for a long time and the size and position of the dots relative to each other and to the line segments did not vary at all. In other words, the position of every element of the image is fixed throughout the illusion.
So, that means that the only thing that could create the different illusions – e.g., that the box is growing larger then smaller or taller then wider, etc. – is a shift in which portions of the lines and dots are colored white or black. Yet, a simple black to white shift should theoretically result in just a simple perceptional shift from one thing to another and back again. What’s wild about this image is that there are multiple perceptual shifts…
Upshot is that I can’t make sense of it. As my teenage pothead boyfriend would have said, “It’s really fucking with my mind, man.”
With this being chicken fried steak day, it is time for my annual tribute to the Cattleman’s Cafe in Blue Ridge, TX (pop 1248). I was introduced to chicken fried steak with white sauce, mashed potatoes, and sweet tea at this establishment near whitewright, northwest of Dallas back in the mid-1970’s with freshly fried apple turnover for dessert. On just checking, the Cafe is still there, with a facebook page, a photo of the aforementioned meal (with plenty of white sauce smothering both steak and potatoes) and a rating of 4.7/5.0. Fifty years ain’t bad for a joint in a small rural Texas town, but I am happy to see it because their food was excellent and the people were as nice as they could be. Live on Cattleman’s Cafe!
I always loved baseball…both watching and playing, but had gotten away from MLB in recent years. The WEIT article on Ohtani the other day piqued my interest and I watched game 2 last night. Wow! Yamomoto’s pitching was incredible … went the full nine innings retiring the last twenty batters straight with pitches of various speeds from 75 up to almost 100mph that rose, dropped and curved all over the place. What a performance.
Go Jays! It ain’t over ’til Joe Carter sings!
Great to see Joe Carter last night! As a Toronto-area resident I’m crazy about the Jays, but I was born in LA and my beloved Granddaddy Gus used to take me to Dodgers games when I visited. So I’m a bit conflicted, but was thrilled with the 11-4 score on Friday.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I really rebel against this idea that politics has to be a place full of ego and where you’re constantly focused on scoring hits against one another. Yes, we need a robust democracy, but you can be strong, and you can be kind. -Jacinda Ardern, 40th prime minister of New Zealand (b. 26 Jul 1980)
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by
the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex
of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive,
definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.
These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. […] these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called
“ultimate terms”: either “god terms,” representative of ultimate
good; or “devil terms,” representative of ultimate evil. In thought
reform, “progress,” “progressive,” “liberation,” “proletarian stand-
points” and “the dialectic of history” fall into the former category;”
From
Thought-Reform and the Psychology of Totalism – A Study of “Brainwashing” in China, p. 429
By Robert J. Lifton
W. W. Norton, 1961
UNC Press, 1989
I see June Lockhart has died, aged 100. Older commenters will remember her playing Dr Maureen Lockhart in Lost in Space.
Even older commentators will remember her for playing the mother on Lassie.
Only on re-runs. But now it comes back to me.
The thing is that ICE is not using race alone to identify potential aliens. That would actually be a waste of time. ICE is including factors like areas and industries that tend to have a high number of illegals, and, one has to assume, public tips. Besides, the Court already ruled on this in Noem v. Perdomo in September, when it granted a stay on a TRO from California based on the claim ICE was racially profiling.
In other news the Chicago School Board wants to use ICE raids as an excuse to bring back remote learning.
I believe that Governor Pritzker said that we should NOT go back to remote learning because it is impeded learning. But I don’t know if he has any control over what happens in Chicago. I doubt it.
State departments of education generally dictate what k12 children must learn to graduate. Local school boards determine how children learn it. State board members are generally appointed by the governor sometimes with approval of state legislature.
So my guess is that the Chicago school board has the say over whether kids learn the state-determined curriculum in-person or remotely.
The Minoan cups are very interesting, and I would definitely use a reproduction of one as a coffee mug.
Isn’t that a non sequitur, given from the foregoing that you (and Sullivan) disagree with most of what he wants to do? Not my concern either way. I just want to know if I misread something.
While the U.S. administration is talking tough about de-arming Hamas, it’s quite true that no rational Arab state leader would want to take responsibility for the task. Gazans have been so brainwashed by the UNRWA-run education system that the Gazan population would be nothing but trouble—even if Hamas were disarmed. It’s a big risk.
Maybe the U.S. will provide incentives to make it more palatable for governments in the region to step up. We’ll see. I do hope that some entity other than Israel undertakes the task of removing Hamas. The war had depleted Israel’s youth—so many of whom left their jobs to fight—and Israel needs to heal its reputation with the rest of the world. (Israel was not treated well by the western powers.)
What I am most concerned about is that the U.S. will slowly lose interest in removing Hamas from power. With the living hostages home and the dead ones coming home a few at a time, the urgency is gone and the path of least resistance is for the U.S. to slowly pull back, leaving Hamas to rebuild and fight another day.
Oh, and one more thing: Here’s a look at the inside of Mandami’s Grocery: https://youtu.be/BPI2pX-nqog?si=iB-W8VdHZlfBwOWo.
I think it would be only fair to ask the UN to clean up the mess they caused.
Else I guess Trump will just put slowly escalating tarrifs on the wolrd and only the states who police Gaza may evade that particular tarrif.
Brilliant!
That must be why Canada’s Prime Minister got invited at the last minute to the Cairo photo-op for the cease-fire, which we had nothing to do with facilitating and may have delayed by recognizing Palestine as a state just as the adults were trying to hammer it out. We are highly vulnerable to tariffs, too.
Canada talks a tough game about disarming Canadian farmers of their legally acquired but now prohibited semi-automatic rifles. We should be just the ones tapped to disarm Hamas of their AK-47s and RPGs. As long as the task doesn’t require our soldiers to point their guns at Muslims, sign us up!
Even worse, they would be pointing their gun at the indigenous people of Palestine!
I don’t know what Andrew Marr is complaining about. Larry is 18 and is enjoying happy retirement from mousing!
The tweet with the empty TP roll made me think of Kinky Friedman’s song “Men’s Room L.A.” (featuring Ringo Starr, no less).
Can someone explain to this non-biologist how mules (offspring of equines with different numbers of chromosomes) work?
In humans, irregularities involving the number of chromosomes are either fatal before birth or very disabling (like Down syndrome).
How are the mules so functional (albeit sterile)?
Probably because the set of horse chromosomes have pretty much the same genes (genes that do the same thing) as do the donkey chromosomes, so the mule probably gets a full complement of genes needed to build an equine body. However, when it comes time for the hybrids to form sperm and eggs via meiosis, the chromosomes, being unequal in number, can’t pair properly, causing a failure to produce viable gametes (i.e., sterility). This is just my top-of-the-head guess.
Down syndrome is a mutation in the number of copies of a single chromosome, so it’s different from the problem of chromosome mispairing in a mule. The Down syndrome aneuploidy changes the amount of gene expression in cells (the genes on chromosome 21 are over-expressed because 3 gene copies are present instead of the normal 2 copies). Aneuploidies of large human chromosomes (chr. 1, 2, 3, etc.) are usually lethal in the early embryo because so many genes are incorrectly expressed; trisomy 21 is less deleterious in part because that chromosome is tiny with fewer genes (~300 vs. 3000 genes on chr. 1).
Thank you. Makes sense.
Is the Beeb paywalled now?
No, the website isn’t. Sadly, they have changed the international availability of their radio programmes via BBC Sounds.
But I noticed that clicking on some article titles pop a “Subscribe to BBC to continue” box. But it turns out that you can still scroll through the greyed text. The subscription on offer is not free.
It turns out that I was wrong: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2vgkn7w10o
You should still be able to read articles by copy-and-pasting their urls into an archive website such as https://archive.ph/
Only for the US. Why should Canadians still get it free (neither of us support the UK with taxes)? Maybe it’s a trial program.
I’ll have to remember this when providing what I thought was a free link in a comment.
If a 34-year-old with no experience managing large budgets or supervising people can achieve Mamdani’s goals without ruining NYC, then I will consider it concrete proof of the supernatural.
Not sure I follow: “Where’s your god now?” was written by an “atheist-hater”? Looks rather like it would have been written by an atheist, taunting a bereft believer betrayed by a fickle deity.
In my own case, my god* has had the bountiful mercy to reveal to me the sacred joy of a bidet toilet, one that even uses heated water. Heavenly, indeed.
*also known as my wife