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, November 15, 2025, shabbos for Jewish cats and National Bundt Day, referring to the bundt cake, whose etymology is obscure. But it’s a good (minus the raisins), and here’s one. It would be great for breakfast with coffee:
Katrin Morenz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House lawyer, had dozens of meetings with Epstein after she left the White House. The messages show she regularly emailed with Epstein about Trump and other topics into 2019. Ruemmler, now Goldman Sachs’s general counsel, told the Journal in 2023: “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.” She didn’t respond to requests for comment on the emails. [ID from the article]:
Michael Wolff (who was wo9rking on a book about Trump:
I haven’t seen anything that could convict anyone, but some, like the one just above, suggest that Trump knew about the trafficking of underage girls. This, too, is something that will erode his approval rating, already sinking quickly. In an update, Trump; has ordered that the Justice Department investigate people named in the Epstein files, but only Democrats! If that doesn’t show retributive politics, I don’t know what does:
When a trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails were made public this week, Donald J. Trump’s name was all over them. But on Friday, when Mr. Trump demanded that the Justice Department investigate a list of powerful men mentioned in the emails, his own name was nowhere to be seen — he had singled out only Democrats.
Equally remarkable was how quickly Attorney General Pam Bondi acquiesced to his demand, even though four months ago the Justice Department formally declared that nothing in the Epstein files warranted further investigation.
That about-face, as much as any action Ms. Bondi has taken this year, demonstrated the near-complete breakdown of the Justice Department’s traditional independence to prosecute cases based on facts and the law, as opposed to presidential fiat. And, crucially, it could foreclose any further disclosures of the Epstein files.
*More on the emails. Scientific American looks as if it’s starting to go “progressive” as it did under Laura Helmuth. I suspected the respite was only temporary. The author of the piece below, Dan Vergano, is senior editor at the magazine:
This article concentrates on mentioning scientists, but of the three it names, only one is a scientist: Summers is an economist and Chomsky a linguist and political activist.
The newly released e-mails also contain numerous communications between Epstein and well-known scientists and academics, among them astronomer Lawrence Krauss, economist and former secretary of the treasury Lawrence Summers and linguist Noam Chomsky, who corresponded with Epstein even after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes.
Krauss is a former member of Scientific American’s board of advisers; he was removed from the board in 2018 following allegations of sexual misconduct. The records show that Krauss, author of the best-selling 1995 book The Physics of Star Trek, exchanged more than five dozen e-mails with Epstein, who was a financial supporter of Arizona State University’s Origins Project when it was led by Krauss. The messages reportedly include an e-mail from Krauss, dated to 2018, in which he asked Epstein for advice on how to address sexual misconduct charges the astronomer then faced at Arizona State University, according to science journalist Dan Garisto. Epstein apparently suggested, “Break the charges into ludicrous. ogling. jokes. . etc.”
According to the e-mails, in 2015 Epstein told Chomsky, a renowned linguist and media critic, “You are of course welcome to use apt in new york with your new leisure time, or visit new Mexico again.” The Wall Street Journal later raised questions about the two men’s financial ties. Summers, a former president of Harvard, “corresponded routinely” with Epstein, the New York Times noted on Wednesday.
So what is this article doing in Scientific American in the first place? Sensationism, of course! I just looked over the magazine’s recent articles, and while most of them are about science, almost none of them are about hard-nosed science written by scientists (in a popular style), which used to be the metier of the magazine. They might as well call it Popular Science, though there’s a website already called that. But the content of both places is converging, and for Scientific American that is not good. I suspect that people don’t have the patience (or the reading skills) to absorb the kind of science the magazine used to purvey.
Texas A&M University System regents voted Thursday to limit how instructors may discuss matters like gender identity and race ideology in classrooms, tightening the rules in a conservative state where debates over academic freedom have flared for months.
Regents, who met in College Station on Thursday afternoon, unanimously backed a revised proposal decreeing that no courses “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” without a campus president’s approval of the course and related materials.
A related measure that regents approved said that faculty members could not “teach material that is inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.”
Taken together, the policies represent an effort by Texas A&M system leaders to assert firmer control over classrooms at a time when Republican officials in the state have been accusing public universities of “indoctrinating” students with liberal ideas about race and gender — a movement that has unfolded in parallel to President Trump’s campaign to pressure elite schools. Professors have fired back that conservative politicians are seeking to stifle open debates and intellectual inquiry.
Texas, the nation’s most populous conservative state, has been a hot spot, with both its K-12 and higher education systems ensnared in battles over what should surface in the state’s classrooms. Similar fights have occurred in other states, including Florida and Indiana.
Well, academic freedom dictates that you can teach things that are relevant to the course, so I’m not sure what limitations are going to apply, and I don’t like them coming from above, which is definitely an authoritarian move. But you get an idea of what is banned from this (my bolding):
In September, Texas A&M fired a lecturer after a student accused her of teaching a course that recognized more than two genders.
Sam Torn, a regent who chairs the Committee on Academic and Student Affairs, did not explicitly cite that furor on Thursday. But he said that it had “become clear” in recent months that some Texas A&M courses were veering beyond what administrators wanted.
“Curriculum is created and approved based on the accepted body of knowledge needed for our students to be successful in their chosen profession,” Mr. Torn said. “It is unacceptable for other material to be taught instead.”
What? When the lecturer taught that there were more than “two genders”, did she mean “sex” instead of “gender” (they are often used synonymously)? The details aren’t clear from the link, but if she was referring to “gender” as “felt sex role,” I wouldn’t have much of a beef with that. But if she was referring to biological sex, well, she needs a talking to. I see firing as only a last resort.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark summary in The Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The al-Qaeda commander’s perfume”. Nellie is mentioning her retirement, which would be sad as she’s the main reason I subscribe to that website. Teen Vogue, which to my delight has just folded, is the first item:
→ The Fired Four: Last week, about 20 employees followed Condé Nast’s HR chief Stan Duncan down a hallway, confronting him over layoffs at Teen Vogue. “Do you think we’re not worth speaking to, Stan?” said one of the Condé Nastians, before following Stan up and down the hall after he asked them to leave. “Stan, are you running away from us?. . . . That’s not a really good answer, Stan. . . . What are you going to do to stand up to the Trump administration?” Totally normal workplace behavior. Four of the hallway heroes were fired. Now they have become martyrs of the left, with their own moniker and everything.
The Condé Nast union’s X/Twitter account announced: “We sent a message to management today with a Slack icon change.” And then, I swear to god, they held a rally this week. Like a real outdoor rally with placards waved in the air, shouts of “What do we want? Reinstatement! When do we want it? Now!” and women in huge glasses giving speeches (I might have dated one of them. It’s impossible to say.).
→ Speaking of breaking news:
Are you kidding me with this blatant transphobia? These “scientists” are now claiming that there is “evidence of advantages to being born male”? We all know that any differences in physical strength are social and can’t be proven. Like this 2023 article in Scientific American explains: “Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.” And by the way, Scientific American hasn’t retracted that. It’s still up. They’re happy about it.
→ Okay, let’s look off campus: The news service Reuters announces: “Hamas terrorists holed up in the Israeli-held Rafah area of Gaza will not surrender to Israel, the group’s armed wing said on Sunday.”
The news service Reuters announces less than 24 hours later: “Turkey Seeks Safe Passage for 200 Civilians Trapped in Gaza Tunnels, Official Says.” Poof, Hamas soldiers become civilians. Amazing how quickly they unlearned their doctrine. (The story was subsequently withdrawn.)
Fascinating.
I’ll speed-run through the rest. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, was recording a pizza review when someone threw coins at him and yelled, “Fuck the Jews!” The weird part is that people defended the attacker (Just criticizing Israel. Just being a funny kid. Oh, so we’re not allowed to throw coins at Jews in public anymore? So much for freedom of speech!). I’m still waiting to find out if he liked the pizza. But I’d rate the attacker’s originality a −3.4 pepperonis.
Over in Norway, they are remembering Kristallnacht by protesting Israel. Yes, Norway’s state-funded Center Against Racism is turning its annual Kristallnacht memorial—meant to honor victims of the 1938 Nazi attacks on Jewish businesses—into a protest against “Zionists.” That’s like having a birthday party thrown for you and it’s attended only by your most vicious bullies. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre attendedthe event despite the opposition of Jewish community leaders in Oslo.
And a British doctor was given only a warning after writing the following: “hahaha zeig heil hahaha gas the jews hahaha just kidding but have you seen these youtube videos about the holohoax they’re pretty convincing imo.” That didn’t qualify as serious enough to “pose a risk to public protection” by the General Medical Council, the investigating committee.. I’m very curious now what would! I guess putting “hahaha” around gas the jews means you’re obviously clearly joking. hahaha democracy has failed let’s pick a monarch maybe me hahaha just kidding.
*Matthew’s new biography of Francis Crick got a big NYT review today, and it’s a pretty good one. Click to read the archived version:
In a few places the reviewer, author and biographer Janice Nimura, appears to take Cobb to task for not writing the book she would have written, but in general it’s a positive review (look at the pull quote in the subtitle), and will certainly help sell books. Most of the review merely recounts what the book says, but there is some evaluation:
Biographers work on a spectrum: from the nimble narrative, propulsive and colorful and condensed, to the definitive doorstop, a storehouse within which all there is to know has been comprehensively gathered.
Two earlier biographies of Francis Crick, the British biologist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for figuring out the form and function of DNA, have already staked out the poles — Matt Ridley’s, slim and roguish; and Robert Olby’s, densely academic. Both were published within five years of Crick’s death in 2004.
With “Crick: A Mind in Motion,” the British biologist Matthew Cobb aims for the tricky “middle path”: a life vivid enough to engage readers who haven’t thought about the double helix since high school, and detailed enough to satisfy the scientists.
Cobb situates the science in the context of the man — an intent signaled on the book jacket, which features a lanky, middle-aged Crick slouching at ease and smirking slyly at the camera rather than gripping a model of the famous molecule. A disclaimer in Cobb’s prologue suggests that he is aware this approach may be a challenge. “Crick’s scientific writings and ideas are described in a way that should be easy for the general reader to understand,” Cobb insists, “but if you find yourself struggling, then follow Crick’s advice to the readers of his own books and skip the hard bits.”
The part below, though, doesn’t seem germane to the book; she wants a digression about misogyny in science. I’ve read the double helix part, and its evaluation of Franklin is accurate and fair. He just fails to go on a tangent about feminism:
Cobb carefully addresses the controversy surrounding Watson and Crick’s use of the British molecular chemist Rosalind Franklin’s work, but fails to look more broadly at the way women scientists have been excluded from the kind of intimate, generative male collaboration that fueled Crick’s brilliance.
And this:
There are wild parties, psychedelic revelations, invigorating encounters with luminaries across disciplines.
But as a scientist himself, Cobb seems more comfortable with the geneticists and conferences and journal articles. And as a full-throated admirer of Crick’s “galaxy brain,” he tends to gloss over the hard bits having to do with his subject’s less admirable moments. He credits Odile Speed, Crick’s wife of 55 years, with grounding his genius, sharing his transgressive energies and infusing his days with art and poetry — and discounts Crick’s countless infidelities as “an expression of his appetite for life,” affirming that his affairs were conducted with “mutual discretion, enjoyment and enthusiasm” and suggesting that Odile “sometimes profited from their arrangement.”
There is plenty enough about Crick’s transgressions, nude psychedelic parties, and such, but what makes Crick’s life worth reading about are his accomplishments–the “hard bits”. The less admirable moments, to me at least, are sufficiently dealt with. I think the reviewer just wanted Matthew to express more opprobrium towards Crick’s sexual peccadillos:
Crick’s defining work on DNA was a magnificent brocade robe of an achievement, and later in his life few were bold enough to question whether the great man was still fully clothed. Cobb acknowledges that a “Crick halo” sometimes raised the Nobelist’s ideas above criticism — but he leaves it in place. A candid consideration of the contrast between Crick’s shining mind and his occasionally tarnished views would further complicate and enrich this intriguing portrait of a gifted, self-absorbed, exuberant and intuitive man.
Flawed humans can be engines of history, and Crick was both.
Yes, like about a third to a half of married Americans have committed adultery, and, as was common among men back then, Crick perhaps had a touch of sexism. But what made this book worth writing was not his flaws (I don’t find Matthew putting a halo over him), but what he did and thought. And that’s why you should buy the book. Cobb was clearly not interested in a sensationalistic biography, but a scientific one that also gives us an idea of what the subject was like.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is feeling sorry for herself:
Hili: Nobody understands me.
Andrzej: It’s a feeling that’s always been in fashion.
In Polish:
Hili: Nikt mnie nie rozumie.
Ja: To uczucie było zawsze popularne.
From Simon; Oded likes to use memes with captions taken from scientific papers (the implication is that the data show a lot more, or even different stuff, than the paper does):
One from my feed. I think of this often, and agree, but the people who go after Steve Pinker would like to return to the time when there were not even any toilets or baths, much less hot showers.
A Dutch Jewish boy and his mother were gassed together as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. The child was 2 years old, and would have been 84 today had he lived. https://t.co/RZY6rESMBC
This is a joke, but how could you tell if there has been adaptive evolution? You can’t just say that evolution in finches is very slow. After all, the Grants showed perceptible evolution of beak shape and size after only one year of drought:
Beak adapted for popcorn. Darwin finch, Isla Santa Cruz.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. -Johann Kaspar Lavater, poet, writer, philosopher (15 Nov 1741-1801)
The clip of Jimmy Carr is great. I think the biggest problem is that people simply don’t understand how bad it could be, even today, if there were a massive disruption in, for example, energy production or transportation.
I see the Aristotle Foundation has already dropped Krauss simply because of him having had e-mail correspondence with Epstein. If people are to suffer because they corresponded with him there will be an awful lot of cancelled people in the world. There is not even a hint that Krauss was involved in anything nefarious with Epstein, but they have punished him anyway.
I remember reading as much as I could about the Lawrence Kraus bonfire at the time of his public shaming, with my defense attorney hat on.
I concluded that at any time other than the height of a wild moral panic (the metoo fiasco*) utterly nothing of the (unprovable) allegations would have been taken seriously by anybody. If I knew him I’d be proud to call him a friend.
D.A.
NYC
*which achieved nothing other than a verifiable, provable damaging of women’s place in the workplace. Moral panics are NEVER a good idea regardless of original intent.
These accusations precede the MeToo-era. Krauss was already disciplined by his university because of his sexual advances towards female students before any of this made the news.
I volunteered with a major humanist/skeptical organization for years and was aware of complaints made against Krauss by adult women before MeToo. To my knowledge none of these involved accusations of criminal wrongdoing.
One of the reasons MeToo happened is that, as sexual harassment rarely takes place in front of witnesses, it is all too easily dismissed. It should go without saying that this fact does not mean that all allegations are true.
Mr. K is a talented scientist and science writer, and I look forward to reading TWOS.
I’m concerned that the mention of Lawrence Krauss will spill over into some sort of criticism of The War on Science. It takes only the most tenuous of connections for the press to try to create a crisis.
——— Complete and total break with my above comment———
Congratulations Matthew on the positive review. I have the book and it’s on my list to read next!
If the Epstein story is a hoax concocted by Hillary, Obama, and Comey, as Trump repeatedly claims, why is Epstein dead and Maxwell in prison? Why did Trump just direct Bondi and the DOJ to investigate Democrats implicated in the case if the whole thing is a hoax? The mental contortions needed to justify not releasing all the information available are staggering.
The Daily Show’s take on the (formerly-)G O P’s release of the emails and iDJT’s further distraction attempt was basically: it’s like disguising pissing yourself by then shitting yourself.
RE: The first e-mail quoted by Jerry, from Epstein to Maxwell (4/2/2011), where Epstein writes about Trump to the effect that “Virginia spent hours at my house with him”:
Bill Maher in his opening monologue (a series of jokes) last night (Real Time with Bill Maher), on what Virginia and Trump were doing during those hours: “it took her [Virginia] that long to explain to him [Trump] that it’s the consumers who pay the price for the tax” [the tax = import tariff]
I suspect that people don’t have the patience (or the reading skills) to absorb the kind of science the magazine used to purvey.
It may also be the case that engineers – who used to be a big part of the Scientific American readership – are not as much interested in the natural sciences as they once were.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. -Johann Kaspar Lavater, poet, writer, philosopher (15 Nov 1741-1801)
The clip of Jimmy Carr is great. I think the biggest problem is that people simply don’t understand how bad it could be, even today, if there were a massive disruption in, for example, energy production or transportation.
Especially today.
I see the Aristotle Foundation has already dropped Krauss simply because of him having had e-mail correspondence with Epstein. If people are to suffer because they corresponded with him there will be an awful lot of cancelled people in the world. There is not even a hint that Krauss was involved in anything nefarious with Epstein, but they have punished him anyway.
I remember reading as much as I could about the Lawrence Kraus bonfire at the time of his public shaming, with my defense attorney hat on.
I concluded that at any time other than the height of a wild moral panic (the metoo fiasco*) utterly nothing of the (unprovable) allegations would have been taken seriously by anybody. If I knew him I’d be proud to call him a friend.
D.A.
NYC
*which achieved nothing other than a verifiable, provable damaging of women’s place in the workplace. Moral panics are NEVER a good idea regardless of original intent.
Thank you, David! I love the subject matter expertise on this website.
These accusations precede the MeToo-era. Krauss was already disciplined by his university because of his sexual advances towards female students before any of this made the news.
I volunteered with a major humanist/skeptical organization for years and was aware of complaints made against Krauss by adult women before MeToo. To my knowledge none of these involved accusations of criminal wrongdoing.
One of the reasons MeToo happened is that, as sexual harassment rarely takes place in front of witnesses, it is all too easily dismissed. It should go without saying that this fact does not mean that all allegations are true.
Mr. K is a talented scientist and science writer, and I look forward to reading TWOS.
I’m concerned that the mention of Lawrence Krauss will spill over into some sort of criticism of The War on Science. It takes only the most tenuous of connections for the press to try to create a crisis.
——— Complete and total break with my above comment———
Congratulations Matthew on the positive review. I have the book and it’s on my list to read next!
If the Epstein story is a hoax concocted by Hillary, Obama, and Comey, as Trump repeatedly claims, why is Epstein dead and Maxwell in prison? Why did Trump just direct Bondi and the DOJ to investigate Democrats implicated in the case if the whole thing is a hoax? The mental contortions needed to justify not releasing all the information available are staggering.
The Daily Show’s take on the (formerly-)G O P’s release of the emails and iDJT’s further distraction attempt was basically: it’s like disguising pissing yourself by then shitting yourself.
The AI video of the cat playing musical instruments is hilarious!
😺😺😺
RE: The first e-mail quoted by Jerry, from Epstein to Maxwell (4/2/2011), where Epstein writes about Trump to the effect that “Virginia spent hours at my house with him”:
Bill Maher in his opening monologue (a series of jokes) last night (Real Time with Bill Maher), on what Virginia and Trump were doing during those hours: “it took her [Virginia] that long to explain to him [Trump] that it’s the consumers who pay the price for the tax” [the tax = import tariff]
In the Data Not Shown video, what is that… creature pulled from the muck? Is it real?
I think it’s a dead cuttlefish.
Wow. Poor cuttlefish. I didn’t know that they could get that large.
It may also be the case that engineers – who used to be a big part of the Scientific American readership – are not as much interested in the natural sciences as they once were.
I LOVED the Cat Fiddler On The Porch Ai video. Ai that required smart human collaboration.