Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, January 24. 2026, and we’re in for a cold week. Here’s the temperatures for today (the number of the top was for 5 AM), and the next week—all in degrees Fahrenheit. Right now, with the wind, it feels like -13°F (-25°C) and my face froze on the way to work. Each day gives the high and low temperatures:
The earliest references to peanut butter can be traced to Aztec and Inca civilizations, who ground roasted peanuts into a paste. The Bainbridge Post-Searchlight reports that 16th-century Aztecs used peanut paste for aching gums.
Several people can be credited with the invention of modern peanut butter and the processes involved in making it. The U.S. National Peanut Board credits three modern inventors with the earliest patents related to the production of modern peanut butter. Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, obtained the first patent for a method of producing peanut butter from roasted peanuts using heated surfaces in 1884. Edson’s cooled product had “a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment” according to his patent application which described a process of milling roasted peanuts until the peanuts reached “a fluid or semi-fluid state”. He mixed sugar into the paste to harden its consistency.
Here’s the TRUTH about how peanut butter is made:
It’s also Macintosh Computer Day (the only computer I’ve ever used), National Edy’s Pie Patent Day, celebrating the patent of this chocolate-covered ice cream bar on this day in 1922 (these were formerly known as “Eskimo Pies,” but the name was, according to Wikipedia, changed to “Edy’s Pies” after the George Floyd riots; George Edy co-invented the treat). Finally, it’s National Lobster Thermidor Day and National Compliment Day (tell someone they look MAHHVELOUS).
There will be no Caturday felid post today as I am not cheerful enough to make one. If readers come upon cat-related items, please send them to me. We will, however, have three cat memes below.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*In a column at the NYT called “The coming Trump crackup” (archived here), David Brooks predicts that Trump is cracking up mentally, something that’s been obvious for some time. Or maybe his latent narcissism has simply been given an opportunity to show itself:
We are in the middle of at least four unravelings: The unraveling of the postwar international order. The unraveling of domestic tranquillity wherever Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring down their jackboots. The further unraveling of the democratic order, with attacks on Fed independence and — excuse the pun — trumped-up prosecutions of political opponents. Finally, the unraveling of President Trump’s mind.
Of these four, the unraveling of Trump’s mind is the primary one, leading to all the others. Narcissists sometimes get worse with age, as their remaining inhibitions fall away. The effect is bound to be profound when the narcissist happens to be president of the United States.
Every president I’ve ever covered gets more full of himself the longer he remains in office, and when you start out with Trump-level self-regard, the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.
Furthermore, over the past year, Trump has been quicker and quicker to resort to violence. In 2025 the U.S. carried out or contributed to 622 overseas bombing missions, killing people in places ranging from Venezuela to Iran, Nigeria and Somalia — not to mention Minneapolis.
The arc of tyranny bends toward degradation. Tyrants generally get drunk on their own power, which progressively reduces restraint, increases entitlement and self-focus and amps up risk taking and overconfidence while escalating social isolation, corruption and defensive paranoia.
. . . . And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
But I do know that events are being propelled by one man’s damaged psyche. History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate. On the contrary, the normal course of the disease is toward ever-accelerating deterioration and debauchery.
And I do understand why America’s founding fathers spent so much time reading historians like Tacitus and Sallust. Thomas Jefferson called Tacitus “the first writer in the world, without a single exception.” They understood that the lust for power is a primal human impulse and that even all the safeguards they built into the Constitution are no match for this lust when it is not restrained ethically from within.
Well there’s no chance of that happening. On the whole, I don’t think Brooks is saying much new here, for those like me who see Trump as mentally ill already believe it, while Trump supporters will never be convinced that the man is nuts. If The Great Greenland Bullying Incident didn’t do it, nothing will. One could say that this was just a ruse, but in truth Trump could have gotten all the bases he wanted without having to do more than ask. His narcissism simply required him to flex.
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s snark/news column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Bored of Peace.”
→ DSA and CCP: The Democratic Socialists of America are taking their marching orders from the Chinese Communist Party. We already knew that they were, emotionally, vibes-wise. But now it looks like they really are coordinating with the CCP. Here’s Newsweek: “The minutes of the DSA meetings show participants discussing contacts with officials from China’s ruling party in the name of ‘anti-imperialism,’ with some members saying the organization should avoid topics that are sensitive for Beijing, such as China’s threats to invade Taiwan, its security crackdown in Hong Kong, and abuses of the Uyghur Muslim minority. They also discuss visits to China.” All’s fair in love and war, so China now has their American footsoldiers. My main complaint is why don’t we do this to China’s wacky political fringe? Why aren’t we cultivating young Chinese soldiers for America? All we have are some random Mandarin-language CIA recruitment videos? Pathetic. We export American culture, yes, but it’s all made by those same DSA members. Why are they so good at making things! Socialists make the best pizza, the best lattes, the best adorable street festivals with sidewalk chalk art. My life is produced by people who report directly to Xi Jinping.
→ Requiem for Iran: The Iranians didn’t attend the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, a shame to miss them on the slopes. They could’ve at least joined for an aprés ski Hugo spritz. Here’s how the WEF explained it:
The tragic loss of lives? Like there was a flood. What terrible natural disaster ended in the tragic loss of lives? Oh, it was the wanton slaughter of protesters by the Iranian regime. It was them marching into hospitals and shooting people. Iran has some strong defenders. Tragic.
Here’s our trusty Tucker Carlson arguing that it could be good for Iran to get a nuke: “Could the Iranians obtaining The Bomb wind up being a good thing? Whether anyone in the foreign policy establishment admits it, North Korea’s nuclearization has undeniably stabilized the Korean Peninsula.” Why not. What’s the worst that can happen. North Korea is a beautiful success story and that is just the cold, hard truth. At least Tuck is brave enough to say it. Here’s Roger Waters, who for some reason gets invited on news shows to spout on about politics: “We know they don’t want the Shah’s son back. . . . We know the Iranians do not want regime change. . . . The government sent the police out to protect those grocers.” Yes, the argument from those on the pro–Iranian regime side is that Iran should have nukes, and also quelling these protesters was just about, I don’t know, protecting local grocers. How sweet. Have a clementine, prisoner.
→ Vendôme antisemite party: This past weekend a group of America’s preeminent Jew-haters got together to flex their muscles (unless you’re Fuentes) and show that the water is warm for racists who also hate women. They gathered to livestream and dance to Ye’s song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub. All dressed up in their Sunday best:
This photo smells like Dior Sauvage and a chloroform rag. It takes a serious bunch of freaks to make Andrew Tate look like the most responsible man in the room. It’s almost impressive how this group—which includes a Mexican incel, a few Muslim dudes, and a kid who does meth to keep his cheekbones up—has become the modern face of white supremacist eugenics. These roided-up streamers in tight pants are in no way what the architects of the “master race” envisioned as their offspring. Dress for the job you want, I guess.
*The White House shared a doctored image of a person arrested after this week’s church protest/disruption in Minneapolis. It looks as if someone in the administration doctored the photo.
The White House on Thursday posted an altered photo of an attorney arrested after a Minnesota church protest, edited to make it look like she was crying, sparking concern among some forensic-image experts about the administration’s distortion of real-world imagery.
In a photo posted to X on Thursday morning by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, the attorney, Nekima Levy Armstrong, appears in handcuffs with a blank expression on her face.
But in an edited version of the photo posted a half-hour later by the White House, Levy Armstrong appears to be openly weeping, with tears streaming down her face. The post did not disclose that the image had been changed.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that Levy Armstrong was arrested on charges she had helped coordinate a protest inside a Minnesota church. The protest, which opposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has become a flash point in the national debate over the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants, with the White House accusing her of being a “far-left agitator” who had orchestrated “church riots.”
The manipulated image of Levy Armstrong on X had been seen roughly 2.5 million times by Thursday afternoon. It was unclear whether the image was altered using artificial intelligence or more traditional photo-editing tools.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kaelan Dorr, a deputy communications director who has coordinated the White House’s digital strategy, referenced the image in an X post: “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
. . .Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, mocked people questioning the image with an X post that said: “uM, eXCuSe mE??? iS tHAt DiGiTAlLy AlTeReD?!?!?!?!?!”
At a news conference Thursday, Levy Armstrong’s husband, Marques Armstrong, told supporters gathered at the St. Paul courthouse that the social media post about her arrest told a false story, including because she had stood tall and walked without crying.
“We have the videos to prove that, to dispel the lies and the twisting of the truth that this administration constantly does,” he said.
. . . . Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and co-founder of the digital-forensics company GetReal Security, overlaid the two images and determined that the image shared by the White House had been manipulated.
Trump and the White House have frequently used edited or AI-generated imagery to win attention and score political points. Some have been clear satire or memes, including a video Trump posted last year showing him dumping feces on protesters from a fighter jet. But others have appeared more realistic, including a video Trump posted last summer supposedly showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI.
At the same time, Trump has criticized his political enemies for purportedly distributing fake images. During the 2024 campaign, he accused Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris of using a fake photo from a rally stop.
Here’s the original photo:
Homeland Security Investigators and FBI agents arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong who played a key role in orchestrating the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota.
She is being charged with a federal crime under 18 USC 241.
I presume they edited it to make Armstrong look sad and miserable after her arrest. I don’t know why they did that, unless they’re trying to deter people from making similar protests (the church interruption was illegal). But what a petty thing to do!
TikTok officially established a joint venture that would allow it to keep operating in the U.S., the company said Thursday, resolving a yearslong fight to address Washington’s national-security concerns.
Under the terms of the deal negotiated by the Trump administration, the popular video-sharing app will be operated by a new U.S. entity controlled by investors seen as friendly to the U.S. Its data-management and algorithm-training on American users will be overseen by Oracle, the cloud-computing giant that has safeguarded its U.S. data for years and has close ties to the Trump administration.
The deal was negotiated to comply with a law passed in 2024. President Trump delayed the implementation of the law a year ago after starting his second term to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. He signed a series of executive orders to extend the deadline for completing a deal until it was met Thursday.
“I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok!” Trump said in a social-media post Thursday night. He thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal. He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision.”
Trump and TikTok’s investors and allies pushed the deal through despite lingering concerns among lawmakers and security hawks that China could still influence the new entity through TikTok parent ByteDance, which owns almost 20% of it.
As you may recall, the U.S. wanted to get rid of TikTok because the Chinese ownership might enable China to get hold of American user data, as well as controlling content to somehow convince our youth to love China and Communism, and hate America. I have no idea how realistic the first idea is (the second seems wonky), but neither is a threat any longer. To phrase it properly, “I couldn’t care less.”
*On Thursday the Oscar nominations were announced. The awards ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brian, will take place on March 15. Here from Variety are the most important awards:
“Sinners,” a bold and bloody vampire saga set in the American South, earned a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations. It was followed closely by “One Battle After Another,” a searing examination of radical politics, which picked up 13 nods. Both films were nominated for best picture at the 2026 Academy Awards, along with “Frankenstein,” “Bugonia,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “Sentimental Value,” “Train Dreams,” “F1” and “The Secret Agent.”
Chloé Zhao, a previous best director winner for her work on “Nomadland,” was nominated for “Hamnet.” The other nominees include Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”), Paul Thomas Anderson (“One Battle After Another), Joachim Trier (“Sentimental Value”) and Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”).
Best actor will be a contest between Timothée Chalamet, whose promotional antics helped turn “Marty Supreme” into A24’s biggest ticket seller, and “One Battle After Another’s” Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood’s few consistent box office draws. Other nominees include Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”), Ethan Hawke (“Blue Moon”) and Wagner Moura, who recently won a Golden Globe for “The Secret Agent.”
“Hamnet’s” Jessie Buckley and “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s” Rose Byrne, who have dominated the early awards conversation for their portraits of mothers struggling with unimaginable challenges, earned best actress nominations. They will face off against two-time winner Emma Stone (“Bugonia”), as well as Kate Hudson (“Song Sung Blue”) and Renate Reinsve (“Sentimental Value”).
Best supporting actor contenders include two performers from “One Battle After Another,” Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn. Both men are prior acting award winners, with del Toro earning a prize for “Traffic” and Penn picking up statues for “Milk” and “Mystic River.” They will compete against Delroy Lindo (“Sinners”), Stellan Skarsgard (“Sentimental Value”) and Jacob Elordi (“Frankenstein”).
Best supporting actress includes two nominees from “Sentimental Value,” Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Their fellow nominees include Amy Madigan (“Weapons”), Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners”) and Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”).
. . . There were some notable snubs and surprises. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who earned nominations for “Wicked,” were passed over for reprising their roles in “Wicked: For Good,” while Paul Mescal, who earned raves for his performance as William Shakespeare in “Hamnet,” was also overlooked. At the same time, “F1,” an action film set in the world of car racing, scored an upset best picture nomination.
You can see the rest of the list at the Variety link above. I’ve seen only one movie nominated, and that was “Hamnet”, so I can make no prognostications save that Jessie Buckley should win best actress for that, regardless of the other female acting roles. But I’m surprised that “The Testament of Ann Lee“, a musical about the Shakers (!), as well as Amanda Seyfriend’s leading role in it, weren’t even nominated. Both her performance and the movie got very high ratings.
If you want to guess all six winners in the category above, go ahead and try below. The first person (if any) to get them all right will win a copy of either of my two trade books, autographed as you wish and with a cat of your choice drawn in it.
Here are the nominations as announced by “Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman, including ASL interpreters”.:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili uses astronomy to wheedle for food:
Hili: The Earth goes around the Sun.
Andrzej: What does that imply?
Hili: Every now and then on the journey, we get very hungry.
In Polish:
Hili: Ziemia krąży wokół Słońca.
Ja: Jaki z tego wniosek.
Hili: Co jakiś kawałek drogi jesteśmy bardzo głodni.
From Masih; I can’t embed this post of an Iranian woman getting beaten up for protesting, but if you click on the screenshot you’ll go to the tweet with the video:
A related tweet about misogyny in Afghanistan, reposted by J. K. Rowling:
To everyone who is here —thank you.😍🙏
Your decision to follow, read, and stay means that the voices of Afghan women have not been silenced. At a time when our rights and voices have been erased, you have chosen to listen and to stand with us.
This space is about the resistance… pic.twitter.com/EpFgY7BrAt
I’ll put this post by Matthew here, as it’s related to the one below it:
Death toll in Afghanistan when NATO answered the US’s call:- 453 Britons- 158 Canadians- 89 French- 59 Germans- 53 Italians- 44 Danes- 17 Spaniards “Stayed a little back, off the front lines “!No one in the media will call him out over this lie or any of the others he spouts.
Trump is a coward who repeatedly dodged military service. He is not worthy of uttering the names of the brave men and women who were killed in Afghanistan after the US invoked article 5, requesting their assistance. pic.twitter.com/ciLxjQJyfx
Ricky Gervais reprises a clip from his great show “After Life,” which I loved—apparently more than some other folks. In the show, he was tired of living and suicidal because his beloved wife died of cancer.
Has this AfterLife clip really had 36 million views on Youtube? That’s mental. https://t.co/5LnYZlTfPT
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was one year old and would be 83 today had she lived. https://t.co/rywP0aFeGG
Will it be in American hands though? There are dueling arguments about this. Who finally controls the algorithm? Commie pukes or Americans? Imagine handing over most of US media – Jane Pawley and Briant Gumble included (heehe) …. and everything the kids watch – to the Kremlin in 1985. THAT’S tiktok today. Tick tok is not just PCC(E)’s cool dance videos to Taylor Swift songs y’know!
Seriously though, all those dumb “Palestinian allies”, undatable campus girls “not doing well emotionally” protests… were FORMED by tiktok. The skew is s/t like 98% pro Palestine. It is the main vector of anti-West/ anti-Israel/ antisemitism.
So whether we get this one right is possibly the most important issue of our times.
Or whether that declining orange fool can be bought by another Chinese bitcoin bro. Again.
Agreed. Who controls TikTok matters hugely, given that it is by far the most popular site for kids and young people, and for many of them their main source of “news” and information about the world.
Currently TikTok is controlled by the Chinese, which means the algorithm strongly boosts and promotes anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-West, anti-white, anti-capitalist content, and whatever else the Chinese think will help destabilise the West. Currently the West is literally giving the Chinese control over what Western kids see on their phones for hours a day.
Lots of people (me included) are trying to work that out, Edward. It is directionally correct but there’s a lot of details to look into b/c of the way tech companies like this are set up. Let’s hope.
D.A.
NYC
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (24 Jan 1861-1937)
I’m afraid the U.S. will learn the wrong lesson from Trump. Replacing Trump with another mini-dictator is not the answer.
The presidency is simply too powerful. Congress needs to reclaim the power it ceded. We need term limits so politicians will think of more than their next election.
Trump is the least of our problems. You’re right on one front, Congress is a joke. Only recently have they begun to do their jobs as the House passed all the appropriation bills that should have been approved last year. We’ll see what the Senate does.
I wholeheartedly agree that the presidency—under both parties—has gotten too powerful. Congress needs to reclaim its authority and exercise its responsibilities rather than delegating them to or otherwise allowing them to be taken over by the executive branch.
Where I disagree with you strongly is on term limits. This would severely exacerbate the very problem you seem intent to corral. We need powerful senators and long-term representatives to keep the unelected administrative state of the executive branch in check; it can already stonewall a president of either party given existing term limits and pursue its own interests. I have seen first-hand the authority an entrenched senator can exercise when he insists on annual briefings from the executive branch on a matter of importance to him—and clearly indicates that he will accept no change on the matter without direct consultation.
Term limits would severely curtail the institutional knowledge, expertise, leverage, and relationships essential for effective exercise of power by our legislators. That the legislative branch is currently derelict in its duty is not an argument for giving it even less power to perform it.
In my view, the problem with Congress is that they are a bunch of cowards. They are terrified of losing their jobs. They are also terrified of being primaried by their own side.
What we need is for our representatives to do the right thing without fear. Term limits are the answer in my view, but I am open to other ideas.
I am also in favor of laws automatically sunsetting after a certain period — 10 years? Then, if the law is working it can be passed again, and if the law is not working it can be allowed to disappear.
If memory serves me, during the last several months when referencing (“framing,” “spinning”) the U.S. Insurrection Act, PBS News Hour, the NPR morning and evening news programs, and the NY Times have emphasized to the effect that the law was “created in 1807” and/or that it is a “19th century law,” and/or that it is “rarely used.” Short of reading media types’ minds, I can’t help but (reasonably) speculate that their position (and desire) is that the law should not be enforced because it is old and rarely used. Why else mention those two aspects?
If Wikipedia is correct:
“The second modification was the Third Enforcement Act in 1871 (§ 253) to protect Black Americans from attack by the Ku Klux Klan. The second modification of the Insurrection Act allowed the federal government to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[4]: 63–64
U.S. presidents invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) in the 19th century, and during the racial desegregation era to protect the Civil rights movement (1954–1968) in the 20th century.[8]”
Surely the aforementioned media outlets have approved of these modifications/invocations despite the law’s age and rarity of use. Surely it is a good thing that the law has rarely had to be enforced.
Since comments are sparse the first hour this morning, I want to comment on what a great read Matthew’s “Crick” is. I started it this week and must say it is hard to put it down. As a non-bio guy..until I audited a college freshman biochem course in 2019, my last previous bio course was as a high school sophomore in 1964 and that was simply classification of plants and animals…and mushrooms were still plants then!
My 2019 course brought me up to date a bit, so it is really fun, in “Crick”to see the double helix structure discovered without knowing where it goes to determine proteins. In his writing Matthew allows the story to unfold as Crick and company think about the processes and the “and company” are a whole pile of what we would call notables today in retrospect but are young researchers in early or mid career in the 1950’s.
I am only 200 pages in. Of course the dna work is early in his life so it is early in the book, and though it led to a Nobel Prize, not the climax. I look forward to having the next 300 pages for company this frigid weekend.
I highly recommend this book as very readable, informative, and entertaining. Thank you Matthew!
“I understand, I sense that you’re tired. But you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century which have rained down on the old continent. [..] You’re tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system are not; they’re not tired at all.”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn Warning to the West
1976
“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist”
I live in Crivitz, WI, practically straight north through Milwaukee and Green Bay, about 250 miles from Chicago. Low of -27 yesterday, a high of -3, and a low of -26 this morn. Don’t even want to think of the windchills. Evern the hardcore ice fishers and snowmobilers aren’t out.
A colleague of mine lives in Minneapolis. He flew home from Dallas yesterday morning (a 73 degree swing). His car wouldn’t start at the airport, but he had one of those jumper boxes. A colleague quipped, “Minnesota, come for the lakes, stay because your car wouldn’t start.”
Since the edited photo was published on the White House twitter account, I am assuming this is one of the Staff’s joke images, like Schumer in a sombrero. They seem to routinely do this to taunt their opponents.
Someone needs to tell Carlson that the Korean peninsula has been stable since 1953, and that the only country that’s jeopardized that has been North Korea. Even if getting the bomb has caused NK to settle down, the potential for catastrophy has increased dramatically. Hardly a positive.
You can say that Trump’s language around Greenland was “crazy”, but it’s clearly part of his maximalist negotiating style. And it worked. Someone once observed that, “If it’s crazy and it works, it’s not crazy.” Besides, the fact that he was able to turn it off like a switch shows that it was just a posture. Finally, journalists shouldn’t make predicitions; it’s the fastest way to show you partisanship.
“You can say that Trump’s language around Greenland was “crazy”, but it’s clearly part of his maximalist negotiating style. And it worked.”
Serious question, because I admit I’m not up on diplomatic negotiating tactics: how did it work?
It worked in the way of Trump getting something he wanted.
Though the US could have gotten the same thing at a much, much lower cost by just asking nicely.
So maybe it it wasn’t crazy, in the way of demolishing your bathroom to stop a dripping faucet is not crazy. No faucet, no dripping. It worked, so it’s not crazy.
So I guess subtly altering photos is fine for all sides then? Because the way graphic designers and other artsy professions vote, I don’t think it’s a winning strategy for the White House.
Happy Australia Day fellow current (and former) Aussies, and all those who call us “mate”!
The shrimp is on the barbie, the Fosters is cold, and we’re not gonna take any hippy bs about “stolen Aboriginal land.” 🙂
I’m sorry that you’re not cheerful enough to put together this week’s Caturday feature. But I understand. It’s too cold, and Trump’s derangement is getting worse. I’m on edge in the hope that his term ends before the world is denuded of human life—all life for that matter. That’s what it has come to: Hope. Ceiling Cat save us!
Related to our host’s recent posts here about ICE and the Minnesota protests, a thoughtful essay about the misinformation ecosystem from a left-of-centre pro-immigration social scientist.
Mike, I just now saw your comment here after earlier linking the same article–with some excerpts–on Jerry’s ICE post.
We could change the details while keeping the process and the misinformation ecosystem, and it would equally apply to sex/gender and an array of other politicized issues.
I regard the Korean peninsula as unstable and the northern nukes have made it worse. At this point, many countries have a quite powerful incentive to overthrow the Kim regime. Same holds for Iran. Lots of countries are powerfully motivated to stop the Iranian government. Without nukes the incentive would be less. Stopping Saddam’s nuclear program was one reason for invading Iraq.
On YouTube it’s not uncommon that the thumbnails (front screen shot) for police cam videos will show the perpetrator crying in handcuffs. Usually there’s a headline like “Shoplifter shocked to find the law applies to them!” Viewers know that particular scene is probably clickbait.
The doctored photo of Armstrong’s arrest looks just like those YouTube thumbnails (the same may apply to TikTok videos, idk.) Was it intentional satire? Is it supposed to be funny, and readers supposed to know that?
Maybe, but even if so it’s wildly inappropriate. I don’t think Trump’s technically mentally ill: I think he’s got a serious personality disorder which is apparently shared by at least some of the people who work for him. He’s temperamentally unfit to be president.
You just HAD to start me on TikTok…(sigh).
Will it be in American hands though? There are dueling arguments about this. Who finally controls the algorithm? Commie pukes or Americans? Imagine handing over most of US media – Jane Pawley and Briant Gumble included (heehe) …. and everything the kids watch – to the Kremlin in 1985. THAT’S tiktok today. Tick tok is not just PCC(E)’s cool dance videos to Taylor Swift songs y’know!
Seriously though, all those dumb “Palestinian allies”, undatable campus girls “not doing well emotionally” protests… were FORMED by tiktok. The skew is s/t like 98% pro Palestine. It is the main vector of anti-West/ anti-Israel/ antisemitism.
So whether we get this one right is possibly the most important issue of our times.
Or whether that declining orange fool can be bought by another Chinese bitcoin bro. Again.
D.A.
NYC
Agreed. Who controls TikTok matters hugely, given that it is by far the most popular site for kids and young people, and for many of them their main source of “news” and information about the world.
Currently TikTok is controlled by the Chinese, which means the algorithm strongly boosts and promotes anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-West, anti-white, anti-capitalist content, and whatever else the Chinese think will help destabilise the West. Currently the West is literally giving the Chinese control over what Western kids see on their phones for hours a day.
Will this agreement with Oracle change that (in the US)?
Lots of people (me included) are trying to work that out, Edward. It is directionally correct but there’s a lot of details to look into b/c of the way tech companies like this are set up. Let’s hope.
D.A.
NYC
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (24 Jan 1861-1937)
I’m afraid the U.S. will learn the wrong lesson from Trump. Replacing Trump with another mini-dictator is not the answer.
The presidency is simply too powerful. Congress needs to reclaim the power it ceded. We need term limits so politicians will think of more than their next election.
Trump is the least of our problems. You’re right on one front, Congress is a joke. Only recently have they begun to do their jobs as the House passed all the appropriation bills that should have been approved last year. We’ll see what the Senate does.
The other problem is the media. NOWHERE are the results of the Minnesota ICE operation being reported. We are not reading news, just propaganda. Take a look at this.
https://www.dhs.gov/wow?combine=&field_country_of_origin_target_id=All&field_state_value=Minnesota
Lysander,
I wholeheartedly agree that the presidency—under both parties—has gotten too powerful. Congress needs to reclaim its authority and exercise its responsibilities rather than delegating them to or otherwise allowing them to be taken over by the executive branch.
Where I disagree with you strongly is on term limits. This would severely exacerbate the very problem you seem intent to corral. We need powerful senators and long-term representatives to keep the unelected administrative state of the executive branch in check; it can already stonewall a president of either party given existing term limits and pursue its own interests. I have seen first-hand the authority an entrenched senator can exercise when he insists on annual briefings from the executive branch on a matter of importance to him—and clearly indicates that he will accept no change on the matter without direct consultation.
Term limits would severely curtail the institutional knowledge, expertise, leverage, and relationships essential for effective exercise of power by our legislators. That the legislative branch is currently derelict in its duty is not an argument for giving it even less power to perform it.
In my view, the problem with Congress is that they are a bunch of cowards. They are terrified of losing their jobs. They are also terrified of being primaried by their own side.
What we need is for our representatives to do the right thing without fear. Term limits are the answer in my view, but I am open to other ideas.
I am also in favor of laws automatically sunsetting after a certain period — 10 years? Then, if the law is working it can be passed again, and if the law is not working it can be allowed to disappear.
Good discussion, (thanks, Doug) and I’ve a question. How would you know if a law was “working”?
If memory serves me, during the last several months when referencing (“framing,” “spinning”) the U.S. Insurrection Act, PBS News Hour, the NPR morning and evening news programs, and the NY Times have emphasized to the effect that the law was “created in 1807” and/or that it is a “19th century law,” and/or that it is “rarely used.” Short of reading media types’ minds, I can’t help but (reasonably) speculate that their position (and desire) is that the law should not be enforced because it is old and rarely used. Why else mention those two aspects?
If Wikipedia is correct:
“The second modification was the Third Enforcement Act in 1871 (§ 253) to protect Black Americans from attack by the Ku Klux Klan. The second modification of the Insurrection Act allowed the federal government to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[4]: 63–64
U.S. presidents invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) in the 19th century, and during the racial desegregation era to protect the Civil rights movement (1954–1968) in the 20th century.[8]”
Surely the aforementioned media outlets have approved of these modifications/invocations despite the law’s age and rarity of use. Surely it is a good thing that the law has rarely had to be enforced.
Since comments are sparse the first hour this morning, I want to comment on what a great read Matthew’s “Crick” is. I started it this week and must say it is hard to put it down. As a non-bio guy..until I audited a college freshman biochem course in 2019, my last previous bio course was as a high school sophomore in 1964 and that was simply classification of plants and animals…and mushrooms were still plants then!
My 2019 course brought me up to date a bit, so it is really fun, in “Crick”to see the double helix structure discovered without knowing where it goes to determine proteins. In his writing Matthew allows the story to unfold as Crick and company think about the processes and the “and company” are a whole pile of what we would call notables today in retrospect but are young researchers in early or mid career in the 1950’s.
I am only 200 pages in. Of course the dna work is early in his life so it is early in the book, and though it led to a Nobel Prize, not the climax. I look forward to having the next 300 pages for company this frigid weekend.
I highly recommend this book as very readable, informative, and entertaining. Thank you Matthew!
“I understand, I sense that you’re tired. But you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century which have rained down on the old continent. [..] You’re tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system are not; they’re not tired at all.”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Warning to the West
1976
“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist”
-Charles Baudelaire
1864
See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/
I live in Crivitz, WI, practically straight north through Milwaukee and Green Bay, about 250 miles from Chicago. Low of -27 yesterday, a high of -3, and a low of -26 this morn. Don’t even want to think of the windchills. Evern the hardcore ice fishers and snowmobilers aren’t out.
A colleague of mine lives in Minneapolis. He flew home from Dallas yesterday morning (a 73 degree swing). His car wouldn’t start at the airport, but he had one of those jumper boxes. A colleague quipped, “Minnesota, come for the lakes, stay because your car wouldn’t start.”
Since the edited photo was published on the White House twitter account, I am assuming this is one of the Staff’s joke images, like Schumer in a sombrero. They seem to routinely do this to taunt their opponents.
Someone needs to tell Carlson that the Korean peninsula has been stable since 1953, and that the only country that’s jeopardized that has been North Korea. Even if getting the bomb has caused NK to settle down, the potential for catastrophy has increased dramatically. Hardly a positive.
You can say that Trump’s language around Greenland was “crazy”, but it’s clearly part of his maximalist negotiating style. And it worked. Someone once observed that, “If it’s crazy and it works, it’s not crazy.” Besides, the fact that he was able to turn it off like a switch shows that it was just a posture. Finally, journalists shouldn’t make predicitions; it’s the fastest way to show you partisanship.
“You can say that Trump’s language around Greenland was “crazy”, but it’s clearly part of his maximalist negotiating style. And it worked.”
Serious question, because I admit I’m not up on diplomatic negotiating tactics: how did it work?
It worked in the way of Trump getting something he wanted.
Though the US could have gotten the same thing at a much, much lower cost by just asking nicely.
So maybe it it wasn’t crazy, in the way of demolishing your bathroom to stop a dripping faucet is not crazy. No faucet, no dripping. It worked, so it’s not crazy.
So I guess subtly altering photos is fine for all sides then? Because the way graphic designers and other artsy professions vote, I don’t think it’s a winning strategy for the White House.
No he’s not crazy he’s just mental like … The Simpson’s Sideshow Bob.
Happy Australia Day fellow current (and former) Aussies, and all those who call us “mate”!
The shrimp is on the barbie, the Fosters is cold, and we’re not gonna take any hippy bs about “stolen Aboriginal land.” 🙂
D.A.
NYC
I’m sorry that you’re not cheerful enough to put together this week’s Caturday feature. But I understand. It’s too cold, and Trump’s derangement is getting worse. I’m on edge in the hope that his term ends before the world is denuded of human life—all life for that matter. That’s what it has come to: Hope. Ceiling Cat save us!
What?
I think it the responsibility of the speaker to be loud and clear. Listeners cannot listen loudly!
Related to our host’s recent posts here about ICE and the Minnesota protests, a thoughtful essay about the misinformation ecosystem from a left-of-centre pro-immigration social scientist.
https://alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/the-uncomfortable-truths-about-immigration
Mike, I just now saw your comment here after earlier linking the same article–with some excerpts–on Jerry’s ICE post.
We could change the details while keeping the process and the misinformation ecosystem, and it would equally apply to sex/gender and an array of other politicized issues.
I regard the Korean peninsula as unstable and the northern nukes have made it worse. At this point, many countries have a quite powerful incentive to overthrow the Kim regime. Same holds for Iran. Lots of countries are powerfully motivated to stop the Iranian government. Without nukes the incentive would be less. Stopping Saddam’s nuclear program was one reason for invading Iraq.
On YouTube it’s not uncommon that the thumbnails (front screen shot) for police cam videos will show the perpetrator crying in handcuffs. Usually there’s a headline like “Shoplifter shocked to find the law applies to them!” Viewers know that particular scene is probably clickbait.
The doctored photo of Armstrong’s arrest looks just like those YouTube thumbnails (the same may apply to TikTok videos, idk.) Was it intentional satire? Is it supposed to be funny, and readers supposed to know that?
Maybe, but even if so it’s wildly inappropriate. I don’t think Trump’s technically mentally ill: I think he’s got a serious personality disorder which is apparently shared by at least some of the people who work for him. He’s temperamentally unfit to be president.