Welcome to Thursday, January 29, 2026, with three more days left in this miserable slushy month. And it’s Seeing Eye Dog Day. Here’s a short (4.5 minutes) but heartening video of a blind woman named Susan, a psychologist, and her seeing eye dog Logan:
It’s also Curmudgeons Day (h/t to my friend Tim), Freethinkers Day, Gnocchi Day (in Argentina, for crying out loud!), National Corn Chip Day, and National Puzzle Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 29 Wikipedia page.
I am a bit sick today (head and tummy), so posting may be light. Here’s our weather for the next week in degrees Fahrenheit; high and low temperatures are given for each day. As you see, it was freezing when I came to work this morning and will not be above freezing (32°F) for the next week. On top of that, they predict four days with snow. Oy!
But one of my orchids bloomed this week. I think it’s a hybrid rather then a naturally-occurring species, but isn’t it pretty?
Da Nooz:
*Two DHS agents involved in the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have been placed on leave, presumably the two who fired shots at Pretti The same article describes how Ilhan Omar got squirted with some unknown but odiferous substance in a syringe [UPDATE: last night’s news said it was vinegar.]
The Department of Homeland Security agents involved in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday have been placed on leave as part of the department’s protocol, an official with the department said on Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear how many agents had been placed on leave [JAC: they announced it was two], but the announcement was a shift for Trump administration. On Sunday, Gregory Bovino, who was then overseeing President Trump’s Border Patrol operations in the city, told CNN that the agents involved in the shooting of the 37-year-old nurse had been moved to other cities and would “more than likely be on administrative duty.”
. . . Stephen Miller, a top aide to Mr. Trump, suggested that federal agents “may not have been following” protocol before the fatal shooting of Mr. Pretti, after making earlier comments in which he and other Trump administration officials portrayed the shooting as justified.
. . . Also on Wednesday, the Minneapolis and U.S. Capitol Police were investigating an attack on Representative Ilhan Omar the previous evening, when a man sprayed her with an unknown substance during a public event in the city. The attack was the latest reflection of the charged political climate over an aggressive federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota that has prompted an outpouring of anger.
Ms. Omar, a Democrat who represents part of Minneapolis and has been a frequent target of criticism from President Trump, was sprayed with a strong-smelling liquid during a town hall she was holding in her district on Tuesday evening to criticize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city.
The attack occurred just after Ms. Omar repeated her longstanding call to abolish ICE. Mirroring calls by other Democratic lawmakers, Ms. Omar also said Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, should resign or face impeachment for making false statements about the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis over the weekend.
Ms. Omar was uninjured, and a suspect was arrested. She initially moved toward the man with her fist raised before he was tackled by security officers. She resumed speaking after a brief pause, saying she would not be intimidated.
Both of these assaults represent unwarranted violence, something that’s becoming increasingly common these days. All I can say is that I decry it, and don’t agree with Trump when he said about Omar, “‘I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud,’ he said. ‘She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,’ he claimed.” I’m no fan of Omar, who’s an antisemite and an extremist progressive, but in no world should she be squirted, beat up, or shot. And I don’t think she “had herself sprayed”!
*The Washington Post reported yesterday that a familiar name, Colin Wright (he runs the Substack site “Reality’s Last Stand“, is suing Cornell for race discrimination: discriminating against white people like him.
Colin Wright, the plaintiff, was a postdoctoral researcher in that field at Pennsylvania State University at the time. He said he was seeking an academic job and was well qualified for the tenure-track position that Cornell allegedly filled without ever posting the job publicly, as was required by university policy.
Attorneys for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank with close ties to the Trump administration that brought the case, contend that internal documents classified a list of candidates by race, ethnicity, disability status and sexual orientation. Emails allegedly indicated that the department intentionally avoided a competitive search and planned to approach candidates one at a time until one accepted.
. . . . Wright saidhe was applying for similar roles in that field between 2018 and 2021. But he did not learn of the Cornell opening until last year, when whistleblowers released emails and AFPI filed a federal civil rights complaint.
A spokeswoman for Cornell declined to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.
Last summer, in response to the AFPI complaint, a spokeswoman said Cornell strictly prohibits unlawful bias or discrimination and “strongly disputes the allegations in the America First Policy Institute complaint that references a number of outdated websites or programs that have not been in use for many years.” She said the university had “further enhanced its compliance with civil rights laws” over the past year.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars hiring or declining to hire someone based on their race, among other factors. However, in the 1970s, the Supreme Court carved out an exception for affirmative action programs that seek to remedy past discrimination. Some experts said this exception was narrow, while others said it was broad enough to cover most of what universities have done in the name of diversity.
I don’t know where this lawsuit will go, but not posting a job publicly, along with the secret emails affirming that this was a race-based hire, is probably a violation of federal rules. The article goes on to mention that the previous Supreme Court case involving Harvard ruled against race-based admissions, but didn’t rule on race-based hiring. I suspect this case will go to the Supreme Court, in which case we’ll have to wait a long time. And of curse if the Court rules in favor of Colin, he wouldn’t want to take a job at a place where everyone would dislike him. As far as I know they hired an African American.
*At the “Trilobites” column in the NYT, writer Jack Tamislea describes a new “dome-headed dinosaur”
Head-butting was all the rage at the end of the dinosaurs’ reign.
During the Late Cretaceous period, several dinosaur lineages evolved dangerous headgear, including the dome-headed pachycephalosaur and the Pachyrhinosaurus, a horned dinosaur that sported a stump of gnarled bone on its face.
Other dinosaur groups, including birdlike theropods, appear to have avoided bashing one another head-on. But a newly discovered species of cassowary-size raptor from Mexico reveals that some of these featherweights may well have been more than capable of cracking skulls.
A team of paleontologists recently described a set of thick bones on top of the dinosaur’s braincase that fused together into a knobby bump. The scientists proposed that the new dinosaur, named Xenovenator (or “strange hunter”) espinosai, used the structure to ram into rivals. Their report was published this month in the journal Diversity.
“Raptorlike dinosaurs are often imagined primarily as agile predators using their claws and teeth,” said Héctor Rivera-Sylva, a paleontologist at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico, and the lead author of the paper. “Xenovenator reminds us that dinosaur behavior was likely far more diverse and nuanced.”
. . . However, not all scientists are convinced that Xenovenator was a troodontid. “It’s such a weird specimen,” said David Varricchio, a paleontologist at Montana State University who was not involved in the new paper. Because the braincase was isolated, he said, he thinks it is possible that it could belong to the skull of a larger dinosaur. “It looks big brained because this is all we have, but maybe it was part of a massive skull.”
This speices belongs to the pachycephalosaurs, about which Wikipedia says this:
The adaptive significance of the skull dome has been heavily debated. The popular hypothesis among the general public that the skull was used in head-butting, as sort of a dinosaurian battering ram, was first proposed by Colbert (1955), . This view was popularized in the 1956 science fiction story “A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp. Many paleontologists have since argued for the head-butting hypothesis, including Galton (1970) and Sues (1978). In this hypothesis, pachycephalosaurs rammed each other head-on, as do modern-day bighorn sheep and musk oxen.
Anatomical evidence for combative behavior includes vertebral articulations providing spinal rigidity, and the shape of the back indicating strong neck musculature. It has been suggested that a pachycephalosaur could make its head, neck, and body horizontally straight, in order to transmit stress during ramming. However, in no known dinosaur could the head, neck, and body be oriented in such a position. Instead, the cervical and anterior dorsal vertebrae of pachycephalosaurs show that the neck was carried in an “S”- or U-shaped curve.
There is by no means a consensus about the head dome; some think it was for species recognition, though that seems a bit unparsimonious in light of this additional information:
Histological examination reveals that pachycephalosaurid domes are composed of a unique form of fibrolamellar bone which contains fibroblasts that play a critical role in wound healing, and are capable of rapidly depositing bone during remodeling. Peterson et al. (2013) concluded that, taken together, the frequency of lesion distribution and the bone structure of frontoparietal domes lend strong support to the hypothesis that pachycephalosaurids used their unique cranial structures for agonistic behavior.
Here’s a drawing from Wikipedia, with the caption, “Hypothetical examples of pachycephalosaur combat behavior, varying per species: Pachycephalosaurus (A), Prenocephale (B), Stygimoloch (C)”
Their relative size (leftmost animal). You can see that they were more than a meter tall and several meters long including the tail
A video:
You can read the paper from Diversity by clicking on the title screenshot below, and at the site you can download a pdf.
Here are some skulls showing the thickened braincase (the dome, labeled as “fr”); photo and caption from the paper:
And a drawing of an envisioned Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis from Wikipedia:
*This is no surprise: Mayor Mamdani of NYC, facing a huge deficit, proposes to raise taxes, but only on the rich.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani says New York City is facing an unexpected $10 billion projected budget deficit in the coming year and plans to push state lawmakers to increase taxes on high-income New Yorkers and corporations to close the hole.
“We must raise taxes on the wealthiest few in New York City so that we can invest in the many,” the newly elected Democratic socialist mayor of the country’s largest city said in an interview Tuesday.
During the campaign, Mamdani pledged to raise taxes on millionaires and corporations to help fund his ambitious affordability agenda. But the plan drew swift rebuke from the city’s elite, who said a tax hike would drive the wealthiest out of New York. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who would have to sign off on the increases, has said she opposes income-tax hikes but has previously been more open to a potential corporate-tax increase. “I don’t believe in raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes,” she said earlier this month.
Mamdani said in the interview the tax increases were now urgently needed to meet the moment. “New York City has not seen a gap of this scale since the Great Recession,” he said, referring to the 2008-09 financial crisis. He added that his administration has already begun conversations with state officials.
Mamdani also wants Albany lawmakers to increase the amount of state funding the city receives. Hochul has boosted state funding to the city since she took office, according to a spokeswoman for the governor.
The mayor, who took office on Jan. 1, must present his first preliminary budget for the next fiscal year in February, kicking off months of wrangling with city council members over spending before the deadline for a final budget in June.
Yes, this will drive the rich out of New York City, and in droves. And I wonder if that deficit will get even bigger when Mamdani enacts his free public transportation, free childcare for all, and rent control.
*From the UPI’s “Odd News” section, a toddler equipped to be a pool (well, snooker) hustler:
A toddler pool prodigy in England has already broken two Guinness World Records for playing pool and snooker before his third birthday.
Jude Owens broke the record for the youngest person to make a snooker double pot at the age of 2 years and 261 days old.
“A double pot in snooker is when two balls are legally potted with a single strike of the cue ball, into different pockets,” Guinness World Records explained in a news release.
Owens followed up the feat by breaking the record for youngest person to make a pool bank shot at the age of 2 years and 302 days old.
“A bank shot in pool is when the cue ball is struck to hit the object ball off one or more rails before it enters a pocket,” GWR said.
The boy’s father, Luke Owens, said he knew Jude would excel at the sport from the first time he picked up a cue.
“Jude has achieved quite a lot in such a short space of time, but to have two world records, it’s probably a pinnacle moment — how do you even beat that?” the father told Guinness World Records. “Do I think he’ll be a world champion one day? As a father, you always hope your kids do well in life, so that would be the biggest aspiration if he was to achieve that.”
Look at this kid! He can’t even see the table without standing on a stool or lying on the table!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being bossy again:
Hili: About time you did the dishes.
Andrzej: The heating stove was broken, and we had no hot water.
Hili: Excuses, excuses.
In Polish:
Hili: Nareszcie pozmywałeś naczynia.
Ja: Piec był popsuty, nie było ciepłej wody.
Hili: Wymówki, wymówki.
*******************
From Things with Faces, a happy key fob:
From CinEmma:
From Funny and Strange Signs:
Tomorrow Masih will be in court facing a man convicted for plotting her murder on behalf of Iran. As the tweet says, she is not making this about herself:
Once again, @AlinejadMasih was asked about the third assassination plot against her own life.
Each time, she refused to make it about herself.
Listen to how she immediately turned the spotlight back to the massacre unfolding in Iran.That’s what real courage and moral clarity… pic.twitter.com/gDrOAxO3w1
— Monireh Kazemi (@MonirehKazemi) January 28, 2026
From Jay: When will Israel and the U.S. strike Iran? Or will they strike at all?
This has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while🤣💀🤣
The ending song is genius.
Whoever did this… it’s brilliant 😂@GAZAWOOD1 @Osint613 @fredforthemets @PaintingRodin @DangerousThinkg you’ll love this pic.twitter.com/UHieltLJaY
— Chaya’s Clan (@ChayasClan) January 27, 2026
Tweeted by Emma. I don’t necessarily agree with all of what’s said here, but it’s worth thinking about:
Chaps, there’s a reason these demonstrators are using whistles, horns, and making so much noise in all the video clips you are watching.
They don’t do these when protesting climate change or LGBTQ rights.
Those sudden, impulsive noises trigger the acoustic startle response.… pic.twitter.com/AlUvdUUTwa
— 𝖱𝖤𝖢𝖮𝖭𝟣 ®✞ (@Recon1_ZA) January 26, 2026
From Larry the Cat, who praises “Defib” the Ambulance Cat (read more about Defib here):
At ease Defib – job well done x https://t.co/LWAMnKhrSs
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 28, 2026
One from my feed:
If you are a woman in Afghanistan with a toothache, you can’t get treated.
Because women are denied the right to education, they cannot become dentists and male dentists are not allowed to treat female patients.
Currently, only a limited number of women dentists remain, and… pic.twitter.com/bne1zpz7Me— WDI.Afghanistan (@WDIAfghanistan1) January 27, 2026
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was six years old and would be 90 today had he lived. https://t.co/9rERTPopZ0
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 29, 2026
. . . and three from Dr. Cobb on a thread of funny science papers:
3️⃣A cat co-authored a scientific paper in 1975, when his owner, a physicist named Jack H. Hetherington, decided to add him as a second author to avoid changing the plural pronouns in his manuscript. Felis Domesticus Chester (F.D.C.) Willard scholar.google.com/citations?us…
— Alexis Verger 🧬🧫🧪 (@alexis-verger.cpesr.fr) 2026-01-28T08:46:04.183Z
8️⃣ Academic marriage proposal. In a 2015 paper, Caleb Brown left a subtly placed marriage proposal to his partner Lorna O’Brien. http://www.cell.com/current-biol…
— Alexis Verger 🧬🧫🧪 (@alexis-verger.cpesr.fr) 2026-01-28T12:07:46.304Z
9️⃣ In the 1971 issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, a paper was written in iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line) – the poetic style often used by Shakespeare.pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/…
— Alexis Verger 🧬🧫🧪 (@alexis-verger.cpesr.fr) 2026-01-28T12:32:12.821Z
There are more!
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on the top. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (29 Jan 1927-1989)
That is a very good quote.
A little nitpicking: The animated film that is being presented by Chaya’s Clan has a blopper. At 00:19 min, it is not Kier [sic!] Starmer who can be seen, but his predecessor Rishi Sunak with his dog, Nova.
Re Colin Wright lawsuit: It is not clear he has standing. There are cases holding no standing if one does not file an application for the job.
According to the Cornell Daily Sun, Wright received a notice from the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission that he had the right to sue
EEOC notice is really a notice that they (the EEOC) won’t sue. It is not informative, one way or the other, either that there is merit to a suit or that the private person has standing. In general, the Supreme Court is tightening standing rules.
I was thinking that it has no standing, so it will likely be dismissed. Also Wright probably knows that. But the desired effect is to cause significant change and significant punitive consequences, and it looks like both are happening.
If the job offer was not published, then no one would have standing. It’s a perfect dodge.
I think it is more likely than not Ilhan Omar “set up” her assault. She is a deeply fraudulent, dishonest person. Sometimes I feel PCC(E) is a bit naive when it comes to some utter scoundrels. 🙂
Loved the blind lady and her dog in NYC. Co-incidentally this month’s Sapolsky show talks about human dog communication. AND an interesting section on the genetic spread of the human race. His show is always worth the time and often pertinent to WEIT-style topics:
To wit:
D.A.
NYC
I agree that this seems like something she could have done. I wouldn’t put it past her. I watched the video of the incident, though, and I think that, if it had been fake, she would have played up her reaction more to make herself look stronger.
Please observe the rule about not posting too many times on a thead.
I note that Omar’s “accomplice” has been booked into Hennepin County Jail on charges of 3rd-degree assault. What I want to know is, how did the two know each other, when did they plot the ‘phony’ assault, what was the quid pro quo, and why did they settle upon apple cider vinegar as the liquid of choice? We must get to the bottom of this!
The bit about Omar setting up her own attack looks more like a conspiracy theory trying to be born. I guess we may know more later, but right now what is known about the attacker does not fit that.
For David Anderson:
Do you think Trump was right in all these other cases where he blamed the victim?
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/29/politics/ilhan-omar-trump-conspiracy-theory
No. I didn’t even know his reaction to this one. Nor did I know they charged the assaulting person, which tends towards it being a genuine assault.
My main point remains, though: she is not a person to be trusted.
Our reputations precede us.
D.A.
NYC
(so end my comments on this: roolz)
There is a very nice 2015 obituary for Prof J.F. Bunnett, lead author of the 1971 chemistry paper written in verse at
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/anie.201609518
He seems to have been a lovely example of some of the kindly and learned profs I was lucky enough to have met in the 1960’s. There is also an interesting editor’s note at the front of that paper…ah..the 60’s!
I was struck that the attitude attributed to Starmer (posing as Sunak – per RGBNo1 above) and of the ambulance station management that would try to kick out a cat after many years (and from what was once my local ambulance station – poor Defib!) epitomize the bureaucratic underpinnings of the weak economic performance of the UK in recent years.
The thing non-millionaire New Yorkers should be worried about, is who’s going to get taxed heavily to pay for all these things when there are no millionaires left? Who are the next rich kulaks?
Suggesting that the protestors in Minneapolis are using whistles to escalate and raise tensions is possibly right enough. But remember this is made against very much hated ICE thugs, outsiders, whose presence is itself seen as an escalation since they are literally the thing that the protesters are protesting.
The quieter protests over LGBTQ rights or climate change are instead countered by local police and local business security guards. They are part of the community and are not seen as the problem.
And the line: “Pretti and Good was (got?) exactly what they wanted. It’s usually someone else who ends up dying and not the instigator. ” Well, we have just learned that Pretti was apparently involved in an earlier altercation, so he was taking risks. But… Wtf?
I think one of the purposes of the citizens of Minneapolis is to warn potential targets that ICE is in the area. Whistles are a perfectly logical way to do this.
“We must raise taxes on the wealthiest few in New York City so that we can invest in the many,” the newly elected Democratic socialist mayor of the country’s largest city said in an interview Tuesday.”
I’d be ok with this as long as we can be assured that the additional tax revenue is going to be spent on things that actually benefit the public. Improved public transit, sanitation, and police services, for instance. I would like to see any such additional revenues earmarked for services like these, and then subject to frequent independent audits to ensure that the money is being spent in accordance with budgets and stated goals.
Unfortunately, without such discipline, accountability and public oversight, additional tax revenues will be likely be wasted and/or spent on ideological pet projects that do not benefit the public in any way.
Cool about the pachycephalosaurs! Colbert may very well have had it right back in 1955. Love the term “agonistic behavior” which, to a close approximation, is a euphemism for that most unsavory of activities: fighting. I was a HUGE dinosaur fanatic when I was in elementary school and some of what I know today about dinosaurs came from that time—such as the story of Roy Chapman Andrews discovering the first dinosaur eggs in Mongolia. How adventuresome, just what a young boy dreams of! Some of what I know about dinosaurs that ain’t so I also learned as a child. The most amazing thing of all—something that is so—is the fortunate fact that dinosaurs are still thriving today, in the form of Birds.