Welcome to shabbos for gentile cats: it’s Sunday, May 3, 2026, and Lemonade Day. Here’s a lemonade joke from the FB page The Language Nerds:
It’s also National Chocolate Custard Day, National Raspberry Popover Day, National Two Different Colored Shoes Day, Paranormal Day, and World Press Freedom Day.
Yesterday my last Ph.D. student, Daniel Matute (now a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), was given the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award for Early Achievement by the The University of Chicago Medical & Biological Sciences Alumni Association. The award was for his contributions to science, and he was the only Early Achievement Recipient.
Daniel, born in Colombia, showed up in my lab when I was on sabbatical, asking to do a short rotation. He was clearly a ball o’ fire, and I took him on as a student, whereupon he worked very hard and excelled beyond any expectations, publishing a gazillion papers before he graduated in 2011, and and winning the Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution awarded “to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist.” (My first student, Allen Orr, won it in 1993, and I’ve had just four students). Daniel’s c.v. shows an astounding 153 papers already, and he’s just a kid! He’s working on the genetics of speciation, mostly with Drosophila, and I’m proud of the lad. Congrats, Dr. Matute!
Here he is getting his award:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires presidents to remove U.S. forces from any conflict that Congress has not authorized within 60 days of the White House notifying Congress of hostilities — a deadline that Trump hit on Friday.
Trump wrote in his letter to lawmakers Friday that the conflict has been effectively over since the United States and Iran agreed last month to a ceasefire.
“There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026,” Trump wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post. “The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”The president’s argument echoed what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Trump also suggested Friday that he believes the requirement to withdraw U.S. forces within 60 days is unconstitutional.
“Most people consider it totally unconstitutional,” Trump told reporters. “Also, we had a ceasefire, so that gives you additional time.”
Well, we’ll let the Supreme Court determine if it’s constitutional or not; can’t they do an emergency order if it’s not? As for Trump, he apparently doesn’t recognize the system of checks and balances that underlies our government.
*The budget carrier Spirit Airlines has shut down after it didn’t get a big bailout from the government.
Spirit Airlines reshaped aviation in the United States by stripping down flying to its essentials and selling what were often the cheapest tickets around. But the airline shut down for good on Saturday, a victim of the rising costs it once excelled at controlling.
In a statement just after 2 a.m., Spirit said it had canceled all flights and told passengers not to go to the airport. On the airline’s homepage, a bright yellow banner declared that the airline was “winding down all operations.”
The budget airline had lost billions of dollars in recent years as it struggled with intense competition at its most important airports — Las Vegas, Florida and New York among them — and rising labor and aircraft maintenance costs.
As a result, Spirit filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and again in 2025. It had aimed to emerge from the second bankruptcy this summer as a smaller company, but those plans fell apart as jet fuel prices rose dramatically in recent weeks, a consequence of the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. The Trump administration started an 11th-hour effort to provide Spirit a lifeline, but government officials and the airline’s creditors could not reach a deal in time to save the company.
The shutdown leaves 17,000 full- and part-time Spirit employees without work and tens of thousands of customers without flights. Spirit said it would automatically issue refunds for tickets purchased on credit or debit cards and was working to get more than 1,300 flight crew members home.
Many other airlines said they would offer affected travelers discounted prices on flights to and from the airports that Spirit served. Some said that they would help stranded Spirit employees get home and United Airlines invited them to apply for jobs.
It’s gone, vanished: it is an ex-airline, singing with the Choir Invisible. There are no more bargain flights; even my favorite cut-rate airline, Southwest, is now charging for bags and its ticket prices have skyrocketed. This is going to put a crimp on people’s summer vacations, though Duck Duty will probably keep me here this summer. As for Southwest, well, I am no longer wedded to that airline, which is also a victim of rising prices but also of a willingness to abandon the unique character of that airline.
*After the NYT published a deeply misleading review of a book whose autistic author used “facilitated communication” to write (see my post here),, it’s now published an op-ed by Amy Lutz that’s a corrective: “Profound autism is difficult enough without this debunked method.” (h/t Greg Mayer).
As the mother of a profoundly autistic son, now 27, I have wished for so many miracles over the years: that Jonah was not really as cognitively impaired as he appeared; that one of the countless treatments we tried would be transformative; that he would one day go to college, pursue a meaningful career and do everything parents want their children to do. So I understand the allure of facilitated communication and similar methods, which promise to grant those wishes with a simple letter board or keyboard.
Facilitated Communication, or F.C., is an intervention in which profoundly autistic individuals spell messages with the physical support of a nondisabled facilitator, who generally provides direct touch to the speller’s hand, wrist, elbow or shoulder. There are variants of F.C., such as Spelling to Communicate and the Rapid Prompting Method, in which the facilitator typically holds a letter board and offers prompts. Grouped together, these methods are often referred to as “spelling.”
Such facilitation, proponents claim, unlocks hidden literacy inside people previously considered severely cognitively impaired. In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interviewed the father of a speller who wrote a book with his son. Discussing his takeaways from the book, Mr. Kennedy says the son “learned to do calculus in essentially a day.” According to “The Telepathy Tapes,” a popular podcast that first aired in 2024, there are spellers who can read their facilitators’ minds.
Here’s the thing about F.C., though: The science doesn’t back it up.
There are augmentative and alternative communication methods that work for many nonverbal or minimally verbal individuals: simple forms of sign language, various digital applications and the Picture Exchange Communication System — which employs small cards with images or icons primarily to convey requests. But communication produced by F.C. and its counterparts isn’t autonomous; it’s influenced by facilitators.
. . .Over time, many such studies have reported essentially the same thing: Spellers could not communicate information unknown to their facilitators. A 1995 study of seven adults in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis found that spellers “typed the correct answer only when the facilitator had access to the same information, never typed the correct answer when the facilitator had no information or false information and typed the picture or activity presented to the facilitator when it was different from the one experienced by the client.” In other words, when spellers and their facilitators were shown the same picture — for instance, a telephone — the speller successfully spelled out “telephone.” But when the speller was shown a telephone and the facilitator was shown a different picture — for example, a hat — the subject spelled out “hat,” which is what the facilitator saw.
A 2014 Finnish analysis concluded that messages produced using F.C. “revealed a large degree of facilitator influence on the content of the messages produced.” A review of this extensive literature published in 2014 found “unequivocal evidence for facilitator control: Messages generated through F.C. are authored by the facilitators rather than the individuals with disabilities.”
Virtually every relevant professional organization — including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities — has issued position statements opposing F.C. Some have also specifically issued statements recommending against the use of variants like the Rapid Prompting Method.
Not only the NYT, but also NBC fell for the notion that Woody Brown was really the “author” of the novel Upward Bound, but it worked only when Mom was the facilitator, and if you watch the videos, Woody is not pointing at the letters that his mother spells out. If you haven’t seen this video debunking the notion that Woody is “speaking” through his mom, do watch it. Facilitated communication has become a religion, completely untethered from reality.
*I was sure that the young humpback whale (“Timmy”) who was stranded in shallow water in Germany, and then towed back to the open sea in a huge, water-filled barge, was doomed. It simply couldn’t work, I thought, despite the tremendous expense (financed by rich animal lovers) of constructing the barge, putting in the whale, and then making the long, slow trek to open water. But it appears to have worked, which makes me very happy!
Rescuers have released a young humpback whale that became a national sensation after it was beached in shallow waters off the coast in Germany, although marine experts have said its chances of survival are low.
The whale, variously nicknamed Timmy or Hope, was released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported there in a water-filled barge by rescuers.
The 10-metre long calf swam out of the barge and was later observed blowing through its blowhole and swimming freely “in the right direction”, according to Karin Walter-Mommert from the rescue initiative.
The rescue attempt had been criticised by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) as “inadvisable” because the whale appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.
Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast also recommended the creature should be left to die in peace.
The whale has been described as lethargic and covered in blister-like blemishes, and parts of its mouth were believed to be caught in a fishing net.
The museum’s director, Burkard Baschek, has said trying to save the whale amounted to “pure animal cruelty”.
The rescue attempt was funded by two multimillionaires who said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the whale, which became stranded on a sandbank in Wismar Bay near the city of Lübeck nearly six weeks ago.
As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.
But after the whale’s plight garnered national interest, with coverage from TV channels and social media influencers, German authorities were persuaded to approve a privately financed rescue plan.
Initial attempts to save the whale with inflatable cushions and pontoons were unsuccessful, but divers eventually managed to help the creature on to a flooded barge , watched by hundreds of onlookers.
. . and here’s a video:
And 0ne of Timmy blowing after release. Go, Timmy!
He might still die, but I sure hope not. (And I hope they tagged it so researchers can keep track.)
*It’s really sad when a Nobel Laureate is imprisoned for political reasons, and it’s even sadder when she has recurrent medical problems but won’t get proper care in prison. That is the situation of Narges Mohammedi, 54, who has been in and out of Iranian prisons for political activity for ten years, and she’s currently in. (She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023.) As the AP reports, she’s been hospitalized with serious health issues.
Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after a “catastrophic deterioration” of her health, her foundation said Friday.
The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said the Nobel Prize laureate had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis.
Earlier Friday, Mohammadi had fainted twice in prison in Zanjan in northwestern Iran, according to the foundation. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident. At the time, she appeared pale, underweight and needed a nurse to help her walk.
The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest on Dec. 12, the foundation said.
“This transfer was done as an unavoidable necessity after prison doctors determined her condition could not be managed on-site, despite standing medical recommendations that she be treated by her specialized team in Tehran,” the foundation said.
Mohammadi’s family had advocated for her transfer to adequate medical facilities for weeks.
The foundation, quoting her family, said her transfer Friday to a hospital in Zanjan was “a desperate, ‘last-minute’ action that may be too late to address her critical needs.”
Mohammadi’s brother Hamidreza Mohammadi, who lives in Oslo, Norway, said in an audio message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation that her family is “fighting for her life.”
“My family in Iran is doing everything they can. But the prosecutors in Zanjan are blocking everything,” he said.
On March 24, Narges Mohammadi’s fellow inmates found her unconscious, her lawyers said she told them during the visit a few days later. Upon later examination at the prison’s clinic, a doctor told her that she probably had had a heart attack. She had chest pain and breathing difficulties since.
Mohammadi, a human rights activist and critic of the Iranian government, should have been released a long time ago, and while she was imprisoned she was not receiving much medical care. What she really needs is to go to a good hospital in Israel, Europe, or the U.S where she can can get the best treatment. Iran, of course, would prefer that she died, as they could just say it was an act of Allah and not due to the imprisonment. But of course it was a combination of both.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the kitties are playing The Wizard of Oz:
Andrzej: Where are you guys?
Hili: Look behind the curtain.
In Polish:
Ja: Gdzie wy jesteście?
Hili: Zajrzyj za firankę.
*******************
From Animals in Random Places:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From CinEmma:
From Luana; a duck story:
Masih is quiet today, but J. K. Rowling is her usual snarky self:
.@zarahsultana I assume this is a different Zarah Sultana MP to the one who was recently filmed clapping along to loudspeaker chants for intifada, on a street in Surrey.https://t.co/J9nLlYtw59 https://t.co/FUlo7Zg2rh
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 29, 2026
From Luana; Portland Mayor Katie Wilson, a “progressive” (and daughter of evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson), dodges questions about surveillance cameras after four shootings in Portland between April 26 and May 1. For the full video, go here.
Staffers for Seattle Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson abruptly end an interview with KOMO News Senior Reporter Chris Daniels when she can’t answer basic questions
Wilson has been criticized for dodging the press & being unable to answer basic questions since she came into office pic.twitter.com/eJnFtg6CLy
— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) May 1, 2026
The Number Ten cat is having a snooze:
The Bank Holiday weekend is here; wake me up on Tuesday x
(Photo @PoliticalPics) pic.twitter.com/IYDta63DnH— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 1, 2026
Two from my feed. What can you say about the first one?
A moment of silence for the real victim of the stabbing attack: The stabber pic.twitter.com/x42pSVv5HB
— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) May 1, 2026
A man helps a thirsty baby elephant. Is the mother thanking him?
Mama elephant thanks a person for giving water to her thirsty baby..❤️ pic.twitter.com/0SJVcf5jwo
— Love Music (@khnh80044) May 2, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed together with his mother after they arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T10:17:30.367Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, voyeurs in Texas sank a boat:
Also discovering Important Sciencey Facts – in their case in the fields of weight distribution and buoyancy – were the people who gave rise to this NBC News story in 2004
— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-05-02T09:03:13.519Z
And an Oggsford drake:
Congrats to Prof. Matute!
“As for Trump, he apparently doesn’t recognize the system of checks and balances that underlies our government.”
Checks and balances? Isn’t that so 18th century? Horse-and-buggy era silliness? I mean, here we are about to celebrate our 250th anniversary and we haven’t yet purged that nonsense and implemented something more worthy of our genius and moral sensibilities? Goodness, they didn’t even have skyscrapers and casinos back then!
Now, if the Constitution were embossed in gold, The Donald might give it a look.
On a less playful note, I too wish the Supreme Court would weigh in on the War Powers Act.