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, June, 20, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats, and World Juggling Day. Here’s a short performance by a man who’s been called “the best juggler in the world”:
There’s another Google World Cup Doodle today. Click to see the results of yesterday’s games and today’s upcoming games:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: The U.S. beat Australia 2-0, winning its second game and advancing to the knockout stage in the World Cup. From yesterday’s ESPN:
The United States were back in FIFA World Cup action today in Seattle as they took on Australia.
Following its impressive 4-1 win last week against Paraguay in its group stage opener, Mauricio Pochettino’s team continued their winning streak by defeating the Socceroos 2-0, with an own goal from Cameron Burgess and another from Alex Freeman as they have now booked their spots into the next round.
The highlights (the two U.S. goals are at 2:22 and 5:35):
Black smoke from a burning oil refinery filled the Moscow sky. The city’s four airports were urgently closed. And part of the busy highway that rings the Russian capital, a metropolis of 13 million people, was shut down.
As Ukraine escalated its effort to bring the war home for Russians, the strikes on Thursday appeared to be the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the war more than four years ago.
No deaths were immediately reported. But the large-scale assault seemed likely to feed fears among Russians that the Kremlin’s ability to isolate society from the impacts of the war was sharply eroding. That would usher in a new stage for a conflict that has now run longer than World War I.
For days, lines have formed and rationing has been implemented at gas stations in dozens of Russian regions, as persistent Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries and processing facilities have threatened a fuel shortage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in a voice memo shared with journalists on Thursday, warned, “If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.”
I wonder where Zelenskyy is getting his drones, but I had no idea they would go so far: the distance between the Ukrainian border and Moscow is over 11oo km. The Russian invasion was over four years ago, and scrappy Ukraine is striking back hard. I had no idea that the fightiong would go on this long; as I recall, I predicted that Russia would take over all of Ukraine within a year or two.
Four IDF soldiers were killed overnight in a Hezbollah attack in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Tebnit, and five soldiers were wounded there hours later, the military said Friday.
Lebanon’s health ministry, meanwhile, reported at least 18 people killed by Israeli strikes. The tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The violence was the latest in deadly clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group that have continued in Lebanon since the US and Iran this week reached a memorandum of understanding that committed them and their allies to halt hostilities in the country.
Israel, which was not party to the MOU, has rebuffed Iranian demands that it withdraw from a buffer zone in south Lebanon meant to protect border towns against Hezbollah attacks. A US official told Axios that Iranian anger over Israeli military activity there may be the reason US-Iranian talks scheduled for Friday were canceled.
In the Hezbollah attack shortly past midnight, a suspected drone or anti-tank missile struck the tank of Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, commander of the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, killing all four crew members, the IDF said.
The names of the three other soldiers killed in the incident will be published later. The exact cause of the explosion is under further investigation by the IDF.
All the news I get implies that Hezbollah struck first and Israel was retaliating, but I’m pretty sure that Israel is not going to listen to Trump’s demands that it stop attacking Hezbollah as it could scupper the misguided “MoI.” This is an existential fight for Israel, and it won’t tolerate the northern part of the country being under continuous attack. Yesterday a cease-fire was supposed to go into effect, but it is not holding in Lebanon.
From the NYT:
Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.
It accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.
Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. The deal’s requirement that American forces retreat from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days means that Iran can boast that it has chased the U.S. military out of the region.
Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran’s missile arsenal or its support of Israel’s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Worse still for Israel, by constraining its military in Lebanon — indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country — the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war.
The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran may receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran’s militia allies around the Middle East.
And from Amit Segal:
It’s Friday, June 19, and overnight Hezbollah has continued its campaign against IDF forces in southern Lebanon. A commander’s tank was struck by a drone or missile, killing four—among them the battalion commander, while in another sector of the front five Israeli soldiers were badly wounded by an explosive drone. In response, the Israeli Air Force has carried out an extensive bombing campaign across numerous villages.
The fallout was swift. Talks scheduled for today in Switzerland between the United States and Iran—meant to implement the peace deal—were canceled, with Iran citing the IDF’s actions in its fiefdom in southern Lebanon.
This confrontation was inevitable from the moment digital ink hit digital paper on the Memorandum of Understanding. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel is a signatory to the agreement, and the two have been touting entirely different versions of it. Iran has assured its proxy that an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon is written into the U.S.-Iran MoU, to unfold over a phased 60-day period. Israel, meanwhile, has declared that it will not evacuate its positions in southern Lebanon—and insists it has not been asked to—while U.S. officials have reportedly told it that its right to respond to threats will not be infringed.
The larger question—whether Israel may strike “emerging” threats—isn’t addressed here directly, since this was a response to an attack, not a buildup of Hezbollah forces. But if the Trump administration won’t tolerate an Israeli reprisal to a Hezbollah strike, it certainly won’t stomach Israel hitting a growing missile storage facility on its border.
Trump’s own comments have been ambiguous. Beyond an endorsement of the “precise and humanitarian” warfighting style of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa—the former ISIS leader—he has not told Israel to stop outright. Most of his remarks echo the sentiment he offered two days ago: “I want Israel to be able to protect themselves, but I do want them to use good judgment.” “Good judgment,” one suspects, means Trump’s judgment—a phrase I’ve lately found hard to pair with so flattering an adjective. When the president wakes up, I imagine Truth Social will feature a more profane word for Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision-making.
For all that, the recent conversation between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was surprisingly friendly. On the outside, they reported—and quite rightly so—a rift in relations, about throwing Israel under the bus, but between the driver and the one being run over, a calm and quiet conversation took place. For listeners, it brought to mind the story of King David, who fasted and prayed for his sick son. Precisely when the son died, he arose and shook off his mourning: “Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?”
Trump’s MoI and his behavior is unprecedented, as it demands that an (erstwhile) U.S. ally stop defending itself against terrorists who aren’t even soldiers of a sovereign nation. And it tacitly allows Iran to keep funding terrorism against Israel. I keep saying that Israel is the only country on earth that is prevented from winning a defensive war, and that’s what we see now.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Thursday lashed out at members of Israel’s government, saying that the country is deeply isolated and its leaders have failed to appreciate American diplomatic and military support.
“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said during a a news briefing at the White House. “The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
Israel and the U.S. jointly launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28, closely coordinating the more than monthlong military operation.
AD
But disagreements quickly emerged following a preliminary April 8 ceasefire agreement, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushing to continue the campaign and Trump moving to wind down a war that was deeply unpopular in the U.S. and rattled the global economy.
Vance of course is acting on Trump’s orders, but I’m sick of him rebuking Israel, just as he rebuked Zelensky for not being “grateful enough” for U.S. aid. It’s like Roosevelt demanding that Churchill show gratitude to the U.S. during WWII for the huge amount of aid we gave the Brits.
But just wait what you see if a Democrat becomes President in a few years. I suspect that Israel will become our enemy and Palestine our ally. (I’m not a one-issue voter, but where the Democrats stand on Israel is pretty clear.) And Israel is isolated because of antisemitism and ignorance, not because of Netanyahu, who, while he has serious political problems, will be replaced by some other PM who will be equally demonized and made the focus of the world’s ire. Are the Palestinian territories “deeply isolated”? I don’t think so. Hamas, as you know, is still in control of Gaza despite Trump’s “peace plan” there. That plan called for them to have disarmed and disbanded by now.
→ Now you’re just gay-baiting: Sometimes I think President Trump reads TGIF and wants to give me fodder—I call this joke laundering—then I remember he only consumes visual media (animated videos of smiling jumping vegetables, Megyn Kelly’s podcast, and Rosie O’Donnell’s Instagram stories). But here is Trump talking about Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi: “He was in a hotel and I met him, and we fell in love, deeply in love. . . . we didn’t know each other before that. We had great chemistry, and I stayed twice as long as I was supposed to.” Are you sure you’re not just sprinkling in these quotes every week to taunt me? If you’re reading this, T, how many Big Macs am I holding up?
→ Nick Kristof investigation: Nicholas Kristof—beloved mascot of The New York Times, moral beacon for all young writers who wonder if they, too, could claim that Israel is training dogs to rape humans—is in trouble. Remember how he briefly took a hiatus to run for governor of Oregon? Well, people donated to that campaign. And now he’s back at TheNew York Times paying those donors back by quoting them, a ton, very positively, in the newspaper of record. A little tit-for-tat, if you will. “Previous political donations made by some people Nick Kristof mentioned in his columns should have been made more clear to readers,” the paper’s spokesperson told Semafor when called on to comment. Nothing will happen. This scandal will disappear. If your politics are seen as good by America’s intelligentsia, you can literally be a journalist taking money from sources. . . and it won’t touch you. Me, I do no crimes, and I give it a 50/50 chance I end up in literal jail when this is all over.
→ I wonder what they have in common?: The Zohran Mamdani–endorsed candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District is socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier. She has fun hobbies, like championing a convicted terrorist behind an Israeli supermarket bombing that killed two people. Oh, and she co-founded the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group that posted things like “Death to America.” At their debate this Tuesday, she also had to apologize for posting “fuck Kamala Harris” and attempted to explain why she attended a Times Square rally celebrating the October 7 massacre (she got lost on her way out of the M&M’s store after the purple M&M’s turned hallucinogenic). And just a million posts like this:
Soon, she’ll be paid by those taxpayers she hates so much. It’s perfect.
→ The rape commission: The independent rape gang inquiry report, spearheaded by United Kingdom MP Rupert Lowe, was released this week and it’s a very tough read. It claims that 250,000 British girls have been abused by these grooming gangs since the 1950s, that Prime Minister Keir Starmer let off 13,000 alleged rapists with just a warning letter, and London mayor Sadiq Khan was made personally aware of the rape gangs but publicly denied their existence. At one point, when a victim’s mother called the police, they reportedly told her: “You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” It’s a very imperfect document, relying on unverified testimonies from victims. Still, it’s damning.
Labour doesn’t want to release data on who occupies social housing, fearing that the information will lead to “racism” on social media. And according to this Daily Mail article, the UK’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit (RICU), which was originally created in 2007 to help monitor and curb al-Qaeda and Islamist propaganda, is now being used to influence public opinion around immigration. The agency allegedly handed out flowers in the wake of the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attacks to promote an environment of “grief” instead of anti-Muslim anger. Aww. . . so thoughtful. And by “thoughtful” I mean tactical and villainous. The group influences families of the rape gang victims not to reference race or religion in their statements. And as recently as last week, when protests spread across Northern Ireland after the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, allegedly by Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, RICU allegedly advised police to remove any mention of Alodid’s background from their messaging and to paint the protesters as thugs.
Three other Vermont towns [besides Bristol]—Hardwick, Hartford, and Underhill—also passed the four-part resolution this spring. It states:
WE AFFIRM our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people;
WE OPPOSE all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and
WE DECLARE ourselves an apartheid-free community and to that end,
WE PLEDGE to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.
The ultimate goal of the campaign, according to both public and internal materials reviewed by The Free Press, is to build support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and ultimately isolate the Jewish state financially, politically, and culturally.
Since the October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, American entities have embraced BDS with open arms. In May, a Brooklyn food co-op voted to strip Israeli products from the shelves after a push that dates back to 2009. More than a thousand artists and labels, including Björk, Lorde, and Paramore, have pledged to block and remove their music from “genocidal Israel,” since September 2025, according to No Music for Genocide organizers. Earlier this month, a group of Stanford students walked out of their graduation ceremony while Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered the commencement address in protest of the company’s $1.2 billion contract with Israel.
“This is BDS on steroids,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former counterterrorism analyst for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, who now runs the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s happening on Main Street, Wall Street, and college campuses. There is a breathless effort to isolate Israel at this moment.”
. . . Vermont, a state estimated to have fewer than 17,000 Jews, is an unlikely epicenter for the anti-Israel grassroots movement. Ten out of the 12 U.S. towns that have passed anti-apartheid pledges are in Vermont. And it’s already spreading beyond New England. Hundreds of unions, houses of worship, and businesses across the country have adopted the pledge, according to the Apartheid-Free network, an anti-Israel coalition led by the American Friends Service Committee. That includes an animal hospital in Florida, an Emmy-winning production company whose founder directed Taylor Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, and NYU Women Founders, a student club at New York University dedicated to ending “gender inequality in the business sphere.”
Many Vermont residents I spoke with said these abstract pledges about a faraway conflict have created a tense environment in the towns they once loved for their progressive values.
But the question of “why Vermont’ has been asked and answered. “Progressive” values now include demonization of Jews and Israel, masquerading as “anti-Zionism” or “Netanyahu is evil.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili both miss Malgorzata, who died just a bit over a year ago:
Hili: This is Małgorzata’s phone. Andrzej: Yes, sometimes people call her.
In Polish:
Hili: To jest Małgorzaty telefon.
Ja: Tak, czasem do niej ktoś dzwoni.
I’ve been following this but haven’t written about it. Luigi Mangione, accused murderer, changed his plea from “not guilty” to a “psychiatric” defense: a tacit admission that he did indeed kill Brian Thompson. But a day after that, they withdrew the psychiatric defense. Can they withdraw the public impression that Mangione in effect pleaded guilty?
In a stunning reversal, Luigi Mangione’s lawyers told a judge that he will no longer be asserting a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. https://t.co/hOw4AvaC0U
The Number Ten Cat calls attention to algae in D.C.’s reflecting pool. I suppose it’s from Trump ordering the pool’s bottom to be pained dark blue, which makes the water warmer, but I’m not sure. (We have a refractory algae problem in Botany Pond).
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old. She would be 92 today had she lived. https://t.co/o4NVRhOkhr
Two from Doc Cobb en France. First, a cave-adapted wasp, already evolutionarily losing wings and eyes:
Introducing the world's only known cave-adapted spider wasp… Troglopompilus miracaecatus (Pompilidae) from the caves of the Nullarbor, Australia.A world first: Eyeless, long limbs and antennae, highly reduced wings.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/…#cave #wasp #biodiversity
A very weird plant, but one related to “regular” plants including rhododendrons and cranberries.
Dried Ghost pipe – Indian PipeThis fascinating plant (Monotropa uniflora) is definitely one of nature’s weird wonders. Because it has no chlorophyll and doesn’t depend on photosynthesis, this ghostly white plant is able to grow in the darkest of forests.
Apparently they received a large shipment of drones from the US some time ago, but these were ineffective. So the Ukraine techs and engineers upgraded and repurposed these basic vehicles to their specific needs, including hitting Putin in the pocketbook to cut off his ability to pay soldiers and the oligarchs. The Ukraine seems to take the initiative to solve their problems, much like Israel did in her several existential wars over the years.
Several European countries are supplying Ukraine with drones, but the majority were actually developed domestically and are now being produced in large numbers by Ukraine itself. The Ukrainian drone industry, which was born more out of necessity—since Western countries have been too hesitant to supply cruise missiles and rockets—is now the most innovative in the world.
Deadly Precision: How Ukrainian Startups Are Changing Drone Warfare
Ukraine has transformed small, off-the-shelf drones from hobbyist gadgets into key weapons. Startups like NORDA Dynamics, based near Lviv, are developing specialized software for them and demonstrating just how rapidly warfare, the defense industry, and Europe’s security are changing.
Apparently Russia remains very top down in weapons development and is (at least for now) lagging in drone development.
Not only that. The Russian defense industry also has a massive problem with corruption and fraud. Government funds that were actually supposed to go toward weapons development were pocketed by company owners. Everyone looks out for themselves, after all.
Over these years, I had questioned the wisdom of Ukraine striking non-military targets in Russia, seeing as how that would not directly deplete Russias military infrastructure, and fearing it might increase patriotism of everyday Russians and make them support the war.
But lately I have been seeing the purpose of the strategy. Those sorts of strikes can actually undermine military abilities through wearing down their war economy, and embitter Russians about Putin. It seems obvious now.
I think that the Ukrainians are taking the view that if X (such as the oil refinery in Moscow that was the target of the latest attack) contributes to Russia’s ability to fight, then X is a legitimate military target. They have attacked oil production and ports on the Black Sea before; but the attack on a St. Petersburg refinery a couple of weeks back and the attack on a Moscow refinery I think is the first time they’ve attacked oil so close to major cities. Russia has always taken this position vis-a-vis Ukraine, attacking rail and electricity infrastructure, etc.; though Russian attacks have always seemed to me to be far more indiscriminate (perhaps due to the quality of the weapons used), and Russia has deliberately targeted civilians.
Per Reporting from Ukraine, Crimea is currently pretty well incapacitated. Supply routes by land are largely cut off, and now shipping in the Azov Sea has been compromised by strikes on communication systems on Russian ships bringing fuel in and grain out. It’s as if the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories have developed leprosy.
Being an Australian born American (but not a sports fan) whoever won that game: I win! 🙂 Surprising outcome though as Aussies are pretty good at soccer I thought. I guess they’ll be crying into their usual breakfast Fosters down there today. No shrimp barbies for YOU!
Love those medieval calligraphers’ tweets every day. Keep them coming.
Lebanon has to be occupied by Israel AT LEAST South of the Litani River. I’m sure you’d agree if you were trying to live your life in Northern Israel. PBS, being a Hamas/Hezb public relations arm mentioned the Israeli strike but not the IDF deaths that caused it. Of course.
D.A.
NYC
The medieval letters are hilarious!
Aussies don’t drink Fosters. American students at my former university here would get laughed at by the campus pub bartenders when they asked for a Fosters, which is a beer for export as it is extremely unpopular here. But the impression that Aussies drink Fosters just shows the enduring impact of all those old Paul Hogan ads in the USA.
Consequent to America’s victory over Australia in the World Cup, Steak ‘n Shake is offering shakes for $0.20, one per customer.
“Israel, which was not party to the MOU…”
I’m reminded of the withdrawal agreement the Trump administration negotiated with Afghanistan. Negotiations were held with the Taliban while the Afghan government was totally excluded from the talks. The Doha Agreement with the Taliban was signed in February 2020 and in August 2021 the Taliban entered Kabul and took over the country.
Best juggler in the world? He’s probably not active much anymore, but at one time I would have suggested Michael Moshen, who won a Macarthur grant and whose performances were widely celebrated. (When I had heard him introduced but had not yet seen his name written, I thought he was using a stage name, Michael MOTION.)
Is the algae problem in Botany Pond exacerbated by excessive enrichment of the water from it being befouled with duck feces? This is well described in other small habitats — I was surprised to see how tiny Botany Pond is — where human feeding increases the duck population beyond the ability of the volume- and diversity- impoverished ecosystem to dispose of their waste products. It’s one of the 11 or so reasons why feeding wild waterfowl is strongly discouraged, prohibited by many private property owners and in National Parks, or even outlawed.
It’s bad for the ducks, as the recent drama at Botany Pond gives some insight into. There are two much larger ponds very close, as the duck flies, to U Chicago, at Jackson Park and Washington Park, that should offer better habitat with higher carrying capacity. That’s likely where the stressed hens encumbered with broods try to escape to from Botany Pond with slim chances of making it, and where they would go to forage in the first place if not attracted by artificial feeding.
is just one of several pages of Google hits on the topic. This is not a controversial, contrarian, or empathy-deficient view. I’m nagging because I care about wildlife, too.
University of California Davis prohibits feeding waterfowl — this extends to nutritious food, not just bread and human junk food — at its ponds.
(I don’t know why the Reflecting Pool has algae, but mallards and non-migratory Canada geese are now everywhere.)
I’m sorry but you don’t know what you are talking about. The algae is caused by the lack of shade on the pond that would otherwise impede its growth, and the absence of vegetation like water lilies that were always there in the previous incarnation of the pond. They cannot plant vegetation because the bottom is no longer dirt but stones, and so vegtation is put in in pots and cannot root or spread.
The hens are stressed this year because we have aggressive drakes trying to mate with them. This has not happened before.
You have no diea about whether the stressed hens are tryng to escapt to the other ponds.
When we had several other broods and more ducks in Botany Pond in previous years, we did not have this algae problem. And we’ve had ducks in the natural pond since the early 1900s.
I’m not sure what you want me to do given that ducks breed in Botany Pond and there is not enough food for all the offspring. But what I do see is that you are telling me, knowing very little about the situation, that I should stop feeding them and let them fend for themselves. And yes, you’re nagging, but without knowing the situation in Botany Pond. I suggest you go nag somebody else, perhaps at Pharyngula.
If nagging were a martial art, it would be dishonourable to go after such a soft target as PZ & Co.
My pond has a liner, so there is no soil at the bottom, but I wanted to have plants in the pond. You can buy mesh baskets specifically for planting in a pond. You line the basket with sacking and then fill it with special aquatic compost and aquatic gravel, which don’t affect wildlife in the pond.
You can also buy floating baskets that you plant up the same way, but they move around the pond according to the wind as they have a flotation ring on them.
I don’t have any ducks in my pond, but apparently ducks like the following plants…… purple loosestrife, Pendulous sedge, Cyperus sedge, Greater pond sedge, Sweet galingale, Hard rush, True bulrush, Bog bean, Soft rush, Yellow flag, Narrow reedmace, Gypsywort, Marsh woundwort, Water forget-me-not and Mare’s tail.
Many of these have lovely flowers and humans can enjoy them as well as ducks.
The tall Cotton grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) on the left in the link below is doing really well in a basket it shares with a Corkscrew Rush (Juncus effusus spiralis) that sits on the bottom of the pond, and the scouring rush (Equisetum Hyemale) in the centre of the pond is in a floating basket that moves around depending on the wind.
I have newts and tadpoles in the pond and they seem happy.
I hope you can get some planting in the pond, the turtles may like it too.
Certainly there’s plenty of algae food in the Reflecting Pond, given the water source (the Potomac) and the presence of birds; but painting the pond a heat-absorbing blue must have exacerbated the problem.
Make Algae Great Again, as some columnist had it.
Make Algae Great Again — FUngus Can Kill YOU!
So I’ve come to understand why the reflecting pool in Washington has turned green, since the darker blue caused it to warm up, and it apparantly uses water pumped straight in from the Potomac! It should have been remodeled like a swimming pool, with a lighter blue paint, and filtered chlorinated water. It is baffling why no one thought of that first.
And maybe a deep-end, diving board, and a Jackie’s Wacky Golf course…Trump Inc projects always kick my brain toward Caddyshack 2 with Jackie Mason as the designer in chief and a legal stable full of Randy Quaids instituting the “Peter Blunt System”.
And now it’s peeling. I have to wonder if it was refilled prematurely (without giving the new coating time to cure properly), so that it would be full in time for the President’s Birthday Party.
Dammit! Didn’t they read the sign No Peeling in the Pool ??
Israel cannot and will not abrogate its responsibility to protect its people from Hezbollah. I’m sickened that the Trump administration was duped into linking Iran and Lebanon, thereby allowing Iran to dial up or down the conflict at will. If Iran wants to delay the negotiations, it directs Hezbollah to attack Israel, prompting a response and providing Iran an opening to call foul. If Iran is satisfied with the way the proceedings are going, it keeps Hezbollah in check, and Israel stands down. It’s disgusting, and Israel cannot be expected to comply.
And I’m completely appalled at Vice President Vance for stating that the U.S. is the only major country in the world that is sympathetic to Israel. Saying this in response to statements coming from far right Israeli ministers—specifically Ben-Gvir, who (stupidly) said “all Lebanon must burn”—Vance implied that Israel deserves to be a pariah state hated everywhere. Vance’s demonization of the State of Israel is as damaging as the MOU itself.
So now the circle is closing. The Democrats have already abandoned Israel, and the Republicans—led by Vance—are threatening to follow suit.
Although there is no record of Vance playing any ball sport, I expect he is the one who has been designated to publicly throw Israel under under a bus.
Re Nellie Bowles’s mention of Darializa Avila Chevalier:
In <a href=”https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/darializa-avila-chevalier-on-housing”> this transcript of an interview, Ms. Chevalier addresses, in a very Democratic Socialists of America kind-of-way, her views on housing, immigration, borders, Israel, and Palestine. She also supports voting rights for non-citizens, something, by-the-way, that will be on Los Angeles’s November third ballot.
Near the end of the interview, she is asked “you’ve been a prison abolitionist, a decarceralist. What should happen to somebody who has killed somebody else?”.
To anyone who chooses to read her responses to the interviewer’s repeated attempts to get an answer to his question: please monitor your blood pressure while doing so.
I also love the medieval calligraphers’ tweets and have noticed that they are from music manuscripts (or, I suspect, from a particular one). Can anyone identify which manuscript they are from? Almost all notated music in the medieval period was in religious manuscripts, in addition to which most of the people who could read either text or music were in the religious orders. So the fact that all these people are naked surprises me.
Maybe it is a bit like the wooden figures on the choir stalls of the cathedral in Ulm, where the carvers depicted all sorts of beings in places where the public couldn’t see them, as under the seats in the choir stalls (an owl, a man sticking his tongue out, etc.). Hidden self-expression?
Not only did they qualify, but with Paraguay’s victory over Turkey, they won the group. Hooray! I hope they get into the quarter finals at least.
F*ck Vance. Every time he opens his mouth, he appalls me – from his disgraceful slanders of Haitian immigrants to his efforts to blame the innocent people who were murdered in cold blood by ICE for their own murders to his contemptible rebuke of a leader of country in a battle for its survival for not wearing a suit. That barely scratches the surface.
And now he is telling brazen lies about the MUO. This short Bulwark video – 12 minutes – deconstructs the lies. Not only haven’t we prevented Iran from becoming a nuclear power, I fear we’ve just paved the way.
I follow The Prosecutors podcast and they recently had this very interesting article comparing public reactions to Luigi Mangione and Mackenzie Shirilla.
They mentioned Mangione’s plea change and wonder whether his social media profile made him drop what would probably be the most effective defence for his crime. The psychiatric defense would mean that he would have to admit in court that he committed the crime and claim it was because he was mentally unwell. His supporters seem to laud him because they want to believe that he deliberately murdered Brian Thompson, and that may be why that defence was withdrawn. But it means that he is at risk of life imprisonment for murder, instead of a lesser charge of manslaughter, if the psychiatric defence was believed by the jury.
It’s alarming that people don’t seem to be looking at the evidence, and are judging them both by their attitude and appearance. The victims seem to have been lost in all the speculation.
Where did they get the drones? The always reliable Anne Applebaum discusses the Ukraine drone development and strategy in her substack at url
https://anneapplebaum.substack.com/p/moscow-is-burning
Apparently they received a large shipment of drones from the US some time ago, but these were ineffective. So the Ukraine techs and engineers upgraded and repurposed these basic vehicles to their specific needs, including hitting Putin in the pocketbook to cut off his ability to pay soldiers and the oligarchs. The Ukraine seems to take the initiative to solve their problems, much like Israel did in her several existential wars over the years.
Several European countries are supplying Ukraine with drones, but the majority were actually developed domestically and are now being produced in large numbers by Ukraine itself. The Ukrainian drone industry, which was born more out of necessity—since Western countries have been too hesitant to supply cruise missiles and rockets—is now the most innovative in the world.
https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/welt/osteuropa/land-leute/drohnen-ukraine-krieg-ruestungsindustrie-fpv-luftabwehr-abfangdrohnen-shahed-russland-startups-100.html
Apparently Russia remains very top down in weapons development and is (at least for now) lagging in drone development.
Not only that. The Russian defense industry also has a massive problem with corruption and fraud. Government funds that were actually supposed to go toward weapons development were pocketed by company owners. Everyone looks out for themselves, after all.
Over these years, I had questioned the wisdom of Ukraine striking non-military targets in Russia, seeing as how that would not directly deplete Russias military infrastructure, and fearing it might increase patriotism of everyday Russians and make them support the war.
But lately I have been seeing the purpose of the strategy. Those sorts of strikes can actually undermine military abilities through wearing down their war economy, and embitter Russians about Putin. It seems obvious now.
I think that the Ukrainians are taking the view that if X (such as the oil refinery in Moscow that was the target of the latest attack) contributes to Russia’s ability to fight, then X is a legitimate military target. They have attacked oil production and ports on the Black Sea before; but the attack on a St. Petersburg refinery a couple of weeks back and the attack on a Moscow refinery I think is the first time they’ve attacked oil so close to major cities. Russia has always taken this position vis-a-vis Ukraine, attacking rail and electricity infrastructure, etc.; though Russian attacks have always seemed to me to be far more indiscriminate (perhaps due to the quality of the weapons used), and Russia has deliberately targeted civilians.
Per Reporting from Ukraine, Crimea is currently pretty well incapacitated. Supply routes by land are largely cut off, and now shipping in the Azov Sea has been compromised by strikes on communication systems on Russian ships bringing fuel in and grain out. It’s as if the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories have developed leprosy.
Being an Australian born American (but not a sports fan) whoever won that game: I win! 🙂 Surprising outcome though as Aussies are pretty good at soccer I thought. I guess they’ll be crying into their usual breakfast Fosters down there today. No shrimp barbies for YOU!
Love those medieval calligraphers’ tweets every day. Keep them coming.
Lebanon has to be occupied by Israel AT LEAST South of the Litani River. I’m sure you’d agree if you were trying to live your life in Northern Israel. PBS, being a Hamas/Hezb public relations arm mentioned the Israeli strike but not the IDF deaths that caused it. Of course.
D.A.
NYC
The medieval letters are hilarious!
Aussies don’t drink Fosters. American students at my former university here would get laughed at by the campus pub bartenders when they asked for a Fosters, which is a beer for export as it is extremely unpopular here. But the impression that Aussies drink Fosters just shows the enduring impact of all those old Paul Hogan ads in the USA.
Consequent to America’s victory over Australia in the World Cup, Steak ‘n Shake is offering shakes for $0.20, one per customer.
“Israel, which was not party to the MOU…”
I’m reminded of the withdrawal agreement the Trump administration negotiated with Afghanistan. Negotiations were held with the Taliban while the Afghan government was totally excluded from the talks. The Doha Agreement with the Taliban was signed in February 2020 and in August 2021 the Taliban entered Kabul and took over the country.
Best juggler in the world? He’s probably not active much anymore, but at one time I would have suggested Michael Moshen, who won a Macarthur grant and whose performances were widely celebrated. (When I had heard him introduced but had not yet seen his name written, I thought he was using a stage name, Michael MOTION.)
Here is a link for his classic “The Triangle” act: https://youtu.be/qjHoedoSUXY?si=h_YvvBwVwMf7XaT5
Is the algae problem in Botany Pond exacerbated by excessive enrichment of the water from it being befouled with duck feces? This is well described in other small habitats — I was surprised to see how tiny Botany Pond is — where human feeding increases the duck population beyond the ability of the volume- and diversity- impoverished ecosystem to dispose of their waste products. It’s one of the 11 or so reasons why feeding wild waterfowl is strongly discouraged, prohibited by many private property owners and in National Parks, or even outlawed.
It’s bad for the ducks, as the recent drama at Botany Pond gives some insight into. There are two much larger ponds very close, as the duck flies, to U Chicago, at Jackson Park and Washington Park, that should offer better habitat with higher carrying capacity. That’s likely where the stressed hens encumbered with broods try to escape to from Botany Pond with slim chances of making it, and where they would go to forage in the first place if not attracted by artificial feeding.
is just one of several pages of Google hits on the topic. This is not a controversial, contrarian, or empathy-deficient view. I’m nagging because I care about wildlife, too.
University of California Davis prohibits feeding waterfowl — this extends to nutritious food, not just bread and human junk food — at its ponds.
(I don’t know why the Reflecting Pool has algae, but mallards and non-migratory Canada geese are now everywhere.)
I’m sorry but you don’t know what you are talking about. The algae is caused by the lack of shade on the pond that would otherwise impede its growth, and the absence of vegetation like water lilies that were always there in the previous incarnation of the pond. They cannot plant vegetation because the bottom is no longer dirt but stones, and so vegtation is put in in pots and cannot root or spread.
The hens are stressed this year because we have aggressive drakes trying to mate with them. This has not happened before.
You have no diea about whether the stressed hens are tryng to escapt to the other ponds.
When we had several other broods and more ducks in Botany Pond in previous years, we did not have this algae problem. And we’ve had ducks in the natural pond since the early 1900s.
I’m not sure what you want me to do given that ducks breed in Botany Pond and there is not enough food for all the offspring. But what I do see is that you are telling me, knowing very little about the situation, that I should stop feeding them and let them fend for themselves. And yes, you’re nagging, but without knowing the situation in Botany Pond. I suggest you go nag somebody else, perhaps at Pharyngula.
If nagging were a martial art, it would be dishonourable to go after such a soft target as PZ & Co.
My pond has a liner, so there is no soil at the bottom, but I wanted to have plants in the pond. You can buy mesh baskets specifically for planting in a pond. You line the basket with sacking and then fill it with special aquatic compost and aquatic gravel, which don’t affect wildlife in the pond.
You can also buy floating baskets that you plant up the same way, but they move around the pond according to the wind as they have a flotation ring on them.
I don’t have any ducks in my pond, but apparently ducks like the following plants…… purple loosestrife, Pendulous sedge, Cyperus sedge, Greater pond sedge, Sweet galingale, Hard rush, True bulrush, Bog bean, Soft rush, Yellow flag, Narrow reedmace, Gypsywort, Marsh woundwort, Water forget-me-not and Mare’s tail.
Many of these have lovely flowers and humans can enjoy them as well as ducks.
The tall Cotton grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) on the left in the link below is doing really well in a basket it shares with a Corkscrew Rush (Juncus effusus spiralis) that sits on the bottom of the pond, and the scouring rush (Equisetum Hyemale) in the centre of the pond is in a floating basket that moves around depending on the wind.
I have newts and tadpoles in the pond and they seem happy.
I hope you can get some planting in the pond, the turtles may like it too.
https://x.com/i/status/2068825466509664530
Certainly there’s plenty of algae food in the Reflecting Pond, given the water source (the Potomac) and the presence of birds; but painting the pond a heat-absorbing blue must have exacerbated the problem.
Make Algae Great Again, as some columnist had it.
Make Algae Great Again — FUngus Can Kill YOU!
So I’ve come to understand why the reflecting pool in Washington has turned green, since the darker blue caused it to warm up, and it apparantly uses water pumped straight in from the Potomac! It should have been remodeled like a swimming pool, with a lighter blue paint, and filtered chlorinated water. It is baffling why no one thought of that first.
And maybe a deep-end, diving board, and a Jackie’s Wacky Golf course…Trump Inc projects always kick my brain toward Caddyshack 2 with Jackie Mason as the designer in chief and a legal stable full of Randy Quaids instituting the “Peter Blunt System”.
And now it’s peeling. I have to wonder if it was refilled prematurely (without giving the new coating time to cure properly), so that it would be full in time for the President’s Birthday Party.
Dammit! Didn’t they read the sign No Peeling in the Pool ??
Israel cannot and will not abrogate its responsibility to protect its people from Hezbollah. I’m sickened that the Trump administration was duped into linking Iran and Lebanon, thereby allowing Iran to dial up or down the conflict at will. If Iran wants to delay the negotiations, it directs Hezbollah to attack Israel, prompting a response and providing Iran an opening to call foul. If Iran is satisfied with the way the proceedings are going, it keeps Hezbollah in check, and Israel stands down. It’s disgusting, and Israel cannot be expected to comply.
And I’m completely appalled at Vice President Vance for stating that the U.S. is the only major country in the world that is sympathetic to Israel. Saying this in response to statements coming from far right Israeli ministers—specifically Ben-Gvir, who (stupidly) said “all Lebanon must burn”—Vance implied that Israel deserves to be a pariah state hated everywhere. Vance’s demonization of the State of Israel is as damaging as the MOU itself.
So now the circle is closing. The Democrats have already abandoned Israel, and the Republicans—led by Vance—are threatening to follow suit.
Although there is no record of Vance playing any ball sport, I expect he is the one who has been designated to publicly throw Israel under under a bus.
Re Nellie Bowles’s mention of Darializa Avila Chevalier:
In <a href=”https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/darializa-avila-chevalier-on-housing”> this transcript of an interview, Ms. Chevalier addresses, in a very Democratic Socialists of America kind-of-way, her views on housing, immigration, borders, Israel, and Palestine. She also supports voting rights for non-citizens, something, by-the-way, that will be on Los Angeles’s November third ballot.
Near the end of the interview, she is asked “you’ve been a prison abolitionist, a decarceralist. What should happen to somebody who has killed somebody else?”.
To anyone who chooses to read her responses to the interviewer’s repeated attempts to get an answer to his question: please monitor your blood pressure while doing so.
Brian, this link should work:
https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/darializa-avila-chevalier-on-housing
I read it, and, yes, it’s infuriating.
I also love the medieval calligraphers’ tweets and have noticed that they are from music manuscripts (or, I suspect, from a particular one). Can anyone identify which manuscript they are from? Almost all notated music in the medieval period was in religious manuscripts, in addition to which most of the people who could read either text or music were in the religious orders. So the fact that all these people are naked surprises me.
Maybe it is a bit like the wooden figures on the choir stalls of the cathedral in Ulm, where the carvers depicted all sorts of beings in places where the public couldn’t see them, as under the seats in the choir stalls (an owl, a man sticking his tongue out, etc.). Hidden self-expression?
Not only did they qualify, but with Paraguay’s victory over Turkey, they won the group. Hooray! I hope they get into the quarter finals at least.
F*ck Vance. Every time he opens his mouth, he appalls me – from his disgraceful slanders of Haitian immigrants to his efforts to blame the innocent people who were murdered in cold blood by ICE for their own murders to his contemptible rebuke of a leader of country in a battle for its survival for not wearing a suit. That barely scratches the surface.
And now he is telling brazen lies about the MUO. This short Bulwark video – 12 minutes – deconstructs the lies. Not only haven’t we prevented Iran from becoming a nuclear power, I fear we’ve just paved the way.
I follow The Prosecutors podcast and they recently had this very interesting article comparing public reactions to Luigi Mangione and Mackenzie Shirilla.
They mentioned Mangione’s plea change and wonder whether his social media profile made him drop what would probably be the most effective defence for his crime. The psychiatric defense would mean that he would have to admit in court that he committed the crime and claim it was because he was mentally unwell. His supporters seem to laud him because they want to believe that he deliberately murdered Brian Thompson, and that may be why that defence was withdrawn. But it means that he is at risk of life imprisonment for murder, instead of a lesser charge of manslaughter, if the psychiatric defence was believed by the jury.
It’s alarming that people don’t seem to be looking at the evidence, and are judging them both by their attitude and appearance. The victims seem to have been lost in all the speculation.
https://truecrimemessenger.substack.com/p/the-vibe-trials