Welcome to Thursday, August 20, 2026, and National Bacon Lover’s Day (note the misplaced apostrophe, implying that only one bacon lover is being fêted). Who is it? Anyway, here’s a maple and bacon donut I ate in January, 2025 at Blinkie’s Donuts in California (h/t Michelle). It was terrific!
And here’s a slightly salacious joke about bacon:
A priest and a rabbi were sitting next to each other on an airplane.
After a while the priest turned to the rabbi and asked, “Is it still a requirement of your faith that you not eat bacon?”
The rabbi responded, “Yes, that is still one of our laws. We cannot eat pork.”
The priest then asked, “Have you ever eaten bacon?”
“Yes, on one occasion I did succumb to temptation and ate a bacon sandwich.”
The priest nodded in understanding and went on with his reading.
A while later the rabbi spoke up and asked, “Father, is it still a requirement of your church that you remain celibate?”
The priest replied, “Yes, that is still very much a part of our faith.”}
The rabbi then asked him, “Father, have you ever fallen to the temptations of the flesh?”
The priest replied, “Yes, Rabbi, on one occasion I was weak and broke the pledge of my faith.”
The rabbi nodded understandingly and remained silent for several minutes.
Finally the rabbi quietly observed, “It beats the hell out of bacon, doesn’t it?”
It’s also International Hawaiian Pizza Day (I love it though the ham-and-pineapple-topped pie is very controversial), National Chocolate Pecan Pie Day, National Hazy IPA Day (like all IPAs it should be avoided), National Lemonade Day, and World Mosquito Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Once again, a %&$^%# Democratic Socialist “progressive” won the party’s nomination for a Senate seat, this time in Florida, beating a moderate Democrat (article archived here).
That coalition built by Nixon, who joined the Democratic Socialists of America a few weeks ago, defies the traditional voting bloc for left-wing candidates who have won primaries this year.
Nixon was the clear underdog headed into Tuesday’s contest. The two-term lawmaker from Jacksonville raised just under $1 million since entering the race this year, compared with the $16 million Vindman raised nationally from Democrats drawn to his history as a key witness in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Nixon’s 12-percentage-point victory was among the biggest primary shockers this year and the latest example of a left-wing insurgent toppling a favorite of the Democratic establishment.
“We definitely knew we were going to win. We just didn’t know we were going to win by that much,” Nixon told The Post on Wednesday, hours after her race was called.
Nixon, however, distinguished her victory from the slate of democratic socialists who have scored upset victories in Democratic primaries nationwide. While she ran on progressive policies such as universal child care and Medicare-for-all, she said she did not agree with the DSA on all issues and believed her campaign, not a national organization, allowed her to build a coalition that looked different from other democratic-socialist wins.
. . .Nixon, 42, was not endorsed by the DSA or any of its local chapters in Florida, so she was less tied to the group’s brand, and she said she also joined the Working Families Party, another progressive entity. Moderates prevailed elsewhere in primaries: David Jolly, a former Republican congressman turned Trump critic, handily won the Democratic nomination for governor, and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D) easily fended off a democratic socialist primary challenger.
But Richie Floyd, a DSA member and St. Petersburg City Council member, said her victory still represents a win for the broader progressive movement, which is aligned on issues such as Medicare-for-all and the rights of Palestinians.
Well, Ms. Nixon may differ from the policies of the DSA (she apparently joined during the campaign), and Grok tells me that she does not support abolishing prisons, defunding the police, or fully opening American borders. At least she’s sane to some extent, but woe be to Jews and supporters of Israel if Democrats take over Congress at the midterms.
*According to Adam Jentleson in the NYT, “The Democrats can’t fix this mess without a supermajority.” (The “mess” is the one created by Republicans.) The article is archived here.
The narrow majorities to which we’ve become accustomed will never be enough to restore a pluralistic democracy and defeat the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. Democrats face structural disadvantages based on political geography, gerrymandered districts and anti-majoritarian institutions like the Senate. With razor-thin wins, a Democratic president risks handing control of his or her agenda back to Republicans in the first midterm, as happened with Joe Biden. We need to win enough power to enact not just an ambitious policy agenda but also the structural reforms necessary to make it stick.
We can’t do this from the safety of blue states; we must expand into red territory. It’s time to shift our focus to building a supermajority.
This requires rallying behind a theory of politics that unites our unruly coalition under a big tent, rejecting calls for rigidity whether they come from the left, right or center. It means embracing the heterodoxy that governs how swing voters think — and that has inspired the periods of progressive change in American history.
. . . This theory of power runs through the Senate. Simply put, we must win enough Senate seats by 2029 to control it beyond the first midterm of a new Democratic president. Every piece of legislation, every structural reform and every judicial nomination must pass through the upper chamber. Even assuming we reform or abolish the filibuster, as we should, the courts will be waiting to strike down our agenda. We should pass court reform, but even then, we will need to replace conservative Supreme Court justices with liberals, a process that will probably take years.
. . . To house everyone from a megachurch pastor like Adam Hamilton, who is running for Senate in Kansas, to the progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, the Democratic Party must embrace a philosophy in which all are welcome and encouraged to say what they think. It is not up to party leaders or the Democratic National Committee to litigate whether a candidate’s views are acceptable; the voters of a state or district decide. The coalition that passed the New Deal included everyone from a Communist sympathizer to self-avowed white supremacists, putting the compromises asked of us today in perspective.
. . . We can make Roosevelt’s promise a reality through a comprehensive program I’ve called the American Security Guarantee, a set of ambitious goals that would eliminate the precarity defining Americans’ lives and ensure that everyone enjoys the economic security that right now feels out of reach. We start by guaranteeing every American access to affordable health care, through their choice of a government or private plan. To fulfill Roosevelt’s vision of a lifelong system of social insurance, we pursue a new economic security agenda. It includes a new federal wage insurance program to help workers maintain their salary levels if they are forced to take positions that pay less, a community-focused job assistance program and a one-stop-shop portal where Americans can check their eligibility across all benefit programs. The goal is to show Americans what they are getting from their government in return for their hard work — and to get higher wages and concrete benefits in the hands of working people, to ensure that in the richest country in the world, nobody falls through the cracks.
But “progressives” want more than this, and moderates like me do not favor the abolition of jails, open borders,defunding the police, or abolishing the Senate (which of course is part of the DSA platform). As for Israel, I don’t know if I can hold my nose and vote for someone like Rashida Tlaib or Zohran Mamdani. Fortunately, I don’t have to, living in Democratic Illinois. The American Security Guarantee sounds okay, but, as always, the devil’s in the details.
*Tara Tanaka (a frequent contributor of wildlife videos here) and her husband Jim Stevenson are featured in an article in the Economic Times for expanding their wetland property and turning it into a wildlife sanctuary. (h/t Robert)
When Jim Stevenson and Tara Tanaka looked at a 45-acre cypress swamp beside their home in Tallahassee, Florida, they saw something far more valuable than land waiting to be developed. They saw a wildlife habitat worth protecting.
In 2007, the couple bought the adjoining swamp after becoming concerned that the wetland could be cleared. What began as a personal conservation effort gradually turned the property into a thriving wildlife sanctuary, complete with a large wood stork rookery.
By 2022, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reported that 275 wood storks were nesting on the property, alongside herons, egrets, ducks, alligators, otters, beavers, foxes and several other species.
Stevenson and Tanaka had already been living on the edge of the wetlands for years when they became worried that the cypress swamp could eventually be cleared for development.
Rather than watch the habitat disappear, they decided to purchase the 45-acre property in 2007 and manage it as a wildlife sanctuary.
According to WFSU, Stevenson is a retired state park biologist who understood the ecological importance of the swamp, while Tanaka became an accomplished wildlife photographer and videographer who documented the animals living around their home.
The USFWS later highlighted their property as an example of how private landowners can contribute to wildlife conservation. The agency noted that private landowners control a substantial share of land in North America and can therefore play an important role in restoring and protecting habitat.
The most remarkable residents of the sanctuary are its wood storks.The USFWS reported that the property was home to 275 nesting wood storks, making the privately owned swamp an important rookery.But the storks are far from the only wildlife found there.
Great blue herons, great egrets, little blue herons and green herons use the wetland, while anhingas, common gallinules, wood ducks and black-bellied whistling ducks also nest there. Roseate spoonbills have been spotted visiting the property.
The sanctuary is also home to mammals and reptiles including bobcats, raccoons, red and grey foxes, otters, beavers, coyotes, marsh rabbits and alligators.
Kudos to Tara and Jim, and stay tuned here for more of Tara’s videos.
*Moderna and Merck have apparently produced an mRNA-based vaccine that’s quite efficacious in treatment of melanoma, impeding tumor growth and metastasis, and the preliminary data are sufficiently good to have made Modern stock skyrocket.
An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday, paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment for the thousands of people diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer each year.
Moderna shares more than doubled midmorning Wednesday, while Merck’s stock gained more than 10%. The companies were on track to add more than $50 billion in market capitalization combined.
The study looked at people who had surgery to remove a melanoma—the point of the treatment was to reduce the risk of it coming back.
The companies said the late-stage study, which tested the personalized cancer vaccine intismeran in combination with Merck’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy Keytruda, met its main goal of extending the time before cancer returns in high-risk patients. The study also met a secondary goal of preventing the disease from spreading to different organs.
“I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a new field,” said Jane Healy, a vice president of oncology at Merck, adding the goal for patients is “to give them longer without having to worry about treatments for cancer.”
The companies didn’t provide specific details about how long patients taking the Moderna-Merck combination lived without their cancer progressing or how long they lived on average. The companies will present more details at a medical conference later this year.
If you don’t remember how mRNA vaccines work, like the Pfizer and Modern shots used to protect against Covid, refresh yourself, as it’s one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine.
Oh, and here’s Moderna’s stock price going stratospheric on the news (note that the WSJ puts this in the second paeragraph!):
*Finally, the fastest-moving star in our galaxy:
A telescope has spied the fastest known star in our galaxy, racing around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
The star is zipping around the black hole, reaching speeds of about 15,534 miles per second (25,000 kilometers per second). That’s 100,000 times faster than a commercial plane.
“That star is really, extremely fast,” said astronomer Stefan Gillessen with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
Now that is an understatement!
The newly discovered star also orbits the black hole at closer range than scientists have ever seen before, taking just 8.7 years to complete a revolution. It harnesses the black hole’s gravity to fly faster without falling in.
Gillessen and colleagues uncovered the star in data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
There are several hundred stars that closely orbit this giant black hole and are sensitive to its gravity. Scientists have mapped the orbits of around 50 of them. The new star is 10 times closer than the previous record holder, meaning that it also feels the effects of the black hole’s rotation.
There are supermassive black holes lurking in the center of almost every large galaxy. But nothing can escape them — not even light — so it’s notoriously difficult for scientists to figure out what’s going on inside.
This video shows a fast-moving star that is similar in speed, and in our galaxy, but I don’t know if it’s the same star described above:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are worried about the despised Kulka stealing their food (Hili really hates her):
Szaron: Are you leaving Kulka alone in the kitchen?
Hili: There’s only water left in there now.
In Polish:
Szaron: Zostawiasz Kulkę samą w kuchni?
Hili: Tam jest już tylko woda.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From Things with Faces; a pear that resembles a chihuahua:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
Lagniappe from Mark Sturtevant:
From Masih, showing her hugging her mother. The Iranian regime tried to force her mother to disown her, and when mom refused, they arrested Masih’s brother. Will she ever see them again?
The Iranian regime went to my sister’s home and made her to sit in front of their cameras and disown me. She did that publicly.
Then they went after my mother. My tiny mum prepared a gallon of gasoline and told them: “If you force me to disown my daughter, I will burn myself… https://t.co/WSMpDdxqjd pic.twitter.com/3R4COlldF0
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 19, 2026
Dawkins on Arday:
I am bewildered, and not very impressed, by the visceral, naked, irrational hatred spat out by some defenders of Jason Arday. If a Cambridge professor is accused of being an unqualified charlatan, the accusation might be racially motivated. On the other hand it might not,…
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 19, 2026
Trump falls asleep. I heard that the woman’s job is to wake him up when he nods off, but I’m not sure. Larry is amused:
Slumpy Trumpy pic.twitter.com/rSZR9Hcqxa
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 11, 2026
From Malcolm; bad cat moms (sound up). “Except” should be “accept.”
She didn’t except this responsibility pic.twitter.com/vcrt9dY3mJ
— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) August 8, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a crow having a blast:
At first I thought this crow was just messing around with a piece of plastic.
Turns out, scientists actually have a name for behavior like this, object play.
Crows and other corvids have been observed picking up, manipulating and playing with objects when there doesn’t appear… pic.twitter.com/RrZbk1BXTu
— fOx (@fOx1257067) August 19, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Polish man, a Catholic priest, died in Auschwitz after he was beaten to death with a stick. He was 38 years old. https://t.co/xWNoZntJ9a
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 20, 2026
And one from Doctor Cobb, who noticed that an exploding star resembles an eye:
When you stare into the exploding star, the star stares back.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-08-15T13:13:51.299Z
In time-honoured fashion of shooting the messenger, Ghent University are going after Nathan Cofnas for whistleblowing on Arday:
“Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism. […] For this reason, the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.” (link)
Now what academia should be saying is: “Thank you, Dr Cofnas, for helping to uphold proper academic standards, as we have so woefully failed to do”.
Instead they are reinforcing the taboos on criticising DEI ideology or black academics, which was exactly the problem in the first place.
I’ve been reading and following Cofnas for a few years – I’m convinced he is not a racist at all.
He is, however, determined to be the most unemployable man in Europe.
I bet he ends up back here in the US, prob at the Manhattan Institute. Which will be great.
D.A.
NYC
Many decades ago, the topic of race difference in intelligence was becoming a controversial topic. Books like the one by Loehlin, Lindsay, and Spuhler, “Race Difference in Intelligence” came out and the authors knew they were whaling a fine line and were careful. In many places, EO Wilson was accused of being a racist because of Sociobiology.
Right around then, I took courses in Behavioral Genetics taught by Gerry McClearn, John DeFries, and Robert Plomin, all of whom were interested in the actual scientific questions involving intelligence and genetics. But they warned students that there were real societal constraints on working on race and anyone doing so was risking his/her career just by touching the topic.
Plomin, if I am not mistaken, has written a letter of support for Cofnas. I didn’t know anything about Cofnas before this latest controversy, but I definitely think that his mouth is his biggest enemy. I think that, in the end, he will not be employable at any university, and may well end up at some private institute.
The comments on his Substack post about Arday were unbelievable in their nastiness. I hadn’t seen anything this bad since the trans nonsense at “The Friendly Atheist.”
As we see time and again, progressives think they are so righteous and that those who say or do what they consider to be bad things must be right-wing evildoers. They feel that this gives them a license to police and condemn anyone they think has said or done any “bad thing”; i.e., something vaguely bordering on challenging or even questioning their agenda. At which point they respond like utterly berserk children having vicious tantrums, albeit children often engaging in horrid ad hominems and vile language.
It permeates every level. Last night I read comments to a column about a baseball game, one in which a player made the mistake of, after catching a fly ball, throwing the ball into the stands thinking the inning was over when in fact it was not. This cost his team a couple of runs, and some fans correctly criticized this player for his farcical error. But another commentator had to intercede and label all the fans criticizing the player as “racist”, even though none of the criticism was remotely on that level. That instance may have been foolish, but these accusations can be insidious. Even disputing the charge of racism can be turned into a “confirmation”, or even a separate charge, of racism.
Right-wing zealots do this sort of thing as well, but somehow the progressives bother me more. As a traditional liberal I am used to disagreeing with the right, but I feel betrayed when those supposedly on the left try to drown out and shut down any voice not saying the words they want to hear. And in the name of freedom of course. Oops, sorry, freedom is nice for us but it’s expendable for you. No, it’s all about “justice”. And “equity”. I have to frequently remind myself that these people are not liberals at all.
Applause and congratulations to Tara and Jim! What a wonderful development! The experience in the landcape there appears from the RWPs to be … just …
Words cannot express it!
Yes, bravo to Tara & Jim!
The rabbis got lucky with the rules 🙂
Too bad for Col Vindman. He was heroic in his job before trump had him fired and heroic in the hearings. Unfortunately, he is not a very attractive candidate and listening to the dem pols was his death knell. Ya gotta run hard every step of the way! Nixon seems like a moderate dem who happened to attach the ds tag to her campaign as an afterthought and it looks like she worked hard to get out the vote. Hope she continues and works out well.
She is a strong opponent of Israel.
I would call it something else.
She “wants the children to be safe”.
Unless they are Israeli children, of course.
They all are, boss! I’m thinking of getting the GoP to send me a membership form.
Shall I get two, one for you?
Or.. just how pogram-y, Islamist and Third Worldist does our former party need to be to get you to defect? I’m nearly there.
D.A.
NYC
I am not a party joiner. Not in Israel, not in the US. So defecting is not really applicable to me.
And where I last lived in the US, well, let’s say it is the last state in the union that would ever vote Republican. So my vote for POTUS is a waste of time.
OK, gotta throw in a rabbi joke. A rabbi goes into a restaurant famous for its eggs Benedict, and orders a meal. He is eating with obvious enjoyment, and the waitress says “excuse me, but you come here every week and order the eggs Benedict. Do you like them that much?”
The rabbi answers “this is my favorite meal in the world. Brioche, hollandaise, poached eggs on a thick slab of salmon… it just doesn’t get any better.”
Waitress: “ uh, sir.. there is no salmon in that order. that is premium smoked ham”
Rabbi (coldly): “did I ask?”
Only nearly?!!!
New Substack post from Philip Markolin on lab leak. Research has been ongoing on origins and the data supporting zoonotic origin keeps piling up:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-211621546
From the article (quoting from an earlier article):
“The weight of scientific evidence for a zoonotic origin is extremely unlikely to be overturned at this point. It is in fact consolidating into a scientific consensus as key publications and new information or analyses are slowly diffusing through, mulled over, and unsuccessfully challenged by the wider scientific community. That includes Dr. Chan, who has long given up trying to bring her arguments to scientific journals and rather brings them to willing newspapers and politicians instead.”
Interesting chart of possible origin scenarios:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-211621546
The lab leak theory is believed by almost the entire right.
It has an added advantage: they can blame humans. It’s usually combined with the accusation that the lab was doing gain-of-function research bankrolled by Anthony Fauci. Hence the hysteria engulfing the Republicans over Fauci.
Thanks for the links!
Frau Katze schrieb:
The zoonotic spillover theory is believed by almost the entire left!
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was doing gain-of-function research bankrolled by Anthony Fauci. Not by him personally, of course, but by NIAIAD, the agency he headed. And the WIV wasn’t doing gain-of-function research on just any old virus; they were doing it on SARS-CoV-1-like bat coronaviruses.
No one knows the origin. That’s the truth.
Nonetheless the majority of scientists lean toward it jumping from an animal.
Lab leak is possible but it definitely not proven at all.
I agree with you that the origin is not known with certainty. But the science surrounding the origin of the pandemic has been politicized in favor of the spillover vs. the lab-leak theory from the start. The majority of the published science may favor the spillover theory, but that means little if the body of published literature is itself biased, as it is likely to be, due to politicization of the subject. If the science has been politicized, then what appears to be broad scientific agreement will be an artifact of publication bias (both in the scientific literature and the media coverage of the subject).
I have often wondered why some people get so worked up when the lab leak hypothesis is mentioned. After all, lab leaks are not unheard of, and the Wuhan lab had poor biosecurity. A quick Google says “Exact global counts for historical pathogen leaks vary by definition, but researchers have documented roughly 70 community-outbreak incidents from lab leaks over the past century, alongside hundreds of localized laboratory-acquired infections.”
Dr. Jha, Coordinator of the Covid Response Team under President Biden, says that after reviewing years of evidence he now favors a lab leak origin. The closest natural coronavirus to covid was found in a bat in a cave some 1000 km from the Wuhan lab – the very lab where researchers were manipulating bat coronaviruses to infect human cells. Occam’s Razor is pretty sharp on this one.
Those who consider a lab leak likely are not all right-wingers. Jon Stewart and Bill Maher certainly aren’t. When I was travelling in Asia a few years ago, I met a young couple from China and asked them what they thought about the origins of covid; they laughed and said “everyone in China knows it was a lab leak” as if I was a naive and foolish Westerner to even consider an alternative explanation. That doesn’t make it true, of course, but I was surprised at the certainty of their response.
I didn’t say it was ONLY right wingers. I said the belief is extremely common on the right.
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/lab-leak-mania?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Congratulations Tara and Jim, on your quest to do good in the world.
Oooh. Safety violation: bringing a baby duck into the office. A potentially fatal mistake. What was the employee thinking?
Who other than die-hard partisans or ambitious politicians would trust today’s demonstrably undemocratic Democratic Party with a supermajority?? Is there any credible evidence that they would be any less vengeful etc. than the current administration? OTOH, their “big tent” supermajority would be a 3 ring circus, incapable of agreeing on much, so the damage will be limited. Paging Dr. Smith….
And re “The new star is 10 times closer than the previous record holder”, we have another fan of the physical dimension of inverse distance: nearth. SI has not yet defined a unit of measurement for nearth, so we are left with clumsy relative measurements such as “10 times the nearth of the previous record holder”. Write your national standards organisation today requesting that nearth be assigned its own named unit; suggest a name if you want. (IMO something that abbreviates as “w” would be appropriate, since “w” is an inverted “m”. Not to be confused with “W”, which is already taken.)