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, October 31, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats, the last day of the month and Halloween! Here’s a short Tik Tok video from The Quack House featuring ducks and an appropriately carved pumpkin:
In the two days since Israelis cast ballots, there’s been a yawning gap between the results and the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about them.
The final vote tally, while inconclusive, indicates that barring drastic change, Netanyahu will stay in power indefinitely. Nobody has a clear path to a coalition, so the incumbent remains, possibly through multiple rounds of elections. And after the wars, catastrophe and domestic strife of the past four years, Netanyahu could reasonably count that as a victory.
Except that Netanyahu isn’t acting like a victor. Yes, he crowed that his party was the largest, but as he himself knows well, that doesn’t guarantee another term. He spent much of his election night speech militating against a Jewish-Arab opposition government — recognition that his opponents, however fractious, have the majority.
Moreover, in the days since then, he has protested that the election was “stolen” and that the vote was illegitimate. He’s demanded investigations and lashed out at his opponents.
Usually, the candidate who won doesn’t claim that his election was stolen, and doesn’t try to delegitimize the vote. Yet Netanyahu is in power and will probably stay in power. So what’s going on here?
A likely possibility is that Netanyahu, by demonizing his opponents, is laying the groundwork for a repeat election in the coming months, in which he may improve his showing. But he may also realize his coalition is fraying, and that while he will remain at the head of the government, his days of effectively governing may be numbered.
This seems to me a correct deduction, and if a coalition can’t produce a Prime Minister, the Israelis are in for more elections. As Bret Stephens says, though (see below), a different election outcome may not lead to a drastic revision of Netanyahu’s policies, though it may call a halt to some of his actions (e.g. , towards the Supreme Court of Israel).
*Over at the the NYT, Bret Stephens offered four lessons from Israel’s election, even though he wrote his column before the election results are known (they’re still not known with respect to who will lead the country). The article is also archived here.
The first thing to say about Tuesday’s election in Israel is the one that tends to be mentioned the least: The country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule and with a plausible expectation of unseating the powerful incumbent.
That’s more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term of office in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It’s more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.
It’s also more than can be said for Egypt, whose president came to power in a 2013 coup and won an “election” the next year with nearly 97 percent of the vote; for Turkey, whose president stays in power by jailing popular political rivals and nettlesome independent journalists; for Jordan, a repressive dynastic monarchy; for Lebanon, whose parliamentary government cannot enforce its writ against Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran.
The second point is that, for an election widely billed as the most important in the country’s history, very little is likely to change, at least as far as the outside world is concerned.
This is not 1977, when the Likud’s Menachem Begin broke the Labor Party’s lock on power, later making peace with Egypt and going to war in Lebanon. It’s not 1992, when Israelis returned Yitzhak Rabin to office, leading to the Oslo peace process. It’s not 2001, when the election of Ariel Sharon in the midst of the second intifada signaled the end of Oslo and led to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza.
This time around, all the leading contenders are on the political right. Not one of them wants a Palestinian state. Not one of them is going to remove Israelis from the West Bank or issue a blanket ban on settlement construction. Not one of them wants anything less than an assertive military posture toward Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. And if, as polls suggest, no party emerges with a clear majority, then nobody is likely to have the votes to force the kinds of tectonic policy shifts achieved in those earlier elections, including the military conscription of the shirking ultra-Orthodox.
All this means that no plausible alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister is going to shift the country’s course sufficiently to mollify its growing list of global detractors. But there’s a different kind of shift Israel desperately needs.
Hence the third point: What’s at stake in this election isn’t about policy. It’s about spirit. It’s about whether the Jewish state will honor the foundational idea “klal Yisrael,” the whole of Israel, and the Jewish principle that every Jew is responsible for every other Jew.
Since returning to power in 2022, Netanyahu has repeatedly violated both.
. . .Finally: What’s at stake in this election isn’t Israel’s “standing.” Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. As I’ve written before, Israel doesn’t exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.
What is at stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas’s terror and Iran’s missiles and a nonstop state of emergency that would have broken weaker democracies and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage. This week, a free and sovereign nation once again has the chance to elect one.
It’s clear that Stephens doesn’t think that Netanyahu should be part of that government.
*The Ilhan Omar kerfuffle is heating up, with the New York Times reporting Thursday that “Several current and former law enforcement officials said an Obama-era investigation found some evidence that Ms. Omar had entered into a sham marriage with a man suspected of being her brother.” (Article archived here.) Of course, as the Washington Free Beacon points out, the NYT and other sources have also assured readers over the year that there was no substance to the Omar incestuous-marriage claim. From the NYT:
The federal investigation of Representative Ilhan Omar is focused in part on whether she entered into a sham marriage in 2009 to help a man suspected of being her brother obtain a green card, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security investigated the marriage in summer 2016, during the Obama administration, and found some evidence that it was fraudulent, current and former officials said.
Speculation that Ms. Omar committed marriage fraud with a brother has shadowed the Minnesota Democrat’s political career for more than a decade and President Trump repeated the accusation last week. She has long called it a right-wing conspiracy theory that federal officials debunked during her first race for elected office in 2016.
But that case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the potential crime, a felony, fell outside a five-year statute of limitations, according to the current and former officials, most of whose law enforcement careers spanned several presidential administrations.
. . .The reporting for this article is based on interviews with three current and former officials familiar with the present-day investigation and six current and former officials with knowledge of the 2016 investigation.
It is unclear what evidence prosecutors, then or now, have showing that the person Ms. Omar married was her brother. Marrying anyone for the sole purpose of securing a green card is illegal under federal law. Marrying a sibling is illegal under state law, but it is not clear whether state authorities ever investigated the matter.
It is also unclear whether federal prosecutors could find a path to charging Ms. Omar that skirts the statute of limitations that applies to marriage-based immigration fraud, a crime that would not threaten her citizenship.
Regardless, they could cite the marriage in an indictment or civil action that describes a family immigration fraud conspiracy — a broader case that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said could lead to Ms. Omar’s deportation.
Omar is an Islamist and an antisemite (“follow the Benjamins”), and if these allegations are true, I hope they can circumvent the statues of limitations by finding legal ways to indict her. Frankly, as with the Alaska fracas, I’m surprised that the NYT is putting significant investigative resources into this case, especially since in the past, they’ve downplayed it:
From the Free Beacon:
This will no doubt come as a shock to loyal Times readers, who were repeatedly assured that Omar did nothing wrong. Following her election to Congress in 2018, the Times ran a glowing profile casting Omar as a bullied Muslim refugee with a “soft voice,” “delicate features,” and a “uniquely American” life story who has come to regard her adopted country as a cesspool of racist cruelty. Running for office, the Times lamented, had “forced Ms. Omar to make public details about her complicated private life, which became fodder for conservative bloggers, who seized on her brief marriage to a British citizen.”
Months later, the Timespublished what it claimed was a “fact check” of President Donald Trump’s numerous “attacks” on the historic Muslim congresswoman, including the allegation that she married her brother. “Rumors … have been circulating since 2016,” the Times explained. “No proof has emerged substantiating these claims.”
The lazy and dismissive fact check, which relied almost exclusively on Omar’s public denials, declined to acknowledge any “murky” aspects of the marriage. It included multiple links to an equally dismissive Associated Press fact check based on some actual reporting. Despite reviewing Omar’s marriage records, the AP declined to mention the bizarre detail about the Christian minister’s signature. Neither did the Times, obviously.
*Once again I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly snark-and-news column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Fake & Gay.”
→ Excuse me, what are the VCs doing?: Joseph Lonsdale. . .
Breed how many what now? Sir! Please. No monkey breeding. Not after the pangolins. We’re not ready. Should I email my friend Joe and ask him why he’s getting into the monkey-breeding business? No, no. I don’t want to know. (Okay, fine, I looked at the website, it’s to test new drugs before human trials to save human lives. I’m still against it!)
And then there’s a new company called Warhound, started by Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, and they’re genetically engineering new dog lineages for war. They call themselves “the advanced canine genetics and cybernetic platform.” Woof. Here is the image on their landing page:
Guys. Men of tech. You know I stand with you on so many freaky things. I say every week: Let the cars drive themselves. I’ve installed Flock cameras in my powder room. ChatGPT is my therapist. But I do not want monkey farms, and I do not want mutant killer dogs even if it’s very cute how their ears stick out from their combat helmets. Tech men, we have found the fissure, you and I. Can’t wait to see you soon (when I’m outside the monkey lab protesting naked with PETA slogans written across my back).
→ My new favorite Cambridge professor:
Under “dictator” Mao! It’s the quotes that get me. I love this guy. He’s a political economist and development studies professor at the University of Cambridge. He’s teaching Cambridge students about good and bad ways to do development. Of course, “development” means millions of deaths but who’s counting when all those hectares of land are being passed around? Did you know that under Mao, steel output grew? These are the same people who are anti–data center because the buzzing sound bothers folks nearby. Mao’s policies killed tens of millions of people to get you that steel, and Professor Hauge is out there nodding along like, it’s worth it, baby! He doesn’t deny the deaths, he’s just like. . . yes, and? Did you want the nuclear weapons or no?
→ Oh wow, The Economist is going for it: Okay, let’s do this slowly and calmly. I’m scared but I’m ready. No one get mad.
And then they have the data:
My first question: If it’s not so bad, guys, why’d you have to use a log scale? Like, “hardly an epidemic,” but you gotta use a log scale to chill the data out a little bit (log scale pushes that “10x” to be less visually alarming, like to pretend it’s all kind of a smooth distribution, like a ladder). Anyway, I think it’s good to speak of these things. If we can talk endlessly about the rape culture of frat boys, I think—yes—we can talk about the rape culture of Afghanistan, a place currently run by the Taliban.
Alright, now I’ve gotten a text requesting that I leave New York City by sundown.
Stephen Kronberg voted 10 years ago to legalize recreational marijuana in his home state of Massachusetts, hoping that it would lead to a boost in tax revenue and a “cleaner product” compared with black-market weed. “I thought it seemed like common sense,” he told me.
But next Tuesday, Kronberg, 63, will vote to make recreational cannabis illegal again. He plans to vote yes on Massachusetts Question 8, which would “prohibit the legalization, regulation, and taxation of the retail sale of adult recreational use marijuana” while keeping possession of small amounts legal.
Massachusetts was the sixth U.S. state to permit the sale of recreational marijuana. Today, weed is legal in 24 states—and the Bay State could soon be the first one to reverse course. Since the vote to legalize cannabis took effect in 2018, Massachusetts’ marijuana industry has generated about $10 billion in revenue and $2 billion in state and local tax revenue, according to the state’s Cannabis Control Commission. The 943 licensed marijuana businesses in Massachusetts range from small family farms and cannabis-infused gummy manufacturers to delivery couriers and posh retail shops.
But there have been problems, too. A Massachusetts General Hospital study found that psychiatric emergency hospital visits among young people between 12 and 17 rose sharply after the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in Massachusetts. (Marijuana sales are legal only for people who are 21 and older.) A separate study found that hospital admissions for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition caused by heavy marijuana use that entails vomiting, nausea, and intense cramps and can last for days on end, jumped 1,350 percent after legalization.
For some voters, the stakes are personal. During the pandemic, Kronberg watched one of his family members struggle with what he described as “around-the-clock” marijuana use that led to “panic attacks, psychosis, anxiety, depression” and a lengthy stint in rehab. “It completely changed my mind,” Kronberg said. “I support free markets, but this market—the marijuana market—can damage lives, and it has to be watched closely.”
The measure to repeal recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts probably won’t pass. In a poll last month of likely voters by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe, 71 percent said they would vote to keep the current law in place. But even if the measure fails, the fact that it is on the ballot at all shows that the backlash against legalization is gaining momentum. Parents, physicians, and even users are increasingly troubled by marijuana’s drawbacks. A similar measure in Maine has received nearly two-thirds of the signatures needed to go on the ballot next year.
If you compare marijuana to tobacco or alcohol, the plant is far, far less dangerous. Although younger people may use weed instead of thanbooze or cigarettes, weed has a far less serious effect on public health, and of course people smoke marijuana largely for the pleasure (or relaxation). Weed is not nearly as addictive. What we’re seeing appears to be a new form of prohibition or paternalism, and I hope it does not grow in support.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still ill but seems to be improving. Still, she’s beefing about attdistractions. Please cross your fingers for Hili as she is barely eating, which is dangerous for a cat.
Hili: I’m afraid we have more attractions than we need. Andrzej: I’ve noticed that too.
In Polish:
Hili: Obawiam się, że mamy nadmiar atrakcji.
Ja: Też to zauważyłem.
From Malcolm. Voyager 1 is still operating, and is now one light-day from Earth—over a billion miles!
Humanity’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, is rapidly approaching an unprecedented cosmic milestone. On November 18, 2026, NASA anticipates that the legendary probe will officially reach a distance of one light-day from Earth. This monumental span equates to approximately 16.1 billion miles, which is roughly 25.9 billion kilometers.
At this profound depth of space, the vast physical gap severely impacts communication lag. Even a radio signal, which inherently flashes through the void at the absolute speed of light, requires a full 24 hours to cross the distance in a single direction. Consequently, when flight controllers on Earth beam a command to the spacecraft, the instructions require a whole day to arrive, and any corresponding reply takes another full day to travel back. This latency creates a grueling 48-hour round-trip delay for a single exchange, a baseline timeline that does not even account for deep-space network scheduling or onboard computer processing times.
Voyager 1 has traveled for nearly half a century to reach this historic boundary. Originally launched on September 5, 1977, the spacecraft primary mission focused on exploring Jupiter and Saturn, famously transmitting unprecedented, close-up observations of their swirling cloud tops, intricate ring systems, and diverse moons. Rather than stopping there, the probe maintained its outward trajectory. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history by becoming the very first human-made object to breach interstellar space, crossing the heliopause, which is the magnetic boundary where the solar wind gives way to the raw interstellar medium.
It is vital to recognize that a light-day is a strict measurement of immense distance, rather than an indication of travel duration. It has taken the mechanical explorer 49 years of continuous flight to achieve a separation that a single photon of light can cross in a mere 24 hours. Even at this unimaginable distance, the scale of our cosmic neighborhood remains humbling. While Voyager 1 has long since exited the sun’s protective bubble, the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, a colossal and distant reservoir of icy primordial bodies bound by solar gravity, still lies far ahead on its endless journey.
For the dedicated engineering teams remaining on Earth, this expanding gulf transforms the nature of spaceflight operations. The luxury of real-time troubleshooting is entirely gone, forcing engineers to meticulously program sequences in advance and patiently wait days to discover if their commands succeeded.
This Austrian Jewish boy was first put in a children's home, and then transported to Auschwitz, where he was gassed on the spot. He was eight years old.
Matthew explained this one why I asked “Why?”: “Because he could! He was beheaded and rather than being dead the power of faith enabled him to walk around with his head! A MIRACLE! HALLELUJAH!”
Saint Firmin who carried his head about. Nice trick but don’t try this at home
Blind Faith performing “Can’t Find my Way Home” in an early performance (1969) at Hyde Park in London. The lead singer is Steve Winwood, with Eric Clapton on guitar (he has a nice solo), Ginger Baker on drums and Rich Grech on bass. The group released only one album before dissolving. Years later, Clapton and Winwood reunited to perform the same song in a great performance (with Derek Trucks).
Jules Winnfield: Okay, so, tell me about the hash bars.
Vincent Vega: So what you want to know?
Jules: Well, hash is legal there, right?
Vincent: Yeah, it’s legal, but it ain’t a hundred percent legal. I mean, you can’t walk into a restaurant, roll a joint, and start puffin’ away. They want you to smoke in your home or certain designated places.
Jules: Those are hash bars?
Vincent: Yeah. Breaks down like this, okay: it’s legal to buy it, it’s legal to own it, and if you’re the proprietor of a hash bar, it’s legal to sell it. It’s illegal to carry it, but that doesn’t really matter ’cause, get a load of this, all right; if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it’s illegal for them to search you. I mean, that’s a right the cops in Amsterdam don’t have.
Jules: [laughing] Oh, man. I’m going, that’s all there is to it. I’m f[redacted]g going.
Vincent: Yeah, baby, you’d dig it the most.
(Bold added, begin quote):
Jules Winnfield: Okay, so, tell me about the hash bars.
Vincent Vega: So what you want to know?
Jules: Well, hash is legal there, right?
Vincent: Yeah, it’s legal, but it ain’t a hundred percent legal. I mean, you can’t walk into a restaurant, roll a joint, and start puffin’ away. They want you to smoke in your home or certain designated places.
Jules: Those are hash bars?
Vincent: Yeah. Breaks down like this, okay: it’s legal to buy it, it’s legal to own it, and if you’re the proprietor of a hash bar, it’s legal to sell it. It’s illegal to carry it, but that doesn’t really matter ’cause, get a load of this, all right; if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it’s illegal for them to search you. I mean, that’s a right the cops in Amsterdam don’t have.
Jules: [laughing] Oh, man. I’m going, that’s all there is to it. I’m f[redacted]g going.
Vincent: Yeah, baby, you’d dig it the most.
(End quote)
Dialogue from
Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino
1994
Obtained from Wikiquote