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.
Oy, gewalt! I forgot to schedule this, so it’s coming out two hours late. I trust readers will forgive me. We also have a Caturday Felid post coming out soon with some nice content.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, November 14, 2026; it’s shabbos for Jewish cats and National Pickle Day. My favorite is the half-sour pickle, and the best examples of any pickle are to be had at The Pickle Guys on the Lower East Side of New York City. It’s the real thing, as this video will show you, and it’s a mandatory stop on Coyne’s Guided Tour of the Jewish Food of the Lower East Side. You can get these delicacies by mail order, and shipping is only $15 flat rate, or free if the order is over $85.
Travelers across the United States and beyond were still facing delays and uncertainty on Saturday as airlines and airports sought to recover from the ground stop the day before that brought air travel to a halt for hours.
Thousands of passengers were stranded on Friday after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the ground stop. More than 8,200 flights — or over 31 percent of those scheduled for Friday — were canceled nationwide, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm, though some international flights received permission to take off.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said at a news conference on Friday night that the authorities had decided to issue the ground stop after aging air traffic communications equipment became overloaded and began to falter on Friday afternoon.
He said that it would take “some time” for airlines to recover, predicting that flight schedules would return to normal in time for the busy Thanksgiving travel season.
Many who waited at airports until late Friday night had to scramble to find accommodation after their flights were canceled. Some carriers, including United Airlines and American Airlines, began to restore flights after flight traffic was restored on Friday night. Aviation experts have said it could take days to fully restore flight schedules after a halt of this scale.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who appeared alongside Mr. Duffy at the news conference on Friday, said there was no indication that the communications failures had been caused by a cyberattack, though he said that an investigation was underway and that he could not rule out such an attack. He stressed that lives were never in danger.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has four bets on how to win the war in Ukraine. Two of them—that Ukraine’s army will break, or that the Trump administration will force Kyiv to submit to Moscow’s terms—are going badly.
But Putin’s other two bets have a better chance of succeeding by next year: paralyzing Ukraine’s economy with relentless missile and drone strikes, and waiting for European support to falter as political parties that oppose aid for Kyiv gain popularity.
This week’s U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi showed that the Kremlin remains committed to its original war aims: dismembering and subjugating Ukraine while rewriting Europe’s post-Cold War order. “All the objectives we have set ourselves will be achieved,” Moscow’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky told Russian state TV on Wednesday.
Putin will likely wait to see how his stratagems play out in early 2027, most observers say, before deciding whether to stay the course or adjust it.
“The spring is what the Russians will be waiting for. They want to see what this missile campaign delivers,” as well as who wins France’s coming presidential election, said Hanna Notte, Eurasia director at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. “And then they’ll take stock.”
Even then, Russia is more likely to review its strategy than give up its goals, Notte says.
I was on a voyage to Antarctica when the war began, and when I saw the reporting on CNN on the ship’s t.v., I thought “The Ukrainian goose is cooked now.” It’s now been over four years and Ukraine is still hanging in there. I guess it’s too late to allow it to join NATO, as the EU knows what this would involve, but I don’t see why the world allows Putin to get away with it. But the two strategies that are helping Russia are still going on, and I think they’re likely to continue. The goose was just under lower heat than I thought, and I didn’t count on the Ukrainians (including Zelensky) being so resolute.
This dissatisfaction with the two main political parties has been growing in recent decades, and the number of independents has been climbing — reaching 45 percent of U.S. adults in 2025, according to Gallup. So how, amid this growing alienation, did the Democrats pull off a landslide?
The short answer is by becoming an anti-party party. Across the Western world, voters have become increasingly unhappy with mainstream political parties, which have lost supporters, members and vote shares. In Britain’s 1951 election, the Tories and the Labour Party got 97 percent of the vote; in 2024, their combined share was 57 percent. This reflects part of a broader dissatisfaction with established institutions, from government to the church to big business.
The Democratic Party fought this midterm with a motley crew of mavericks. Many openly criticized the Democratic Party itself. Axios did an analysis of campaign ads from Aug. 24 to Sept. 22 in recent election years and found that this year 47 Democratic-aligned ads criticized their own party or both parties, up from just 14 during that span in 2018. Candidates had a variety of political views, from pro-lifeand pro-oil and gas on the one hand to Medicare-for-all and anti-ICE on the other. It turns out that loosening ideological conformity allowed Democrats to be more authentic and more responsive to their local constituencies.
The great debate in the Democratic Party in recent years has been whether it should move to the left or the center. It should do both. More than a dozen of the winning House candidates were endorsed by the moderate Blue Dog PAC and more than 20 by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC. Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, was elected to the Senate in Kansas, a state that last elected a Democrat to that body in 1932. Meanwhile, Abdul El-Sayed, an Arab Muslim Rhodes scholar and a passionate advocate of Medicare-for-all, was elected to the Senate from Michigan.
An anti-party party does not need to be incoherent. It should instead be an organization that is stronger at the bottom and looser at the top. Power should flow from the grass roots, not from the bigwigs in Washington issuing diktats.
. . . Of course there must be some core beliefs, but they should be a flexible set of principles, not rigid dogma. The Democratic identity has always been about looking out for the little guy. When speaking the language of economic populism, enforcing competition and providing access to the marginalized, Democrats sound true to that tradition. When they speak the language of cultural leftism — on asylum, trans women in sports or diversity, equity and inclusion — that dynamic is reversed. They are speaking as the elites — often down to the masses, who must be instructed in how to be virtuous.
. . .The midterm elections were in large part a referendum on President Donald Trump and his policies, from the Iran war and tariffs to immigration roundups and eye-popping corruption. It was a Democratic wave, not a liberal one. Many of the candidates who won big were moderates. Many of the ballot initiatives that prevailed were conservative. Polling suggests that on many key issues — illegal immigration, crime, major socialissues — Americans are still center-right. But it might well have been an election to reward the Democrats’ antiestablishment style: a big tent and a practical organization that reflects the diversity of this country.
The anti-party party might be a way of restoring the political party itself and of repairing politics. In an age when millions of citizens distrust distant institutions, a party rooted in the people and places they actually know could again begin to mean something.
The problem, of course, is that the groups mentioned as “cultural leftism”: immigrants, trans people, and people benefited by DEI, are “marginalized.” Is it that Democrats should give up the idea that these people are marginalized, or simply redefine what “marginalized” means. Is it a losing strategy to let other people tell you who is marginalized, especially if they’re professors? And does Zakaria really think that centrist Democrats like me are happy to have Abdul El-Sayeed and AOC in our “big tent”? I don’t think so, and for sure I won’t vote for such people.
→ Meanwhile, the ballroom is looking absolutely massive. We’re starting to get drone shots showing the full scale of this beast. I’m pro-ballroom as a concept. Like, I get that the White House needed a larger, indoor, and secure entertaining space. We were serving the Singapore president sweaty chicken in a tent before. But, uh, just look at this thing:
One part of the White House’s beauty is its human scale. Like an old English home, the rooms feel cozy and manageable. The ballroom is giving Houston living room. The old White House is a Mini Cooper. The ballroom is a Hummer SUV. It looks like it wants to eat the White House. And yet it also looks like the performing arts center at an all-women’s college. I’m confused. I’m alarmed. And I’m sure the gift shop will be even bigger.
Look at the size of that thing! I had no idea!!!
→ Nvidia CEO ousted for sexcapades: Jensen Huang, the chief executive officer of Nvidia, is out after a second extramarital affair was reported, in addition to the one that made headlines last month. This one was allegedly with his vice president of healthcare—a direct subordinate! How dare he! Sleeping with a Chinese spy and potentially doing the bidding of a hostile foreign power? That was one thing. That was fine. That was survivable. But sleeping with a 48-year-old subordinate? She’s a child! Can a woman as young as 48 even give consent? Someone check the Nvidia bylaws on sex. Because, get this, he had the affair without filling out the HR paperwork to transfer her chain of command. Jensen violated the sacred laws of Human Resources. And apparently there was a third. It’s over for you, Jen. You might be a captain of industry. You might be worth $143 billion. But no one is above the law of America’s HR ladies. Into the hole you go.
The most ruthless career obit for Mr. Huang comes from my dear friend Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs: “Sad about Jensen. Shakespearean. But as de Gaulle said, ‘The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.’ ” Et tu, Blankfein?
→ Woke’s back, baby!: I love this recent-ish piece from NPR. We’re going back to 2020, baby!
Check the date: 2026. I was worried there for a second that we’d gotten over our national fever, but it’s spiking now! And I, for one, can’t believe taxpayers stopped funding this important journalism. From the article: “Right-wing ideology has crept into gyms across the country. Is this a new phenomenon, or is the very idea of ‘fitness’ ripe for politicization? Is our idea of fitness inherently fascist?”
It might be new to those writers, but here’s The Guardian saying fitness is right-wing in 2018 and in 2022 or GQ saying it in 2023. I actually don’t mind that the craziest members of our society decided that being sick and weak is good for them, in particular. Communists all have to stay in bed all day and sleep, that’s the rule, and anything else is fascism. That is the new protest. It’s like the incel movement on the right. It makes me sad, but if you’re that angry at society and refuse to adapt to modernity, it’s probably good not to reproduce? May the strongest, fittest, happiest, most gluted-up normies win.
And the headline:
→ Elsewhere in liberal podcast world: NYU professor and finance guru Scott Galloway says he took a shit in his Tesla to spite Elon Musk. I’m serious! Here’s Scott: “[Elon] started shitposting me on Twitter so I sold [my Tesla], not before taking a giant dump in the passenger seat. True story. Not good for resale value.” If you ever find yourself climbing into the passenger seat of your own car and squatting on it to poop, you should stop and ask yourself a few questions. If you have the urge to poop in the passenger seat out of spite, take a few deep breaths and check your insulin levels. I have a lot of big political feelings, and none of them involve me wishing death on people or shitting on my stuff. It can be done!
Peruvian officials said they had discovered thousands of tarantulas hidden inside socks packed in suitcases at an airport in Lima in an attempt to smuggle them into Germany.
The stash included eggs, hatchlings and adults. Some of the species of tarantulas identified are popular as exotic pets, the National Forest and Wildlife Service of Peru said in a news release on Wednesday.
The spiders, some of which were brightly colored, came from across Peru’s diverse geographies, including the Andes Mountains and the Amazon rainforest. At least one protected species was found.
The spiders were discovered after officials stopped two German citizens and one Polish citizen at Jorge Chávez International Airport while they were checking in at the boarding area, officials said.
The discovery of the spiders was the product of a “painstaking intelligence operation,” said the Forest and Wildlife Service, which did not specify when the seizure was made. The service said on social media that it had received an anonymous tip that had led to the seizure.
A lot of the tarantulas appear to be babies in the video below. I was glad to read that “the spiders would be housed in a breeding center after being assessed,” but really, are they going to keep 3,000 tarantulas in rehab?
I’ve watched many Trump speeches over the years. But in his recent rallies, I saw something new.
Last month in South Carolina, Trump referred to the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as “the governor EEHHP.” It was a bizarre belch-like noise, something uncontrolled. Was Trump going for a dis of Haley? If so, it was an oddly clumsy one for a master of the stand-up put-down. “Governor EEHHP”?
The next day, discussing the Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, Trump said, “If you don’t want communists controlling the U.S. Senate which is between JAYYT … how about the gentleman from a place called Michigan?” The “JAYYT” has no meaning, and why “a place called Michigan,” as if Trump were referring to Brigadoon? Did it help him save face for a verbal glitch?
So: “EEHHP,” “JAYYT” — and then “jigger.” That one was in Mississippi, and it was Trump referring to gas prices in Iowa being $1.85 “on the top of the jigger.” What’s a jigger? (A measuring tool for bartenders, sure — but what does that have to do with gas?)
It went on. There were times when Trump was clearly grasping for basic concepts, and erring even in his attempts at correction. “They gave the wonderful peace prize, right? Does anybody know the name of that peace prize?” Trump asked. But why be coy about the name of a prize that’s as renowned as the Oscars? It’s reasonable to wonder whether he was blanking on the name of the Nobel Peace Prize — especially since he went on to refer to it as the Pulitzer. “They gave the Pulitzer Prize to a young lady …”
Now, we have to distinguish the genuinely unusual from what linguists know as ordinary speech errors.
. . . Trump plows through these odd eruptions and stark incoherencies as if they were par for the course. If President Joe Biden had popped off with even one example of what is now verbally typical of Trump, MAGA enthusiasts would have classified it as indisputably dire. One assumes they will not do the same with Trump.
Clearly these are not “ordinary speech errors,” and here McWhorter is politely suggesting that Trump has some form of dementia. The video below shows some of those errors (the belch is the scariest one). Or it might be some weird variant of Tourette’s:
From Masih. Try telling her that the U.S. should get the hell out of Iran!
From Berlin Freedom Week, I joined CBS on translational repression reported Iranian regime’s new threats to Treasury Secretary @SecScottBessent, Secretary of State @SecRubio & White House Chief of Staff @StephenM.
The same regime that massacres its own people, now threatens top US officials, and still gets a seat at the UN. Seriously?
Two from my feed. I’ve seen this Jewish woman before, but don’t know who she is. She has dialogues with Muslims and takes them apart. Anybody know? I don’t think the “monkey” thing is a racist slur.
Ah, I put a photo of her in Grok, which told me this:
Talia Yoseph (טליה יוסף), also known online as @taliaortati/ itstalia___.
She is an Israeli (Jewish, unapologetic Zionist) content creator and pro-Israel advocate known for engaging in direct video dialogues/debates on platforms like Umingle (an Omegle-style random video chat site). She frequently matches with people interested in topics like Israel, Palestine, Islam, or related issues, including many from Arab/Muslim backgrounds, and posts the resulting conversations.
Her style is straightforward and fact-focused; clips of these exchanges (often covering history, October 7, hostages, narratives around the conflict, etc.) regularly go viral on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X. She has a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers dedicated to these debates and related commentary, and she has been covered in Israeli media for the reach of her Umingle conversations.
In a minute, she turned him from a victim into a terrorist—from a movie actor into his true self.
