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.
There will be no long Hili post this morning (though of course Hili’s dialogue is below) due to medical exigencies, i.e., visits to eye doctor (I’m ok).
But here’s one issue for discussion, taken from a new op-ed in the NYT. Joe Cruz, head of the philosophy department at Williams College, where Luana works, has a piece called “What if writing isn’t central to thinking?” (article archived here). If his thesis is true, it will give students license to use AI for essays and exams, which in fact Cruz allows. He has a workaround for that, but it’s not a good one.
His thesis:
Most college professors I know believe that students learn to think — critically, creatively, reflectively, tenaciously — only by writing. At Williams College, where I am a professor, writing skills are among the very few general education requirements.
It’s no surprise, then, that universities see artificial intelligence as an existential threat, and have launched an arms race of countermeasures: more proctored essay exams; test-taking rooms shielded from the internet; requirements that essays be composed on platforms that track all edits, so the word-for-word genealogy can be verified. I’ve heard professors rejoicing when they see typos or grammatical errors in an essay, as if they proved that a student wrote it without any help from A.I.
But what if we are mistaken in treating writing as the highest cultivation of thought? The evidence that supports this belief is thin at best. Writing can be useful cognitive scaffolding for memory and self-regulated learning, but the notion that it is the best process for developing thinking skills is a fairly recent idea, traceable to the 1970s writing-across-the-curriculum movement.
His lack of evidence is merely a lack of relevant research. But Cruz finds support from none other than Socrates!
In Plato’s “Phaedrus,” Socrates offers a startling criticism of writing. Written words, he claims, are not the true children of knowledge, because writing cannot speak, answer questions or come to its own defense. [JAC: OF COURSE it can if the response is also in writing.] Only through conversation among minds, he suggests, does reason yield real insight. For the past two millenniums, this appraisal has seemed like a failure to appreciate the power of writing. But perhaps Socrates was right, and we think best by speaking, answering and defending of our ideas.
The problem here is that you can have back-and-forth discourses in writing (here’s one I had with Adam Gopnik about whether there’s truth in art.) And those are permanent, forcing you to think carefully, because once something’s published, it’s usually permanent.
But the essay gets worse:
I don’t rely on prepared scripts when I teach, and few of the teachers I most admire do. Instead, I engage my seminar students through messy, searching conversation, responding to their presence in the classroom to gauge whether we’re understanding one another. I want to make new connections in the immediacy of our back-and-forth. I want to recall a thread from two class meetings ago spontaneously and weave it into my improvised lecture while snapping into new ways of thinking about it in the moment.’
Here Cruz is talking about seminar classes—small discussion group with a back-and-forth in a small group. You can have those in philosophy, but not when teaching basic physics, chemistry, or biology. This doesn’t work with a larger class, of course. He does admit some use for essays, though how will he ensure that the essays aren’t written by AI?:
Writing assignments serve practical needs of colleges and universities. When we receive a batch of 10-page essays, we can take them home, read a few, put them aside and grade the rest when the opportunity arises. If our minds wander, we can reread the prose before us. If we need to justify a grade, we can cite the record. Writing is a portable, compact trace of mind that is more manageable in a bureaucracy than is a conversation. But none of these conveniences is about developing the best thought.
And here’s his solution: we must “think aloud together”!
Last semester I permitted my students to use A.I. tools on their final essays in accordance with specific guidelines. Each then had a 45-minute oral exam in which I could audit their understanding of their claims and push them further in their analyses. I was reassured by the results. In no case did I suspect that an A.I. had written a student’s paper in the substantive, objectionable way that we are all concerned about. The students were all too sharp on the ideas, too deft in reconfiguring their thoughts and extending them dynamically. Moreover, at least half of the class was more agile, more reflective and clearer during oral exams than they were in their papers.
I believe colleges can permit the use of A.I. writing tools without undermining the next generation of thinkers. But to get there, we need to embrace a different image of a university education — one in which ideas are expressed in real time and analytical thought unfolds as a debate or an oral defense or a group discussion. It will take courage to demand that students demonstrate active, participatory mastery of ideas. And it will take courage on their part to abandon the safe recursion of revision and narrative refinement. To be sure, there will be challenges of scale, and not every kind of institution will be able to adapt. The benefits, however, may be enormous.
Well, if all learning occurred through Socratic dialogue between professors and students, that’s fine. But as we all know, that’s not the way it works. There are many courses with too many students How do you have a 45-minute oral exam if you have 600 students? And Cruz seems too credulous to me: “In no case did I suspect that an A.I. had written a student’s paper in the substantive, objectionable way that we are all concerned about. The students were all too sharp on the ideas, too deft in reconfiguring their thoughts and extending them dynamically.” I call bullshit on that. Did Cruz think of putting essays through Pangram? As I’ve learned, AI can write essays that are better than students can write, even Williams students.
In my career, I’ve written a lot and published a lot, both in the scientific literature and—more germane here—in the popular press, where I’ve placed over 190 pieces. I’ve learned that trying to express your ideas lets you know whether you really understand them, for sometimes, when trying to explain something, you realize that your mind is not clear on an issue, and you have to think it out. And for me, but perhaps not for many, I get great pleasure from writing, trying to produce prose that is incisive and, yes, beautiful. I have a long way to go, and will never get close to masters of this form, like Richard Dawkins in my field. But once written, a published essay is permanent—there for all to see—in contrast to the spoken word, which is evanescent. There is no substitute for an essay or article written and published, so long as the writing is not done by a computer program.
Please weigh in below, especially if you are a teacher of any sort.
**************
And a felicitous Hili dialogue. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Her Highness gives us words of wisdom—somewhat of a redundancy:
Hili: What do you think of artificial intelligence? Andrzej: I get the impression that the better it gets, the better plagiarism gets too.
In Polish:
Hili: Co sądzisz o sztucznej inteligencji?
Ja: Mam wrażenie, że wraz z jej postępem poprawia się jakość plagiatów.
And a beer that’s been drunk, sent to me from England by my friend Andrew Berry. He knows that Landlord is my favorite session beer, and was trying to taunt me:
President Donald Trump stood on the red carpet at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in December and declared his mission to fix the building, to “make it beautiful,” all but accomplished.
“It was falling apart, and now it’s pretty much back,” Trump told reporters as he stood beside FIFA President Gianni Infantino ahead of the World Cup draw. “We’ve done a really great renovation job on it,” he added, predicting that remaining work would be complete within three or four months.
By Trump’s telling, it was the culmination of a transformation he had set in motion shortly after returning to office when, vowing to end “woke” programming, he purged the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees and became its new chairman.
But less than two months after Trump’s victory declaration — after his name was added to the building, artists balked at performing there and income dropped further — his assessment of the center’s condition soured.
In late January he hosted a starry red carpet premiere for the documentary “Melania” but days later announced that the center was so “tired, broken, and dilapidated” that its main building would need to close for two years. The building was “sort of dangerous,” he added that week, though it was deemed safe enough for Trump and the first lady to catch a performance of “Chicago” about two months later. By the end of April, executive director Matt Floca was testifying about dangerous roofing conditions and electrical equipment that he said posed a risk of fire or, in the worst case, explosion.
Over the following months, the descriptions grew more dire. Trump said people entering the building were in “serious danger.” The center’s lawyers called it “structurally unsound” and “fundamentally unsafe.” This month, after a section of ceiling plaster fell in the Grand Foyer, Trump described the building as being in a “virtual state of collapse” and said the incident could have “killed” people.
Yet many of the underlying physical problems cited by management were documented years before Trump took control — when Kennedy Center officials and their engineering consultants were planning to repair the aging building while continuing to stage performances.
A dozen current and former Kennedy Center staff members interviewed by The Washington Post described a building that needed substantial repairs and routine maintenance but said they had not experienced conditions that led them to believe the building as a whole was unsafe.
Truth be told, I never thought of the Kennedy Center as a particularly attractive building, inside or out, nor a fitting tribute to JFK. If nobody wants to go there, or perform there, perhaps it should be allowed to die. But that’s different from Trump’s changing description about a building based on whether his name’s on the outside. All this behavior resembles that of a small, petulant boy. I suppose someone has pointed that out, but his whole Presidency resembles juvenilia.
*Oh, Lord, another despoliation. This time it involves a major league ballgame being held into a National Park. Guess who wants it? Yes, according to the WaPo, Major League Baseball approached the Trump administration to host a standalone game in a National Park. This may well not happen, and it shouldn’t, but a Park Service official is scouting locations in Grand Teton National Park.
Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday.
The administration has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Grand Teton is the country’s eighth-most-visited national park and is famous for its breathtaking views of the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains. National parks are among the country’s most protected federal lands, and constructing a sports facility at Grand Teton could set a new precedent for the use of vast national park land in the Western United States.
An MLB official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the league approached the administration after the success of MLB’s other stand-alone events, such as the recurring Field of Dreams game in Iowa. The idea of playing a game in a national park is one of several that MLB is exploring.
The White House said in a statement that MLB asked the administration “if it was possible to host a game at a national park, similar to the Field of Dreams game.”
“This is not a Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House. It’s also not being driven by the Department of Interior,” the statement said. “Therefore, this is not a White House or Administration priority.”
The White House said MLB has not made any decisions and the Park Service has not granted any permits. “If the MLB wants to go on site visits of national parks, that is their prerogative,” the statement said.
It referred additional questions to MLB.
National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands visited Grand Teton National Park in recent days and looked at three potential locations for a baseball park within the park’s boundaries, the two people familiar with the matter said.
Now wait a tick! You don’t have to build a permanent stadium there, but there will have to be some kind of stadium that holds many people, and that shouldn’t happen in a National Park. That’s not what those Parks are for! But if I know Trump, he’ll want to build a permanent grandiose facility there and call it Trump Teton Stadium. I’m hoping these plans fall through completely.
*If you thought the Free Press was objective in its news coverage—and you really shouldn’t have—you’ll be learning that it is soft on religion, putting it on the front page, like this (click to read if you subscribe). Yes, the lead story of yesterday’s FP was how two Princeton philosophy students, one an atheist (Joe Schmidt) and the other a lukewarm Christian (Noah McKay), while both are vegans, came to wholly embrace Catholicism. “What,” I asked myself, “Is the point of this.” The author, Suzy Weiss, a nepoemployee, write about culture for the site.
I’d taken the train to Princeton because I wanted to find out what’s in the water in New Jersey. I assumed philosophy was a field where reason trumps faith, and that anyone who thinks about it long and hard enough, in the halls of the progressive Ivy League, will come to the conclusion that there is no Creator. I thought postmodern academia had made everyone believe in nothing. Did these grad students study their way into believing in God, or was the intervention more divine than that? And does it have something to do with America’s much-vaunted “Catholic boom”?
Both these gentlemen were clean-cut—polos, khakis, a leather messenger bag—and clearly brilliant. They talked fast and opined on the finer points of magisterial doctrine from the 18th century, between bites of vegan corn ravioli. They’ve both been studying and debating apologetics for years, and met each other a few years ago at a conference, before they were students at Princeton together.
When McKay and Schmid met—it was in October 2022 at the Rutgers Philosophy of Religion Conference, also in New Jersey—they discussed what arguments might actually convince them to become believers, and they were in agreement: miracles. They weren’t talking about finding the image of the Madonna in a slice of toast. What they wanted to find was “strong empirical evidence” for miracles, and instances of “medical documentation, X-rays, hundreds of thousands of witnesses, including skeptical and hostile witnesses.” So, they got to work.
They studied the Marian apparitions, like the one in Fátima, Portugal, where three shepherd children reported seeing “a Lady more brilliant than the Sun.” They studied the miraculous healings at Lourdes, in southwest France, where the waters are said to have cured more than 7,000 people in the last 150 years or so. (The Pope is visiting this weekend.) The Catholic Church has verified 72 of these healings, and McKay was impressed with their rigor—anyone healed at Lourdes goes back each year for reexamination—and the canonization process, in which a Catholic considered for sainthood has to have at least two miracles attributed to them. “I still think miracles are rare, and I still think most miracle claims are false,” said McKay. But by the end of 2025, “I believed that Catholicism was true.”
For Schmid, the tipping point was studying Padre Pio, a Catholic saint who died in 1968, and was said to exhibit stigmata: wounds that appear on the same parts of the body where Jesus was nailed to the cross. “Naturalistic explanations don’t seem to account for their persistence, their character,” said Schmid. He was working on the case of Padre Pio with Ethan Muse, a philosopher at Rutgers, who had likewise been convinced that Catholicism is the one true faith, after spending years as an atheist, by studying miracles. (“This New Jersey corridor between the Princeton philosophy department and the Rutgers philosophy department is very sympathetic to philosophy of religion,” said McKay.) Muse had begun seriously considering Catholicism around Easter 2025, after studying the Shroud of Turin, and had enrolled in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults program.
There are alternative explanations for Padre Pio’s stigmata (some have evidence behind them), but the fact is that we don’t understand how they got there, and we can’t test them now. Curiously, no existing priests have stigmata that could be tested. At any rate, the miracles did the trick.
Then, in early January, Schmid was sitting in the gym, when “a feeling in waves” came over him, and he got the message “You could be a saint” over and over again. “I just sort of was like, Okay, I give up, I’ve lost, God has won, and I’ve got to become Catholic,” said Schmid. A month later, on February 7, he went to a general confessional—because Schmid’s family is Catholic, he had been baptized and confirmed as a kid—and considered himself officially converted. “Big news. God exists. Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church,” Schmid told his followers, in a video he posted to his YouTube channel, Majesty of Reason, where he’d previously made arguments against the existence of God. In the video, Schmid added, “I’m not kidding.”
This kind of stuff is all too frequent in the Free Press, yet we never read about how someone became an atheist or gave up faith. And I don’t think we ever will.
After her triple-murder case ended in a mistrial, Lindsay Clancy will appear in court Tuesday for a status conference that should signal how the controversial case will proceed following a month of uncertainty.
At the hearing, prosecutors and the defense are expected to address pending motions from Clancy’s attorney to stave off another trial, the defense’s attempt to obtain more information about the holdout juror and – if prosecutors decide to retry Clancy – the schedule for a new trial.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in the divisive case on September 4 after the jury sent several notes saying they were deadlocked and that a single juror was preventing the panel from unanimously finding Clancy not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility for killing her children.
At trial, Clancy admitted to killing her children – Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months – but argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she fatally strangled them and then attempted suicide in January 2023.
Prosecutors have not announced whether they will retry Clancy, but experts said both sides are likely considering whether another jury would reach the same conclusion, largely siding with the defense. At least one of Clancy’s jurors believes they would.
“If they tried the trial again the way they did, nine times out of ten, I think a jury would come back with not guilty by reason of insanity,” juror Nick Dargie told ABC News. “No doubt in my mind.”
I suppose that’s the verdict I’d find, for Clancy, if she was truly mentally ill (and it seems that way), should be given a chance for psychiatric rehabilitation, though I wouldn’t want to see her walk free in a year or so (that, of course, is a possibility). What I don’t understand are those people who want her found “not guilty”, period. It’s almost as if she’s become a hero for the murders. At any rate, it’s unlikely that the prosecution and defense can find a compromise solution that will avoid a new trial, as the defense wants no resolution that will result in jail time. This is a tough one.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s raining, Hili is outside, and Kulka’s occupying the inside windowsill. That means trouble. As you know, these cats hate each other.
Kulka: I have a feeling it’s raining. Hili: I’m about to chase you out of that spot.
In Polish:
Kulka: Mam wrażenie, że pada deszcz.
Hili: Zaraz cię z tego miejsca wypędzę.
From Kitty Litterposting (I haven’t looked). You are looking not for the cat but for Waldo, who looks like this:
From Masih. This Iranian woman is going to be lashed 74 times because she sang.
One minute. That is all it takes to listen to this beautiful voice. One minute to become her voice.
Parastoo Ahmadi, one of Iran’s most beloved singers, has reportedly been sentenced to 74 lashes simply for singing. Her musicians and production team face the same punishment. In… pic.twitter.com/vuCXoKMBCO
Here’s Netanyahu’s speech at the UN last week (h/t Jez). The Times of Israel comments (not always favorably) on this speech, including this bit:
there were surprising omissions from the address, omissions that reinforce the sense that Israel does not have a clear and viable plan right now for countering the central threat to its national security: Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its ballistic missiles, and its rapacious, tenacious regime.
Several people have told me the speech is good, and I will watch it, but of course approving of anything Netanyahu does is like approving anything that Hitler did.
WATCH: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/LSmn6uDDdF
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old, and would be 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/bzvilhpCFj
Two from Matthew. First, the amazing reaction time of springtails:
Nature photographer 'pendra100legs' does these amazing macro shots of tiny bugs.This one is delightful (I'll link below to the full thing).It's a globular springtail in genus Sminthurides. These insect-relatives can launch themselves 60 times their height in 1.6 MILLISECONDS.*Voomp*. Gone.
Welcome to Sunday, September 7, 2026, and Morning Show Hosts Day. Although “The View“, a talk show that made me cringe every time I saw it, isn’t exactly a morning show, it’s uber-woke (often with a token conservative), and Nellie Bowles has two items about it in her latest TGIF (Sunny Hostin is one of the passel of woke women who was on the show):
→ Sunny Hostin once served on a jury: This week on The View, Sunny Hostin said that when she was on a jury in the early ’90s, she was the holdout juror who prevented a good, if ill, man from going to prison. That’s right: She claims to have been the holdout in the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” trial (which might not be true but let’s go with Sunny). Here’s Sunny on his crime: “He did not mean to kill her and once he killed her, he panicked. He chopped up her body, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime,” she continued, talking over the other panelists to make one final important point: “And he fed her body parts to the unhoused.” So crucial. He fed her body parts to the unhoused. She really wants to be sure you heard that part. Because, well, that’s honestly admirable. The unhoused are famously hungry. If someone slaughters your mother but then feeds her flesh to the homeless, it’s morally neutral. What? You want to starve our unhoused community of human flesh? You’ve never panicked and accidentally chopped up, boiled, and served human body parts? Okay, Ms. Perfect! Speaking of The View:
→ In sickness and in murdering our children: I love The View, the beating heart of absolutely berserk American discourse. Because Sara Haines was also on the show criticizing Patrick Clancy for leaving his wife after she, uhh, strangled their kids. Haines said, “What bothers me is he talks about forgiving her, which I love, but he focuses on that and never jumps to what so many people struggle with. How did the marital love end so quickly?” Yes, Patrick, how? How did that love end so quickly? What changed? We’re all struggling to understand. You made a commitment!
The mule. . . .Old Rivers. . . and me. That last “me” is enough to make you weep, eh? We have a better song below.
Posting may be light until later in the week due to slow healing of my eye and a passel of doctor visits. Bear with me, though some people aren’t bearing!
President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.
Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.
But privately Trump was skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said.
After this article was published, a reporter asked Trump on Saturday about the offer. “I’m rejecting their deal,” he said
Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.
The level of strikes Trump is contemplating couldn’t be determined. He is reluctant to resume major combat operations, the officials said, partly because the U.S. wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies. But Trump has also announced massive attacks to push through diplomatic deadlocks in U.S.-Iran negotiations, sometimes following through but always stepping back from his most audacious threats, including wiping out the entirety of Iranian civilization.
Trump told the United Nations this week politics don’t enter his mind when aiming to pry nuclear fuel from Iran.
There was no mention of nuclear fuel in the proposed deal, at least so far as I know, and yes, Trump keeps flip flopping on war strategy. I keep saying that all he has to threaten to do is bomb Kharg Island, cutting off all of Iran’s oil supply to the West, and that might well turn the tide. But what do I know? I’m a biologist, not a pundit.
*Over at the WaPo, Henry Olson lists the ten Senate seats most likely to flip, and all, save the ones in Michigan and Iowa, he deems likely to flip to Democratic control. Given that there are 43 Democrats in the Senate (including independents who caucus with them) and 53 Republicans, a flip of just six of these seats would give Democrats firm control of the Senate.
North Carolina: North Carolinaunsurprisingly tops my rankings. The Tar Heel State leans Republican in federal elections and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Kay Hagan in 2008. But most statewide races there are close, and the Democrats nominated popular two-term former governor Roy Cooper, who has led in polling all year. Some of that lead — he’s ahead of GOP nominee Michael Whatley by eight points in the RealClearPolitics average — is certainly because Whatley is still largely unknown to about a third of voters. But RCP has Cooper at 49.3 percent, and as long as he remains around the magic 50 percent mark, it will be hard for Whatley to win.
Ohio: Democrat Sherrod Brown appears on track to reenter the Senate two years after he was defeated by Republican Bernie Moreno. Throughout his career, Brown has run ahead of the Democratic trend, and polling has consistently put him ahead in this race by three to eight percentage points. Like many states with large agricultural sectors, Ohio seems to be swinging against Republicans this year.
Maine: [Susan] Collins has survived in this blue state only because she attracts many Democratic voters. She certainly can win again, but Trump’s low popularity will be a barrier to the levels of ticket splitting she needs, and this week brought a bombshell ProPublica report that until 2025 she had been a subject of an FBI bribery investigation (her office strongly denied any impropriety by the senator). . . One to watch, but Democrat Troy Jackson is the favorite.
Michigan: Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s well-known weaknesses give Republican Mike Rogers a shot to pull off a blue-to-red upset. Michigan has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, but Rogers came close in 2024. The big unknown: Will Michiganders who vote Democratic in other races abandon El-Sayed knowing his defeat could cost the party control of the Senate? It’s a good sign for El-Sayed that his support has been steadily rising since he won his primary on Aug. 4, but the race is far from over.
Alaska: It may surprise some readers to see Alaska this high on the list. But here’s another case of a good Democratic candidate combining with a good environment. Former congresswoman Mary Peltola beat a flawed Republican nominee and showed her crossover appeal by running five points ahead of Kamala Harris even when she lost in 2024.
Texas: Democrat James Talarico has been ahead in the last nine polls, but his lead still averages under three points. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the scandal-scarred GOP nominee, is flawed in the extreme. Will Republicans and GOP-leaning independents vote party over person?
Iowa: According to the polling, the race between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek is a dead heat. Hinson does not seem to be suffering as much GOP voter defection as other nominees, and she trails among independents by a smaller margin than her more endangered colleagues. It’s still a toss-up, but I join most raters in thinking Hinson is likelier to prevail.
New Hampshire: Republicans have reason to be excited about New Hampshire, where polls consistently show former senator John E. Sununu running ahead of expectations in this light-blue state. Three respected race raters have moved this one into their toss-up category. The fact remains, however, that New Hampshire is a highly educated, moderate state that has elected only one Republican to the Senate (Kelly Ayotte in the GOP wave of 2010) since President George W. Bush’s first term. It would be extremely strange if Sununu, who lost his reelection bid in 2008 to outgoing senator Jeanne Shaheen, can buck that trend in such a Democratic year.
Minnesota: Recent polling shows Minnesotaclose. The Democratic candidate, Peggy Flanagan, is very progressive, and as the sitting lieutenant governor she can be tied to the benefits-fraud scandal that destroyed Gov. Tim Walz’s career. Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, is a talented campaigner, and one cannot entirely rule out an upset. But it’s very rare for a candidate from a party likely to do poorly in a midterm to capture a seat in the opposing party’s column.
Georgia: After a narrow runoff win in 2021, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has turned himself into a fundraising powerhouse and dark-horse presidential contender. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Mike Collins has had trouble raising money and has been stalked by a series of controversies involving problematic staffers. Georgia is Republican enough that the GOP is spending to try to elevate Collins, but don’t be surprised if he gets cut off — triaged, in political parlance — in October.
A lot of this sounds like wishful thinking.
*Roxane Gay, writer and NYT contributing editor, has a column that is mixed, “The W.N.B.A should take care of its own” (archived here; the WNBA stands for “The Women’s National Basketball Association”). She’s right about the dominance of drama over basketball, but dead wrong about wanting trans-identified males to play long with the women.
The W.N.B.A. is having a moment.
As the league celebrates its 30th anniversary, the audience is growing exponentially, and the number of teams is expanding. After years of fighting tirelessly for fair wages and a successful strike authorization vote, the players’ union earned a collective bargaining agreement; for the first time, star players in the league have secured million-dollar contracts; the league minimum salary is now $270,000; and there are higher salary caps for teams.
For anyone watching the W.N.B.A. blossom over the past three decades, this has all been a long time coming, hard-earned and richly deserved. But alongside the growth and increased public attention, the league is also facing a pair of crises, not necessarily of its own making: how to welcome trans women, if and when it becomes necessary, and a rise in racism directed toward Black players. How the league and the players navigate that will determine its future, one made possible by a loyal fan base that is largely composed of the very people most vulnerable to those ideological attacks.
. . .The league, however, does not exist in a bubble. The former N.B.A. players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, in a bid to be provocative, declared in August for the 2027 W.N.B.A. draft. In doing so, they stated that they were going to identify as trans women so they could be eligible to play. Freedom has continued this farce, appearing on conservative media, desperately seeking the attention he was unable to garner in the N.B.A.
Freedom has mostly pushed the league to provide a definition of “woman,” a tired conservative talking point, presumably because he and White think they are cleverly revealing some flaw in inclusive logic. The W.N.B.A. has indicated that neither Freedom nor White is eligible, but the question of how to craft a fair and reasonable policy for trans women remains.
The Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham was vocal earlier this year about her beliefs that trans women shouldn’t play in the W.N.B.A. “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” Cunningham said in an ESPN interview. Her claims exploit one of the most popular attacks against trans women — the idea that women and girls are not safe around trans women.
That’s not my reason for opposing trans women (“trans-identified men”) playing in the WNBA. It’s that they have an unfair advantage over biological women. I agree with Cunningham.
. . . Thus far, there has been only one openly trans W.N.B.A. player — the talented Layshia Clarendon, who retired after playing for 12 seasons, and also identifies as nonbinary. Thus far the controversy has been entirely manufactured by people with no real connection to the trans community.
The author goes on about the preponderance of black and queer women in the WNBA, but I don’t see a reason why that should cause concern. And yes, there’s a rivalry that sometimes becomes physical between Caitlin Clark, white, and Angel Reese, black, and watching the WNBA I think there’s too much concern over that, though the physicality is horrific. If the WNBA is to hold our attention, we’ll have to concentrate not on that drama but on the sport. Speaking of which, one of the author’s maladaptive recommendations is this:
The W.N.B.A., as a league, should lead the charge for making space for trans women in women’s sports.
Does that mean that trans women should be able to compete in all women’s sports? If not, why just basketball? Yes, there was once a trans woman WNBA player, but that should be the last one.
*And, if you need more stupid kerfuffles in the culture wars, read the Free Press‘s column by Liel Leibovitz, “Why you should care that Aslan is a woman.” (The voice of an upcoming animation of “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” has the voice of the Jesus-lion Aslan spoken by Meryl Streep. And there’s the rub: the subtitle is “The decision to have Meryl Streep voice the character in the new ‘Narnia’ film is neither a stroke of brilliance nor a microaggression against conservatives. It’s much more profound and dangerous.” Seriously? Profound and dangerous?
In case you’ve never stepped through that famous wardrobe door and into C.S. Lewis’s magical world, you should know that Aslan is a lion and the King above all High Kings in Narnia. Why, then, would anyone mind if Streep—a lioness and the Queen above all High Queens of Hollywood—gives the big cat a new purring sound?
The usual pop pugilists, still licking their wounds from the fight over Christopher Nolan’s casting choices in The Odyssey, rose to offer the usual arguments. Gerwig, growled the culture warriors on the right, is feminizing a quintessentially male figure; they could overlook her decision to turn Ken into a bumbling bobo in Barbie, her previous film, but giving the mightily maned lion a bit of gender reassignment surgery is a step too far. Relax, cooed their counterparts on the left, this is Meryl we’re talking about here and, really, there’s no one that woman can’t brilliantly portray.
But a woman can’t play a man if that man is JESUS!:
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Aslan is meant to emulate. Any fifth grader could point toward Jesus—which is precisely what a class full of actual fifth graders argued in a letter to Lewis in 1954. The author, however, wrote back right away, telling the children they had it dead wrong.
“I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia,’ ” Lewis wrote from his office in Oxford Magdalen College. “I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that it is quite a different thing.”
As is usual with C.S. Lewis, I fail to grasp the distinction there. But let’s proceed:
Which, Lewis wrote again and again to anyone who broached the topic, was the entire point of the Narnia novels. Aslan wasn’t an allegory for Jesus; he really was Jesus. All the author did was project Christ into a different world, where, he told another correspondent, “He would really have been a physical object. . . as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than His death on Calvary.” And if little boys and girls walked away from the books loving Aslan, then the faithful author would’ve achieved his goal, because the one they were really loving was Jesus Christ Himself.
. . . The problem, then, isn’t merely that a woman can’t or oughtn’t play traditionally male roles, a retrograde worldview which, thankfully, none but our grimmest guardians of tradition still hold. The problem is that, while imagining Jesus as a lion merely explores an image already present in the Bible, Jesus’s maleness is an essential aspect of his being. A woman can’t play Aslan because Aslan is Jesus, and Jesus, the son of God, is male. To alter that fact is to make him precisely what he is not: an allegory that may be repurposed and redesigned at will.
. . . And an attack like that isn’t about just another cheeky casting decision or wild artistic choice. It’s a bold step toward telling American believers that their culture rejects them and their beliefs. Gerwig’s film, then, may be fun and entertaining and even moving. But to Aslan’s loyal followers, it will never be more than a deliberate assault on their core beliefs. And if we’ve learned anything from our repeated visits to Narnia, such assaults rarely go unanswered.
O horrors! We can’t let this happen, even though some people say that Jesus was trans or bisexual. But there’s a far more pressing question here. Why did Leibovitz, who said explicitly that he’s a religious Jew, care so much about this? Presumably, religious Jews don’t see Jesus as a savior or the Messiah. And why did the Free Press deem this worthy of publication?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili vehemently denies she’s praying. And of course she isn’t: she’s an atheist cat.
Me: Are you praying? Hili: No, I’m talking to a spider.
In Polish:
Ja: Modlisz się?
Hili: Nie, rozmawiam z pająkiem.
*******************
From reader Michael Glenister, who saw this face in the back of a truck:
From Luana: What was really suspended was the American Psychological Association’s authority to give or withhold accreditation. And it was a federal panel’s recommendation, based on the APA’s antisemitism, not a final decision. What does that accreditation panel do? The City Journal says this:
While the APA does not possess a formal legal monopoly on psychology education, in practice it exerts near monopolistic influence on professional training across clinical, counseling, and school psychology. This includes control over doctoral education, internships, and hospital and medical-center placements. The accreditation standards of the APA disproportionately shape the values and practices of the mental-health workforce in the United States.
BREAKING: An advisory panel on accreditation has recommended that the Department of Education suspend the American Psychological Association (APA) for 12 months amidst concerns about ideological standards on DEI, gender-related treatment, and especially antisemitism.
From Jeff Maurer. Does this mean we can call them “Eskimo pies” again?
When I was a speechwriter, I was told by many American Indians that they call themselves “Indians”,* so I was constantly writing the word into speeches and then explaining my choice to disbelieving white people.
After following a sign to “follow the cat,” they were guided around the corner directly to a bar table where the cat jumped up like a proper host.. Bro really works there..🐈🐾😅 pic.twitter.com/RX5pPLGlPU
This French girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was six years old, and would be 89 today had she lived. https://t.co/wQn5uoQo7D
Music for the day: The Four Tops sing “Ask the Lonely” as performed in Paris. This, along with James Brown’s performance at the TAMI Festival, is in my view the most soulful music ever recorded on video. Look at Levi Stubbs sweat as he belts it out!
Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 25, 2026, and the last Friday of the month. There will not be a Caturday post this week due to the visit of the Black D*g. It’s National Pancake Day; here’s a stack of blue corn pancakes with piñon nuts I ate in Santa Fe eight years ago:
Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume talks on its nuclear program in seven days if the United States lifts its naval blockade, waives sanctions on Iranian oil sales and observes a ceasefire that would include Lebanon.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi detailed the proposal in a private gathering on Thursday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, according to one attendee.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute think tank, who attended, said Araghchi suggested that a speedy agreement would help U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections.
There was no immediate comment from Iran’s U.N. mission or other Iranian officials.
The proposal strongly resembles the so-called Memorandum of Understanding reached in June, but with an accelerated timetable. The earlier agreement, which had called for a 60-day interim period, quickly collapsed as Iran resumed attacks on shipping in the strait.
Trump has said he is in no rush to reach a deal, even as high oil prices fuel inflation and exacerbate cost of living concerns. On the Iranian side, there are questions as to whether the hard-liners who dominate the security forces will accept compromises championed by relative moderates, like President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“If Trump calculates this arrangement is worthwhile and can bring political benefit before the midterms and reduce gas prices, perhaps we’ll see flexibility not seen in previous weeks,” Parsi said. But he noted “deep suspicion,” especially around the prospect of Iran merely buying time to get out more of its oil and ease its economic pain.
President Trump rejected Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks aimed at reaching a deal on the country’s nuclear program, according to U.S. officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this week, Iran’s foreign minister offered a proposal to implement a seven-day ceasefire, reopen the strait and restart talks with the U.S. aimed at reaching a final nuclear deal.
However, U.S. officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal reportedly said Mr. Trump is “skeptical” Iran would meet his demands and that he expects to resume a bombing campaign.
Indeed; this shows that Iran is being economically squeezed, and although Trump has a political loss in the offing if he holds firm with Iran, he also has a military gain. Do I know what he’s going to do? Of course not. Do I think he should stay the course? Yes, of course.
*After a federal judge order restoration of White House press pool access to MS NOW, Politico, and CNN journalists on Thursday morning, on Thursday evening some of them were still blocked from access to the White House, and enforcement of the judge’s order was also spotty throughout the day. After all, Trump thinks they purvey “fake news”:
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were allowed reentry to the White House on Thursday, days after being banned by the administration, and hours after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered their credentials restored.
This followed a chaotic morning in which journalists from all three outlets were initially turned away from the White House, and some had their press credentials seized by the U.S. Secret Service.
But later in the day CNN and MS NOW reported that some of their journalists were denied access to cover the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a state dinner.
CNN said that a reporter and producer were blocked from the event, while a photojournalist and audio technician were able to attend. MS NOW said its White House reporter Laura Barrón-López was denied entry to President Xi’s arrival ceremony.
President Donald Trump berated the two media outlets in a post on Truth Social Thursday, falsely claiming they had “refused to cover” the arrival.
“The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to “TRUMP,” they refused to be there,” he said.
It remains to be seen whether the White House pool system — which splits video coverage of the president among five major networks — will resume to cover the remainder of the visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, MS NOW White House reporter Akayla Gardner said. ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC said they would halt TV coverage of presidential events after the White House banned CNN, while other outlets, including The Washington Post earlier this week, temporarily refrained from publishing new photos of Trump in a show of support.
“This is a historic moment. We have President Xi coming here to Washington for a major state visit, and at this moment, we’re seeing tremendous solidarity among the news outlets,” Gardner said on air Thursday, adding, “I think we can assume that if the White House does comply with this order, that the pool potentially will be back in effect once again, and the public can get information the same way that they had before.”
The White House on Friday night blocked CNN from accompanying President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee, a network spokeswoman confirmed, in the latest twist in a weeklong standoff between Mr. Trump and the Washington press corps.
The decision immediately raised the question of whether the television pool would cover the president’s trip. The TV pool, a rotating group of networks that share the work of filming the president’s daily activities, had boycotted those responsibilities this week after Mr. Trump first banned CNN from participating in the pool.
I’m glad the news outlets, including Fox News, are standing together to oppose Trump’s clearly unconstitutional act, and the administration might as well realize they’re on a Losing Cause Train and stop censoring the press pool.
*According to the NYT, the University of Cambridge has abandoned plans for a full investigation of the Jason Arday affair, including examining the University’s hiring practices, and instead will focus largely on “whether the school offered [Arday] sufficient support amid accusations that he plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis and embellished his personal narrative.” This, of course, reflects the University’s desire to avoid at all costs an analysis of how the school could hire a completely unqualified fabulist, apparently because he was both black and claimed to be disabled.” (h/t Greg; article archived here).
The University of Cambridge has abandoned plans to fully investigate its hiring of Jason Arday, the professor who became a lightning rod in the debate over diversity-and-inclusion efforts in higher education, following his abrupt death last month.
Instead, the university said, the inquiry will examine whether the school offered him sufficient support amid accusations that he plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis and embellished his personal narrative. Dr. Arday may come up as part of a broader look at university hiring practices, but he will not be a focus.
That marks an abrupt shift from the plan announced this summer, when the school’s vice chancellor, Deborah Prentice, promised a “thorough and transparent” investigation into Dr. Arday’s appointment.
Dr. Arday died last month amid intense scrutiny of his biography and a deluge of personal, sometimes racist, taunts online. No official cause of death has been released, but his family said that the “campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason.”
The change in investigative focus means that Cambridge may never publicly address questions about how it vetted Dr. Arday for a senior teaching job and why it repeatedly downplayed concerns about his work and biography.
That has upset some professors, who are circulating a letter demanding full institutional accountability and an examination of how the university promoted Dr. Arday’s personal story, according to a draft seen by The New York Times.
. . .Cambridge has appointed a respected former prosecutor to lead the review but has narrowed the scope. The investigation is “not about the allegations made against Professor Arday or about his academic record,” the former prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, said recently. “It’s about his welfare, his care, his well-being.”
It will go “deep on a narrow question rather than broad on all of them,” Mr. Afzal, who is also chancellor of the University of Manchester, noted in a post. A second, broader inquiry by an expert panel may touch on Dr. Arday’s years at Cambridge but will not focus on him.
The second review “will consider the wider context of Professor Arday’s time at the University of Cambridge” by examining policies on hiring and academic misconduct, along with “the support available to academics who are subject to extraordinary public and media scrutiny,” a university description of the inquiry reads.
A university spokesperson declined to explain the change or answer questions about it
The reason for the change is pretty clear. First, Arday is dead, so one could say that there’s no point to investigating him, which could lead to his demotion or firing. But that investigation would lead to Cambridge being accused of racism. Second, if the investigation does reveal a form of antiracist or DEI hiring, whereby a deficit of merit can be made up by a surfeit of pigmentation and claimed handicaps, it would also look bad for Cambridge, despite the rest of us wanting to know why he was hired. The benefits accrue to us and to academic, and none to Cambridge.
*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: I am the code.”
→ Claudine Gay is back: Former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned after six months amid criticism over her handling of campus antisemitism as well as plagiarism allegations, has returned to teach a seminar called “What Is a University?: Purpose and Politics in Higher Education.” The 16-person course examines institutional power struggles, donor influence, and Harvard’s controversies, with students ultimately proposing their own vision for university reform.
I love this for her. She gets to teach a whole class on how she got fired. The final exam will be to throw darts at the head shots of Harvard board members. It’s a practicum on why the hell she ended up teaching that class. I hope they bring in donors and scream at them. Enroll me, please!
Don’t forget that Claudine Gay’s salary as a professor is a total of about $1.55 million per year, including $1,397,749 base compensation and $150,802 for “other compensation”, mostly university housing. How can she deserve that much, which is far more than regular Harvard professors make?
→ Sunny Hostin once served on a jury: This week on The View, Sunny Hostin said that when she was on a jury in the early ’90s, she was the holdout juror who prevented a good, if ill, man from going to prison. That’s right: She claims to have been the holdout in the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” trial (which might not be true but let’s go with Sunny). Here’s Sunny on his crime: “He did not mean to kill her and once he killed her, he panicked. He chopped up her body, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime,” she continued, talking over the other panelists to make one final important point: “And he fed her body parts to the unhoused.” So crucial. He fed her body parts to the unhoused. She really wants to be sure you heard that part. Because, well, that’s honestly admirable. The unhoused are famously hungry. If someone slaughters your mother but then feeds her flesh to the homeless, it’s morally neutral. What? You want to starve our unhoused community of human flesh? You’ve never panicked and accidentally chopped up, boiled, and served human body parts? Okay, Ms. Perfect!
→ Oh, Lauren Boebert: Boebert is facing a House ethics complaint alleging sexual relationships with three staffers, including a four-year relationship with a woman to whom she allegedly paid $200,000 after it ended. Boebert—who has promoted “Christian values,” criticized Major League Baseball for “forcing” players to promote “the LGBTQ agenda,” and was famously caught vaping and groping a male companion in a theater—called the allegations “utterly false” and “politically motivated,” adding: “I’m not a lesbian or bisexual, and I have never, ever been in any inappropriate relationship, nor have I ever been sexually involved with any staff.” I want to believe her. And I typically am suspicious of allegations. But I saw that theater grope video. And just knowing how she presents to the world as a sort of sexed-up secretary. . . I don’t know, my gut says this one may be real. Boebert swinging both ways is extremely believable. Based on no knowledge, I’m gonna say it probably happened.
In the weeks after Passover each year, Israeli-New Zealander Daniel Rosenbaum is already at work preparing for Sukkot, a Jewish festival six months away.
As the incoming chairperson of the Wellington Jewish Community Center, Rosenbaum spends months navigating the legal and administrative requirements to import sets of the Four Species — plants that Jews are biblically commanded to gather together and wave on the Sukkot holiday.
The country’s approximately 5,500 Jews, a pittance among a broader population of 5.3 million people, face an enormous challenge getting supplies for the festival of Sukkot each year because New Zealand has some of the world’s strictest biosecurity laws.
Any natural materials, leaves, plants or fruits are considered a biosecurity hazard to New Zealand’s fragile island ecosystem, and their import into the country is tightly controlled. The lulav and etrog, or palm frond and citron, along with the myrtle and willow branches used on the festival of Sukkot, are caught under these strict restrictions.
This year, Rosenbaum is overseeing the legal import of 14 sets of the Four Species for all of New Zealand, some of which will be sent to the Auckland Hebrew Congregation. Under him, there are two teams. One looks after compliance and legislation, and the other acts as the importer.
“We have to go through the same rigmarole as a massive company, like one that brings in 1,000 tons of tomatoes from Spain,” said Rosenbaum.
To get import approval, the Wellington Jewish Community Center and Auckland Hebrew Congregation separately review their biosecurity risk management plans, submit them to the Ministry for Primary Industries for review, and undergo individual biosecurity verification audits.
MELBOURNE, Australia — In the weeks after Passover each year, Israeli-New Zealander Daniel Rosenbaum is already at work preparing for Sukkot, a Jewish festival six months away.
As the incoming chairperson of the Wellington Jewish Community Center, Rosenbaum spends months navigating the legal and administrative requirements to import sets of the Four Species — plants that Jews are biblically commanded to gather together and wave on the Sukkot holiday.
The country’s approximately 5,500 Jews, a pittance among a broader population of 5.3 million people, face an enormous challenge getting supplies for the festival of Sukkot each year because New Zealand has some of the world’s strictest biosecurity laws.
Any natural materials, leaves, plants or fruits are considered a biosecurity hazard to New Zealand’s fragile island ecosystem, and their import into the country is tightly controlled. The lulav and etrog, or palm frond and citron, along with the myrtle and willow branches used on the festival of Sukkot, are caught under these strict restrictions.
This year, Rosenbaum is overseeing the legal import of 14 sets of the Four Species for all of New Zealand, some of which will be sent to the Auckland Hebrew Congregation. Under him, there are two teams. One looks after compliance and legislation, and the other acts as the importer.
“We have to go through the same rigmarole as a massive company, like one that brings in 1,000 tons of tomatoes from Spain,” said Rosenbaum.
To get import approval, the Wellington Jewish Community Center and Auckland Hebrew Congregation separately review their biosecurity risk management plans, submit them to the Ministry for Primary Industries for review, and undergo individual biosecurity verification audits.
The government ministry checks the community building protocols and its plans for managing the sets. It then prepares a report indicating whether the synagogue’s proposed management of the biosecurity risk is acceptable or whether anything must be adjusted.
Anyone handling the Four Species must undergo “staff training” on how to handle the restricted plant material, so in Wellington, the synagogue includes a reminder of the community’s biosecurity protocols at their annual meeting and in the weekly synagogue newsletters leading up to the festival.
The sets of the Four Species are grown in Israel, but are imported via the nearest large Jewish community, Australia. Before the plants reach New Zealand, each synagogue’s biosecurity team puts up posters at all synagogue entrances, reminding congregants that they are entering a secure facility authorized under the Biosecurity Act.
Posters at all exits also remind people not to take the sets outside the synagogue. A green and red line is drawn around the synagogue’s secure and non-secure zones, and the sets cannot cross the red line, including into the sukkah, where they are traditionally waved in other communities. Although in other parts of the world many Jews purchase their own sets, no one in Wellington or Auckland may have one in their own home; the synagogue stores all sets in its secure facilities.
The process is extremely expensive. After all is said and done, the cost of a set — usually the cheapest and simplest available for purchase — comes out to around $1,200 to $1,700. In other communities around the world, such sets can often be obtained for as little as $40.
Well, such is religion. I have no truck with this minutely observed form of worship, but I do applaud the New Zealand government for applying its biosecurity laws to everything. And of course because Jews control everything, including the banks, they have the dosh to pay these enormous fees.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an exchange with her nemesis Kulka. Is Kulka being insulted?
Kulka: Does absolute emptiness exist?
Hili: Some suspect it can be found in many heads.
In Polish:
Kulka: Czy istnieje absolutna próżnia?
Hili: Niektórzy podejrzewają, że jest w wielu głowach.
You seem to have found common ground in your recent meeting. So I have one request: can you find a common ground on this too help us stop the execution of these innocent Iranian protesters?
From Brianna Wu, a trans-iudentified male whom I much admire, not only because she walks the walk but because she’s a liberal who dunks on progressives. And here she explains that in her case she was compelled to transition. That’s certainly true.
It’s not choice to transition. Do you have any idea how well I did with gay men? I must’ve prayed 1000 times for God to just let me be a gay man instead.
If I were one of these helpful otters, I’d demand fish instead of no stinking ice cube:
Em um aquário no Japão, após o horário de fechamento, alguns filhotes de lontra espertinhos ajudam seu avô a arrumar os brinquedos deles. Como recompensa, ele dá cubos de gelo a eles. pic.twitter.com/5a3llyhCjq
Three Dutch Jewish siblings were likely murdered in a gas chamber together with their mother. One of them would have been 90 today. https://t.co/zJ0wQB1byi
The new prickly pal needs a name! 💖Our prehensile-tailed porcupette is doing really well, gaining weight (now 2 lbs), and trying solids. She also loves hibiscus! The one-month-old wasn’t getting enough milk from her mom, so staff is hand-rearing her to ensure she continues to grow and thrive. 1/2
Keepers have selected three name options: Amora, Bristle, and Bramble. Voting is open now and closes on Wednesday, September 30. We'll announce the winning name later next week.VOTE: pdza.org/name-the-porcupette
Music today: a new feature that may be transient. This is the famous melange of songs on the second side of Abbey Road. I’m not sure of the occasion, but the video notes “Music for MONTSERRAT 15th September,1997”. Besides McCartney, there’s Phil Collins on drums, and Mark Knoepfler and Eric Clapton on guitar. Besides that, the orchestra is conducted by George Martin.
Welcome to Friday, September 25, 2026, National One-Hit Wonder Day. I can name many of these: “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen, “Brand New Key,” by Melanie, and “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning (below). Wikipedia has a list of dozens of American one-hit wonders. If you remember this, you’re old:
A federal judge ordered President Trump to temporarily lift a ban on White House access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists, but the news organizations said some of their reporters were still denied entry hours after the ruling.
In a ruling early Thursday, Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, D.C., said the removal of reporters’ press badges was likely done without “constitutionally adequate due process.”
Kelly, a Trump appointee, said that the president and other officials had offered “little to back up their asserted national security interest” for instituting the ban, and that Trump had instead focused on “the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity” of the outlets’ reporting.
The temporary restraining order will be in place for 14 days while Kelly considers whether to extend it for the duration of the litigation, marking an early win for the news outlets in their latest clash with the Trump administration.
Media access for some reporters wasn’t immediately restored, however. Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were turned away when they tried to enter the White House early Thursday morning. Attorneys for the outlets told Kelly the administration was violating his overnight order and asked him to call an emergency hearing. The judge ordered the administration to reply by 12:30 p.m.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bracing for a loss, Trump earlier in the week signaled he would appeal any order to reinstate the reporters’ credentials, although he said he “probably” would comply with the ruling.
Trump announced the ban in a social-media post Friday, citing what he described as unfair coverage of his administration, and said he would consider banning other outlets in the future. He didn’t point to a specific story for the decision at the time, saying it was “really just cumulative stories over the last two years” that he was “sick of.”
Shareholders of The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the paper’s parent company on Wednesday morning, arguing the paper has failed to meet its obligation: to tell readers the truth and correct itself in a timely fashion when it doesn’t.
The suit, filed by the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) in New York County Supreme Court, asks a judge to force the Times board of directors to hand over internal records the company has refused to produce for four months, the majority of which pertain to the paper’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The suit includes the testimony from a whistleblower, a former Times employee who is Jewish and spent nearly a decade on the paper’s video desk. According to the suit, the whistleblower raised concerns about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on her desk at least 15 separate times between 2019 and her March 2026 departure, using every channel the company makes available to employees, including her managers, the standards desk, and human resources.
In an exclusive interview with The Free Press, the whistleblower said, “The public deserves a better picture of how the Times manufactures the news when Jews or Israel are involved.” She asked to remain anonymous over concern for her family’s safety. She is not named in the suit.
The whistleblower noted in the suit that in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, staffers on the video desk spent weeks searching for evidence that Hamas did not use the tunnels beneath al-Shifa Hospital, even after the Israeli military released its own footage of the tunnels in November 2023. At the desk’s November 20, 2023, morning meeting, the whistleblower’s supervisor referred to them as “alleged tunnels,” the suit says.
“Alleged tunnels”. I’d laugh if that wasn’t so grotesquely stupid. A few examples of the Times’s bias; you’ve already read of one:
In one of several meetings with Times management, the whistleblower spoke to human resources representative Chante Williams about the broader culture of anti-Israel bias on the video desk, to which Williams told her, “If you don’t like our values here, maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours,” according to the suit.
I suppose the paper should give all potential employees a list: “These are our values that you’re expected to share.” More:
Since October 7, the Times has been plagued by allegations of anti-Israel bias in its coverage. Last week alone, the Times published three significant errors in its coverage of the region.
In a September 15 article, the Times referred to Sharif Labad, who was killed in a drone strike, as “a Civil Defense rescue service worker,” and made no mention of the fact that the Israel Defense Forces identified Labad as one of the members of the Hamas Nukhba force who invaded Israel on October 7. The story has not been updated.
The same day, an article on the Donald Trump administration’s decision to supply bombs to Israel ran with a photo caption misstating the weapons’ size as 40,000 pounds. The bombs actually weigh 2,000 pounds—a twentyfold overstatement.
The Times was also forced to issue an editors’ note on a story about NAZA, a documentary about Gaza, after the original piece stated that Israelis “still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.” The paper called that line an “editing error” that had “inadvertently suggested” the deaths of 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages were a matter of perception rather than fact.
So it goes. We know this much, but I wonder if the lawsuit will move forward.
Stanford University acknowledged this week that it used artificial intelligence to alter a promotional photo, swapping out a Latino student for an AI-generated Black woman and slimming down two of his classmates — the latest episode to raise questions about how universities market diversity, and one that lands amid mounting federal scrutiny of Stanford’s own record on race.
The doctored image was first flagged by the Stanford Review, an independent student publication, which published side-by-side comparisons showing Billy Ramirez and two classmates in a 2024 photo. When the image resurfaced on banners around campus this month, Mr. Ramirez had vanished, replaced by a woman of a different race and gender, while the two students beside him appeared visibly thinner than in the original shot.
Mr. Ramirez told the student paper the experience left him feeling silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include him.
Not only were Ramirez’s race and gender changed, but the two students to Ramirez’s right were distorted, making them appear visibly thinner.
While this incident is humorous and generated thousands of reactions on Fizz, it offers an unsurprising insight into Stanford’s and its bureaucracy’s persisting ideological and racial preferences.
While Stanford R&DE likely believed they were subtle enough for no one to notice, fortunately, our vigilant Stanford student body cannot be fooled. The Review will continue to monitor future advertising and actions from Stanford R&DE as they learn how to use generative AI.
Here’s the Stanford Review photo showing the original (left) and AI-doctored representations (right)
The NYT note that this was their most shared article yesterday (what do you suppose that means?) and adds this:
Stanford acknowledged in a statement on Tuesday that it had used artificial intelligence to change the original image.
“Stanford’s A.I. policy is clear: The use of A.I. in producing or altering images of Stanford people, events, research, facilities or achievements is strictly prohibited,” the university said. “Both the alteration and lack of disclosure in this case violate that policy. We are working with Residential and Dining Enterprises to provide additional training and ensure proper review of all materials.”
Stanford removed the banners.
*And in more news about duplicity, I got this tweet from Luana (you’ll remember Rachel Dolezal as the white woman in Seatlle who claimed she was black, and got away with it for a while). When it came out that Dolezal was white, all hell broke loose, for you can identify as a woman if you’re a man, but under no circumstances are you to identify as black when you’re white. Read about the Rebecca Tuvel controversy.
A woke anti-Israel teacher and activist who claimed to be part black and Arab has been dubbed the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal” after she was outed as being a white, Jewish woman who hid her privileged identity as she led antisemitic protests.
Hannah Gann, a Philadelphia teacher, was forced to confess she was a “white woman of significant privilege and wealth” after fellow lefty activists grew suspicious of her background and confronted her.
“I am a white woman of significant privilege and wealth. Anyone who supported me was manipulated and should not be judged as a result of their support for me,” she continued.
A staunch figure in far-left activist circles in Philly, Gann portrayed herself as a mixed-race woman with black and Palestinian heritage. In reality, she is white and Israeli, according to friends.
What can you say except she was a liar. And yet she may have been an even more powerful exponent of Palestine had she done it as a white Jewish woman, speaking “against the grain.” Now she has no credibility at all.
*Being depressed, I am in need of heartening news, and here’s just the ticket from The Washington Post (article archived here):
A recent quiet morning at a Florida marine research facility was interrupted by tapping at the back door.
A biologist walked over to investigate and found a brown pelican standing on the stoop and pecking at the glass with its long beak. It stood there patiently, as if waiting for help. A quick inspection revealed the pelican was injured.
Fishing line was wrapped around the pelican’s right wing, and a double-barbed treble hook was stuck in the wing, restricting the bird’s ability to fly. About a dozen cactus spines were lodged in its left foot.
When Annsli Hilton, a University of Miami research associate who works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research facility, heard the commotion, she figured someone had brought in the injured bird. She was shocked to hear the pelican came on its own to the lab in Panama City.
“I always kind of thought in my head — and liked to think that — animals would know to either come to me for help or to come to the lab for help,” Hilton said. “… But I never thought it would happen.”
Hilton said the pelican might have walked about a quarter-mile from a basin on St. Andrew Bay — where pelicans are common — to the NOAA laboratory.
Scientists at the facility study fish and sharks, but they quickly helped the pelican after discovering it on Sept. 8. One biologist picked up the pelican by its abdomen and held its beak, so researchers could treat it without hurting the bird or getting bitten themselves.
While another biologist held the pelican’s right wing, Hilton cut the roughly 6-foot-long fishing line with scissors. Her co-worker then snapped the fish hook with wire cutters. The hook’s small barb was still lodged in the pelican’s bone; Hilton carefully removed it with forceps.
She also removed the cactus spines, which she said the pelican probably picked up from cacti near the facility.
Hilton, 26, said she had never treated a pelican before but relied on techniques she uses while inserting tags into smalltooth sawfish, the fish she primarily studies. The pelican was calm throughout the procedure, which Hilton said took about five minutes but felt like an hour because of the unusual nature of the situation.
Her co-worker then carried the pelican to the basin, where the bird stretched and flapped its wings for a few minutes before flying away.
Here’s a news video, along with two other animal-rescue segments as lagniappe. I always wonder how animals know where to go to get help, or is that just an accident?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is her usual worried self:
Hili: I’m worried about the fate of the world. Andrzej: Oh, that’ll keep you busy all day.
In Polish:
Hili: Martwię się o losy świata.
Ja: O, to masz zajęcie na cały dzień.
*******************
*An article in the Free Press by Masih (if you subscribe you can read it here).
I wrote this article with a heavy heart, but also with enormous pride.
These women were shot in the eyes during Woman Life Freedom uprising by security forces.
The Handmaid’s Tale is not fiction in Iran.
Caught red-handed breaking in, the whole group of raccoons immediately froze and played dead, as if staying perfectly still would somehow make them invisible.
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was four years old and would be 88 today had she lived. https://t.co/8OgisF90qA
Welcome to The Cruelest Day: September 22, 2026 and the day of my cataract surgery (I am iatrophobic). As you read this, I will be having the lens of my right eye emulsified and sucked out, then replaced with an artificial lens. I have to admit to some apprehension.
NOTE: Because I have to go home and rest after the surgery, I won’t have time this afternoon to prepare a Hili for tomorrow, and because tomorrow I must go downtown to have the eye patch removed, there will likely be no Hili on Thursday, either. Bear with me; I do my best.
In the Northern Hemisphere it’s also the first day of fall, known as The Autumnal Equinox. which begins at 6:05 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S.
The autumn equinox is one of two days when all points on Earth except the polar regions see the sunrise and set at due east and due west. With few exceptions, all latitudes see almost precisely 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness.
President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday that he would convert plans for a Washington, D.C.-area “Triumphal Arch” to those for “a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch” at the request of the U.S. military, citing “national security.”
The new plan, he said, is to “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”
Reached for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson said the department has “nothing additional to provide beyond the post.” The White House declined to provide additional information.
His post marked a significant change in plans that had already been in progress, as the Trump administration had announced earlier this month that it was preparing to break ground in the coming weeks.
The proposed 250-foot arch project, which would sit in a roundabout between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, has faced legal challenges from veterans and historians. The project area sits on the Potomac, across from Washington.
The arch proposal has already passed key hurdles, though it’s unclear how Trump’s announcement could affect the prior approvals. In April, the project obtained approval from the Commission of Fine Arts, which is now composed of the president’s allies after he fired previous members. In July, the National Capital Planning Commission, which is led by Trump appointees, approved the preliminary site and building plans. The arch, which would sit a few miles from Reagan airport, also passed the Federal Aviation Administration’s air safety standards last week, with the administration announcing that it “would not pose a hazard to aircraft.”
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery and is adjacent to the proposed site, slammed Trump’s plan in a post to X.
Here’s the tweet:
Putting a drone launching site directly in the landing path for DCA is a stupid, dangerous, and unworkable idea.
Trump clearly expects to lose a lawsuit and therefore wants to set up a pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security. Which is obviously idiotic. https://t.co/YIMlIm65TR
The project appeared poised to move forward imminently. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Sept. 3 that the administration was preparing to start excavation work “over the next two-week period.” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the Trump administration to provide 48 hours’ notice before it starts “any activity” on the arch, other than work to determine whether there are archaeological resources on the proposed site.
What can one say but “0y vey” (if you’re Jewish)? Why turn a decorative arch into a weapons site, also making it a target for terrorists? Only if you want to justify the arch (like Trump justified the White House ballroom) as being of crucial importance to National Security.
*As expected, CNN, Politico, and MS NOW are suing Trump, who excluded the venues from the White House and deep-sixed them from its press pool. But the t.v. networks struck back, banding together to black out all television coverage from the White House:
The decision marks an escalation of tensions between the press and the Trump administration after the president announced last week that he would ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.
The three news outlets said earlier Monday that they were suing the Trump administration over the ban.
In a joint statement early Monday, the outlets said they were filing the suit to “protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer representing CNN, MS NOW and Politico, called the ban “a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process.”
. . . Major television networks agreed on Monday to suspend a rotation of broadcast journalists who cover President Trump after the White House removed CNN from a planned assignment covering the president’s trip to New York.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News wrote in an email to pool members. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.”
The White House press pool is a rotation of reporters, videographers, photographers and technicians who cover the president when he travels or when he conducts events in spaces that are too small for the entire press corps. Monday’s decision suspends—for now—the television press pool, which distributes video footage and reporting about the president to TV networks and other broadcast outlets.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government,” White House television pool members Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News said in a statement. “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
I don’t know whether other media, like print and/or radio, are part of the pool, and whether they’re still participating. This will take some of the wind out of Trump’s sails as he delights in getting attention. Now he’s not getting it from television networks, at least in the pool coverage.
The Senate prediction is 3 states favoring Democrats, 2 favoring Republicans, and 7 states being tossups.
It’s a critical couple of weeks for Representative Mike Collins, the Republican nominee in Georgia, and Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee in North Carolina.
Both have consistently trailed in polls, and Republican strategists are actively discussing whether to cut bait, especially on Collins, as The Times reported last week.
At a donor meeting earlier this month in Dallas, Collins was notably missing from a slide presentation of the party’s top
“quality” recruits this cycle — though he was in the room as the presentation was made.
Republicans haven’t given up on Georgia or North Carolina. President Trump campaigned for Whatley last week in North Carolina. Vice President JD Vance will be there on Monday. And Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican majority leader, is headed to Atlanta on Thursday to headline a fund-raiser for Collins.
But as Thune said last week, Republicans “obviously make decisions when it comes to resources” on a stretched map.
Translation: Improve soon in the polls — or else.
For the House, 9 districts are leaning Democratic, 7 leaning Republican, and there are 21 tossups.
Republicans are seeing the same polls that the public is. The Times measured a nearly 9-percentage-point edge for Democrats on the congressional ballot last week — akin to the margin in the 2018 Democratic wave.
But Republicans are openly hoping those numbers are understating G.O.P. support.
“None of us should put any stock in polls anymore because they are wildly inaccurate; we all know that,” Speaker Mike Johnson said last week at the Capitol. “We know this is going to be a tight race. It is going to be decided by about 20 jump-ball swing districts around the country.”
His math is not wrong. The Cook Political Report currently rates 206 seats as leaning Democratic and 208 as leaning Republican. Democrats will need to win a majority of the 21 tossup seats to win.
I’m no pundit so I’ll refrain from predicting anything. But clearly the Republicans are going to lose quite a bit of Congress this time. If the Senate goes 50/50, it will effectively be Republican since VP Vance will be the tiebreaker.
*The WaPo has joined the chorus of media that recognize the value of standardized test in an editorial board op-ed called “A multifront war against educational accountability” with the subtitle, “New York drops Regents exam as a graduation requirement and conceals AP test results” (article archived here).
If teachers unions put as much effort into improving test scores as dodging accountability, students in New York’s public schools would have markedly better chances for success in life.
The New York State United Teachers union rallied again last week to pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to reverse her decision to opt into a federal tax-credit scholarship program that would benefit students. Union bosses fear it would boost enrollment in private and religious schools, where it’s harder for unions to collect dues.
No wonder NYSUT feels threatened by more competition: Only 48 percent of New York public school students in grades three through eight can read proficiently, according to preliminary assessments released last month by the state. Bad scores aren’t for lack of investment: New York spends more per pupil than any other state.
Instead of rising to the challenge, NYSUT would prefer the state water down standards. “More teaching, less testing” is the union’s mantra. Manhattan Institute fellow Jennifer Weber told us, “They don’t want the tests because they don’t want to be held to the data and the outcomes.”
Last week, the unions won a big battle in their crusade against accountability when the New York State Board of Regents voted to end the use of the Regents exam as a high school graduation requirement. Though students will continue to take the test, the board says it will develop a different set of graduation requirements, such as being a “critical thinker” and “effective communicator.” But how will those skills be measured?
. . .New York’s Education Department has joined the anti-transparency brigades by blocking U.S. News & World Report from gaining access to the state’s Advanced Placement scores. New York claims it’s protecting student data from being used for a “commercial product.” In reality, suppressing aggregate data on AP scores covers up the shortcomings of public schools while handicapping higher performing alternatives, such as the charter network Success Academy.
One of the network’s high schools was ranked 11th in the state last year when U.S. News factored in AP scores. This year, without the AP scores available, the school fell to 196th. Success Academy is suing the state and deserves to win.
I’ve come to realize that teachers unions are among the biggest opponents of merit as a metric for advancement in schools, but New York’s Education Department? And they block AP scores so the shortcomings of the states’ schools aren’t evident (the “commerical product” argument doesn’t wash). Oy again!
While that commission of inquiry may never come, a new book offers the most extensive analysis to date of the war, and the behind-the-scenes decisions and debates that shaped its trajectory. In the War Room, released this month, is a riveting—and at times infuriating—look inside the deliberations that drove Israel’s multifront war against the Iranian Axis from 2023 to 2025. Co-authored by Israeli journalist Yonah Jeremy Bob of The Jerusalem Post and American journalist Elliot Kaufman of The Wall Street Journal, the book takes readers inside the conversations—both within Israel and between the U.S. and Israel—that produced the war’s greatest achievements and failures.
. . .As the book progresses, a pattern becomes obvious: Litanies of stunning Israeli military successes are repeatedly offset by colossal mistakes and miscalculations, egotistical infighting, and a jaw-dropping failure to reassess assumptions about Hamas. Indeed, this is the first time it’s been reported that Netanyahu did not speak to the head of the IDF until four hours into the Hamas invasion.
The authors make it clear that the failures that led to October 7, and the disastrous mistakes made that day, belong to all involved. “Israel’s prime minister, cabinet, military, intelligence agencies, and opposition all wore the same blinders,” write Bob and Kaufman, referring to the belief that Hamas was incapable of a mass invasion of Israel and that it favored quiet over confrontation. Still, they add, “the buck must stop with the prime minister. On some level, he knows that.”
. . .According to documents retrieved by the IDF in Gaza, former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned the October 7 attacks with two overarching goals. The first was to thwart the Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement that the Biden administration was close to securing. The second was to lead Israel into a long and grinding invasion of Gaza that Hamas had long prepared for and Israel had not, and that Hamas knew would result in the deaths of many thousands of Palestinian civilians. The ensuing humanitarian crisis, Sinwar predicted, would turn Israel into an international pariah.
It is hard to argue with the fact that both of Sinwar’s goals were achieved. Israel’s international standing has seldom been worse, and Israel is now a bitterly divisive topic on both sides of the aisle in the United States. It is an open question whether the next American president—representing either party—will sever ties with the Jewish state. The prospect of normalization with Saudi Arabia, briefly revived by the Biden administration, was laid to rest by Netanyahu’s rejection of the conditions that agreement required. Today, relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are frayed, with the U.S. rejecting Saudi requests for aid as the kingdom faces renewed attacks from the Houthis. Prospects for normalization are muddled at best.
As for the military successes achieved in this war, many have failed to stick. As the book explains, the same Hezbollah that was supposedly decimated in the 2024 pager attack rose from the ashes to terrorize Israelis in 2026, emptying northern Israeli towns and killing dozens of soldiers. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime—the benefactor of Hezbollah and Hamas—survived the unprecedented American-Israeli attacks, leaving its ballistic missiles and nuclear program largely intact.
There’s a lot more, and you can read it if you subscribe. Schwartz seems to think that the solution to the whole problem was to somehow replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority. That is dumb for two reasons: Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza prefer Hamas to the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian authority is still committed to terrorism.
The book (click the link to go to the distributor’s page):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sees the despised Kulka outside:
Hili: Our neighbor pretends she doesn’t see me. Andrzej: Use the same method of coexistence.
In Polish:
Hili: Nasza sąsiadka udaje, że mnie nie widzi.
Ja: Zastosuj tę samą metodę kohabitacji.
From Masih, a heartbreaking voice message from an Iranian woman who may be about to be executed:
Hello everyone, this is a message from inside prison, from a young Iranian woman who is about to be executed. Please help me to amplify her voice before they hang her. 💔
«Remember my name, maybe I will not be able to speak again.»
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial. This brother was selected to work in the camp, but decided to stay with his ten-year-old sister. Both, Jews from Czechoslovakia, were then put to death in the gas chamber.
22 September 1932 | Czech Jewish girl, Vera Taglicht was born. As a refugee she went to Norway.
She was deported to #Auschwitz with his brother Tibor in March 1943. Tibor was selected as able to work. He asked to stay with his sister. They were both murdered in a gas chamber.… pic.twitter.com/Bfu0oJ9Lcv
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, listen to the coyote chorus:
Sunrise song. You'll want the volume up for this one, but not too high. Every coyote within a half kilometre radius decided to make themselves known this morning while I was enjoying the sunrise from the kayak. A truly magical moment. #mammals 🌿
