Welcome to CaturSaturday,  shabbos for Jewish cats, and we’re nearly into June. as it’s May 31, 2025.  It’s National Macaroon Day, and don’t mistake the American brand—soft, chewy, and tasty coconut cookies—for the frou-frou French macarons, which are overpriced and not that great.

Here are the real ones:

And the overpriced macarons, which seem to have become a culinary fad.

It’s also World Parrot Day and National Meditation Day

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the Times of Israel, Hamas and Israel may be close to reaching an accord that will be accompanied by a cease-fire.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told hostages’ families that he principally approves of US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s latest proposal for a temporary ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, media outlets reported Thursday, while two sources told The Times of Israel that Hamas is leaning toward accepting the deal, with some reservations.

Accordingly, the deal is not yet final, and negotiations are likely to drag out for at least several more days, the sources said.

According to a copy of Witkoff’s latest proposal, the authenticity of which was confirmed to The Times of Israel by two sources familiar with the negotiations, Hamas would release 10 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza and return the bodies of 18 deceased hostages during a 60-day ceasefire.

In return, Israel would release 125 Palestinian terror convicts serving life sentences, 1,111 Gazans detained since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, and 180 bodies of Palestinians currently held by Israel.

The IDF would also pull back from some areas where troops are currently deployed; the parameters of the pullback would be finalized “during proximity negotiations.”

Netanyahu told hostages’ families during a meeting on Thursday that he was prepared to move forward with the proposal, the Axios news site reported, while Channel 12 reported that he told the families he “principally accepts” the document. However, the TV report also quoted him saying he was “not ready to end the war without eliminating Hamas.”

Meanwhile, right-wing ministers and some hawkish hostage families came out in opposition to the proposed deal, arguing that Hamas was weakened and that now was the time to pile pressure on the terrorist organization to surrender. A decision to accept the proposal would have to be approved by the Israeli cabinet.

This is a lousy deal, as all Israel gets is ten living hostages out of the estimated 20-30 left, plus dead bodies. Hamas gets lots of murderous terrorists released from Israeli prisons, and Israel has to leave part of Gaza. This will still leave Hamas in charge of the territory, and I thought that eliminating Hamas was Israel’s main aim.  Is it still? Remember, Hamas will still have around ten hostages if any ceasefire ends, so there would have to be another deal. All the while the world turns more and more against Israel. I have to say that Hamas played its cards well (taking hostages was very smart of them), but I agree that there can be no peace in Gaza so long as Hamas does not surrender itself as well as all of its hostages. A two-state solution? Not in the offing now.

*We learn from The Free Press that the Democratic Socialists of America are split about whether to condemn the murder of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, gunned down in cold blood by a pro-Palestinian radical in front of Washington, D.C.’s Jewish Museum (see Nellie’s comment about one caucus of the DSA below).

Last Wednesday, a 31-year-old progressive activist allegedly shot and killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., in cold blood. As one of them, Sarah Milgrim, a 26-year-old Jew from Kansas, tried to crawl away, the gunman continued shooting at her.

“Free, free Palestine,” he shouted as police took him into custody.

You would think that this would be easy to condemn. Yet when the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America said in a statement released last Thursday that they “reject the violence of last night’s fatal shooting,” some members of the political organization revolted.

Almost immediately, a debate broke out in the national DSA’s internal message board for dues-paying members over how to respond to the killings outside the Capital Jewish Museum.

“Is it good to condemn violence against a genocidal apartheid state?” a DSA member with the username “SebastianFG” said in a post. Other members responded to the post with emojis of a heart and applause.

Other DSA members called the statement “horrific,” “hurtful,” and “irresponsible.”

The Democratic Socialists of America is not just a fringe activist organization. Its national membership has skyrocketed in recent years to more than 90,000, riding the wave of Bernie Sanders’s nearly successful primary challenge of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The political organization has since boasted major electoral success with politicians in Congress’s progressive “Squad,” including Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and New York City’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The far-left group unendorsed Ocasio-Cortez last year after the congresswoman voted in favor of a resolution affirming Israel’s “right to exist.”

The radical group is deeply fractured over how to respond to last week’s killings of Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky. (The alleged shooter, Elias Rodriguez, was charged with murder of foreign officials, first-degree murder, and other crimes.)

On one side of the fight within the DSA is the group’s so-called “right wing,” as its critics call it, which believes that the DSA should avoid any association with violence—and either condemn the act or not speak of it at all. This camp includes members who described themselves as a 69-year-old “radical,” a union member from Virginia, and a travel writer based in Louisiana, according to messages reviewed by The Free Press.

Then there are the DSA extremists, some of whom argue violence is necessary for revolution and others who openly celebrate it.

Well, AOC got booted out of the DSA because she wasn’t hard enough on Israel. Note, though, that Rashida Tlaib, who’s beyond redemption, is still a member, and Bernie Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has been endorsed by the DSA.  Regardless, given this behavior, both should resign from that organization. For crying out loud, nobody deserves to be murdered because they work for the Israeli embassy in Washington!

*And at Quillette, Graham Deseler reviews Ross Douthat’s new book, tendentiously called Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (it was issued by a religious publisher).

. . . religion has been making something of a comeback lately. According to a recent Pew survey, the number of people who identify as Christians—a figure that had been declining for decades—appears to have levelled off, at least for the moment. It hovered around 63 percent in 2019, and that’s approximately where it stands now. In England, church attendance has actually increased among Generation Z. Rather than turning to the Church of England, younger congregants have been joining showier denominations like Catholicism and Pentecostalism. The rise of wokeness and the cult of personality that sprang up around Donald Trump have led some people to speculate that there’s a “God-shaped hole” in contemporary culture. “As religion has receded from people’s lives,” sociologist Jonathan Haidt has explained, “they’re hungrier. As I see it, politics has really taken the place [of religion].”

One of the loudest cheerleaders for the current religious revival is opinion columnist Ross Douthat, a conservative and a Catholic, who for years has used his perch at the New York Times to sing the praises of faith. Douthat has a new bestseller out titled Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, in which he argues that belief in God is not only socially beneficial and emotionally fulfilling—as Thompson, Rauch, and Ali contend—but also scientifically sound. “It is the religious perspective that grounds both intellectual rigor and moral idealism,” he writes. “And more important, it is the religious perspective that has the better case by far for being true.”

Douthat is an intelligent man, and he’s written several well-reasoned books—on the Republican Party, on the decadence of modern society, and on his own harrowing battle with Lyme disease. This is not one of them. He blows past entire branches of science and philosophy in just a few paragraphs, behaving as if he’s solved puzzles that, in fact, he’s barely touched. For instance, the question of why a benevolent personal God would allow good people to suffer has been perplexing thinkers since the Book of Job. But Douthat believes he has that problem licked:

After recounting what he sees as Douthat’s strongest argument (“fine-tuning”, which isn’t that strong), Deseler takes apart more of Douthat’s evidence for God:

Douthat also wonders about consciousness. Scientists have learned an enormous amount about the workings of the brain, he writes, but they are no closer to explaining how consciousness emerges: “Redescribe as you will, reduce as you may, nobody has any idea how or why the physical inputs that go into conscious experience, the stimuli from particular chemicals or light waves or exchanges between neurons, yield the actual experiences themselves.” On top of this mystery, Douthat layers others: “How,” he asks, “can light be both a wave and a particle? How can particles remain somehow ‘entangled’ even when separated by a great distance? And above all—how can human observation be the only thing that transforms quantum contingency into definite reality, wave into particle, probability into certainty?” Douthat’s answer to these rhetorical questions is that mind and matter are entwined because mind precedes matter.

It doesn’t take a degree in either neuroscience or quantum physics to see that Douthat is simply swapping one mystery for another. The hard problem of consciousness has stumped scientists for years, but invoking a divine creator does not provide a satisfactory answer. Douthat could just as well use the word magic to explain the emergence of consciousness. That, at least, would provide a more parsimonious explanation of cause and effect. After all, if conscious minds need a conscious creator, the next obvious question is who created the creator? The same goes for wave-particle duality. Saying the existence of God explains how light can be either a particle or a wave, depending on how it’s observed, is simply a way of dumping the conundrum on the Almighty. Douthat, in short, is postulating a “God of the gaps,” squeezing Him into the crevices that scientific knowledge has yet to fill. In the past, religious apologists have generally been wary of resorting to such arguments because they recognise that the gaps have been shrinking over time as we learn more about material reality. A God of the gaps is, by definition, a God of diminishing importance.

And you may remember this fatuous claim of Douthat:

Midway through the book, he states that the world’s religions are not incompatible with one another. Human history is filled with episodes of religious conflict and bloodshed precisely because they aren’t compatible. The New Testament, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon can’t all be the final revelation. If Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are real, Allah can’t be the one and only God. To pretend otherwise is not an empirical position, based on evidence. Nor is it a rational one, based on logic. It’s an act of faith.

Indeed, but Douthat would likely say that it’s better to have any faith rather than none. The man is delusional, making a post facto case to justify what he wants to believe, and it’s embarrassing that he’s allowed to publish this stuff in the New York Times.

*The National Spelling Bee was won with a tough French word (the article is archived here). I bet you can’t spell that word!

After coming in as runner-up during last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee and bungling an earlier chance to win on Thursday night, Faizan Zaki was given a word that, if spelled correctly, would let him finally win it all: “éclaircissement.”

He smiled and, without hesitation, stated each letter easily, then collapsed on the floor amid a shower of confetti. The 13-year-old of Plano, Texas, didn’t even need to ask for the word’s meaning, “a clearing up of something obscure.”

The stunning win capped a surprising run that took down six finalists and momentarily left the bee’s winner in doubt.

Here are five takeaways from the competition.

The nine finalists were unflappable

Sarv stole the spotlight

The competition almost ended in the eighth round

Mary Brooks had the hardest job of the night [a judge, she had to ring the bell when a contestant misspelled a word]

Faizan finally gets his win [he finished second last year]

Here’s a video of the winning moment.  If you look at the photo in the NYT piece, you’ll see that all the contestants but one appear to be East Asian, which I think is the usual situation.

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly snark-and-news column in the Free Press, called this week: “TGIF: Scammander in Chief.”

→ The continued reckoning: A postmortem on Kamala Harris’s campaign cited a “perception gap” as one of the reasons she lost, saying voters believed she held positions that she didn’t. “Over 80% of swing voters who chose Trump believed Harris held positions she didn’t campaign on in 2024, including supporting taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants (83%), mandatory electric vehicles by 2035 (82%), decriminalizing border crossings (77%), and defunding the police (72%).” But Harris had, in fact, supported all of these positions. Like, she is on record supporting each of those positions (here, here, here, and here). So it’s not really a perception problem so much as a reception problem, like these ideas are not popular even though I support them. There’s a sense among Dems that people should simply ignore the things that are unpopular and that referencing them is fake news. Like, how dare you talk about the surge of migrants coming through our new open borders thanks to swift changes from the Biden admin. Yes, it’s technically true, but it’s disinformation-coded.

→ Leave Bruce alone: A bar in New Jersey canceled a performance by a Bruce Springsteen tribute band after the real Springsteen called Trump “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” while on tour in England. Citing the bar’s MAGA clientele, the bar owner said that a Springsteen cover band would be “too risky at the moment.” And: “Whenever the national anthem plays, my bar stands and is in total silence, that’s our clientele. Toms River is red and won’t stand for his bull—.”

My conclusion: All political groups can be snowflake babies. All men yearn to see blood in the streets. See, I absolutely love Bruce Springsteen, and sure, I find his photo shoots and podcasts with Obama to be a little cringe, as the kids say, but I also don’t care. Politics shouldn’t get in the way of enjoying “Tunnel of Love,” a goddamn masterpiece. I take my neutrality seriously. We’re blasting the new Ye banger in our house right now. Art knows no borders! (Weird, I have no idea why the preschool teachers just requested an urgent meeting.)

→ Things that are not antisemitism: The Democratic Socialists of America “Liberation Caucus” has announced its support for Elias Rodriguez, the suspect arrested for slaughtering two Israeli Embassy staffers outside D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum last week. Here’s the statement signed by the DSA Liberation folks and a bunch of others: “As imperialism has made the entire world its battlefield, it is justified to fight it, by any means necessary, without regard for geography.” And: “[T]here must be consequences for genocidal [Z]ionist imperialism, and those consequences are righteous.” Chants of resistance is justified are the new cool thing in Chicago. And the major anti-Zionist protest group Unity of Fields is officially transitioning into “A MILITANT FRONT AGAINST THE US-NATO-ZIONIST AXIS OF IMPERIALISM.” Militant means their plan is to kill more. So, anyone who has ever said the Passover prayer that ends with Next year in Jerusalem, well, we’re all fair game. The killings are anti-Zionism, though, not antisemitism, write mainstream lefty thinkers. It just happens to be that Judaism keeps bringing up Israel. Have you considered not saying prayers? And a leader of the Palestine Writes festival is posting about how there is no such thing as the Jewish people. You learn new things every day.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is tired of being Editor-in-Chief of Listy and would rather rest:

Hili: We have to make a careful plan.

A; What plan?

Hili: How to break away from work.

Hili: Musimy to starannie zaplanować.

Ja: Co zaplanować?

Hili: Jak się oderwać od pracy.

And a photo of Szaron:

*******************

Frim CinEmma:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Meow:

Masih is still quiet, but JKR is reliably vocal. Here she points out the phenomenon of lesbians who are demonized for not wanting to hook up with transwomen who say they are lesbians:

‘I’m a straight man who dresses as a woman and I’m angry lesbians won’t sleep with me.’

What’s truly unbelievable is that some of those who tweeted #MeToo and #RapeCulture a few years back will take this man’s side. pic.twitter.com/9PhyqzC6b7

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 29, 2025

From Michael: BIG CAT HUG!

Bro got the hug everyone wants

🎥: robert via ig pic.twitter.com/i5GNDk4Hua

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) May 30, 2025

From Jez: a Jewish MIT grad offended by a blatantly anti-Jewish graduation speech (this moronic speaker doesn’t seem to realize that Hamas is the truly genocidal organization). The kids can’t help themselves!

Today should have been a happy day.

I finally got my PhD from @MIT, with my 5-year-old twins, my 2-year-old and my parents (children of Holocaust survivors) traveling halfway around the world just to be there.

Instead, MIT’s student commencement speaker decided it was… https://t.co/TLVDdqpF7i pic.twitter.com/qmtVs8IOlX

— Guy Zyskind enc/acc (@GuyZys) May 30, 2025

And here’s the offensive speech. The speaker certainly helped Gaza (LOL)!

That @MIT trains woke minds that fail to see the only genocidal entity in Gaza is Hamas is known.

But to ignore warnings & allow the class president to deliver hateful & dividing speech with no response from President Kornbluth who followed, shows the gravity of the situation!… pic.twitter.com/yFiEm6Ql1o

— Retsef Levi (@RetsefL) May 29, 2025

From Malcolm, a pensive cat (sound up):

Overthinking pic.twitter.com/M4MziWwfBc

— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) May 15, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz, this Dutch girl was only seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T09:46:03.709Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. About the first one he simply says, “True”:

The only thing flat earthers fear is sphere itself!🌎 😆🤙

— Photography by Douglas 🍁 (@darkwaterphotos.bsky.social) 2025-05-29T12:21:31.494Z

The article notes that these are a white-fronted goose and a Canada goose, which have mated and produced eggs.  There were six eggs, two of which hatched, but no goslings could be found. The other four were duds.

“These are two totally different species of goose. But for some reason, they paired up – and they even produced eggs.”

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T04:06:10.013Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“ruz tapeh” in Dari), May 21, 2025 and National Strawberries and Cream Day, which means everything will be peachy today.

It’s also National Juice Slush Day, International Tea Day, and National Waiters and Waitresses Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The UK, France, and Canada have threatened to impose sanctions on Israel if it doesn’t end the war (h/t Malgorzata).

The leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada issued a joint statement Monday condemning Israel’s handling of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and calling on the Jewish state to immediately halt military action in the enclave and allow in more aid, threatening “further concrete actions in response” if Jerusalem refuses.

The three leaders — Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Mark Carney — called Israel’s announcement Sunday to allow a limited amount of aid into Gaza “wholly inadequate” and said the country’s failure to assist the Gazan civilian population “is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law.”

Netanyahu hit back in a statement, saying London, Paris and Ottawa were “offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities.”

The earlier statement from the three Western countries called on Israel to engage with the United Nations “to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles.”

Five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday for the first time since March 1, when Israel halted the assistance to pressure the terror group to release dozens of hostages it is holding. Israel argued that a sufficient amount of goods entered the Strip during a six-week ceasefire and that Hamas has been stealing much of that aid. In recent weeks, though, some officials in the IDF have begun warning the political leadership that the enclave was on the brink of starvation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the immediate resumption of “basic” humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, making a highly unpopular decision among his right-wing circles in light of mounting pressure from Washington to end the blockade.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are a few problems with this scenario. First, these countries, and the UN, by asking for a cease-fire without any concessions from Hamas, are promoting the continuance of the terror group as the leaders of Gaza. Note that there is no call for Hamas to surrender militarily as well as give up the hostages. Second, Israel has tried to collaborate with the UN to deliver food to Gazan civilians, but the UN won’t have any part of Israel’s plan, which involves the IDF guarding the food but with the UN (who doesn’t care if the food goes to Hamas) standing by. (Presumably the UN doesn’t want its people shot at.) And yes, there’s ample evidence that Hamas has been stealing much of the food aid, which is still enough to last several weeks.  What the world should be doing now is pressuring Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, and that is eminently possible since Qatar is the home of many rich Hamas leaders and funnels plenty of financial support to Hamas.  The UK, France, and Canada (and the US and the rest of Europe) should be demanding that Qatar cut off all aid to Hamas, arrest its leaders, and that the US should threaten to remove its military base from Qatar.  Why is the world not pressuring Hamas (via Qatar) instead of Israel?

*Speaking of Qatar, the NYT reports that no, that country didn’t just offer Trump a luxury jet out of the blue to serve as Air Force One. No, the Trump administration had its eye on the plane and apparently negotiated its acquisition for a considerable time. (story archived here):

Well, as I said, Trump might help end the war in Gaza by threatening to sever the close ties between the U.S. and Qatar, including that military base, which Qatar wants badly but the U.S. doesn’t need all that much.  Qatar’s dual role as friend of US and Hamas-helper means that we have leverage over it, as do EU countries. As for the damn plane, well, Air Force One is not obsolete yet; it’s just that Trump wants a fancy plane. And one that would need to be fully disassembled and inspected for suspicious devices.

*In an unexplained emergency decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a large number of Venezuelan immigrants no longer enjoy temporary protection from deportation put in place as a humanitarian decision by the Biden administration.

As is typical when they act on emergency requests, the justices did not explain their decision, which will remain in effect while a legal fight over rescinding protected statusplays out in the lower courts. The court, which ruled against Trump in two other recent emergency cases that involved summary deportations without due process, said some Venezuelans who lose protected status might initiate their own legal challenges if the government tries to deport them.

JusticeKetanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to say she would have kept in place a lower-court decision that blocked the Trump administration from removing protected status while litigation continued.

The Biden administration created protected status for Venezuelans — and extended it shortly before he left office — because officials felt the political and economic turmoil under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro made it too risky to deport migrants to their home country.

. . .Monday’s ruling directly affects Venezuelan migrants granted protected status in 2023. Protection for another group of approximately 250,000 Venezuelans, granted in 2021, expires in September.

Trump is also seeking to roll back other Biden-era protections that have allowed millions of immigrants to remain in the United States while their immigration cases play out, including temporary protected status for migrants from Afghanistan, Haiti and Cameroon.

It seems, though it’s unclear,even to lawyers, whether the U.S. can start deporting Venezuelans immediately, even without a due-process hearing. And I’m not sure about the meaning of the Supremes’ ruling that “some Venezuelans who lose protected status might initiate their own legal challenges if the government tries to deport them”. Which ones? Ones with money? And Afghanistan? Don’t the immigrants include those who helped the U.S. Army in their country and had to flee lest they fall into the hands of the Taliban?

*Oliver Wiseman at The Free Press, in an article called “The Joe Biden Cover-Up“, summarizes the findings of  a new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson: Original Sin:President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. (Article is archived here.)

Joe Biden couldn’t remember the name of Jake Sullivan, his top national security aide. He stared at people he had known for decades, including George Clooney, like he’d never seen them before. His top advisers hid him from his own staff. Cabinet members realized that the president could not be relied upon to respond to an emergency that came at an inconvenient hour.

Original Sin, the new book by CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson, is all Washington can talk about right now. Although its official release isn’t until Tuesday, there have been enough previews and excerpts for everyone to know what it says: that the decision by Biden’s top aides to keep his cognitive decline a secret was an enormous scandal. Perhaps even the biggest political scandal of the 21st century.

The book provides jaw-dropping details about our slack-jawed former president and the people who tried—and failed—to deliver for him another four years in office, even though he was obviously incapable of doing the job. Yet these are bombshell revelations of a strange sort. They are vivid and enraging, but fundamentally unsurprising.

That’s because they confirm what most normal Americans—and indeed everyone who has ever known an elderly person—instinctively understood was happening behind closed doors. They could see with their own eyes that the president was losing his mental faculties.

Anyone who still doubts that should listen to the audio from Biden’s October 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, which Axios published on Friday. It makes Hur’s assessment of Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” seem generous.

. . .Taken together, the book and the audio are a reminder that for 2023 and most of 2024, an elaborate play was staged for the American people. The production was brought to you by some of the most powerful people in the country. The First Lady and senior White House aides wrote the script.

Cabinet members and governors and senators and the legacy press all dutifully played their parts. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg made it as slick a show as possible. Steven Spielberg helped with the lighting.

. . . “The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for re-election,” write Tapper and Thompson, but reading their book one is left angry not at Biden but at self-serving aides, cowardly Democratic elites, and—especially—a media who conveniently forgot their role in the democratic process.

. . .The specter of Donald Trump explains so much of this bad behavior. Time and again, Trump was invoked as the justification for quashing dissent, rewriting the primary rules, or silencing inconvenient voices.

The Democrats were frozen in panic at the prospect of a second Trump term. They couldn’t do what any sane party would do and move on from Biden when there was still time to do so properly. And that inaction led to exactly the outcome they so feared.

And don’t forget Kamala Harris, who assured us all that Biden was fine. He wasn’t. This is something that anybody knew who possessed two neurons to rub together, and it’s unfortunate that the book is coming out right when Biden was diagnosed with serious prostate cancer. But blame for this coverup falls largely on the liberal media and the Democratic Party. Had people been honest, we might have had a Democratic President now. That may be wishful thinking, but, as Wiseman says, “the party’s historically low favorability ratings won’t get very far” without a reckoning about the scandal. And that means Democrats have to own up to their behavior around Biden. (That would be hard to do right now!)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is loving the Spring:

Hili: I’m looking with admiration.

A: What do you admire?

Hili: The charms of the spring.

Hili: Podziwiam.

Ja: Co podziwiasz?

Hili: Uroki wiosny.

*******************

From Richard; Pope Francis arrives in Heaven:

From Meow:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih spoke at a dinner the other day so she must be recovering, but she’s still not posting. We’ll have a tweet from her stand-in:

Denying women the right to assemble without men is a clear violation of women’s human rights. pic.twitter.com/uDYzD71hQO

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 20, 2025

From Malcolm, and I find it heartwarming even if there is a d*g:

This stray cat & dog never separate. Until a kind man adopted them both, they cuddled as if they knew all they had was one another. Nobody can buy love, but everyone can find it in the streets. pic.twitter.com/MavuAclGDh

— Hakan Kapucu (@1hakankapucu) May 4, 2025

From Simon, and this rings true:

— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-04-22T15:04:19.571Z

Two from my feed. Cats and fawns first:

nobody would believe me if i didn’t record it pic.twitter.com/MFNr7ZuzxO

— Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) May 19, 2025

Is this whale really responding to the sound? I like to think so.

A man who blows into a conch shell in Hawaii gets a response he will never forget…

pic.twitter.com/aIMILEJHWQ

— Kevin W. (@Brink_Thinker) May 19, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A French Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. ("The selection" is a horrible euphemism.) Had she lived, she'd be 87 years old today.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-21T09:52:47.126Z

From Matthew:

First, a wonky statement from Beth Shapiro, scientific head of the “de-extincting” company colossal:

And two responses from critics of Colossal’s hype: (Herridge is a mammoth expert and Hone a dino experts; both are friends of Matthew):

Still, never thought I’d see the day that some ancient DNA peeps would so whole-heartedly embrace (a somewhat iffy version of) the morphological species concept.

— Tori Herridge (@toriherridge.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:08:10.443Z

This is the sort of thing any informed journalist should have queried them on. So you are sequencing the DNA, manipulating the DNA, but to determine whether or not you succeeded, you're looking to soft tissue anatomy and behaviour on a [checks notes] animal known from skeletons.

— Dr Dave Hone (@davehone.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:41:57.646Z

Welcome to the top o’ the week: it’s Monday, May 19, 2025, and National Devil’s Food Cake Day (remember, there’s also Angel Food Cake). The origin of the name is obscure, for this is simply a chocolate cake, usually darker than a normal one and frosted with chocolate, comme ça:

Wikipedia says this:

The name probably had several sources of inspiration, including the culinary term deviled to describe flavorful foods like deviled eggs and the contrast of this dark, dense, flavorful cake with the light and airy angel food cake. The name has inspired humorous comments; one of the first printed recipes declares it to be “Fit for Angels”, and another early recipe recommends topping it with divinity frosting.

But if you look up the culinary term deviled, you get “grilled with a piquant sauce”!

It’s also World Family Doctor Day, but not much else.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, and it’s metastasized to his bones. As they said on the news last night, “It’s not curable, but it’s treatable.”

The diagnosis came after Mr. Biden reported urinary symptoms, which led doctors to find a “small nodule” on his prostate. Mr. Biden’s cancer is “characterized by a Gleason score of 9” with “metastasis to the bone,” the statement said.

The Gleason score is used to describe how prostate cancers look under a microscope; 9 and 10 are the most aggressive. The cancer is Stage 4, which means it has spread.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” according to the statement from Mr. Biden’s office, which was unsigned. “The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

This is very sad to hear, especially given that two of his children also died, one of brain cancer and the other in an accident that also killed Biden’s first wife. He’s also had two dangerous brain aneurysms.  The guy has been through a lot.

*Boss vs. Boss: Trump is trying to get Bruce Springsteen to shut up. It isn’t working (article archived here).

President Trump warned Bruce Springsteen to “keep his mouth shut” until he gets back to the U.S. The rock icon is showing no signs of backing down, delivering a fiery performance from a stage in this city Saturday that reflected the stark political divide in America.

Springsteen echoed earlier criticism of the Trump administration Saturday, saying a “rogue” government was rolling over U.S. lawmakers and institutions designed to keep authoritarianism in check.

“Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy,” Springsteen told the audience. To drive the point home, he dedicated one of his songs to our “Dear Leader,” an allusion to the honorific set aside for former North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il.

A similar broadside last week prompted Trump to take aim at Springsteen in a social-media post: “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy.”

The escalating confrontation between the president and Springsteen is part of a broader clash between Trump and some pop-culture icons that goes back to the president’s first term. Trump has repeatedly assailed Taylor Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris in last year’s election but hasn’t engaged in the sort of sharp-tongued criticism delivered by Springsteen.

Trump lashed out at Swift in a separate post Friday: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’”

. . . . few artists have been as blunt as Springsteen, who for decades has cast himself as a champion of the working class and, in recent decades, has regularly campaigned with Democratic Party presidential candidates.

Still, Springsteen has generally been able to straddle the partisan divide in America. His 1984 anthem “Born in the U.S.A.” was widely embraced by Republicans including Ronald Reagan, despite its lyrics’ searing criticism of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Springsteen also counts New Jersey’s former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and longtime presidential aspirant from Springsteen’s home state, among his biggest fans.

Still, despite Springsteen’s support, the Democratic Party has seen its longtime strength among blue-collar workers eroded by the rise of Trump. The president has transcended his own gilded upbringing to become a hero to many voters across the Rust Belt states that Springsteen has made a career of singing about—including Youngstown, a working-class city in Ohio that was the eponymous subject of one of the songs Springsteen played on Saturday.

Keep on speaking your mind, Bruce!  Trump can’t do anything to you, because you have freedom of speech. It’s clear that Trump has no ability to ignore criticism, but always answers it with juvenile name-calling.

*From the NYT: “Hollywood couldn’t imagine a star like this one” (archived here). Who is the star? Why, it’s Desi Arnaz from “I Love Lucy”, a show I regularly watched as a kid.

*On his Substack site, the well-known physician and writer Eric Topol discusses the first human to be treated for genetic disease with in vivo “CRISPR 2.0 personalized genome editing.” (h/t reader Gingerbaker).  The genetic disease was “severe carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency, a disease with an estimated 50% mortality in early infancy.”  After determining the infant’s defects, they developed an infusion that was targeted at the prcise base pair that was defective, and then gave it repeatedly to the one-year old. From Topol’s report:

This was unique in many respects. KJ Muldoon was born in August 2024 with lethargy, rigid muscles and other worrisome symptoms. Genome sequencing revealed this was due to a severe urea-cycle disorder that leads to accumulation of ammonia and death in about half of infants affected, and short of death, the high levels of ammonia cause lethargy, seizures, coma, and brain damage. The disease-causing gene was CPS1 (carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency), a 1 in a 1.3 million births genetic (ultra-rare) disease. KJ was hospitalized and awaited a liver transplant, listed at 5 month of age, if a donor organ became available. In the meantime, therapy consisted of a low protein diet and ammonia lowering (“nitrogen scavenger”) medications.

To get to the basis of KJ’s genomic defect and attempt a cure, the team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Penn Medicine (led by Drs. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and Kiran Musunuru) sequenced KJ and his parents. The father had a truncating CSP1 variant (Q335X) and the mother a different variant, E714X). They developed an adenosine base editor (called K-abe, schematic below) to specifically correct KJ’s defective CPS1 gene. The approach taken was particularly rigorous and comprehensive. Within 6 months they tested the editor in cells with the genomic variants, in mice (bred to specifically have KJ’s CPS1 mutation), in non-human primates, and got FDA approval to give it. It was administered intravenously using delivery via mRNA + nanoparticles beginning in February 2025 and then with 2 subsequent doses. The base editor used was directed against the paternal mutation (a G→A stop variant) at the Q335X site of the CSP1 gene.

What is missing to date is a liver biopsy, due to risk to the infant, to prove the targeted CSP1 editing. There is also lacking evidence of a cure—”just” a reduced need for medications and the restrictive diet. But also encouraging is that KJ is now reaching developmental milestones and although he sustained two viral infections, both were without an ammonia crisis. Further doses of the base editor can be administered with the mRNA approach (rather than a virus vector that can induce an immune response). Regarding uncertainties, we also don’t know about the durability of the editing, any mosaicism impact (only some liver cells edited), and the potential of any off-target effects (rigorously assessed in the 6-months sprint of lab experiments but not yet in KJ).

It seemed to work, though of course fixing a genetic disease by changing some of the cells isn’t guaranteed to be a permanent fix, as there are other, unfixed cells that keep replicating. I’m not sure whether the infant will require lifelong infusions, or whether the disease has bad effects only in infancy, but it’s remarkable that you can target liver cells and change a single base pair in the DNA (out of 3 billion bases) in an attempt to cure a genetic disease. Topol adds this:

This case of KJ represents a human first—-personalized, N-of-1 genomic intervention with base editing (CRISPR 2.0), in the body (in vivo), to directly fix a pathogenic (disease-causing) gene mutation. This bespoke intervention was accomplished in a remarkably compressed timeline that included rigorous assessment in cell and animal models, along with regulatory approval to proceed. It embodies something in medicine we have not and could not have done previously. It involved a dedicated team at CHOP and Penn and collaborators spread out around the world.

There are many specific aspects of the case that deserve attention. The fact that this work culminated from many years of NIH supported research, including the current report, at a time when we’re seeing profound and indiscriminate cutting of such funds

Here’s the paper from NEJM:

There is a lot more of this to come, and it’s amazing that we’re living in an age in which gene editing (which arose as a fortuitous byproduct of pure scientific curiosity about hot-spring bacteria) can be used to ameliorate or cure genetic diseases.

*The Times of Israel reports that the body of Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar, the target of an attack about a week ago, has (according to a Saudi report) been found in a tunnel in Gaza. The third Sinwar brother, Zakaria, was killed by an airstrike on Sunday night. (Some time ago Yahyta Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was also killed by the IDF).  The IDF reported the strike, but they don’t take a kill for granted unless they’re sure, and I’m accepting this Saudi version.

A series of Israeli airstrikes last week killed Muhammad Sinwar, the de facto commander of Hamas in Gaza, according to reports on Sunday that said his body was found in a Khan Younis tunnel.

Muhammad Sinwar was the younger brother of the former Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the IDF in southern Gaza last October.

According to a separate report, Zakaria Sinwar, another brother, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday night. [JAC: I’ve heard rumors that Zakaria was in the morgue, showed signs of life, and has been taken to the hospital. Stay tuned.]

A series of Israeli airstrikes last week killed Muhammad Sinwar, the de facto commander of Hamas in Gaza, according to reports on Sunday that said his body was found in a Khan Younis tunnel.

The strikes that reportedly killed Muhammad Sinwar on Tuesday targeted an underground command compound below the European Hospital where he was believed to have been sheltering.

The IDF later bombed the area several more times, in an apparent attempt to prevent anyone from approaching the tunnel.

According to the Saudi channel Al-Hadath, his body was recently recovered along with the remains of 10 of his aides.

The report said that there was evidence that the commander of the Rafah Brigade in Hamas’s military wing, Mohammad Shabana, was also killed in the strike.

What effect, if any, these strikes will have on Hamas remains to be seen. After all, some predicted that Hamas would give up after Yahya Sinwar was killed. It did not. But it’s clear that Israel’s big push now is designed to finish the job, and may have led to the proposal in the next item.

*In addition, Israel and the Qataris (and, “indirectly,” Hamas) are pondering one war-ending plan that would return all the hostages (dead or alive) and get Hamas to give up:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says Israel’s hostage negotiation team in Doha is exhausting “every possibility” for a deal, including a potential agreement that would see the end of fighting, in an apparent shift in approach.

The PMO says that the team is working toward the possibility of either US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s proposal for a short-term ceasefire and limited hostage exchange, or an agreement to end the war through a comprehensive release of all hostages in Gaza and the complete surrender and exile of Hamas.

“Under the prime minister’s direction, even at this hour, the negotiating team in Doha is working to exhaust every possibility for a deal — whether according to the Witkoff outline or within the framework of ending the war, which would include the release of all hostages, the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip,” writes the PMO in a statement.

. . . . Israel has consistently said that the war will not end without the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing power. Netanyahu has previously insisted on only agreeing to a temporary ceasefire of roughly 45 days, which would begin with Hamas releasing about 10 hostages.

Will Hamas give up and go into exile? This doesn’t seem likely, as they always say they value death more than the IDF values life, and many truly believe that if they die while “resisting,” they will go to heaven and get those virgins. But surely some members of Hamas don’t want to die. See also this archived article about the IDF’s “excpanded ground operations” in the NYT.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is impatient:

Hili: I’m sitting here and waiting.

A: What for?

Hili: For somebody to come and fill the water bowl.

Hili: Siedzę tu i czekam.

Ja: Na co?

Hili: Aż ktoś przyjdzie i uzupełni wodę w tej misce.

*******************

From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!/Epic Fails!!:

From Annie:

From Cats:

Masih is posting again, though they’re mostly reposts since she’s recovering from surgery. Here’s an old one but of course still relevant to the patriarchal Iranian regime:

#چهارشنبه_های_بدون_اجبار #چهارشنبه_های_سفيد
second week of #WhiteWednesdays one day, instead of feeling scared of the morality police… pic.twitter.com/8j6b6QYVlf

— My Stealthy Freedom (@mystealthyorg) May 31, 2017

Another instance of deplatforming tweeted by Nicholas Christakis at Yale. Salman Rushdie was scheduled to give the commencement speech at Claremont-McKenna College. From the link in the tweet:

The cancellation came as student and local Muslim advocacy groups called the author’s presence “disrespectful” after he said pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses were akin to supporting “a fascist terrorist group,” The Guardian reported last year.

“I’m surprised, relieved and happy,” Claremont Colleges Muslim Students Association president Kumail Afshar said about Rushdie’s decision.

Rushdie, an Indian-born British and American atheist, was forced into hiding by the outrage over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, in which he suggests Islam’s Prophet Muhammad may have entertained polytheism.

The College supported Rushdie, but I suspect he was scared of being attacked again:

When you are happy that you have cancelled the incredible Sir @SalmanRushdie from giving a talk at your college, you really have lost the plot. https://t.co/MBqFpcPVjH

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) May 17, 2025

Talking about losing the plot, look what Naomi Wolf said (“Tim Onion” is Ben Collins, owner of The Onion):

“Since I’ve rearranged my whole identity to call most people unclean and filled with vampire blood, their hugs seem less sincere. Separately, I have discovered the vampire-blooded have a new disease called Soft Hug Disease.”

— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) 2025-05-17T17:56:07.455Z

From Simon:

When you post the same thing on X and Bluesky

— Oded Rechavi (@odedrechavi.bsky.social) 2024-11-12T19:52:01.542Z

From my feed; I hope this cured the mantis and it was let go. But crikey, look at that thing!

Lowering a Praying Mantis in water to entice the parasite living within to come outside. pic.twitter.com/Ld2QsdglaL

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 17, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was 11, and woiuld be 94 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-19T09:39:28.249Z

From Matthew via Phil Plait; a bad joke. My own personal version, which is mine, is opening a fusion Caribbean-Jewish restaurant called “Bermuda Schwartz.”

I'm gonna open a fusion Italian-Peruvian-Jewish restaurant called Matzah Pizzu

— Phil Plait (@philplait.bsky.social) 2025-01-07T15:25:53.020Z

And a relatively newly discovered jellyfish:

The pink meanie jellyfish was only described in the year 2000 (they even got their own new family!) and we’re totally here for it. The pink meanie hunts the moon jellyfish and helps keep their blooms in check! #coralcitycamera

— Coral City Camera (@coralcitycamera.bsky.social) 2024-11-12T14:37:17.997Z

Save for John Avise’s collection of dragonfly photos for tomorrow, we’re out of readers’ wildlife. This is sad, as the feature has been going since this site started in 2009 (I can’t believe it’s been that long!).  If you have wildlife photos and don’t want the feature to disappear, please send ’em in. There will be no photos today.

Welcome to Jewish cat shabbos: CaturSaturday, May 17, 2025, and National Walnut Day. Here’s a short video about how commercial walnuts are harvested: They shake ’em off the trees!

It’s also Armed Force Day, World Whisky Day, National Mushroom Hunting Day, National Cherry Cobbler Day, National Pinot Grigio Day, and they’re running the second race of the Triple Crown today: the Preakness.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*To become an American citizen, applicants have to answer questions about America’s history and laws, which is okay (I hear that most native Americans can’t answer them). But now, in this Age of Trump, they’re thinking of turning this vetting into, yes, a reality television show. It’s not a done deal yet, but it’s tacky, and of course the pressure of being on t.v. could throw some people:

The Department of Homeland Security is considering taking part in a television program that would have immigrants go through a series of challenges to get American citizenship, officials said on Friday.

The challenges would be based on various American traditions and customs, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the agency. She said the department was still reviewing the idea, which she spoke about several weeks ago with a producer named Rob Worsoff.

“The pitch generally was a celebration of being an American and what a privilege it is to be able to be a citizen of the United States of America,” she said. “It’s important to revive civic duty.”

She said the agency was happy to review “out-of-the-box pitches,” particularly those that celebrate “what it means to be an American.”

The project was reported earlier by The Daily Mail.

Mr. Worsoff told The Wall Street Journal that the show was not intended to be punitive.

“This isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants,” Mr. Worsoff said, adding, “This is not, ‘Hey, if you lose, we are shipping you out on a boat out of the country.’”

Ms. McLaughlin said the pitch had not yet reached the level of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. She said on social media on Thursday that the department “receives hundreds of television show pitches a year,” including for documentaries about border operations and white-collar investigations. “Each proposal undergoes a thorough vetting process prior to denial or approval,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “This pitch has not received approval or denial by staff.”

The department has worked with filmmakers in the past on programming.

In 2017, during the first Trump administration, the agency allowed documentary filmmakers extensive access to operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for a program called “Immigration Nation.”

I cannot imagine the American public being intensely interested in such a show. Granted, they would learn some history and law, but people would find it boring. I find it embarrassing and schlocky, and imagine answering those questions on t.v. I am betting they won’t go through with it.  “I’ll take Canceled Amendments for $200.”

*Israel previously announced that it would launch a large offensive against Hamas after Trump finished his trip to the Middle East. But the IDF couldn’t wait, and a big offensive has just begun. (h/t Malgorzata)

Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday killed at least 74 people, Hamas-run authorities said, as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a Middle East visit that skipped Israel and offered little prospect for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Vowing to take care of Gaza, Trump said “a lot of people are starving in Gaza… There’s a lot of bad things going on.”

Strikes overnight into Friday morning hit the outskirts of Deir al-Balah and the city of Khan Younis, and sent people fleeing from the Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya.

The death toll figure, which is not independently verified, does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

The Saudi Al-Hadath news channel reported that Israeli tanks advanced in the area of Beit Lahiya.

The IDF said Friday afternoon that it had carried out airstrikes on over 150 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip over the past day.

The targets included anti-tank missile launch posts, cells of operatives, and buildings used by terror groups to carry out attacks on forces, the army said.

The WaPo adds this:

The strikes in Gaza on Friday were preparatory actions leading to a larger operation and were meant to send a message to Hamas that the campaign will begin soon if there is not an agreement to release hostages, the Associated Press reported, citing an unnamed Israeli official.

The problem with the food, which I do worry about, it that yes, Gaza has enough food for all its people for some time, but Hamas is guarding it in warehouses.  True, no food is coming in, but Israel has offered to distribute food to people so it could ensure that the food goes to civilians, not to Hamas, but the UN won’t let Israel do that for reasons that are completely unclear to me.  But, at any rate, it’s not true that Israel refuses to distribute food, and remember that there is no obligation to distribute food to an enemy country (we didn’t in WWII), so Israel is going beyond the call of duty by offering to do so.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/dozens-said-killed-in-heavy-israeli-strikes-across-gaza-trump-people-are-starving/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2025-05-16&utm_medium=email

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly and snarky news column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The emir of America.”

→ Biden and Kamala continue their bickering: A top adviser to Kamala’s presidential run told authors of a forthcoming book that Biden screwed the campaign over, and that if he had only dropped out earlier, Kamala would have soared. Which makes no sense, because she became slightly less popular as she campaigned. It seems like if Biden would’ve quit just a couple months earlier, Doug Emhoff might have been in the East Wing today switching out the drapes and getting ready for SoulCycle in Georgetown. The new book details Biden’s aging, and the lengths people went to cover it up includes that his team planned for Biden to be in a wheelchair soon after the election. I need everyone involved in this to step away from public life. But they refuse. Last week, Joe and Dr. Jill Biden went on The View. The ladies asked him about the criticisms of his age, and he went on for a few minutes until Dr. Jill, our villain, swooped in to say how very hard he worked.

The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day. I mean, he’d get up, he put in a full day, and then at night he would, I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff. I mean, it was nonstop.

He put in a full day like a grown-up, she says, as Joe stares ahead, confused. Why is Joe all dressed up there at The View table anyway? Dr. Jill, just let him rest, good Lord.

→ The new Statue of Liberty: Donald Trump is being gifted a jumbo jet by the Qataris. The administration says it’s being given to the Defense Department and then will go to Trump’s “presidential library foundation,” which I’m sure will be very real and very full of big books. Facing criticism, Trump reposted someone on Truth Social saying the plane is a gift from a foreign government, like the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. Just like that. But does the Statue of Liberty have a minibar full of Diet Coke?

My favorite exchange on this whole thing was on Fox News, between Brian Kilmeade and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Kilmeade: “Do you worry that if [the Qataris] give us something like this, they want something in return?”

Leavitt: “Absolutely not, because they know President Trump, and they know he only works with the interests of the American public in mind.”

To be clear, I only work with the interests of TGIF in mind. So if someone wants to gift a briefcase of diamonds or a big private plane, TGIF might be interested in promoting your concrete company. Incentives: aligned! You’re welcome, TG readers.

Attesting to the legality of the gift from Qatar was United States attorney general and top blonde Pam Bondi, whose former job was working as a lobbyist for Qatar.

→ UC Berkeley votes against Hindu Heritage Month: The UC Berkeley student senate voted against Hindu Heritage Month, citing “Hindu nationalism,” despite the university’s observing several other heritage months. Hindus are not allowed heritage time! Stop asking for heritage awareness, Hindus. You must sit in shame next to the Irish Pride group and the campus Israel club (it is an awkward combo in there, I gotta warn you). Certain heritages’ self-awareness needs to be suppressed, and UC Berkeley is adding Hindu to that list. The failed resolution had recognized contributions to the Berkeley community by people of Hindu heritage, and called on students to “support their Hindu peers on campus.” No. Stop asking. As your debutante arbiter of who is white, and what to do with edge cases, I’ll be clear: Greeks and Italians are ethnic and may celebrate, though not for a whole month, just a heritage week. Basically a food festival and that’s it. But Hindus are white. I can’t explain why but it’s true.

*A new paper in Science once again shows the value of genetic differences between human populations in reconstructing the history of human migration. Who says population differences are of no biological significance?. Click below to read it, or find the pdf here (h/t Matthew):

The upshot is really summarized in the abstract, and the four lineages giving rise to modern South American populations is shown in the figure below. The size of the circle in each area is an index of the inhabitants’ genetic diversity, which itself is an index of population size (bigger circles = more people in the past).

Here’s the summary:

From our origins in Africa, humans have migrated and settled across the world. Perhaps none of these migrations has been the subject of as much debate as the expansion into and throughout the Americas. Gusareva et al. used 1537 whole-genome sequenced samples from 139 populations in South America and Northeast Eurasia to shed light on the population history of Native Americans. Collected as a part of the GenomeAsia 100K consortium, analysis of these data showed that there are four main ancestral lineages that contributed to modern South Americans. These lineages diverged from each other between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago, and this analysis reveals more details of the population history dynamics in these groups.

Note how, in general, the South American circles are smaller, reflecting the fact that only a limited number of individuals went on each southward foray, reducing the genetic diversity.  Note that they used over 1500 whole genome sequences to get these data, and that the lineages diverged over 10,000 years ago. What I always find amazing is that humans crossed the Bering land bridge about 17,000 years ago, and only a few thousand years later they’d already crossed North America, Central America, and made it to South America. That’s some fast traveling, and one wonders why. (I presume competition, but we don’t know.)

They also were unable to find the part of NE Asia where the immigrants originated, but they surely had to pass through Siberia.

Click picture to enlarge:

*The man who tried to stab Salman Rushdie to death has been sentenced, and although it was the maximum sentence under the charges, it seems light to me:

 The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced Friday to serve 25 years in prison.

A jury found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault in February.

Rushdie did not return to court to the western New York courtroom for his assailant’s sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement. During the trial, the 77-year-old author was the key witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety.

Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made a statement about freedom of speech in which he called Rushdie a hypocrite.

“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” said Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”

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Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie and seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with him. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said.

Rushdie, stabbed 15 times, lost one of his eyes and the use of one hand, and if you want to read his ruminations about the attack, I highly recommend Rushdie’s account Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which I’ve mentioned before. Since Rushdie never met the guy who stabbed him, it’s not just his thoughts about the murder, which are quite eloquent, but the gruesome details of his long healing. At the end he confects a dialogue between himself and Matar in an attempt to  suss out Matar’s motivations.  It’s all because Rusdie wrote a book that offended some Muslims; I bet Matar didn’t even read it.

Here’s an 8.5-minute BBC video giving details of the trial; it includes a short interview with Rushdie:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s looking for books in all the wrong places.

Hili: What are you looking for?

Andrzej: A good book.

Hili: You are not going to find it here.

And a picture of Szaron stalking:

*******************

Masih must be feeling better, as she’s reposting old posts. Here’s one about hijabs. There are English subtitles

درست میگفت آن زمان عادی نبود…#چهارشنبه_های_سفید#آزادی_های_یواشکی https://t.co/clLyszlBwF

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 16, 2025

From Luana. Seriously, a headline this straight (and indicting Palestinian terrorism) is very rare in the NYT!

I mean this entirely sincerely: kudos to the NYT for a straight headline like this pic.twitter.com/oZ3IY8WbNk

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) May 15, 2025

From Simon:

Unpopular Pete Hegseth Forced To Drink Lunch Alone

— The Onion (@theonion.com) 2025-04-22T16:00:02.314Z

From Malcolm.  I may have posted this before (I can’t recall), but I love it.

Every 10 steps she takes, she looks back to check her little one pic.twitter.com/RxP770PRsW

— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) April 30, 2025

From my feed; these are pretty amazing and, I’m sure, expensive:

Hyper realistic silicone mask visuals
pic.twitter.com/wrJ1llU7zq

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 16, 2025

One from the Auschwitz Memorial that I reposted”

This Czech Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was 13.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-17T09:39:30.280Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb, who’s recovering rapidly. The first one he captions, “More nightmarish visions from the good old US of A. It’s heinous:

The state of Georgia is using the body of a brain-dead woman as an incubator. Because she was 9 weeks pregnant when she died, and their abortion ban is from about 6 weeks, they are sustaining her on life support, without input from her family, until 32 weeks of gestation. A true dystopian nightmare.

— Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD (@arghavansallesmd.medsky.social) 2025-05-15T18:46:36.731Z

Here’s natural (well, really artificial) selection for antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Note that the environment gets more challenging towards the center.

A fabulous video – I used to show this to my first year students as am example of natural selection in action.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T15:24:22.352Z

Welcome to Thursday, May 15, 2025, and International Conscientious Objectors Day. I was one of these, and applied for I-O status in 1970. My draft number in 1971 was 3!. I vowed to go to jail rather than fight in Vietnam, which I saw as a useless and unjust war in which the U.S. was not defending itself.  Fortunately, I got a 2-S (CO) status without evan an examination (I had a history of antiwar work). So, I did my CO work in a NYC hospital for 13 months until I found I had been “drafted” illegally (they drafted COs from the class of 1971 but no soldiers, which violated the draft law). With the help of the ACLU, I initiated a class action suit (Coyne et al. v Nixon et al,) and we won in NY federal court. We were released (the class was, as I recall, about 2500 COs all told), but of course not compensated, as we were allowed to earn no more than a GI ( about $6000 per year) but had to pay for our own food and housing.  Then I was free to go to graduate school, but that is another story, and a long one. . . .

It’s also Bring Flowers to Someone Day, National Apértif Day (always a dry sherry), National Chocolate Chip Day, and Peace Officers Memorial Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Republicans are getting antsy about Trump accepting an expensive plane from the terrorist-supporting state of Qatar to use as Air Force One for the next four years.

Republican lawmakers on Tuesday expressed national-security concerns over the proposed $400 million plane that the Qatari royal family wants to give to the U.S. for use as Air Force One, offering rare GOP resistance to a venture backed by President Trump.

Many of the Republicans who expressed doubts serve on congressional committees that oversee the nation’s armed services and intelligence agencies. They said that the White House would be subject to a battery of questions regarding security if the transfer goes forward. They noted that scrubbing the plane for foreign surveillance technology would be a costly and laborious process and questioned whether the Qatari plane would have necessary capabilities—like being able to refuel midair—or carry the advanced technology needed for an airborne command center.

Several suggested that President Trump and the White House might rethink the offer.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) stressed Tuesday afternoon that nothing was official yet and predicted there would be “plenty of scrutiny” around the arrangement should it move forward. “There are lots of issues around that that I think will attract very serious questions if and when it happens,” Thune said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) stressed Tuesday afternoon that nothing was official yet and predicted there would be “plenty of scrutiny” around the arrangement should it move forward. “There are lots of issues around that that I think will attract very serious questions if and when it happens,” Thune said.

Trump also has faced some criticism over the deal from conservative commentators: Ben Shapiro characterized the idea as “skeezy,” and influencer Laura Loomer took aim at Qatar via social media saying “we cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits.”

The objections voiced by GOP lawmakers also are noteworthy given that Trump is currently on an overseas trip to the Middle East. He is set to be in Qatar for a state visit on Wednesday, and the blowback at home about the gift threatens to overshadow the trip.

And it looks as if the plane will sort of belong to Trump after his term is over, as it reverts to the Trump Presidential Library. What will happen then? Will it no longer fly? Will it be used to ferry documents and books back and forth? No, this is very bad optics, and you know it’s bad when even Republicans criticize it. And to prevent eavesdropping, they’d have to take the whole damn plane apart to see if the Qataris have put listening devices in it. It’s not like they’re even a friendly state, though they pretend to be.

*Here’s Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Pretty clear, no?

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That looks like Trump’s “birthright ban” for children of immigrants is palpably unconstitutional. But yet. . . . .

*Finally, Matthew brought my attention to a Guardian article about a duck being caught by a Swiss speed camera, and it was likely a repeat offender. Yes, ducks can fly quickly, and this was a mallard drake.

A radar image of a speed offender caught in central Switzerland last month has revealed that the culprit was not only a duck but probably a repeat offender, local authorities have said.

Police in the town of Köniz, near Bern, were astounded when they went through radar images snapped on 13 April to discover that a mallard was among those caught in the speed trap, the municipality said on its Facebook page at the weekend.

The duck was caught going 52km/h (32mph) in a 30-km/h zone, the post said.

That’s reckless flying!

The story, first reported by the Berner Zeitung newspaper on Monday, got even stranger.

It turned out that a similar-looking duck was captured flying in the same spot at exactly the same speed, on exactly the same date seven years earlier, the Facebook post said.

The municipality said it had considered whether the whole thing might not be a belated April Fool’s joke or a “fake” picture.

But the police inspectorate said it was impossible to doctor images or manipulate the radar system.

The computers are calibrated and tested each year by Switzerland’s federal institute of metrology, and the photos taken are sealed, the municipality said.

Lock him up!  Here’s the photo, credited to: Gemeinde Köniz/Facebook:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the boys have a botanical exchange:

Hili: The grass grows quickly after rain.

A: I don’t blame it.

Hili: Trawa po deszczu szybko rośnie.

Ja: Ja jej się nie dziwię.

*******************

From Now That’s Wild:

From Meow:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih is still recovering from her operation, but here’s a tweet retweeted by JKR. I can’t embed it but you can go to it by clicking on the screenshot, and you can read the letter here. The BBC is accused of being homophobic!

Simon says this is “hilarious if true”, but I simply can’t believe it.  Readers–help!

You can’t make this up

— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) 2025-05-13T16:18:26.272Z

From Malcolm: I can’t embed this but you can see the original by clicking on the screenshot. (Note that “only” should be before “once”.)

Shermer gives all the excuses why this is okay:

Not happening
One-off event
Not that common
Biased reporting
Moral panic
It’s okay because he identifies as a she https://t.co/q9ET5OgYRu

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) May 14, 2025

From my feed.  Turkey loves its cats, and this vending machine apparently dispenses cat food when it hears a meow. Now seagulls are trying to game the system.

There is a food vending machine for cats in Turkey, the seagulls meow pretending to be cats
pic.twitter.com/F0mhnqY2Pg

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 14, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Polish dressmaker died in the camps barely a month after arriving. She was 22.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-15T09:56:14.034Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb, who is recovering from both a chest infection and respiratory virus. But he’s getting better! First, a little crab stole some food from the big one. Sound up to hear the Spanish:

Libidoclaea granaria 🦀 from @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 741 #ChileMargin2024 #MarineLife

— Lisa (@tuexplorer1.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T03:12:03.111Z

Matthew says this about the tweet, which starts a thread: “I briefly felt well enough last night to pen this Wodehousian thread (inspired by listening to a lot of BBC Jeeves dramatisations, which is only vaguely droll if you know the Jeeves books and also UK WW2 literature 

What did Bertie Wooster get up to in WW2? He was 24 when he employed Jeeves (20 years older?) who later said he had “dabbled to a certain extent” in WW1. That must have been in 1920ish. In 1939 he would have been in his early 40s, slightly liverish, but still a game old bird. 1/n

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-05-13T20:46:14.308Z

Welcome to shabbos for goyische cats:  Sunday, May 4, 2025, and Bird Day.  In honor of the day, here are Mordecai and Esther (they are doing fine, but I will post about them when the ducklings come, which should be within ten days. He is watching over her protectively. Note that they are both in great shape! We all love ducks, don’t we?

It’s also World Laughter Day, International Respect for Chickens Day, National Orange Juice Day, Lemonade Day, and National Candied Orange Peel Day (I love the stuff!)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump really, really hates Harvard, probably because it’s America’s most elite school. And it’s not enough that he wants to remove billions of dollars of federal grant money from the school (mostly from scientists who haven’t had anything to do with the anti-Semitic climate supposedly reigning on campus). No, now he wants to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status. And, like Trump’s other blackmail, Harvard is fighting back against this thuggery (article also archived here).

Harvard University signaled Friday that it would resist President Trump’s renewed threat to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status, a move for which it said there was “no legal basis” as the president escalated his bitter dispute with the nation’s oldest university.

Harvard stopped short of explicitly pledging a legal challenge to a revocation of its tax status, a change that would upend the university’s finances. But a spokesperson for the university said in a statement that there was “no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.”

“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the statement said. “It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs and lost opportunities for innovation. The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”

Mr. Trump declared Friday morning on social media that the government would be “taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status.” Mr. Trump added, “It’s what they deserve.”

Despite Mr. Trump’s assertion online and Harvard’s sharp response, it was not immediately clear Friday whether the I.R.S. was in fact moving forward with revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a change that could typically occur only after a lengthy process. Federal law prohibits the president from directing the I.R.S. to conduct tax investigations, and I.R.S. employees who receive such a command are required to report it to an internal government watchdog.

. . , With its tax-exempt status, Harvard not only does not have to pay most taxes, but donors can write off gifts to the school on their own tax returns. Losing the status would not only force Harvard to start paying tax to the federal government on its income but could cause donations to dry up. Philanthropy accounts for about 45 percent of Harvard’s annual operating revenues; most of that sum comes from a payout from the university’s $53 billion endowment.

Colleges and universities in America don’t pay taxes because of their special mission to educate students, and it does seem unfair to tax stuff like tuition, which should rightfully go for the mission of these schools. And why Harvard? Because of Trump’s claim that the school’s antisemitism must be penalized? What about all the other schools that are even worse? I say let Harvard clean up its own messes, and don’t penalize the school’s mission because of a desire for revenge. (I don’t think for a minute that Trump really does love the Jewish people or Israel, even though he’s treated them better than did his predecessor.)

*The administration has announced deep cuts to NASA’s scienc budget—by nearly half.

The White House released its 2026 “skinny budget” on Friday (May 2), a blueprint that outlines how the administration anticipates allocating government funds for the upcoming fiscal year. According to this proposal, NASA will see a 24% cut to its top-line funding, which experts say could be devastating for the agency.

“The White House has proposed the largest single-year cut to NASA in American history,” The Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit organization widely supported by scientists and space enthusiasts, said in a statement. “It would recklessly slash NASA’s science budget by 47%, forcing widespread terminations of functional missions worth billions of dollars.”

For instance, NASA says the skinny budget, which suggests removing about $6 billion in funding for the agency compared to enacted 2025 levels, would end efforts dedicated to Mars Sample Return. This program aims to bring samples of the Red Planet back to Earth — samples the Perseverance rover has been collecting over the last few years that experts say require lab-based analysis to reach their true scientific potential.

The budget would also eliminate climate-focused “green aviation” spending, directed at producing aircraft that are better for the environment. The latter also reflects the skinny budget’s major reductions to Earth science.

Furthermore, the skinny budget calls for the cancellation of Lunar Gateway, a space station meant to be built around the moon that has already notched some important construction milestones here on Earth. And on the topic of the moon, if this budget actually goes through (meaning it’s approved by Congress), it would retire NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after their third flight to the lunar neighborhood via the Artemis program. SLS and Orion have flown once together so far, in 2022, meaning there’d be two more opportunities left for this duo.

“If enacted, the 56% cut to the National Science Foundation, the 47% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and the 14% cut to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would result in an historic decline of American investment in basic scientific research,” the American Astronomical Society said about the proposed cuts in a statement released Friday.

I’m not keen on projects to get people to Mars, but I don’t think NASA is involved in that. The other cuts mentioned seem inimical to science. They are not DEI projects, they are are not “woke.” They are projects that will increase our knowledge about the universe. No, that’s not going to make us healthier or wealthier, but it will make us richer—in knowledge.

*Whatever you do, DO NOT FLY INTO OR OUT OF NEWARK AIRPORT.  I’ve been there once, and although my flight to Africa was only half an hour late, the airport was soulless. Now due to staffing shortages that include air traffic controllers and various breakdowns, it’s the worst airport in America.

. . . Newark has long been a punchline among travelers in the tri-state area, a launchpad to be avoided at all costs. It routinely tops rankings of large airports in flight delays and cancellations. It is hard to get to and harder to get around.

“The American people are reasonable, but if we have to spend the night sleeping on a bench in the Newark airport we will grab a flag and join the revolution like an extra in Les Miz,” late-night television host Stephen Colbert joked during a government shutdown in 2019.

But over the past few days, Newark achieved the unthinkable: It got worse.

Newark’s week started badly with an air-traffic technology outage that disrupted flights. Runway construction and air-traffic control staffing issues extended the pain, prompting hundreds of flight delays and cancellations this week alone, according to travel analytics company FlightAware.

For travelers, there’s no end in clear sight, especially as the summer months and their inclement weather add to the airport’s troubles.

There follows the expected litany of horrors. Then this:

Some of the criticism of Newark can be chalked up to snobbery. New Yorkers of a certain ilk see crossing the Hudson into New Jersey to board a plane as a bridge too far, even if parts of Manhattan are geographically closer to Newark than they are to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once refused to get off a plane at Newark, complaining that his TWA ticket from Chicago listed New York as the destination, not New Jersey.

But Newark’s operational problems are very real. In the last Wall Street Journal rankings of best large airports, Newark came in last based on scores for reliability, convenience and value.

. . .United CEO Scott Kirby, who joined United after that, has urged people to give Newark a shot. Still, he has long said the move to leave JFK was a mistake. Some corporate customers preferred JFK and switched airlines.

On Friday after the latest problems, Kirby wrote in a message posted on United’s website that the airline will cancel 35 daily round trip flights at Newark starting this weekend after a group of air-traffic controllers took leave following equipment outages:

“Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”

When United Airlines cancels 35 round trips per day from one of its hubs, you know there’s trouble. Please do anything to avoid flying to, from, or through Newark.

*Sovereignty  won the Kentucky Derby yesterday (7-1 odds), but the AP has an article about why, according to SCIENCE, these thoroughbreds are so fast:

What makes horses so powerful?

A horse’s heart and lungs are the source of its extraordinary power.

The heart averages 10 to 12 pounds (4.5-5.4 kg), or about 1% of the animal’s body weight, compared with half a percent for the typical human heart. Secretariat, the storied horse that won the Triple Crown in 1973, was found after his death to have a heart weighing more than 20 pounds (9.1 kg).

20 pounds!!!!!

Horse hearts are built for exertion. The average horse can go from a resting heart rate of about 34 beats per minute to 220 or 240 while racing – faster than a human heart during maximum exertion.

“One thing that’s really unique about horses is that they have an incredible capacity to move blood around their bodies — their heart rate can go really high and still be safe,” said University of Connecticut researcher Sarah Reed, editor in chief of the journal Animal Frontiers.

They also have a lung capacity of 60 liters – 10 times that of humans.

“That massive lung field allows for oxygen to transfer from the air into their blood, which is vitally important for sustaining aerobic energy,” Farmer said.

Recent research in the journal Science found that a genetic mutation enables horses to avoid negative side effects of super high energy production.

“Horses are great athletes because they can deliver a lot of oxygen to their muscles – way more than an elite human can —and by elite human, I mean Olympic athlete,” said Gianni Castiglione, the study’s co-author. “They have a bigger tank of gas and they have a more efficient engine … and this mutation is contributing to both of those things.”

. . .Other aspects of a horse’s biology enhance its abilities.

Horses store extra red blood cells in their spleens. These cells are released to carry even more oxygen around the body during intense exertion.

“Adrenaline when exercising causes the spleen to release extra red blood cells into circulation,” veterinarian Hilary Clayton said. “What horses are doing is essentially ‘blood doping’ themselves.”

Meanwhile, horses’ brains allow them to process sensory information and react quickly. That’s despite having frontal lobes, parts of the brain used for thought and planning that are proportionally smaller than those in humans.

“Brainwise, they’re designed with a real desire to play and run independent of any fear,” said Dr. Scott Bailey, a veterinarian at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, a thoroughbred breeding farm where Secretariat is buried. Horses are also able to focus intently, which “is really important for an athlete.”

Bone structure and musculature also help. The ligaments and tendons in their hind legs act like springs, Farmer said, helping propel them forward. Like other large prey animals, he added, they have “long, thin legs that are meant to run.”

Here’s the two-minute race. Journalism was the favorite but finished second. Every one of the 19 horses in this race had the great Secretariat in its lineage (his track record still holds after over 50 years).

And those long, thin legs are prone to injury. Once, when I gave a lecture at the University of Kentucky, they took me as a treat to a racetrack to watch the thoroughbreds run. I got to sit in the rich people’s box and dine in their dining room, and watched the races with fascination—until a horse fell on the track.  It had clearly broken its leg, and within minutes a large truck rolled onto the track and the view of the recumbent horse was blocked by men holding a big cloth. They euthanized it–right there in front of everyone (though we couldn’t see it.) That killed all my enthusiasm for thoroughbred racing.

*Israel appears to be planning a Big Push in Gaza, at least according to the Jerusalem Post. ‘

The IDF says it is sending out tens of thousands of call-up orders to reservists this evening, as the military is set to significantly expand its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, during a security consultation, the military presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with its planned offensive in Gaza, which will require substantial mobilization.

Israel’s security cabinet is slated to convene tomorrow so ministers can vote to approve the military plans authorized by Netanyahu.

Currently, three IDF divisions are operating in Gaza, in an offensive that the military has said is aimed at pressuring Hamas back into a hostage deal, and not destroying the terror group.

Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that if no hostage deal is reached soon, the military would launch a major offensive aimed at defeating Hamas. The intensified offensive will see the IDF operating in new areas of the Strip.

The tens of thousands of reservists being called up tonight will begin to show up in the military this coming week, according to the IDF. The reservists have likely been called up multiple times already during the war.

The IDF has said that it sees the return of the 59 hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip as the most important goal of the war, with defeating the terror group in second place.

It’s not at all certain that ratcheting up the fighting will lead to the release of the hostages, for Hamas would never do that unless there was a deal to allow the terror group to keep running Gaza. And I dont think Israel will make such a deal.  Without any hostages, Hamas has no leverage to get any kind of deal. It’s a great shame that the world doesn’t recognize that the hostages are not the equivalent of prisoners of war: they were kidnapped in a supreme act of immorality and then used to solidify the position of a terrorist group sworn to commit genocide.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili misses a mouse so SHE can do something bad to it!

Hili: W zeszłym roku tu była mysz.

Ja: Może gdzieś poszła?

Hili: Boję się, że przytrafiło jej się coś złego.

And a picture of the loving Szaron:

*******************

From The Monday Morning Memo;  I hope this is true!

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day: Natural selection!

Masih is still quiet, so here’s a bit about the new DHHS report on transsexualism.  I really must read it, but it’s so LONG!

A 409-page report, produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, reviews 17 international studies. Among its findings:

— No evidence that medical transition reduces suicide risk
— Risks include infertility, sexual dysfunction, cardiovascular disease
— U.S. studies on… pic.twitter.com/dnoE8Vf2Um

— The Free Press (@TheFP) May 2, 2025

Just in case you don’t know the downside of scientific journals taking political stands:

In 2020, Nature magazine endorsed Joe Biden for U.S. president. A pre-registered, large-sample experiment found that the endorsement didn’t change people’s view of the candidates – but it did cause them to lose trust in Nature and in scientists in general.

[Link below.] pic.twitter.com/U8iQ38QhAo

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 27, 2025

From Michael. I’m not sure I’d go this far. . .

If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t tell anyone but there would be signs. pic.twitter.com/xRBYebPSfb

— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) May 3, 2025

From Barry, who considers this a “fair warning”:

I mean, the warning wasn't wrong. #proofOfCat

— John Bull (@garius.bsky.social) 2025-05-03T08:08:59.458Z

From Simon:

Going to print this out and frame it on my wall

— Aaron Fritschner (@fritschner.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T15:12:32.867Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was eleven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-04T10:04:02.622Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, postmortem revenge:

19th Century customer reviews:

— Mark Wallace (@wallaceme.bsky.social) 2025-05-03T08:22:08.470Z

Robber flies! It’s a video, so play it.

From Wikipedia:

The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, sucking hypopharynx. The name “robber flies” reflects their expert predatory habits; they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and, as a rule, they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight.

For #WorldRobberFlyDay here's an edit I made showcasing how cool these flies are 😎

— Teagan Mulford (@teaganmulford.bsky.social) 2025-04-30T16:12:19.723Z