Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I haven’t looked at Natasha Hausdorff‘s videos in a while, but you’ll remember her as a British lawyer, an expert in international law, and a “pro bono legal director of the advocacy group, UK Lawyers for Israel.” Here is her reaction to the latest anti-Jewish violence and anti-Israel protests in England, both of which have become regular events. Here she goes up against Owen Jones, left-wing “British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist,” whose Wikipedia entry shows a photo of him wearing a Palestinian flag shirt. The channel is LBC, or Leading British Conversation.
The question is whether the pro-Palestinian marches in the UK should be banned because because they fall outside the boundaries of free speech. Hausdorff says they are violations because they constitute “hate speech” that incites violence against Jews, while Jones says that they’re not only legal, but a necessary outlet for opinions that Israel is committing genocide against Gaza. (He claims that Israel has killed 100,000 Gazans, which is surely untrue.) Jones is a big proponent of the “genocide canard”, and while I am not sure whether the marches violate British speech law, I agree with her that Israel has not committed genocide against Gazans. Anybody who knows what genocide is and how the IDF operates knows that’s a lie. But of course Jones has nothing bad to say against Hamas.
In response to Jones, Hausdorff can’t come up with anything that the Israeli government has done to justify the accusations of genocide (she doesn’t mention the West Bank, but may have done so somewhere in her talks or writing). But she correctly notes that the accusations of genocide aren’t being raised against the noncombatant deaths produced by the U.S. in WWII—and in that case, as in virtually all other wars, the ratio of noncombatant deaths to combatant deaths is much higher than seen in Gaza.
Jones cites several academics and “genocide scholars” who back the “g-word” as what Israel is doing in Gaza He adds that one can find identifiable Jews participating in the marches on the Palestinian side. He places the blame for hunger and destruction on Gaza squarely on the doorstep of Israel, while Hausdorff says that in contrast, it’s the fault of Hamas, which has embedded itself among civilians. Hausdorff argues that accusations of things like “starvation” are untrue, and also claims that the protests are a product of the “Hamas propaganda machine, ” which I think is an unwise accusation even though it is to some degree true: some of the figures and accusations bandied about by the protestors and by Jones and his experts come from Hamas.
Jones seems to argue largely from authority, citing none other than the Lancet and The Economist for the casualty figures, which must have come from Hamas. Hausdorff says that she’d be willing to debate the cited pro-Palestinian “genocide scholars” any time, but so far they’ve refused to do so.
Here are the notes added to the YouTube site by the UK Lawyers for Israel. I’m not whether if Hausdorff was interrupted in an unwarranted matter: you be the judge.
This recording includes comments on whether restrictions should now be placed on anti-Israel marches in London and other British cities, as well as strongly disputed allegations regarding casualty figures in Gaza, war crimes and genocide.
Unfortunately, Natasha Hausdorff was repeatedly interrupted by the interviewer when she tried to set out the inaccuracy of these allegations. It seems that many interviewers cannot stand to hear the expression of any view that supports Israel – as soon as a person interviewed starts to deploy facts contradicting the false propaganda the interviewer interrupts to prevent the truth being told.
For details of Gaza casualties according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry down to 10 November 2025, see this thread by Gabriel Epstein: https://x.com/GabrielEpsteinX/status/…. This shows that even according to this information (which may itself be distorted by Hamas propaganda):
1. A much higher % of males of fighting age died than of females of the same ages, indicating that Israeli military action targeted combatants and was not indiscriminate.
2. A much higher % of male teenagers died than of female teenagers, indicating that a significant number teenagers, who are classified as children, were killed because they were combatants.
3. The claim initiated by Hamas and disgracefully maintained by the BBC, that 70% of those killed were women and children, is false.
The claim stated by Owen Jones, that the IDF has admitted that 83% of those killed were civilians, is completely bogus, as Chief Magistrate Goldspring found in paragraph 81a of this recent ruling: https://www.uklfi.com/wp-content/uplo…
The details provided by the Gaza Health Ministry do not identify how they died. They probably include around 10,000 who died of natural causes: see Salo Aizenberg https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/2021…. Thousands more may well have been killed by Palestinian fire – rockets falling short, explosive devices, and crossfire. They certainly include 471 allegedly killed in the explosion outside Al Ahli hospital caused by a Palestinian rocket that fell short: see https://www.uklfi.com/false-al-ahli-c…. Well over a thousand other Palestinian rockets also fell short; each of them may have killed dozens of people.
Finally, here’s a related email I got yesterday from the editors of a small publication in the Pacific Northwest that has clearly fallen for some of the Big Lies. I am accused of being a histrionic Zionist, a proponent of settler colonialism—and pro-genocide (they call it “modern Holocaust denial”) as well. Their arguments are largely the same as those of Jones, even citing casualty figures taken from medical journals. They also try to tell me how to write this website. Finally, they seem unaware of my criticisms of religious Judaism, made on this site as well as in Faith Versus Fact, so they haven’t done their homework. But they don’t really care if I’ve also criticized Jewish superstition: their point is that I am pro-Israel, which they see as immoral.
At any rate, they can take a hike. Their email will not change how I “write my blog”. The email is indented:
Reading your blog, we were appreciative of the fact that you seemed to promote science and counter narratives from the religious establishments.
However, your inability to separate your own Zionist histrionics from what should have been strictly an antitheistic, science-focused platform ruins the experience for anyone who isn’t A) a genocide apologist, B) deeply insecure about their ethnic identity to the point that they associate it with a 20th century settler-colonialist project, or C), both.
Does your criticism of religion only extend to Christianity and Islam, or do you take on the Jewish religious establishment too? The most tangible and powerful form of that, of course, being the state of Israel, which reputed medical journals estimate has killed close to 100,000 civilians just since 10/23.
Atheism today needs smart, conscientious voices to lead, not modern Holocaust deniers. We won’t change your views with this email, but maybe we can change the way you write your blog to not repel people (a hopefully increasing majority) who are appalled by the Zionist crimes of ethnic cleansing and mass displacement.
Well, brothers and sisters, friends and comrades, this is the last batch of photos I have. If you’re feeling generous and have some good wildlife photos, well, you know what to do.
Today’s lot comes from Ephraim Heller: they are manakins and tanagers from Trinidad and Tobago. Ephraim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Today we have photos of manakins and tanagers that I photographed on my February visit to Trinidad and Tobago.
The three manakin species in these photographs all engage in lekking. Females choose a partner at the lek, mate, and then depart to build a nest and raise chicks entirely on their own. Males contribute only sperm. This behavior places intense sexual selection pressure on males, driving the evolution of exotic plumage, acrobatic movements, and multi-male performances. I make no comment on potential parallels in human behavior.
Blue-backed manakin (Chiroxiphia pareola) males engage in cooperative lekking. Two males — typically an older dominant individual and a younger subordinate — perform a dance in which they jump over each other on a branch. The female observes, and when she is sufficiently engaged, the subordinate male withdraws and the dominant male completes the mating. In these photos you see one of the males perched on the lekking branch and then performing the jump.
JAC: Here’s a video showing a related lekking species, the Blue manakin (Chiroxiphia caudata) and their remarkable courtship dance. Look at those males lined up, each trying to show he’s a better jumper than the others!
Each white-bearded manakin (Manacus manacus) male clears a small patch of forest floor down to bare earth and maintains one or more bare sticks above it as perches. The display involves rapid leaps between these sticks and the ground accompanied by a shockingly loud cracking sound – it sounds like someone snapping their fingers right next to your ear. It’s produced by the wings connecting above the back, which is enabled by a limb muscle, the scapulohumeralis caudalis, that is the fastest skeletal muscle in any vertebrate. Here you see two white-bearded manakins perched on their lekking branches and preparing to jump to the ground.
JAC: I also added a video of the white-bearded manakin courtship:
The golden-headed manakin (Ceratopipra erythrocephala) male’s lek display includes a “moonwalk” in which it slides backward along a perch. Sadly, I didn’t observe the moonwalk. In these photos the male has the bright yellow head, and you can see a female behind the male in the second photo.
JAC: Here’s a golden-headed manakin male courting, though I can’t really say it’s a “moonwalk.” They also pop their wings.
This gorgeous bay-headed tanager (Tangara gyrola) stopped me dead in my tracks. It has microstructures in its feathers that scatter light to intensify its hues. In addition, a hidden layer of white or black feathers beneath the outer plumage acts as a reflective backing, boosting the brightness and saturation of the visible colors:
The palm tanager (Thraupis palmarum) is one of the most common birds in Trinidad. The second photo is of the nest, which was conveniently located in a planter on our hotel’s balcony:
White-lined tanager (Tachyphonus rufus) males are glossy black, while females are rufous.
Welcome to the Lusty Month of May! It’s May 1, 2026, and we should all be singing this song from “Camelot”. This version of “The Lusty Month of May’ comes from the stage cast and is sung by Julie Andrews, who unaccountably declined to appear in the movie and was replaced by Vanessa Redgrave.
Apparently the British equivalent, “No Trousers Day,” was three months ago, and a lot of people rode the tube sans trousers (“pants” in the UK means “underpants”). Here’s a video:
A picture of the returned Vashti. What a sweet hen! Pictures will follow shortly to address the doubters.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I don’t like redistricting–creating new Congressional districts and often new seats in the House–unless it’s based on changes in population size and density. There are mathematically sophisticated ways of redistricting that divide up states based purely on population numbers. Now, however, it’s often done to create ethnic “voter equity” or to increase one party’s seats in Congress. I don’t like either form of gerrymandering, and now, according to the NYT, the Democrats are regretting having started the process a decade ago.
Their party began a major push for independent commissions to draw congressional districts after President Trump and Republicans swept into power in 2017. Democrats, panicked about Republicans’ structural gains after the 2010 census, succeeded in enacting such commissions in Colorado, Michigan and Virginia, while Republicans mostly kept politically minded state legislators in charge of drawing maps in red states.
Now Democrats are finding that their old good-government policies have become bad politics.
Their idealistic push for fairness is, it turns out, no match for the Republicans’ maximalist redistricting effort. The independent commissions that Democrats pushed for eight years ago, along with ones in Washington State and California that predated Mr. Trump’s rise, have complicated the party’s redistricting fight.
After the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a decision likely to lead to a rush of new maps before the 2028 election if not this year, blue-state Democrats are finding themselves regretting that they had sought to give away redistricting power to outside commissions.
“One of the lessons of the Trump era is a failure of imagination about how many norms they would break,” said Phil Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado who backed his state’s independent redistricting referendum in 2018 and is now supporting a ballot initiative to undo it. “You could say we should have been thinking ahead. We didn’t foresee this.”
At Mr. Trump’s urging, Republican lawmakers in the last year have redrawn congressional maps to help their party in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. Democrats responded in California and Virginia by asking voters to undo past referendums that created independent redistricting bodies. In both blue states, voters agreed.
Then came the events of this week, when the Supreme Court ruling appeared to give Republicans new opportunities and Florida Republicans passed a new map designed to flip four Democratic seats.
I repeat: there should be no redistricting except to balance population sizes among Congressional districts. The Republicans started the latest round of violating that principle, but now the Democrats are catching up. It’s the tragedy of the commons, with the commons being states. Who knows what effect this will have on the midterms. I still think the House will flip to Democratic in November, but I’m not betting on it.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) told Republican House candidates Wednesday that he plans to suspend next month’s primary elections so state lawmakers can pass a new congressional map first, according to two people with knowledge of the calls.
The move follows a Supreme Court decision earlier in the day that found Louisiana had unlawfully discriminated by race when it created a second majority-Black congressional district under legal pressure. A new Louisiana map would position Republicans to gain one or two seats in the midterms as they fight to hold their narrow majority in the House.
A spokesperson for Landry declined to comment on his plans for the primary. But the governor, along with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R), said in a statement Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision no longer requires the state to hold “congressional elections under the current map.”
“Yesterday’s historic Supreme Court victory for Louisiana has an immediate consequence for the State,” Landry and Murrill said in the statement. “We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward.”
The 6-3 decision limited a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act and could lead to Black Democrats across the South losing their House seats. Most states are unlikely to be able to redraw districts in time for the November midterm elections, but Louisiana could be one of the exceptions.
Election officials sent ballots to overseas voters weeks ago. It’s unclear whether the governor’s suspension would apply only to primaries for the six House seats, or include other elections, including the heated Senate primary that pits Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) against Rep. Julia Letlow (R). Louisiana has six House seats, two of which are held by Democrats.
If Landry suspends the House primaries but not other contests, primary voters would have to go to
Here are Louisiana’s congressional districts, which are clearly gerrymandered. If you go to the article link above, you’ll see they match almost exactly the area with a proportion of blacks above 50%. Apparently the Republicans want to dismantle that, pronto.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday dropped her bid for the U.S. Senate, pointing to a lack of campaign funds to keep up in one of the most competitive races in the country that quickly became a reflection of an internal party debate over which candidates can win in high-profile contests.
The move now thrusts political newcomer Graham Platner, an oyster farmer almost no one knew a year ago, as the expected Democratic front-runner against longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, whose seat Democrats are targeting in their effort to win control of the closely divided Senate.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else – the fight – to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
. . . Mills, a two-term governor and longtime Maine politician, was seen as one of Democrats’ top 2026 recruits when she entered the Senate race last year. She had the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and prominent left-leaning advocacy groups hoping to unseat Collins in the chamber, which has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.
. . . Meanwhile, Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, both of New York, said they would work with Platner to defeat Collins.
“Our North Star is winning a Democratic Senate majority, and over the past year, Senate Democrats have carved out multiple paths to do that,” their statement said.
Two male runners who were discovered fraudulently competing on behalf of female colleagues in a top South African marathon have been disqualified and could face two-year bans from the event, along with the two women.
The two women runners swapped their bibs with the two men, who both finished within the top 10 in the women’s half-marathon at the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town last Sunday, initially denying those slots to two female runners.
But the cheating was discovered by a marathon board member, and the men were disqualified from their 7th and 10th place finishes. Two women were belatedly recognized instead.
Larissa Parekh was accused of having Luke Jacobs run on her behalf, and Tegan Garvey was accused of having Nic Bradfield run on her behalf, marathon board member Stuart Mann said. All four runners face disciplinary action that could include two-year bans from the event, Mann said.
The annual Two Oceans race is one of South Africa’s iconic marathons and includes a 56-kilometer (34.7-mile) ultramarathon and a 21.1-kilometer (13.1-mile) half-marathon. The event attracts over 16,000 participants and finishing among the top 10 is a significant achievement for most runners.
Click the screenshot to go to an Instagram report. One of the men posted a picture of himself (below) on social media wearing a woman’s bib, which revealed the deception. I guess that both men and women ran together, which might make it harder to detect that the two imposters were in fact men. What it shows, of course, is the average advantage that biological men have over biological women in sports. The women who gave their bibs to men should be banned for at least two years.
*A gigantic Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) named “Chonkers” is grabbing all the headlines in San Francisco. where he’s often found chilling on Pier 39.. Weighing in at a full ton, he’s twice the weight of the usual California sea lions (Zalophus californianus).
San Francisco’s newest star isn’t part of a show, and you won’t find him at the ballpark or the basketball court, but he’s large and in charge – literally.
“Chonkers,” an estimated 2,000-pound Steller sea lion at Pier 39, is attracting visitors from far and wide.
“He’s massive,” Linda Helkin of Brisbane, Australia, said Tuesday. “Just lying there, didn’t have a care in the world.”
“Chonkers” is noticeably larger than the California sea lions that usually hang out at Pier 39. Large adult male California sea lions generally weigh between 800 to 1,000 pounds, while Steller sea lions are about double in size.
“Chonkers” has been hanging around Pier 39 for the last month or so. According to the Pier 39 harbor masters, he’s come to visit occasionally over the last few years.
Pier 39’s Sheila Chandor said he’s likely here now because the bay offers plenty to feed on.
“Right now, the fact that he’s staying this long means that there’s a lot of food source close by to where we are,” Chandor said. “It’s a good sign. It means the bay is healthy, we’ve got plenty of fish around.”
According to the harbor masters, the best time to get a look at “Chonkers” is in the morning until roughly 9:30 a.m. and in the later afternoon and evening. During the middle of the day, he’s usually out in the bay fishing.
Here’s a video. Look at that chonk!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is attentive to the garden, but I suspect she’s speaking metaphorically:
Hili: The same thing again.
Andrzej: What do you mean?
Hili: Weeds grow faster than grass.
In Polish:
Hili: Znów to samo.
Ja: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Chwasty rosną szybciej niż trawa.
Masih applauds the expulsion of the Iranian football chief from Canada. I’m not sure I agree that sports should be a political football (pardon the pun).
Iran football chief expelled from Canada in airport showdown over IRGC ties!
I welcome the deportation of Mehdi Taj from Canada sends alongside millions of Iranians because we are united against sportswashing.
From Luana. It’s Springtime at the U of C, and the pro-Pals have created their parallel university, complete with public prayers:
🚨 Day Three of UChicago’s “Popular University” featured ICE intervention training, a student repression panel with recently arrested students, a Rojava reportback, “Palestine Before 10/7″ with FJP, and “Anti-Black Structural Violence + Radical Resistance.” pic.twitter.com/Fvm34Fj3eI
🚨 Day Two of UChicago’s “Popular University for Gaza” has professors teaching “Iran War + US Empire,” the Grenadan Revolution, ICE resistance, political prisoners in “Babylon,” and more.
From J. K. Rowling, who noticed that people have trouble saying that the Golders Green attack in London affectsed Jews. Even mentioning the affected group is apparently verboten:
Why do leaders of the Greens have such difficulty naming the particular demographic likely to be most ‘shaken’ and ‘affected’ by two men from their community having their throats cut on a London street? pic.twitter.com/sKMA4p1bre
After writing the lyrics to "Song of the Murdered Jewish People," this Jewish poet, Ithak Katzenelson was himself gassed. You can hear the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrWQ…
If I was asked ten years ago to explain this difference and also the trend over time, I wouldn’t have been able to give an answer, though now various places have suggested self-selection: academia by its very nature of free expression and (supposed) favoritism of argument and open ideas, favors liberals over conservatives. Here’s from The Independent Review:
The very nature of political inquiry is implicated here as well. Some argue that because academia focuses on expanding ideas, it is inherently opposed to conservatism, which seeks, in a nod to Buckley, to yell “Stop!” In some respects, a liberal-leaning academia should be expected to some degree. The confounding reality now, though, is that many liberal academics agree it is vital to limit ideas they deem harmful.
Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas.
Now what does that mean? I suppose you can interpret it as another way of saying what’s above: universities, whose job is to find out the truth (“reality”) tend to attract liberals. But I don’t think that’s what the phrase is supposed to mean. I think that Colbert meant, and others mean, that reality itself has a tendency to buttress Left-wing views. That’s what Grok says when asked to explain how the Left uses the phrase:
Often deployed earnestly (or semi-earnestly) to argue that empirical evidence on topics like climate change, inequality, public health data, or social issues tends to support center-left policy conclusions more than conservative ones. The implication: “Stop calling facts ‘liberal bias’—reality just doesn’t align with your priors.”
And that may indeed be true, but it reverses the causes of what’s meant: “the views of liberals are more often supported by the facts than are the views of conservatives or moderates.”
Well, one can argue about even that (e.g., climate change on one hand and Israel on the other), but what bothers me is that the quote implies that reality itself leads to liberalism. But reality has no ideology: it’s simply what’s true about the Universe. Evolutionary biology itself gives just the facts, though those facts can be accepted by liberals or rejected by conservatives like religious creationists. How one deals with the facts depends on one’s upbringing and predisposition.
Actually, anyone studying reality—trying to find the truth—had best abandon any ideological slant beforehand, as ideology impedes the search for truth. The methodology of science itself—hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt, double-blind testing, the use of math and statistics, publication and communication, and empirical observation—is not ideological, and does not lead one to either the Left or Right.
This paper from BioScience, written by a philosopher and an evolutionary molecular biologist, shows that studying reality itself is best done in an atmosphere of ethnical neutrality. Click screenshot to read.
The authors argue first that ideological neutrality is important in finding the truth:
Arguably, a more feasible solution to the new demarcation problem is an old solution: when engaging in the core activities of scientific research, scientists should strive to eliminate the influence of all non-epistemic (e.g., ethical and political) values from the work they are conducting and (importantly) reviewing—at least to the extent that this is humanly possible. Like the ideal of a perfect democracy, the ideal of perfect ethical or political neutrality is probably never attainable in practice. Nonetheless, it is an ideal that motivates scientists to identify and hold each other accountable for any non-epistemic biases that might infiltrate and potentially distort scientific reasoning.
They then say that science is best conducted employing four Mertonian norms (Robert Merton was an American sociologists who wrote a lot about the sociology of science):
Merton’s first norm, perhaps inappropriately called “communism,” “prescribes the open communication of findings to other scientists and correlatively proscribing secrecy” (Zuckerman and Merton 1971).
. . . Merton’s second norm—universalism—states that personal attributes of a scientist, such as race, gender, nationality, religion, class, or political affiliation, are irrelevant when evaluating their scientific work. This norm functions epistemically as a corrective against all possible forms of discrimination other than merit.
. . . Merton’s third value, organized skepticism, encourages scientists to remain open to future falsification. This involves considering “all new evidence, hypotheses, theories, and innovations, even those that challenge or contradict their own work” (Anderson et al. 2010).
. . . Merton’s fourth norm called “disinterestedness” is perhaps the most controversial. Taken literally, this norm seems to require of scientists that they set aside personal goals in the pure pursuit of truth. Even the most careful scientist is vulnerable to confirmation bias (Wiens 1997). The expectation that scientists should behave as if they had no stake in the outcomes of their research is meant to counteract the effects of wishful thinking.
Now the authors discuss the opposition to these norms, and problems that arise when using them, but I think it’s useful to recognize that setting aside ideology is the best and fastest way to understand reality.
I suppose this post is a long-winded way of exporessing what I see as a self-aggrandizing phrase, and one that distorts the way that finding truth really works, but I’ve heard the phrase often enough to dissect it a bit.
The upshot: neither morality or ideology can be derived from reality, but those of a certain ideological or moral bent may rely on reality more than those of other stripes.
Without a doubt, the most famous “restaurant” in Savannah is Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room, formerly known as Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House (the apostrophe seems to be optional). It is a stupendous all-you-can eat Southern homestyle meal, formerly served to the lodgers at a boarding house. A bit from Wikipedia:
Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room was previously the dining hall of the Wilkes House, a downtown boardinghouse. Today the restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the same historic house, built in 1870, at 107 West Jones Street. The restaurant was described by author William Schemmel as “a treasure hidden away in a historic district town-house”. Its longtime owner, Sema Wilkes, published several cookbooks. As of 2024 her family continued to run the restaurant, serving lunch on weekdays.
We happen to be staying at about 200 Jones Street, so could walk get there in about 7 minutes, though waddling home the obligatory postprandial nap took a while longer!
More:
Mrs. Wilkes’ is noted for its homestyle traditions, in which guests are escorted in shifts of ten into the dining room, where a variety of dishes are freshly laid on one of several long tables. There is no menu; dishes are selected by the restaurant and change daily. Travel Holiday in 1993 recalled that the “tables were set with steaming bowls and platters of tasty Southern food”.
The guests sit at the table and pass the dishes around to one another like a family. There are usually long queues waiting to get in.
Usually?? Try “always”!
We tried to go on Monday, but didn’t make the first seating and so, lest we miss our Monday architecture tour, decided to return yesterday. The first three pictures are from Monday, but the line was the same (long) yesterday. The difference was that yesterday got there a full hour before it opened at 11 a.m., and so were seated as soon as the doors opened.
I’ve put a lovely YouTube video about the place at the bottom of this post, so be sure to watch it. It perfectly captures the Wilkes Dining Experience.
x
The line was longer than this but I wanted to fit in the house as well as the hungry customers.
I wanted Tim to photograph me holding a fried chicken leg (the place is famous for its fried chicken) and, sure enough, my chicken leg was on the sign by the entrance.
The place was about five minutes late in opening—a delay I couldn’t tolerate. Photo by Tim.
They take only case: no credit cards (there’s an ATM nearby).
Our table set up with some (but far from all) of the dishes we got, along with glasses of tea (sweetened, of course) and fresh roses. You can see collard greens, fried okra, macaroni salad, cucumber salad, and, well, I put below of what we were offered.
One of the two dining rooms after it filled up.
Immediately after sitting down, we were served both cornbread and fresh, hot biscuits.
And of course the food and atmosphere were conducive to making friends, and so we chatted with two amiable visitors from the UK, one from Manchester, where Matthew lives. I’m sure this is a particularly unique experience for Brits who aren’t familiar with southern American cuisine (the best in the U.S., in my view, especially if you throw in Texas brisket).
Here are the dishes that were put on the table, but we may have forgotten a few. There were more than two dozen, and you could help yourself to as much as you wanted. Our lunch took about an hour.
Below: my plate, the first of 2.5 platefuls I ate. Clockwise from 11 o’clock: biscuit, cornbread, collard greens, deep-fried okra, macaroni salad, pulled pork, black-eyed peas, stewed cabbage, rice with chorizo, sweetened yams, and fried chicken. As expected, the fried chicken was fantastic: among the best I’ve ever had. A crunchy, crackly exterior enshrouded juicy chicken.
This was, of course, only my first plate, as I wanted to try nearly all the dishes except stewed okra (okra is edible only when deep-friend, and ;then can be very good).
Me eating chicken–a breast this time, though I also had a thigh. Photo by Tim.
Here are Tim and Betsy digging in:
We were offered a choice of desserts: peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream or banana pudding studded with vanilla wafers. Since part of my stomach is reserved for desserts, I asked for (and got) both.
Cobbler:
Banana pudding:
We waddled home after that, and all of us needed a nap. I did not eat a bit of food until this morning, when I ate only two pieces of toast.
If you go to Savannah (and do go when it’s not summer), you MUST go to Mrs. Wilkes’. This is not optional.
Here’s a great video about the place I found on YouTube.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 11, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats and, in Canada, it’s National Poutine Day, the tastiest and unhealthiest of all comfort foods. Here are several orders of poutine waiting to be served at La Banquise, perhaps Montreal’s most famous poutine shack. The photo, taken in March of 2016, shows two orders with guac amd sour cream. One person has unaccountably ordered a salad:
Here are the Kingsmen lip-synching to the song. I can still remember the first time I heard it, and it was on a transistor radio.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Did you watch the Artemis re-entry and splashdown yesterday? Everything worked fine: it was, as they say, copacetic.
Floating in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission had achieved more than just a historic return to human spaceflight around the moon.
“From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete,” Rob Navias, who provided NASA commentary during the re-entry, said after splashdown.
The successful conclusion of Artemis II sets NASA on a path to extend the agency’s achievements in space exploration, and, for now at least, the United States is ahead of China in a 21st century space race.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency were the first people to leave low-Earth orbit since 1972. Their journey captivated space enthusiasts and may have created new ones.
I’ve put an 11-minute video below; the moment of splashdown is at 7:42.
I’m told that this mission is partly to prepare for creating a U.S. base on the Moon. I’m not sure, however, what that will accomplish? Will we claim the moon, in the same way that countries have made faux claims in Antarctica?
*In a post on It’s Noon in Israel,” author and journalist Amit Segal interviews Israeli Minister Aryeh Deri and also gives some exclusive statements from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. First I’ll give Segal’s bullet points and take on the war, and you can read the Q&A for yourself:
It’s Friday, April 10, and before we dive into today’s headlines, we have exclusive statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During our conversation last night, he highlighted three key points:
On Iran he asserted that without the two recent operations, Iran would have already acquired nuclear weapons by 2026.
On U.S. relations he argued that Israel’s standing in the United States is only an issue among those who have a problem with America itself. He stressed that this is not a new development, nor is it related to the current war.
On the northern front he claimed that Hezbollah has been begging for a ceasefire for a month, and teased that there will be further ‘interesting developments’ in the negotiations with Lebanon.”
As early as the second week, it became clear that the regime would not fall from airstrikes alone. The U.S. and Israeli strategy pivoted: hit them hard, then allow internal pressure to build while the U.S. military remains in the region as a passive deterrent against mass repression. The recent prospect of negotiations complicates that signal to the Iranian public, but the core strategy may still hold.
While the Iranian threat has been at least temporarily defanged, a new long-term threat is rising: U.S. public opinion.
There is a two-part problem.
First, the United States has not yet achieved its stated objectives. Second, as long as those objectives remain unmet, the finger of blame will inevitably point toward Israel. We can already see the narrative forming: Israel gave the U.S. false intelligence that the regime was on the brink of collapse, deceiving Trump into wasting American resources and lives in pursuit of its own interests. Ignoring the likely fact that Donald Trump hasn’t been led into doing anything he didn’t want to do since he was an infant, this is the story that’s being told.
Israel cannot afford to be seen as the party that overpromised. It cannot be left holding the proverbial bag for an Iranian version of Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs.
Moving forward, Israel must urgently invest in rebuilding its own infrastructure devastated by the war: public support in the U.S.
A bit of the Q&A with Deri:
Q: Will we see a regime change in the near future?
“I believe so. By the way, Trump believes the current regime is far more measured and responsible than what came before. In a certain sense, I agree. The diplomatic figures there effectively forced the ceasefire because of the constraints, not because of any genuine change of heart. They understood that within two weeks Iran would go bankrupt.”
Q: “And aren’t you worried that Israel’s gains come at a cost – a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn’t theirs?”
“That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans – whatever administration – will understand that their real ally is us.”
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: MMIWG2SLGBTQIA+” (yes, that’s a group; read on).
→ To study the forest, you must have a limp: A new job posting for a tenure-track position—Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship at the University of British Columbia—has an interesting requirement. “For this position, applicants must identify as having a disability.” Actually, more ideally, they must identify as disabled women or indigenous people of color:
In accordance with UBC’s CRC Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan, and pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights code, this search is restricted to people with disabilities. We welcome applications from disabled scholars who are also members of the following federally designated groups: Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, and women, and gender equity-seeking groups. Applicants to CRC positions are required to complete this equity survey.
To study the forest, you must have a limp. And be gay. Are you gay and are you limping? (Me, yes, frequently.) Now you may apply to be a professor of the forests. Also, this confirms my theory that the longer the job title, the more ridiculous the job. CanadaResearchChair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship?
And elsewhere in Canada, a major political conference devolved into chaos as everyone fought over “equity cards,” differently colored little cards that let certain speakers cut in line according to their level of oppression. “I was standing here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. That’s my point of privilege,” one person said. Another: “Yesterday, this card was used in an inappropriate matter. And while I understand in Ontario, we note this as equity, even if that, this was also used inappropriately in terms of gender. I want everyone to be mindful that these cards for individuals like myself, who identify as a black woman, have no value outside of this space.” Okay, fine, one more: “I said, ‘Hey, this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience, I’d like to speak.’ I was rejected when I talked. It’s frustrating when it’s—these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta. A cisgender woman had spoken over me.” The delegates weren’t the only ones complaining, however. The chair had some words after their pronouns were tread upon: “I’ll again thank delegates not to call me ‘Madame Chair.’ I am a nonbinary person. My pronouns are they/them/their. Chair is sufficient.” I’d also like to thank my coworkers not to call me Nellie Bowels. Which they have multiple times this week, and which is (I swear to G-d) how my name is spelled on my official Paramount ID card. I thank you not to call me that. Chair is sufficient.
On my last Canadian note—it’s a 20! I’ll be here all week!—New Democratic Party MP Leah Gazan expressed her frustration at budget cuts by saying: “They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.” Them’s a lot of letters. I thought that surely had to be a joke. So I googled the phrase and sure enough, it’s real. I really try not to make too much fun of the alphabet soup stuff. It’s too easy. It’s played out. I’m better than it. But then a member of parliament drops MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ on us. What are we supposed to do here, guys? When will the letters end? Is there pi of letters? Why two Q’s?
Here’s the answer. There’s other mishigas from Canada at the article. Note that this isn’t really a “genocide” since most of the perps are indigenous people themselves, and I suspect that domestic violence is a major contributor:
→ Updates on Jewish life: What a time it has been! Sixty percent of American adults now largely dislike Israel, according to a new Pew Research Center survey and also my entire Instagram feed, and everyone else in the world minus the people I work and associate with.
. . . A politician from Britain’s Labour Party made and posted a video with the words Jew and kike spelled out over different Tories’ faces. But don’t worry—he was just quoting a song, just a random line that happened to be transcribed randomly. Must be AI’s fault. A total accident, he says, of the word kike spelled out over his oppositions’ faces. Happens all the time, I’m sure. I’ve been there, man, hang in there, says the rest of the country.
In a vestigial twitch of fairness, NPR’s public editor did note that it was odd how the news outlet covered the attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool. See, NPR sent a reporter to a Lebanese village to help contextualize why the suspect in that Michigan attack might have been so upset (Israel killed his relatives, one of whom was reportedly a Hezbollah commander, so you see, blowing up a Jewish preschool is fair). The public editor notes: “I couldn’t find any stories that quote rabbis, congregation members, or the families of the children who had to flee the building.” Seems bad! Alas, not really that bad. The piece ends: “NPR has given Americans what they need to understand their government’s motivations and to hold their elected officials accountable for this war.” All’s well. Nothing to see here.
Meanwhile, a NYT piece on the youth these days defines the term J-pilled as simply “far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence.” J-pilled. Interesting; does Israel start with J? Does it have a J? Maybe it stands for Jabba the Hutt? Oh, right. It means Jew-pilled, and the NYT is trying to soften it. Like how the mainstream media always translates the Arabic wordYahud to Israelis instead of Jews, which is what it means. But the people saying J-pilled speak English! They’re literally calling themselves Jew-pilled, and our greatest newspaper is desperate to make it go down smoothly. Some days I’m ready for the human-alien hybrids to reveal themselves.
*John McWhorter responds to both AI and DEI in a new NYT column, “What A.I. and D.E.I. have in common” (article is archived here). The commonality involves casting suspicion on people and their work.
I never thought A.I. would get me thinking of D.E.I.
I’ve reached a depressing turning point as a college professor. With A.I. now entrenched in academic life, when a student submits a wonderful essay, I will never again be sure that it was purely a work of the student’s initiative, intelligence and talent.
Some essays will be. But there will be no way to really tell. Technology could allow me to determine only what was likely. And would an essay count as original if the student used A.I. to begin the paper but then built upon those prompts?
Let’s face it: From now on we will have to revise our sense of what is original and authentic. There is no way to adjudicate where to draw the line, and few professors will be up for submitting every essay they receive to this kind of evaluation.
. . .And there is something else gloomy about A.I. making it unnecessary to write an essay from the ground up. A.I. will put more people under the sort of suspicion that D.E.I. does.
A.I. will put artistic and intellectual achievement under a cloud of doubt, a sense that the creator did not do it all on their own, and possibly could not have. And this is the burden that D.E.I. policies often saddle its intended beneficiaries with.
Call it diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action or racial preferences, it is rooted in a quest to give people an opportunity to compete more easily against straight white people, especially men.
Adjusting standards for admission or hiring in view of a group’s past handicap is a unique moral advance.
But it should be applied for as limited a time as possible because of the side effects. Under a policy that allows certain people to be judged even partly on who they are rather than what they bring to the table, people of color are often suspected of being “D.E.I. hires,” brought on with lesser qualifications than their white equivalent would be permitted to have.
Sometimes, the charge is false. From what I see, and from what people with law degrees whose opinions I trust tell me, the Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is clearly qualified for her position.
But the interviews Karine Jean-Pierre gave during her book tour last year gave credence to the idea that when President Joe Biden made her White House press secretary her race, gender and sexual orientation were more important criteria than her ability to convey policy, positions and ideas clearly.
I haven’t seen Jean-Pierre’s interviews, but here’s a video from the Left-wing site The Young Turks arguing (at the start) that her book tour was a “disaster”:
*If you want to hear about the sex binary for its expert, as well as rebuttals of several widespread criticisms of the (real) sex binary, there’s an interview with Colin Wright published on his substack called “One reality, two sexes, and endless debates.” You can read for free; it’s a transcript of a interview he did with the German rationalist/skeptic organization Die Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP),(The Society for the Scientific Study of Parasciences). Here are two of many Q&As:
Q: Your paper identifies five main models used to argue against the sex binary. Could you briefly outline them?
A: First, there’s the conflation of mating types with sexes. Some fungi and slime molds reproduce sexually using gametes of the same size—we call these isogamous species. They have chemical compatibility types between gametes, sometimes thousands of them. Articles about ‘the slime mold with 30,000 sexes’ are based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Sexes refer only to males and females, which are defined by different-sized gametes. Species with same-sized gametes don’t have males and females—they have mating types.
Second, there’s the chromosomal or karyotype model. You’ll hear people say, ‘if you’re XX you’re female, if you’re XY you’re male.’ But this conflates how sex is determined in humans with what sex is. Many crocodilians and turtles don’t have sex chromosomes at all—their sex is determined by egg incubation temperature. People with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) aren’t a third sex; they’re biologically male. These are chromosomal variations within the two sexes.
Third, there’s the sex spectrum model, which holds that sex is a continuous variable based on genital morphology. Some proponents think males and females aren’t real entities but exist only in a statistical sense—you can be varying degrees of male or female, but not definitively male or female. This ignores gametes entirely and has circular problems: how do you know what genital shape is ‘male’ unless you already know what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fourth, there’s the polythetic categories model—like family resemblance, in which members share overlapping characteristics, with no single feature necessary for membership. They try to apply this to sex, saying it’s a combination of chromosomes, hormones, height, and voice pitch, and many other sex-related traits. But how do you define which chromosomes or hormone profiles are ‘male’ without presupposing what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fifth—and most influential—is the multi-level model, which says we can’t talk about bodies having a sex. Instead, you’d say someone is ‘genetically male’ or ‘hormonally female’ or has a ‘male height.’ But again, how are they determining which chromosomes are male without presupposing that males and females exist apart from chromosomes, inevitably rooted in gametes?
and:
Q: What evidence would you need to change your view that there are only two sexes?
A: That’s a crucial question. In the skeptic community, you always need to have something that could convince you you’re wrong. If you don’t, you’re just a zealot, not doing science.
For me, it’s really easy: we define sexes by the type of gamete an individual is biologically capable of producing. You’d need to present a third novel gamete type—in addition to or intermediate between sperm and ova—that an individual’s reproductive system could have the function to produce. That’s the only thing that could make there be more than two sexes.
*Chimp wars! The WSJ describes a lethal war between a previously amiable group of chimpanzees. We’ve long known that chimpanzees can engage in lethal intergroup violence, sometimes tearing apart an outsider chimp limb from limb. But in an article called “Inside the deadly civil war that tore apart a group of chimpanzees in Uganda“, the paper describe fractionation of a previously harmonious group, and a big group, too. I’ve put the original article from Science below, which you can also click to read. The article’s conclusion is that fractioning a group doesn’t require “cultural markers” like ethnicity, religion, or language, since chimps don’t have those.
A rare and deadly “civil war” has broken out between two factions of chimps in Africa, according to new research.
The dispute erupted in what was once a cohesive group of about 200 chimps whose ties stretched back two decades. It took just three years for them to turn on each other, according to a new study in the journal Science.
“We’ve known for a long time that chimpanzees will attack and kill their neighbors,” said primatologist John Mitani, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and a study co-author. “It turns out they will do this even when those neighbors are former friends and allies.”
For 20 years, the Ngogo chimps of Uganda’s Kibale National Park “were living the good life by being together,” Mitani said. They helped one another, dominated and killed apes from neighboring groups, expanded their territory and boosted their babies’ chances of survival.
But in 2015, the group started splitting into two clusters. Several male chimps who had bridged cliques within the larger group died from disease, weakening social ties. Around the same time, a new alpha male rose to dominance.
Changes in the dominance hierarchy can fuel more aggression and tension, said Aaron Sandel, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and study co-author. As aggression escalated, the factions drifted into separate areas of the park.
By 2018, the split was complete. The two groups had no remaining social or reproductive ties between them; the last chimp infant with parents from different groups was born in 2015. What was once the center of the group’s territory became a border, which chimps patrolled, the researchers found.
Then the hostilities began in earnest.
Members of the smaller of the two groups launched coordinated lethal attacks on the other, aiming to kill rival adult males. By 2021, these raids had expanded to target younger apes, averaging several infant deaths a year since.
The paper below says that “over the next 7 years [after fission], members of one group made 24 attacks, killing at least seven mature males and 17 infants in the other group.”
Here’s the paper’s conclusion, which contains what I think an unwarranted extrapolation to humans. It’s ok to speculate, I guess, but I’m not sure I would have written what’s below:
This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions . It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gives his opinion about philosophy:
Andrzej: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m practicing philosophy.
Andrzej: Sometimes that amounts to the same thing.\
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, uprawiam filozofię.
Ja: To czasem na jedno wychodzi.
From Bryan: a short but provocative interview with Dan Dennett (text and video) about consciousness:
Daniel Dennett: You don’t know your own mind as well as you think you do.
In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about… pic.twitter.com/UZ0hZuwmG0
— Big Brain Philosophy (@BigBrainPhiloso) April 9, 2026
From Luana on Biden’s immigration policy, which was no policy:
Most Americans still don’t fully understand what happened under Biden…
8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years.
8% of the entire country.
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 9, 2026
One from my feed; more evidence that the Turks love their cats (translation from the Turkish: “In Turkey, an elderly man who makes his living by shining shoes never turns away this little friend when a cat that shows up at the same time every morning asks to have its fur brushed.”
Türkiye’de ayakkabı boyayarak geçimini sağlayan yaşlı bir amcanın yanına her sabah aynı saatte gelen bir kedi, tüylerinin taranmasını isteyince amca bu minik dostunu asla geri çevirmiyor. pic.twitter.com/ktjJE66upn
